Story must be amazing, lore must be in-depth and original/interesting, otherwise no amount of flashy gameplay will make me want to play the game. If I want a fancy hack n' slash I'd go play Dark Messiah or any other other billion carbon copy hack n' slash games that pretend to be RPGs.

Agreed we dont know their origens and also there is no definitive thing forbidding riding dragons, I dont see what the big deal is with people. Dragons come in all shapes and sizes some could be tamed other no some are pathetic weak creatures whilem others are majestic and blessed with the powers of the divines. Also it says in the lore a dragon can have somebody ride it nobody should try to draw their own conclusions about that breaking the lore as we have no idea how one can ride one.

A lot of lore tends to be pretty flexible, is there to serve as a great foundation to be built upon, and to prevent things like half races (which is not really feasibly) or someone running around like a space marine due to some dwemer tech someone found. It serves to prevent terrible choices, and creates an atmosphere that makes the game world really fun.

Often, lore can be vague, and at other times specific. The vague bits are there for discussion and something to further extrapolate later in the series. The hard coded stuff serves to make the world believable and more cemented.

You've mentioned these space marines before. Are they from another fictional universe? I'm not familiar with them.

They are the emperor's finest, and brothers that must be converted to chaos. They're super powered and genetically enhanced super humans, who wear the strongest of metals that that range from being almost as thick as a tank's hull to the thickness of a tank's hull. They're army men of Games Workshop's tabletop game set around the year 41,000.
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1000385a_99120101032_BACommander_873x627.jpg, http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1251535_99110101299_SMMarneusCalgarmain_873x627.jpg, http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1610023a_99060101074_MarneusCalgarPowerArmour_873x627.jpg, http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1240680_99060101111_SMTermCaptainmain_873x627.jpg, http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1240980_99060101355_SMTechmarineaxemain_873x627.jpg, http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1240725_99060101189_Col40kSMDevHvyBolter98Main_873x627.jpg, http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1252499_99120101037_SMCloseComTermmain_873x627.jpg

Surely we'll be more advanced than that in 41,000, no?

Is the first one using an important-looking document as a loincloth? :blink:

No, the space marines are fanatics to the emperor, and hold him to a level of a god, even though the emperor in the year 41,000 is in a coma. Also they're a lot more BA in the fluff.

I've got to go look this up, now.

THIS!

I play shooters and strategy games for the gameplay.

I play RPGs for the chance to escape into another world. When that world bears too many inconsistencies, I lose my footing within it and return to the real world. I can imagine away bad gameplay or "translate" old gameplay mechanics into real time action, but when the world itself becomes unrecognizable, I feel like I'm playing a game and not living another life.

For me, lore > gameplay

..And anatomically correct!

But I still stand that ultimately gameplay is important. Or else you just have a [censored] game with a nice story.

Just imagine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNpBwU3PTX8
Can you shrugg that off with good story?

Then you should have read a book, or go play an actual table top game.

It's very common to have the lore objection when people find a proposed addition to be, for the lack of better word, cheesy. But this has nothing to do with the lore itself, as much as their own personal tastes. Simple truth is, there's very little a lore can't support, especially in a game where most lore is in form of books (ie it could be totally wrong, omitting things etc), and even if all things fail, a new addition can be made. Earth's "lore" 500 years ago was totally different than it is today.

What one really needs to think of when contemplating changes is a bit more general than just the lore. It's at what point the changes make the game totally different in feel from the game we all loved. This has to do with lore ofcourse, but has as much, if not more, to do with the gameplay. Especially with a lore like TES that seems to have all it's bases covered (magic, elven scientist races, other continents pretty underdeveloped lore-wise), we could find lore friendly ways to do almost anything. (Dwemer tactical nuke here we come :biggrin:) but then the game will feel totally different from the games we loved.

Lore was created to enhance the game. It needs to have some consistency in order to do that, but it's also against its purpose to hold the game back. Bethesda in the past has taken a "lore consistency is secondary to making the game we want" approach if you ask me (eg forest/jungle Cyrodill)

Voted No.3

As far as I'm concerned the only lore that counts is what has been in the games. But as Mr. Howard said in his recent interview, pretty much all of the in-game lore is always subject to the opinions and the understanding (or otherwise) of the characters, therefore there aren't really any undisputable facts. So it's not a case of changing lore, but showing that existing lore wasn't true, or changing popular opinion on it.

In fact that's pretty much how most of human history operates. If you look at 200-year-old history here, how much of written history is fact and how much of it is opinion based on some very basic facts?

Gameplay over lore 100% of the time. Consistency in a make-believe world isn't terribly important. Those who wrote it can change it and I'll be fine with that. Can't make a crappy game better with backstory.

Seems simple to me. Without the lore, you wouldn't have a TES game. :shrug:

Yes agree with most of this

I am personally hoping for either a King Ghidorah or Godzilla type dragon. One can only wish.................. bliviongate:

if you want a universe almost as rich in lore as the elder scrolls than warhammer 40,000 is definitely the way to go :biggrin:

EDIT: interestingly enough a lot of the lore in 40k comes books that have been published by games workshop, and if the elder scrolls could do the same that would be great.

This.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameplay_of_The_Elder_Scrolls_series#Free-form_design

Lore, don't betray it. Change is a great thing, it is the essential aspect of progression within any story, but you can't build a magnificent tower by choosing to use wood as the foundation and then later deciding to build upon it with adamantine, just to beautify the end result. The end result would be a collapse, both metaphorically and physically. Lore is important.

Lore doesn't need to change the game play at all. The game play can be fit to Lore and it still be a great game. Take Oblivion for example. The whole Pocket Guide had to be rewritten, the basis of the Lore, to make Cyrodill more like a country side. That's where the problems with Oblivion started with me, changes were made to the most basic Lore to fit the game. When you change the Lore to fit a game it's doomed for disaster. Cyrodill as was written in the first Pocket Guide would have been a great game world to explore.

Lore and Game Play can go hand in hand, it doesn't have to be one over the other.

Lore is all well and good, but the past is not where the games take place. They are the theoretically the "present" and unless the game is a prequel there is no official "lore" stating what is happening during the game until it is made.

A consistent history is nice, but all a game really needs is for a vague description to canvas the setting and tone for what is to come. If you get too wrapped up in the lore you will always find inconsistencies in the gameplay. Unless they turn the series into "Lore simulators" (I like the idea of a reversal on the "life simulator" argument), where the game world is EXACTLY how lore describes it (population and land size included), the game will take a life of its own.

UP until the game informer article came out there were several ongoing threads about how "Inclusion of perks will be a serious breach of TES lore." I have not seen any thread trying to argue the same since the article was released.

Like roads, lore may branch out in many different directions, but it should remain consistent with the overall progression of the main highways.

If Bethesda comes up with this great idea regarding the gameplay, they should definitely change the lore for it to be featured - that is if the lore does come in the way. They should abuse this though.

My feelings as well.