He's saying that you don't have to understand the scientific basis of something in order to consider it beneficial. In no century would being dirty have been sixually or socially preferable to being clean. That's why perfume has existed since the Egyptians.


Heh, I guess you weren't around for the "where are the bathrooms" threads.


And hence, cared about their appearence, which means they would have been reluctant to wander round covered in excrement when the means to remove it has always been there.

That is indeed true, trying to determine how Tamriel would really look based on real history always encounters this problem. It's fantasy, after all, if you're looking for a realistic portrayal of Medieval society, you probably shouldn't be playing the game where you can play as a cat man wearing armor made out of glass and using magic to save the world from hordes of demons.

Though, I'd imagine Tamriel would, in reality, be somewhat dirtier than we see in game, it probably isn't people sleeping in their own filth level of dirtiness, but it wouldn't be like what we see in Oblivion either. It would also depend on where you are, Bravil, for example, would be pretty dirty for the most part, whereas some wealthy noble in the Imperial City would probably get more cleaning done. That being said, however, even if we put aside the visual style of the games, the dialog or books in the games don't seem to suggest that things are all that bad either, and considering that some cities have been shown to have sewer systems, and sload soap is an item present in Oblivion (You know, soap, something people use for cleaning.) it would seem that some attention is paid to sanitation, how much attention? Not much information seems to exist.



Looking at the trend of very "gritty" environments with lots of gray and brown in modern video games, I'd say that they in fact do, or at least it's what many designers THINK consumers want.



Not if Bethesda is ifficient about it, lots of games get by with lots of garbage laying around, even Fallout 3, using the same engine as Oblivion, had a fair amount of it.

Most of those things existed before the Romans, the only thing we've done is put them in more convenient places.



The first one is more historical, just use that as your best source

The towns and cities (outside the slums) are not going to be squalid.

Tamriel is not medieval europe, it is an Empire able to draw on an unbroken culture with thousands of years of refinement (Summerset Isle). The only thing comparable in our world would be China or Classical Rome.

Most would be comparable, in their own way, but I sort of see your point...

But it comes back to whether or not Tamriel is based on anything in our world. I haven't seen many people mention magic.

18th century is NOT the Middle Ages. People got a lot dirtier after the Renaissance, for a number of weird reasons (including things as apparently counter-intuitive as increased sophistication in arts and the rise of the bourgeoisie).

Let's remember your first post:


18th century is not 1000 years ago. Mozart was born in 1756, so it was 253 years ago.

Note that the 18th century is not just not the Middle Age; it's even not the Renaissance. Mozart is a child of the Modern Era.

What about back in the 1st Era? Tamrielians weren't as advanced and as refined as they are in 3rd and 4th era (well, 4th era just began so we really don't know what's gonna happen). Didn't Nirn have it's dark times and "caveman" days where mortals lived like animals? I've read the http://www.imperial-library.info/history/merethic.shtml timeline and http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/before_the_ages_of_man.shtml and nothing is noted about how people looked or lived or anything. It mostly gives major events. Although it does say that the elves drove the beastfolk out and settled along the coast of Tamriel in the middle merethic era and that they were sophisticated, literate, and technologically advanced.... but in comparison to the beastfolk I'm assuming. I highly doubt the elves 4000 years ago lived the same way as the elves in present day Tamriel do. But since nothing is precisely noted about how clean they lived, I guess all we can really do is make assumptions based on the text that is given, huh?

Actually, there isn't a single recent movie set in anything resembling realistic medieval times. From Peter Jackson to Mel Gibson to Terry Gilliam, they're all fantasy.

Something like The Seventh Seal, though full of anachronisms and things that never happened, is much more realistic. Primitive sanitation does not have to be squalid. It's the formation of modern cities, starting in about the 17th C., that caused out-of-control pollution and squalor.

So now you're saying cavemen were filthy; that's nothing to do with whether 3rd Era Tamrielics were filthy, nor whether Medieval Europeans were filthy. The essential answer is, dirtier than Oblivion, cleaner than a cesspit.

Oh, and in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner had a bath in a lake, so there must be some accuracy there, I mean, everyone knows that a film set amongst the majestic redwoods of Sherwood Forest is pretty accurate! Hmm, I'm struggling to think of any Hollywood film that's an accurate portrayal of anything.

We need to go back to the primary sources. Perhaps the Domesday Book tells us how much soap there was in England in 1086. Still, we know they had it in Tamriel, so even if the architecture would have been grimier, the people wouldn't have been all that dirty, save for beggars and farmhands, but even they have access to water.

What about it? Have you read the first era sources? They're pretty damn refined for caveman pictoglyphs.

True, but I was thinking more like Roman and Medieval times, and all the times in-between those two :shrug:

Tamriel isn't the http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDungAges. I wouldn't even strictly use the word "medieval" to describe it either.

Well maybe I'll make a mod that adds poop everywhere. I'll let you be the first one to download it, Emerald Melios.

I know this post is a bit late, but even the film by Terry Gilliam was parodying the middle ages in his movie, Jabberwocky. Tamriel as aforementioned by many intelligent persons, was not a festering cesspool of grime and rats and various other unpleasantness that, if you saw it, would shock your future generations into never being born. It was a violent age. True. That holds true to a certain degree in Tamriel. In Tamriel however, they have an equally ~*~magical~*~ resource that the people in the dark ages had not: Reading material. Where would we be without that unlucky Scotti, the Lusty Argonian Maid, or perhaps the Thief of Virtue? (True classics I must say, on-level with Pride and Prejudice but with much less boring/arbitrary prejudice and much more meaningful/amusing pride... but I digress.)

And, in short, I give you this:

In Tamriel the surroundings were not brillig and within them did not the slithy toves become gyre and did not gimble in the woves. The borogroves were not mimsy in the slightest; oh no, not at all, and the mome raths refused to outgrabe.

Eighth grade history covers all of this.

You're saying because Tamrielians had access to books, that gave them an advantageous edge compared to the people in the dark ages here on Earth?

Of course. Just think: Where would WE be without books? The reason they didn't have knowledge as we do today in the dark ages about basic things is BECAUSE of the lack of books. With books, people learn more. When people learn more, better things happen... when better things happen, there isn't crap on the street. If you would like for me to elaborate further, I can.

Of course, this is definitely one of the MANY reasons, but what I at least would consider to be a large reason.

There, I fixed it for you.

What you have to realize is that Tamriel is in a timeline of its own. Its own universe. Not our universe, not our timeline (past, present, OR future). Things developed differently in Tamriel than on Earth for a great many reasons. Even if the middle ages and other past civilizations and eras were cesspits in their entirety doesn't mean Tamriel is or would have to be. There are SOME similarities between Tamriel and our own past (such as swords, exclusion of cars, etc.), but that's all they are. Some similarities.

And yes. It DOES give them an advantage because books = knowledge and the more knowledge the better the world, one can assume.

How do they add filthiness to a game? When you wake up from sleeping theres a guy peeing on you?

Well for one they could definitely add more litter, trash, garbage and bird poop to all the towns. The water in some of the lakes should not be all reflective and shiny like they are in all the youtube videos I watch. But rather, some of them should be covered with grime, animal poop, dead bugs, etc... stuff like that.

Such as Bravil, whos river they use as a sewer.

Tamriel is an Empire with a beaurocracy and effective government. It's not going to be wretched libertarian paradise like medieval Europe.

First, I don't remember Sload Soap being in Oblivion, Morrowind definitely though. Second, I don't think it's actual soap.

:sload soap:
Sload soap is a waxy substance made from the immature non-sentient forms of the sload.

If you really want to wash yourself with the corpses of baby slugmen, I suppose you can. I just can't imagine it being particularly hygienic.

I've heard stories about five thousand years old. We don't need books to record information. Neither do the people of Tamriel - the Ashlanders are a good example.



How much do you know about medieval Europe?

See I don't have Oblivion; need to get a new computer that can run it since my 2001 machine can't. I'm just going off of youtube videos like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR4StTxFH74

Bravil without any mods looks so empty though. I mean, yeah, the walls are grimy inside the houses but it's still pretty clean. Then again, the developers aren't going to waste weeks of man-hours adding in trash everywhere, unfortunately. They leave that up to the modders.

True, but the technical aspects of things are lost. We don't know how to make Greek Fire, and we would struggle to pass down the knowledge of Nuclear Physics from word of mouth over 5 thousand years.


His description does sound more like Thatcherite Britain than Medieval Europe....