How come these people in a different universe created the same language as us?
" " " " " " " " look just like humans, lizards, and cats?
" " " " " " " " have buildings, tents, armours, and weapons essentially as they are on Earth?

The list could go on, but I won't continue it for the same two reasons that Bethesda didn't implement these things into TES:

lack of imagination
allow players to have some comprehension of what the world is

Oh, come on. The time system and calendar are the two things that don't have to be overly innovative in The Elder Scrolls universe. Since dates and the time are just relative labels, I think it's good to keep them realistic so that we can more easily relate to them and the flow of time. If Bethesda made every element of their universe different from our own, it'd just get overly alien and annoying to adapt to on a gameplay level. You might as well ask why Bethesda chose to keep the sky blue, or populate Tamriel with all these wondrously similar humanoid races.

There is a limit to creativity.

I'd like to see it, and wave at it as I walk by.

Might go under suggestions:
1st, 2nd, 3rd shift with a 2 or 3 break for each one.

so on 0-24:
18 would be Mid Night (2 step, 3rd shift)
3 would be Early Morn (1st step, 1st shift)
12 would be solid Noon, with Early and Late for the 4 hour spread

Or a 5 shift system
Night (covers the change in day), so with that blur aside
Night - Twilight - Morning - Noon - Evening - Night

Now, where's the .ini for the real world?

I think the main problem is, once you start changing things for the sake of change (such as the amount of hours in a day), then it becomes more and more "unrealistic" to have other things work like the real world.

If Bethesda decided a day on Nirn has say, 25 hours, then why should other things work the way they do in our world? Why is lightning made from atmospheric pressure or whatever instead of dragon farts? (after all, they live waay up in the air, and they're invisible anyway, so they don't have to be embarrased). Why isn't all the water in the world made by a single colossal Frost Atronach at the bottom of the ocean who's melting?

Sure you can. Just look at the position of Uranus at night

I don't have a problem with it, but I do think it should have been different. It's a fantasy world, I think fantasy "time" cycles on Nirn would have been rather immersive. 18-hour days and 14 month years or something. Why not?

The player occasionally needs to know when sunrise and sunset are in order to plan their rests. That's the only context in which the 24-hour day is relevant.

A more interesting time-related feature they could incorporate into future games is the tides. It would largely be an aesthetic feature, but a nice one that could possibly be incorporated into gameplay (cave entrances, wrecks and coastal routes being revealed at low tide and cut off at high).

Aren't there hourglasses in Oblivion?

That's a good idea

Perhaps the an hour in Tamriel isn't actually an hour in real time, but to keep it simple they just left it as 24 units of time in a day, not necessarily 24 hours. It may help with immersion for you to think of it that way.

Well, thank you... This may be a solution for people who feel like me (at least for the "24 houred day"...)

I ran across a similar dilemma when I was playing Oblivion the day before, the question came to my mind: Why are there people in TES games? I mean in a completely different universe, I would prefer -a completely different universe-... You know, just to give the feeling...


Seriously though, every game world is going to share many, many, many, in fact almost all qualities, with this universe, save for a few random combinations of things from this universe into 'new' things, such as combining an iguana, fire, and wings and calling it a dragon, or taking a slug and combining it with a human to call it a Sload. Nothing in any fantasy world is original, precisely for the reason that people cannot be original, we can only play with ideas we're given in the real world and combine them into fantastic forms - yet the fact will remain that it's all just manipulations of things in this world.

You'll never have "a completely different universe" for the simple reason that no human mind can imagine a single thing truly foreign to this universe, much less imagine a completely different universe...

You do have a completely different universe with different units of time, but also a different language (or several). It has all been translated for you into the equivalents in Earth's languages so that you don't have to play with one hand while holding a Cyrodiilic dictionary in the other, and a calculator in the third.

It's easier for us to relate to, and saves us from having to adapt to a new system.

I would have rather had two suns. It would make the sky seem so much better.

Unfortunately, it also makes lighting much more complex. I mean, given how many Star Wars games take place on Tatooine, I don't know of any where they actually did the research and implemented two shadows. For that matter, even the Prequel Trilogy suffers from this.

So would two moons, and the night should be pinkish.

i think the time is fine keeps it easyer to keep tack

Yes, I can think of at least one example (minor Oblivion spoiler)





I disagree. In Oblivion, the chapel bells chime every hour on the hour, so they must have some sort of mechanical technology that allows them to tell time, and because of this I don't see why they wouldn't have pocketwatches and such.

This^
Thanks for taking words from my mouth
Oh and too the person above me, it could be from magic, or a limitation in material

Well, I guess you COULD say that as the Earth is the right distance from the Sun to support life, it would only make sense that Nirn be the same.

Then again, you could also argue against that, possibly using the fact that Nirn is floating in Oblivion. But for me, I just think it's for the convenience of players.