A thinly-veiled cop-out by Bethesda to justify getting rid of the skill. Besides, just because something is banned in Cyrodiil doesn't mean that it is suddenly 'lost' everywhere else. Certainly on Summerset Isle I'm sure there were wizards who could still levitate, and I doubt the Mages Guild would've just let the spell 'die out'.


Crossbows maybe, since they were based on Dwemer weapons, and Dwemer ruins are only in Morrowind and (apparently) Skyrim. With Morrowind blown up, and with the Imperial deciding it apparently isn't worth the effort to make crossbows, I guess they would perhaps die out. This is a thinly-veiled, semi-cop-out. As for spears, they're simpler to make than swords. There's no great 'lore' behind them that could be lost. Any shmuck who sees a picture or crave drawing of a spear could sharpen a stick into one, and I'm sure old Eorland Greymane would be able to figure out the rest...

They weren't included for gameplay/lore reasons, but they are in the world.

Yes, but a dent that would limit the range of movement of your diaphragm was always unpleasant.

What the other people said, coupled with the fact that there were different crossbows. Only the stronger ones packed a punch close to that which you describe, but you wouldn't be able to reload them by hand (and the only type of crossbows we've seen in-game look like the ones you do reload by hand). And armour lasted longer on the battlefield than the crossbows, FYI.

Ok I have a question
you guys keep saying it would brake gameplay
How?
for one they take a while to reload
2 they have horrible range compared to bows
third They are arnt to terebly over powered

I dont think they were removed for gameplay because Im certain we wouldnt be the only one using it
I think it was just forgotten

Historically, crossbows were for militias and other forces gathered on the spot since they're easy to use. If you can pull back a cord and aim right, you can use it. Bows on the other hand require months if not years to use properly. They're also arguably more deadly than the crossbow, the Longbows of Late Medieval England could punch knightly armor having greater distance, reload time, and overall punch if you arch the aim right.

Personally, I'd think they'd make the perfect Assassin's tool instead of the bow, and it make more sense to see guards and villagers carrying them than bows.

They would have had to 1, spend time ironing out glitches on both weapons, then 2, balance them weapons thus delaying release of the game.

These people spend years of their lives at a time working hectic work schedules to bring you to a world that's painstakingly crafted with considering its size, relatively few bugs, lazy ? No. Time constraints should not be an excuse ? How do you figure that ? I for one am glad I got to play Skyrim last year, instead of waiting another 2 while they pandered to every fans request.
The team at bethesda aren't conspiring against you to put out a sub par game. If something doesn't work, or resources needed to be focused elsewhere during development, it doesn't make it in the final game. They do the best they can with what they have.

See all my other points.

Ravenius, you pointed out the merit of mods earlier, I suggest you find a crossbow/spear mod and download it, wait for one to come out, or make one yourself. This thread has deviated from the lore, the OP has his answer - crossbows exist, this is more like a general discussion thread now.

good point sir
and I thank you all for it
but sadly I can tuse mods
see my computer is sh** and I half to use the xbox version
Me personally I think Bethesda would make some money off of making some mods into dlc giving a cut to their creators for the console version

its not impossible
Mojang the guys making minecraft already made huge deals with mod makers of their game to let those mods be released as dlc.

No, they aren't conspiring against me. They are however conspiring to water down their games to broaden their appeal to include virtually any player, of any interest or mental capacity. I guess that's fine, their 60 dollars is the same as my 60 dollars. But along the way we're losing a lot of stuff. I don't like that, many other people don't like that, and if you don't mind it then great, but it is happening.

and
'Do it yourself Raven! The modders can fix anything Bethesda didn't want to do!'

No. We literally saw spears in the Gamejam video at least partially working, where at the absolute maxmum one guy worked on them for one week straight to make it into the video. The fact of the matter is that Bethesda could've saved time by not revamping a leveling/character creation system which already worked well to replace it with a watered down, gimicky system. They also could've saved time if they'd spent less resources on making their trees just a little higher resolution, or making flowing water look so pretty, or carry things down stream with it.

The idea that adding in a new set of weapons would 'delay' the game because it would take so long to implement them is silly. It's just a matter of time management - Bethesda made Warhammers, Battleaxes, and daggers a priority and they got into the game just fine. I promise you had they also said on day one 'Hey lets do spears and crossbows again too', it would've been easily possible. Clearly they had time to spare in making Skyrim as evidenced by the week long 'do whaever the heck you want to the game' Gamejam video.


It's not a matter of pandering to every fan's request. I don't want them chasing down every guy's pipe dream of flying unicorn mounts, or any old thing. The point is we had crossbows once, we had spears once, we had spellmaking once, we had dozens of different spells once. It's just a matter of asking for things back that they've taken away for either no reasons or bad reasons. Give us back the amount of content we had in Morrowind, and build from there - don't subtract stuff in each subsequent game. What this represents is a shift in Bethesda's design philosophy, and apparently a change in their vision for their games - not time or monetary constraints. And many fans, myself included, who have been with Bethesda for years kind of resent, or at least rather dislike the changes.

Todd has already said they would like make to where we can download mods on console, but it's not really theyre decision it's microsofts and sonys legal mumbo jumbos that prevent them from being able to do so

The OP posted this topic in the lore section, and not the other sub-forums. If you want to discuss Bethesda's intent/reason for not putting in said weapons in game, turn to there, as the OP was looking for in-game reasons.

As to what others said, yes, they exist. There is no in game representation to them in Skyrim, however.

Again with the damned atlatls. if we're gonna be mad about things that should have been in, at least let's make it Snow Whales. The only one we see is guarding his own corpse in humanoid form.


It's an issue of time, man. It would have taken man-hours they probably plain did not have to make the animations, models, and textures for every subset of crossbow and bolt, then come up with crossbow-specific perks or even a skill (it's a very different beast than a conventional bow).

As for why in-universe, it's been answered.

@ Dargor - You may be right.

But, I want to point out that once it was determined that the thread title was in error because it assumes that crossbows weren't invented yet the thread naturally moved to 'Well if they weren't invented, why aren't they here?' territory. I also didn't start the discussion about the 'logistics' of whether or not Bethesda could include crossbows, I came into the topic quoting a moderator who was explaining Bethesda's 'intent/reason' as you put it. So, in my mind these topics are fair game.

Not disagreeing with you, but there were professionals using crossbows too, such as Italian mercenaries. Though they'd use a windlass for pulling back the string rather than their own hands, like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Armborst_4%2C_Nordisk_familjebok.png And just for the record, I'd take any statements concerning longbows with a grain of salt, as they are often hyped the same ways as katanas and other weapons linked to patriotic sentiments.

It's worth noting that there are likely many technologies that exist in the world but aren't seen in-game. In some cases, like crossbows, spears, throwing weapons, and chain weaponry it's shown up before but not in subsequent games. In other cases we can likely assume that the technology exists even if we've never really seen it. Limiting ourselves to weapons, I find it highly unlikely that no one in Tamriel has used a polearm, or thrown a spear, or entangled someone with a net, but I'm pretty sure these have never been options available in-game.

Going beyond weapons there are plenty of tools and other technologies we could discuss.

Development has finite resources, and not everything BGS considers can be included. Crossbows may only need a somewhat tweaked physics mechanic to be added, but if that's the only difference between them and bows is it really worth it? Using a crossbow should feel quite different from a bow, and that requires spending far more time on the mechanics for both and balancing both of them.

Oh yeah, there's a load of tech we don't see, and, on the rare occasion where it is distinct, a lot of magic we don't see. This is the challenege of making a video game: if has to be as sensible as the best films or novels but it also has to flow and be fun. Which is why we don't see Mananaut stations everywhere in Cyrodiil but they're mentioned in the pocket guide that came with Oblivion. They want it all to be there, but at this time it's not all feasible.

Ravenius, again you've failed to see my point, bethesda aren't out to enrage people by not including features. They're not lazy. They do care what fans think. You may get the impression I have no love for the spear or the crossbow, but you'd be wrong, I'd love to see them in game, I simply realise that they couldn't do everything to please everyone. And yes, mods are a great way to tweak your game to suit your preferences, not as you put it, to fix things bethesda were too lazy to put in. The problem you seem to have is that you were so attached to spears or crossbows or spellmaking, or whatever feature that was lost that you feel most wronged by, that you can't see that to the people like me, your no different to

You seem to fail to see my point too. I don't think Bethesda is 'trolling' people or anything like that. But I do think that their design philosophy is changing for the worst, and some of the things they've done have been extremely misguided...such as the removal of spellmaking. Everyone liked Spellmaking. No one was clamoring for it to be removed, but for one reason or another not only did Bethesda see fit to take out a great many different spells, now we can't even customize the spells we do have. People say that it's because they don't want anything imbalanced in the game, but if it was okay to release Skyrim with gamebreaking glitches on the PS3, and Smithing where an iron dagger increased your Smithing skill as much as a Daedric dagger, I don't see how that argument would hold water. It's not like having something in the game that is broken, bug-ridden, or not working as designed has stopped other video game companies from including it, releasing the game, and patching it later. Least of all Bethesda.


But you see, it's emphatically, even objectively different to ask for some random, silly thing that you dreamed up one day versus asking for Bethesda to stop taking away things with each subsequent installment of their franchise. It's like criticizing the army for taking away your grenades, and then being thrown into the same category as those wanting the army to develop state of the art plasma rifles when all you want is your grenades back. If Bethesda could put crossbows, spears, and medium armor in previous games with less money, less workers, then they could certainly manage it with Skyrim if they set their minds to it.

Spellmaking getting the axe was just a total 'wtf?' moment though.

Because corporate suits and time-lines require otherwise intelligent talented devs to drop good, fun things that might be moderately complex in favor of dumbed down mechanics that pander to the lowest common denominator. Case in point: The entire game Oblivion, and Skyrims perk system.

Disclaimer: My opinion might be excessively biased towards morrowind.

I give up, its devolved completely into a general discussion thread and it feels like I'm just trolling your comments, which wasn't my intention, I just fundamentally disagree with almost every one of your opinions. Which is thankfully what they will remain.

I'd like to add that I think this is where the construction set/creation kit comes in - I've always felt it's been the modding communities responsibility/privilege to extract technology and locales and creatures from the game universe and it's lore and add them in for those of us most interested in having it.

While Randy Savage faced dragons are very funny, in general I really think the mod community would benefit from visiting this lore forum and the Imperial Library, and temple zero before they pump out self-imagined races or modding in Halo weapons. The Tamriel Rebuilt team is a perfect example of my ideal modding group.

Again, my opinions may be cynical and biased. Have a pleasant day.

*Also, I'd like to announce that I have begun a morrowind mod (lol i know, who still does that?) to expand upon the Clockwork City as a prequal set-up for Ur-Sotha's Infinite Doors and the Pearlescent Chronographers, based upon the recently-posted-in-this-forum pentannual survey of Dunmeri houses of the new north.

I'm just going to close this now as resolved since it's gone off topic now.