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The Elder Scrolls Lore Thread

The lore for TES is pretty fantastic. The manuals and guides for the games up to and including Morrowind were fantastic for lore. Afaik the guides for Oblivion and Skyrim were more typical strategy guide stuff. Might be wrong though.
 
Valhelm said:
I disagree. If we go to Summerset, the Thalmor will be the main antagonists. They were set up to be such horrible villains, but without any payoff.
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i'm sure they'd be there, and they'd be royal dicks as always, but probably after some kind of fall from power, a civil war, or whatever would put them in a different capacity to where they're not breathing down your neck the entire game.

alot of the major historical events in ES don't take place in the actual games, so either way i expect the state of the empire and the thalmor to be much different regardless of where the next game takes place
 
Subbed cause even though I'm a big Elder Scrolls fan, I admittedly do not know much about the lore besides the basic. Great thread.
 
Thank you for this thread.

Man, I crammed over 100 hours thus far in Skyrim, it's my first journey into the world of The Elder Scrolls and realized I barely know much of the lore at all still! There is just so much to take in and the game itself has a like a billion books you can lose yourself into with it's history and yet, that picture of the continents is just frightening. Skyrim is just but a small fraction of the world?

Great googly-moogly.

One thing though, on my current ongoing journey through Skyrim there is one thing that I find absolute; the Thalmor can kiss my ass! Kiss it long and hard.

Esch said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYrH_cb8zeY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJwpaVwOaHM


Your dreaaaaams come truuuuuuueeee

EDIT: also i hope the next TES is at least 300 or whatever years after.
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HOLY CRAP! THIS IS AMAZING!
 
Valhelm said:
That's awesome! I'd consider buying Skyrim on PC just for that and the Skyblivion mod. [
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Whoa, I had no idea Skyblivion was a thing. I knew about the Morrowind conversion, but not this :o I will spend hundreds of hours on both if they ever see the light of day.

Anyway, I used to love reading about the lore when I was really into Skyrim for a while. I'd love for the next TES game to be set in Elsweyr.
 
kenjisalk said:
That's the thing that is so frustrating and yet amazing about this franchise to me: there is so much detail to the world and so many amazingly original and complex stories to be had therein, but you get as much out of it as you put into finding it.

There's this Tolkien-level world of lore to explore yet most people run around like it's GTA randomly killing stuff and get all "snoooooze what a boring universe" about it.
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Whua ha ha ha, lol !!!!!!!!!!!

Good joke.
 
Edwardo said:
Could the Dwemer ever come back?
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supposedly they aren't dead, just nobody knows where they are

there was a dwemer in morrowind, so there could be another somewhere. though any more stray dwemers would probably be dead at this point
 
So can anyone tell me who King Wulfharth is? The lore for that character made me confused whether he was Talos, Pelinel or a separate character due to information from Skyrim. Also I was disappointed there was nothing said about Jyggalag in Skyrim, dude was awesome in Shivering Isles.
 
Great thread. The work they put into the lore is so amazing. All those in-game books and just little lines of dialogue that add to the living world are so interesting but get ignored by a lot of people.
 
I've put 200+ hrs into Oblivion and Skyrim and am pretty much lost when it comes to the lore. TES does a really bad job at furthering the lore through its plot and gameplay.

I've played Mass Effect, Ultima, Fallout, plenty of other RPGs, and I was able to get a pretty deep understanding of all the races, leaders, ambitions, territories, etc. just by playing normally.

TES is a freaking mess. There, I said it!

Sometimes I do pick up a random book and read it, and I think, "that seems interesting," but it's volume 7 and none of the other volumes are around, so what the hell am I supposed to do? Plus the game puts all its information at the very periphery, so it's hard to get to it without going out of your way. Which can make it rewarding, but it's handled better in other games where the lore comes out through quests and character interaction.
 
Great thread, subbed to it now. It actually made me want to load up my old save (fifty percent of the trophies too) on PS3. I know, I know, the PS3 version is terrible and almost unplayable but I want that platinum ;-;
 
Dr.Acula said:
Sometimes I do pick up a random book and read it, and I think, "that seems interesting," but it's volume 7 and none of the other volumes are around, so what the hell am I supposed to do?
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Carry the book with you, put it in the bookshelf in your house, collect all the volumes and read them in order later?
 
Slamtastic said:
Carry the book with you, put it in the bookshelf in your house, collect all the volumes and read them in order later?
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Since games having apps that compliment the game experience is now a thing - I do think one unique use for it with Elder Scrolls is an app that would let you read the books that you collect within the game world. That way you could do it when you can't actually play the game and where it would be a better time to do something like that for people who may be more interested in actually playing the game when they are on. Maybe even have it so the books don't appear on the app until they are in the book case or something.
 
Slamtastic said:
Carry the book with you, put it in the bookshelf in your house, collect all the volumes and read them in order later?
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That's what I'm complaining about. I liked how Mass Effect handled it, in that the more you learned the entries just kinda popped up in your journal in an order which made sense, so if you were confused by an event, you could get to the knowledge base quickly.

Also the lore was presented to you, rather than something you actively had to hunt out.

The lore in TES is relegated to the background far too much I feel. Like when I'm dealing with two races, I have no idea if the races hate or like each other or why. Or why people from two towns would beef or whatever. Or why is this person wearing that colour, or wielding that weapon, or afraid of that spell.
 
Slamtastic said:
The act of putting in effort to search it out and the books following real world logic are my favorite parts of TES lore.
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I think you can have it both ways, I think some of the more esoteric lore should be hard to find, but it's pretty amazing to me just how little I gleaned by playing casually. I don't mean they need to give the whole history through cut scenes, just that it would be nice to have more of it come out through dialog and missions that help flesh out the world.
 
i think the lore is sort of intended to be "background noise" that lends itself to the illusion you're in a living breathing world with its own analogue for our world's sciences and religion - which is turgid and incomprehensible on its own.

personally i think its fine and works into the gameplay perfectly. but i'm not a theologian or anything.
 
120v said:
i think the lore is sort of intended to be "background noise" that lends itself to the illusion you're in a living breathing world with its own analogue for our world's sciences and religion - which is turgid and incomprehensible on its own.

personally i think its fine and works into the gameplay perfectly. but i'm not a theologian or anything.
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yeah, i agree.


its nice enough how it is, even if the story that you actually play is sort of inconsequential, with some bigger events sprinkled through.
 
Slamtastic said:
The act of putting in effort to search it out and the books following real world logic are my favorite parts of TES lore.
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Yeah, and I really love it when you don't understand a text at first, but then read it, months later, and everything makes sense.
 
Dr.Acula said:
Sometimes I do pick up a random book and read it, and I think, "that seems interesting," but it's volume 7 and none of the other volumes are around, so what the hell am I supposed to do? Plus the game puts all its information at the very periphery, so it's hard to get to it without going out of your way. Which can make it rewarding, but it's handled better in other games where the lore comes out through quests and character interaction.
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I actually downloaded all the Skyrim books onto my Nook.

http://capane.us/dovahkiin-gutenberg
 
Dr.Acula said:
That's what I'm complaining about. I liked how Mass Effect handled it, in that the more you learned the entries just kinda popped up in your journal in an order which made sense, so if you were confused by an event, you could get to the knowledge base quickly.

Also the lore was presented to you, rather than something you actively had to hunt out.

The lore in TES is relegated to the background far too much I feel. Like when I'm dealing with two races, I have no idea if the races hate or like each other or why. Or why people from two towns would beef or whatever. Or why is this person wearing that colour, or wielding that weapon, or afraid of that spell.
Click to expand...

Being a roleplaying game, the lore of TES is presented to you at the same time as your character. You're not going to understand the first thing about, say, the Code of Malacath or how to forge Ebony armor until your avatar sits his ass down and pursues that knowledge. The delivery method of TES lore is ideal, in my opinion. The games would be too busy if they shoehorned every lore tidbit there was to know into the story.
 
Dr.Acula said:
That's what I'm complaining about. I liked how Mass Effect handled it, in that the more you learned the entries just kinda popped up in your journal in an order which made sense, so if you were confused by an event, you could get to the knowledge base quickly.

Also the lore was presented to you, rather than something you actively had to hunt out.

The lore in TES is relegated to the background far too much I feel. Like when I'm dealing with two races, I have no idea if the races hate or like each other or why. Or why people from two towns would beef or whatever. Or why is this person wearing that colour, or wielding that weapon, or afraid of that spell.
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As I said on the first page of this thread, would you understand the complex racial/social interactions of say, blacks and whites in america or palestinians and israelis if you didn't go to school or ever read a book? You might figure out that they might not get along so well, but the motivations and history behind it would all be hidden to you.
 
Valhelm said:
Is this actually the game Morrowind on the Skyrim engine, or just Skyrim gameplay in Morrowind?
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It's Morrowind content remade for Skyrim. The mod team didn't want to just port it, they wanted to recreate everything for scratch. As a result, it's nowhere near done, so be careful if you decide to download it.

Deified Data said:
Being a roleplaying game, the lore of TES is presented to you at the same time as your character. You're not going to understand the first thing about, say, the Code of Malacath or how to forge Ebony armor until your avatar sits his ass down and pursues that knowledge. The delivery method of TES lore is ideal, in my opinion. The games would be too busy if they shoehorned every lore tidbit there was to know into the story.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but the games do sometimes miss the boat. In Oblivion, the developers wanted there to be a lot more discernable differences in attitude and bearing between the people in Nibenay and the people in Colovia. They wanted to have some political strife going on between the two parties. It all sounded very interesting, especially when you throw a dead Emperor into the mix, but it ultimately got cut. Cyrodiil, lore-wise, is apparently rife with racial and territorial tensions (as befits a melting pot), but the devs just didn't feel like they could portray that right at the time.

That strife did end up making it into the lore, though: the original Titus Mede, for instance, was a Colovian warlord. When he took over as Emperor, the Nibenese part of Cyrodiil originally wasn't too thrilled about it.
 
Deified Data said:
Being a roleplaying game, the lore of TES is presented to you at the same time as your character. You're not going to understand the first thing about, say, the Code of Malacath or how to forge Ebony armor until your avatar sits his ass down and pursues that knowledge. The delivery method of TES lore is ideal, in my opinion. The games would be too busy if they shoehorned every lore tidbit there was to know into the story.
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Not only that, it is a lot more natural and realistic becuse the lore takes place over large amounts of time rather than all of the vital events ever worth reading about (literally) happening during the course of one game.
 
I seriously want VI to be set in the Summerset Isles. Just by looking at the concept art from the Online game you can tell that its the heart of high fantasy. Colorful, beautiful, spiritual and mystifying. Of course, there is the ugliness of the hearts of the Thalmor to be rooted out yet ( though I wouldn't mind being able to pick their side too ) and what better place to strike but the very streets of Alinor? I don't think a Thalmor conclusion can be made anywhere else. At least not satisfyingly.

http://images.uesp.net/4/4d/ON-concept-Auridon_flowery_trees.png
http://images.uesp.net/8/8a/ON-concept-Auridon.png
http://images.uesp.net/f/f1/ON-concept-Queen_Ayrenn.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/9/95/ON-prerelease-Auridon.jpg

Valhelm said:
I like the idea that Ma'iq was just some Khajiit who achieved CHIM through Skooma usage. He realizes that he's in a limited fictional universe, but has been driven insane from too much Moon Sugar.
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Haha, well the Khajiit in "Where Were You When the Dragon Broke?" did say that the humans did not 'have the sugar to see' the Dragon Break so I guess there is a factual correlation established in lore between experiencing stuff ( like Dragon Breaks ) and being a dope head. ;)
 
Nobody wants to see Valenwood? I think they should pull a daggerfall and make the game in Summwrset Isles and Valenwood. I guess nobody cares about the Bosmer, lol. Theyre like the Bretons of humanity.
 
Reyne said:
I seriously want VI to be set in the Summerset Isles. Just by looking at the concept art from the Online game you can tell that its the heart of high fantasy. Colorful, beautiful, spiritual and mystifying. Of course, there is the ugliness of the hearts of the Thalmor to be rooted out yet ( though I wouldn't mind being able to pick their side too ) and what better place to strike but the very streets of Alinor? I don't think a Thalmor conclusion can be made anywhere else. At least not satisfyingly.

http://images.uesp.net/4/4d/ON-concept-Auridon_flowery_trees.png
http://images.uesp.net/8/8a/ON-concept-Auridon.png
http://images.uesp.net/f/f1/ON-concept-Queen_Ayrenn.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/9/95/ON-prerelease-Auridon.jpg



Haha, well the Khajiit in "Where Were You When the Dragon Broke?" did say that the humans did not 'have the sugar to see' the Dragon Break so I guess there is a factual correlation established in lore between experiencing stuff ( like Dragon Breaks ) and being a dope head. ;)
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Beautiful. You have my vote for VI to be set in the Summerset Isles.
 
Wonderful thread, thanks for making it!

I've always been drawn to the Dwemer (although I've only played from Morrowind on), every time I go into their ruins I can picture it in it's heyday.
 
Blue Ninja said:
Yeah, but the games do sometimes miss the boat. In Oblivion, the developers wanted there to be a lot more discernable differences in attitude and bearing between the people in Nibenay and the people in Colovia. They wanted to have some political strife going on between the two parties. It all sounded very interesting, especially when you throw a dead Emperor into the mix, but it ultimately got cut. Cyrodiil, lore-wise, is apparently rife with racial and territorial tensions (as befits a melting pot), but the devs just didn't feel like they could portray that right at the time.

That strife did end up making it into the lore, though: the original Titus Mede, for instance, was a Colovian warlord. When he took over as Emperor, the Nibenese part of Cyrodiil originally wasn't too thrilled about it.
Click to expand...

To be honest, doing IV in Cyrodiil was overly ambitious, maybe even stupid. It was too big of a province for them to handle really, at least in their form back then. It's actually quite interesting of a province but they really just did not execute in terms of art. Everything looked so generic. I hope they revisit Cyrodiil some day far in the future and give it the treatment it deserves as the hub of Tamriel.
 
Esch said:
Nobody wants to see Valenwood? I think they should pull a daggerfall and make the game in Summwrset Isles and Valenwood. I guess nobody cares about the Bosmer, lol. Theyre like the Bretons of humanity.
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High Rock would be my number one choice actually, which puts me in the ultra-minority. (I'd love a High Rock/Summerset Isles game with a heavy focus on the sea, magic and politics; a man can dream).
 
Valenwood would be awesome, but really hard to pull off. Their cities are giant migratory trees. I don't see Beth doing that without retconning the province again like they did with Cyrodiil, which used to be a tropical rainforest.
 
Esch said:
Nobody wants to see Valenwood? I think they should pull a daggerfall and make the game in Summwrset Isles and Valenwood. I guess nobody cares about the Bosmer, lol. Theyre like the Bretons of humanity.
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Isn't Valenwood just a giant forest? It could be difficult to render with current technology and a little dull. It would be awesome to see the "walking cities", though.
 
Anybody here still excited for eso? I know opinions haven't been too favorable but I still want to play it for the world.
 
Sioen said:
Anybody here still excited for eso? I know opinions haven't been too favorable but I still want to play it for the world.
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Nope. I'm very put off by it, both by it being purportedly crap and by it being an MMO.

Valhelm said:
Isn't Valenwood just a giant forest? It could be difficult to render with current technology and a little dull. It would be awesome to see the "walking cities", though.
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Maybe, this is true. Valenwood is kinda lacking in lore tbh, now that I think about it. But that just means there's plenty of opportunity to write stuff in!

Sotha Sil said:
High Rock would be my number one choice actually, which puts me in the ultra-minority. (I'd love a High Rock/Summerset Isles game with a heavy focus on the sea, magic and politics; a man can dream).
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I would love a high rock game as well. The Dark Brotherhood storyline for that would be incredible as well with all the intrigue and factions.
 
I think High Rock might be the least interesting province. It's basically just standard medieval fantasy? It would feel just like Westeros.
 
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