I agree. Good to see some level headed folk.

But yeah. It's the wonderful thing about how every single piece of lore is presented from the perspective of a character. Even though there are some folk who say "Such-and-such a character was written by such and such a developer so what this says is obviously 100% right!" Just think along the lines of real history. You have one guy who says one thing, you have another guy who says another thing, and a third guy who says something else. You will never be 100% sure who is right, so make up your own damn mind.

But as for Oblivion's forest, blame mainstreaming. easier to market "Gondor and Mordor" than "South America Meets Austrailia on steroids with all manner of freakish creatures and seperate dimentions of existance where intelligent cultures of immortal beings live out thier immortal lives in service to a force of nature personified," isn't it? I that case generally I go with the older, Australia on steroids thing.

Nice to see someone else with a background in the sciences on here. I thought it was just myself and Wierd. LOL. I'm a biologist and a high school science instructor (biologist don't make much money unless they also teach). I dunno what Wierd does. That guy's a friggin' genius, though.

The fact of the matter is, far too many people have imagery of Brazil clouding their imaginations when it comes to the "jungles" of Cyrodiil. If the trees had been thicker in game, it would still have been, technically speaking, a jungle. Deforestation. Clear and simple. As to what happened to the cultures and vibrant colors, etc. Who knows? 400 years of assimilation? It happens.

chock it up the the authors of the first PGE taking a little literary license. Kinda' like a vacation brochure. My wife and I booked a hotel that supposedly had a "scenic view of the mountains" for our honeymoon. Our hotel-room window faced a steep rock wall. They didn't say that the mountains were only 50 feet away. You can't see them that close. I think of it kinda' like that.

I?m very aware that it?s not about the fact of replacing jungle for forest, it?s a matter of principle. I understand and I agree with it.

But, just for the sake of discussion, here?s the devil?s advocate typping:

Forget about Oblivion for a second, focus on TES III: Morrowind. Remember every single imperial settlement and the style of their architecture.

Can you really imagine that kind of architecture set in a rainforest/jungle/brazilian (whatever you wanna call it) kind of environment? Does it fit in?

P.S: Feel free to bite my head off...

You mean the Tudor style buildings in Pelagiad? Colovian.

Yes, kinda. What i mean is: Do you see that style in a tropical jungle setting?

Assuming there is only one style of Imperial Architecture?

Well, that's a very good point

Trying it another way - before Oblivion came out we might have assumed that the Imperial style in Morrowind was actually just one of many Imperial styles and have expected to find lots of totally different and new things in Cyrodiil itself? Basically a far greater range of climates and vegetation along with a greater range of architecture. But it was not to be. Again maybe because someone in Beth or Zeni-Max had a line on Vista as well as what was in the pipeline re the consoles and knew that the release was going to have certain variety of models, processing and total memory constraints.

Hopefully the new MS OS (which they are claiming is friendlier to smaller pcs) will allow something rather more momentous to be created - at least for PCs.

The Romans of Morrowind were allegedly Ken Rolston's creation anyhow. But it has gotten worse. TES III had Ordo Legionis. TES IV has the Ten(Nine) Command(ments.)

Colovia isn't a jungle. Give thehttp://www.imperial-library.info/pge/cyrodiil.shtml a whirl.

For the last time...

It says "subtropical" and "jungle" about Cyrodiil.

South American rainforests are tropical rainforests.

Subtropical areas would be places with climates like some parts of Texas, Georgia, or the southern American states. Southern America, not SOUTH AMERICA. Bottom of the U.S. on a map.

Jungle means forest and subtropical means warm, but not tropical.

Seriously, read the PGE link that Proweler supplied again.

Well you cant really call the small forests in Oblivion Jungle anyway. ^^

Chill Dude.

The exact description paints the center of Cyrodiil as an equatorial rainforrest, that is Central Africa or the Amazon Jungle. Only going south it become more subtropical and you end up in the swamps of Florida Argonia.
The whole of Cyrodiil isn't a rain forest of sorts either, the Colovian West seems to be distinctly different. Colder, more rugged, possibly like the Mediterranean but I prefer the region around Nepal. This way you could see Cyrodiil as a slice of India, which is probebly easier to envions then Constantinople on the Amazon.

But it isn't a big deal. Talyn was only playing the Devils advocate and the landscape is only the background. It wouldn't have mattered at all if there was more dept to the game but now it is symbolical for the lack of imagination.

It also said "Between its western coast and its central valley there are all manner of deciduous forest and mangroves, becoming sparser towards the ocean." and the mangroves are tropical and subtropical living in tidal zones. They'd still have to maintain the "most of Cyrodiil is a river-based society surrounded by jungle", so it seems that the portion living in the deciduous forest section is written into a small area compared to the rest of the country.

The writer of the PGE didn't care about climate and distribution of biomes any more than the builders of digital Cyrodiil did.

I can agree with that. Sort of a "nobody cared so it doesn't matter" sort of thing.

Neither would we if there wasn't anything more interesting to discuss.



True. Though Cyrodiil is being painted as having two different halves and the river-trader image applies only on to the East. I was thinking about the Colovian highlands as being more temperate, the mangroves probebly border on Valenwood.

Exactly, that?s the point i was trying to make...

Though, I did say it you were welcome to bite my head off

You're misinterpreting me. First of all, the topic was about what, and how, lore gets "canonized" over other lore, not from a creation/desgin standpoint. Second of all - it is not the words of BATW, or the concept in itself (as it is ultimately what we all use - subjectivity and all that), but what it does to the "TES concept" and the TES lore. What I meant is that if you take all the boring stuff out of TES, all the filling and fluff, it affects the rest of the "good" lore as well, and in turn, makes it boring.
So, from my viewpoint, if a rule that is supposed to take away the boring parts instead makes the good parts bad, the rule fails.

Of course, as I write this I realise that I was getting ahead of myself with my first post. As I said, the topic was about what lore weighs heavier, and my post was about inflicting BATW on the lore as a whole. When it comes down to conflicting lore, BATW is what we all use, whether subconsciously or not, because in the end we all take a stand for the parts we like. I have nothing against BATW in such circumstances. I still object to the notion of there being an "universal good/cool", though, but that is a different matter.

I have seen nothing that indicates that about the Devs - it may be that they cared but were told they could not do what they wanted - and then had to find ways to rescue the situation.

Must say that run-down on the detail of the various areas was good stuff proweler - and it shows how far off the ball Oblivion was in some ways.

Another thing that can happen is that a lot of time can be spent on one aspect of the graphics or gameplay and then the timeframe changes for reasons beyond the bog-standard devs' control so that everyone's plans and unfinished projects have to be shelved.

On a pure Lore basis, as touched on at the start of this thread, one of the biggest sources of confusion is the metaphysical aspect - particularly Dargon Breaks. Seems that's a sort of fork where the normal flow of time carries on into a pocket dimension and eventually dead-ends there while the main flow of time is altered and the course of History changed in new and wonderful ways ...

I'll second that.

Didn't mean to be a [censored]. I think you hit the nail on the head though. For lack of anything else to talk about, we're gonna' end up revisiting old arguments. Unless they hurry on TES V (which I doubt...) I predict the mood in the lore forums to become more and more acidic with every passing day.

On the other hand, if they do hurry, then we'll have another sub-par product that we can all complain about for the next five years.

For the record, though, I enjoyed Oblivion immenseley. I, truthfully, wouldn't have changed that much about it. (don't tell anybody I said that, ok? )

Whatever you find out it was in lore the reason is they weanted to make a generic standard fantasyland, obviously, just look at the gothic churches and the "sereotyphical hell" oblivion planes.

I hope you realize it was just something that Sload wrote on the forums that MK liked. It's not even in urban dictionary for chrissakes.

Yeah, it actually means "bad American travel writing" or something like that, doesn't it? Acronyms can be so confusing when there are several definitions for the same one. ECW used to be the "world wrestling federation" until they got sued by the "world wildlife federation". It's craziness, man. Pure craziness, I tell ya'.

(before anyone gets the wrong idea, I'm going on record right now to say I DO NOT watch wrestling. LOL. I hate it. I live in Oklahoma, though, and it's really popular with the rednecks. You grow up around it, you learn crap about it, even if you don't want to. )

And here I was thinking it was Sload who had "made it up" in the first place.
Did he write "boring and therefore wrong" or "BATW", by the way?

...And how does it not being in a dictionary even matter?


Even growing up in Sweden, you can't escape the sweaty, steroid-pumped clutches of wrestling.
Unfortunatly.

It's not a doctrine. If you don't like it, it doesn't even exist.

Most things are boring and therefore wrong once you start standing on the tower.

I'm not, though. Those who write the stuff are, apparently, I think.