im talking about the goat legs argonians and khajits have in each game..

is there a mention in any of TES lore about them being a different species or was it just lazy programming for oblivion?

I'd say likely as not it's got just as much to do with "OMG why can't my Argonian wear boots?" and the ones in Morrowind all walking like they had broken hips or something.

That said, personally I'd just as soon have the old legs back with the walking animation tweaked to get rid of the "bowlegged wobble" myself and still wouldn't mind not wearing boots or close-faced helmets. :shrug:

But then I'm freaky enough that I liked Arcanum, where Dwarf-sized characters and Half-Ogre sized characters had to look extra hard for armor to fit them instead of having magical armor that wold fit every character from three feet tall to 8 foot 9.

There is a lore reason for khajiits, in each game you have a different 'breed', in the first two it was a mostly humaniod khajiit, in morrowind it was the beast like ones and oblivion it was another.

The argonians have always been humaniod, only in morrowind did they get the weird legs.

Morrowind was a try to make them more of a new race I think (instead of the boring "Lizard Men"). The Infernal City combined with the Hist managed to do that very well without weird legs though.

Argonian have different "breeds" as well, depending, iirc, on how many times they lick the tree.

Or at least that's what we were told until further notice.

While this does explain the differences between Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind, I suspect that the Oblivion version is meant to be the same type from Morrowind, Bethesda just changed the design slightly. Probably because they were too lazy to program the game to allow some races to have unique body models and animations, plus, they wanted to appease the people who could not take missing out on ONE armor slot, the latter of which is hardly much of a justification for changing the design, seeing as in Morrowind, modders managed to get boots on Khajiit and Argonians without getting rid of the animations. the solution was special boot pieces that only had the ankle part and did not cover the feet, therefore, it did not work for shoes, but at least you could get boots, so if Bethesda wanted to allow them to wear boots, they could have just taken ideas from modders.

And the silly animations are not an excuse at all since that is the result of poor quality animations, for which we can only blame the animators for not doing a better job. Honestly, ALL the character animations looked bad in Morrowind, people just like to complain about the ones for Khajiit and Argonians, possibly because they tended to stand out more due to being more "exotic". The animations for humans and elves were just really stiff and did not seem very life-like, it was the animations of Khajiit and Argonians that really looked silly.

Yes, so it was not an Oblivion Developers are lazy thing... and Selbeth, I personally think they are different races of Argonians

No, I'd still say it's a matter of lazy design, just that it's one with precedence in the setting, and that alone does not mean it was a good idea, because, at least for me, Morrowind's leg structure made them more interesting, because it made them feel like a unique race, distinct from the others in the setting, rather than just people in rubber suits, so while the Morrowind design was different from that in Daggerfall, it was a change for the better, and sequels are supposed to improve upon what already exists in the series, not slide backwards, so while Oblivion's design may have been closer to how things were in Arena and Daggerfall, it was not a welcome return. That sort of thing is only good if a previous game has already strayed from the desirable path the series should take, and a return to how things were would be considered an improvement.

Just because things were a certain way in previous games of the series does not mean that's the best way to do them. And besides, it's not like Oblivion's Khajiit and Argonians are exactly like the version in Daggerfall, in fact, the Khajiit are much closer to the Morrowind version, just with a more human like body structure.

And besides I doubt that, when Bethesda settled upon the design for Khajiit and Argonians in Oblivion, the first thing they considered was not that they should make them more like in Daggerfall, it was probably rather what would be easiest to do.

Though honestly, the lack of claws bother me even more than the feet, especially since there's absolutely no justification for it, it's purely a matter of lazy design.

I usually just accepted that it was just the lack of interest or lack of manpower/time to go along and cut and paste texture onto a human body like all the other things they did not add into the game.

Are you even listening to the fact that khajiits have many different sub breeds and it is possible to have two khajiits sub breeds that are almost exactly the same except one is more human like and for argonians:Maybe cyrodiil argonians lick the hist less so they are more human like.

yeah I thought the goat legs of Morrowind gave the beast races much more character. MUCH MORE.

The upright bodies mod for MW beasts is totally redundant imo.

option C:

Dunmer in Vvardenfell shove metal poles up the rear ends of their slaves and any of their free counterparts. It is the law of the land. They are the same species as the beast races in Oblivion, they just walk strangely due to the poles.

That is what I thought when I first started playing Morrowind.

While it may be a matter of laziness, at least it can be explained as different subspecies. I would rather have that than a horrible, nonsensical way of retconning it like some other series have.

I think they should have both varieties. Everybody's happy. But please give some way for everyone to be able to armor their faces and feet if they want.

What I found interesting, though, was that in TES IV, Argonian changes went beyond their body structure; males and females had very different scale colors.

Age also affected color, if I recall things correctly.

Yes, as they aged they gain green patches around their eyes and lose them further down the road. In addition to more subtle changes in complexion. The males do at least. I haven't looked at how it affected females.

It really wouldn't be terribly hard. All it would take is some code in the CS that adds a little checkbox saying "Restrict this armor to beast races?" and a little dropdown menu that lets you pick which one. ("All", "Argonain", "Khajiit", "Custom Race[s] Here") At least that way beasts can wear specially made boots and helmets (and tail armor!) without having to make them look like humans in Halloween costumes.

Yeah, my only real problem with the Morrowind beast races was the lack of boots and helmets. If, in TES:B, they had beast-race specific armor with designs like Morrowind, I would be very happy.

Tail armor would be wicked sweet.