Poll: Anyone else hate the Skyrim animal races?

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Double A

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New Frontiersman said:
Strain42 said:
I like the Lizard dudes I'm probably going to play as one. Not necessarily because I like them, but because if my character is supposed to be Dragonborn I want to make my character at least look like there's some relation lol
That's actually one of the reasons I picked an Argonian as my first character in Skyrim, I thought it fit.

On topic though, I like them. It's a fantasy game, it doesn't have to make evolutionary sense why there are cat and lizard people around nor does it have to make sense why there are pointy eared people around.
Aaaaactually, the dragon blood means you're related to Alessia, also known as the chick who founded the first Empire by rebelling against Umaril the Unfettered and the Ayleids. Among her army was Pelinal Whitestrake, the demi-god/avatar/thing who killed Umaril the first time and had the sweet crusader gear from the Oblivion DLC. Anyway, she then founded the religion of the 8 Divines and allegedly was granted some of Akatosh's blood. Her descendants carry on the blood of Akatosh, which so happens to include notable individuals such as Talos, Martin Septim, and you.

So what this amounts to is that you're part time dragon god, are probably eligible for the throne of the Empire, and you don't have to feel bad about killing dragons as an Argonian because they aren't really your relatives.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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Admittedly, I find it hard to believe that the Dragonborn is a...cat, or a lizard, but I think the animal races are good to have, because it's more choice, it fits with the world of Skyrim, and Argonians are awesome. What I hate is Khajiit with beards, I mean they either have beards or fur, make your f***ing mind up Bethesda. Also, if they didn't have Khajiits and Argonians then god forbid...they might have to use a relatable race as slaves and skooma dealers. I mean, the dark elves were sort of mistreated, but the real 'scum' of society in Skyrim's heirarchy are cats and lizards, and Bethesda did this so they wouldn't have to have a human race in their place.
 

triggrhappy94

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Argonian is the only race I'll play as. The only thing I didn't like about them in Skyrim is how they got rid of the hissing accent.
If you don't like them, then you probably didn't play Oblivion, where they were the best race.
Bonuses to sneak, lockpicking, blade, and some magic. Along with disease and poison amunity and water breath.
And subtractions to speechcraft and barter, because everyone was racist, it didn't though those skills didn't do anything in that game.
 

ZeroMachine

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Oct 11, 2008
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Pff, racist.

Nah, I kid. But for the record, there IS no evolutionary reason for ANY of them to exist. Every race was created by some god.

Guess one of the Eight was a furry. :p
 

Buccura

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I agree man, I hate those "Anthropomorphic" animal things or, whatever people like to call them. Animals that walk and talk? I am at a loss at trying to think of the last time I've heard such an asinine concept. And why do the cats have hair? That makes no sense! It defies the laws of science that Elder Scrolls has spent 5 games (and two spin offs) establishing!
 

Tiger Sora

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They were made from the gods of the game. They were reshaped from humans and elves. So there ya go.

I like the Kahjiit, those lizards.... not so much.
 

Carrots_macduff

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it has probably already been said 10 times by this point but incase you didnt notice every single race has the exact same body shape for each gender depending on where you put the slider
and from this you might gather that if they wanted to make all the races have unique bodies and methods of movement i.e. inverted hind legs that would be alot of work
 

The_Echo

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Lilani said:
I like the beast races. I only ever play as an Argonian.

From a lore standpoint, the human, elven and beastman races came from the Ehlnofey, whose actual design I cannot find a description of. It could be assumed that they were, in some way, anthropomorphic. The Ehlnofey and the Hist are cited as being the only survivors of the "twelve worlds of Creation," suggesting this isn't a full evolutionary path we'd be following.

They haven't been implemented into the games yet, but the Sload race of Thras--while still anthropomorphic--are distinctly different. The Akaviri races are also beastlike, and I think they might be less anthropomorphic, though I haven't seen much concept art or concrete physical description. The dragons are an Akaviri race, though, so that should give you a good idea.
 

BehattedWanderer

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Jun 24, 2009
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First of all, screw you, you speciest hominidophile. Second, a bipedal form capable of clasping motions with the hands and feet would be one of the most useful forms that can be taken, evolutionarily speaking, and therefore it's easily acceptable that both cats and raptors could have gotten there. Furthermore, the humans and elves came to Tamriel after both the Argonians and Khajit were there, which makes them the weird ones. Yet more, there are plenty of differences; you need only look at the cultures of the various peoples to see how they have grown and adapted to their environments. Take the Hist, for example, or the Argonian predisposition to being less susceptible to disease, having survived the impossibly harsh Black Marsh.

But, that's not your argument (mostly). You are annoyed by a few things that basically come down to this: Short of creating entirely different physics for each race in what is already an enormous mountain of a game, and short of literally retconning their past few games in terms of race dynamics, making their movements and animations the same was the only choice. In doing so, they don't have to remap the collision lines for the armors, they don't have to recheck the interactivity between the map itself and the character models, they don't have to have redesign the movements of two races as they interact with items and people in the environment, and they can continue making the game as large as it was.

But, your other issue comes to this: We are humans. Our Gods have been human, or, at their most different, humans with animal heads. We're extremely bad at coming up with believable creatures that don't act like us, look reasonably like us, and resemble us, because if they stop being close to us, then we cease to believe they're anything as grand as us, or have anything to do with us, short of feeding us, or eating us.

I will, however, give you that Argonian females should not have breasts. That's just terrible design. Which, again, comes back to that whole "human" thing, and how because our females have breasts, we expect all females to have breasts.

Besides, it's fucking awesome not to have my choices limited to "variant of human/elf/dwarf" in a classic fantasy game. If they threw in an avian race alongside the other two, I'd pop my lid.
 

New Frontiersman

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Double A said:
New Frontiersman said:
Strain42 said:
I like the Lizard dudes I'm probably going to play as one. Not necessarily because I like them, but because if my character is supposed to be Dragonborn I want to make my character at least look like there's some relation lol
That's actually one of the reasons I picked an Argonian as my first character in Skyrim, I thought it fit.

On topic though, I like them. It's a fantasy game, it doesn't have to make evolutionary sense why there are cat and lizard people around nor does it have to make sense why there are pointy eared people around.
Aaaaactually, the dragon blood means you're related to Alessia, also known as the chick who founded the first Empire by rebelling against Umaril the Unfettered and the Ayleids. Among her army was Pelinal Whitestrake, the demi-god/avatar/thing who killed Umaril the first time and had the sweet crusader gear from the Oblivion DLC. Anyway, she then founded the religion of the 8 Divines and allegedly was granted some of Akatosh's blood. Her descendants carry on the blood of Akatosh, which so happens to include notable individuals such as Talos, Martin Septim, and you.

So what this amounts to is that you're part time dragon god, are probably eligible for the throne of the Empire, and you don't have to feel bad about killing dragons as an Argonian because they aren't really your relatives.
Yeah, I already knew all that actually. I picked an Argonian at first because it looked sort of like a dragon (moreso than the other races at least). Not because I thought they were actually related.
 

Evill_Bob

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Argonians freak me the hell out, especially the female ones, in Skyrim. Every time I rented a room in Riften I couldn?t help but notice how her shoulders are shiney? and looking them in the face is little better, especially when you swear you can hear them hissing? Now that we got that out of the way? I play Khajiit usually and enjoy it. Morrowind probably made me love the beast races simply because of the challenge involved in playing them. Not only could you not wear boots or wear a full faced helmet but socially everyone already had it out for you. Pretty much crawling from literally the bottom of the pile all the way to becoming a god certainly was satisfying. Now in Oblivion I couldn?t care less about ANY of the races. Everything was so tolerant, bland, and lumpy.

Now Skyrim kinda gives the Morrowind feeling again except it?s barely noticeable. Granted after a bit of dialog nobody blinks twice at the High Elf Mage fighting alongside the Stormcloaks raising the corpses of Imperial and Rebel alike in battle to serve as his zombie horde or the Khajiit in heavy Dwemer armor slogging through hordes of enemies with a ancient artifact of the Nordic people with a vicious dislike of Thalmor and sneaking and a hard on for the Empire. The beast races play as big of part in setting the wonderfully strange world of the Elder Scrolls as any of the Mer and Man races. If you don?t like that then the Elder Scrolls are not for you, especially when the Morrowind DLC hits and we all run into the bizarre land of the Dunmer. Shit?s gonna get weird again.
 

WolfThomas

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Dec 21, 2007
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Magic that's why. The Khajit are actually Mer, whose biology is influenced by the moons to make them more feline, in some era Khajit have just been Elves with cat ears. The Argonian's origins are relatively unknown, while they look like Lizards, they're possibly more like some amphibious proto-humans mutated by the hist sap.
 

Furioso

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...It's a fantasy game? I mean I can understand someone thinking they should be crazier and more primal, but at the end of the day, who really cares, it's just a game... one where I can RP as a Raptor from Jurassic Park!
 

Darh Abdomino

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I find it amusing and informative that the Escapist Community consistently shows that it is usually more apathetic than negative.
 

Chased

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Darh Abdomino said:
I find it amusing and informative that the Escapist Community consistently shows that it is usually more apathetic than negative.
It is a bit strange about how the majority of Escapists are indifferent about things. Meh, I don't really mind.
 

Denamic

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Buccura said:
I agree man, I hate those "Anthropomorphic" animal things or, whatever people like to call them. Animals that walk and talk? I am at a loss at trying to think of the last time I've heard such an asinine concept.
Humans are animals too.
And why do the cats have hair? That makes no sense! It defies the laws of science that Elder Scrolls has spent 5 games (and two spin offs) establishing!
Why do you have hair all over your body?