Skyrim - The Elder Scrolls V

[Azale]

So umm...am I the only one fairly impressed with the 10 minute "trailer" for Elder Scrolls online? I probably won't buy it because it's an MMORPG, but it does seem like they've done their initial due diligence.

 

[PeteAtoms]

So umm...am I the only one fairly impressed with the 10 minute "trailer" for Elder Scrolls online? I probably won't buy it because it's an MMORPG, but it does seem like they've done their initial due diligence.

Nope. I was also fairly impressed. It actually looked a lot better than what I was hoping. I'm seriously considering getting into the MMO scene with this game (I've never played any MMO except Guild Wars 1 for a month or so).

 

[GrayingGamer]

Not impressed. Looks like just another unambitious, watered down theme-park MMO. If they manage to do it right, it'll probably have a small following, but I don't see anything worth getting excited about unless you're really dying to play "WoW-clone in Elder Scrolls universe."

A well done sandbox is what I'm looking for - I realize I'll probably never find it.

 

[ace99]

TES VI: Black Marsh

 

[PeteAtoms]

Not impressed. Looks like just another unambitious, watered down theme-park MMO. If they manage to do it right, it'll probably have a small following, but I don't see anything worth getting excited about unless you're really dying to play "WoW-clone in Elder Scrolls universe."

A well done sandbox is what I'm looking for - I realize I'll probably never find it.

I guess if you're someone that wasted countless of hours of your life playing WoW, playing more WoW clones might seem unappealing (doesn't mean it's bad though).

But I have never played WoW (I thought that it looked a little too childlike and the impression that I got from the fan-base was off putting to say the least), so playing a "WoW-clone" isn't as big an issue for me.

The setting itself is reason enough for me to at least check it out and give it a fair shake instead of giving up on it before anything substantial is actually released about it.

 

[cybrxkhan]

*EDIT* I remember now. You have to kill him if you want to restore the Blades to their former glory, which I did want to do. I just found it ridiculous after you choose not to kill Paarthurnax, and he proves himself to be an all-around great guy (you know, the whole saving the world thing) the blades still insist on being ginormous douches and straight-up refuse to even talk to you if you don't do it. It just doesn't make any sense. I'm the dragonborn, I get to call the shots, god dammit.

Ah, that makes more sense. Yeah, if you don't want to help the blades anymore because they're pricks then they won't give a crap about you, o saviour messiah of the world.

It is pretty ridiculous, indeed.

So umm...am I the only one fairly impressed with the 10 minute "trailer" for Elder Scrolls online? I probably won't buy it because it's an MMORPG, but it does seem like they've done their initial due diligence.

Some of it looked okay. But okay is not enough to get me interested. Frankly it just looks like another MMORPG - they keep reining in the point that it's going to be relatively unique and very Elder Scrolls-like, but I'm not seeing any of that yet.

TES VI: Black Marsh

I would actually think that TES VI: Elsweyr (or Elsweyr + Valenwood) would be a better option. Or at least Hammerfell. Even though part of its in Daggerfall already.

 

[LightSpectra]

Skyrim was definitely setting up a Thalmor war, so some kind of revolutionary in the Summer Islands is probably possible.

I doubt we'll ever see a main game take place in Argonian land or Khajit land, because they're substantially less marketable.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Skyrim was definitely setting up a Thalmor war, so some kind of revolutionary in the Summer Islands is probably possible.

I doubt we'll ever see a main game take place in Argonian land or Khajit land, because they're substantially less marketable.

My reasoning is that the next one will take place in Elsweyr + Valenwood because:

1. Bethesda wants to milk the Thalmor conflict for all its worth and will delay going to a big battle against them for now (not that that's a bad thing!), but having it in Elsweyr and Valenwood (or Hammerfell) will allow them to still put the Thalmor conflict front and center without actually having to go to Alinor. In fact, putting it there can allow them to flesh out the conflict and present it in more shades of grey than they have in Skyrim (if they... do, that is).

2. I suppose it is true Elsweyr is not as easy to market, unless if they really play up the exotic Africa/Middle East ORientalist stereotypical culture element, which I personally believe is possible. Still, having Valenwood in as well will allow there to be at leaset half the game's territory be inhabited by more human-like people.

3. Also, they've been doing European stuff for the last two games. Elsweyr (and Valenwood) is a good way to get out of there, for a fear a Sumerset Isles will be a bit too Elfy in the Tolkien vein.


However, this guy here argued why Elsweyr is a good possibility better than I have, simply by ruling out the other possibilities: http://www.augmented-vision.net/?p=270

I believe the only real problem with Elsweyr is that it's full of cat people. If Bethesda can find a way to either 1) make the cat people uber-awesome (by, for instance, marketing their culture as some uber-awesome faux-MidEast-African mashup of awesomeness) so that everyone loves them now, and/or 2) find some justification to bring in reasonable amounts of other races into the region - perhaps, for instance, if Elsweyr becomes the next front in a Thalmor-Empire proxy war.

 

[ace99]

Dude I don't care what you say, its going to be in Black Marsh because Argonian's are awesome. Read the Argonian Account.

 

[Double A]

Argonians are the most awesome race but Black Marsh isn't involved in the current conflict and no one has ever conquered it, so a Thalmor invasion would not only be unlikely, but require no player intervention to actually fail.

The one and only problem I see with Elsweyr as a setting for the next game is that Beth likes to portray the Khajiit as one out of the many, many, many breeds every game, as opposed to having even two. Now, while it would be really cool to have more than 10 main models of NPC, a lot of them are going to have different hitboxes and such, so I foresee either a massive retcon or a hand-wave making it so that only one breed is there (or at the very least, in each area). Also, some of the Khajiit will undoubtedly be portrayed as regular monsters in caves and the wild, which I don't particularly look forward to.

 

[alpav]

Elder Scrolls Online looks like a really bad GW2 clone.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

What on earth makes you people think the next Elder Scrolls game will have anything to do with the Thalmor? In case you haven't noticed Bethesda has a habit of doing massive time skips between games in this series and coming out with games that have almost nothing to do with the last one. What mention was there in Oblivion about a civil war in Skyrim? Nothing, because it took place hundreds of years earlier. There is every reason to believe they will continue that trend and that the events hinted at in Skyrim will play out off screen, leaving something completely different for TES6.

I agree that the last two games have been far too European like in setting, it's boring. Give us something interesting, a culture that actually feels foreign, that would do a lot to revive the series IMO. I don't care if that's Elsweyr, Black Marsh, Valenwood (with it's huge mobile trees [am I the only one reminded of the planet Tanith from Gaunt's Ghosts?]), whatever, just stop with the generic fantasy settings and give us something that feels new.

Not that it matters at this point, I fully expect a new Fallout game before we get any news on a new TES game.

 

[cybrxkhan]

^But that's just Oblivion > Skyrim.

Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion - the first four games - all took more or less within one monarch's reign - the heroes/PCs of these four games could more or less be considered contemporaries. Skyrim's the odd one.

The only reason I suppose there was a skip from Oblivion to Skyrim was because that time period (and the monarch, Uriel, who embodied it) that was key to the first four games. I highly doubt Bethesda will do a massive time skip after Skyrim after 1) having just built up to this new era without exploring it further, and 2) having just introduced the Thalmor and making it clear they're pervasive yet not explore them further as well. I highly doubt they need to bother with a big time skip after all the hints at those events hinted in Skyrim. That's why they're hinted at so massively in the first place.

 

[civ_king]

My reasoning is that the next one will take place in Elsweyr + Valenwood because:

1. Bethesda wants to milk the Thalmor conflict for all its worth and will delay going to a big battle against them for now (not that that's a bad thing!), but having it in Elsweyr and Valenwood (or Hammerfell) will allow them to still put the Thalmor conflict front and center without actually having to go to Alinor. In fact, putting it there can allow them to flesh out the conflict and present it in more shades of grey than they have in Skyrim (if they... do, that is).

2. I suppose it is true Elsweyr is not as easy to market, unless if they really play up the exotic Africa/Middle East ORientalist stereotypical culture element, which I personally believe is possible. Still, having Valenwood in as well will allow there to be at leaset half the game's territory be inhabited by more human-like people.

3. Also, they've been doing European stuff for the last two games. Elsweyr (and Valenwood) is a good way to get out of there, for a fear a Sumerset Isles will be a bit too Elfy in the Tolkien vein.


However, this guy here argued why Elsweyr is a good possibility better than I have, simply by ruling out the other possibilities: http://www.augmented-vision.net/?p=270

I believe the only real problem with Elsweyr is that it's full of cat people. If Bethesda can find a way to either 1) make the cat people uber-awesome (by, for instance, marketing their culture as some uber-awesome faux-MidEast-African mashup of awesomeness) so that everyone loves them now, and/or 2) find some justification to bring in reasonable amounts of other races into the region - perhaps, for instance, if Elsweyr becomes the next front in a Thalmor-Empire proxy war.

Maybe 50 shades of grey?

 

[Wolfbeckett]

^But that's just Oblivion > Skyrim.

Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion - the first four games - all took more or less within one monarch's reign - the heroes/PCs of these four games could more or less be considered contemporaries. Skyrim's the odd one.

The only reason I suppose there was a skip from Oblivion to Skyrim was because that time period (and the monarch, Uriel, who embodied it) that was key to the first four games. I highly doubt Bethesda will do a massive time skip after Skyrim after 1) having just built up to this new era without exploring it further, and 2) having just introduced the Thalmor and making it clear they're pervasive yet not explore them further as well. I highly doubt they need to bother with a big time skip after all the hints at those events hinted in Skyrim. That's why they're hinted at so massively in the first place.

You know what, you're right, my mistake. For some reason I was thinking that Daggerfall took place quite a while before Morrowind and that MOrrowind->Oblivion was the weird one, but I looked it up and I was wrong. So yeah, it's fully possible that the next one will be Thalmor based then, which is actually fine by me since I've never trusted those yellow skinned bastards and will happily jump at the chance to wreak havoc on them. Even in the older games the Altmer were always arrogant to an extreme and need to be brought down a peg or 5.

 

[ace99]

Altmer need the Red Year treatment that the Dunmer got. Maybe they should be invaded by the Maomer or Sloads.

 

[TheDanish]

One of the reasons TES Online received a lot of flak because it was initially reported that the combat would not be "real-time," i.e. it wouldn't be like Skyrim's combat in that you couldn't actively block or swing, and the swinging, blocking, etc. would be automatic like every other MMO. Turns out this was reported wrong, but for publicity reasons the game designers couldn't correct the reporters. Active blocking and swinging is in, which is kind of cool, I guess.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

TES Online is in the big skepticism zone for me. My problem is not so much the combat, I don't care if it's WoW like or what (in fact after Guild Wars 2 I find myself preferring WoW style combat). I'm one of the nerds who are concerned about the lore. They are going to have to do a lot of weird story acrobatics to make a story that makes sense in the lore of the world and fits with an MMO style game and I'm extremely worried that the lore is going to be what takes the hit. If they just came straight out and said "This is non-canon" then we're fine, but if they end up having to retcon/change a lot of stuff it's going to be rage inducing.

Edit: Watching the 10 minute intro now, thoughts as I watch it:

Megaserver sounds cool if it works, but it's also very likely to cause lots of pain and frustration ala GW2's overflow servers. We'll see.

9 races at character creation? Which one is getting the shaft?

Perks seem pretty likely to resemble talent points in any other MMO, I wouldn't expect too much out of this system.

Quests affect the world, I've heard THAT promise all too many times with all too many MMO's. I'll believe when (IF) I see it.

PVP sounds a lot like WvWvW in Guild Wars 2, hopefully it will be deeper though as that got old pretty fast.

All in all nothing here fired me up, this sounds more less exactly like other contemporary MMO's except with The Elder Scrolls in the title.

Edit 2: Apparently it's Imperials getting the shaft. Not really sure why your character can't be an Imperial when the whole plot of the game is based on chaos in Cyrodil but...

This is the kind of lore problems I'm talking about. One of the factions is Dunmer, Nord, and Argonian. Why in the hell would the Nord and ESPECIALLY the Argonians ally with the Dunmer? What? And why are the Khajit part of the Aldmeri Dominion? What in the hell. These are the kinds of lore gymnastics I was worried about and what I'm seeing is not giving me any reason to worry less.

 

[ace99]

They already ruined the Imperials by making them pure evil. Apparently the Imperials go insane and try to summon Mehrunes Dagon so they're not even playable. There are 3 crazy stupid alliances that make no sense.

MMORPG's are the mindkiller.

 

[cybrxkhan]

You know what, you're right, my mistake. For some reason I was thinking that Daggerfall took place quite a while before Morrowind and that MOrrowind->Oblivion was the weird one, but I looked it up and I was wrong. So yeah, it's fully possible that the next one will be Thalmor based then, which is actually fine by me since I've never trusted those yellow skinned bastards and will happily jump at the chance to wreak havoc on them. Even in the older games the Altmer were always arrogant to an extreme and need to be brought down a peg or 5.

Yeah, I think Bethesda won't put some players' Thalmor hatred to waste - it's good material for the next TES game, wherever it will take place. They definitely need some fleshing out, anyways, and if they can somehow pull off some reasonably sympathetic or justified Thalmor that makes sense, I will consider arguing that perhaps their world building capabilities are almost as good as Morrowind's.

Edit 2: Apparently it's Imperials getting the shaft. Not really sure why your character can't be an Imperial when the whole plot of the game is based on chaos in Cyrodil but...

This is the kind of lore problems I'm talking about. One of the factions is Dunmer, Nord, and Argonian. Why in the hell would the Nord and ESPECIALLY the Argonians ally with the Dunmer? What? And why are the Khajit part of the Aldmeri Dominion? What in the hell. These are the kinds of lore gymnastics I was worried about and what I'm seeing is not giving me any reason to worry less.

Totally agree with you here. I'm one of those lore people too. I don't know much about it, but it's the main reason why I was so impressed with the series - even in its most generic form, Oblivion, was the time and effort put into creating the illusion of a believable world with all its biases and different perspectives. Just the whole faction system throws that out of the window.