I have been wondering what it was about the feel of the game that made me so excited about it, other than the awesome viking-esque theme, and monster hunting dragon slaying ale drinking lore bound world, i think i know another reason why i can't wait for the game just for the feel of it... because it reminds me so much of Peter Jacksons version of J.R. Tolkiens amazing world of The Lord Of The Rings... the vast horizon of mountains (which reminds me of the Misty Mountains), the Tundra (that reminds me so much of Rohan), the dark dungeons and forests... does no one else feel this? This isnt a bad thing, its a great things, im so looking forward to it, dont get me wrong Skyrim is its own fantasy world with its own unique traits, but it feels so LOTR inspired, and i love it What do you guys think?

EDIT: I also heard that theres a project that is attempting to mod Skyrim into Middle-Earth, they have scrapped it on Oblivion and instead are using Skyrim, which is a good idea since so much of it feels like Middle-Earth anyways.. so jealous i use Xbox now... oh well

Inspired by the same things that inspired Tolkien and Jackson, but I wouldn't say that Skyrim is directly inspired by LotR.

I agree on that it is inspred by Tolkien and Middle Earth... But so is almost every single fantasy game ( A bit over exaggerating perhaps, but you get the point). And ofc, it is a good thing. No better universe, than that of Tolkiens. Even though TES comes at a solid nr. 2 :happy:

Tolkien's world is so iconic its difficult for ANY fantasy setting took look anything else but Tolkien inspired.

Tolkien himself took inspiration from a wide variety of European mythologies, particularly the Norse.

You're talking about Lord of the Rings. One of the foundations of modern fantasy. Ofcourse this would remind you of it, It should. It's kind of what a vanilla fantasy world should look like. So TES looks like it.

also includes Dragons (duh), a large nasty spider, Whiterun is definitely a copy of Rohan.

I'm curious about the Volcanic Tundra towards the East. Could be similar to LOTR Black Marsh (or whatever it was called)

This.

Like Tolkien and Jackson, Skyrim is inspired by Norse/Saxon culture.

LOTR inspiration is not a good thing. It is already WAY too overused in every single game. TES already has some perks borrowed from Tolkien, but I really want a different atmosphere for Skyrim.

virtually all modern fantasy is inspired of Tolkien, which is heavily inspired by Western European (especially Celtic, Saxon, etc) myth and history.

My main happy-Tolkien moment is that Orcs don't look like something out of Warcraft or Shrek.

That said, I think Tolkien == European anything, nowadays. Pretty interchangeable. Like Vaseline, or Q-tips.

I don't see any fat hobbits in the game.

True, they look nice now. All races do, in fact. They are a huge improvement over Oblivion.

Hell yeah its a good thing. Tolkien's Middle Earth is amazing, just as Elder Scrolls is.

Because things like Tolkien and D&D aren't inspired by other works which really go back to myths and etc. of different cultures. Mainly Western Europeans.

In terms of gameplay TES is basically a ripoff of systems and places of RuneQuest.

This topic came up a few days ago and went the same way. Someone said the game reminded them of the movies and people started talking about whether the lore was influenced by the books. IMO what the lore is most influenced by is the parts in D&D that come from Tolkien (not straight Tolkien which is very particular). However of course that is outweighed by other stuff.

Middle Earth is so played out. I understand that it's the wellspring from whence most modern fantasy entertainment flowed from but there are other older fantasy sci-fi works out there like H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard to name a couple.

All modern western fantasy is. If it wasn't I'd actually die a little inside.

:foodndrink: Cheers to Robert E. Howard

And a fantasy RPG in a Lovecraftian setting would R'LYEH awesome!

Its not middle earth its skyrim, of course theres going to be tundra, what do you expect, purple forests with giant mushrooms? No, this game is great because it has its own theme.

This pretty much sums it up

Tolkien should be judged by his books, which have very beautiful stories and perfect use of the English language. However lots of the best fantasy isn't influenced by him.

As mentioned, it's nearly impossible for fantasy settings to not appear to be inspired by Middle Earth.

But it's not like Middle Earth was the pinnacle of originality. Almost everything in it was taken from real-world cultural references. If anything, the prior Elder Scrolls games have shown far more creativity than Tolkien's Middle Earth, especially when you get into The Shivering Isles (or lots of areas in Morrowind).

Bosmits.

That is way overstating it. His elves are not really like anything before. There are elements of Norse myth such as dwarves, goblins, wizards, dragons, magic items, the Rohirrim, but this is just backdrop mostly. And all that stuff hadn't been put together like that before, in novel form. The "main story" of Middle Earth (the ups and downs of elves, men, and angels) is far out and doesn't have a direct precedent that I'm aware of. Lots of the characters rock, esp. Aragorn, Eowyn, Frodo+Sam and Faramir+Boromir+Denethor, not to mention Gollum.

they are called bosmer