The Dragon language quite intricately molds the storyline of Skyrim. It's present usage however, is confined only to dragon shouts.

We're aware of two certain sources of procuring the Dragon Shouts - ancient walls and the dragons, themselves.



These shouts, though, aid us only in combat. So, how do we further the implementation of the language while ensuring it isn't obtrusive?

Firstly, it could be used in ancient manuscripts and scriptures for augmenting our lore. The GI article hints at this but the usage is only limited to walls.



With puzzles being confirmed it could be used for tablets which we may obtain or recover while we scour the landscapes of Skyrim. These tablets could assist us in deciphering puzzles encountered in dungeons. Or, it may be used in manuscripts which entail information about some hidden treasure waiting to be discovered. These could also be obtained as rare rewards from a successful dungeon crawl. Who knows? There might be someone out there looking for these manuscripts to further his cause.

Additionally, since dragon shouts are so powerful, we could possibly chant them to enhance the effects of potions or poisons; provided you have the requisite knowledge (read: words from Dragon Shouts.)

Perhaps, it could be implemented to perform rituals. I remember fairly well that a Mages Guild quest from Oblivion required you to observe a summoning ritual. It would be interesting to perform one yourself by deciphering a codex or a short manuscript to summon the Daedra lords.

Lastly, we could use it to have conversations with greater dragons, albeit that seems highly unlikely.

Thoughts?

i think some NPCs (friendly dragons, cultists) should only speak the dragon language.

"Hi, I'm Casper, the friendly dragon" ...
Seems unlikley. I dunno, when I encounter a dragon, my first thoughts aren't exactly "Oh boy a new friend!!"

lol thats true, why not cultists, or use it in conversations with the greybeardsto impress them or somthing of that matter? who knows, maybe thats all some greybeards speak.

Well, dragons don't have to be your friend in order to speak to you. Just look at Smaug from The Hobbit, he had a long nice chat with Bilbo

Indeed, and the Elder Scrolls also has instances of characters who are not you're friend who speak to you, albeit usually before attacking you, Dagoth Ur doesn't count though, as he WAS Nerevar's friend, that's why he offers you the chance to serve him. Admitably, these characters weren't dragons. But I don't see how that changes anything. If you're enemies can speak, than the fact that they're dragons doersn't mean you can't speak to them before they try to kill you. That's actually something I kind of missed in Oblivion's main quest, with very few exceptions, the Daedra just attacked you on sight, I didn't even get to hear them threaten to do unspeakable things to my corpse before trying to kill me. Now, for most types of Daedra, I would imagine it's because Oblivion didn't really support dialog with creatures, but even Dremora, who could clearly hold conversations with you, rarely had anything more to say than combat taunts. At the very least, I hope we get to speak to Alduin before fighting with him, in many good stories, I've found, the dialog between the protagonist and antagonist during the climatic confrontation, whether it's the villain revealing his goals and getting into an idealogical debate with the hero, trying to tempt him to join the dark side, or just exchanging taunts and one liners, can convey more emotion than the final battle. Obviously, this isn't always the case, some antagonists don't lend themselves to conversation, particularly when you're antagonist isn't actually capable of speech to begin with, but when you're villain is an alter ego of the chief diety of the Nine Divines, I'd like to hear what he has to say for himself. As it stands, Alduin has already been made to sound like an entity that's just kind of there to provide a threat for the story, with no real reason and logic to his actions, I'll be slightly dissappointed if Alduin just shows up, roars, and *BAM!* final boss fight! Without even a single line of dialog before or during the battle.

Besides, it was already said in the Sounds of Skyrim video that dragons would speak, I believe. So it's pretty much confirmed we'll be able to talk to them, it's just a question of whether they'll speak their own language, or English (Or whatever langauge you got the game in if you buy a localized version.) What I'm hoping for is that we'll be able to have dragon dialog handled in a similar way to dialog with aliens in KOTOR, where they'd speak in their own language but there would be subtitles in English so you could tell what they were saying, except instead of just having them speak gibberish, they should actually use the dragon language Bethesda created. It seems like kind of a waste to create a language for you're game, even a somewhat rudimentary one, and not put it to good use.



That bit makes it sound like their might be some bonus lore hidden in those walls for people who take the time to learn how to read the draconic script.

I'd like to see it sprinkled throughout the game in manageable chunks. Single words and Short recurring phrases, in dialogue and documents, which meanings you begin to pick up as you progress through the game- much like Outcast handled their unique words in their language. That is probably also the only realistic implementation of it. The language in itself is likely not complete, and probably only has limited rules for grammar, so expecting documents to be written entirely in the language wouldn't be a good idea. For two reasons: One, it would take a lot of time and effort to develop the language to such a state that it could be used in such a fashion; and Two, you restrict this content to only a small fraction of your consumer base (those with the interest and patience to learn an entire language for the sake of some secrets or lore.) It simply doesn't make sense to spend so much time on a feature that it would be experienced only by a few hardcoe fans. A couple of words and phrases are easy to create for the designers, and easy to learn even for the casual player - making it a great atmospheric addition at a very low cost for everyone involved.

I think you're onto something there. The Greybeards generally don't talk because of just how powerful their voices are. But if the Dragon language is where this power comes from, it wouldn't make sense for them to speak Tamrielic at all.

Now that I think about it, they're probably Dragons. Nords would speak Tamrielic, or at least know a little. If a Greybeard speaking equals Thu'um, that means that they don't know Tamrielic, or are somehow incapable of speaking it.

So, yeah. Dragons.

Wow, what a great post and Poll idea. Well thought out and provocative. Thanks!

I chose most of the options except the first one about ancient script because if it's lore, I personally don't want to have to peer through and decipher the writings just to find out what to do on my quest. I want my quest to come easy and fast. But all the other options were ones I would choose. Having to decipher dragon speech to find some buried treasure is acceptible because it's not a plot-driven quest and wouldn't break plot progression if you didn't do it. You'd just suffer the loss of whatever treasure could be found if you had taken the time. But it's still your choice. Putting into the plot would cause too many glitches and the require us to buy the supplemental "gaming guides" to find the advice on how to solve certain areas, requiring more money output. I'm not for that at all. Hahahaha.

That is correct. However, I suppose basic directions wouldn't be too hard to cipher. While for the language itself, shorter manuscripts (like the letters from Oblivion, some of which consisted of not more than five lines) or something along the lines of the text on the GI magazine could be feasible.



Neither do I :thumbsup:. On the contrary, its exclusion from the quests would be better. Although, the language itself could be used in conjunction with symbols to provide basic directions.

I don't think that the Dragonborn can speak dragon language fluently enough to conversate with anyone, considering that he has to learn that language word by word during all the game. But I want the dragons not to be just the other monsters. I really hope they are intelligent creatures, intelligent enough to speak to some of them (maybe not in draconic though).

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dragon_Alphabet http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dragon_Language

That would probably be in regard to Thu'um. The handling of the language would ultimately come down to player skill.

Personaly, I would love to see some of this.