Elder Scrolls Lore Bad?

[DoPo]

Unless there is somebody who changes the entire nature of vampirism (which could be a Daedra), then expecting all vampires to be affected the same is rather unreasonable.

All vamprisim comes from a daedra, Molag Bal specifically.

He created it to give Arkay the finger, by breaking the cycle of life and death by creating undeath.

But all of it comes from Bal, he just apparently liked to create lots of different kinds of vamprisism, just like Hircine created many variations of lycanthropy, ranging from werebears, to werecrocodiles, to werevultures, to the standard werewolf.

Right, so it does make sense. I remember a book which did attribute vampirism to Molag Bal (I think it was Tribunal-related), but I couldn't remember if it was truth in-universe, or just in-universe fiction of some sort.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Right, so it does make sense. I remember a book which did attribute vampirism to Molag Bal (I think it was Tribunal-related), but I couldn't remember if it was truth in-universe, or just in-universe fiction of some sort.

NA, its the truth.

They even mention it in the Dawnguard DLC for Skyrim. Harkon offered up thousands of souls, and Molag Bal raped him, his wife, and his daughter, to make them into pure vampires, which started the Volkihar strain of Vamprisim.

The original vampire was just some nedic woman Bal decided to rape one day for no real reason, many ages before Harkon and his family got vamprisim.

 

[DoPo]

They even mention it in the Dawnguard DLC for Skyrim.

Ah, thanks for that. I've not played that yet - I wasn't sure if it, well, "explained" vampires, so to say. I imagined it would do, given it's devoted to them, but it could have just as well made no claims.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Ah, thanks for that. I've not played that yet - I wasn't sure if it, well, "explained" vampires, so to say. I imagined it would do, given it's devoted to them, but it could have just as well made no claims.

It doesn't go into a lot of detail, Serana just mentions the ritual was "degrading", and the player is left to make the connection between what she said, and what books say about the origin of vampires, to figure out what happened.

 

[R Man]

It most certainly is not semantics. "Based on" and "derived from" are two very different things when you're talking about the inspiration at work behind storytelling.

Perhaps, but that is not the impression I got from you text was that you were conflating the two. For example you said:

I wouldn't call it "bad," but like most Western fantasy it is derivative. 

Which sounds like you are suggesting a much more 'direct' link.

It's just building on the momentum that Tolkien started with his work, occasionally going back to the Norse and Germanic myths that inspired Tolkien; again, most western fantasy does this.

And this, which seems to attribute more to Tolkien's influence than what I believe to be the case.

There is a large contingent of people who prefer sci-fi because it's more original, and another group of fantasy fans who are tired of the Tolkien-esque worlds of elves, humans, dwarves and ancient magic and want to see western fantasy branch out more.

Which I think implies that The Elder Scrolls series features these, which is not an accurate description. Now, maybe I misread you, and you meant something different. But you can see how I came to the conclusions that I did.

Look, if Tolkien hadn't done what he did, Elder Scrolls, as it stands today, would not exist. I'm repeating myself, but here's how it works. Tolkien's work pioneered so much of what we consider "normal" about western fantasy.

No one can know for sure. In any case, I'm not denying that Tolkien was hugely influential on the genre of Fantasy, including The Elder Scrolls. What I am objecting to is that you have, or appear to have, ignored the influence of other authors, as well as the creativity of the writers themselves. For example:

Fantasy stories set in a world resembling Middle-Age Europe? Tolkien did it first.

I'll give you Oblivion on this one, but do you seriously think that Morrowind resembles Midde-Age Europe? With its quasi-Middle Eastern/Assyrian style setting and aesthetics? Think of the names of some of the mines in Morrowind. They have Assyrian names. Medieval?

Dwarves? They were originally featured in Norse mythology, and Tolkien's dwarves are a bit different than their Norse myth counterparts, but when you think of "dwarves in a work of fantasy fiction" as short, strong, crafting creatures who live in mountain strongholds? Tolkien did it first.

Ignoring all the ways the Dwemer are different from Tolkien's dwarves. Sure they live underground, they are great craftsmen, and wear beards, but there the similarities basically end. Dwemer are actually elves, something The Elder Scrolls makes clear. They are tall, thin, and well made in their dress. They don't look Dwarven, they look Babylonian. Their sciences are played very differently. Sure Dwarves are master craftsmen, but the Dwemer are scientific and philosophical in a way other Dwarves are not. I could see these guys working on the Apollo Program. Not to mention their high use of magi-tech, which is again different to other Dwarves. Basically the Dwemer are further from Tolkien's Dwarves than Tolkien's Dwarves are from Norse mythological Dwarfs.

Elves? Before Tolkien, when you said "elf," people tended to think of Santa Claus' helpers, or the Keebler elves: small, more fairy-like creatures. The idea of Elves as tall, ethereal, enlightened beings? Tolkien did it first.

Actually he did not. Elves are, possibly (this is uncertain), derived from Celtic and Irish mythology. The 'Fair Folk'. They were capricious, malicious, and horribly deceptive. And they did not like people. Tolkien did change the elves to be fair, rather than evil. If anything, The Elder Scrolls returns closer to the Celtic Myth than to Tolkien, at least in some respects. The Bosmer, for example, eat the flesh of their slain enemies and have a pact with trees. Even the Khajit and Argonians can be though of as part of this. In other words think Changeling: The Lost.

Later generations, leading all the way up today, have added, subtracted, subverted this basic setup. They've gone very different directions in terms of tone, themes, history, politics. They've added in elements from other influences, such as Lovecraft and anime, but most Western fantasy settings still have the basic Middle-Earth skeleton underneath--this is a point of consensus that literary academics have strongly agreed upon for years--and Elder Scrolls is no exception.

I think you are underestimating Lovecraft's influence on gaming, especially for The Elder Scrolls. I would say that The Elder Scrolls owes as much to Lovecraft than to Tolkien. Why is Elder Scrolls mythos so convoluted? Because Lovecraft's mythos was confusing. Why is Hermaeus Mora so alien? Because its Yog-Sothoth. Why does Dagoth Ur communicate to followers through dreams? Because Cthulhu does. Why are monsters always coming up from the bowels of the Earth? Because in Lovecraft's fiction that is one of the main places where horrors lurk.

Of course, Lovecraft is just one influence of many, which is the point.

Those who are well-versed in the literature of the 20th recognize this influence; some of those people consider modern Western fantasy settings that have this recognizable Middle-Earth skeleton derivative (not "based on," because that is something quite different) of Tolkien's work and would consider the Elder Scrolls lore as "bad," or at the very least "lazy" or "unoriginal." This was the point of this thread and my original response: the OP pointed out that the ES series has its critics, and I was providing an explanation for many of those critics.

I've made my points, multiple times in fact. Your inclination to dismiss my points (points that a literary academic vanguard has my back on), and the method by which you last dismissed my points (disregarding the difference between a system of storytelling basis and a system of storytelling influence as "semantics") tells me that this conversation will go no where.

Can you quote any? Has anyone gone through and actually checked? And if they have, do they agree with you? From what you have written, it seems not. You appear to be guessing that they would find The Elder Scrolls lore as 'bad'. or 'lazy', or 'unoriginal'. Maybe you are not, in which case please tell me, as I would love to debate the issue.

Now, I want to reiterate again, that I understand that Tolkien has been an enormous influence on Fantasy, The Elder Scrolls included. However, it was not the only influence, and what The Elder Scrolls has ended up with looks very different from Tolkien's world. Are their similarities? Yes. There are things which are the same in both and The Elder Scrolls obviously derived them from Tolkien. But there are obvious differences as well. And I think you are downplaying those differences through language, and those differences cannot be ignored. The Elder Scrolls has done more than just build on Tolkien's work.

If you quote me again and prove me wrong (bring something new and constructive to the discourse), I may reply. If you just try to argue your side more, I will not reply.

I'll give you the courtesy if you do the same for me. Can you argue against my points?

 

[Elfgore]

Say what you want about Elder Scrolls lore, but you can't deny there is a lot of it. Said quality of lore though, kinda depends on who you're talking to. I enjoy Elder Scrolls lore. I've read quite a bit of it, mostly on the factions, races, and lands. I've enjoyed every bit of it.

But... that doesn't mean the lore isn't confusing as hell. I've tried to read and understand the history of The Elder Scrolls... and it is just confusing and needlessly complicated. Which I do consider to be a downside.

 

[beastro]

TES has some great lore, it's just a shame that so much of it's stuck in the books you read and that they find it hard to translate into the games plot lately. Morrowinds and Darkfalls was neat, it's gotten more generic as it's gone on since with Oblivion and Skyrim.

My one problem with the lore has always been the Empire and it's various iterations, but that comes from usual problem of "unrealistic" cultural and nationality evolution in games and it's not the worst of the lot. The worst being Final Fantasy and other JRPGs and their worlds being devoid of things outside of the places you travel through.

 

[lacktheknack]

It's not great.

Need I bring up the Warp in the West, literally the worst possible way of establishing inter-game canon?

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I wouldn't say it's bad. It has some interesting ideas, but I would like to see some different settings. Seriously, you have a race of cat-people living in a desert, a group of lizard-people living in a swamp, and all manner of other cultures, and you give us a generic medieval setting followed by Nordic mythology. The Nordic stuff was actually kind of neat, but it wasn't original enough to make up for the blandness of Oblivion.
There seems to be entirely too much focus on white humans and pseudo medieval European cultures. Fuck that. I've had enough of games set in pseudo medieval European cultures. I just opened Steam and the very first thing I saw was generic medieval setting where one group of white humans storms a castle held by another group of white humans. Gives us a game dealing with either the Argonians or Khajiit, or at very least, one of the elves.
Why do they insist on ignoring the most interesting races and locations?

 

[SajuukKhar]

Why do they insist on ignoring the most interesting races and locations?

Because
A. Furies don't make up a large enough portion of the populace to justify the cost of such a game to begin with, period.
B. The Khajiit and Argonians have so many different forms that they don't have the budget to make all of them, which is also why the other 16 forms of Khajiit have never been in a TES game ever.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I'm not in any way a fan of the lore in the games. If it doesn't relate directly to an Aedra or Daedra, or any of the quests in the actual game/living people I can talk to then I'm not going to care. I have read a few of the books, a very few, and maybe 4 interested me. I've gone on the wiki and learned a few things, but the vast majority of the lore to me is just vestigial. I might have mattered in the first 3 games, but now no longer matters.

Of course with ESO they just kinda pulled that plot out of their asses because they had a period where apparently it "could" have happened.

I've always been of the opinion that ES games were great, in spite of their lore. And that I wish there were other gamesthan that series to get good RPGs in that style.

 

[Pr0]

I've always viewed the TES games as lore ridiculous.

Establishment of a deep property based canon doesn't specifically mean the canon is good.

Most TES lore reads like bad D&D fan fiction if you really sit down and try to immerse yourself in it.

I mean its nice that we have books and written accounts that give us some level of basis for the history that predates our introduction to the world, but Bethesda has always just been like "sure lets throw ninjas in Tamriel...write a cultural lore that supports Tamrielic ninjas".

Lots of lore doesn't mean that a game has good lore, it just meant it has lots of lore. And while Daggerfall to Skyrim have all been pretty good as games go, Bethesda's world building efforts, as far as their narrative goes, is bush league forum fan fiction at best.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I wouldn't call it "bad," but like most Western fantasy it is derivative. It's just building on the momentum that Tolkien started with his work, occasionally going back to the Norse and Germanic myths that inspired Tolkien; again, most western fantasy does this.

To some derivative = bad. There is a large contingent of people who prefer sci-fi because it's more original, and another group of fantasy fans who are tired of the Tolkien-esque worlds of elves, humans, dwarves and ancient magic and want to see western fantasy branch out more.

To others, it's no big deal; these overarching tropes are accepted without issue.

So, like almost everything else, whether or not Elder Scrolls lore is good or bad depends who you ask.

To be honest, can anything really not be considered derivative in some manner? Its like people complaining about the Inheritance Cycle being derivative. I know it is, but I actually enjoy the way Paolini writes, and the story while yes its very much like a lot of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy stories/movies, still was great. The movie sucked, but that is a different story...
Anyway, derivative doesn't mean bad, just means its not necessarily original. I personally think that all stories are derivative of something anyway...

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Why do they insist on ignoring the most interesting races and locations?

Because having an entire game take place in a huge swamp or a huge desert would be boring.

True, but I still think there is plenty of variation you can give a swamp or a desert. Even so, there are plenty of other parts of Tamriel that I feel are significantly more interesting than Skyrim and Cyrodiil. Valenwood sounds kind of nice, since I love forests. Summerset Isles also seems interesting, and even Hammerfell has the decency to go for a sort of Arabic motif for their architecture. Honestly, I swear if the next TES game is set in High Rock I'm going to curl up into a ball and weep to myself.

High fantasy really needs to fuck off out of medieval Europe and begin running some other setting into the ground for a change.

They actually already did a sort of retcon like this, with regards to Skyrim.

Prior to the game "Skyrim" being released, the maps of Tamriel had the province of Skyrim completely covered in snow. The whole province was always shown as a cold snowy permafrost tundra.

But then...

Spoiler: this

became...

Spoiler: this

Parts of the province were made 'non-snowy' and more temperate. I'm guessing this was a design choice to make Skyrim's game world more interesting and varied, because otherwise it'd get a bit boring if it was all the same landscape and color palette.

Even in Oblivion, if you go as far north as you can go (up in the Jerall Mountains) and look north into Skyrim, on a clear day all you can see is a snowy landscape stretching all the way to your view distance limit.

I can only see this as a retcon. (Unless the province of Skyrim is completely covered in snow during the winter. But you can play "Skyrim" for an entire in-game year, and the season doesn't change, so I don't accept that as an excuse.)

Thankfully though, there's a mod which undoes this retcon.

I'm actually quite glad they did this. I think the seasonal excuse can justify it, since you can play all the other games all year round and they never change (Cyrodiil seems to be in an eternal spring).
Regardless, snowy environments are one of my least favourite places to visit, so if it is a retcon, I don't really mind.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

I wouldn't call it "bad," but like most Western fantasy it is derivative. It's just building on the momentum that Tolkien started with his work, occasionally going back to the Norse and Germanic myths that inspired Tolkien; again, most western fantasy does this.

To some derivative = bad. There is a large contingent of people who prefer sci-fi because it's more original, and another group of fantasy fans who are tired of the Tolkien-esque worlds of elves, humans, dwarves and ancient magic and want to see western fantasy branch out more.

To others, it's no big deal; these overarching tropes are accepted without issue.

So, like almost everything else, whether or not Elder Scrolls lore is good or bad depends who you ask.

To be honest, can anything really not be considered derivative in some manner? Its like people complaining about the Inheritance Cycle being derivative. I know it is, but I actually enjoy the way Paolini writes, and the story while yes its very much like a lot of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy stories/movies, still was great. The movie sucked, but that is a different story...
Anyway, derivative doesn't mean bad, just means its not necessarily original. I personally think that all stories are derivative of something anyway...

Yes. That's why I draw the line between "derivative" and "bad."

It is a common thing in genre fiction for one or two watershed works to establish trends and tropes that are used and recycled for years or even decades.

I personally have no problem with this, and most people who enjoy genre fiction don't either. However, to serious literary types and fiction snobs, derivative is usually seen as a bad thing.

 

[Oroboros]

Elder Scrolls has some great lore. My problem is that they keep 're-imagining' it, to use a polite term (or retcon if you are less generous). Lots of unnecessary changes for the sake of changes, etc.

I get the feeling that they kinda don't know what to do with all that fantastic lore they have.

I thought blowing up Morrowind was a godawful hamfisted storyline development. As someone who's favorite ES game was Morrowind, it *really* didn't make me happy to be told that essentially everything done in that game was pointless and all my efforts were for naught. I presume they did it so that if they ever revisited, they'd have an excuse for Morrowind being incredibly different. But seriously, I have had enough of settings I enjoy getting 'nuked' turned into post-apocalyptic settings because the writers can't think of more imaginative/less destructive things to do with them.

The whole 'dragons and dragonborn' thing seemed rather generic for a storyline for me. It felt like they came up with a concept for a game (based around the spectacle of fighting dragons) And then filled in the gaps later. It just didn't feel like it had a whole lot of substance or forethought to it.

And of course, Skyrim touches on one of my pet peeves in regards to storylines- making a 'canon' player character for the previous games. In this case, making the protagonists from Morrowind and Oblivion male. Completely unnecessary IMO-is it so hard to use gender neutral pronouns?

And of course lots of minor quibbles. 'Malachite' being glass ore- I guess copper doesn't exist in ES? (glass mines being native to Vvardenfell being another retcon, I suppose) Stuff like that.

I feel like Bethesda has lost their way with ES, and can't just let it *Be Elder Scrolls*, instead trying to make it things which other IPs would be better for.

 

[HeadClot88]

I personally think the Bethesda has "Lost their way" so to speak.

It Elder Scrolls Skyrim and Oblivion feels like every other generic fantasy game.

Just with better AI and Graphics.

I am personally enjoying daggerfall and morrowwind. For those of you who have not played Daggerfall do it.

A seriously underrated game for its time.