No bathrooms in Skyrim (or: the treatment of bathrooms in games?)

[Averant]

Yeah everyone, "not being invented" is a good... idea, I mean. But still, in the real world and real world history (us as humans on planet Earth) we didn't have magic. But, the races in TES (at least!) all have magic. So a mage can conjure a fireball, or raise a zombie, or magically heal, but can't, like, create a plumbing system?

[sub]Because magic and plumbing aren't related. I don't think being a mage automatically makes you an architect either.[/sub]
Its because Mages don't give a shit.

Both, I think. Not to mention nobody in Skyrim wants anything to do with magic. The mages are holed up in the College for a reason, ya know.

Also, doesn't plumbing require, like, continuous water and energy to make it work? I don't think any mage wants to be the guy sitting outside of a bathroom all day waiting for people to come out so he can flush it. "Beneath" their dignity would be an understatement. More like set in concrete and dropped into the Mariana Trench.

 

[Zack1501]

I found a bathroom in a bandit cave. It was one grotto up north with a captain Hagar 'excuse me if I misspell' in there somewhere. Well off in a corner was a bunch of wood planks for floor but in center of circular area there were no wood plants just a bucket. There is your bathroom a glorified bucket.

I was about to say that. I found that too. It was very obviously a bathroom.

Can someone tell me where exactly is this located? Got me intrigued...

The one i saw was in a gold mine near the first town you go to(riverwood). I think it was on the southern part of a neer by lake.

 

[thiosk]

Just pray bethesda doesn't implement smell-o-vision.

 

[Psychedelic Spartan]

Well, I don't think I'll need that bathroom, I'm an Argonian and as far as I'm concerned, lizards can crap wherever.

 

[Zack1501]

I found a bathroom in a bandit cave. It was one grotto up north with a captain Hagar 'excuse me if I misspell' in there somewhere. Well off in a corner was a bunch of wood planks for floor but in center of circular area there were no wood plants just a bucket. There is your bathroom a glorified bucket.

I was about to say that. I found that too. It was very obviously a bathroom.

Can someone tell me where exactly is this located? Got me intrigued...

I think it was this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHiSbU6z2Gg . The bathroom is neer the end in a corner.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I do recall running into several obvious bathrooms albeit just a bucket in a corner. I honestly ever really get bothered by the lack of bathrooms in video games. In a way, it makes sense. That is why all the characters look so stiff and awkward, none of them have been able to go to the bathroom for years.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Hmm... I was actually trying to think of the number of games that have toilets, and I came to the conclusion that frequently, like in films, it's plot-driven.

There are exceptions, but it's often forgotten.

It actually reminds me of IMVU, which is a rather awful 3d chat program...

Anyway, there is a lot of content, and frequently quite elaborate buildings...

But after a while I started noticing a distinct lack of bathrooms.

Now, it's an online chat program, so really, there's no practical need for a bathroom, yet frequently you'd find a building with a lounge, TV (which doesn't work), kitchen, and so on...
Basically all the elements you'd expect to find in real-world locations...

EXCEPT bathrooms.

And even if there was a bathroom, it would rarely contain a toilet. Showers? Sometimes. Baths? Quite often. But toilets? Almost never.

Quite odd.

(Now granted a lot of the time the architecture had more obvious flaws, like a multi-floor building with no stairs or elevators... Or multiple rooms without any doors between them. - Not suprising in a program where you can't actually walk around.)

But still... No toilets? Weird.

As for Skyrim... Yeah, magic or not, I suspect they looked to medieval designs for inspiration.
They didn't think of what magic would imply for an invention like a toilet.

Though you have to wonder what actually led to indoor plumbing and toilets becoming commonplace in the real world before you can realistically give much thought to how likely it is to develop in a fictional setting. With, or without the aid of magic.

Honestly, I was actually very surprised to run into a toilet in the Legend of Zelda... And here too it shows the half-thought out design, because there is a toilet, but only one.
None of the houses people supposedly live in have a toilet or anything even remotely like one...

Yeah, it gets very confusing trying to understand fictional worlds in games.
But the ones set in modern times that forget about this detail are perhaps the strangest.

I guess at the end of the day it's one of those things... The toilet was invented because of a basic human need.
But in games this need doesn't exist. Neither as an inherent need, nor, in most cases, as one based in any of the game mechanics. (The sims being about the only game I can think of where there's a gameplay reason for there to be toilets.)

That means a careless game designer can easily forget about details of that kind. Or... A set of level designers can do really confusing things because one person considered such details while another did not...

Bleh. The many perils of creating a world completely detached from any of the constraints we expect to find in reality. XD

 

[NerfedFalcon]

If you really must have toilets in your games, look no further than No More Heroes: they serve as save stations. Every time you take a leak, you save the game - whether it's a child's potty, unzipping behind a bush or taking a dump into the most luxurious lavatory imaginable...

That's what I've heard, anyway.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

I poop in the forest. I seriously have role-played taking a poop in the forest. Also, any river is basically my urinal, ...until I took an arrow in the knee.

 

[Trig0n]

Like everyone has already said, you crap in a bucket.

Unfortunately there is no bucket in my house so I just use Lydia's room. She's never in there anyways. She just sits in my room, staring at my bed...

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

We're not even sure the races in TES urinate. It's not Earth and it's not "medieval times".

Also what would my character excrete? I don't need to eat or drink anything in the game.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

There are bathrooms in Skyrim. One of them even has a potion of trueshot in it, which is fairly hilarious.

But yes, there are fewer than there could be. This is a fairly rustic setting. I think it's reasonable to assume most of these people are just pooping outdoors.

 

[not_you]

The only game I can think of that openly had bathrooms in was Duke Nukem...

And let's face it, they were hardly what we call civil.....

 

[Bobbity]

Look for buckets. Yeah, gross.

Especially in the house in Whiterun, when Lydia's sitting in that spot where she can see everything...

 

[skittlepie345]

Okay, so I know it's silly, but after... well, many hours playing of Skyrim today, I took a break and went to the bathroom, and this thought came to me - why are there no bathrooms in the houses of Skyrim?? Mind you this is not only the houses... There are also no bathrooms in inns, forts, castles, palaces, shops... Nowhere really. Caves?

So what's the deal with this? Now when I remember there are also no bathrooms in Dragon Age too. No bathrooms in ANY medieval/fantasy game I've played so far, not even Fable! The last bathroom I remember in an RPG game was the one in Shepard's captain quarters aboard the Normandy 2... If I'm not mistaken. Also, now I remembered more, there were bathrooms in Deus Ex: HR, Dead Space 2, Duken Nukem Forever, Crysis 1 & 2... In all entirety I'm not serious, but this really gave me an itch!

So riddle me this fellow gamers, what's the thing with bathrooms and RPGs? :/ Don't the people of Skyrim have bodily needs they need to take care of, or personal hygiene to keep up? Why not steal some soaps for example, or sell soaps, or produce soap, or steal towels, perhaps toilet paper and so on (so many rolls of paper and woodcutting industry in Skyrim)? I haven't seen a single faucet in the game (Skyrim), let alone a toilet seat... I'm curious as to what the toilet seats in Skyrim look like, and what are the differences between them, for example: Nord, Dwarven, Elven, Orcish toilet seats? And I can guess about dragons not needing a device to poop in, but where do giants go for... their large ones, right? Or Hagravens? :/ I also found a Spriggan Sap ingredient in game... I wonder how this "sap" was obtained... Any ideas?

The medieval tech at the time were just buckets. No toilets or showers. You wanted to crap, you shat in a bucket and tossed it out the window. From what I hear sometimes it would land in the street, and hope rain would wash it away. However, the Imperial CIty has a sewer system, but no actual "toilet" (forgot the name of the ones forts used, its a french word meaning "to forget") to speak of.

The french word for forget is "perdre" if that helps at all.

Actually, I think it might be 'oubliettes'. It's essentially the word for dungeon, derived from the verb 'oublier' which means 'to forget.'

 

[Hatchet90]

Let's just say I now regret putting buckets on the heads of many unsuspecting NPC's.

 

[thatcanadianguy]

The medieval tech at the time were just buckets. No toilets or showers. You wanted to crap, you shat in a bucket and tossed it out the window. From what I hear sometimes it would land in the street, and hope rain would wash it away. However, the Imperial CIty has a sewer system, but no actual "toilet" (forgot the name of the ones forts used, its a french word meaning "to forget") to speak of.

i do beleive the chamber to which you are referring, is called an "oubliette" and it wasnt a toilet. it was more a chamber in ones dungeon or kingdom where people who had to dissappear, but could not be assassinated or publically imprisoned were sent. once you went in an oubliette. you basically ceased to exist.

 

[trooper6]

Like everyone else says...sit down toilets are from the mid 19th Century...that is sort of late.

Heck, when I was a kid, I lived in a small town in the mountains in California, and we didn't have a toilet...we had an outhouse. There was also no shower or bathtub with attached plumbing.

I think it was the videogame Deathspank that had outhouses, and Dragon Age 2, there was a chamber pot or discussion of a chamber pot in your fancy house in Kirkwall.

There are lots of places today where people don't use western style sit down toilets.

So...yeah....history!

 

[DuX1112]

Well okay, I wasn't only referring to the lack of "toilet seats", but to the bathroom as a room with specific purpose in one's home. For all I know there's a lack of these in fantasy-set games. Although I don't see why. I can think of a few quests making use of bathrooms... Say, a drug-dealing Khajiit would meet up with customers in the bathroom area of a market district, just saying.