The current scientific "majority opinion" is that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, and were also decidedly reptiles, albeit closer to modern birds than to alligators. Therefore, Argonians may be repilian in the dinosaur tradition, rather than snake-like?

I think its more that the Dev makes stuff up along the way and figures the game needs a lizard-like race to equal out the Elves and Humans that occurs in the race selection (hell, Khajiit was alot more elvish/humanish then beast in the first two installment). And like I would say like before that the biological study in TES is a bit off or vague in the their Universe compares to ours.

Talked about it before but here's a overworked version of the "writing your history" suggestion.

Writing your history:
Since your character usually starts of with no given past it could be possible to write your own past. That way there would be no dictated preset past for your character (keeping the mystery) but you could still create your own depending on which you find fitting.


What writing your past would do is it helps setting up your stats at the beginning of the game, instead of directly choosing your major ? minor skills you select things that happened in your past which then have influence on your skills, attributes and other conditions.
You don't actually WRITE it though, you simply choose from a list of possible occurrences in your past. However you can write in it too, the occurrences stay the same but you can craft a little story around them, this is purely optional and cosmetic though.
For example, if you selected you grew up in Black Marsh you probably already contracted some poisons and diseases meaning you'd already have a bit of immunity against certain ones (the most common ones in Black Marsh). Or if you trained sword fighting you of course have better sword fighting skills.

However the strength of your stats would also depend on when and how often you did certain things, for example, when you only trained alchemy once when you where a child you won't have much of it left. However when you did that later in your life there will be more of it left over and if you did it regularly it will get even stronger.
Also a lot of history choices would not just influence one skill/attribute/condition but more that are tied into it. For example, saying you have been a pick-pocket in your past would give you a bonus in sneaking and pick-pocketing or saying you have been quite a ruffian you'd get experience in boxing and simple defense, plus you'd probably already busted your bones a few times so you have slightly tougher bones now (healed fractures are stronger than normally grown bones).
However many would also carry a negative in them, most only have the "negative" of taking time in your history and leaving less room for others, some however have actual negatives. Starting out as a thief for example there could already be a criminal record that followed you so when you get in trouble you get higher fines. Or with the ruffian example people could find your face less appealing from all the punches you caught (it wouldn't have an actual influence on your characters looks though).

You'd also have a limit of how many entries you can make, though I wouldn't base it on your characters age but have a set amount of possible choices.


In the end this can lead into a character class, the game can calculate a class on your chosen history and the stats that come out in the end or you can of course name one yourself as always.
Writing your history would be optional though, it would be a more detailed alternative to the "10 questions" system with a lot more choices. You could still just pick a preset class or chose your own skills or, if there's a "try out" phase for your character, determine your skill choices there.

On the other hand I'd really like it if having to chose a Class is optional too, I don't really want to pick a title for my character but rather leave it open since I like to play more open. So best make it that you can leave the class blank or fill/change that field later in the game when you have "chosen" a career you want to follow. After all it is just formal so the decision should be left open.
Additionally your class description could change dynamically throughout the game if your skills change, it simply takes your highest skills and calculates which class would fit those the most.


All in all being able to create your characters history is a more RP friendly way to create your character AND leaves you the choice of what your characters past is without destroying the "mystery". After all everyone can think off their own way what they want to have happened in their characters past and they wouldn't necessarily HAVE to either.

I thought it was cool how you could take raw minerals to an armorer and have them make you a suit if you brought by enough chunks of raw mineral. What I thought svcked was it looked the same as all the other glass/ebony armor in the game and provided the same protection. I think they should make this customizable and being a custom suit of armor have a slight custom fit protection bonus.

For example it would be cool if you could take the Iron Pauldron from morrowind and a chunk of raw glass and get the giant pauldron made that looks just like the Iron one but is made out of glass instead. It would allow you mix and match different armor styles and have all the pieces match. I thought it would be cool if they expanded the minerals so you could find raw iron or steel and get suites made out of those materials as well.

I'm not sure about "raw" steel, but it should be possible to find iron, silver, and steel all in ingot form, at least from merchants. Iron and silver could definitely be found truly raw (and in fact, are in Oblivion + Mehrunes Razor).

As cool as truly custom weapons and armor sounds, I think that at best, Bethesda can add a very limited version where the plans are linked to an item. So you need the materials and the plans to get anywhere. Then modders can do what's much less practical for the devs (since anything they add wouldn't really be custom)

Shadows and true darkness:
One thing you see in many games is real time shadows, however you also see that there often is no "true darkness". And so far TES doesn't really have either.
However the game could greatly profit from this, the real time shadows for environment would of course increase immersion AND also have an advantage for stealthy characters as you can actually sneak in casted shadows. Having actually DARK darkness would also make deep dungeons or dark nights out in the wild a lot more interesting.

As for the real time shadows those don't have to be soft shadows, hard shadow corners do just as well. In fact having hard shadows would at least still be better than none at all. And I'd ALWAYS want the option to turn on hard shadows in the options since, honestly, many soft shadows look like crap.
Since the engine isn't that well suited they should use http://lightsprint.com/ for that, it also takes over some light and shadow dynamics like color bleeding and atmospheric shadows.
To be even easier for rendering many objects could have a "simple model" that casts the shadow instead of a more high-res model, this was actually done for actors in Morrowind (when looking at your shadow you could see that it didn't wear armor/clothing and had a base head).

Dark-darkness can make a dark place actually threating, imagine being able to see absolutely NOTHING outside your torches radius. And then have the torch suddenly go out and having no other light source with you.
Now there is a way to still have this "threatening" but not leaving you stuck and completely helpless, have a "arms length" radius around you. Within that range around your character you can see black and white but fuzzy contours, that way you can at least slowly inch your way out of somewhere instead of being totally stuck.
I remember a level in "Drakan: The ancients gates" where you could only see with a torch and the most you could see in the distance where a few reflections off the corners of the carved stones in the walls. This was actually VERY atmospheric and I'd really like to see something like that in TES.

Agree'd. Prospecting/mining/refining/smelting should be added for all types of metals. Also for extra's it would be nice to be able to specialize into extra things like glass making and jewelry to add stuff onto your crafted armor. One preferable thing I would absolutely LOVE to see in the game would be the ability to take lava, harden it, refine it into obsidian glass then make stuff with it. Of course if they include lava in the next game or perhaps the plane of Oblivion again this could be possible.

I think it would be great to have creatures you can use to fly around the game and after a crazy hard quest you can obtain a dragon

They would most likely eat you for a snack instead of being use as mount by lesser creatures.

I... have to agree...
That's where mods come in!

Considering steel is not actually natural, but rather man-made (well, iron altered by mechanical processes), it would be impossible to find any ingots of them lying around. But otherwise, it sounds pretty good.

Ingots are post-forging/purifying, man. Steel ingots http://images.google.com/images?q=steel%20ingot&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3a%6ffficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi. I think you were mistaking ingots for raw material (like ore), which steel definitely can not be found in.

No hes right, steel is made of a mix of iron and other materials.

But I think all the forge ideas sounds great!

1) Animation - more, more, more and rich skeleton without troubles, for man and for woman separate. Girls should not have man's shoulders, hands and a neck.
2) Models. With good attached weight, good rigging and deformation, and head, good head!
3) Animated cloth, hair, eyelash
(in 2004 all of this was in one game... hmmm, I am silent)))))
4) Horse battle
5) Fur shader for monsters, armor, cloth
6) big-big world, more dungeons, big cities, more quests and books.... but It will be made by modders)))

Dreams, dreams for ideal... Now nevertheless the XXI-st century ))))))

@Daniel Kay

The Thieves Arsenal mod for Oblivion gives water arrows to the PC, the arrows extinguish flames and make the areas around the flame dark for hiding.
The water arrows could work perfectly in TES 5

I was playing oblivion last night and showing my sister how the game is so realistic... and suddenly she asked a question... how can you be able to carry 6 swords, 1 staff, 2 shields and all the other stuff with you and where? well... she laughed for 2 minutes when she saw I had 2 watermelons with me while going to battle I'm lucky that she didnt notice all the other stuff such as my alchemy tools... These were not so ridiculous until her insult and now I cant stop thinking about this s***. Yes she is right, it is NOT realistic :shakehead: I hope they fix this in the new game but I dont know how.. Because I love looting...

NO!!! I like being able to carry 3 swords, 2 staffs, 4 full pairs of Armour and 6 shield around with along with a huge supply of ingredients, potions, books, keys, gems and gold. It makes me fell like an army a bit

lol... A different aspect...

I said this many threads ago, but I want to repeat it.



-I think it's time we had some real dual wielding.

-I would like for my character to have a weapon on his back and weapons on his waist at the same time.

-As an archer, I would like for my weapons to not disappear from my back, waist or both when I have my bow out.

Dual wielding is stupid and unrealistic.

:o

I agree with your other points though.

I'd like to see some more lore on the other continents, maybe even a very poorly detailed map of one of them.

Never seen tonfas or butterfly knives? Or is all your knowledge of fighting gathered from games?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfno9HUdymA (edit)

Stupid = Subjective.
Unrealistic = Don't give a frootloop. Although it is realistic. But even if it wasn't, poetic justice.

EDIT: Fashion over function is my new motto. Thong wearing Xivilai, wielding JRPG-sized swords of a western design=AWESOMESAUCE!

What's JRPG (Junior Roleplaying Game?)

Japanese rpg