Skyrim suffers the same "problem" as Oblivion, compared to Morrowind. Namely, Morrowind's main quest was a meandering romp that took you across all facets of Dunmer history and culture and shoved its lore in your face, like a little kid eagerly showing his parents a drawing or LEGO sculpture. Oblivion's, and to a lesser extent Skyrim's, main quests don't really touch so much on the cultural aspect, leaving it to the player to delve deeper, independently, into things like the Ayleid empire or Nordic burial rituals. And this is exacerbated by the later games' "show, don't tell" philosophy, by and large. The depth of lore is still very much alive, it's just much more subtly woven into the gameworld.

There have been a few NPCs who elaborate on lore a fair bit, but I agree that there isn't enough. It could be argued, though, that most mortals wouldn't care about things so far above them when they have more every day things to worry about. A few examples of lore sources in-game: Eno Romari, Vivec, Dyus, and Sheogorath, just off the top of my head.

CHIM is very relevant to the game world. Without it, mortals would have nothing to aspire to, no Amaranth to try to reach, and no escape from Lorkhan's prison.

Nord faith isn't very well explained in Skyrim, there could be a little bit more. It would be hard to have one explanation, though, as http://www.imperial-library.info/content/song-return-skyrim-preamble Bethesda might think it would be "too much cost for not enough interest." The lore-interested market is a bit of a niche, unfortunately. Going in depth on interfaction politics, the culture of Skyrim, the Empire's relation to it, and having it all be visible without being hidden in books and texts, would require almost an entirely new game.

Is embalming ever explained in the game? I don't think it's mentioned once out of Blood on the Ice, unless I've missed it. Embalming tools are everywhere from town crypts to necromancer lairs.

While the last bit is correct, the rest not so much. High Fantasy is an original world built from the ground up with its own set of rules, like Middle-Earth, Tamriel, Westeros, Randland, etc.

Low Fantasy is something set in the "real" world, but either in a lost sorcerous prehistory (Conan the Barbarian) or "behind the scenes" of history, like Soul Edge-Soul Calibur III where it is the secret motive behind established historical events. IV and V are in that muddy middle ground where it's sort of in the "real" world, but there is too much magic and too overt to make sense in its absence from real history.

So it's not simplified so much as... incorrect. Even though your assessment of TES' place on the spectrum (which is not a spectreum, it's really just one thing or the other) is right completely.

We know the old Nordic pantheon were eight animals and a dragon, now. We know ancient Nords had complex mummification processes, http://www.flickr.com/photos/47857688@N08/6877563849/in/photostream/lightbox/ (at least for important people). We know that Kyne is extremely vicious, judging by her statues.

Ancient Skyrim is painted all over the landscape.

No one mentions Shor? He is mentioned quite a bit, though mostly in random dialogue.

Aren't there only a few religions that know of or believe in that, let alone want to seek it or know even the basics of how to do so? I'm sure vast majority of tamrielic people have less lofty goals.

No love for the Shivering Isles?

Awe come on man every ones knows Imperials are Romans.

That is not true either.


A Song of Ice and Fire is for example low fantasy even though it clearly is not set in the real world.

But in the latter books it becomes more and more High Fantasy due to the resurgence of magic.

Conan the Barbarian is neither low nor high fantasy. It is heroic fantasy which is a whole different genre.

I get confused as every real successful rpg or fantasy themed universe has been based on real life cultures.

Thats without the hundreds of fantasy films that centre on Greek mythology, Norse & Slavic lore, Celtic mythology, American cultures, Gothica etc

The same happens in China if you look at the Chinese film market.

People love an expanded universe on what they can already relate to.

Cowboy films is an example of this. The whole wild west and the fastest gun plot is a complete fabrication from reality. The latest expanded made up universe that has come around is the whole ghetto themed pimping millionaire gang stars as seen in the whole hip hop & RnB world. This is again expanded on in films and games such as Saints Row. GTA4 is the only game to go for a more realistic approach with Russian and Italian Mafia making serious money in arms deals at the top and the Jamaican street gangs making pennies at the bottom selling weed. Irish & Albanians working for the Italians etc which again has some truth behind it.

Assassins Creed is another game set in real world history.

On the other hand we have the new Kingdoms of Amular. I have tried playing this hoping for something comparable with TES, but I find it quite boring and I don't find the races and character design to really pull me in. I can't relate to any of the armor types so I don't find myself roleplaying the character in my mind.

Fable 2 and Fable 3 is another game universe that has made a success. Again this is based on real world influences. I'm guessing the next game in the Fable series will allow race choice and people can choose from a European or African looking person from Albion, An Indian looking Gypsy, An Egyptian / Meso-American looking Aurorian or a East Asian looking from the distant Samarkand. Fable were clever in someways as they didn't go down the armor route but stuck to clothes that just give little perks so that it gives plenty of variety in character design and we don't find everyone one going for the top armor type.
Choice we have are highwayman clothes, British Napoleonic era soldiers, medieval clothing etc. Again an example of a successful rpg universe based upon our own.

Tolkiens LOTR is the best example. Even Harry Potter tries to draw on world culture in it making. Getting an old steam train train from King Cross station to a castle in very stereotypical British looking countryside scenery.


just looked it up. Still looks like a fantasy realm with European style knights and European style castles. At last TES has other influences from around the world

Song of Ice and Fire takes place in more oriental settings as well. Or should I say orientalist?

How about orientalisticesque?

It is true, because the term "High Fantasy does NOT refer to how bizzare of magic-based something is, it refers to the primary world in which it is set, be it our own with added magical elements (low fantasy) or a different world (high fantasy). Everything in TES IS high fantasy, regardless of how foreign it feels or how much magic they use.

Actually it is true. SoI&F is high fantasy because it is in a world that GRRM created from the ground up, even if it draws (really alone among all fantasy despite the stereotypes) from Medieval Europe. Conan the barbarian is low fantasy because it takes place in a fictionalized real world. When you get right down to it, those are the only two fantasy subgenres. Heroic fantasy is a category, not a different genre, and is, when you get right down to it, most fantasy. It's like the term anti-hero. It only works if you aren't using the correct definition of hero in the first place.

It has literally nothing to do with how much magic is used or how gritty it is or who the characters are. The only thing that distinguishes high and low fantasy is if it's in a made-up world. The Elder Scrolls, even Daggerfall and Oblivion which are "comfortable European fantasy" are high fantasy because Tamriel does not exist.

hahaha, jack254. You so silly.

I'm surprised people still take you seriously with all of your ridiculousness.

I'd say that was kind of a stretch. The "Hyborian Age" in which Conan was set is supposedly Earth after the destruction of Atlantis, but long before the continental land masses had moved to their present locations. It places humans into a prehistoric time before there were actually humans, on a map that only vaguely resembles the real world.

This places "Conan" into exactly the same "class" of fantasy as "The Lord of the Rings"; Tolkien asserted that his "Middle Earth" was supposed to be an earlier version of our world. That would make LOTR "low fantasy" under your definition.

Sure, I will stop fighting your wikipedia-quoting ways.
That source is just way to credible.

The Empire is more like... America.

Morrowind borrowed a lot from Assyrian culture, yes. The names of the Daedric ruins and the look of the Dunmer strongholds, which is similar to the look of a Zigurrat.

edit: Not that it's a problem. Nothing is ever completely original. Even those songs you'd call the greatest of all time are sometimes proven to be huge ripp-offs. Personally, I like how TES twists real world myths and history.

Eh, The Lord of the Rings may have started that way but by the time it was finished it was definitely its own thing, a "mythology for a new age" style of whossname in an era (post-WWII) where we really had no defining cultural mythology (I'm separating "culural mythology" from "religion" here because of social factors that I'm not sure we're allowed to talk about. It's a common thing in writing that the finished product is wildly different from the original intent, to continue with the Middle-Earth example it was originally going to be a "mythology of England" that had been lacking compared to the Continent.

Naw, I don't quote wikipedia. I just am a fantasy writer and would therefore have reason to know this kind of thing instead of running with misconceptions so common that people have actually started acting like they're true (anti-hero is a thing separate from "hero," magic levels have anything to do with your kind of fantasy, having a bloody hero in the first place makes for a different subgenre of fantasy). Also, credible is not an infinitive verb last I looked.

You know, I'm pretty sure this thread has been answered enough times. The Elder Scrolls takes literally everything (and I mean it, I can't find a single mythology or culture that doesn't get at least a little bit of lovin' in TES lore, no matter how esoteric the connection) puts it in a blender with a cup of imaginative strangeness and then we get the results. I'm looking at the Dunmer, who have traits of Mesopotamians, Mongolians, Jews, Gnostics and Medieval Christianity as well as the Nords, who have dashes of Norse, Egyptian, Hinduism and germanic folklore, and Imperials who have a bit of Roman, South American, United States and Imperial Chinese.

I always thought that Bethesda took common fantasy ideas and turned them on their head.
I.e The Orcs. Generally in Tolkien-Like fantasies they are marauders who pillage and burn villages but in TES they are the persecuted.
Dwarves. Usually half-sized fat people who like to drink and mind. In TES, technologically advanced (normal-sized people) race which attempt to join the Divines and may have succeeded or not....

The notion that Middle Earth was to be viewed as taking place on a fictionalized version of Earth (rather than taking place on a different planet as some had supposed) derive from two of Tolkien's letters. The first, letter 211, is dated October 14, 1958 and the second, letter 294, is dated February 8, 1967. Both letters were written after the publication of Lord of the Rings.

So LOTR changes entire genres because of a note about author intent that has no presence in his actual work?

Well now we have clear proof that TengenToppa's distinction between high and low fantasy is worthless. The distinction as commonly interpreted is pretty bad too, however.

High-fantasy/Low-fantasy isn't defined purely by the physical location. When the term "world" or "universe" is used, it can refer to the cultural, geographical and historical relation to the world as we know it as well. I have not read Conan, but I think it would be considered high fantasy, and LOTR as well, because despite them being supposedly set in a prehistoric Earth, the world involved in the stories scarcely resembles the world from our history. For another example, Harry Potter is considered sometimes to be High Fantasy. It is set in Modern day Earth, but the predominant "world" that the characters are involved in is the world of Wizards, which is far removed from the regular world; there is little technology, magic is used for everything, they have a seperate system of government, different sorts of language use, rarely intertwine with areas of muggle society, have different customs etc. Compare this to something like the show "Supernatural", which would be low fantasy, as it involves fantastical and supernatural elements, but this is woven into the fabric of existing society, a sort of underground really, and our existing world is the predominant setting.

All the Imperials have names that are puns. I dont like puns. But aside from that, i think you're getting a bit too...obsesive about this.

http://youtu.be/GkpbZzs7a94

That video proves that Bethesda copied EVERYTHING from something for Skyrim. How is Bethesda gonna answer to this?

First I raged. Then I lol'd.