dude skyrim already hurt the lore so bad and fallout 3 was a murdershow for fallout lore on so many fronts. like srly i have no hope for bethesda projects going forward and can only hope bethesda goes bankrupt and the ips get sold to a new studio or at least rights to make games with them by microsoft to someone willing to make good TES and fallout games again............
It's a shame, they had people that were trying to build a world, something so much bigger than just a game franchise, and now Elder Scrolls is basically consigned to the same trajectory as Halo.
Hate seeing when game studios dumb down games for a "wider audience" Look at larian and bulder's gate 3, they stuck to their roots and as a result a game that was for a niche audience made it mainstream anyways. I wish game companies did this more instead of casualising everything
Great point. I hope it’s success helps influence Todd and we don’t just get the basic “you the special person in Hammerfell with Sword Singing powers” like we all expect.
@@loC2ol yeah it's a long shot but I hope it's more like Morrowind where you could be a overpowered demigod but I also remember spending days to level up my magics and doing countless quests to actually get to that point and be someone important, much more satisfying then Skyrim
@@MLPDethDealr32 how is that a dumbing down exactly? It's an rpg (RolePlaying Game) if you wanna be a straight white male go for it, wanna be a black trans woman then go for it Look I don't understand the whole trans thing too but all I know is that they do exist and while they shouldn't hijack entertainment I wouldn't really care much if they were included a little so long as the whole trans or gender thing isn't their whole personality If you are bothered by this trans character creation thing to a point that you can't enjoy a genuinely well made game then you are a snowflake lol and besides the game doesn't even force you or uses the woke words it just says body type and allows you to have a diddle no matter the body type Cyberpunk 2077 did this and no one said it was woke, but I guess red pilled sigma alpha males like you don't care because your so Patrick Bateman 🤣
Well, no...? That's not CHIM. That's a fan theory stemming from Vivic "Pausing time." Which means nothing when there are five other characters who do that through either Shouts, Spells, or Potions. In reality: CHIM is just being lucid dreamer and learning to control the dream and push in directions of your choosing.
@@BlankEmporium which is a metaphor for videogame functions like those, vivec even mentions that it would be pointless for him to fight you because you've achieved chim and no matter how many times he could beat you you'd win eventually. so what ability does the player have, one vivec attributed to chim, that lets you try a fight again and again? its the save load system. it's never going to be mentioned in setting but it is totally intended to be interpreted this way by a player.
@@EvelynNdenialarguably it could be seen in how supposedly azura keeps reincarnating nerevar into different nwahs and they always end up coming for vivec. So eventually he will be gotten.
"The Velothi and demons and monsters that were watching all took out their own spears. There was much biting and the earth became wet" LMAO, Morrwoind was the best
That story about drawing two monsters, the one MK wanted and one he knew Todd would shoot down, all so he could trick him into adding the original design is hilarious. Forget Auriel shooting Lorkhan's heart across the world into the ocean, _that_ is the quintessential lore every TES fan needs to know.
Seeing the games before and after Morrowind you can tell that it was the exception rather than the rule, even though it’s what made the franchise for Bethesda.
The developers of Morrowind have been known to have drawn a lot of inspiration from the Dune universe. The native tribes/religions, an outsider messiah figure, and much of the ambiguous storytelling aesthetic.
Tribal people with different color eyes that prophecize a messiah figure coming and uniting them against a common threat… something about that seems familiar ( fyi I love Morrowind and Dune )
Subbed If there's one thing that truly drives me insane is how underused the elder scrolls verse lore is, by far deeper, more interesting and thought provoking than all souls, Warhammer 40k, game of thrones,star wars and lord of the rings combined, yet the hacks at besthda don't do anything with it Kirkbride is a fucking genius
Well, Warhammer and DS have some great universes for sure, but TES' lore is indeed much more unique. I think it's mostly because of MK's theological background. The more I learn about Buddhist, Shintoism and Dao - the more I see many reflections of those religious streams in his works
👆I would go that far, TES lore is far more complex and fleshed out than what Tolkien wrote, definitely better than Souls series, I’m not sure about GoT or Warhammer since I’m not familiar too well, Star Wars (legends included) is on par with TES but it’s a “space fantasy” so can’t really be compared
@@conscioussubconsciousness1976Well you shouldn’t because Tolkien is still superior in world building and story writing. And no other fantasy universe without him would be successful.
It's why the best future ES games will come from the Project Tamriel teams of modders-carrying the torch of MK's imaginative vision of the Elder Scrolls universe.
There is no one at Bethesda, certainly not Todd Howard, who can write compelling lore. Thats why there has been no good lore since Morrowind, almost everything has been based on what they made in the past. ESO is like Anime filler, it kills time but it is nothing like what came before.
@@BlankEmporium I hate to say it but a large portion of the lore that encompasses TES IV and V were already told in Morrowind. The lore of the Amulet of Kings wasn't unique, it already existed in Morrowind, and the unique addition (Mythic Dawn, Mysterium Xarxes) was made on consultation by Kirkbride. Skyrim is the worst as it essentially added nothing, any Morrowind player already knows there are Nords that could use their voice, Dragonbornes, the only thing that Skyrim really added that didn't already exist in the lore as of Morrowind is more information on the Snow Elves. Even something new, like the assassination of Titus Mede II in Skyrim is essentially just a rehashing of the assassination of Pelagius I by the DB. Arguably ESO has added more to the lore than both TES 4 and 5 added together and multiplied by 10. Sadly TES has been riding the wave of Kirkbride's lore since Morrowind. Commercial success is down to being more approachable games for a casual audience and the fantasy genre transforming from niche nerd genre to becoming far more mainstream, which were due to many factors, big one one being the LOTR movies. I'd like to add though it doesn't make them bad games, I absolutely love Skyrim. Oblivion is a bit hard to play due to the voice acting being 60% absolutely godawful and 40% amazing (mostly due to the A-Listers such as Sean fucking Bean). But trying to pretend the lore hasn't expanded much since Morrowind is just lying to yourself, probably to justify the fact you might like Skyrim or Oblivion over Morrowind. A good example of what TES4 and 5 has done - nearly nothing about the DB in Oblivion is 'new' lore wise - it's all there in books and dialogue in Morrowind, speaker, listener, black hand, etc. But as we know, Oblivion did a fantastic job of the Dark Brotherhood, where I'd argue Morrowind did a pretty meh job of representing that existing lore. TES4 and 5 repeat this everywhere in their games. Nothing new in the world, it's all already been created by the Morrowind guys, all they did was tell those existing stories, to varying degrees of success.
@@BlankEmporiumI mean you can cope but it's true. Hell Skyrim didn't even use all the cool and unique lore that Nords had before it came out and made them waaaaaaaay more generic. It's kind of insane.
To be fair, Abraham Lincoln is so good he makes good US presidents look like turds. Just because something is better than something else doesn't make what it's compared to bad at all.
frfr, but Skyrim and Oblivion still could be much better and that's something that we need to address, if we want some Morrowind level games in the future
You know what the sad part is? Morrowind was only one game. TES was built on DnD. The games before Morrowind were generic 90s medieval fantasy (not that that's a bad thing, Daggerfall is very interesting on a mechanical level), and the games after Morrowind were generic 00s medieval fantasy that happens to take place in the same universe. All the games are products of their time and that's perfectly fine, but after tasting CHIM, it's kinda hard to go back.
@@ThatWasMyGirl CHIM in the lore is realizing the universe is nothing but a dream and you're not real without either thinking you're the dreamer or instantly getting erased by learning that info If done right you become a god like Tiber Septim became Talos Canonicaly in TES the whole universe is a lie doomed to repeat itself with slight variation (Kalpas), and if the dreamer awakens then the franchise end as the cycle breaks and all get erased, just like you wake up from a dream but can't remember any of it and odds you dream the same one are null Dagoth Ur was in fact unknowingly setting the dreamer to awaken if he wasn't stopped
I feel like the creation myths were partly inspired by the interactions between MK and the rest of the team. The way how Kirkbride had to trick and sweet-talk the others into going along with his ideas sounds a lot like Lorkhan...
@@nepnep1453 nah, the myth of creation was covered by Kirkbride in Monomyth. The first pocket guide to empire, where most of the deities are described - work of Kuhlman and Michael. Even when Peterson did create the third pocket guide, he did it together with MK. Old participants created the names of the deities and Ted, for example, came up with Sheogorath, but the creation myth is all work of MK.
I dont consider ESO or Fallout 76 canon to the franchises. Theyve added nothing of relevance and cheapen the games and the stories told in universe. Unless the IPs are ripped away from them, we are not getting any decent storytelling for the foreseeable future. the only good thing about Skyrim is that you can mod a better story into it then whats originally there.
ESO is cannon but not part of the single player game timeline (remember Dragonbreak exist for that purpose) so whatever happens there simply can't carry over to other TES game
Really wish Kirkbride went wild with an original IP novel series. Skip all the hesitant colleagues like Todd or poor reception of Immortals of Aveum's gameplay
Kirkbride was always at his best when his work was run through a team of editors for sanity. When it wasn't you ended up with universe ruining, self fellating word soup garbage like C0DA, KINMUNE, and the Trial of Vivec. People really, really underestimate and undervalue the contributions Kuhlman and the other writers made to the series. I love Kirkbride but I'll never understand why he gets so much more credit than everyone else to the point you'd think he was the sole writer of the entire series. The reality is that much of Kirkbride's metaphysical work was literally just putting a bizarro/high fantasy coat of paint on gnosticism and theosophy.
One of my favourite things is how Vivec describes his half-divinity when you talk to him, like he tries to put into words something that can't really be put into words but you can get a rough understanding, a glimpse. That was peak writing for me.
Yea after the huge letdown of story and depth that fallout 4 and star field lacked. There is no way elder scrolls 6 has a chance in hell of bringing back the compelling mysteries and wacky prophecies rooted in mature quasi religious undertones we all know and love from Morrowind..it just gets less and less with every Elder Scroll, I just have no hope for es6 at this point. Glad too see others feeling that aswell
I started with the Oblivion and ended with morrowind, I think I got the good ending. If ES6 is bad either way I think it would be fun to mod at least. Skyrim modding is great.
True-native speaker but after learning my first foreign language I realized just how batshit crazy English pronunciation is. We often guess wrong when reading a word we haven't heard before.
Kirkbride's role in Morrowind is commonly and largely overestimated. He added some important lore, sure, but it was just a small part of the entire game's setting and other details, equally unique and sometimes even more strange. It was a product of a time when Bethesda, looking at a possible bankruptcy, was not afraid to take risks. Success was the start of their downfall, but if Fallout 76 did not end up a wake-up call, then Starfield also will not be and as the title suggests, we will never get good lore again. At least we have conversion mods like Enderal.
Kirkbride certainly had a big impact, but not alone, I'll give you that. But he contributed a lot of the iconic imagery we today associate as quintessential Morrowind as another example, besides his lore contributions. The other devs who had more of a passion for deep worldbuilding sadly left during and shorty after Morrowind too. Leaving Todd and his best high school buddy made lead writer Pagarulio to now fully direct the future of the games...
There is no hope for Elder Scrolls 6. The Future of Elder Scrolls is gonna be on the Tabletop where it originally started. All you gotta do is adapt some dnd modules into the setting and you have a better game than anything Bethesda can come uo with. I'm thinking of maybe adapting Wryms of Kyuss from 3.5 and making the big bad Manimarco. The Sky is the limit.
Morrowind world building was stellar! So much imagination went into this project. A shame that they went back to classic fantasy just because LOTR was trendy for Oblivion and beyond.
I've fully embraced c0da at this point. I've never onced touched ESO or its lore. The only post-Skyrim lore I recieve is Kirkbride schizoposting on the forums. I reject the notion of a game's studio's rubber stamp being required for legitimacy and instead take whatever lore I like as canon and whatever lore I dislike as falsehoods. It makes the setting better AND it infuriates the lore puritans. There's no downside.
Missed the Aztec influence when you were listing cultures that influenced it. The Aztec influence is especially noticeable in Almalexia, the Serpent Goddess, who bears relation to Quetzalcoatl
I don't think you can really consider Skyrim and elder scrolls game it's just basically the trappings of the previous games but dumb down and made to appeal to a mass audience which it did which is why it sold so much but it's still not really what I would consider an elder scrolls game the only thing that's consistent with it is it still has Bethesda James that makes things unintentionally funny like the guy that's funny on accident but when he tries to be funny he's a dumbass that's basically Bethesda
Khajiits maybe, still it was just a flashing out of what has already been established beforehand. Argonians however turned into a dull slop. Check how they were portrayed in Infernal City before TESO and what we got in the game. It's a damn shame, they could've become one of the most unique races in all of fantasy.
@Chimperium I have read the book myself and I still disagree. I think both did them justice. We know so much more about their interactions with the Hist and their beliefs in regards to creation. Also if you're saying ESO is just iterating on what came before. That's what a game series is supposed to do. Micheal Kirkrbride did that very thing despite you giving him so much credit. He also wasn't the only one contributing the weird and unique Lore in Morrowind
@@tarponpet truth to the second part. It's just that they didn't dare to venture further. Now Khajiits are just another sand people, yet with some crazy myths of creation and birth cycles pitched by MK. They are okay, but could've been so much more. They could have encompassed different real-life cultures, could've been made more intriguing, yet, their most intriguing parts are already set in stone and nobody even tried to jump over that. Same with Argonians, but much worse, imo.
Skyrim is the true culprit. It radically changed the RPG system while completely removing the class and D&D inspired elements. The lore/story was also insane for a single installment - the elves allied together and beat the Empire in a war? Vivec is missing and Morrowind is in chaos? A civil war is raging in Skyrim?? It was truly a wild game that set the genre onto a casual trajectory imo
@@Chimperium Lol. I'm just not a big MK fan. I think for every amazing idea he has, there's a number of not-so-great ideas, and he certainly wasn't the only contributor to the amazing pre-Oblivion lore. Also, I've heard that changing Cyrodiil from jungle to plains had more to do with technical limitations than capitalizing on LotR. And honestly, Oblivion does a pretty good job presenting a scaled-down world, despite some of its overambitious technical issues. And I think your analysis of ESO fell a little flat, too. I'm no ESO fan, but I know the Khajiit lore is quite good, and their culture is more a blend of Romani, Persian, and Cambodian influences with all sorts of interesting quirks. If anything, ESO fleshed out the Khajiit better than any game prior - which is quite the achievement.
@@echoecho3155 They didn't really add that much in ESO, per se. If you would check even the first pocket guide, it's really nothing new, tbh. Now check the first pocket guide on Dunmers and check on how much deeper MK and others went with them in Morrowind to see the difference. I don't think that they did a terrible job in ESO with Khajits, I just think they could've done much more.
Yea bethesda should be a little more bold and daring in their writing elder scrolls stories. I dont dislike the stories that cover the more mundane elements of TES, but they have a habit of presenting the more abstract stuff in the same mundane style. Dont even get me started on ESO writing. Except for a few things they make even the most interesting lore appear boring.
Imo, too many unknowns within the ES lore. ES relies on that to a fault imo. The unknown is fascinating, but what is known can lend to itself more lore such as speculating on how Big Foot looks vs actually discovering it as a species of Ursa......Now we have more questions than answers..........
@@monsutaman1 Even if it is frustarting which it definitely is I dont think it is to a fault. In A Song of Ice and Fire there are many mysterious locations we will probably never see like Asshai of the shadow and Sothoryos. I would love to see both of them from a pov or a lore book but we just wont GRRM doesnt want to. It isnt for no reason though. Without the mystery they are just cool places the intrigue adds to the "believability" of the world because we just simply dont know. For a real life example think of how we used to believe that there are all sorts of mystical places around the world. Anyways point is Mystery adds to the intrigue of the world sometimes the tease is better than the bust.
I want ambiguous characters again. In Morrowind there are certain faction quests that made me think "I'm not really sure if I should do this", even the living god Vivec is very morally grey and clearly regrets some of his life choices. Skyrim characters are 2 dimensional and some of them openly state how uninterested they are in current events.
I do like the story in oblivion but you are absolutely right about its world building. What do they eat? How are they not overrun by the enemies from dungeons
Although the first two games were lacking much lore in game they had official dev and forum stuff that went deep into the lore. This is where for example we got the Yokudan pantheon stuff and much of imperial history.
I saw the thumbnail somewhere... Oh, it's from the Russian RUclips channel IGM. They have a series of videos called "How [game series] died". There is even a joke among the viewers "Oh, you are grave diggers, IGM". Maybe you should write the source of the picture under your video?
I found it somewhere on a forum, thought it would reflect the vid pretty good. If it's from someones channel I'll just make a similar one and change it in a few
I too love to criticise oblivion, it scores the lowest on my mainline TES ranking, but it's high time this jungle argument suffer the same fate as Roggvir of Solitude. 1. it would be extremely challenging to portray a jungle environment given the limitations of the time, culminating in either a lack of visual fidelity and/or appalling performance. 2. It's incompatible with what we've come to expect from TES since arena -- Variety of biomes, and in later entries, ample beautiful vistas. See the difference between Oblivion's golden coast to blackwood, Skyrim's forests of Falkreath to Eastmarch. A jungle is by definition an uniform, undeveloped, humid forest. Good luck getting vistas when you can't see 20m in front of you due to dense vegetation. 3. Jungles are extremely hostile environments, incredibly suited to extreme biodiversity but diametrically antagonistic to the development of complex societies. No complex society has come from jungles, plenty exist/ed in adjacence to them, none within. To think that a Cyrodill as a massive jungle is a good idea is to not understand the concept of a jungle. This is pertinent to both Valenwood and Black-Marsh. Any game set in those provinces would inevitably change the geographical lore or be very different experiences to the TES formula. If Cyrodill was a jungle, oblivion would be worse for it. Todd was incredibly based in changing it. And I'll defend the decision to change Cyrodill from a jungle to temperate hills to my dying breath. Great video, btw.
@@Chimperium Shivering isles is perhaps the best example of how biome diversity meshes incredibly well with the TES aesthetics, I feel very dumb for not mentioning it now. Buy you're right, the technology was there, though the density of vegetation that it's required to portray a jungle. I think that's only beginning to be possible nowadays with the modern mesh instancing techniques and on-the-fly mesh decimation techniques (vd. UE5's nanite). Green hell comes closest of games in such a setting, but even it often fails to capture the claustrophobic feeling of being in a jungle.
It won't until that occultist hack Emil Pagliacci is in charge of writing. Both Oblivion and Skyrim have story that reads like if it was written by a 10 year old, and it has no depth. Civil War is written good and there are many cool concepts they are just extremely shallow. Same goes for gameplay, if not for graphics you would think Skyrim came out before Morrowind. Everything is dumbed down so a 5 year old could figure our. I remember reading a post on reddit by the guy that played Skyrim many times but he never figured out there was a way from Riverwood to Bleak Falls Burrow. I guess he always scaled the mountain??? Imagine if the game had no quests markers. And it really pisses me off because it's what I enjoy in Morrowind, you feel immersed, actually looking for places instead of travelling from cave to dungeon like in a theme park. It reminds me of playing Gothic as a kid. The only in-game map was an item that you could buy from a cartographer for a lot of money. If you wanted to find a location you had to explore. Last thing is being the chosen one, I'm sick of it. Morrowind was great because at the beginning you're just some fucking guy. You work as a novice intelligence officer and are told to just explore and do side quests for a bit so you don't seem suspicious. In Oblivion, even more in Skyrim, I always feel like I'm pressured by plot to do the main quest. At this point I'm more excited for Project Tamriel than for TES VI. I just don't believe Bethesda can deliver. I know Todd said he wanted to do fantasy life simulator but the modern gaming market would never let you release a game like Daggerfall or Morrowind. Everything has to simple and streamlined to sell more copies. It's a shame
The fact theres almost no Tsaesci stuff in skyrim is mindblowingly disappointing to me, Saarthal is still there and its even older than the Akirivri invasion.
Good video, but callling OBLIVION mid is completely bullshit, there's an argument to be made if Morrowind is better or not, but Oblivion is glorious and you just don't see it , heck the side quests are so much better.
Sadly, Skyrim came out in the rising age of casual gamers, everything had to get more streamlined and dumped out, also if VA’s weren’t this fucking expensive, both Skyrim and Oblivion could have their lore more showcased and fleshed out.
Same with Warcraft... I loved Warcraft Lore, but pulling back the Veil, how disappointing Shadowlands is from a lore writing perspective with so many issues... it just really severely stopped my interest in the Lore. Some things are best left in muddy waters, especially if it is of these things you can't easily put in words. I wish they never would have written it all. It already started before. But that was the final nail.
Everyone thought Skyrim was going to be boring before it came out because up to that point it had been depicted as this borderline uninhabitable frozen wasteland that was practically just a slightly less frozen Atmora.
@ And yet the Morrowind lore and environment is far more interesting. have you ever read the lore on the black marsh and elswhyr there is so much more you can do with this then any other location.
@@zool201975 Missing the point that Skyrim is proof they have the talent to expand on what's seemingly an extremely boring province and turn it into a beloved place. The sad reality is that I doubt a game set in furry/scalie land would have the same appeal as humans and elves to the wider audience, which means less sales, which means less incentive for them to make a game there. I've wanted a game set in Black Marsh since I first played Morrowind but I really doubt we'll see it anytime soon outside of fan projects. I've also always wanted a game (more like an expansion about another expedition) involving Akavir but I know that also probably won't happen for much the same reasons as Black Marsh or Elsweyr.
TBH I was blown away when Oblivion came out. The faces and art style were not that bothering back then. I think when meme culture came up, Oblivions graphic style and face design became a laughingstock. Yeah it had some quirks but so did Morrowind. Both main stories are very good. What I don't like about MW is that you become a literal god. In Oblivion you are simply a messenger that gets tangled into the story. I also love Skyrim but I remember how disappointing it was when I found out that you cant create a custom class. Of all "modern" Elder Scrolls games Skyrim has the weakest story. I was never that fond of the whole dragon saga. I found it kinda lame. Nevertheless I played it hundreds of hours.
I'm also an Oblivion kid and the fourth TES was my first bethesda game. I love it! However, speaking realistically, Morrowind had a muuuuuch deeper story. Not only that, but the main quests were very well interconnected, lead you to many different side activities and made you explore the island, which, in its place, was much more fascinating than Cyrodiil. Morrowind beats Oblivion in everything that can't be attributed to age, so I'm just giving Morrowind it's due.
Oblivion is my favorite elder scrolls game. It's less clunky than morrowind and still offers a good roleplaying experience. Of course, the facial animations are atrocious, but i think the game itself is a happy medium between morrowind and skyrim.
TBH, I don't think that any TES could give you any adequate degree of roleplaying. Morrowind either. I love Oblivion, but it still could've been much better. They just emphasis on the wrong things imo
oh man, I've missed the unemployed part of the TES fandom - stolen art as the thumbnail, Kirkbride's personality cult, over 20m video length (emulating the Kirkbride's graphomania)... oh man, it's the whole vibe of it's own
unemployed is the cute little term the dispassionate part of the bethesda fancult likes to use when referring to people who want their favorite franchises' stories and worlds to have a little more bite i suspect you must've seemed pretty unemployed too when it came to defending emil's "starfield isn't empty, it's realistic" statement
@@tacoforces4234 wow, wonder how todd'll react when he finds out one of his NPCs found its way out of one of his terrible games how many more lines like these does the drone have in store? i bet you whispered that one to yourself with all the intelligence and confidence of an underpaid bethsoft VA just before posting it
Morrowind is bizzare for sure and might be off-putting, but it's not so much about the setting itself, but what's inside. Skyrim and Oblivion became too shallow in comparison.
5:30 just like the post by Delicieuxz, this pretty much gives another hint at the idea of Todd Howard being the downfall of the elder scrolls series. It's really hard to think that for something that occured 20 years ago. Morrowind aside from it's music and interesting world isn't that good, a very overrated game indeed.
I think the only improvement to the lore post kirkbride are the Khajiit, but that was done by a completely different company. ESO did a great job with Kjajiiti Cultre and Religion since they worship both Aedra and Daedra and incorporate all of them into their pantheon. They were a race I would've never thought of playing until that lore came out, and now they're my 2nd Favorite behind Nords.
They sure dug a little deeper, but most of the lore was already established by MK. Check the 1st Pocket Guide to Emprie: en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Pocket_Guide_to_the_Empire,_1st_Edition/The_Elsweyr_Confederacy
from my experience the more I learned about the lore of TES the more it felt like tryhardy attempt to be unique and esotheric, while really just repeating the same bits other big fantasy IPs already did. I'd much prefer a good grounded setting that feels lived in, and not everything has to be divine or magical
There are not so many game-writers, who studied theology and got a degree in that. Considering that and what a mindblowing universe he created - crazy is not misplaced at all
Idc and idk why it matters. As long as the individual game stories aren’t stupid. I’m not impressed with the background story of the elderscrolls games. Lots of it deserves to be scrapped.
haven't you played a bethsoft game lately? stupid doesn't even begin to cover it uninspired, thoughtless, boring and terrible, those just about describe every game they've made since oblivion
@@noahsylvester1754 After oblivion, I liked Skyrim. I think the gameplay improves as the games progress. Though perhaps the aesthetics and quests begin to decline. Not gonna play anymore after that probably, in my opinion they’ve dropped the ball with Fallout and their latest space game. I doubt they have what it takes to make the next elder scrolls game great in terms of gameplay, setting, characters, and fun quests. I’m not so concerned about Lore. Lord originally said cyrodil was a jungle and pretty happy they changed that. Sure they have may have provided an in universe explanation, but it was really ad hoc. Gameplay, Aesthetics, etc. all come before any tid bits of Lore. At least in my opinion.
ESO is ruining the TES lore at an alarming rate. They are releasing annual DLCs with a**-pull lore. The hell is the forgotten prince Ithelia? So much is happening in so little time.
To be fair its not all gloom and doom, Greymoor chapter in instance with its vampire-werewolf alliance to save the souls sended to the hunting grounds and coldharbour with a plan to create a new oblivion realm where the Daedric prince would have no more power over them was quite decent ESO is just VERY hit or miss with their expansions
@Alpha1598753 hit or miss exactly. Their expansions should be 2 or 3 years at least like with ffxiv and gw2. Far too many and too rushed chapters. Also, your greymoor example being good actually make sense since it is directly connected to molag bal in the base game. That's how things should be. Focus more on the planemeld events and the 3 alliance war. But no, they have to milk it.
This is bs, just cause they changed some things from old lore doesn’t make new lore bad, think about how many people got into the franchise cause of games passed morrowind, think of how many will get into it because of es6 sure you might not like it, but claiming it went downhill and all that is just absurd.
Yeah right. Have you seen the work of modern writers? It's complete incompetence and garbage, stained by whatever psychotic trend they read off Twitter that week.
It's not the fact that it's something "new", it's the fact that there are almost no "new" things in it of itself and even those newer ones are much worse as far as creativity and quality goes
@@INSAne_DrUNkard but nothing offers a good experience anymore so it's best just to keep people from getting in to the stuff we like. They never create anything worth investing in to
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dude skyrim already hurt the lore so bad and fallout 3 was a murdershow for fallout lore on so many fronts. like srly i have no hope for bethesda projects going forward and can only hope bethesda goes bankrupt and the ips get sold to a new studio or at least rights to make games with them by microsoft to someone willing to make good TES and fallout games again............
TES Lore died with Daggerfall actually. And then Morrowind served as eulogy, as far as the real connoisseurs are concerned.
that fact todd had to be constantly tricked to allow morrowind to be made explains sooo much about bethesda.
Yes it does
It's a shame, they had people that were trying to build a world, something so much bigger than just a game franchise, and now Elder Scrolls is basically consigned to the same trajectory as Halo.
@UTO7 oof, right on the mark with that, I gotta sit down….
Really?
It just works
Hate seeing when game studios dumb down games for a "wider audience"
Look at larian and bulder's gate 3, they stuck to their roots and as a result a game that was for a niche audience made it mainstream anyways. I wish game companies did this more instead of casualising everything
Great point. I hope it’s success helps influence Todd and we don’t just get the basic “you the special person in Hammerfell with Sword Singing powers” like we all expect.
@@loC2ol yeah it's a long shot but I hope it's more like Morrowind where you could be a overpowered demigod but I also remember spending days to level up my magics and doing countless quests to actually get to that point and be someone important, much more satisfying then Skyrim
dude, they still dumbed that game down. or did you miss the " Non binary, Trans character creation" ?????
@@MLPDethDealr32 how is that a dumbing down exactly?
It's an rpg (RolePlaying Game) if you wanna be a straight white male go for it, wanna be a black trans woman then go for it
Look I don't understand the whole trans thing too but all I know is that they do exist and while they shouldn't hijack entertainment I wouldn't really care much if they were included a little so long as the whole trans or gender thing isn't their whole personality
If you are bothered by this trans character creation thing to a point that you can't enjoy a genuinely well made game then you are a snowflake lol and besides the game doesn't even force you or uses the woke words it just says body type and allows you to have a diddle no matter the body type
Cyberpunk 2077 did this and no one said it was woke, but I guess red pilled sigma alpha males like you don't care because your so Patrick Bateman 🤣
They did dumb down. Baldur's Gate 3 is an alright game, feels more like Divinity 3 tbh, but it is NOT a Baldur's Gate game
I love how the explaination of CHIM is that the guys figure out that they're in a video ggame and gain access to the console.
the modding tools too.
Well, no...? That's not CHIM. That's a fan theory stemming from Vivic "Pausing time." Which means nothing when there are five other characters who do that through either Shouts, Spells, or Potions.
In reality: CHIM is just being lucid dreamer and learning to control the dream and push in directions of your choosing.
@@BlankEmporium which is a metaphor for videogame functions like those, vivec even mentions that it would be pointless for him to fight you because you've achieved chim and no matter how many times he could beat you you'd win eventually. so what ability does the player have, one vivec attributed to chim, that lets you try a fight again and again? its the save load system.
it's never going to be mentioned in setting but it is totally intended to be interpreted this way by a player.
@@EvelynNdenial And Vivic had CHIM too. So why couldn't he simply reload until he wins? Unless, of course, the answer is a bit more complex than that.
@@EvelynNdenialarguably it could be seen in how supposedly azura keeps reincarnating nerevar into different nwahs and they always end up coming for vivec. So eventually he will be gotten.
"The Velothi and demons and monsters that were watching all took out their own spears. There was much biting and the earth became wet"
LMAO, Morrwoind was the best
That story about drawing two monsters, the one MK wanted and one he knew Todd would shoot down, all so he could trick him into adding the original design is hilarious.
Forget Auriel shooting Lorkhan's heart across the world into the ocean, _that_ is the quintessential lore every TES fan needs to know.
After Starfield I believe you.
What about before starfield then? Please don't tell me you were a Mr Matty chill, huh?
@@messire9837 I don’t really like his channel, plus Fallout 76 was horrible.
Seeing the games before and after Morrowind you can tell that it was the exception rather than the rule, even though it’s what made the franchise for Bethesda.
The developers of Morrowind have been known to have drawn a lot of inspiration from the Dune universe. The native tribes/religions, an outsider messiah figure, and much of the ambiguous storytelling aesthetic.
I played it for the first time last year and I kept going "the spice must flow" and "my name is a killing word."
Tribal people with different color eyes that prophecize a messiah figure coming and uniting them against a common threat… something about that seems familiar ( fyi I love Morrowind and Dune )
Maybe not officially but when beyond Skyrim gets complete Oh man beyond Skyrim is the real elder scrolls 6
Subbed
If there's one thing that truly drives me insane is how underused the elder scrolls verse lore is, by far deeper, more interesting and thought provoking than all souls, Warhammer 40k, game of thrones,star wars and lord of the rings combined, yet the hacks at besthda don't do anything with it
Kirkbride is a fucking genius
Well, Warhammer and DS have some great universes for sure, but TES' lore is indeed much more unique. I think it's mostly because of MK's theological background. The more I learn about Buddhist, Shintoism and Dao - the more I see many reflections of those religious streams in his works
I wouldn’t go that far but you have a point.
👆I would go that far, TES lore is far more complex and fleshed out than what Tolkien wrote, definitely better than Souls series, I’m not sure about GoT or Warhammer since I’m not familiar too well, Star Wars (legends included) is on par with TES but it’s a “space fantasy” so can’t really be compared
@@conscioussubconsciousness1976Well you shouldn’t because Tolkien is still superior in world building and story writing. And no other fantasy universe without him would be successful.
Yeah no, no way ES comes anywhere near the works of Tolkien.@@conscioussubconsciousness1976
It's why the best future ES games will come from the Project Tamriel teams of modders-carrying the torch of MK's imaginative vision of the Elder Scrolls universe.
skyrim might be generic, but it's atmospheric as hell, which can be confirmed via reading comments under skyrim ost videos
There is no one at Bethesda, certainly not Todd Howard, who can write compelling lore. Thats why there has been no good lore since Morrowind, almost everything has been based on what they made in the past. ESO is like Anime filler, it kills time but it is nothing like what came before.
There hasnt been any for Fallout either. It ends at New Vegas. 4 is fun to mod and thats it.
No good lore past Morrowind? Yeah, sure buddy, keep telling yourself that.
@@BlankEmporium I hate to say it but a large portion of the lore that encompasses TES IV and V were already told in Morrowind. The lore of the Amulet of Kings wasn't unique, it already existed in Morrowind, and the unique addition (Mythic Dawn, Mysterium Xarxes) was made on consultation by Kirkbride. Skyrim is the worst as it essentially added nothing, any Morrowind player already knows there are Nords that could use their voice, Dragonbornes, the only thing that Skyrim really added that didn't already exist in the lore as of Morrowind is more information on the Snow Elves. Even something new, like the assassination of Titus Mede II in Skyrim is essentially just a rehashing of the assassination of Pelagius I by the DB.
Arguably ESO has added more to the lore than both TES 4 and 5 added together and multiplied by 10. Sadly TES has been riding the wave of Kirkbride's lore since Morrowind.
Commercial success is down to being more approachable games for a casual audience and the fantasy genre transforming from niche nerd genre to becoming far more mainstream, which were due to many factors, big one one being the LOTR movies.
I'd like to add though it doesn't make them bad games, I absolutely love Skyrim. Oblivion is a bit hard to play due to the voice acting being 60% absolutely godawful and 40% amazing (mostly due to the A-Listers such as Sean fucking Bean). But trying to pretend the lore hasn't expanded much since Morrowind is just lying to yourself, probably to justify the fact you might like Skyrim or Oblivion over Morrowind.
A good example of what TES4 and 5 has done - nearly nothing about the DB in Oblivion is 'new' lore wise - it's all there in books and dialogue in Morrowind, speaker, listener, black hand, etc. But as we know, Oblivion did a fantastic job of the Dark Brotherhood, where I'd argue Morrowind did a pretty meh job of representing that existing lore. TES4 and 5 repeat this everywhere in their games. Nothing new in the world, it's all already been created by the Morrowind guys, all they did was tell those existing stories, to varying degrees of success.
@@BlankEmporiumI mean you can cope but it's true. Hell Skyrim didn't even use all the cool and unique lore that Nords had before it came out and made them waaaaaaaay more generic. It's kind of insane.
What about Pelinal Whitestrake?
Tod howard falling for star wars is hilarious amd def what he would do
I hope Kirkbride will come back to TES or will come up with his own world completely. He might be controversial but his talent can’t be disputed
fr fr
Why is he controversial?
He is never coming back. He broke ties with Bethesda years ago and also his style does not mesh with what they are doing these days.
@@YesNo-xi5zg said some nasty things
He’s too busy tripping balls smelling his own farts and writing fan fiction
I feel so sad when people talk about how good skyrim is because I know it could have been so much better.
To be fair, Abraham Lincoln is so good he makes good US presidents look like turds. Just because something is better than something else doesn't make what it's compared to bad at all.
frfr, but Skyrim and Oblivion still could be much better and that's something that we need to address, if we want some Morrowind level games in the future
@@Marinanor And then you have George Washington. Who makes all leaders in history look like corrupt and petty kings.
You know what the sad part is?
Morrowind was only one game. TES was built on DnD. The games before Morrowind were generic 90s medieval fantasy (not that that's a bad thing, Daggerfall is very interesting on a mechanical level), and the games after Morrowind were generic 00s medieval fantasy that happens to take place in the same universe. All the games are products of their time and that's perfectly fine, but after tasting CHIM, it's kinda hard to go back.
very well put!
what is CHIM if you mind me asking?
Battlespire and redguard were both built with morrowind style lore, however they both kinda suck gameplay wise.
@@ThatWasMyGirl CHIM in the lore is realizing the universe is nothing but a dream and you're not real without either thinking you're the dreamer or instantly getting erased by learning that info
If done right you become a god like Tiber Septim became Talos
Canonicaly in TES the whole universe is a lie doomed to repeat itself with slight variation (Kalpas), and if the dreamer awakens then the franchise end as the cycle breaks and all get erased, just like you wake up from a dream but can't remember any of it and odds you dream the same one are null
Dagoth Ur was in fact unknowingly setting the dreamer to awaken if he wasn't stopped
I feel like the creation myths were partly inspired by the interactions between MK and the rest of the team. The way how Kirkbride had to trick and sweet-talk the others into going along with his ideas sounds a lot like Lorkhan...
lol, could be
Art imitating life lol
the creation myths were largely the work of the OGs such as Ted Peterson, not Kirkbride.
@@nepnep1453 nah, the myth of creation was covered by Kirkbride in Monomyth. The first pocket guide to empire, where most of the deities are described - work of Kuhlman and Michael. Even when Peterson did create the third pocket guide, he did it together with MK. Old participants created the names of the deities and Ted, for example, came up with Sheogorath, but the creation myth is all work of MK.
This is a lot like hearing what Tim Cain's original thoughts and plans were for fallout
I dont consider ESO or Fallout 76 canon to the franchises. Theyve added nothing of relevance and cheapen the games and the stories told in universe. Unless the IPs are ripped away from them, we are not getting any decent storytelling for the foreseeable future.
the only good thing about Skyrim is that you can mod a better story into it then whats originally there.
cope
So Daggerwind, you say then? But WHEN???
ESO is cannon but not part of the single player game timeline (remember Dragonbreak exist for that purpose) so whatever happens there simply can't carry over to other TES game
Really wish Kirkbride went wild with an original IP novel series. Skip all the hesitant colleagues like Todd or poor reception of Immortals of Aveum's gameplay
Kirkbride was always at his best when his work was run through a team of editors for sanity. When it wasn't you ended up with universe ruining, self fellating word soup garbage like C0DA, KINMUNE, and the Trial of Vivec. People really, really underestimate and undervalue the contributions Kuhlman and the other writers made to the series. I love Kirkbride but I'll never understand why he gets so much more credit than everyone else to the point you'd think he was the sole writer of the entire series. The reality is that much of Kirkbride's metaphysical work was literally just putting a bizarro/high fantasy coat of paint on gnosticism and theosophy.
Really glad youtube recommended me this, great video man!
Glad to hear that, brother!
One of my favourite things is how Vivec describes his half-divinity when you talk to him, like he tries to put into words something that can't really be put into words but you can get a rough understanding, a glimpse. That was peak writing for me.
I like how it also intertwined with the game mechanics as well, so it's like a meta-commentary and a breakage of the 4th wall. Peak indeed!
Yea after the huge letdown of story and depth that fallout 4 and star field lacked. There is no way elder scrolls 6 has a chance in hell of bringing back the compelling mysteries and wacky prophecies rooted in mature quasi religious undertones we all know and love from Morrowind..it just gets less and less with every Elder Scroll, I just have no hope for es6 at this point. Glad too see others feeling that aswell
I really enjoy your videos. You have a chill way to speak and your jokes are funny.
thanks, brother. means a world to me!
I started with the Oblivion and ended with morrowind, I think I got the good ending. If ES6 is bad either way I think it would be fun to mod at least. Skyrim modding is great.
No. Quit that cr*p for good and play Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 instead. You'll tank me later.
@@messire9837 looked neat I give it a look when I play another strategic RPG
Man, imagine if MK worked on Starfield... such a lost opportunity.
Calling DOS "D, O, S" broke me
sorry, bro. English is too inconsistent
True-native speaker but after learning my first foreign language I realized just how batshit crazy English pronunciation is. We often guess wrong when reading a word we haven't heard before.
@@Chimperium I thought you were too young to know how to say DOS
@@SaltyChickenDip that as well :)
@@Chimperium great. Now I'm mad again! Those kids and their graphic user interfaces
Lovely, needed and subbed
thanks!
So he's the answer to the Pagliarulo Problem
Emil thinks he's Gordon Ramsey, but in reality, he's just Chef Goyardee.
Always has been.
Kirkbride's role in Morrowind is commonly and largely overestimated. He added some important lore, sure, but it was just a small part of the entire game's setting and other details, equally unique and sometimes even more strange. It was a product of a time when Bethesda, looking at a possible bankruptcy, was not afraid to take risks. Success was the start of their downfall, but if Fallout 76 did not end up a wake-up call, then Starfield also will not be and as the title suggests, we will never get good lore again. At least we have conversion mods like Enderal.
Kirkbride certainly had a big impact, but not alone, I'll give you that. But he contributed a lot of the iconic imagery we today associate as quintessential Morrowind as another example, besides his lore contributions.
The other devs who had more of a passion for deep worldbuilding sadly left during and shorty after Morrowind too.
Leaving Todd and his best high school buddy made lead writer Pagarulio to now fully direct the future of the games...
There is no hope for Elder Scrolls 6. The Future of Elder Scrolls is gonna be on the Tabletop where it originally started. All you gotta do is adapt some dnd modules into the setting and you have a better game than anything Bethesda can come uo with. I'm thinking of maybe adapting Wryms of Kyuss from 3.5 and making the big bad Manimarco. The Sky is the limit.
Honestly the best idea. No bugs to crash and true choice kicking in that doesn't railroad the outcome, unless the GM begged to differ.
I've been running a PF2E campaign with an elder scrolls module for 2 years. Lots of fun.
Morrowind world building was stellar! So much imagination went into this project.
A shame that they went back to classic fantasy just because LOTR was trendy for Oblivion and beyond.
saw the video title and agreed with it 100%, but I'll watch the video just to see some criticism piled on Bethesda
I've fully embraced c0da at this point. I've never onced touched ESO or its lore. The only post-Skyrim lore I recieve is Kirkbride schizoposting on the forums. I reject the notion of a game's studio's rubber stamp being required for legitimacy and instead take whatever lore I like as canon and whatever lore I dislike as falsehoods. It makes the setting better AND it infuriates the lore puritans. There's no downside.
That's actually the innate idea of MK's lore : you decide what's true or not. Good for you!
Never have i ever read a comment that screams virgin more than this one lmao
@@colinp3366 you hurl insults st strangers on the internet and like your own comments. You definitely don't get any.
Missed the Aztec influence when you were listing cultures that influenced it. The Aztec influence is especially noticeable in Almalexia, the Serpent Goddess, who bears relation to Quetzalcoatl
Him creating CODA was really the best because now all our different headcannons are Real Cannon!!!
Morroboomers: First time?
DaggerGenXers: Second time?
Arenacorpses: HALT!!
My guy really just called oblivion mid
Great video by the way
In a lot of ways Skyrim was their way of saying goodbye
I don't think you can really consider Skyrim and elder scrolls game it's just basically the trappings of the previous games but dumb down and made to appeal to a mass audience which it did which is why it sold so much but it's still not really what I would consider an elder scrolls game the only thing that's consistent with it is it still has Bethesda James that makes things unintentionally funny like the guy that's funny on accident but when he tries to be funny he's a dumbass that's basically Bethesda
Appreciate ya. Thanks for sharing.
Very underated channel. I wish for your swift growth since I truly belive you deserve it.
bro, appreciate that enormously!
Well done man, great video !
so Todd Howard is reason Elderscrolls was knee capped to nothing, since Skyrim. He is ruining his own company for greed....
I think it's much more nuanced with Todd tbh
What the heck are you talking about with Argonians and Khajiit? Did you read ANY of their ESO lore, cause they benefitted massively.
Khajiits maybe, still it was just a flashing out of what has already been established beforehand. Argonians however turned into a dull slop. Check how they were portrayed in Infernal City before TESO and what we got in the game. It's a damn shame, they could've become one of the most unique races in all of fantasy.
@Chimperium I have read the book myself and I still disagree. I think both did them justice. We know so much more about their interactions with the Hist and their beliefs in regards to creation.
Also if you're saying ESO is just iterating on what came before. That's what a game series is supposed to do. Micheal Kirkrbride did that very thing despite you giving him so much credit. He also wasn't the only one contributing the weird and unique Lore in Morrowind
@@tarponpet truth to the second part. It's just that they didn't dare to venture further. Now Khajiits are just another sand people, yet with some crazy myths of creation and birth cycles pitched by MK. They are okay, but could've been so much more. They could have encompassed different real-life cultures, could've been made more intriguing, yet, their most intriguing parts are already set in stone and nobody even tried to jump over that.
Same with Argonians, but much worse, imo.
putting the CHIM in Chimperium
Fire as usual, keep it up.
Yeah i don’t see the next entry being all that but I’d be lying if i said i didn’t want it to come out already😅
Skyrim is the true culprit. It radically changed the RPG system while completely removing the class and D&D inspired elements. The lore/story was also insane for a single installment - the elves allied together and beat the Empire in a war? Vivec is missing and Morrowind is in chaos? A civil war is raging in Skyrim?? It was truly a wild game that set the genre onto a casual trajectory imo
The morrowind red year thing was kirkbridges intention btw. As for the rest... yeah....
I was interested to hear what this video had to say, but I couldn't hear it over the sound of the weird guy fellating Michael Kirkbride.
I love my MK fellated good
@@Chimperium Lol. I'm just not a big MK fan. I think for every amazing idea he has, there's a number of not-so-great ideas, and he certainly wasn't the only contributor to the amazing pre-Oblivion lore.
Also, I've heard that changing Cyrodiil from jungle to plains had more to do with technical limitations than capitalizing on LotR. And honestly, Oblivion does a pretty good job presenting a scaled-down world, despite some of its overambitious technical issues.
And I think your analysis of ESO fell a little flat, too. I'm no ESO fan, but I know the Khajiit lore is quite good, and their culture is more a blend of Romani, Persian, and Cambodian influences with all sorts of interesting quirks. If anything, ESO fleshed out the Khajiit better than any game prior - which is quite the achievement.
@@echoecho3155 They didn't really add that much in ESO, per se. If you would check even the first pocket guide, it's really nothing new, tbh. Now check the first pocket guide on Dunmers and check on how much deeper MK and others went with them in Morrowind to see the difference. I don't think that they did a terrible job in ESO with Khajits, I just think they could've done much more.
Yea bethesda should be a little more bold and daring in their writing elder scrolls stories. I dont dislike the stories that cover the more mundane elements of TES, but they have a habit of presenting the more abstract stuff in the same mundane style.
Dont even get me started on ESO writing. Except for a few things they make even the most interesting lore appear boring.
Imo, too many unknowns within the ES lore. ES relies on that to a fault imo.
The unknown is fascinating, but what is known can lend to itself more lore such as speculating on how Big Foot looks vs actually discovering it as a species of Ursa......Now we have more questions than answers..........
@@monsutaman1 Even if it is frustarting which it definitely is I dont think it is to a fault. In A Song of Ice and Fire there are many mysterious locations we will probably never see like Asshai of the shadow and Sothoryos. I would love to see both of them from a pov or a lore book but we just wont GRRM doesnt want to. It isnt for no reason though. Without the mystery they are just cool places the intrigue adds to the "believability" of the world because we just simply dont know. For a real life example think of how we used to believe that there are all sorts of mystical places around the world. Anyways point is Mystery adds to the intrigue of the world sometimes the tease is better than the bust.
I want ambiguous characters again. In Morrowind there are certain faction quests that made me think "I'm not really sure if I should do this", even the living god Vivec is very morally grey and clearly regrets some of his life choices. Skyrim characters are 2 dimensional and some of them openly state how uninterested they are in current events.
I do like the story in oblivion but you are absolutely right about its world building. What do they eat? How are they not overrun by the enemies from dungeons
Watch the Ultima VII intro/outro and then come back saying you enjoyed oblivion's storyline. Welcome to the Black Gate... Of Oblivion? 🤨
@@messire9837 pardon?
hbomberguy type energy, I'm here for it
appreciate that!
what a soothing and lovely voice
awwww, thanks :3
Although the first two games were lacking much lore in game they had official dev and forum stuff that went deep into the lore.
This is where for example we got the Yokudan pantheon stuff and much of imperial history.
FYI I am Turokman2000 the dwarf-orc guy and I also wrote Hemskeriad
Great video,
Sad to see that this is the state of TES, which is why I am not excited for the 6th installment
I saw the thumbnail somewhere... Oh, it's from the Russian RUclips channel IGM. They have a series of videos called "How [game series] died". There is even a joke among the viewers "Oh, you are grave diggers, IGM".
Maybe you should write the source of the picture under your video?
I found it somewhere on a forum, thought it would reflect the vid pretty good. If it's from someones channel I'll just make a similar one and change it in a few
Elder scrolls 6 is gonna be rough. Might skip
I too love to criticise oblivion, it scores the lowest on my mainline TES ranking, but it's high time this jungle argument suffer the same fate as Roggvir of Solitude.
1. it would be extremely challenging to portray a jungle environment given the limitations of the time, culminating in either a lack of visual fidelity and/or appalling performance.
2. It's incompatible with what we've come to expect from TES since arena -- Variety of biomes, and in later entries, ample beautiful vistas. See the difference between Oblivion's golden coast to blackwood, Skyrim's forests of Falkreath to Eastmarch. A jungle is by definition an uniform, undeveloped, humid forest. Good luck getting vistas when you can't see 20m in front of you due to dense vegetation.
3. Jungles are extremely hostile environments, incredibly suited to extreme biodiversity but diametrically antagonistic to the development of complex societies. No complex society has come from jungles, plenty exist/ed in adjacence to them, none within. To think that a Cyrodill as a massive jungle is a good idea is to not understand the concept of a jungle.
This is pertinent to both Valenwood and Black-Marsh. Any game set in those provinces would inevitably change the geographical lore or be very different experiences to the TES formula.
If Cyrodill was a jungle, oblivion would be worse for it. Todd was incredibly based in changing it. And I'll defend the decision to change Cyrodill from a jungle to temperate hills to my dying breath.
Great video, btw.
I kinda agree, however Shivering Isles showed that the game engine of the era could portray some unhinged bioms pretty well
@@Chimperium Shivering isles is perhaps the best example of how biome diversity meshes incredibly well with the TES aesthetics, I feel very dumb for not mentioning it now. Buy you're right, the technology was there, though the density of vegetation that it's required to portray a jungle. I think that's only beginning to be possible nowadays with the modern mesh instancing techniques and on-the-fly mesh decimation techniques (vd. UE5's nanite). Green hell comes closest of games in such a setting, but even it often fails to capture the claustrophobic feeling of being in a jungle.
@@dwi-tyo You do not count Mayans as a complex society?
@@rickymartin4457 Yeah, fair enough. Wasn't thinking straight, I retract that point.
It won't until that occultist hack Emil Pagliacci is in charge of writing. Both Oblivion and Skyrim have story that reads like if it was written by a 10 year old, and it has no depth. Civil War is written good and there are many cool concepts they are just extremely shallow. Same goes for gameplay, if not for graphics you would think Skyrim came out before Morrowind. Everything is dumbed down so a 5 year old could figure our. I remember reading a post on reddit by the guy that played Skyrim many times but he never figured out there was a way from Riverwood to Bleak Falls Burrow. I guess he always scaled the mountain??? Imagine if the game had no quests markers. And it really pisses me off because it's what I enjoy in Morrowind, you feel immersed, actually looking for places instead of travelling from cave to dungeon like in a theme park. It reminds me of playing Gothic as a kid. The only in-game map was an item that you could buy from a cartographer for a lot of money. If you wanted to find a location you had to explore.
Last thing is being the chosen one, I'm sick of it. Morrowind was great because at the beginning you're just some fucking guy. You work as a novice intelligence officer and are told to just explore and do side quests for a bit so you don't seem suspicious. In Oblivion, even more in Skyrim, I always feel like I'm pressured by plot to do the main quest.
At this point I'm more excited for Project Tamriel than for TES VI. I just don't believe Bethesda can deliver. I know Todd said he wanted to do fantasy life simulator but the modern gaming market would never let you release a game like Daggerfall or Morrowind. Everything has to simple and streamlined to sell more copies. It's a shame
The fact theres almost no Tsaesci stuff in skyrim is mindblowingly disappointing to me, Saarthal is still there and its even older than the Akirivri invasion.
Good video, but callling OBLIVION mid is completely bullshit, there's an argument to be made if Morrowind is better or not, but Oblivion is glorious and you just don't see it , heck the side quests are so much better.
I'm also an Oblivion kid, my first TES. In comparison to Morrowind it's indeed mid. Besides few quests Oblivion is just sad
More like a “Lore of Bethesda in regards to TES”
lol, true
Let me guess. He said that the Deep Elves aren't Dwarves and he was tossed into the ocean?
ah yes, because skyrim has good lore
mostly made by the guy, who's not a part of the company anymore
Good but under utilized and explained. It was made to be easy to immerse in the forest not the lore.
Sadly, Skyrim came out in the rising age of casual gamers, everything had to get more streamlined and dumped out, also if VA’s weren’t this fucking expensive, both Skyrim and Oblivion could have their lore more showcased and fleshed out.
TES is nothing without MK. Oblivion and Skyrim proved that.
No hope for TES VI..just look at Fallout and StarField.
Who's MK? Doesn't sound like Ted Peterson to me!
Same with Warcraft... I loved Warcraft Lore, but pulling back the Veil, how disappointing Shadowlands is from a lore writing perspective with so many issues... it just really severely stopped my interest in the Lore. Some things are best left in muddy waters, especially if it is of these things you can't easily put in words. I wish they never would have written it all. It already started before. But that was the final nail.
this man is liking all of the nice comments shows us he is a trool..... like what the hell.
I just like the ones I like, lol
this ois the reason why i am thuroughly dissapointed in the ES6 location. give us elswhyr or the black marches. high rock will be bloody boring.
Everyone thought Skyrim was going to be boring before it came out because up to that point it had been depicted as this borderline uninhabitable frozen wasteland that was practically just a slightly less frozen Atmora.
@ And yet the Morrowind lore and environment is far more interesting.
have you ever read the lore on the black marsh and elswhyr there is so much more you can do with this then any other location.
@@zool201975 Missing the point that Skyrim is proof they have the talent to expand on what's seemingly an extremely boring province and turn it into a beloved place. The sad reality is that I doubt a game set in furry/scalie land would have the same appeal as humans and elves to the wider audience, which means less sales, which means less incentive for them to make a game there. I've wanted a game set in Black Marsh since I first played Morrowind but I really doubt we'll see it anytime soon outside of fan projects. I've also always wanted a game (more like an expansion about another expedition) involving Akavir but I know that also probably won't happen for much the same reasons as Black Marsh or Elsweyr.
TBH I was blown away when Oblivion came out. The faces and art style were not that bothering back then. I think when meme culture came up, Oblivions graphic style and face design became a laughingstock. Yeah it had some quirks but so did Morrowind. Both main stories are very good. What I don't like about MW is that you become a literal god. In Oblivion you are simply a messenger that gets tangled into the story. I also love Skyrim but I remember how disappointing it was when I found out that you cant create a custom class. Of all "modern" Elder Scrolls games Skyrim has the weakest story. I was never that fond of the whole dragon saga. I found it kinda lame. Nevertheless I played it hundreds of hours.
I'm also an Oblivion kid and the fourth TES was my first bethesda game. I love it! However, speaking realistically, Morrowind had a muuuuuch deeper story. Not only that, but the main quests were very well interconnected, lead you to many different side activities and made you explore the island, which, in its place, was much more fascinating than Cyrodiil. Morrowind beats Oblivion in everything that can't be attributed to age, so I'm just giving Morrowind it's due.
The cult of Kirkbride strikes again, I see. What other cliches can we pick up from the dustbins of the earl 2000's?
Oblivion is my favorite elder scrolls game. It's less clunky than morrowind and still offers a good roleplaying experience. Of course, the facial animations are atrocious, but i think the game itself is a happy medium between morrowind and skyrim.
TBH, I don't think that any TES could give you any adequate degree of roleplaying. Morrowind either. I love Oblivion, but it still could've been much better. They just emphasis on the wrong things imo
So Todd will do anything to make a Star Wars game huh? Checks out.
ES6 is gonna suck huh
considering everything said in the video and the newer games from Bethesda - most likely yes
i am 100% prepared for TES6 to be garbage
oh man, I've missed the unemployed part of the TES fandom - stolen art as the thumbnail, Kirkbride's personality cult, over 20m video length (emulating the Kirkbride's graphomania)... oh man, it's the whole vibe of it's own
got me with the thumbnail, I'll change it, no worries
unemployed is the cute little term the dispassionate part of the bethesda fancult likes to use when referring to people who want their favorite franchises' stories and worlds to have a little more bite
i suspect you must've seemed pretty unemployed too when it came to defending emil's "starfield isn't empty, it's realistic" statement
@@noahsylvester1754 you didn't have to cope this hard mate, it's okay
@@tacoforces4234 wow, wonder how todd'll react when he finds out one of his NPCs found its way out of one of his terrible games
how many more lines like these does the drone have in store? i bet you whispered that one to yourself with all the intelligence and confidence of an underpaid bethsoft VA just before posting it
@@noahsylvester1754 now you try to find your way out of your mom's basement
aye im trying to make it good with my web series
Plugborn is a fire name! If you'd make a fire instrumental on TES theme - I'd feature it in my next TES vid
Honestly I prefer the oblivion and Skyrim setting , Morrowind looks like it was made on a weed trip
Morrowind is bizzare for sure and might be off-putting, but it's not so much about the setting itself, but what's inside. Skyrim and Oblivion became too shallow in comparison.
@@Chimperium I agree
LSD actually. I've heard that some of the Morrowind books were written during a weekend bender.
C0da makes everything canon
TES top
5:30 just like the post by Delicieuxz, this pretty much gives another hint at the idea of Todd Howard being the downfall of the elder scrolls series. It's really hard to think that for something that occured 20 years ago. Morrowind aside from it's music and interesting world isn't that good, a very overrated game indeed.
Another missinformation video lesgooooooo!!!
would be glad to hear some particular "misinformation" bits and see them debunked, if you'd be so kind
mister chimperium, please forgot about skyrim, touch grass
siryessiryes
I think the only improvement to the lore post kirkbride are the Khajiit, but that was done by a completely different company. ESO did a great job with Kjajiiti Cultre and Religion since they worship both Aedra and Daedra and incorporate all of them into their pantheon. They were a race I would've never thought of playing until that lore came out, and now they're my 2nd Favorite behind Nords.
They sure dug a little deeper, but most of the lore was already established by MK. Check the 1st Pocket Guide to Emprie:
en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Pocket_Guide_to_the_Empire,_1st_Edition/The_Elsweyr_Confederacy
@@ChimperiumI stand Corrected then
I love this video but sadly its really hard to hear you
you mean the way I talk or overall loudness? or like the background noise?
man ESO ruined alot of the lores
Gotta de-cannonize that isht
from my experience the more I learned about the lore of TES the more it felt like tryhardy attempt to be unique and esotheric, while really just repeating the same bits other big fantasy IPs already did. I'd much prefer a good grounded setting that feels lived in, and not everything has to be divine or magical
makes sense, but not Oblivion nor Skyrim are "less magical", they are just less creative and fleshed out in comparison
I would not count Oblivion or Skyrim as "grounded" at all.
@@rickymartin4457 yeah good thing i didn't call them that
your use if the word "crazy" is misplaced, this man studied world religions and some essoterrica that's all
There are not so many game-writers, who studied theology and got a degree in that. Considering that and what a mindblowing universe he created - crazy is not misplaced at all
Idc and idk why it matters. As long as the individual game stories aren’t stupid. I’m not impressed with the background story of the elderscrolls games. Lots of it deserves to be scrapped.
haven't you played a bethsoft game lately? stupid doesn't even begin to cover it
uninspired, thoughtless, boring and terrible, those just about describe every game they've made since oblivion
@@noahsylvester1754 After oblivion, I liked Skyrim. I think the gameplay improves as the games progress. Though perhaps the aesthetics and quests begin to decline. Not gonna play anymore after that probably, in my opinion they’ve dropped the ball with Fallout and their latest space game. I doubt they have what it takes to make the next elder scrolls game great in terms of gameplay, setting, characters, and fun quests. I’m not so concerned about Lore. Lord originally said cyrodil was a jungle and pretty happy they changed that. Sure they have may have provided an in universe explanation, but it was really ad hoc. Gameplay, Aesthetics, etc. all come before any tid bits of Lore. At least in my opinion.
:(
M.E.S.G.A
ESO is ruining the TES lore at an alarming rate. They are releasing annual DLCs with a**-pull lore. The hell is the forgotten prince Ithelia? So much is happening in so little time.
To be fair its not all gloom and doom, Greymoor chapter in instance with its vampire-werewolf alliance to save the souls sended to the hunting grounds and coldharbour with a plan to create a new oblivion realm where the Daedric prince would have no more power over them was quite decent
ESO is just VERY hit or miss with their expansions
@Alpha1598753 hit or miss exactly. Their expansions should be 2 or 3 years at least like with ffxiv and gw2. Far too many and too rushed chapters. Also, your greymoor example being good actually make sense since it is directly connected to molag bal in the base game. That's how things should be. Focus more on the planemeld events and the 3 alliance war. But no, they have to milk it.
As long as MK isnt holed up in his apartment on an acid bender writing, i ain't interested
This is bs, just cause they changed some things from old lore doesn’t make new lore bad, think about how many people got into the franchise cause of games passed morrowind, think of how many will get into it because of es6 sure you might not like it, but claiming it went downhill and all that is just absurd.
new people shouldn't get in to the games. i don't want to see them games need to stay niche and not mainstream.
Yeah right. Have you seen the work of modern writers? It's complete incompetence and garbage, stained by whatever psychotic trend they read off Twitter that week.
It's not the fact that it's something "new", it's the fact that there are almost no "new" things in it of itself and even those newer ones are much worse as far as creativity and quality goes
It literally doesn't matter how many people get into something. What matters is if that something offers a great experience.
@@INSAne_DrUNkard but nothing offers a good experience anymore so it's best just to keep people from getting in to the stuff we like. They never create anything worth investing in to