• Catherine_Steward [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Wood Elves worship plantlife to the point of being pure carnivores? Sounds cool, but we never see it or explore it

    Because we never (in the mainline games) go to Valenwood where that's relevant. Outside Valenwood they eat plants.

    I’ll reiterate my main point here to make it a little harder for you to just cut my comment up to avoid it again: it’s one thing to have lore, it’s another thing to implement it and explore it

    This is true, and Skyrim implemented for you to explore a lot of wild shit from the lore. The fact that a lot of players don't understand that's what they're seeing is not a failure to implement the stuff from the lore.

      • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Well, we read an Elder Scroll and visit Sovngarde, for two. It's not really a failure of the worldbuilding if the average player doesn't realize how cool those two things are.

        • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It is a failure of worldbuilding and of storytelling (by which I partially mean how the worldbuilding is conveyed to the player) if they don't make it cool enough on its own merits for players to realize it without having doing unassigned homework first.

          For example (and this is from Oblivion, so I'm undercutting my own point somewhat), stealing the Elder Scroll in Oblivion was cool whether or not you knew what it was because they made it cool. You spent basically half of the questline building up preparations, all of which then pay off one-by-one. People who know the lore know how important the Elder Scroll is from the lore, but "regular" players also have at least a sense of how momentous this is.

          And then the player is confronted with what felt like 10 minutes of unskippable dialog from the Grey Fox, the actual protagonist of the questline. So I'm not saying that was perfect or anything.

          • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            You're not going to hear me say that Skyrim's storytelling is better than Oblivion's, especially not regarding Oblivion's sidequests. They did really good work with those. But the Elder Scroll in Skyrim is also built up, not in exactly the same way.

            • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              Lol don't get me started on the writing in Skyrim's Thieves Guild questline or we'll be here all night (actually, Shamus Young already did a 5-part deep dive into why it was so bad, so I don't have to). Out of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, Oblivion is the one I have the hardest time revisiting, but it definitely had some good stuff going on in its quest writing. I was going to say "especially compared to Skyrim", but honestly, that wasn't Morrowind's strength either, not in the way Oblivion did it.

              • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Yeah, the Thieves' Guild and College of Winterhold questlines are my favorite examples of writing disasters in video games quests. Just absolutely atrocious in every way. Thieves' Guild is worse than the College though.

                • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  I also like The Companions questline because it somehow doesn't even feel like a questline? Say what you want about the Thieves Guild, as bad as it is (and I do think it's the worst written of the major questlines) at least it feels like a narrative. I always forget the Companions exist.