I don't see how making them more bestial solves the "boring race" problem. If anything, it makes them more boring by making them more real. Equating beasts with primitivity is also rather lame - I'd prefer to see the intricacies of Khajiiti and Argonain civilizations developed more. The Argonians are the only recognized sentient race that is completely different from the elves (that is Ehlnofey), and that brings about all sorts of possibilities. The Khajiit are born different based on the phase of the moon and keep the word from ending by getting high. Lets see more of that, please, rather then pulling a new race out of no where. Also, take a look at the http://www.imperial-library.info/content/pocket-guide-empire-first-edition-elsweyr-confederacy. What we've seen ingame so far is not all that there is to see.

Not kidding about the tree thing, not completely anyways. The Argonians are descended from the Hist, and depend on them for various life functions, so they are sorta trees.

Forgotten about those guys, though I never play Arena that much as I am not use to the old-school control theme. Blah, if only I can change the control scheme of Arena.....


Eh, comparable to Humans and Elf. They are dolls too.


Orc are Elfs too.

As for your way of changing the Argonians and Khajiit, I think what we have right now is practically good enough. In theory all race in TES are suppose to have something over the other race in term of status. In reality, its all cosmetics. So we don't have to make Argonian and Khajiits more primitive.

As for adding a race, I rather, in a way, not. It would take good amount of lore to bring in a race that would make sense to be playable in the TES Universe. The Orc got lucky at Daggerfall that enable them in the race menu. I don't know how the heck the Imperial Race get into the mix, however.

According to the first edition of the Pocket Guide to the Empire, Hist are a type of Argonian (or vice versa, not really sure). Bethesda retconned it to make Hist trees (possibly sapient) with which Argonians have an almost symbiotic relationship. It could be argued that Bethesda never retconned anything but that Argonians are Hist, which would make them trees.

And OP? No. Just no.

Both Orcs and Imperials always existed, they did not just appear out of nowhere. Canonically, Orcs were not considered to be equal to man/mer, and were as such not a playable race. After Daggerfall and the Warp in the West, Orsinium was recognized as a kingdom and the Orcs gained a lot more respect.

Imperials were also around, but as Colovians and Nibeneans. No idea as to why they were not playable - perhaps the developers thought they had enough human races. They played a huge part in Morrowind though, so it makes sense to add them there.

In the same vein, I would not be opposed to the Akaviri races, the Sload, or similar races being playable since they are already in lore. I do however strongly object to making up wholy new races because cat and lizard people are 'silly'

They are part of The Lore. They will stay there.
Why they wear human clothes? Seriously? How accepted would they get in human/elven culture by running around clad in bark or nothing at all? They have adapted. Atleast the city-livers. Those in the marsh and Elsweyr are propably different.

Ya, I already know about that.


I heard of Colovians and Nibeneans many time, though like you, I don't really know why they combine both ofthe human races. Probably number count, like ya say. That, and I probably guess that the game might need a race that have a silver tongue (which usually tend to be a Human trait like in many, many fantasy).

Some sort of Christopher Walken shaped creature.

than which weapons should they have?

@OP, if they decide to change major things like that, than it will vitiate the game.

I adore Mass Effect but what? How are those races original? They're all basically retreads of classic sci-fi/fantasy races.

Ya, I'm confused too. Mass Effect contained some really unoriginal races. The only original looking race was the Hanar. For every other race the devs took the Star Wars cop-out by creating aliens that are just humans wearing make up.

I was mostly recapping for those who didn't, as these threads inevitably tend to go the "but they added orcs/imperials later on why can't they do it again" route.


Well, I'd say Colovians are close enough to Nords for them to be smooshed in there. The Nibeneans on the other hand are much more distinct culturally and biologically. I think the biggest reason was to keep 'races' geographic. After all, Reachmen are counted as Bretons and Ashlanders as Dunmer despite having a different culture. By all rights the Direnni should be their own subgroup, since Ayleids are. Kothringi, Men of Ge, Nedes, Keptu, and all the other 'Nedic' tribes are outright ignored. Keeping one race per province just makes it simpler.

That would be awesome...Even more awesome if it was voiced by Christopher Walken!

I think there's still a lot of room to make the "beast" races particularly alien by incorporating features that are seen in our own creature kingdom on Earth.

For example, you could give the Argonians a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_line and somehow translate that in game-play to a visual cue. You could give them heat-based bonuses and penalties to movement or fatigue regeneration. Or give them a defense like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_lizard, which can squirt blood from its eyes!

They can also re-emphasize that an Argonian's six depends on age. I forget the technical name, but it comes up in the animal kingdom that some species will change gender as they age. I recall the species description in TESIII mentioning that Argonians have gender life stages, too.

As for Khajiit, well... :shrug: There are, like, what, 12 different varieties? And subspecies depends not on inheritance, but on the phase of the moons when born. Have more Khajiit varieties in each game, that'll up the "wtf weird" factor a bit!

Admittedly, when I first played Oblivion, and was completely new to the TES series, I groaned when I saw an Argonian, aka a lizard man. Because, honestly, it looked like a man in a lizard suit. Same with pretty much every other beast race in Oblivion. But in Morrowind, Argonians looked much different, and totally alien. I loved the Argonian's in Morrowind. If Bethesda would go back to that I don't think anyone would complain about them being silly.

But this whole topic is ridiculous. Beast races are cliche, eh? Ok, cut them out. But wait, elves are cliche too, cut them. And humans, how dare they be in a fantasy video game! Cut! What are we left with, besides the races that have been written about but not seen... Sload? Oh boy, Tamriel inhabited entirely by Sload, that sounds like a blast.

Bethesda has made a lot of unique creatures in the TES universe, and even the races that seem "silly" at first are actually pretty cool if you take the time to learn the lore behind them. The story behind how the Dark Elves came to be is great, the story behind the Argonians and the Hist, how there are dozens of variates of Khajiit... the races Bethesda uses may not be the most original but the lore behind them sure is.

I second this statement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7Ky5R-vxns He can fly!

Can you imagine the pandemonium that would ensue if Beth removed the Beast Races? You may not like it, but I can tell you now that many, many more people love Argonians and Khajiit.

What bothered me about Oblivion was how homogeneous every race was. Every race was a carbon copy of one another, the only difference being in outward physical appearance and in voice, although even the differences in speech were less than in Morrowind, and instead of unique voices for each race we got Breton/Imperial, Elf, Orc/Nord, and Beastrace.

I understand that maybe in the middle of the Imperial City any race there will be dressed in the local fashion, but Cyrodiil had half a dozen borders. In Morrowind, which was an island, Ashlanders dressed one way, Telvanni another, Imperial fashion was common for many, but Orcs would wear Orcish armor, Nords ringmail and fur, argonians and kahjiit often wore rags, slave or free.

I would have loved to have seen wild Argonians, Kajhiit, and Woodelves in the forests and swamps, Darkelves in the East, Redguards and Orcs near Anvil, and tribes of barbarian Nords north of Bruma. Actually, many of the other cities felt like they were in different countries, only with Imperial guards, who to me seemed more like Bretons with varied heraldry. I would have preferred if the Legion guard made up the town garrison, although I suppose they are trying to avoid similarities with Romans, which I don't quite understand. I thought their motifs from Morrowind were great.

*shivers* You'd have to change the rating.

I think some inbreeding (I think I mean cross-breeding) of the ones we already have might be fun.

Genes dont work the same way on Nirn as they do in real life.The offspring of two different races always take the race of the mother. There are no cross breeds.

Unless two different races breed for centuries. That is how the bretons came to be, the centuries of interbreeding between aldmer and nedics. It's a VERY long process, something we'll not see against most likely.

Inverted monkey whales.

An organic version of something like http://ui24.gamespot.com/1175/finalfantasyphantomfigure_2.jpg where the race all have different body proportions and are not exactly symmetrical. As a non-hostile partially civilized maybe not playable being.

[] Though that looks like an ascended sleeper / argonian.
Still

[2] Something like http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2392/4507911605_69c16720df_o.jpg with one or two additional, effectively useless, pairs on the torso.

And if that model is connected to a game I would love to know which one.

[3] Additions not replacements.

i would be happier if they had different clothing than humans.......frankly i would like to see elves wear different clothing as well. i miss the morrowind animations (apparently most people do) and would like to see them use unique weapons instead of what everyone else uses. WAC helps in that it gives the different races their own types of weapons but it would be nice if this was in the vanilla game. right now as other people have said there really is not distinction between the races culturally speaking.

I got it! I got it. Amphibians, that are trees.

It would be nice to see an exploration of the known http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Khajiit#Sub-species_Notes and http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Argonian#Tribes, that we know to exist in the lore, in the next game. Instead of only giving us one species/tribe to play expand it to 2 or 3.