Nothin!

Ever heard of Conan the Barbarian? I love history and hate hate MMO armours for the most part and the terrible representations of it in alot of things. But the developers have confirmed they're shooting for a very Conanish feel to this. Also, you have to remember, this isnt history or reality. Its a world with floating toadmen who happen to be masters of magic and necromancy, capable of raising and entire island. Snake people are a genuine threat in this world. Historical armour isnt really what this game wants or is trying for, Id be maybe on your side if the females were basicly wearing just an armour bra, but they arnt, and I love Conan the Barbarian so... It looks great, you'll play the game, I know we'll all dig the hell out of it (I mean we're on these forums constantly following all info, we're the big fans of the game), and your problems are related to the art style, which is about as personal opiniony you can get in critical thoughts

:huh:

These armors look skimpy to you? The only one really showing skin is number 2, because he's going for a tough barbarian look. Also getting cold isn't too much of an issue in combat, since combat gets heated, and remember he's a Nord and has natural frost resistance. Also it's not like every set of armor is one piece set, you can pick what you wear for your different body parts, so it's your choice. He could probably wear a shirt underneath if he wanted to. In pic 1 the only skin I see showing is for the arms. Now it looks like his pants are a similar color as his skin, but surly that's not his ass. Pic 4 is just a bad example because they're undead, and pic 3 is just a khajiit wearing selective armor pieces. No problem for him either getting cold since he has fur. I don't see skimpiness here.

The first picture doesn't seem all that skimpy to me, most of the torso is covered, the arms are bare, certainly, but there were armors that didn't cover those in past games too.

For the other armors, though, they're kind of skimpy, though these are male armors rather than female ones, that doesn't mean it makes sense for them to not cover as much skin, but I find it interesting that Skyrim seems to be defying the ever common fantasy cliche where in for male armors it seems the more mass on your armor the better (Creating huge pauldrons, extremely bulky armors, and such, adding spikes also gives an additional bonus.) whereas for female armors, the inverse is true, best if your females wear armor that covers only the bear minimum of skin needed to not risk increasing the rating for nudity, of course, we've only seen one example of female armor in concept art and that one seems to be a full body armor, so for all we know, maybe female armor is even more revealing than its male counterparts. I'd find it amusing if it turned out that the female armors actually covered more skin (And not just on the chests.) than the male ones, though.

But regardless, I think the skimpyness from the armor we've seen so far comes from Bethesda going for a sort of Conan-ish look for the game's art direction, Skyrim is a less civilized place than Cyrodiil, after all, and we've all seen barbarians in fantasy wearing little more than a loincloth into battle, I'm sure, realistic or not, it's the direction Bethesda seems to have chosen to go, and in any case, just because some armors are skimpy doesn't mean all are, in fact, we've already seen examples of armor that is NOT skimpy, take the elven armor, for example, it seems to cover a lot to me, so if skimpy armor is not to your liking, there's certainly options for that. Now if I can't play a female character without looking like a lady of ill repute, on the other hand, then that will bother me.

Well, guys have almost no stigma when it comes to walking around without a shirt, often times encouraged (of course, it can vary). Women, on the other hand, cannot and have to cover up. You should change that, OP, and remove such stigma from women. The world will be better for it.

The only thing wrong with that armour is that it isn't skimpy enough.

*Nods sagely in agreement*

Come on people its just a couple armors, they are going for the epic manly man who is epic enough to not need a shirt. You should all be rejoicing at his sheer manliness!


On a more serious note, its only picture 2 that has any real skimpiness to it. The undead do not count they have been dead for gods know how long of course their armor will be scraps, the ones in oblivion where naked after all... :\
Khajiit are not the same as humans they should be going nvde in most the games anyways, why should they slow themselves down with stupid human armors?

Just for that I shall go make a naked Khajiit character right now. *wonders off*

/thread :teehee:

Actually, the only game where Khajiit could go completely nvde where other races couldn't was Morrowind. In other games, either all races could be naked (Like Daggerfall.) or all races had permanent underwear (Like Obliion.) and really, Khajiit not having underwear in Morrowind never made much sense to me, they still wear clothes, so why would they go without underwear when other races don't? I guess you could justify it for slaves, but I don't expect to see many slaves in Skyrim, now, in Morrowind, they had nothing to cover, but that's just the in-game models, in lore, they're obviously not like that, and if you've ever seen a real cat in your life, you'd probably notice that real cats aren't like that either.

And there's a very good reason why they would want to slow themselves with human armors, because they wear armor for the same reason humans do, to protect themselves in battle, and armor leaving parts of your skin exposed diminishes its protection, because your enemies can aim for those parts, and no matter what race you are, you don't want someone stabbing you in your exposed stomach. Now, a character's race might justify skimpy armor if due to cultural reasons, members of that race have a tendency to go into battle with little or no armor, but that would mostly apply to your stereotypical barbarian warrior race, which might describe Nords, but not so much Khajiit, or if that race is naturally armored and therefore does not need to wear armor, but if that were the case, they wouldn't need armor a all, or would just need to wear it on more vulnerable parts of their bodies, and in any case, I don't think fur will protect you against swords and axes much. Besides, I don't think the armor the Khajiit is wearing is an actual Khajiit design, I'm sure it's armor we'll see other races wearing as well, and I see no reason to assume it will show more skin when other races wear it.

Now, I'm not complaining about the armor in question, it's not a chainmail bikini we're talking about here, that level of skin is something I can accept being shown in armors, and as I've said, not all armor is like that, and I don't expect all armors in the game to be to my liking anyway, if I don't like some armors, I just won't wear those ones, not that I'm saying I have any objection to that armor. I'm simply pointing out that saying the character wearing the armor is a Khajiit doesn't really justify the armor showing skin.

Historically, armor has quite a bit of variance in coverage. Some amounted to nothing more than boiled leather cuirass with a couple arm guards. Others were head-to-toe plate. As far as fantasy games go, TES actually does a pretty decent job of varying the armor in a realistic way, with the better quality armors realistically providing more coverage in addition to being made of better materials.

Selbeth_The_Winged_One Eh I guess I see "clothing" to be more of a "human" (as in "civilized" cultures), since both Khajiit and Argonian have such different bodies to those of mer and human I dont see why they would feel the need to wear the same thing. Sadly I didnt play Daggerfall, it doesnt work for me for some reason D: so I go by mostly morrowind.


But really I like the armors shown so far, even the small clip with full plateish stuff looks amazing. So much detail, to see people complaining about it just makes me roll my eyes. XD
Anyways lets try to not get off track... I do that alot D:

Epic manly men, whats not to love?

Yeah, so, for one, the draugr armor has been degraded over time. Because they are undead.

The khajiit one isn't what I would call 'skimpy' seeing as it covers most of his body.

The one in the tunnel seems to be a sort of barbaric kind of armor.

Then the assassin one, well you can't even see the assassin, and the guy he's stabbing has a bare arm. That's not exactly grounds to say it's skimpy. It a bare arm for crying out loud.

You complain the skimpy armour will make them cold? well duh its OBVIOUSLY enchanted with frost resist on self

Can't really see character models underneath huge bulking armour. Come on guys, they're trying to show off as much with as little as possible. They're not just gonna show lots of sets of moving armour. It's not rocket science.

I think we need some sort of discount for skimpy armor in the game.

I just want to see what It looks like on female characters.

Well I never, http://img843.imageshack.us/f/foresthuntwlegal.jpg/ has his entire arm exposed. Next thing you know womenfolk will be exposing their ankles *grumble*.

Maybe they've gotten rid of Armor Ratings completely? So, it doesn't matter what armor you wear, it's just for player preferences.

Because who needs armour when you are DRAGONBORN!!!

Nords are resistant to cold/frost

Woah, woah, woah. Lets not get carried away here. This is a family forum. There will be no ankle exposing in this game if the players have anything to say about it.

What is this doing in my Skyrim?


Also cool armor is cool /thread. Who cares if you can see my muscles.. I kill dragons.. and I'm a Nord.. I don't need tons of covers to keep my toesies warm. In MW, the typical "ALL HAIL" Elder Scrolls game, you had Nords in their underwear in Solstheim.

i hope you can! that is one feature i wish they kept in OB where you could wear a set of pants/shirt underneath your armor, which some of it would show with certain armors.

I just meant it covered all his vitals in the upper area of the torso as well as can be done. You can't really slap a plate over your arm pit you wouldn't be able to move your arms downward at all they'd only be able to stick straight out or go up. It looks heavy from what its made out of but really flexible for what it is.

I think the armors look totally awesome so far, I just assume beth is showing off less armored to highlight the actual characters appearance. Hope we get some more pictures soon looks phenomenal to me.

Well the undead guys have chainmail that's broken over time. And the rest because hey, shut up.