An odd comment given its the politics of man that generally dominate the history books. The idea that men must be plain and mundane sounds like a copout for ignoring Cyrodiils lore. I don't mean to point out only Cyrodiils landscape, but the general lack of any cultural differences between the Nibian and Colovians as well as the political whirlewind that the capital of Tamriels Empire should have included.

The Mer certainly don't have a monopoly on being unique.

What disappoints me very much is the lack of references to the events in Oblivion. I almost feel betrayed.

Um... were you even paying any attention? You've got countless references to an empire in shambles thanks to the end of the Septim dynasty, a few books about the end of the third era and the oblivion crisis, the crisis is implicated as the main catalyst for the Thalmor's rise to power, Sheogorath's rather oblique reference to the fact that he is the CoC while in the same breath comparing Martin with Tiber Septim...

Yeah, I can go on.

What more would you really have wanted though? I agree on the Nibinay/Colovia thing, but a lot of the political side was stymied by the lack of an emperor. You can't have too much of a political landscape if its in shambles to begin with.

It'd be the total opposite. Everyone would be attempting to claim the throne and it result in all kinds of political situations they could have taken advantage of.

Anyway, I think Skyrim has amazing political, social, "modern" history and secular lore. Religious and ancient lore less so.

The new firewall put up by Martin Septim severely restricts Daedra trafficking. The atronachs and dremora get an exemption because they look cool.



Uhh...no idea.



Werewolves were probably something that was late in development (they nearly had to delay it to DLC apparently). As for Volkihar, that's a shame they forgot to include them.



Again, Martin Septim. Or maybe they just messed up game balance.



They did the same thing when Daggerfall transitioned to Morrowind. Anyone remember when Altmer were immune to paralysis?



The cleanup must've been thorough.



Good question



They got erased in the Warp of the West. Needed to make room for Talos and Mannimarco's ascension.

I would say for gameplay and story reasons. Though it would make sense to see some werewolves around in the wild, people would've expected to be able to catch the disease from them. However, with the way the Companions quest line is set up, being able to become a werewolf outside of the quest line would've broken everything, especially if they kept the forced transformations that non-Circle werewolves are cursed with.

They could've fixed it all up to make it workable, sure, but that would take more development time. I'm stoked enough that they even included them in the main game (and hope to see that continue, hinthint) because modding them in after the fact with an engine not designed for it is a great pain in the rear (there was so much trouble getting Oblivion to handle playable werewolves in a relatively bug-free manner, and Morrowind's werewolf mods had their own issues before Bloodmoon, too). But with them in the vanilla game, you have a much better chance for mods to implement the extras Bethesda didn't have time to.



Werewolves may be "generic fantasy fluff" (they're more horror really, but whatever), but I can't name a single game that implements them nearly as well as Elder Scrolls does and makes them playable. Everyone that does bother with werewolves, though, tries to make them "different" and inevitably loses something from them in the process. Bethesda's different by going the standard route with them (a curse/disease transmitted through bite or scratch, forcing someone to periodically change into a horrific wolf-like beast and kill people), and I love it. It would be a great loss for Bethesda to forget about them or stray too far from the standard formula, IMO.


Vampires I don't care so much about, but I can sympathize with vampire fans on the issue. All I can say is I'm [NUMINIT] glad they're ignoring the [NUMINIT] "vampires vs lycans*" [NUMINIT] that pervades popular media dealing with them.

* I [NUMINIT] hate that word.

I think what a lot of folks are missing is the shifting face of Fantasy as a medium from Morrowind to Skyrim.

What is the most successful and popular advlt Fantasy series going today? George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice", which as much as I personally don't care for it, really is the "Lord of the Rings" of the modern era. For good or ill, Fantasy settings are being shaped and reshaped accordingly in response to Martin's success. And it's not limited to just Martin either. Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" is another good example of the shifting face of Fantasy, or even comparing the modern day "Riftwar" books to Feist's earlier tales.

The days of High Fantasy and warring against powerful entities that defy mortal understanding are coming to an end. They're being replaced by far more intimate and personal conflicts between individuals that feature some trapping of the wondrous.


As for Lore, I think the argument could be made much more strongly that Bethesda disregarded Lore in Oblivion then Skyrim. Oblivion saw Cyrodill changed from a Tropical Rainforest to a generic European Countryside and abandoned the Roman Empire Trappings of the Imperials in favor of generic Renfaire garb.

Generic fantasy fluff? Like Mages and wizards and dragons and witches? Might as well take out Vivec and Dragonborn and CHIM and all that other stuff in lore then. I personally like Bethesda for adding vampires and werewolves in the game. No other game besides the Elder Scrolls series can offer gameplay as a werewolf the way Bethesda did it in Daggerfall, Bloodmoon and Skyrim. I would hate to settle for an unnaflicted beastman, elf or human, since it's really generic because its overdone in their games. And what is the essence of the ES? Vampires been around since Arena, werewolves since Daggerfall....Don't want to play as a werewolf or vampire, don't come across them. It's so simple.

I think you misattribute to a single fantasy writer a change that has been far more subtle and culture-wide.

"A Song of Fire and Ice" is something I have not read personally, but which I have often heard described as something like "Tolkien without the cosmic war of Good and Evil". This is not something that a single writer has done to us - it's the changing of the cultural Zeitgeist.

Tolkien was a devout Christian who wrote fantasy in terms of a set of "heroes" who were merely pawns of a greater war between Good and Evil. His internal conflicts were about how a relatively minuscule man of faith (Frodo) could matter in such a cosmic storm much larger than himself, and his writings reflected that. I cannot say as definitively what Martin represents, having not read him myself, as I have previously said, but his inner struggles are necessarily different from the inner struggles of a man grappling with his faith.

When talking about the changing themes of the times, I could compare as well Superman to the X-Men as being products of the internal conflicts of society at their times, as well.

Superman was a personification of the New Deal - when they say he "stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way", they mean he stands in for those "virtues". When people think they are weak and powerless, Superman steps in to show the boundless strength of The American Way when people are willing to challenge their fear of their inability to act. In Superman, society is inherently Good, and all villains are somehow Alien Outsiders (often times literally, but that is beside the point) that try to inflict their villainy through being different from society. Normal - good. Freak - bad. The only halfway contradiction to this is in Lex Luthor, who exists as the corrupting moneyed powerbroker interests that FDR had to fight to get the New Deal through.

The X-Men originally stood in for black people during the Civil Rights era, (but eventually shifted over to Gay Rights, which it fit better, as you can't really hide being black or suddenly discover you are black the way that you could with mutantism,) and features a conflict between itself and society as a whole, whose nonacceptance of mutants is a driving force in the story, paralleled by a war within the mutant community about whether or not the mutants should force society to accept through peaceful demonstration and assertion of their inherent rights, or through force and intimidation.

These are not world-shaping declarations by writers, however, but people who were influenced by outside events just as much as their works may have influenced others who read them.

Oh the lament of the fan, woe to us who clearly know the world of our games better than the people who make them. How dare developers sully their own perfect vision with their greedy hands!

But seriously, people seem to forget that the lore exists to aid in game development, not the other way around. Bethesda are in business to make fun games, not be the Church of The TES Lore. And likewise, the lore isn't some static immutable dogma that has gone unchanged, it was changing all the time from day 1 to suit the needs of the game being made.

I'm not saying Bethesda are infallible in their handling of things, but to ask are they "taking the lore seriously" really isn't a valid question. "Are they making good use of the lore?" makes more sense, because I can guarantee that if they were to make a game that was 100% true to the canon to everyone's satisfaction, but was completely terrible in every other respect, everyone on this board would hate it just as much as everyone else.

Has anyone done the Mehrunes Dagon quest yet? That was ripe with the "lol, Oblivion" moments.

Pretty much. The Crisis has been over for ages now, things pass on, even followers. Especially the followers, killed off by their lord.

Really though, the people of Tamriel have bad memories to begin with. Just look at...well...every game! Not much Arena in Daggerfall, not much Daggerfall in Morrowind, not much Morrowind in Oblivion, and not much Oblivion in Skyrim. With the games before Skyrim, the most amount of years that passed was 7-10, with 3-4 being the shortest amount of time.

Witches? I'd be fine with booting them. Magic is sort of integral to the series, and CHIM/Vivec/Dovahkiin are anything but generic (unless you look at the most basic and inaccurate summary of them). Generic doesn't mean "it's been done in other games." Most games have humans, because it's damn hard to get away from that model and we, as humans, need someone to identify with.

Generic, at least in the sense that I'm using it, means not deviating from the expected norm. Other than saying that they originate from Daedra, TES really does nothing with vampires or warewolves. Lycanthropy started to get some development with Hircine, but hasn't moved beyond the initial stages. Vampirism is still bloodsvcking undead dudes (I suppose I should give them props for not making them sixy). If I were to summarize the history of Tamriel, vampires and warewolves wouldn't warrant a mention (mages and dragons on the other hand, would). They're there solely for people like you to play with, and that's why Bethesda keeps them around. The only place warewolves were needed was Bloodmoon, and that's the sort of setting and story that they need to matter.

Why did I choose to make a statement that I knew was going to be controversial? Well, for the conversation. Also because it is on topic: I don't feel that vampires or warewolves (or scamps or the mysticism school) is essential to TES. Not showing the sorts of Vohikar vampires that Immortal Blood describes isn't a fundamental violation of our knowledge of lore. Even if we ignore gameplay restraints and the inherit bias in any book (the former being the reason for their exclusion, the latter a handy weaseling away of it), we are left with the fact that they really weren't of any import to what it means for a place to be Skyrim. Skyrim isn't about whether there are vampires busting out of the ice - it is about the conflict between racial pride and the longstanding colonization by (and colonization of) the Empire, it is about the Graybeards and their Voice, it is about a martial culture built on eons of history in an unforgiving land, it is about humor amid hardship and honor through it all. TESV does this and more - the exclusion of ice vampires, Jyggylag, or Ebonarm doesn't change Skyrim-the-province, and only barely impacts Skyrim-the-game.

[quote name='Lady Nerevar' timestamp='1323135803' post='19651452']

Skyrim is what people want it to be, using included lore to further increase their satifaction for the overall game. I guess it's down to our opinions on the lore, to each his own, right? Vampires and werewolves are lore. Dragons have been done before, but they are lore. Colonization and Empires and mages have been done in story and is cliche, so it's all matter to opinion. But they are still lore and people still like them.

I don't think cliche (and generic) means what you think it means. Unless you'd like to argue that the British Empire was cliche and generic?

What I meant was is that the concept has been done before. Dragons have been done to death and so have prophezised heroes destined to save the world from an impending doom. You can say the Elder Scrolls series borrowed from many other sources and took influence from other franchises. As for Empire's, well is it different than that the Empire of Tamriel has been influenced by the Roman Empire? Same as preternatural creatures such as vampires and werewolves have been influenced, or should I say, entirely borrowed from folklore.

I would point out that TES does a good job of starting with traditional fantasy elements, and then twisting them in their own particular way.

"Daemons" are mentioned only as a way of referencing in Daedra, and only in reference to the Alessian Order, which is the game's only passing reference to Monotheism.
"Dwarves" is a term only used by silly people who corrupted their proper name, "Dwemer".
Same with silly people talking about "Orcs" and referring to them as if they were somehow related to mere beast folk like goblins, when clearly they are "Orsimer" who are a brand of elf corrupted by Daedric influence.
Quit being so uncouth by referring to the proud and cultured Dunmer people as mere "Dark Elves". Would you refer to a Redguard as a "Dark Man"?!

They take their own twist on lore, but they tie it back in to their starting points somehow.

Unless you just want a showdown in Akavir as a Monkey Versus Snake showdown, the games are going to have to find a way to bring in the new kids by showing them something they find somewhat familiar, and then talking about how "Our Whatevers are Different"

Every concept has been done before. It's the distinction between cliche and archetypal. When it comes to real life concepts like empires, you can't really call them either. An Empire just is, it only becomes cliche when used in away that is so common as to have become trite and unoriginal (the uniformly evil empire versus the good guy rebels of Star Wars comes to mind). To quote http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheEmpire: "Note that just being called an Empire is not sufficient to qualify a nation for this trope. Especially in a Heroic Fantasy setting, other types of empires abound, often based on the Holy Roman or British Empires (and occasionally a more sympathetic take on the actual Roman or the Chinese Empire)." The Septim and Mede Empires aren't cardboard cutouts of a concept, they're composites of real world empires transplanted into a fantasy setting. They take concepts that existed in the real world and tie them inseparably to TES. With a little effort I could write a convincing post-colonial* anolysis of Skyrim's civil war.

Vampires/werewolves, on the other hand, aren't incorporated in such a way. They are concepts from fantasy superimposed upon the TES setting with a Daedric namedrop in their origin. I wouldn't say that the concepts of vampires and werebeasts are by themselves cliche, but they need to be evolved and incorporated into TES to actually become an essential part of TES lore. A couple years ago Subadim had the idea of Cyrodiilic vampires being Tsaesci half-breeds, both idealized and feared for their heritage. That's the sort of thing that would make them cool, and relevant, and interesting to talk about (the fear of miscegenation, orientalism, commentary on the modern transformation of vampires from something to be feared to something to be desired, incorporation and reinterpretation of previous lore, etc.). Bloodmoon sort of kind of started doing something with the werewolves by exploring their relationship with Hircine, and Immortal Blood gave the potential for something new for vampires, but neither was ultimately enough. They don't include elements pervasive to distinguish them from what an average person thinks of when they think "werewolf." Ironically, going back to the originating mythos would actually make them cooler (though it's probably too late to incorporate much of it).


Yes. That's paragraph #2 above in a nutshell. I'm too wordy for my own good.

*as in the critical theory, not "time period after colonialism."

In that regards, I must agree. The fault lies in Bethesda. Don't get me wrong, as a fan I enjoyed their games and certain aspects of lore which I find fascinating. But we can complain too, right? I won't babble too much in regards of these diseases and their respected princes as much as I would like, since this topic is not just about that. But I agree when Bethesda needs to at least do something interesting regarding those aspects of lore. Bloodmoon, as you said, was close enough. There was a main quest just filled with werewolves, but it wasn't as significant as it was suppose to.(The bloodmoon event was only mentioned once in an ingame book and added in Skyrim for Nostalgia's sake). Which was a reason why I made a topic regarding Hircine and his Realm, but since we already have seen him, I doubt Bethesda would do it again. Lore is lore, nevertheless, so we can't throw it to trash when it has been around for awhile. Especially in most of their games.

Just to muddy these already-muddy waters with a little explosive radioactive mud (as well as torture an opening metaphor beyond all recognition), Lady Nerevar suddenly reminds me of a pair of blog posts I remember seeing...

The first was a talk about how all horror comes down to "Vampires" versus "Zombies". Or rather, how Zombies are a projection of a fear of the loss of identity and individualism to an uncaring and homogeneous society, while Vampires are a fear of the loners, the different, the alien, the freaks. Both are human, but changed into something horrifying. Hence, modern Vampire lore where they aren't monsters of terror, but sparkly Marty Stus can just be explained as a celebration of individualism by the perversion of its horror elements. (The website this was on seems to be down, unfortunately...)

Then, just to ensure that no discussion about this could ever go without a flamewar, he http://www.cracked.com/article_19402_6-mind-blowing-ways-zombies-vampires-explain-america.html by stirring in the relation of these fears of "Chaotic Evil" versus "Lawful Evil" into the terms of political party.

Man, I feel like I just threw chemical agents onto a fire that is already having gasoline poured onto it.

Speaking of "generic," what really bothers me more is the use of the Warrior archetype as advertisemant. Take, for example, the Dovahkiin model in the background of the forums. Not exactly garbed in the attire of Mage or Thief.

We have all these fantastic entities and sorcerous powers, and now with Skyrim even the ability to literally shout the opposition down with straight line winds, and yet the most marketable form of hero is a man that squanders all that for straight up melee combat? Seriously, what's up with that? That's the most generic fantasy of them all. Good thing the TES series use of freeform skills allows considerable flexibility (and with THu'um, even warriors are transcended).

The "Real Man" (Hard-bodied Hero) role-play archetype is what sells the best.

It's the same with most RPGs - put the spikey-haired dunce "in charge", even though the wimpy girl in the robes CLEARLY does all the thinking for the party, and is basically the only one whose "destiny" involves actually doing all those things. The spikey haired idiot is only there to "inspire" people with his stupidity, and told to go out and "lead" in front because he has enough hit points to absorb the brunt of the traps he will inevitably blunder into.

Worse still when you have things like Final Fantasy XII, where the "main character" has absolutely no relevance to the plot, and is basically just a hanger-on for the actual main characters simply because he's something that fits into the target demographics.

I think we can all agree that "more is better" when done well. Exploring more of the lore associated with werewolves and vampires would obviously be a good thing. Ultimately, though, there's only so much they can do with the game, and the game's focus obviously on the dragons and Skyrim's civil war. Vampires and werewolves provide interesting gameplay opportunities, and at the end of the day, this is a game.

As far as the werewolves go, it's not like they were devoid of substance, though. With the likes of Sinding and the Circle, we got the opportunity to see more of the relationship between Hircine and werewolves (they don't all turn into gibbering idiots, and werewolves are destined to go to The Hunting Grounds on death). We learn that werewolves can die of age. The totems provide new interesting information, too. Even the word walls provide subtle info:

Not only do we get definitive proof that werewolves form packs, we get the name of one such pack and one of their past leaders (who was also a female, showing male werewolves aren't necessarily dominant). We also get the name of someone else who was able to best Hircine in his Great Hunt.

The Nerevarine is Goku. Who's the Vegeta?



Like Arthur Dent. Or am I reaching?