Hey guys! So, before Skyrim came out, I was thinking about whether Labyrinthian would be in the game and if yeah, then how would it look. If asked before the 11th November, I'd have said, "Labyrinthian will play a big part in the MQ and it will be the 2 hour dungeon Todd Howard was talking about."

You can't imagine the disappointment after I had reached Sovngarde. I realized that there isn't any Labyrinthian in the MQ (I didn't do the College quest by then) and was flabbergasted that a dungeon which had played such a big part in Arena was just neglected. A few days later, I was just wandering north of Windhelm near the sea during a blizzard and looked up at a strange structure which I thought looked a hell lot like http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:AR-Img-Labyrinthian.jpg . Anyways, I quickly realized that this was the College Of Winterhold. Which would soon lead me to Labyrinthian which looks NOTHING like the image I linked to. Now, you could say that this is because of the passing of time. I mean, around 300 years have passed but still... as a gift for Arena players. I'm not an Arena player, but have read enough about it. Anyways, my point is that the Labyrinthian should have been something extremely special with the backstory of the three brothers and something like Ice Golems and stuff and not just another generic dungeon. I mean, they should have designed it according to lore.

Another thing I wanted to point out that while Labyrinthian is still there. There is no Fortress of Ice. Or any mention of it.

Oh, and why are Morthal, Dawnstar, Riverwood, Falkreath, Winterhold, Karthwasten, Rorikstead and pretty much every other settlement out there the same? Do you guys think it was a time issue or just plain laziness?

How did everyone just forget Umbriel like that?

Don't get me wrong, I'm about 70 hours in on the PS3 version and I'm loving every second of it. But it just doesn't contain enough lore to whet my lore appetite. And I'm not into the whole dragon thing. They were supposed to remain lore. As nobody ever mentioned the dragon language and the Dragon War in the previous games.

P.S. How do you disable the invisible barriers in the PC version? And why is there a Warn Status below my name? I haven't done anything wrong.

What do you mean by lore? I'm asking because it seems like you are referencing allot of elements from previous games. Which are indeed part of lore but not all of it.

I mean, there isn't enough about Thalmor. And how the Mede Empire came to be. Then, there is very little about the Nightingale backstory, they just appeared out of thin air, (was Jagar Tharn a Nightingale?). And what the Dark Brotherhood has been doing since 200 years.

But you're right, I may have confused lore for the nostalgic elements. There just aren't enough of them.

Jagar Tharn wasn't a Nightingale, but the Nightingale who stole the Staff of Chaos was working for Jagar Tharn and the historians just assumed it was him, since nobody had heard of the Nightingales, since, it's well, a secret society.

I know but since there is a book written on it, they're not entirely unknown, are they? And that book made it's first appearance in Skyrim, no? So, obviously they just made it for this game.

Time constraints, resource constraints, and ridiculous demands. If you knew anything about the way that the games industry works, you'd know that there really is no room for laziness. Less than 1% of all those who have specifically trained to work in the industry ever get jobs in it, and employers know that they can basically demand whatever they want of their employees. The people at Beth work like hell. At crunch time, many of them don't go home.

Please, have some respect.

I do respect the guys, hell, that's what I want to do when I grow up. But really, if you play the PS3 version, it's really broken.

I actually liked Labyrinthian in Skyrim.

I don't remember how long it took me to get through the dungeon, but it wasn't short. The first big chamber was a challenging fight, and the boss at the end was as well.

Yes, the Nightingales were created just for this game. They took "Nightingale" from The Real Barenziah IX, changed the original meaning, and used it for their purposes.

Arena really isn't relevant to lore. 90% of what little it presented has been thoroughly overhauled, and the rest exists mostly on a name dropping basis. I was very surprised to learn that they bothered to include Labyrinthian and Shalidor at all.

To disable borders in the pc version, find your ini (my documents/my games/skyrim/skyrim.ini, iirc), find the border property, set to 0. You shouldn't talk about warnings publicly, but you should be able to click somewhere there and see the official log.

Morthal, Dawnstar, Riverwood, Rorikstead, Falkreath and Winterhold are all the same?
WHAT?
They're nothing alike! At least, no more alike than small towns and villages of the same culture necessarily would be.
I thought they were done with incredible distinction for settlements in an Elder Scrolls game; the way Rorikstead is a farming villiage, Dawnstar is a shipping port and mining town, Riverwood with its silvan industry while Falkreath has its rich history and graveyard and Winterhold is a ruined shambles atop battered cliffs dominated by a secluded mage castle... They're all unique, distinct, and very well characterized areas.

As for Labryinthian, I was pleased enough that they'd included it at all. Maybe I just have low standards. But I was VERY let down by Saarthal...

And don't worry about the warn status as long as that bar is blank. Everyone has that under their own name.

This. Arena was basically TES before TES had personality. It's the same reason that Giant Rats are gone and Skeevers take their place. Some retcons are to be expected.

Wah wah. Cry me a river.

"I have to work at Bethesda, it's sooooo hard."
Well, I'd happily take that job off your hands =D

And that's the reasoning why, as MinotaurWarrior said, "employers know that they can basically demand whatever they want of their employees."

On topic: There is barely any mention of Umbriel because there is barely any mention of the past games. Think about Oblivion. The three games before that took place 30 years before-hand and nobody talks about them. There are a few books and a handful of references and that's it. Add in a general desire among mixed-media franchises to keep each medium separate entities, and you begin to understand things.

Edit: alternatively, you can wander over to the thread dedicated to this topic.