I was playing the Shivering Isles expansion for the first time last night and I was rather disappointed. This is supposed to be the realm of Oblivion that represents insanity. Well, it just looked like they took a few designs from Morrowind and stuck them in Cyrodiil. It looks absolutely nothing like "insanity". It should look like M.C. Escher or something: http://mathcentral.uregina.ca/beyond/articles/Art/relativity.jpg


Or something where you're just floating and trying to swim through topsy turvy atmospheres like in "Linger in Shadows"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjZxdalCkkE&feature=related


Or perhaps bizarre looking dimensions as if you're on a shroom trip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oDdpSr0dTk

I seriously think they should have waited until they had better technology to do the Insanity realm. 2007 technology didn't do justice at all. Looks just like another mundane island.

They also had to make money off of it, you realize.

Not only is a large portion of the things mentioned impossible in the game engine - which you touched on, but people needed to enjoy it. Not a lot of people truly would've enjoyed actual insanity, as unfortunate as that may be.

Given SI's success, I'd say they did their job quite well. And while I too don't think it represents "insanity" as much as "absurdity", Sheogorath's motives are unknowable. And whatever we "think" it should be, is really just an interpretation thereof.

Yeah, you're right. It did sell well and it generated a lot of revenue for them, so I guess Bethesda accomplished what they set out to do in the end.
And that's true that all the games are interpretations of the actual TES universe.

What? I am confused by this.



Where did you get this from? I never heard of this.

Well... when someone is refered to as "mad" it can mean "Insane."

Mad Scientist... the Mad Hatter... The Mad God... Realm of Madness... "By god, man! You're Mad!" In all of those instances, "mad" means "Insane."

In fact, Mad first came about as a descriptor to insanity, not anger. When it (originally) applied to anger, it pretty much meant something akin to "foaming at the mouth, destroying everything around you" anger. Of course... now we tend to view "mad" as a few digrees less than angry, though the mad=insanity still survives... but just barely.

Also, since the Shivering Isles are Sheogorath's AKA The Mad God's realm, it must also be, by definition, the place of insanity.

Like the term "mad dog". I enjoyed Shivering Isles. It added a little bit of that "wow, cool look at that!" factor that Morrowind had. Too bad it couldn't do more for it though.

Mad implies insanity, but people these days think anything they wouldn't do is insane. They are words, nothing more - and as always, are subject to their common usage and acceptance in society.

You used to have to be insane to admit you were gay. And now people do it all the time. People in Oblivion call you "mad" or insane when you murder someone, but people in real life who commit murder 90% of the time are poor, stupid fools who can't hardly hold down a job. That doesn't make them insane, it just makes them an idiot. And they get caught, and spend the rest of their lives in jail for some stupid mistake.

"Mad" as we know it, does not mean insane, as we gamers envision it. Technically "insanity" isn't even a psychologically accepted term. It is a legal term, and when used as a defense in court, almost always fails. In psychology, you are not insane, you have a mental illness - a specific mental illness, that in order to be specified, has to meet very specific requirements. Most of the time these requirements are simple labels such as "Poses a danger to themselves or others" or "Continued behavior that is not socially acceptable." (Along with several other, more specific qualifications.)

But again, these qualifications don't necessarily mean "insane" or crazy vaporized floating backwards staircases and episodes of mania.

A good portion of the time, they just mean "other than the norm". Or quite frequently "Idiotic."

Both of which can be found in excess, in the Shivering Isles.

It is also worth noting, that as the Mad God, lore and books seem to point to Sheogorath's love for screwing with people, fellow daedric princes, everyone. And if his realm was truly "insane" as you would like to see it, people would flat out not exist or be able to coincide. His realm follows his personality, while consequently allowing for the personalities and existances of his followers and as a result, partial "entertainment". Read some books about his playing with people's minds and fooling daedric princes, and you'll have even more reasons as to why his realm exists as it does.

Dude............................................what the hell are you talking about?

Roflmao

It's the realm of the Daedric Prince of Madness. And therefore it is the realm and fount of Madness in the rawest conceptual form, encompassing all the extremes that apply to that concept.
Therefore, it is not a matter of real-world (or even TES-world) societal definitions of the word.

Naturally, mechanics limitations are present on what can and can't be done. However, I found the Shivering Isles to be largely eccentric and nothing more. Eccentric is not mad. Eccentric certainly doesn't fulfill the requirements of representing the purest all-encompassing realm of madness.

That said, the eccentricity and spice of the SI characters were a welcome reprieve from Cyrodiil's residents, and the landscapes were a far retreat from "the safe route of familiarity," so I can't complain too much.

"The Daedric Prince of Order! Or biscuits... No. Order. And not in the good way. Bleak. Colorless. Dead. Boring, boring, boring."

What he says there is true about the Shivering Isles.

Not great expansion, nevertheless.

I thought it was pretty mental. I loved it.

Great expansion. in fact. OP, it sounds like you're a complainer more than a constructive critisist. So thank you, but no thanks. It was mad to me, especially taking into account the normal cyrodill.

My question indeed. Someone seems to be over-anolyzing just a bit.




Now I don't think that's completely fair to say; everyone is entitled to their opinion. Although, I must admit I could never understand how anyone could have a problem with the SI expansion. Then again, different people, different tastes.

What the hell??

How can you even complain about the landscape? The inhabitants and Sheogorath himself are hysterical. Personally I'd say the SI questline and storyline is the second best of all Oblivion, right behind the thieves guild questline/storyline.

Besides, nowhere does it say EVERYTHING has to be insane. I mean, considering Sheogorath dresses quite well and looks like a noble gentlemen, I see no reason why the island itself can't appear innocent too. Thought I read somewhere that Sheo dresses normal to lure in unsuspecting people. Well, a normal looking realm would do the exact same, wouldn't it?


I say just stop focusing on landscape and take the time to talk to the people or go into some of the dungeons. Those are great, and personally, I would be complaining if they spent a bunch of time focusing on the landscape and neglected their detail with the inhabitants themselves. After all, land masses can't be insane; people can.

Madness, insanity, same thing in a nutshell.
http://www.imperial-library.info/book_daedra/index1.shtml#sheogorath


And it looks like Morrowind because of all the mushroom stuff. That's what I meant.

A realm that represents madness/insanity should be more insane and mad, landscape, people, dialugue, quests. It should be like like you're on drugs in my opinion. Realms in Oblivion should look far different from realms on Mundus, and defy natural laws that the mundus has. When you first go into SI with those butterflies flying away was cool. But other than that, the whole place looked like a place on Tamriel. They need to make these "other worldly" realms a lot more "other worldly".

I understand where you're coming from with the whole "it looks like Morrowind thing" however other than the giant mushrooms, I believe it looks pretty dang other-worldly. Looking up in the sky, seeing the odd creatures, listening to the people talk; it's all very different from Cyrodiil and feels like an alien experience. I thought it was extremely well done.

No offense but maybe when you went into SI, you became Insane. Inside joke b/c SI causes insane, if this bothers you, I will erase. I don't see it looking like Tamriel or having a problem with mushrooms. The world of SI is unique, awesome and WOW.

I felt like I was on drugs when I first saw it.

It's pretty out there. I fail to see how it could be any crazier without ruining the gameplay.

Well, it's my opinion and I think it still looks like a place on Tamriel. Tamriel is strange enough. SI could pass for an area in a province in Tamriel. It really just comes down to Bethesda could only make it look as far as technology in 2007 would allow them. Just look at how pathetically they portrayed the Mantellan Crux area at the end of Daggerfall.
Daedric realms should at least not have the same laws as Mundus. i.e. falling through holes or voids and winding up in some other weird place where gravity is pulled upwards or sideways. Or talking trees or wind that forms facial expressions or NPCs that have you do quests that can't even be completed or done or to fetch some items that don't even exist. Or like, Alice in Wonderland kinda stuff where rooms get smaller as you go through them or at least have some mushrooms that do weird things, like make you see things differently or change your size to super small or very big. Bizarre things like that. Or have the realm changing randomly to something completely different and the town names changing and the people changing. After all, the realm is represented any ways Sheogorath wants. He can change all the cities and names and he can change it to just be a small floating island if he wanted to.

However, if Bethesda couldn't figure out how to get Levitation to work properly in game, then they most likely couldn't have done all that crazy stuff I mentioned above.

Maybe he didn't feel like changing it...

Two things; First, quests that can't be completed are never player-friendly... most people will scream "BUG!" when they encounter it, and when the patches fail to fix it, they scream "BETHESDA IS LAZY!"

Second, they could have easily made Levitation work. The reason they didn't was because of the walled cities; if you hop over the walls from the outside (or inside) you see a half-finished area. They did this, presumably, to cut down on lag. (In fact, the Open Cities mod tells you that there may be lag issues when you use it.)

this falls into the same boat as "Why do people seem fairly normal?", if this is meant to be the realm of madness, why can you make intelligent conversation with everyone? etc etc....

Reason: This is a game that needs to be fun. How this applies to your comment, if everything was crazy it would be impossible to find your way and do this, it would be too confusing and wouldnt work as a game mechanic.

It's the realm of Sheogorath, not http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Vaernima. Almost all of the things you described are already in the game, in Vaermina's http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Vaermina. Vaermina's realm is described as follows, in the book "http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Doors_of_Oblivion". Sheogorath's realm should not be THAT.



If you want to know the truth. The fact that you find the state of Sheogorath's realm so "maddening" at present, as in, the degree in which it irks you - that fits DIRECTLY with his personality. Ever read the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Shivering:Myths_of_Sheogorath? Drove a guy mad by doing absolutely nothing. Not at all what the guy expected, but boy did he drive him crazy with it.

I think it's funny.

Yeah, because it'd cost too much time and money for bethesda to redo a new game for the sake of saying that Sheogorath changed his little town. It all boils down to how much time and money Bethesda wants to put into the game. Every plant and piece of dialogue and armor is time and money spent on Bethesda's part. But if ZeniMax gave them a bunch of bonuses and increased their deadline, then I'm sure a lot of other things could have been done.