You are officially my new favorite poster.

I think Todd is partially correct in his anolysis of the situation. The packaging and presentation needs to be familiar to the prospective buyer. This does not mean that it needs to be bland or overly generic, it just means the player needs to be able to locate themselves within it.

The most important features of the game should be able to be condensed into a space the size of the back of the box, with enough space for visually-attractive formatting and appropriate screenshots.

Take Daggerfall, for instance. At face value, it is a generic fantasy RPG in a pseudo-Mediveal Europe/North Africa... It has knights, assassins, stealty rogues, demons and gods. So, if your are in the mood for swinging a sword around, you know this is exactly what you want, you buy it, and then... BAM! You meet the in-game lore, beautifully presented and imbued. Disbelief is suspended because you know where you are, and then you come to appreciate the uniqueness of the game.

It is a generic fantasy world in some aspects, but at the same time it is entirely unique. The demon princes for the most part have personalities beyond "Demonic horde will take over your world and Make it Mordor!" though they keep enough of that in there for some people to maintain interest in fighting him. You get actual an actual political climate where each province has its own history and degrees of culture diverging from the three powerhouses of the Illiac Bay, which while clearly a copy of the Mediterranian, it is different enough to intrigue the player's interest and inspire them to dig deeper into the lore.

Without the generic familiarity, the game has no definition. Without definition, nobody will buy the game because they will be wondering "Why do I care about this Vvardi... Vardun... V-place? What else do they have... Ooh! A game with heros and magic! Now we're talking!"

So, I guess the point is, it needs to be at least facially a "marketable stereotype", or else nobody will be interested. This does not mean it can't have unique lore... On the contrary, the unique game lore is what keeps players coming back to the game, and joining the forum-based fandom. A completely generic game is nothing more than a casual game, and has about the same amount of playtime. Amusing for a long session, but once you've seen a small part, you've seen everything and have nothing left to look for.

Okay, then what about Morrowind? What was common or generic about that? The setting was completely original.

For example, not one familiar creature can be found in Vvardenfell.

Beyond any previous TES game and certainly beyond Oblivion (Though i?ve never played Arena nor Daggefall).

I mean, what was it about Morrowind that the player could feel identified with? You always feel like an alien, in fact NPC?s treat like one from the very beginning

My feelings for depth of lore:

Morrowind > Planescape > Daggerfall > Dragonlance > Darksun > Eberron > Forgotten Realms > Greyhawk >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Oblivion

I suspect the Imperials and outlander colonists are a touchstone for the player in Morrowind, pockets of familiarity in a world that is mostly alien. The Imperials themselves at least resemble Romans and they bring with them the more conventional Fantasy armors and weapons.

The part Mr Howard neglected to mention, and perhaps consider, is that TES has established its own familiarity, that TES fans would be looking for in the game. Now instead those of us who know it, are the ones who feel lost. The key is to establish it so that it can be familiar from multiple points of view, especially from fans of the series. Even newcomers wont all have the same expectations or ideas for what is familiar, as there are a wide range of fantasy stories from around the world.




As for the OP, I think you will find that TES Lore is deep, but usually not "in your face". You can play all through Morrowind, and especailly Oblivion, without learning much at all about it. This is intentional I believe, as the Lore can be very deep, and that isn't for everyone. Lore also doesn't just come from the books(which I might add, all the books you can read online, you can find them in the game), but it also comes from dialogue, and the very visual form of the game itself. Example, there doesn't need to be a book that lists the different creatures of Morrowind for them to be Lore, they are simply because they were in the game.

Specifically one of the better parts of TES Lore, is that it is always from someone's point-of-view, and there are rarely absolute answers. It is also full of morally gray areas, there is no clear cut evil or good, which is a huge difference from standard fantasy RPGs, including DnD games. This is what makes the Lore interesting, trying to build the overall picture from the varying accounts and the motives/perspectives of those accounts.

There are so many characters in TES, that are larger than life, or at least something like what you might consider famous, or "heroes". As I said before, its about perspective, so it's hard to apply hero to them. Someone like Vivec, is a hero to his worshippers, but to the Ashlanders he is certainly not. Just about every other book talks about particular characters that aren't fictional. The Saints of the Tribunal Temple would fall into this category, especially Saint Veloth. Tiber Septim, and various Emperors. Cyrus, of course you do get to play him, but it's not exactly the same as the other player characters. You are right, that there usually isn't "other" great hero characters that we hear about that the player didn't play at some point, but then that is the point of the games, you are playing those heroes that are above the rest.

I think you will find its deeper and more interesting than you've given it credit for.

Morrowind is Chiaroscuro to the nth degree as was Daggerfall.
The Initial Impact comes with the loading screens artwork - parchment with strange neolithic drawings (how ancient do you want it?) and yet there are bright and lively glazes of colour in there promising untold treasures. Ancient and modern. You know it in your waters. And the Music - a truly Imperial mix of Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English - a perfect mix of martial and sedate with a strong uplifting tone - totally new and yet sooo familiar.

The game begins and this theme is continued - a strangely dark dream in which a velvet (deep down you recognised her) voice offers you comfort (Wonder Woman? Mummy?)

... then a rough but kindly voice says wake up and a unique, somewhat battered being is stood there before you giving sensible advice (Daddy?). You know this is ES because it is an ES opening, one way or another you are about to be thrust out from something safe into something dangerous and mysterious - remember the dream? Sure you do and those strangely neolythic creatures in the loading screen artwork are still there working in your mind and you are dying to meet them already - you cannot really get away from them as that wonderful theme music returns again and again. You see Morrowind has already begun to work its magic on you and you were totally unprepared to defend against it because you hardly recognised it for what it is.

Then an Ancient Roman Soldier arrives - you can see that clearly - you have seen Roman Military Uniforms before in films at least and you are guided up onto the deck of an Ancient Roman or Phoenician Trading Ship - yes soon you will leave the womb of the ship! How much deeper and more bloody familiar can you get than that?

There on deck are further Romans all with plummy British accents (you do remember that Great Britain ruled the largest Empire the world has ever known? Sure you do) reinforcing the Imperial theme. And you are in the harbour ...

From there you are escorted into a Mediaeval building - Solid wood and whitewash! And so it continues. This is not over-control such as people are complaining about in Oblivion, you know that a whole world is out there and waiting for you ... mummy told you so and you had that dream - it was dark and scary but you know that you can succeed.

Locations
Seyda Neen - small, comfortable looking Mediaeval buildings with Roman Imperial discipline protecting you form that big wide world and the people while not totally welcoming are at least civilised - you can feel safe for a moment. And if you offer kindness the you immediately make good friends. If yuo atttack or rob then you find yourself in a whole heap of [censored]. Your choice. On the edge of the village is a massive creature like a Giant tick or Flea, but that massive strangeness is safely under control - for now ...

Balmora - unique architecture reminiscent of ... ? Balmora, what's in a name? Ah yess, Queen Eliza-beth's family residence in Scotland = Balmoral. There are University students wandering about Balmora ... they are poor but the Temple provides education ... that's what students all over the world want - just not too much study There you get to meet members of various races again - but they are brusque - you are the stranger and this is a town or city. I wonder what other clues I absorbed but did not recognise ...

From there with the Mages Guild Quests starting from Balmora, or if you walked to Balmora, your first taste of the Ashlands ... Mordor move over! And there are huge thorny plants too ...

The Ascadian Isles is mediterranean/classical = see Turner, De Vinci, etc - pure romance - and if you walk a ways you get to meet some nice peole on the route ... as well as dangerous Scribs ... and more.

And so on - it's all balanced and dovetailed so nicely that you arrive at each stage with both forewarning and total astonishment. You were expecting to meet something new. Lo and behold you did, but you could not have known exactly what it would be like. The familiar and the strange. The dark and the light. chiaroscuro. genius.

Your task if you accept it is to make all those new people into friends - or enemies = your choice.

If you have not had a classical education and recognise none of this then blame your parents, school, government and the damn ignorent console games that ape and rip off classical, but trivialise it and so you have been cheated of your birthright - civilisation.

1999, I doubt anyone will put it better than that, well done.

Rats.

Also, skeletons are quite familiar to the genre.


While I noticed the name similarity, I shalk it up to coincidence because Hlaalu architecture is much more reminiscent of Arabia or Maghreb than of Scotland.

What's with the hyphen in Elizabeth? Anway, the architecture of Balmoral Castle looks sod all like Balmora:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Balmoral_Castle.jpg

Personally I think Vvardenfell is more similar to a spaghetti Wild West setting than any ancient civilization. While the imperials are superficially roman in appearance, their western architecture and frontier style, with their local forts and mines put me more in the mind of american gold prospectors that happen to dress like Romans. Then you have the native ashlanders in their nomadic tents and suspicious attitude to outsiders, like the indian tribes that would inconvenience many a Hollywood cowboy. Balmora's architecure always put me in mind of Mexican puebelos with their adobe buildings, sort of the civilised settled natives, but not without their own sense of culture.

Vivec reminded me of south american civilisations like the Aztec city of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan, the great city on the water, where proud and haughty warriors patrol the streets and waterways in exotic armor, in service to their god-king.

travel to the far north, and you have the tribesmen of Canada, with their frozen landscapes and log huts and shamans, and mysterious nature worship. I realise this is all subjective but I've always found Vvardenfell to be more American than Egyptian or Roman.

1999's post is beautiful :bowdown:

Elizabethesda, I guess. That's what I call "trying too hard".

wtf are you talking about?!? That castle has right angles in it! It's an exact anologue of Balmora!

ty LPS and Burninate The N'wahs

turns-the-page, th eword-play is just that, plus the nature of the Dunmer vocals (how many times have people commented on that deep way of speaking? Add the dour character projected - that's very Scottish (if not the accent) as are certain of the Highlands - I was surprised not to see loads of heather covering the hills and glens) the look of Balmora does have a middle-eastern flavour - but I could not pin it down to a specific city and there is a certain rounding that comes from somewhere else? I also noted the unusual color of the stone in Balmora reminding me of a rather more dun Ankhor-Wat. And the comment on Tenochtitlan is spot on too - again I could not remember which Central or South American Temple that was. Basically I just put into my post what I could remember of my feelings when I played it 10 years ago.

lol gez that's exactly what I feel has been done with Morrowind - the devs have played mix and match with architecture, names, cultures and whatever and hidden all sorts of things in there that tease the imagination, everything is familiar but very hard to define without opening oneself up to self-ridicule for thinking such thoughts if one tries to. So you have the familiar and the strange all around you.

Where Morrowind succeeds is that the programmers, artists and writers were exceptionally talented by any standards, happily working together and given free range were so good at it that they went far beyond any producer's reasonable demands or expectations and created a masterpiece.

There's no need trying to explain everything with counterparts on earth, can't balmora be a hlaalu city around a river?

Its just interesting sometimes to see where they draw their inspiration from.

True

Balmora is a beautiful city in the eyes of the fan beholders ...

However I seem to remember that we are adressing the import of Lore in this thread - and responding in part to the introduction of a Todd the Producer man quote about familiarity.

We don't forget that Balmora is a beautiful city in the eyes of the fan beholders ... honest. (even paw-prints-in-the-mud isnot immune to that - he just does not want to admit it )

But about Lore - that is both what has gone before in Morrowind for example and also the things that were said and done in previous ES games - plus the cultural ties that bind us to the games that come from outside them. There are powerful reasons why previous ES games have such a strong hold on people (as noted) and their content therefore remains germain to the latest release.


Cliffracers? Nah, Pterydactyls!

Mediaeval - Elizabethan

Morrowind also had very interesting politics. Although said politics were probably a reason why Morrowind never formed an empire.

Probably... Dunmer don?t care about anyone else.

Even if they could. I don?t think they would?ve been interested in rising as an empire at the risk of getting their cultured contaminated by a strong contact with foreing civilizations. That was kinda the point of the Armistice with Tiber Septim.

Maybe I?m wrong, but I think Morrowind?s military capabilities are somewhat limited... Yeah, yeah the battles of 2920 and all that, plus they held the Empire back for 80 years, but they had three god-kings by their side.

You mean like pre-communist China?

No, pre-communist China had already been contaminated. Reman failed to emasculate Morrowind the way the British did China, and the only reaction to Vivec's collaboration was increased popularity for the Sixth House, not a revolution.

And no, this isn't a gratuitous wiki-style history lesson, it's the result of my itchy trigger-finger when it comes to Pointless Comparisons. And no, I don't disparage them because I want to pretend that the object of my fanboyism is completely unique, but because Pointless Comparisons are by turns shoehorned (Scow is great at these), utterly random and probably wrong (here's lookin' atcha, 1999), or they highlight the worst part of the fiction to no purpose, obscure some important message, or are entirely coincidence.

Why?

Because this is fantasy, and we all know damn well the Tamriel with all its races is populated by humans and human ideas alone. Especially the alien ones. So what is the point in pointing and yelling 'Gotcha!' at a grand anology or an idealized model? The history of a fictional place is a study in vagueness, so of-frooping-course it's going to correspond with the last thing all you cyberspace scholars looked up. The diversity of Elder Scrolls is only exceeded by the random horde of semi-useful facts floating around in the heads of nerds.

So no, half the time the 'inspiration of the devs' is just a meaningless similarity. You'll know a true correlation when you see it, like the names of Daedric Ruins, and it may even be elegant. But Nords are only 5% based on or inspired on Vikings because one would hope that they are creatively self-sufficient by now, or would be if you gave them credit for belonging over there and not over here.

The bigger the claim, the more wrong it is. Elder Scrolls relies on scrambling the familiar, and seeing how many real-world allusions you can make out of it is like picking out random letters from a paragraph- illegible.

And that another series of conflicting big claims - but nice to see you have temporarily come out of your one-liner shell.

Morrowind = South Carolina

"... and I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind"

Of course. But thats what Boetiah and Mephala had wanted.

I kind of want to fight the Akiviri........