Alright. Just looking at the title, if you're here to immediately draw comparisons to modern firearms, shut down the idea without a though, make some snide comment about Call of Duty, just leave now. I am not, by any means, talking about modern firearms. I would like to see guns in a future Elder Scrolls game. By which I mean no more than your late medieval flintlock rifle and/or pistol and maybe blunderbuss. The way I'd see these working is less accurate than bows (and crossbows, assuming those were also added), take a realistic amount of time to reload (possibly a little sped up, for the sake of you becoming old and withering away at the controller while you wait to fire your next shot), but pack one hell of a wallop should it hit. In the era of early gunpowder, one would carry multiple pistols for defense, and they would shoot off their bullet, throw the gun to the ground, pull out another pistol, and fire that one, so on and so forth until either they or their adversary were either dead or out of guns. I could see a similar system for pistols. But generally, I could imagine gunpowder weapons being used for large group battles (see the Stormcloak vs. Imperial battles on the Late Xbox 360, then imagine the large-scale group battles that could occur on the next generation of consoles.). But you could possibly carry about 5 or 6 pistols around for some personal adventuring, as well. Skyrim takes place 200 years after Oblivion, which takes place about 6 years after Morrowind, where there were crossbows. It's not unlikely that by the time the Elder Scrolls 6 is out, technology would be somewhere near the real-world parallel of the 16th or 17th century, where flintlock weapons started to be used.

TL;DR; I think primitive firearms would be viable in the next, or future Elder Scrolls games. Discuss your opinions on the viability of primitive firearms.

Considering you can already blow people up with magical fireballs or shout down city walls with a thu'um and the forumula for gunpowder was found exactly once in the entire series and therefore we can assume it is scarce compared to real world resources, there is no viable reason from a story or worldbuilding reason to shoehorn in firearms. And as for gameplay, well there's really no point in the current triple division of gameplay.

You have good points. But I think it feels awkward that there was a 200 year timeskip from Oblivion to Skyrim, but the world hasn't modernized even a single bit. In two hundred years, technology appears stagnant. I think if there's another timeskip from Skyrim/Next ES Game, it could be more transitioned than shoehorned.

They've been a bad 200 years, anyways I think its a good idea.

It's not really too much of a stretch from a real-world perspective. People used swords and spears for thousands of years before the first firearms were developed. Real-life technology didn't really start exploding until the last few hundred years of history. Trying to find parallels between Nirn and the real-world only serves to make things complicated. It's a fantasy world and it has it's own certain set of "rules" to remain as such.

From a lore perspective, I don't think firearms are completely beyond reason. Cannons were actually mentioned in passing in a book in Daggerfall, though how canonical (no pun intended) they are could be up for debate. And I don't think just because there is magic means that there is no reason to have firearms. It might discourage their creation, but it wouldn't make them invalid.
From a gameplay perspective, however, I'd worry that the addition of firearms would start leading the series in a bad direction. If done right, they might work, but if done wrong, you'd just end up with another first-person shooter kind of deal, and a lot of angry, die-hard fans.

What I think would be cool: old Dwemer steam-cannons. Those guys were like the height of technology in Tamriel, surely they could have come up with something like that. Heck...they had frickin' robots!

That's because you're looking at the wrong technology. You're expecting things to advance in an Earthen way; guns, cars, trains, etc. That's not how Nirn would progress technologically. Nirn is far too magical and metaphysical for those things. They are irrational.

Even the Dwemer's technology is backed by crazy magic and bending the Earth Bones, and even their technology isn't properly comparable to Earth's.

Plenty of technological progress has been made in those 200 years, just not in the places you're looking for.

Hm, kinda like the vast majority of the history of human society.

Guns are a rather recent invention and the early guns weren't much better than longbows (actually they were worse than a longbow wielded by an experienced archer) and there were major civilizations that existed for thousands of years without inventing guns (like the Roman empire). Guns aren't really practical in TES since magic can and is used in their place and is both more powerful and more accurate.

guns have no place in TES

sure the dwemer had gunpowder, or atleast something like it (satchel charge), but they are gone and the technology should stay gone with them

tes with firearms = and i will not play it

I won't debate the technological progress in a world whose lore changes I can't control, but I can safely say that from a presonal gameplay and roleplaying standpoint I would hate firearms in TES.

I'm not being snarky, but I'm genuinely interested, what's changed? I've heard the magic point, with wards and such. But... I don't buy it, that's gameplay, and if we're taking that into account magic has taken many more strides backward.

Personally I'm of the perspective that technology is currently stagnant in TES, and I'm glad for it.

Not a fan of guns in TES series myself, I can't reasonably explain why or back my opinion with lore as I'm not a lore person. It's probably the resemblance with first person shooter games, or the notion of "modernism" they inspire whereas my passion for TES stands in the feeling of "lost in an ancient and somewhat primitive world". It's the reason why I'm anticipating the upcoming Risen 2 with a cloud of doubt above my head.

Water powered saws seem to be new.

yes, this means we can have a nuclear bomb in the next TES

for sure

You're grasping at straws son, Imma stick with my 'technology didn't advance at all' theory. Like I said though, that's good, I don't want a Fable 2.

Uh, I'm not for this, guys, this is just a fact. Doesn't mean anything, it's not that significant.

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Velorien hit it on the head. Our world only industrialized in very specific circumstances. Nirn has spaceships (and yes, they have been to the moons), interplanetary/interdimensional travel, time travel, robots, airships, subways, and weaponized 16th dimensional magic and so on. Nirn has advanced, just not like our world, mainly because there's no need for it. Why build cars when you can travel the same distance via stilt-strider or hist-parasite in about the same time.

Exactly.

This debate has been going on for awhile. I hope guns never make it into Tamriel, but if they do, what I'd hope Beth would do is to introduce period pieces equivalent to what was possibly available during the Middle Ages & Renaissance on Earth. In other words, crude, inefficient, dirty weapons that take a long time to reload and are the lesser choice when compared to TES magics, as well as bows & arrows.

The OP seems to "get this", thank goodness, and isn't asking for AK-47s and revolvers and desert eagles such.

I find it amusing that this idea of inevitable technological advancement is so common. Our viewpoint is skewed by the fact that we live in times of great and rapid change, so we don't realize that our own world went along for centuries at a time with little or no change, until recently.

In order to get big change like that, you need a scientific and industrial revolution. You need public education. You need a non-repressive government. Do you see these things in Tamriel?

Gunpowder was invented in China, and the idea carried west by traders and explorers. Meanwhile, it was all but forgotten (or suppressed) in China.

Crossbows existed in classical Greece, and were further developed into hunting weapons by Rome. The crossbow was suppressed by the elite and clergy after the fall of Rome, because any untrained peasant with a crossbow could point and fire it to kill even a well-armored noble. It was a "threat" to the established order, and didn't make its re-appearance until contact with middle-eastern archers created a huge need for something capable of shooting back, and didn't require a decade of training to be effective.

In Tamriel, quite a bit of magical knowledge has apparently been lost (Levitation, etc.). Development in Tamriel faces the same "up and down" mechanisms that have affected real-world science and technology for most of human history, up until this recent surge where "western civilization" has tended to try to put everything into writing and store it redundantly, as well as educate the majority of the public to be able to read it.

All true.

You guys make good arguments against firearms, and at a deeper look, perhaps they wouldn't be so fitting in the Elder Scrolls world. But in the next game, I'd like to see at least some advancement. Skyrim-era Tamriel seems just as advanced, if not more primitive than Oblivion-era Tamriel.

It could also have a lot to do with the differences in provinces. Cyrodiil is the heart of the Empire, and at the time of Oblivion, the Empire was still doing pretty well for itself. It's more of an organized and "modern" province, and it probably gets the most funding and best technology.

Skyrim is a much harsher environment, and a lot of its population is probably just trying to survive. They don't have the luxuries of rich, rolling hills, moderate weather, or exceptional farmlands. They get mountains, snow, and rocks. Outside of major cities like Solitude, Skyrim's society is a lot more grounded.

So I think province has a lot to do with it. Summerset Isles or High Rock might be more technologically advanced than Valenwood or Black Marsh. Of course, they all have unique conditions to overcome, so they could all very well be advanced, but it different ways that may seem more primitive to other cultures.

Then, you have the 200 years between Oblivion and Skyrim. The Oblivion Crisis leaves the Empire without a ruler, so you have a change of dynasties. Then, the problems with the Thalmor, the Imperial City being besieged, all kinds of conflict—Tamriel is pretty war-ravaged and shaken by the time Skyrim takes place, and the Empire is falling apart. A lot of technological advancement may have ground to a halt, or even slid backwards into a sort of Dark Age.

Now, don't take this the wrong way or anything, I'm not disagreeing or trying to say you're wrong, so take no offense. I'm just trying to figure out reasons why it may seem that technology has stagnated. If anything, military tech should be getting more advanced. War often promotes technological growth. Some of mankind's greatest achievements began in the military, then were later adapted to civilian use.

Yeah, i've wondered this too. I know the devs aren't going to change gameplay based on lore, but what exactly
is the explanation for everyone in the world forgetting about crossbows? All the mages lost their levitation spell
books? Any "advancements" seem to purely be for gameplay purposes. Someone said the Alchemy Labs are
an advancement, but it seems like having a portable alchemy lab like in past ES games is much more conveniant
than an immobile house set.