» Sun Nov 07, 2010 5:01 pm When I played Morrowind the single strongest point of the entire game was for me, Vivec character’s development, House Dagoth, Dagoth Ur & the Dwemer history. This means that the way the game introduced the story of these two elements seemed masterful in every sense. For Vivec I suppose it was related with my personal experience and the timing in which I read the book that narrated the adventures of the legendary demigod. As the game advances I was learning more and more about this character and thought it was a mere adding to the lore and ancient history of Vvanderfell but the surprise came when actually he was not a legendary character but alive in his Ziggurat and I was granted a permit to see him!
This added a lot of complexity to the story script and encouraged me to learn more about the lore of Tamriel. Suddenly gamesas achieved a complex and enticing character in the game… without the books and background history about Vivec he would have been another NPC in the game that lived on the top of a Ziggurat without much relevance to the player. It wasn’t the architecture of the city and the church’s quarters, or the guard and districts that surprise and awe the player but the strongest factor to achieve the amazement of the player was the humble story script in the books of the game and most of all the timing in which you learned the lore of the different elements as you progress in Morrowind.
[img]http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:MW-creature-Vivec.jpg[/img] [img]http://images.uesp.net/thumb/d/d0/Dwemer_parchments_copy.jpg/350px-Dwemer_parchments_copy.jpg[/img] [img]http://images.uesp.net/thumb/2/25/Dagoth_Ur.jpg/180px-Dagoth_Ur.jpg[/img]
Same with the Dwemer or House Dagoth & Dagoth Ur since you learn about the history as you play through the game. The books aren’t just a decorative element they intertwine with the game and support each other. The book that weren’t mere leisure stories but added critical knowledge on parts of the game you’d be later playing were what added the strongest factor to complexity and amazement to the game.
The explained above could have been explored and developed more in Oblivion but instead it was semi-abandoned. The single most fatal error for me was to meet the single most complex character in the game, Uriel Septim, just as you start the game and kill it in the first minutes. It was like to kill the main character in a film in the first minutes; nobody would care, but if you develop the story of that character and build bonds between him/her & the public the events that happen to him/her would be much more relevant.
For example I expected some sort of continuity to the characters of the game series. Seeing a tired and paranoic Caius Cosades in Cyrodiil, overwhelmed in his task of protecting the emperor and properly developed his history through pages of his diaries or pieces of accounting books of the blades. Or learning about the history of Martin Septim and what happened to him before and after the events of Oblivion, thinking those books or records are mere decoration to the story script and Martin Septim just would be a far emperor in his Ivory Tower in Cyrodill only to get the surprise of seeing him on a skirmish expedition to Skyrim to pacify the region, offering a daunting view of an older and powerful Martin on a war horse in front of an enormous battalion of soldiers and knights. But I repeat; no matter how spectacular are the graphics or the voice acting if there’s not enough development of the character history through books or any other mean like videos or told stories by minstrels the character won’t surprise and amaze the player as it could. And not only characters can be protagonist but places as well, it’s more exciting to visit a ruin that you know its history. And even better how some elements you find in those ruins, as part of a quest, help you more to understand the ancient civilization and history of the race that build it. Actually there should be more quest related to the finding of more lore about a particular subject, and its reading or learning opens you new options of dialogue and rewards like the restoration of lost ruins by the empire or other events which complement the “fetch & kill” aspect of the game.
[img]http://images.uesp.net/thumb/8/88/OB-npc-Martin.jpg/180px-OB-npc-Martin.jpg[/img] [img]http://images.uesp.net/thumb/e/ef/MW-npc-Caius_Cosades.jpg/180px-MW-npc-Caius_Cosades.jpg[/img]
I don’t know if the scripter and writer that worked for gamesas in Morrowind never worked for them again ever since but since Morrowind their games have diminished progressively in their lore reaching to Fallout 3 where the books were mere decoration elements and the lore was almost absent. Oblivion (recycling a lot of books from Morrowind) and Fallout 3 seemed nice and huge at the beginning but turned just fetch objects and kill people or “fetch & kill” games eventually as I call them. Without a proper lore and stories related with the events of the game the games lack attractive and end up being repetitive. So sometimes it is good leading your player by the hand in the sense of when he starts a mission, the people who sends him on a quest may recommend reading some lore books related with the task at hand. Just like Caius Cosades did in Morrowind, player still have the option of reading it or not and they add complexity and rewards those who choose to read. There’s other narrative options available as I mentioned like minstrels or videos but books is the easiest and more romantic way in my opinion.
Community Suggestion Wiki
One last question and suggestion to gamesas and the community is about there is a wiki page where the community can make suggestions for the series like this one and those be classified in an easy and MySQL database style page for easy access by gamesas developers and top brass and community modders? The best example that I know of collaborative work in a game is in the ArmA modding community in the http://dev-heaven.net/ page. Creating something like this for the eleder scrolls series would be great for its improvement. It would be cool to add a system of voting to discern what are the most demanded suggestions for the game.
http://dev-heaven.net/
If you agree with my suggestions and want them included in Skyrim or future ES games vote or reply to this thread adding your suggestions and asking the moderators to make it a sticky thread and hoping some of them would be included or people in the community like uesp or tesnexus pages decides to make a wiki of suggestions like http://dev-heaven.net/.
