Grand artist treatment

Generic medieval fantasy is boring to me, because I already know what it looks like. I like Morrowind, because I saw many sights that my mind would have a hard time imagining on its own. Vast volcanic wastelands, forests of twisted, non-Smurfy mushrooms, and whatever you'd call the West Gash are just things that wouldn't float into my mind if I hadn't seen it in Morrowind first.

historical
largely, actually. the fantasy aspects are nice but i much prefer a stronger emphasis on historical aspects, which TES largely doesn't have unfortunately

first i wonder wich aspect of fantasy were talking about as for some people fantasy meens alien plants and strange non real creatures
but for me fantasy meens impresive and massife and unieq landschape structures that would be imposible or hard to find in real life
my vote go for more fantasy in matter of landscapes and city's
i also agree that im little tierd of the classic stone forsts and little vilages
1 of my favorite citys in a other game "wow"you got silver moon: http://wow.incgamers.com/gallery/data/513/medium/silvermoon_04.jpg
for some maby a little over the top but i felt as i realy was in a huge fantasy city wile still with the few npcs walking around it felt like a city to me
also for exampel if i imagion a altmer city and have seen the alyed ruins i personly think of a picture i saw on devion arts wich very good show a fantasy element i would love to see in a game http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=fantasy%20city&order=9&offset=72#/d26h128
altough if i think of skyrim i dont think you can use much fantasy aspects in the normal citys i think of a nord city these drawings i saw on deviant make the best bed : http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=fantasy%20fort&order=9&offset=48#/dmd6x1
http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=fortress+fantasy#/d2ckbwf
http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=fortress+fantasy#/d15mvbf
http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=fortress+fantasy#/d2k81q8
the best picture i found that could posible show a good fantasy element in skyrim is thise ^^ : http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=fortress%20fantasy&order=9&offset=48#/driyjz

Note the pictures are not my own i only showed them as exmaple what i like to see in a fantasy element

Some high fantasy elements, but no power fantasy -.-

The game world needs to be realistic enough to be fully immersed in, but obviously not this world, even if it reflects the mature themes of this world. The lore certainly does, so should the next game. If the only meaning of fantsy in game is to have fantastic beast for you to kill, it's a fail. Or, if your forced to be the fantastic hero, denied of choosing your own path...

I don't like 'fantasy' as a starting point, as it generally means very incoherent and uninspired designs, more focussed on simply alienating the gamer and create false immersion, than to actually captivate with in-depth, well-founded concepts.
The need to be streams, evolutions in those streams and counter-streams, all off that in the same location, next to each other, and influences from one place on the other etc. The best you can hope for in fantasy settings now are a handful of cultural streams, created completely out of thin air, without nuances, without relations between them and without any justification for their formalistic elements. It are model cities without a true spirit, they are just hollow shells.
I am not saying they don't put effort into it. Just thinking up such styles and creating the various elements takes a lot of time, but for the same amount of effort, they could do much greater things if they started from a historical basis. Why not fill in their own interpretation of the Renaissance-Baroque-Classicism era? Create a gravity-defying variant of Gothic architecture? Give a modern take on Inca architecture? 'Downgrade' modern minimalism to a medieval level? 'Alienate' Roman architecture? By simply using the work done throughout history, they could create a vast variety with little effort.

As soon as you can cast a fireball, it isn't historical any more. Like others have pointed out, if you want historical, there are truly historical games which mimic as closely as possible actual periods in history. These tend to be interesting to me and educational for some, but they aren't even close to being relevant to a TES discussion.

I tend to fantasy but really want consistency. Either pick a set of 'rules' and stick by them, or have a sensible progression. Frex, in games such as Rise of Nations, you start out with sticks and stones but develop into jets and bombs over years and generations. That's sensible and a progression. In another game, Dungeon Siege, you are all swords and sorcery until you get to a particular area where you face machine guns, rockets, grenades and tanks. That's inconsistency which severely damaged that particular game for me.

whatever the lore permits

I think some people are confused in their definitions. If you're not though, its nothing to brag about. High Fantasy is not defined by "alien landscapes." LoTR is High Fantasy. Magical races and species, Pure Good versus Pure Evil, "chosen" heroes, these are elements of HF. ALL of TES has some of these elements.

Low Fantasy is stuff like Conan the Barbarian. There is magic, but its more obscure, part of it is chemistry, part of it is psychology, and the last part is what you'd call "magic." No one guy is trying to take over the world, multiple people are. And they are not all evil undead wizards, although some are. Others are just kings, politicians, etc.

There are no Elves, Orcs, or Dwarves. There are ancient races that are dying out, but they are viewed in a more Darwinian evolutionary perspective, they are not anything like men, they are apes, or lizards, or something else entirely.

I don't want them to cut out what they do have. But I want them to blend the genres. Elves shouldn't be a magical race of super powered people who live for hundreds of years. They should just be a different culture, with slightly different physicality, culture, and technology. Think of Romans and Medieval Chinese.

I wouldn't mind trashing the "good vs evil bad buy tries to take over and you're the only one who can stop him." It's tired and boring. How about "some rich deucebag is trying to buy himself into kinghood and you can't do squat because you're a poor nobody, prepare to be drafted into his army and forced to fight against some foreigner who never did anything to you."

Sword and Sorcery for me, (or comically coined the "sandal and the scented tent") with little to no contemporary or mechanical nods. Nothing spoils a good escapism for me than seeing contemporary nods such as Looney Tunes speak in a game (lemme, gimme, why-I-oughta's). Also, tech really spoils it for me, and made the Dwemer almost a bit much. Almost. Something Epic with lots of travel and exploration, even arcane magics and beasts, but not all surrounded by vast armies at war. Far too many of those as it is. That said, it need not be Shadow of the Colossus either, which was interesting but damn, was the game desolate with these huge unpopulated landscapes.

Historical is a huge can of worms from my experience, having watched those that DBA (De-Bellus Antiquitatus) game it. They come to the table with varying levels of passion for their historical eras of choice, and often get a bit too passionate, letting fact go right out the window with some common sense. Seen too many late and early lovers of all things Roman defend the "Light against the Dark Ages" mindset without honestly accepting that this "light" was built on a society of genocide, patricide, infanticide, and much aggrandizement from the conquered and vanquished. A good many seem to get their appreciation from the worst of all historical representations; the movies, cable series, or historical novels. Almost was going to put Morrowind back down on the shelf years ago because the last thing I wanted was another game devoted to romantic illusions about the Roman empire. Thankfully, they are Imperial, and though Roman flavored, it was easy to separate them from likening it to Earth history. Besides, in the end it gets too easy to progress from the sword to the gun, which I have no taste for in fantasy of any kind. For me and me alone, the only projectile I want to see is an arrow.

Extraplanar wouldn't be so bad if it had some rules to reign it in from getting as someone mentioned, too Final Fantasy-ish.

Neither is historical though. TES is fantasy. It can be influenced by history but can't be historical.

Though to that end I hope it won't be influenced too much by fantasy.

Unless you strip out many of the elements that have been in all the games - alternate reality with different natural laws, magic and fantastic creatures as commonplace, supernatural beings actively interfering with the world - its not a matter of being influenced by fantasy, it is fantasy.

I'm not sure what people who want it to be more historical are actually asking for.

Do they mean modelled closely on Earth in terms of society and technology/ 1 period or several? Just Western Europe?
In any case I presume they don't mean modelled on actual Earth history. Tamriel already has a history of its own written about in a fair amount of detail in ingame books.

I like fantasy worlds made truly as fantasy and as other worlds, but I also like them to make sense. I'm not a fan of badly made high fantasy, but TES i pretty good there, at least morrowind and redguard. "High fantasy" for me is a meaning for a horribly cliche setting based on a cliche version of medieval europe. History is a good reference, there are so many "weird" places on earth that seem to be too alien for many people here. If you took random things from all over the world in all of history, that would be awesome.

I like the high-fantasy but I'm not sure I like Oblivion's execution of high-fantasy. I'll try to explain. The individual races are fairly unique and have a rich history. But they all currently live together in harmony. Mixed together, in fact. Aside from appearance you can hardly tell the difference between them. What I would like to see is more conflict and segregation between the races. Have cities and villages devoted to one or two races with other races rarely appearing in those places. Have the game take place during a major war between some of the races.

Then there's the magical elements. The magic spells themselves are fine but the system needs some work. Paying money at altars to make spells or enchant items like a vending machine is stupid. And "recharging" weapons? What, do they use electricity or something? I won't complain too much about the magicka system since there aren't many other choices in terms of gameplay. Overall the whole system could be a little more imaginative.

In fantasy worlds everyone's extremely racist. I have never heard about a war on earth, ever that was fought because of race.

Jeez, okay, let's all stop for a second!

It seems nobody knows what fantasy is on the internet, and I've seen people use the term "mythopoeic" wrong constantly down in the Lore Forum (where it has been morphed into a High Art, AKA meaningless pretentious [censored] word), so let's have a crasher right here. get out some drinks and slow down.

Mythopoeia is always Fantasy, but not necessarily vice-versa. It is when you build a metaphysical backstory to the fantasy world, so basically the "why are Dark elves grey and red-eyed?" not just "Dark elves are grey with red eyes." Fantasy is any created world.

Now, when people hear "fantasy" they act like it is an insult, or that it "has to" be Tolkien. No, Tolkien has to be Tolkien, BAD fantasy writers try to copy his general aesthetic and the "elves with trees and bows, dwarves in caves" thing. This has led to the false stereotype that all fantasy is wood elves and scottish dwarves. OKAY fantasy like Dragon Age has his aesthetic but goes into original reasons for it. GOOD fantasy like TES and Briar King has its own aesthetic, set of rules and mythopoeia.

So now speed back up, Shades, TES is as fantasy as it gets, but it's GOOD fantasy because it's original, like fantasy should be. Therefore, the political/historical aspects are High Fantasy aspects, meaning the thread's central question is meaningless.

:facepalm: I sincerely hope you're not being serious.

Even beyond that, that's another not necessarily true fantasy stereotype like the ones I mentioned. Although it's not so much racsim in TES as it is, notice how all of the races particularly tense with each other border one another? It's a nationalist thing.

I don't want them stripped, I want them integrated. By historical, I want them to be historical in Tamriel's terms, and they should make sense in Tamriel's terms. Not that there isn't a lot of wiggle room, but I don't want to see a land dreugh in a high mountain pass.

There's no stopping.


I'm not saying that TES isn't fantasy, I'm saying don't lean on it like a crutch. Harry Potter (movies, never read the books) do a good job of making the fantasy seem fantastic because they don't treat it like commonplace. It works pretty well, and that's the effect I would rather see. A working, reasonable world with the fantasy elements appropriately inserted. I don't want "fantasy" to be the excuse for some dev to put whatever crap runs through his head on paper, I want it to work in the world. I don't want to see skeleton warriors in places where necromancers wouldn't have put them. I want to see town government buildings, coopers, farmers, and so on. The fantasy thing to do is to give you an armorer, a general store, a magic shop, and call it good for town shops. I'm saying the fantasy in this sense is bad because it often represents a lack of effort, it's just "here's some stuff!" without grounding.

I am being serious, ethnic cleansing and genocide attempts do not count. I didn't mean wars motivated by race, I mean that typical thing in fantasy worlds where all people from one race are allied and agree on everything. Fight wars against other races etc.

People say historical aspects have been overdone, but I don't know of any game that shows a realistic version of the Medieval days.


Personaly I like both.

I don't quite understand the difference between what you're describing and pretty much every war we've had for the past 3000 years.

Now I could use your previous statement, but it's probably a better idea to answer seriously.
What are you talking about?

So you're saying all the Mongolians weren't united against China? All the Greeks weren't united against the Persians? And don't get me started on the middle east. Or are you talking about something completely different. I'm seriously having trouble understanding what you're talking about.