My vision for the Elder Scrolls

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My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by VelothiConservative »

Hi, n'wahs. hehe. I just registred here on the forum but I'm certainly not new the the elder scrolls. My previous contributions to UESP is adding that balmora means stone forest in dunmeri in the article, among other minor things.

I started playing morrowind some seven years ago and I truly enjoyed it, when oblivion and skyrim came out I played those too. But I always felt that Morrowind was, accounting for the technology avaible at the time, the best game. Hence my name, velothi being another name for morrowind as you probably know. Now, after that brief introduction I will share with thee my thoughts on how I think the series are going the wrong way, especially with ESO, and what I think elder scrolls could learn from other games, and just things I think would improve it.

Assassins creed style cities: vivec, whiterun, and the imperial city are supposed to be metropolies yet there are more people combined in the little hamlet I live in. I know ES tries to go for detail, each character being unique with a purpose and a name, but I think they should have it more like in AC. Just lot's of people walking around in winding narrow streets, non essential people you can't talk to nor do they have names. I mean look at any city in the series; small villages at most, almost devoid of people! we might have a city of we combined all buildings and people in all three games, might.

Racism: yes, morrowind had a good shot at it. Remeber that EVERYONE would call you outlander? :D while I obviously don't like racism it does undoubtedly give that harsher, unfriendlier atmosphere that I think should be there. Now, morrowind had limited technology but imagine that instead of the camonna tong just standing around in their clubs all they, they would actually go around the streets harrassing non-dunmers? Imagine more racial slurs, like the ones heard in combat in oblivion, but comming from people that are just general racist a**holes. Something like that anyways. The idea could certiainly use more thoughts, but it's a start.

Crime: You should get mugged, assaulted, and theived from. as in AC, random thug attacks in the cities would be cool. Pickpockets hiding in the crowd also.

Also, in combination of the above, ghettos. Imagine khajiit and argonian ghettos, like the dunmer one but better. there should be places that are just crime ridden and dangerous, that people simply do not want to go to. THIS is were theives guilds should be discreetly located! Not in the only sewer in town, not in a residencial area.

corrupt guards: I liked the shakedown when first comming to riften, but there should be more of that. There should be racist guards that just push you into a wall or something just because, or they just want some money or they'll beat you. Know how the guard in the beginning of half life 2 react if you come close to them? They beat you. that's how I want it, if you look poor that is. If you look rich they should be pushing other people away for you.

What made me like morrowind so much was the detail the put into making a whole new world, unique nature, new culture etc. sujamma, sera, flin, gah-julan, chuzei, telvanni, hlaalu.. The names! there are soo many wierd liqours, armors and stuff that you truly don't recognise because there's not even a paralell on earth, it feels strange and unique. Not like in oblivion where they just have a typical boring western knightly fantasy setting with boring familiar names. I want giant mushrooms, wierd animals like kaghouti, and odd local names for everything. see what I'm getting at here?

One thing I think they should do away with, and they have to some extent, is the left overs from arena. The names of cities for example: solitude, whiterun, dawnstar, winterhold? those names, quite frankly, suck. Names like sadrith mora, balmora, gnisis etc are much better because you don't know what they mean, 'til you learn dunmeris. It gives soo much more immersion. vvardenfell had the luxury of only having one city with such a name, ebonheart, so they could just add new ones with better names. But I think they should either just say to the fans that these names are bad and they're going to change them into something better and we'll pretend that they've always been named so, OR claim that whiterun is the imperial name of the city whilst the nords call it [something that sounds nordic] in nordic and henceforth refer to it by that name. In a way, we're lucky morrowind didn't include the whole province because then we'd had to deal with firewatch and fear (mournhold also, what a name..).

the above applies to many other things, like the provinces. morrowind is such a name, should be swapped with velothi or resdayn imho. But as said they're going in the right direction somewhat, changing dark elf to dunmer etc.

well.. There's probably more but this will suffice for now. Feedback would be appriciated.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by philfredobob »

i disagree with you on about everything you just said.

i dont think TES should following after Assassins Creed, they are two different styles of games. TES is more focused on detail and individual stories, and have been trying to improve upon those two things since daggerfall, they dont need to fill out there maps with undetailed, samey samey cities, full of nameless, faceless, civillians with no personality (they did lots of this in Oblivion, and not many people liked it )

theres lots of Racism in skyrim, sometimes aimed at you, i know it might not be as much as you asked for, but to be honest, im not seeing how much this would add? some people in-game already dont like you, and they insult you based on your race in combat. thats all i could want

about the crime stuff, i dont think so. that just sounds annoying. imagine if somebody pickpocketed your insane Ring of superduperness or any other thing you have of value, while it might be slightly ''realistic'' it would be incredibly annoying

Ghettos is always a possibility, depends how big they can make their maps, and what city it is

i wasnt a fan of morrowind, but even with that, if they make everything have giant mushroom trees and wacky creatures, that becomes the norm, and you get used to it and bored of it. if they stick to normal ''earth'' landscapes (which i personally find very beautiful in-game) then whenever they come and show you a freaky landscape, it'll be that much better because its so different from everything else.

not everyone thinks of names the same way you do. i prefer names like : Solitude, Whiterun, Dawnstar, Anvil and so on. in fact, i prefer them over names like: Seyda Neen, Gnisis, Balmora, Etc... so dont just say ''they are worse ! they must change!!'' because not everyone is going to agree with you
Morrowind is a great name for a Province, i dont like the name ''Velothi''
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by VelothiConservative »

Philfredobob

I don't want only unimportant people obviously, but I don't want the streets to be emtpy, nor do I want to know everyone in a supposedly huge city. It breaks everything to me that the "major city" of whiterun has only around twenty buildings and probably less than a hundred people in it. It would be more okay if they called it a villge, but they don't. My idea is that all those people in whiterun, for example, are still there as usual but that there's also lots of non essential people moving about to give you the feeling that it's actually a city.

It's not samey-samey cities either imho, the ones in AC are quite different. it don't see how adding these people will make everything the same, really don't. And they did this in oblivion? In my experience they did it more in morrowind with all the random people just living in a cramped room in vivec. In oblivion they moved more towards that everyone should have a purpose, no one was just 'normal'.

There could of course be both normal terrain wacky terrain.
But what they did in oblivion was that they moved away from having a unique flora and fauna, namely silt striders, kaghouti, guar, mushrooms, saltrice, hackle lo and whatnot, to having just deers, bears and regular earthly, western things. It doesn't quite feel as if you're in a strange fantasy land anymore.

A matter if personal taste obviously. But for me, a city named firewatch is just terribly ugly and immersion breaking. it would be okay if they just say it's the imperial name and rename it to it's local name to, once again give that feeling of a strange fantasy land.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by DarkEastwood »

I'll have to agree with Phil. It really annoys me when someone wants TES to conform to Assassins Creed. Mostly because I don't like Assassins Creed, but also the two games are totally different. And I would prefer if they stayed that way ;)
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Musicman247 »

A lot of the things you're pointing out as you liking and should be put in other games (namely flora, fauna and names) are native to Morrowind. Having a silt strider in Cyrodiil would be akin to having a kangaroo or polar bear in North America. Using names like Seyda Neen in Skyrim would be like naming a city Jamestown in Saudi Arabia. They just don't fit the culture of the area you are playing in.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by VelothiConservative »

DarkEastwood:

Well I don't want it to be like AC at all actually, it's just this one thing with random pedestrians that give the feeling of a huge city that I think should be added. I do not want the combat system for example, hell no. Agree that no "city" in any game can really be called that with a straight face?

Musicman247:
That's not quite what I'm proposing. I obviously don't want morrowind's things in cyrodiil and skyrim, but I want them to make unique things for those provinces like they did for morrowind. They don't really have that level of a unique culture that they had in morrowind in the other games. That's what I'm saying.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Unionhack »

Assassin's Creed and The Elder Scrolls need to be seperate.

I like the AC series but I don't think it's God's gift to gaming, and not every free-roam game should adapt to how the games play out. I don't think giving similarities to the AC series to TES would work very well at all.

The cities are just fine :P They've got what you need, right? The majority of the gameplay in these games don't take place in the cities. They take place out in the huge world, where all the monsters and the dungeons are. AC doesn't have a huge outside world because it all takes place in the cities and what not.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by CBR JGWRR »

Musicman - TBF, in the 1800s when european imperialism was all the rage a Jamestown in Saudi Arabia would be perfectly reasonable...

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OP - TES is not AC, and it shouldn't be. The facts are Skyrim, like all the other games, is highly scaled down - the entire of Tamriel as seen in the games could fit into the forest owned by my grandparents in Sussex... The real places would be at least 10 times the size and population, most likely more.

Anyway, with Assassin's Creed one of them only had the city of Rome... (ok, and a few other places, but they don't really matter...)
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Mattbott »

hello and welcome to the site VelothiConservative, not sure about a lot of what you're saying there..

I agree they could have put 'generic' npc into the elder scrolls games to fill out the numbers, it would have added the illusion of populace.

However, I think the detail in each TES npc probably means it would be more difficult to do this than in AC - i get the impression every NPC in TES has the capacity to do something, whereas AC npc tended to be walkers, or fighters, or screamers, they were limited to standard responses when you exposed them to crisis. When a dragon lands in Solitude, every NPC acts to their strengths and weaknesses, usually quite differently. Not so in AC

I like the names like Solitude and Winterhold.. dunno, it's a taste thing.

I do agree that Morrowind (of the three TES games i have played) has a richer and more unique feel to it because as you say, Cyrodiil and Skyrim seem to be based more on the 'real world' flora and fauna, whereas Morrowind was totally alien - silt striders instead of horses, ash yams instead of leeks or whatever etc.. it really added a lot of depth and longevity to my appreciation of the world, especially in exploring it.. it's a place of imagination far more than Skyrim or Cyrodiil are imo. These are fantasy game after all. It's one of the reasons i wanted the summerset isles (or the Khaajiti/Argonian lands) to be the next game - the chance to do something completely crazy - tho i suppose theyll have to reproduce the designs in TES0 now to maintain all important canon

i suppose the influence of the LOTR movies has been the overwhelming stamp on TES4 and 5 design wise.. which is a shame, cos i thought TES3 has some truly original turns . The shivering Isles and Solstheim (and Hermaeus Mora's realm) prove they can still do it, and of course dwemer design is up there with the best game/movie locations ever imo
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by VelothiConservative »

Unionhack:

Well, yes, but the cities definitively need some improvement.

CBR JGWRR:

Indeed they are, which is bad. It wasn't soo bad with morrowind. They had much more detail despite it's small scope.

and to both of you; I've mentioned three things from AC, none of which are characteristic of AC. I'm not trying to make TES into AC for christ sake. It's just general things that I believe would make the game better. That AC has it isn't a valid reason to oppose it.

Mattbott:

thank you.

They don't have to be so defenseless as they are in AC (although honestly, not everyone being prepeard to fight to to death like an experienced fighter would be quite a realistic change). And they don't have to be the same either, there could be many kinds of generic npcs. Not to hard to solve i'd bet.

Indeed. I too was hoping, and still hope, for eslweyr (which they can rename imho, it's obviously 'elsewhere'. not enough khajiitish). I hope ESO don't ruin it too much; I fear they will abandon all the different kinds of cats, among other intressting things there can be around tamriel. Looks to much like wow also, cartoony.

And truly, one person that agrees with me. That's it, the originality! that's what I'm talking about.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Avron the S'wit »

I think that players who find Cyrodiil or Skyrim "the same and boring" are ignoring a huge chunk of the game. As exotic and beautiful as Morrowind was, I personally had a lot of amazing moments with the unique cultures as presented in Oblivion and Skyrim. While they may look alike, the Imperials and the Nords are pretty different from each other, and so, too, are their two provinces. I think each game did an exceptional job of reflecting the personality of each race in its home province: a land of exotic misery and beauty, as fits the Dunmer; a land of rich vibrancy but danger, as fits the Imperials (and certainly Imperial rule); a land that is rough but strong, as fits the Nords. I understand that each gamer has their own personal taste, but I really think that if the lack of "exotic" elements in Cyrodiil or Skyrim, and the close resemblance the Imperials and Nords have to us, is so overwhelming that you forget to separate them from you, you're not doing your self much service, and you're missing out on an important but subtle sense of uniqueness that, to me, is extremely well done and very rewarding...if you can pick up on it. I get a truly different feeling playing each installment of TES without it being so overbearing and alien that I can't find myself identifying with the themes presented within, and I think that's an exceptional job well done on Bethesda's part (though criticisms we have of them, too!).

You can play these games for mere pleasure, which is great, but a roleplaying game really benefits when you assume the role of someone other than yourself and put yourself in a world that you can recognize as not your own, once you take its lore and mechanics to mind. That requires a bit of imagination, though. Can't quite teach that skill, I'm afraid. ;)
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by VelothiConservative »

Avron the S'wit

Well, skyrim certainly did a much better job than oblivion in that regard. Very enjoyable actually, much culture and such. But there could always be more. My criticism is mostly of oblivion which I feel failed quite hard in some areas.

I guess that I was dissapointed how oblivion moved away from the racism that I felt gave immersion, away from roman style imperials to knightish, didn't bring many of the unique tamrielic animals they've made for their fantasy universe over to cyrodiil. The ones that could reasonably be expected to fit into that climate of course, but they only brought dreught, slaughterfish and mudcrabs iirc. Not even along the borders of morrowind does one see any of these things.

There was simply more cultural things in morrowind, the liqour, the armor, the plants, and animals.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Eltee »

Then again, I did quite like how Cyrodiil was very much the opposite of Morrowind, racism wise... It felt very much the cosmopolitan heart of a diverse empire. And it certainly made fringe elements of racism like in Leyawiin seem so much more crass and backwater.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Lynx »

VelothiConservative wrote: Crime: You should get mugged, assaulted, and theived from. as in AC, random thug attacks in the cities would be cool. Pickpockets hiding in the crowd also.
This is a painfully bad idea. "Yay, finally I got Umbra after defeating thousands of enemies!", 5 minutes later it gets stolen from you.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by VelothiConservative »

Eltee:

contrasts, indeed. But.. morrowind had more of that, both in terms of nature (obviously) and he attitude of the people. and architecture.

lynx:

well, yeah that would suck undescribably hard. But then, in AC they can only take money afaik. same can be true here. or if it's so hard to implement in a good way atleast let there be thugs that attack you in dark and lonely streets.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Unionhack »

I still don't see the whole fixation of Assassin's Creed here. And I think the cities are fine in each game; after all, it's nice to have cities full of named people. In AC there's plenty of 'Peasant #4592' and 'Nobleman #31', but in games like Skyrim and Oblivion, it's quality over quantity. Ysolda is a character in herself, for example. Not just some random trader chick. I think I prefer smaller, more detailed places over cities that you have to traverse across rooftops for a couple of minutes just to get to a certain shop.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by VelothiConservative »

Unionhack:

There is no fixation with AC, I just took a few examples of things in their games that I think can be used in TES.

Again, I don't want all that AC has into TES. I don't want only generic people. There's nothing stopping us from having both Ysolda, the character with a deep and intresting character, and more people to make the city feel like, an actual city and not a village. Besides, there's not even only generic people in AC, most characters even have a deeper personality etc there than they do in skyrim, so I don't know where you get that from.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Unionhack »

The point of the matter is that cities in TES are chock-full of actual differing NPCs whereas you have a handful in AC during important parts of the story.

Let's not forget that the technological differences between the two universes are huge. It's much more practical to build cities like that in Skyrim and Oblivion because some engineering techniques discovered in Renaissance Italy do not exist in Nirn.

Also, the cities that are in Oblivion particularly are of very adequate size. Imperial City is pretty sizeable. I don't think we need bigger cities in these games. Less space for the fun stuff like going out and fighting monsters in the wilderness and in their lairs.

You're also a PC gamer, so if these things really bother you, there are always increased population mods and the like.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by VelothiConservative »

unionhack:

there's indeed more people, with character, in TES than in AC. But there can easily be both no? just keep all these important people, and add lots of random pedestrians to give the illusion of more people.

indeed, but I'd say that the imperial city for example is more than what they could build in the renaissance, I don't think TES pays much attention to keeping it realistic in that regard. Nor do they have to, not many people care anyways. Still, even if we say that nirn would be more on a antiquity of medieval technological level there was still big cities back then, there had been since the sumerians and egyptians.

Yes, the imperial city is very big actually, but there's not enough people to populate it. I mean, it's the capital so of course there should be a market disctrict, an arena, aboreum (?), and lots of other fancy stuff that fits a capitol. Rome had that too. the difference being that rome had an 'fancy buildings vs. residences' ratio of 1:50 or something, imp city got 5:1. id est, way too many fancy buildings per residencial place and people. I know adding in lots of housing is tiresome, and it's not really needed; a 1:1 or even 2:3 ratio would suffice. I hope you understand what I mean.
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Mattbott »

i think there were around 700 NPCs in Oblivion (the whole vanilla game land, someone can correct me i am sure if this is wrong) which was i'd imagine the limit of the technology limited by the sophistication of the npcs in the game. I think TES always goes for the more detail deliberately and that Beth wouldn't want to go the AC route of filler crowds for this reason.. the central philosophy is do what you want.. if you want to stalk a random merchant for 3 days, then they will have a home, family and daily routine. They might even walk to the next town and get attacked by wolves

so perhaps a future solution is to populate the world with generic NPCs (like AC) but who can become more sophisticated if the hero interacts with them. If you dont talk to someone for a while, then they fade back. This would be a huge task but might be the only way to get the best of both worlds worlds
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Avron the S'wit »

VelothiConservative wrote:Eltee:

contrasts, indeed. But.. morrowind had more of that, both in terms of nature (obviously) and he attitude of the people. and architecture.
Yes, but just because Cyrodiil looks "normal" to you, you can't say it doesn't have the same amount of culture. That's a bit ethnocentric and biased, like saying Asians have more culture than Americans because they have "weirder" stuff. (And no, I'm not here to spark a debate about it...you just made my inner cultural anthropologist cry a bit.)

It is interesting that the very exotic to us screams "Culture!" whereas things that seem more familiar seem so boring. Sort of neat to see how people perceive culture to be, from a purely academic standpoint. :P
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by ToxicCosmos »

Avron the S'wit wrote: It is interesting that the very exotic to us screams "Culture!" whereas things that seem more familiar seem so boring. Sort of neat to see how people perceive culture to be, from a purely academic standpoint. :P
I think it feels that way for some people because this is a fantasy game, so we feel like there should be something distinctly unique in the way it looks. "Exotic" is supposed to be different from what you're used to and that's what people expect. But yea, people do mistake exotic for culture, as you said.


I think the reason Oblivion/Skyrim were disappointing for some people, vaguely for me, is because it felt too familiar. I understand that what's in Oblivion is supposed to be the Imperial culture and I get that; but I do feel like there was room to add more things, particularly creatures and perhaps a few areas, that would seem more "exotic" and hence in people's eyes more fantasy-like and yet still be able to fit in with the culture. *shrug* I think that's what I loved most about the Shivering Isles expansion. It felt a lot more exotic, both sides of the island, and yet still had much Imperial-like architecture. It was an interesting blend that I think could have been used in Cyrodiil somewhat. *shrug*

I think the biggest problem is we've had two such games in a row. They're not the same culture, but they're so close to things we're already familiar with that it's easy to see how on some level that would be disappointing. Especially for people who started off with Morrowind. Don't get me wrong, I loved both Oblivion and Skyrim and thought they made great steps forward as far as games are concerned, but I definitely long for a more exotic fantasy experience. Hopefully with the next game, eh? :]
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Mattbott »

ToxicCosmos wrote:
Avron the S'wit wrote: It is interesting that the very exotic to us screams "Culture!" whereas things that seem more familiar seem so boring. Sort of neat to see how people perceive culture to be, from a purely academic standpoint. :P
I think it feels that way for some people because this is a fantasy game, so we feel like there should be something distinctly unique in the way it looks. "Exotic" is supposed to be different from what you're used to and that's what people expect. But yea, people do mistake exotic for culture, as you said.

I think the biggest problem is we've had two such games in a row. They're not the same culture, but they're so close to things we're already familiar with that it's easy to see how on some level that would be disappointing. Especially for people who started off with Morrowind. Don't get me wrong, I loved both Oblivion and Skyrim and thought they made great steps forward as far as games are concerned, but I definitely long for a more exotic fantasy experience. Hopefully with the next game, eh? :]

yeah, i agree - the fantasy isnt fantastical enough lol - i suppose i expect more high fantasy from my TES, and two games in a row seems to be setting a precedent.

In Skyrim the giant/mammoth relationship is excellent, its exactly the sort of off-centre fantasy i am looking for and tbh a couple more little touches like that would have made it that much stranger - could have been as simple as replacing horses with giant ride-able goats or something

Oblivion was about right for me - the normalness of cyrodiil was a contrast to bonkers SI and hellish oblivion so there was a good reason to see meadows full of flowers and picturesque castles out of skiing holidays..

So I am hoping the strangeness of Morrowind wasn't a "one-off" ie ash mutations (aloe vera becomes scathecraw with contamination from red mountain, etc) making things weird

@Avron - yes! we want made up culture, not boring generic real life stuff : :D lol:

one danger with lore in general is that if you fill in too many gaps, imagination has no where to explore - the biggest disappointment is when a book/movie/game turns out not to be as good as what you imagined, and imagination is the currency of these games

edit: but having said all that, we still have dlc to come, so this all might be a bit premature - SI didnt arrive for a while after all and that balanced TES4 very nicely
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Avron the S'wit »

I can understand that feeling. To each their own! :D

On the plus side, as we've already explored High Rock, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim, it seems the only places left to go are rather fantastical indeed!
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Re: My vision for the Elder Scrolls

Post by Mattbott »

Avron the S'wit wrote:I can understand that feeling. To each their own! :D

On the plus side, as we've already explored High Rock, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim, it seems the only places left to go are rather fantastical indeed!

yes indeed

the beast lands should be eye openers :wink:

if argonians can all waterbreathe, do they have underwater cities..? they'd have to allow underwater combat for that game
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