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After reading the Hobbit (and watching the movies) I started to think that Smaug is similar to Paarthurnax.
Bear with me here; they are both dragons (pedantics aside) who committed atrocities in the past, they pretty much keep to themselves now, and live in/on a mountain.

Alright, second thing; after watching Battle of the Five Armies, I was struck by the similarities to the Dawnguard DLC. During the final battle in the Hobbit, Azog, a pale orc, is killed on an ice covered lake that over looks a large area( in this case, a battlefield). During the penultimate battle in Dawnguard, Vyrthur, a snow elf and thus quite pale, is killed on an overlook, above a large area covered with frozen lakes. Plus, their armour looks almost identical.

So what do you guys think, are these real similarities? Coincidences? Am I just reading to much into this?

P.S. I have put this in Multimedia because it covers books, games, and movies, but if you feel as though it should be moved (to The Arts, Skyrim General, etc,) feel free to use the [!] button and let the Moderators know.

I haven't read any of Tolkien's books, but they are fantasy classics. It's undoubtedly that a series so famous leaves tracks in all of successive works, be it either videogames or films. Bethesda used real world's cultures as a base to build their own game world, for example Imperials and Redguards resemble respectively ancient Romans and Medio Orientals.
This is as Tolkien references. They inspired to his books to create their own lore, and I don't see anything wrong about it. Even Tolkien inspired to ancient germanic lore.

I didn't mean to imply that there was anything wrong about it. After all, trying to make a fantasy game without being influenced by Tolkien is like trying to make a book about robots without being influenced by Isaac Asimov.
I just found it strange how a dragon like Smaug, who most people would kill without a second thought, is conceptually similar to Paarthurnax, a dragon who many people actively choose to not kill.
That probably explains the Lonely mountain. ("It's a German legend, there's always going to be a mountain in there somewhere.") But he didn't just take pieces of Germanic lore, he also took pieces from Norse, Greek, Brit (and probably many others that I can't remember) mythologies. Now I don't mean that in a demeaning way, after all, his works are master pieces, and few could weave the mythologies together as well as he could.

P.S. Your profile says you're from Italy, and if so (I mean you might not be, you could be my brother for all I know.) your English is quite good, better than most of the people I know.

I would love it if Peter Jackson looked at Dawnguard for the BotFA bits you mentioned, but to be honest I don't see much more than coincidences. The armor isn't that close, anyway.

The Smaug-Paarthy parallel is definitely a coincidence. Smaug returns to committing atrocities at first provocation, after all; IIRC he only went to sleep in the first place because he had achieved his ultimate goal of the awesomenest hoard ever and only woke up because said hoard was threatened. It's not like he had an epiphany.

As for mountains, they ARE the best places for dragons to lurk. Imagine a dragon on the Great Plains. Go on. Imagine it.

First of all, thank you, but I still have much to learn.

I think most people choose not to kill Paarthurnax because he gives a significant help in defeating Alduin. If weren't for him and his advices about Dragonrend Shout, Alduin surely would have restored his lordship; furthermore, the Greybeards helps the Dragonborn teaching Shouts. Yes, the Blades (or more specifically Esbern) have a major role in the main questline, but it's Paarthurnax who gives the player the decisive hint on how to defeat Alduin.
I think it's also because the Blades forces you to kill him. They don't want to hear any reasons, but until you kill Paarthurnax you'll be an enemy to them.

I doubt he did, but I'm gonna stick to my guns on the armour.

"The Smaug-Paarthy Parallel" sounds like a super cool scientific theorem. But I want to note that Smaug only started killing people (again) after he was told that they came for revenge, at which point he (correctly) assumed that lake-town had something to do with it and off he went. But you're right, Paarthy wouldn't go around burning Riverwood and Ivarstead just because somebody threatened him.

Also, I imagined it... it was weird. Dragons shouldn't live where the buffalo roam. It's just not natural.

Tolkien's was the first major work to define the fantasy popular genre as we know it today. There were many other fantastical works being written in the first half of the 20th century (Including the adventures of Conan the Barbarian written by Robert E Howard and work by many of Howard's peers, including H P Lovecraft who also influence popular culture today).

Tolkien loved the Viking sagas (which he saw as a rich authentic tradition of story telling which Britain had lost) and was no doubt influenced by them. If you read the Silmarillion stories, they are quite "saga esq" (in fact I half expect Jackson to get stuck into them; it would probably be more work for Orlando Bloom and the fall of Gondolin would be right up PJ's alley)

In the 70's a generation of British students really got into Tolkien and learned how to speak elvish, Led Zepplin wrote middle earth inspired lyrics, other writers and musicians were telling fantastic tales and all this paved the way for fantasy fiction to become big. Star Wars proved all this nonsense could be mega bucks

Gary Gygax wrote dungeons and dragons, the golden age of RPGs came into being. Finally when computer games came along, RPGers saw something very familiar, and it is hard to find a computer game even now which isn't essentially a version of an existing RPG run by a computer.

So yes, everything you see in TES is influenced by Tolkien because his work is the trunk of a tree with thousands of branches

It's perhaps a mistake to equate Peter Jackson to Tolkien though, Jackson has very competently interpreted LOTR onto the screen but one might interpret them differently when reading the books. I think TES design has similarities with Weta Workshop's movie design in the Hobbit and LOTR but this is pretty common where things share the same genre

lol that's my current version of the history of everything, anyway

A source we all forgot to mention was the Bible; Tolkien was a devout Christian, something that is pretty apparent in the Silmarillion.


I have to say, you're right on all accounts. When it comes to Tolkien and Jackson though, it is quite hard to mention one but not the other. In a way, it's sort of like a knight and his horse. A knight is shining and good, but without his horse it would be much harder for him to reach all four corners of the earth.

Now, you all have excellently answered my original questions. Smaug is not like Parrthurnax, and is probably more like Mirmulnir, willing to come out of hiding and cause destruction at the beckon of a dark lord. (I think; I can't confirm, but I think Gandalf wanted Smaug dead so that he couldn't be used as a weapon of the enemy) And that BotFA and DG are similar by coincidences brought about by being influenced by the same material, one more directly influenced, one more indirectly influence.

yes since Jackson made LOTR I haven't been able to read the books.. Maybe I'll give it a couple more years lol

with regards to TES/Jackson influences though, in Morrowind you have a bad guy living in a volcano which is walled in and guarded by the Buoyant Armigers. All this might sound a little like mount doom and Gondor, but the game looked and felt absolutely nothing like LOTR

then after Peter Jackson made his movies, Oblivion came out and a lot of the design seemed similar to LOTR movies; the oblivion plane citadels looked like Saurons architecture and quite different from the daedric ruins in Vvardenfell (ok you might argue different daedric realms look different so Mehrunes' gaff just happens to look a little Barad Dur-ish), Ayleid ruins are quite Old Gondorian, and in Skyrim Edoras is Whiterun. But the Dwemer cities and ruins are still pure TES, I think it would have been a great shame if they started to morph into Moria like designs

That said, Markarth's layout (now) matches Jackson's vision of Helm's Deep: gate on the right side, a curtain wall stretching off to the left.

yeah i didnt notice that lol

This is correct. Gandalf said something along the lines of "Smaug could be a terrible weapon in the hands of the Enemy".

Heroes can be such meanies. "What better way to defeat your enemy than to make him your friend?"

This philosophy is why you see villains bent on enslavement or trying to turn heroes to the darkness, rather than straight-up killing folks who don't agree with them. Heroes aren't quite so compassionate.

Remember that in the Tolkien world, the dragons are inherently evil. A dragon could not be turned to good.

I watched the Battle of the Five Armies and learned that the Elven Armor of Thandruil's Forces resembles Skyrim's armor (if not for the skirts and capes in the movie). The helmet is exactly the same and both have a golden look to them. Thandruil on the other hand wears Ebony armor.