ijffdresomethings: the elder scrolls analyis

On the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year in the new millenium, a new part of the elder scrolls will be unraveled. We will travel to the province of skyrim, the homeland of the nords, where we will face a new danger to the world at large. Also dragons. Possibly those are one and the same. In anticipation of this new game, we will take a look at what came before, and which aspects of the previous games do we want to see return in Skyrim.

For those of you who never heard of the elder scrolls, let me give you an introduction; The elder scrolls games are open world RPGs that center around the continent of Tamriel. Here, a mighty empire has arisen, which has brought peace and stability to the lands. Every of the games pretty much centers around a different hero, who has to battle a different threat. One notable aspect about the elder scrolls however is that the main plot is wholly optional. You can just ignore it and go off adventuring instead.

The first elder scrolls game was called Arena, which was notable because of its massive tracts of randomly generated land and the fact that the starting dungeon tends to be way too hard. The threat in Arena is the wizard Jagar Tharn, who has kidnapped the emperor using his powerful magic staff. He has split the staff into eight parts and hid them in the most dangerous parts of the world to prevent it from being used against him. The player must travel every corner of the continent to reforge the staff and confront Jagar.

The second game was called daggerfall and this game probably had the most features of any game in the elder scrolls series. You could create your own spells and enchanted items, buy up houses and ships to start your own land-lording empire, become a werewolf, vampire or wereboar. Daggerfall was also big. About ten thousand times as big as morrowind in fact, though this was achieved through the random generation of terrain. Daggerfall's story centers around the Numidium, the original iron golem, and the several political factions warring over it. Daggerfall featured multiple endings, depending on which faction won, and in a way every single one of them is canon. Think space-time anomaly or something. It's fairly confusing.

Between the second game in the series, daggerfall, and the third game in the series, morrowind, there were two stand-alone games; battlespire and redguard. These stand-alones were never that popular. Battlespire takes place in a single massive dungeon, the battlespire, where mages are trained. But when you are sent there, you find that the mages have been slaughtered and daedra (elder scrolls equivalent of demons) have taken over. Redguard takes place on a single island, where you, the redguard Cyrus, are on a quest to save your sister's soul, which leads you into massive political intrigue.

The third game in the series is Morrowind, which shows some major changes from Daggerfall. While daggerfall had a massive amount of randomized terrain, morrowind focused on a smaller area that was set in stone. This had the effect of a much more detailed and developed, though smaller, world. Where Arena focused on the entire continent and daggerfall on two provinces, morrowind focuses on the island of vvardenfell within the province of morrowind. Here, long ago, a great war took place. No one knows the details, but the war resulted in the dwarves vanishing, three chimer ascending to godhood, another chimer with godlike powers being imprisoned beneath red mountain, the death of the greatest hero of the chimer, nerevar, and the curse that turned the remaining chimer into dark elves. Now you, a prisoner, must find the answers underneath the mountains of political machinations, and stop the ancient evil of Dagoth Ur, before he escapes from Red Mountain.

The fourth game in the series is oblivion, which takes place in the heart of the empire of Tamriel, the province of Cyrodiil. Here, the emperor is brutally assassinated while fleeing through your prison block. You now shoulder the responsibility of the entire empire. To save every man in the world, you will need to restore an ancient barrier that long has held the world of man and demon apart. But demonic armies are already invading, and cities are falling. Oblivions is notable for its pretty graphics and very lively cities and wilderness, as well as streamlining the gameplay present in earlier elder scrolls series.


Next post in this thread: morrowind vs oblivion.

 

The elder scrolls series has long had a problem with its sequels. Daggerfall just doesn't feel like a sequel to arena. Morrowind doesn't feel like a sequel to either daggerfall, redguard or battlespire. Oblivion doesn't feel like a sequel to Morrowind. Despite the stories supposedly taking place on the same continent, cultures change radically between games. In Arena and Daggerfall, the empire was a unification of all races. In Morrowind and Oblivion, the empire was founded by the imperials who took over the continent by force. In Morrowind, the empire was obviously inspired by greek and roman cultures, with temples, forts and centurions. In Oblivion, a game which takes place only 6 years after morrowind, the empire is obviously late-medieval, with castles and knights. Even the genre changes between games. Morrowind is high fantasy, while oblivion is low fantasy. Today, we compare these two games and see which one we want to inspire skyrim more.

Let me start off by saying that oblivion and morrowind are both, in their own way, very very good. Now that I have appealed to the fanboys, let me also state that both games, are, again, in their own way, quite bad. In oblivion, they really tried hard to solve some of the worse aspects, and in some cases it worked, but just as frequently, they went to far in the other direction to create something even worse. A good example of this is the tutorial/character creation process. In morrowind, you start out on a prison ship. You tell a dude your name, and a text-box tells you how to move. Then you meet a guard, and you tell him your race and gender. Then you go inside and tell the administrator your class and star-sign. In the next room, you find some items that give you brief explanations when you steal them, and a little text-box tells you how to open items and use your journal. All in all, the morrowind tutorial/character creation process takes about 5 minutes, but gives you far too little explanation on just what everything is, no combat practice or just leaving out entire aspects of the game. In oblivion on the other hand, you get a large dungeon, which takes about half an hour to go through and pretty much explains everything, but takes way to long to finish and get to playing. And when you create a new character, you need to do the same dungeon again. And for every character after that, you need to do the same long, tedious dungeon again. Because the oblivion start takes way too long, I prefer Morrowind. For skyrim though, I'd prefer a shorter version of the oblivion dungeon, but with the option to just skip the damn thing. Let's compare some other things.

Combat: Easily the weakest point of morrowind, and the strongest point of oblivion. Combat in morrowind is tedious and often fairly annoying, with you encountering the same enemies over and over, and defeating them in the same way over and over. Oblivion adds all sorts of new battle techniques, both for melee fighters, ranged fighters and magic fighters. No longer do you have to switch between weapon mode and magic mode. Sneaking now actually feels like sneaking instead of being shorter. The open areas of the world are a lot larger, so becoming a ranged character actually feels like it has some use now. The only thing that really seems missing from oblivion is dual-wielding, which has already been announced for skyrim.

Leveling: For me, this is the weakest point of oblivion. When you level up, everything levels up with you, from the random bandits, to the city guard, and even the inventory of the shopkeepers increases in quality. Everything, except people who you need to escort for specific quests. This pretty much has the effect of actually making you weaker as you level up, because everything else becomes stronger at a greater rate than you do. True, morrowind featured a number of leveled enemies as well, but at least town guards and bandits stayed the same, which allowed you to actually access more areas as you grew in power. If you grew a number of levels at once, which is quite possible if you are an alchemist, you'd actually become critically underpowered in oblivion, which really misses the entire point of leveling. I'd really like for skyrim to more closely resemble morrowind in this regards.

Phat lootz: a big part of any rpg is the attainment of loot. Getting good and rare lootz gives you a good feeling, but only if you have to work for it. The point of getting this legendary stuff is to make your character stand out from the mass, to make him/her a unique and legendary hero. Equipment needs to resemble the path your character took and the dangers he faced.
To a large degree morrowind manages to attain this. No matter what level you are, you will always appreciate finding rare armour. Morrowind however fails in that there are often quality levels of armour or weaponry missing. Light armour for example, has no quality levels between the common and weak chitin and the incredibly rare and powerful glass. Medium armour misses a high-level variant. The only armour kind that feels complete is heavy. Artifacts in the game are usually handled pretty decently, but due to the small dungeons of morrowind, some can be attained way too easily, most notable the mentor's ring, which you can get within fifteen minutes of starting the game (that's including character creation), even if you have no idea that it exists (I got it around the twenty minute mark the first time I played).
Oblivion gets around the issue of missing armour qualities by reducing the amount of armour types from three (heavy, medium, light) to two (heavy and light), so that less armour is needed to fully fill up the system. Artifacts in oblivion are all pretty hard to get, and you certainly don't get any at the start of the game. Though I would argue that a bit too many artifacts are attainable by doing the daedric shrine quests, this is consistent with the overall theme. Oblivion however also has a very big flaw in the phat lootz department: you work hard for an armor, spend a ton of gold on it. Then you go pick some flowers, train your alchemy and go up three levels. And suddenly every random bandit in the world has your previously incredibly rare and powerful armor. Why are they still bandits anyway? Their armour is worth enough to live comfortably for the rest of their days. Because oblivion uses far less armour slots than morrowind (9 vs 17), there is also far less armour pieces to hunt for, and since you find entire sets on random bandits anyway, so there isn't a lot of fun in set hunting.
Overall, I prefer Morrowind in this regard, although it could be massively improved. For Skyrim, I hope they keep the heavy/light armour sets, but go back to the 17 armour slots system. Have a bit of variety in the acquisition of artifacts, but please make acquiring any of them a memorable experience.

The world: Both games have their strengths and weaknesses in this regard. Morrowind has a very static world, where characters can only move around in a small area, if at all. In oblivion, pretty much every single character has a complete life, moving to their home in the evening, sometimes even going out of the city to visit far-away relatives (or secret cults). Morrowind however has much more interesting factions than oblivion. Morrowind has the political conflicts between the hlaalu, telvanni, redoran, mages guild, fighters guild, thieves guild, cammona tong, morag tong, the imperial legion and the tribunal temple. No player in Morrowind can join all the factions, and it isn't really required to join any of them, making the factions the player joins a very nice representation of his personality. In oblivion, you HAVE to join the thieves guild if you are gonna steal (no one else will buy stolen stuff, which they can somehow identify), you HAVE to join the mages guild if you want to create your own spells or enchantments. In addition, only five real factions are available in the game, compared to morrowind's thirteen.
As for the world itself: Oblivion absolutely has amazing graphics, and the terrain itself is amazing to run around. Oblivion has fairly bland cities however, all with just a small variation in "generic medieval" building style. Morrowind has much more interesting city designs, but not nearly as much cool landscapes.
In the end, I couldn't really choose either. Both are amazing in their own way, and for skyrim I really hope for a combination of the two. Give me people that really have a life, and factions I care about by giving me a choice in whether to join them or not and a reason to fight for them. And of course, I want both cool cities and cool landscapes.

 

Story: like so many things, the bad aspects of the story in oblivion and morrowind are the same, but in the opposite direction. Morrowind featured an absolutely epic backstory, interesting characters, a conflict that had actual conflicting morals and a significant impact upon the face of the world. However, it kept a lot of stuff in the shadows, referenced massive amounts of important stuff only off-handedly and for those that did not spend hours studying it, was a pretty confusing mess. Hell, we never really get to know who fought who at red mountain, only a dozen conflicting accounts, and that battle is the core of the entire backstory. Morrowind was also not very strong in the epic battle department, featuring only a single large scale fight and that one was rather underwhelming. Oblivion had little0 backstory relevant to the current conflict and it was a simple story of good versus evil. However, it was clear to everyone what was happening and why you were doing what you were doing. And frankly, oblivion featured some epic battles. I myself prefer the morrowind way, but I fully accept that people would prefer the much clearer oblivion story. I would like skyrim to feature some more grand battles though.

Crime: I really like playing the lovable thief, but both morrowind and oblivion have quite let me down in this regard. In morrowind, many thefts are just criminally easy and completely fall flat on the excitement-O-meter. On the plus side, late in the game, there are a lot of cool exciting thefts to be made, but it often feels more like exploiting game mechanics than it feels like sneaking around. Oblivion made stealing a lot more exciting, because everything that you'd expect to be illegal is illegal, and you can't just go upstairs in anyone's house to raid the place. You actually had to sneak, or hide in a corner of a building and wait for everyone to leave, or sneak into a bedchamber at night and steal the valuables. However, there really isn't anything useful to be gained by stealing and at higher levels than level 3, it just falls flat.
What I'd like for skyrim is a mix between the two. Make stealing as exciting as it was in Oblivion, but don't forget to also include exciting stuff to steal.

Travel: You'd think this to be a fairly minor point, but both morrowind and oblivion receive major critique from fans of the other. In Morrowind, there are a number of travel methods. You can take the silt strider between dunmer cities, you can go from any mage guild location to any other, you can use divine intervention to instantly go to the nearest imperial temple, or almsivi intervention to go to the nearest dunmer temple, you can take a ship from almost any coastal town to any other and you can even mark a certain location and go back to it any given time using recall. However, there are some pretty big gaps in this travel system, with seyda neen not having ship access (despite the fact that you start the game arriving there in a ship) and pelagiad having neither a mages guild, silt strider or harbor. It's also a big shame that when you eventually get a stronghold, it's pretty much inaccesible. You also walk quite slowly unless you specialized in speed, and a lot of the locations you need to access are quite out of the way. As a high-level mage, or with enough money for potions and scrolls, you get access to leviation, which allows you to float anywhere rather quickly, which is a good high-level alternative. Still, moving around can be very annoying in morrowind.
Oblivion replaces all of the travel methods from morrowind except walking by a single system: click on any location on the map you visited before, you go there instantly. You even start out with ability to travel instantly to any city, despite never having visited them. This is a little too convenient of a system for me, and can ruin the experience of travelling around. The alternative to walking, the horse mount, is quite good however, and I really like it.
For skyrim, I basically want the system from morrowind, but with the mounts from oblivion so you can travel to far-away locations more readily. Maybe the ability to create your own teleporation network, like the mages guild has, as well, as long as it's high-level. Also, I would like to see some mounts more exotic than horses, like the silt striders from morrowind. Also, please put the cities back into the overworld again, so we can use levitate. It's just so much fun.

Houses: Always fun to own a house in an rpg, for it is a place to store great treasure and to remind yourself of all you have achieved. In Morrowind, you could get a house by killing the original owner(s)(every city has at least one suitable bandit cave, or a character that you are allowed to kill for a quest) or by constructing your very own stronghold after becoming an important figure in one of the great houses. The strongholds were pretty underwhelming, mostly because they didn't offer good places to put your artifacts or armor sets, but they were also fun because they were a show of political power.
Houses in oblivion were handled very differently. Every one of the cities had a single house for sale, varying from the tiny hut in the imperial city to the mansion in skingrad. Every house could than be expanded by purchasing extra furniture sections. However, putting your own stuff in the house was annoying and more than likely to mess stuff up due to the overly-sensitive physics engine, not to mention that I have lost more than one rare jewel due to weird glitches.
For skyrim, I hope for a combination of the two systems. Have both houses that show what you have achieved, as normal houses in the cities themselves. Also, for god's sake, add mannequins to the game, so you have somewhere to show off collected armor sets. Also, give us some sort of editing system a la the construction to fill in our houses without knocking everything over a dozen times.

Other notes:
- Please fix the accidental team-kill mechanism from oblivion. When you kill a friendly mob, you will be reported as a murderer, even if it was that heavily-wounded idiot that actually stepped in front of your fireballs during a big battle. Make it so that you won't get reported for a kill if you took less than 25% of their health.
- Bring back the companion share option from morrowind. It's just so much handier than the dropping items in front of them method from oblivion.
- please don't turn social interaction into a mini-game. It just doesn't make sense and breaks the suspension of disbelief.
- the oblivion gates were very underwhelming due to their small pool of random maps. Please don't do something like those again.

Up next: plug-ins and expansions.

 

Well, fourth post in the series, and for this one, we will look at the official plug-ins that have been produced for both Oblivion and Morrowind and what could be learned from these for any possible plug-ins for Skyrim. Now you may say "dude, the game isn't even out yet. Why are you whining about this already?". The answer to this is that the elder scrolls franchise has somewhat of a history with bad plug-ins, with oblivion's infamous horse armour as the most notable. This dlc only came out two weeks after the release of oblivion and was already in production before oblivion came out. That's why I am doing this WAY up front.

Let's go through every dlc and plug-in, shall we?

Morrowind
Morrowind, unlike oblivion, has free downloadable content, which makes them more like patches. You can find all of them here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/morrowind/expansions/ . Because they are free, I will judge them more lightly than oblivion.
entertainers: This one is an interesting concept, but lacks in scale. It allows you to perform several entertainment tricks, like singing, drumming, dancing and juggling to entertain the patrons of a bar. You can earn a few gold doing this and also earn the liking of the people in the bar, which could be handy for quests. The problem however is that this is limited to only a single bar, and there is no real reason for that, since it takes just a couple of minutes to implement the feature all around the world. It's also annoying that all the entertainment is done through speech balloons describing what you do, but I don't really expect new animations in a free plug-in. The way the entertainment works with stats and certain items is quite good though. I rate this plug-in decent
Bitter coast sounds: The bitter coast is a swampy coast-region. What this mod does is add the sound of frogs near pools and shows some insects flying near the rotten plants. That's it. It's really more of a patch than something that adds content. I rate this plug-in should have been included in a patch, not as a seperate plug-in
Area effect arrows: This game adds some magic ranged items with areas of effect to the game, and is pretty underwhelming, as the game already had the possibility to create area-of-effect bolts, arrows and throwing weapons, just not any pre-made ones. The plug-in only adds the items to a single, new, shop, when placing a few in already-existing shops and leveled lists would have integrated the new stuff a lot more naturally (and would have taken less to boot). My main problem with this plug-in is that it is just minimalistic, to the degree that I, a poor and fairly inexperienced modder, could have made this in less than an hour. Give me two hours and I could have given the new items a texture that would have made them more unique. I rate this mod poor
helm of tohan: this mod adds a new artifact to the game, the helm of tohan, and isn't really bad or good. The helm of tohan has the same looks and stats as the adamantium helm from the tribunal expansion, except for it's higher enchantment value. The quest that accompanies this is short, but at least a bit original, so I have to rate this mediocre
Master Index: Spread all over the island of vvardenfell, there are 7 ancient dagoth strongholds. Each of these strongholds has a magic propylon chamber, allowing the wielder of it's index the ability to travel to the other strongholds. The master index mod allows you, when you have all 7 indexes, to tie together the mages guild transport network and the propylon transport network. It's a very good idea and well executed and it actually makes the stronghold network useful. That's why I am rating this should have been included in a patch, not as a seperate plug-in, as it fixes the uselessness of a game feature.
Lefemm armor:Easily the best official plug-in. It adds one full set of light armour and one partial set of medium armour to the game and spreads them all over vvardenfell, giving the sets to both shops and individual people. The armour has unique looks and actually fills in the quality holes I mentioned two posts ago. The sets have two downsides however; one, in that they were designed for female characters and males just look silly wearing them and two, that one of the better armours in the game is now available in random shops, which ruins the feel of it a bit. Still, I rate this plug-in good. Hell, even if if this was purchasable, I'd still rate this good.
Adamantium armor: Adds the rare adamantium armour from tribunal to several shops on vvardenfell. Remember what I said in the previous paragraph about having one of the best armours in the game just available from the shops? That's all this plugin does. For me, this plug-in ruins one of the most fun armour hunts in the game. Still, I can imagine people without tribunal wanting good medium armour that does not have half the police declaring jihad on its users, though it could have been implemented A LOT better and this just feels lazy. Give me an hour and I could turn this in a fun armour hunt. I rate this poor
Siege of Firewatch: I don't get this; most people really really like this mod. This mod, at most times, feels like it was made by an absolute amateur, with some finishing touches added by a decent modder. The new islands added are almost devoid of any objects, aside from lots and lots of marshmerrow and closer to the fort some trama root, despite neither shrub growing in the region. The entire island and the entire dungeon, are covered in hordes of only two mobs: skeleton warriors and skeleton archers. Both very low-level mobs, which your allies have no problems with at all. The interiors of the castle are almost completely void of any furniture or decorations. The end-boss is, compared to skeleton warriors, so ridiculously overpowered it's just laughable. And the final artifact, for which you did all of this, doesn't even have a unique look like all other artifacts in the game. True, there are some nice touches, like the hidden stockpile room, but these are so completely unlike the rest of the island that I suspect some last-minute alterations by a better modder. Overall, I rate this plug-in mediocre.



Tomorrow the oblivion's purchasable dlc's.

 

I like typing...

For now, a look at the oblivion plug-ins:

Horse armour: Remember last post, when I mentioned this infamous piece of DLC crap? Basically, horse armour was a feature that was removed from the original oblivion at the last minute because they couldn't finish it in time for the release. Two weeks later, however, they released this feature as a DLC for $1.89. And it seems it was still not complete. The DLC featured no new quests and only 2 of the 12 in-game armour types have horse armours available. I, like pretty much everyone, rate this bad DLC bad. bad. This DLC is so clearly incomplete it's not even funny; there is a major bug in that it can remove your rare unique shadowmere horse from the world, the DLC also adds a book to an obscure dungeon, with the text

and no inventory item. So this is basically an incomplete buggy cut feature. bad.
The Orrery: Inside the walls of the arcane univercity stands a magnificent device of ancient power: the orrery. Constructed long ago by the now-vanished dwarves, this machine can observe and channel the power of the stars. But now, this magnificent machine stands broken. Take back the parts that were taken by bandits and restore this machine to its former glory! The quest this DLC adds has you take back the orrery parts from four bandit camps to gain access to a power of temporarily draining one stat in favor of another. The parts themselves are references to morrowind, which is always a plus in my book, the animation of the orrery is absolutely beautiful and the powers you can obtain are well-implemented and interesting. The quest itself is however a bit short. Still, this dlc is worth the $1.89 it and gets a decent rating
Spell tomes: Basically, this makes some bandit mages carry magical tomes from which you can learn spells. It's a simple but efficient mechanism and the cheapest of the DLC, costing only $0.99. I think it's a good idea, because you are far less relient on the mages guild this way, something which I complained about in the second post. Overall, I think it's worth it, but only because of the lowered price, and I think this is the sort of stuff that patches are useful for. I rate this mediocre-decent
The four house DLC's: These are actually four different DLC's, but are easily grouped, because each one provides a very luxurious mansion for a different kind of player, gives the player the option of pursuing a job direction without joining any guilds, and has the same price of $1.99.
Wizard's tower adds a powerful tower with its own alchemy lab (gives a bonus to alchemy), gardens with rare herbs, a summoning circle to create elemental guardians, an enchanting altar and a spellmaking altar, so you have access to those services without being a member of the mages guild, and a teleportation circle that can instantly bring you to any mages guild. The tower also has both a beautiful look and beautiful feel. The only thing that annoys me is the small chaotic storage chamber with the weird graves that don't fit. Otherwise, it's the best of the houses and I rate it good
Thieves den adds a pirate cove with a stranded ship. But before you and your thieving buddies can take it for yourself, you will first need to clean it of it's previous owners, who are now amongst the living dead. But when you finally claim this place for yourself, you can turn it into your own private thieves guild, including a fence, a spymaster, a supplier, a security expert and a fletcher. Once a week, you can set your crew of pirates out to plunder, and when they come back, you can claim some booty for yourself. Thieves den also adds a lot of new enchanted items that are very useful for those who want to sneak around unnoticed. The greatest downside of this mod is that you, the sneaky stealthy thief, get a pirate ship, which doesn't seem wholly appropriate. Otherwise, this mod is decent. It isn't nearly as graphically imposing as the wizard's tower, but I admit it's kind of cool to own a group of pirates.
Vile Lair is my least favorite of the four mansions, and is made for the Eeeeevil player and serves as an alternative to the dark brotherhood. My main problem with this mansion is that it's a ruin. Not just when you find it, but even after you purchase the upgrades, it remains a ruin. Not even a particularly evil looking ruin. Honestly, if you placed this thing in the sewers of the Imperial City and removed the Eeeeevil altar, it'd work a lot better as a thieves den. The pirate cove is just fine for evil characters. Meh, I'm rambling. Mechanically, the vile lair works fine. It gives you an alternative to the temple's heals, which is really handy as an evil character, a place to cure vampirism, a cattle cell for vampires, a garden with poisonous plants and a nice storage area. Overall, I'd have to rate this thing decent, but note that the stylistic choice seems a bit odd to me. Maybe some weird daedric temple located within oblivion would have been better.
Fighter's stronghold was the last of the four mansions to be released and I think it's pretty good. It's basically a castle, including knights, a treasury, a secret treasure vault, a blacksmith, a dwemer forge, the possibility to stuff animals as trophies, a chef, a maid and someone to make wine for you. Like the orrery, I like the fact that this plug-in references a previous game, something which oblivion is quite short of. This is a fine mod and deserves a good rating.
Mehrunes' Razor: This is easily and by far my favorite plug-in because of it's length, strong standing in lore, and nice level design. A telvanni arch-mage has gone rogue and he has hired a large army of mercenaries and miners to unearth the ancient elven city of Varsa Baalim and find Mehrunes razor, a mythic artifact, in his plans to overthrow the empire. The dungeon added for this quest is absolutely massive and provides very much fun. Though it is slightly more expensive than the other plug-ins ($2.99) I'd say it's well worth it. The rating is, of course, good


in conclusion
Well, the conclusion is pretty easy, but it's worth stating anyway
- If you add a house, make sure it actually looks good. Making it visible from the outside is also a big plus, as it really gives you a feel of might to own a big building in the overworld.
- If you add any mythic artifacts, remember to give them a unique look.
- A slightly more expensive DLC with a long and epic dungeon crawl is preferred over a cheaper but short adventure.
- If you add a quest, be sure to give it an epic ending. This is my main liking of the orrery mod, though Mehrunes razor also has a pretty nice ending.
- If it was intended as a game feature, don't DLC it. Make it a patch.

 

And this is the sixth post in the series, made after I spent about a week playing both morrowind and oblivion. Purely for research of course >.>. But during that time, I have been making a couple of observations about things that could be improved in both morrowind and oblivion.

AI
These are mostly some minor notes regarding what AI improvements could be made.
- If the melee fighter can't reach his ranged enemy, let him seek cover
- Let the shopkeeper follow you into other rooms. Or let him even call the guards because he is suspicious.
- Guards should not recognize you as a criminal if you stole a loaf of bread half a continent away.
- For god's sake, it shouldn't take running through three bandit camps, an undead legion and a gate into hell itself to get rid of a chasing guard. Prioritize, mister guard.
- Create a state called alert. A character is alert when feeling threatened, but not in combat. An alerted character draws his weapon, ceases idles conversation and looks around. This is mostly so that bandits will not have a merry conversation while you are shooting arrows at them (and missing).

clutter and assorted loot
For those of you not in the know, clutter consists of useless items spread throughout the game world. Clutter is mostly there to provide atmosphere, such as having cups and plates on tables, but can also serve as a source of sell-able stuff for thieves or as loot for tomb raiders.
Roughly 50% of the loot you find on your travels is useless to you and consists of clutter, low-grade armor and weapons and clothing. 40%, while useful, is nothing to write home about and consists of low-grade trade goods (stuff you use to make other stuff), potions, scrolls, magical rings and amulets and ammo. The remaining 10% is the interesting loot and consists of gems, high-quality trade goods and high-grade armour and weapons.
Now why am I telling you this? To make you realize that most of the time, players expect to find a loot of useless stuff in dungeons. So make sure, when designing a dungeon, to actually add stuff like that. Sixth house bases in Morrowind were quite boring to raid, because you couldn't really find anything there other than some stuff in the final chamber.
Oblivion also had its problems with this. As I said before, clutter is mostly there to give atmosphere(and the same really goes for all the useless loot). So, when you go to a place that is supposed to have a different atmosphere, you expect different clutter. Oblivion seems to have missed this, as both ayleid ruins and the realm of oblivion lacked in their clutter. Ayleid ruins had varla stones and welkynd stones as their only unique items. No weapons, no armour, no cutlery, no nothing. You found mostly the same items in ayleid ruins you found anywhere else. Oblivion had a similar problems, though it had some weapons.
The lesson to draw from this is that when designing a dungeon type, be sure to also design some stuff that fits the setting.


edit: Modding
I wish for the modding program to be capable of three new things:
1. Create new spell effects.
2. Declaration of areas for script triggers.
3. Alter the terrain with a script.

 

My biggest worry about skyrim
Honestly, as a setting, skyrim sounds really generic compared to some of the other provinces. I'll give a summary of all to demonstrate.
Black Marsh, home of the living trees and the lizard-like argonians. Black Marsh has long suffered as an imperial province and was the first faction to break away. Now, the argonian lizard tribes wage war against those who slighted them in the past. Argonians live in symbiosis with intelligent trees, the hist, who are as old as creation itself.
cyrodiil: already covered in oblvion.
Elseweyr: Home to more than 20 variations of the same intelligent species, the cat-like khajiit. The khajiit are split between two nations, with their governments rotating as the supreme government every few months. The khajiit are almost completely dependant on a drug that is concidered illegal everywhere else in the world.
Hammerfell: already covered in daggerfall. Hammerfell is home to the redguards and their many port cities. Hammerfell is also home to a massive desert filled with nomads.
High Rock: where culture once started, with a structure where the gods decided on the faith of the universe. This province was also covered in daggerfall, where the gods themselves decided to interfere and reshape the dozens of city-states into a united front. But now, the states have begun to crumble again.
Morrowind: Completely ****ing destroyed in between morrowind and skyrim. -_-
Skyrim: Humans first landed here. Also has mountains.
Summerset isle: Home of the altmer and the psijjic order, land of magic. Summerset isle is covered in beautiful nature and great cities. However, under this beauty lurks a repressive class system and the mysterious necromantic sload constantly pose a threat.
Valenwood: a province covered in rainforest and inhabited by the savage bosmer, who are cannibalistic and in times of great danger, transform into dangerous beasts.

As an additional note, the nords were pretty much fully covered in bloodmoon already, so there isn't really that much new to find out. Still, imma hopin' ta be surprised.

As a sidenote: what the hell bethesda? Was it really neccesary to not only have most of morrowind invaded and slaughtered, but also to destroy the entire the playable area of the elder scrolls 3? For those of you not in the know, here is a step-by-step
1. During the oblivion crisis, a great gate opened in ald-ruhn, completely destroying it. House redoran moved it's government to blacklight in eastern morrowind, which was sacked completely by orc and nord invaders.
2. The ministry of truth fell from the sky into vivec, causing red mountain to erupt and completely destroy all life on vvardenfell (where you played in TES3)
3. Taking advantage of the situation, the argonians invaded morrowind, attacking and destroying the last remnants of civilization.

 

On another extra note:
give yourself the possibility to include more than one legal system. This was less of an issue in oblivion, due to there only being a single law system, but in morrowind this is one of the most frustrating shortcomings of the engine. So many things are either illegal when they shouldn't be, such as attacking other members of house telvanni or skooma smugglers refusing to trade with someone who carries skooma, while others aren't illegal when they should be, such as not carrying hospitality papers in sadrith mora, trading in dwemer or limeware within imperial towns, summoning the undead within a non-telvanni dunmer city or carrying apogrypha within non-telvanni/non-hlaalu dunmer territories.

 

Also, another extra note



IT'S CALLED TESTING! Both morrowind and oblivion have such a massive number of misplaced objects that it's almost funny. Morrowind, in addition, is rife with both big and small mistakes, from wrong or missing enchantments, to misspelled names to broken pathing. In addition, morrowind might be the only game I have played where the freaking sound options are broken; AoE spell explosions, sound spells and some minor stuff is not affected by the settings and can not be turned softer, louder or just off.

THE OTHER THING IS ALSO CALLED TESTING! Gameplay elements that should really have been fixed before the game was shipped and were not are also common. Oblivion had it's very annoying non-changing plants, where there was no way to see if you harvested something or not (morrowind had it as well, but it was generally easy to find a large cluster of ingredients), something which was actually rather easy to fix and made the game a lot greater. Morrowind had a ton more, including overpowered early game items (ring of toxic cloud comes to mind, as it is an item you can easily attain at level 3 and is capable of one-shotting 95% of the enemies you encounter).
The most severe example of this however is tel uvirith. It is the house you obtain during the telvanni questline and is the sign of your political power, fully developing into a wizard tree-tower as you become archmagister and, politically, one of the five most powerful people on vvardenfell. It is also utterly useless, because it takes 15 minutes of walking to get there from the closest town, is located in the most under-developed area of the game, so you can't use it as an adventuring outpost, and generally lacks in storage area. ( for those who still want to play telvanni, I advise the excellent Rise of House Telvanni, Uvirith's Legacy and Building up Uvirith's Legacy. They are some of the best-crafted morrowind mods you will ever find)


Also: adding a poll
edit: I guess I should also tell my opinion. As a vanilla game, no expansions nor DLC, I prefer Morrowind. It gives the player the feeling of an actual adventurer, growing in position and acquiring rare and unique treasures. Oblivion feels way too static, and it doesn't really feel like you are a greater hero at the end then you were at the beginning. However, if I look at the product as I play it, including expansions, DLC and, most importantly, mods, I have to admit that my opinion of oblivion improves vastly until it is about en par with morrowind. However, because the vanilla game is still better, morrowind gets my vote.

 

One day someone will respond. One day!

Mobs
This bit is regarding the assorted mobs the player will encounter on his travels, such as demonic invaders, undead legions and wild beasts. In general, there are only three rules for mobs:
1) They must be fun. Give the player a fun encounter and a real fight. There are a variety of ways of doing this, and describing it is far beyond the scope of this piece of writing.
2) They must be varied. Some enemies might be strong, some enemies might be weak. Some will just ignore you until provoked, while others will storm you instantly. This variety prevents the player from being bored. That's why it is important that, for every situation, there are a number of mobs available.
3) They must make sense. Why do you encounter a mob here? Is it it's natural habitat? Is there a gateway to it's home dimension nearby? Has the creature been put there to guard something? There is nothing as annoying as fighting velociraptors in medieval castles, fighting naked barbarians in the darkness of space or encountering fire elements at the bottom of the ocean. This sort of thing can make or break the feeling of a setting.
That said, mobs in both morrowind and oblivion have generally been good. Both games featured a decent number of mobs, and, generally, their spread through the game world has been handled well. There are however a number of points which could really use some improvements.
First of all: Water mobs. I can NOT emphasize enough how the aquatic mobs are in need of improvement. Morrowind only featured three aquatic mobs: dreugh, slaughterfish and mudcrabs, all of which were aggressive. Every single time the player entered the water, he would be rushed by hordes of slaughterfish, and, seeing how vvardenfell is surrounded on all sides by water, and had three regions characterized by island chains, this happened a lot. Oblivion, despite having only two aquatic mobs, slaughterfish and mudcrabs, was a bit of an improvement, since there was less water and you didn't get rushed every time you entered it. Still, both games seriously lacked in fun aquatic encounters (note: this only goes for the vanilla games. Oblivion's expansion featured a very nice variety of aquatic enemies)
Second: Cliff racers. Just cliff racers. For those of you not aware of the greatest horror of morrowind, let me give you an explanation. Cliff racers look just like pterodactyl, only without the claws. They are unable to land and use the warm air from red mountain to rest on. They are also the single most annoying mob in the game. They are highly aggressive, appear in every region of the game and often attack in groups. Every single time you had to walk somewhere, you encountered at least a couple of these things. Sometimes, they even attack you in the middle of a city. Please, if you include such a mob, do not spread it through the entire frigging game.
Third: Land dreugh from oblivion. These things are annoying because they don't make any sense. Supposedly, during their fertile period, dreugh start developing legs and move onto land to find a partner. This fertile period only happens once during a dreugh's (rather long) lifetime, so 99% of the dreugh will be found in the water. The problem with this is, as mentioned in point one, that oblivion has no normal dreugh, only this rare land-based variant. I should not need to point out all the logical flaws in this. What I don't get is why there are no normal dreugh in the game. They were pretty cool enemies and oblivion completely lacks in strong water enemies, so there is no reason for the dreugh not to appear.
Fourth: Hungers in shivering isles. As I said before, creatures should only appear in a location where it makes sense for them to appear. Hunger's serve the daedric prince Boethiah. Shivering isles takes place in the realm of Sheogorath. Yet somehow, despite it being a completely different planet, hungers can be found anywhere.

 

I've read every post a few times right from the first moment you started writing these, but I kept from posting a reply... they always seemed to ****ty. D:

Anyway, Morrowind gets my vote anytime, both for the vanilla and the fully expanded versions with all plug-ins. Why? Because of the lore mostly. I couldn't care less for most of the Oblivion stuff, even after having read most of the ingame books and lore. It just doesn't seem as complex as Morrowind, which is what made playing that game the most attractive to me.

As for the graphics, those of Morrowind can be vastly improved with some mods, so meh... this never really was a decisive factor.

The thing that completely made me hate Obivion was the fast travel system. I do not want to have such a system in an adventure game. It completely defeats the purpose of having a cool overworld, guards and companions to guard. Why create roads with patrolling guards, horse armor for those who go off road, and tons of ruins to explore, when the majority of gamers will never see them due to fast travel? I want to explore, damnit. Now all the friends I recommended the game to, told me it was boring because they saw almost nothing of the world... sigh.

Oh, and leveling. It made me feel like crap in Oblivion to encounter random bandits in full Deadric armor. All of Morrowind's epic gear hunting seems like a joke once you see every random stray idiot wearing legendary armor types.

I could rant on and on and on about this, but the missus wants more attention. -.-
Will make a proper post later this week!

Quick question, though... did Vivec himself die? I hope not. D:

 

Vivec's current status is uncertain. He either died at the hands of the nerevarine in tribunal or he vanished somewhere between morrowind and oblivion.

 

For those of you unversed in elder scrolls lore, I tried to find a good summary of history. But since I couldn't find any, I wrote one myself.


The beginning of the universe (also known as the dawn era)
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS NOUGHT BUT VOID. AND FROM THIS VOID AKATOSH WAS BORN. Akatosh was the first of the gods, and many others were born following his creation. These first gods, also known as et’ada, were split between two factions, the padomaic et’ada, who followed padomay/sithis, the concept of change, and the anuic et’ada, who followed anu, the concept of stasis. Of the et’ada, three were the mightiest; Akatosh, the original and mightiest god, and Magnus, the architect, were anuic. Lorkhan was padomaic. One day, Lorkhan approached the other et’ada with an idea he had: the creation of reality. The other padomaic et’ada were disgusted by the very concept of co-creation and went off to create their own realms. Most anuic et’ada were totally into the idea however, and Magnus himself drew up the plans for the creation of the Mundus (the solar system). Eight of the mightiest et’ada gave their body to create eight worlds, and they became the aedra. Other et’ada gave their essence completely to create a ninth world; Nirn. But Nirn was a trap, laid by Lorkhan for the anuic spirits. Nirn was a world that constantly created lower and lower realities within it, until, at its lowest level, it trapped the spirits into bodies of flesh and blood, creating mortals. It was a world of such absolute chaos that it pulled the anuic et’ada into it, until finally, it absorbed even Akatosh. But, at the last moment, Akatosh became the adamantine tower, a massive structure, and brought order to the world of Nirn. All the et’ada met at the adamantine tower to decide over the faith of Lorkhan. Lorkhan’s heart was ripped out, and thrown into the oceans of Nirn.

Basic astronomy/geography
The universe can roughly be divided between two parts: oblivion and the mundus. Oblivion is a realm of magic and energy, where Mundus is a realm of stability. Both realities contain worlds; for Mundus, there are Nirn and the eight divines, the aedra that gave their bodies. For oblivion, there are the daedric realms, created by the padomaic et’ada, now calling themselves the daedric princes, where each of them could do what they wanted. When Nirn was created, several anuic spirits were so disgusted by it, that they fled back into oblivion, creating holes between the two, now visible as stars. The biggest hole was left by magnus and became the sun, through which the magic of oblivion seeped through. Lorkhan’s mutilated body still orbits Nirn in the form of its two moons, Masser and Secunda.

Nirn had several continents. The most notable among these were aldmeris, home of the aldmer, or first folk, yokuda, home of the redguard, or black humans, Atmora, home of the nords, or white humans (yes, they are separate races), akavir, home to the akaviri, four animal-like races, and, the greatest continent of all, Tamriel, where the beastmen lived. Tamriel was home to both adamantine tower, the remains of Akatosh, and red mountain, a volcano formed by the heart of Lorkhan.

The beginning of mortal history (also known as the merethic era)
Aldmeris was destroyed, something which happens surprisingly often to entire continents, and its inhabitants fled to tamriel. First, they settled on summerset isle, but later they spread all over the continent. In time, the elves evolved into different species and laid the groundwork for the current continents. The aldmer of summerset isle evolved into the altmer and became known as the arrogant high elves, who considered themselves, with some justice, the most cultured and civilized people on the globe. The aldmer of Valenwood evolved into the savage, carnivorous bosmer, also known as wood elves and subjugated the creatures of the forest. The ayleid, or wild elves, lived in cyrodiil, which they had bought from the beastmen in return for literacy, and created vast cities, where they bound pure magicka. The mountains of skyrim were settled by the falmer, or snow elves, but to this day, very little is known about them. Morrowind, or resdayn as it was known back then, was settled by the dwemer, who were architects, magicians, alchemists and engineers all rolled into one, as well as a number of powerful aldmeri wizards. There were also two elven races that had simply renamed themselves after a conflict. The maormer, or tropical elves, travelled far away from Tamriel and settled on the island Pyandonea, where they would become lords of the sea. The chimer, or changed elves, believed the altmer had become corrupt and followed the prophet Veloth, who had been inspired by the daedric prince Boethiah in the guise of Trinimac, to morrowind, often clashing with dwemer. The greatest change however happened to the orsimer, who were the closest followers of Trinimac. And when he was taken over by Boethiah, they changed as well, becoming the Orcs.


The men of Tamriel
The early ages of Tamriel can be a confusing and contradictory mess, and the first appearance of humanity is the prime example of this. Some sources claim that all humans are descended from either Yokuda or Atmora. Others claim that humans are indigenous to Tamriel, although to what degree remains unknown. The post popular theory is that there was only a single, unimportant tribe of humanity, the silver-skinned kothringi, until the nords start emigrating and formed the Nedic peoples . Other sources claim that the Nedic people were indigenous to Tamriel. What is known for a fact is that indigenous humans were never an important power on Tamriel and were, at most, slaves. That is until the nords first arrived. Emigrants from Atmora started settling in skyrim, and at first, relations between them and the Falmer were peaceful. But as the number of immigrants grew and grew, tensions between the nords and falmer also rose, until it finally resulted in the night of tears, where the falmer destroyed the Nordic capital, and only three nords survived, ysgramor and his two sons. Ysgramor and his sons travelled to Atmora and returned with five hundred of the greatest warriors history had ever seen, and they waged war against the falmer for several hundred years, which finally resulted in the falmer fleeing to ayleid lands and skyrim becoming the home of the first empire of the nords.

 

The mer and the slave rebellion
Over time, the different elven species slowly grew apart. The dwemer, maormer and chimer had long since been separate factions, but in the year 0 of the first era, the elven nation finally fell apart. The bosmer united under the Camoran dynasty, while the ayleids united under the banner of the white-gold tower, an imitation of the adamantine tower. The kingdom of the ayleid was based mostly around dark magicks and slavery, where the slaves had to do all the hard labor while the sorcerors practiced profane magicks such as necromancy and deals with the daedra. But affairs did not last long, for in the year 266 of the first era, a massive slave rebellion had broken out, led by Allesia. The slave rebellion and their nord allies managed to overthrow white-gold tower and the rest of cyrodiil, driving the ayleid out of their lands and establishing the first empire. She also started the religion known as the eight divines, which consisted of both Nordic and elven gods. On her deathbed, the eight divines visited her and made a covenant, binding her spirit into the amulet of kings, which would seal the many ways between Mundus and Oblivion. What follows is many years of war between humans and elves, mostly resulting in human victories, leading to the conquest of the provinces of High Rock, Hammerfell and Morrowind. The conquest of Morrowind does not last long however. The legendary chimer hero Nerevar Indoril allied with the dwemer king Dumac Dwarfking, and together, they united the warring dwemer and chimer factions to defeat the invading Nords.

Morrowind and the battle of red mountain
Before the coming of Nerevar, the chimer were divided between six great houses (dres, redoran, hlaalu, telvanni, indoril and dagoth), as well as a number of smaller houses, such as house sotha. But beneath the banner of mighty Nerevar, the houses united. The great heroes Vivec, Almalexia, Sotha Sil and Vorys Dagoth banded together, and made peace with the Dwemer to drive out the nord invaders. This peace would not last.
Where the chimer were worshippers of the daedra, the dwemer mocked the very gods, instead attempting to usurp their power. For the dwemer had discovered the heart of Lorkhan, and researched it in an attempt to usurp its divinity. To do this, they created three profane tools; the hammer sunder, the blade keening and the gauntlet wraithguard, capable of tapping into the very essence of divinity. Their attempts to do so were however noticed by Vorys Dagoth, and what follows is possibly the most confusing aspect of elder scrolls continuity, for there are many versions.
Some versions claim that all the chimer houses sent their armies to distract the dwemer, while Nerevar and Dagoth sneaked into red mountain and encountered the dwarven high architect, Kagrenac, in the heart chamber. Others claim that Dagoth had sided with the dwemer. Still other versions claim that nord, orcs and ashlanders (nomadic chimer, not part of any house) were involved in the battle, though who was on whose side differs from version to version. There is even a version where the only chimer present was Nerevar himself. But, a few outcomes of the war can be seen as fact, so let’s list them and the theories related to them.
1) All throughout the world, the dwemer vanished at the exact same time. Some versions claim that Kagrenac tapped the heart of Lorkhan, though whether the vanishing was success or failure is unknown. Other versions claim that the Daedric Prince Azura, the patron of Nerevar, had a hand in their disappearance, either by snatching them away the moment they tapped into the heart, or by instructing nerevar to use the profane tools to sever their connection to Lorkhan and the divine spark. The final version is that the dwemer were all simply killed during the war, though this version has been proven untrue.
2) Nerevar died and Dagoth was beaten by the other three heroes. Nerevar, bound by an oath to Azura, was opposed to the idea of using the profane tools for themselves and dagoth wanted to keep the tools for himself, either because he was corrupted or out of plain old ****ery. Vivec, Almalexia, Nerevar and Sotha Sil fought Dagoth, though sources disagree if he was empowered by the heart or not. Some sources claim that Nerevar died in battle, though others suggest the other three poisoned him to claim the tools for themselves.
3) Azura was told to suck it and Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha used the tools for themselves. Either after a long study by Sotha Sil, or immediately after the death of Nerevar, the three made a well-informed and thought-out decision/were corrupted into using the three tools to become gods themselves. They would use their powers to help the chimer/themselves. At the last moment, Azura showed up and told them not to use the heart, but they either ignored her or insulted her and did it anyway. Azura was not happy about this and decided to curse all the chimer, turning them into the ash-skinned red-eyed dunmer, as well as prophesizing the return of Nerevar. Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha would collectively be known as the ALMSIVI after this event.

The allessian order
A hundred years after the death of saint allesia, the elves started to form a threat again. Clan Direnni, a high elven clan, uses questionable political methods to usurp control of the province of high rock, eventually resulting in war between clan direnni and the united force of cyrodill and skyrim, which was then embroiled in a civil war. Though Clan Direnni was eventually defeated, it had weakened the skyrim empire enough to lose all of its holdings outside of skyrim. The cyrodillic empire meanwhile, was in the grip of a new religious order, centered around the prophet Malukh and his visions of the saint allesia. This order, known as the allesian order, believed that there was only a single god and that the elven influences on human culture should be completely removed. Though the order was at first tolerant of polytheistic religions, it later became more strict, which lead to conflicts with other nations. Throughout the centuries that followed, many small wars were fought, the orcs were defeated as a major power and the empire of cyrodill expanded. The alessian order was a major faction within the expanded empire, and, in the year 1200 of the first era, they made a massive mistake. They attempted to temper with the nature of Akatosh, removing the elven elements from his identity, and, through their attempts, warped the fabric of time, causing a thousand and eight years of distorted history (apparently people gave birth to their own parents).

interlude
By trying to tell history in a logical way, several quite important events would be skipped over, so let me take some time to point out each one
- Yokuda sank. Again, sinking continents are quite common. The yokudans landed in hammerfell and became a large part of the population.
- Akaviri pirates become very active in parts of Tamriel.
- The Sload, a group of daedra-worshipping beastmen who lived on Thras, unleashed a plague upon Tamriel, killing half of its population. The various nations gathered a navy and made Thras sink. Because landmasses have a tendency to. The sload later made their islands rise from the oceans again, though they never did anything as large-scaled as the plague again, instead preferring to harass the high elves.
- The Alessian order got embroiled in an internal feud, and destroyed itself in a very bloody civil war.
- The maormer try to invade, but get destroyed in a freak storm, which is often attributed to the aldmer psijic order.

 

the second empire
We come back in the year 2702 of the first era, and Reman I is emperor of cyrodill. Tamriel is under attack by a massive army of akaviri, and hope seems lost. But Reman I will not give up. Under his banner, he unites the various nations of Tamriel; The partly-elven Breton of High Rock, The nedes and Redguard of Hammerfell, the aldmer of Summerset Isle, the nords of Skyrim, the bosmer and ayleid of Valenwood and the khajiti of Elseweyr. Under his banner, the second empire was formed, a single powerful nation capable of fighting of the Akaviri. And when they were defeated, emperor Reman allowed them to join, even making the akaviri potentate his second-in-command. His son, Reman II managed to conquer large parts of Argonia, resulting in the province of black Marsh. Only a single province remained independent: morrowind.
The war between morrowind and the empire dragged on for 80 years. The imperials had massive well-trained armies at their control, but morrowind had three living gods at its side. In the end, after eighty years of war and barely-changing borders, a peace treaty was signed, ending the war. And then morrowind sent the assassin clan known as the morag tong to kill emperor reman III and his heir (murder is a standard political manoeuvre in morrowind).
Though the empire was without an emperor, the akaviri potentate took control of the empire. The populace of tamriel was not happy to have a snake-man as their ruler, and throughout his rule, potentate Versidue-Shaie had many conflicts between the populace, impoverished by his need to keep a large standing army. Then, the morag tong killed Versidue-Shaie. His son, Saviriek-Chorak, was the new potentate of the empire, but he was incapable of keeping it together. The second empire was falling apart. And then he was killed by the morag tong, ending the second empire all-together.

interlude
Again, a period of time in which a lot of important stuff happened, which can’t really be told chronologically. This stuff covers both the akaviri potentates and the interregnum between the second and third empire
- The mages guild is founded, providing a central magic authority that stayed intact, even after the fall of the empire.
- The fighters guild is founded, to supplement the army of potentates.
- The morag tong splits in two, the morag tong still serves as a political tool, while the dark brotherhood murders for the sake of their patron, sithis
- A plague spreads among southern tamriel. Because the argonians were immune, many suspected them of causing the plague.
- The akaviri try to invade again, this time attacking the province of morrowind. Vivec simply tells every man, woman, child and creature how to breathe water and floods the province, killing all invaders. I must say that I find it quite refreshing to see the ocean rise instead of the landmass sinking.

The third empire
We join our universe again around the year 840 of the second era. The empire of cyrodill has shrunk to only half the province it was named after, with nords and Bretons having invaded large parts of the province, as well as the aldmeri dominion, an alliance between the aldmer, bosmer and ayleid. But the imperials have a new secret weapon, the ingenious general Tiber Septim, later known as Talos, who wins battle after battle, even recovering the amulet of kings. Tiber Septim manages to conquer hammerfall, high rock and elsweyr, while black marsh voluntarily joins the empire for unknown reasons. Tiber Septim even manages to make a deal with the almsivi, who had been weakened by the return of Dagoth Ur, and him denying them access to the heart of Lorkhan. Morrowind joins the empire, in return for the right to govern itself. The tribunal even lends the empire the numidium, a dwemer golem designed to be a new god. The numidium crushes the aldmeri dominion, though it is eventually destroyed by the mysterious underking. Tiber Septim founds the third empire and declares the start of the third era after all of Tamriel is united. Important to note is that the third empire was never truly united under a single government. Most provinces of the imperium even had their own kings and queens, and wars were plenty. The maormer even tried to invade summerset once, though a freak storm destroyed most of their fleet. The storm is often attributed to the mysterious psijic society, one of the few organizations to truly contend with the mages guild. There was also the war of the red diamond, where three people dragged tamriel into a war over the imperial throne, and the invasion of the camoran usurper, a powerful magician, said to have controlled an army of undead and daedra, marched all over the provinces of Valenwood and Hammerfall, until finally being defeated by the high rock navy, the largest ever gathered. Because of these many, many wars, the empire was often considered weak. That was until emperor uriel V, who turned Tamriel into a war machine, and led the army to invade Akavir in the year 288. Though the invasion failed and resulted in his death, he is still considered one of the greatest emperors.

Elder scrolls I: Arena and elder scrolls adventures: battlespire
At the start of the reign of Uriel VII, the empire was probably the most unified it had ever been in history. But, one day, Uriel VII vanished, imprisoned in another realm by the imperial battlemage Jagar Tharn. But Jagar Tharn is betrayed by his apprentice, Ria Silmane, who guides a hero all over the continent of Tamriel, gathering the parts to a powerful mystical artefact: the staff of chaos. Fang Lair, Labyrinthian, Elden Grove, the halls of colossus, crypt of Hearts, Murkwood and even Dagoth-ur were visited by this great hero over the course of ten years, before finally defeating Jagar Tharn in the imperial city. Due to the conflict, the empire’s hold on the continent had begun to slip, and several wars broke out during and after the events of Arena. The most bloody of these was the arnesian war, which was fought between morrowind and black marsh, after argonians brutally murdered a merchant who refused to denounce his faith in the almsivi. Orsinium, capital of the orcs, is also rebuilt during this period, and becomes its own state within the empire. The imperial battlespire, the central hall of the mages guild, has become the location of a battle between a member of the mages guild and the daedric prince Mehrunes Dagon. Though Mehrunes is eventually banished, most of the battlespire has been ruined, and there have been many, many deaths.

 

Elder scrolls II: daggerfall
The second game starts in the year 405 of the third era. King Lysandus of Daggerfall has been murdered, and Daggerfall and Sentinel have gone to war over the area known as Betony. Another mysterious hero arrives in Daggerfall to investigate the death of Lysandus, and during his research he gets entangled in a political web, where several parties fought over the remains of Numidium, the golem used by Tiber Septim to defeat the aldmeri dominion. Over the course of 15 years, the underking, king of worms, Daggerfall, Sentinel and Orsinium fight for control over the Numidium’s totem. In the end, the war was resolved in a very weird way, called the miracle of peace or warp in the west. Somehow, all possible outcomes of this war came true at the same time and in the most optimal way possible. The 44 city-states around Illiac Bay merged into four states, all loyal to the empire: Sentinel, Wayrest, Orsinium and Wayrest.

Elder Scrolls III: morrowind, Tribunal and bloodmoon
The third game in the series starts in the year 427, when the emperor arranges for a prisoner to be released on the recently opened up disctrict up vvardenfell, the island with red mountain lying at its heart. In the same year, Dagoth Ur unleashes the blight storms, spreading terrible diseases over all of Vvardenfell. All trade between the island and the mainland is cut off. The almsivi have been terribly weakened by their lack of access to the heart, while dagoth ur has been growing stronger and stronger, even starting the construction of a second numidium. The prisoner becomes an agent of the blades, and gathers information about the sixth house and nerevarine cults, discovering that he or she might in fact be the legendary nerevarine, nerevar reborn. (S)he becomes infected by the most deadly form of blight, the incurable corprus, but it’s negative effects are removed, courtesy of the ancient telvanni wizard Divayth Fyr (whom I speculate to actually be Malacath, but that’s another discussion), leaving the character with an immunity to any disease, one of the signs of the nerevarine. The nerevarine is granted another sign by Azura herself; the legendary Moon-and-star. After being acknowledged by the four ashlander clans and being made hortator, a general who leads by example, by three great houses, Vivec acknowledges her/him as the nerevarine and accepts that the almsivi must become mortal, giving the nerevarine instructions on how to destroy the heart of Lorkhan, giving him/her wraithguard. The nerevar fights the seven brothers of Dagoth Ur, retrieves the artefacts Sunder and Keening, and uses them to shatter the heart, killing dagoth ur and ending the blight.
But not all of the almsivi are ready to be mortal once more. Almalexia sends the dark brotherhood after the Nerevarine, and goes absolutely insane, unleashing hordes of monsters upon morrowind and killing Sotha Sil. The nerevarine however defeats her in battle, after reforging the legendary blade of nerevar. It is rumoured that Vivec also died in battle with the nerevarine, though others suggest that he was taken by the daedric princes to stand trial.
The nerevarine also did battle with a daedric prince, Hircine, as he turned the island of Solstheim into a hunting ground, for himself and his werewolf minions. After this, the Nerevarine left for the continent of Akavir.

The elder scrolls IV: oblivion and shivering isles
Among the populace of Tamriel, a new cult was rising. The mythic dawn, led by a mer calling himself Mankor Camoran, child of the Camoran usurper, believed that Tamriel was but another realm of oblivion, and one that they should return to it’s rightful owner: Mehrunes Dagon. In the year 433 of the third era, they manage to assassinate the empire and his heirs, obtaining the dragonfire amulet and opening gates between the deadlands of oblivion and various locations in Tamriel. The cities of Kvatch and Ald’ruhn are destroyed by supergates in the first wave, as Mehrunes Dagon himself prepares to enter the realm of Cyrodill. But, by their assassination of the empire, the mythic dawn has accidently released a prisoner, now an agent of the imperial blades. With his help, as well as the research of Martin Septim, an illegitimate heir to the throne, Mankor Camoran is defeated, and the amulet of kings returned. However, gates still open, and another supergate appears near Bruma, though the prisoner manages to close it. Mehrunes Dagon then attacks the Imperial City and is only stopped by the sacrifice of Martin Septim, who smashes the dragonfire amulet and becomes an aspect of Akatosh, resealing the barriers between worlds and banishing Dagon.
The prisoner, now hero of cyrodill, awaited a dark faith in the realm known as the shivering isles, where he discovered that sheogarath, the daedric prince of madness, is in fact two separate entities, doing battle every thousand years. The end result of the conflict slowly turns the hero into the new sheogarath, locking him away within the shivering isles.

aftermath
Tamriel is devastated by the various daedric gates that have opened up. The only province to remain relatively unscathed was black marsh, where the Nirn, sentient tries, had foreseen the event and gathered the forces necessary to fight the daedric invaders off. The empire itself has no emperor. The empire finally starts falling apart after the ministry of truth crashes into the city of Vivec, making Red mountain erupt and destroy most of vvardenfell. After the disaster, Black Marsh leaves the empire and invades the now-weak morrowind, conquering all or most of it. Elseweyr also leaves, as do Valenwood and Summerset, banding together into a new aldmeri dominion. In the centuries that follow, the empire shrinks and shrinks. When we join our heroes again, there is a civil war within skyrim whether or not they should leave the empire.

The elder scrolls V: Skyrim
Yet to be written…



Important notes
1. Many of the events noted in here are only known through in-universe sources, and many of the earlier events have some degree of in-universe discussion surrounding them, so it’s not exactly certain what happened.
2. The gods are weird. Though they existed before the rise of man, mer or beast, they are strongly influenced by them. Lorkhan for an example, was thought up by Allesia as a merger between the nord and aldmeri gods. But when the alessian order tried to change this, they created the weird time-space distortion, showing that Lorkhan on his own was truly a god.
3. Those of you who have played oblivion may remember the speech by Mankor Camoran regarding the nature of the universe. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to it, as this is someone who doesn’t even know which daedric realm belongs to who. Furthermore, Mankor is lying about his identity, as the actual Mankor Camoran was the son of an aldmer man (the camoran usurper) and a bosmer woman, and you inherit your race from your mother (the in-game Mankor is an aldmer).
4. Should I do a description of the cultures next?

 

meh, description of the cultures for another time. This is expansions! Both games have had expansions. Morrowind has had two expansions, while oblivion has one. In addition, oblivion also has the knights of the nine DLC that some count as an expansion, while others do not. As a compromise, I put it here while not believing it is a true expansion.

tribunal
This was the first expansion ever released for an elder scrolls game, and it really shows. The story is weak, the way the expansion is integrated into the game is annoying and for an open world rpg, the missing open world is rather apparent.
However, before I go into any details on these negatives, let me get the positives out of the way first. I love the new armour sets and the visuals in general. All the sets look pretty damn good, though I do have to wonder what is up with the eyes on the dark brotherhood outfit. Mournhold, the district of Almalexia this entire expansion takes place in, also looks good in comparison with the other cities in the game and is a nice contrast with it's semi-abandoned, poorly designed, twin city Vivec. However, I do have some issues with the weapon designs. With the exception of the Ebony scimitar, the weapons are quite unimpressive, especially in regards to the last picture, which, for being rare and powerful weapons forged out of the mystical adamantium, has very poorly designed meshes and textures. I get the feeling tribunal was rushed for release; some of the meshes/textures are clearly unfinished (as is the case with adamantium weaponry), the game is lacking in open-world content, the new clothing sets lack robes and belts, and some of the statistics on the items are blatantly never-even-looked-at (All the alchemical ingredients have the same weight and worth and the adamantium items do not have a durability that matches up with their lore.). The side-quests that you receive are exceptionally well-designed, and introduce some very handy new mechanics and scripts and easily the best thing in the expansion. One thing that does irk me are the new creatures. The durzog and goblins look fine, but the fabricants look like they belong in an entirely different game, with a different art-style.
The worst part of tribunal is its main quest. It makes no sense. For some reason, your character keeps switching sides between two factions that are blatantly trying to assassinate you. The hook-up to the main quest actually happens before the events that trigger the events in the story (You are supposed to be attacked because you are/claim to be the nerevarine, but despite that only happening about halfway through the main quest the assassins attack even new characters.) The way Almalexia and Sotha Sil are handled in the game is quite interesting though, so it's not all bad.
Overall, despite its better points, this expansion is still bad. 4.5/10.

next post: bloodmoon

 

bloodmoon
Bloodmoon was the second expansion, and very much of an improvement. Instead of a single city district, it added a large island called solstheim, which has only recently been settled by the empire (and by settled, I mean; has a single poorly-staffed fort on it). There are two main questlines to this expansion; one, involving a daedric lord unleashing hordes of werewolves for his once a millenium man-hunt, and the other involving the founding of raven rock, the first imperial city on solstheim. Both quests are well-developed, having multiple choices that affect their path, and, as always, the game is full of glorious side-quests, this time with unique audio. Also, you can become a werewolf, which is always fun. Bloodmoon also deserves the dubious honour of least bug-ridden bethesda product ever (oblivion crashes every few minutes, morrowind is equally bad, daggerfall has you falling endless through the void and fallout 3 can actually destroy your hardware), which was quite refreshing. The armour, while not looking as good as tribunal, still looks quite decent and the weapons are a big improvement over tribunals crappy adamantium weaponry. The creatures of solstheim are not really all that impressive, although it is fun to finally see some new stuff. And, in contradiction to tribunal, the new creatures actually look like they fit in the game. Bloodmoon also gives you a nice, easily-accesible house located in raven rock, the only legally obtainable house located in a city. Bloodmoon does lose a bit of points due to its lack of transport, having only two, relatively close cities with fast travel options. Overall, I vote this 8.5/10. It's very good and I have no big complaints, though it is by no means perfect.

next post: shivering isles

 

shivering isles

Everything I hated about Oblivion returns for yet another story. This time the story actually takes place within a realm of oblivion, the madhouse, on the shivering isles, where the madgod sheogorath lives. It has the same stupid leveling system, idiotic looking armour, bad balance and impossibly large amount of ruins that oblivion had. And yet I love this expansion. The main quest is original, the dungeons have actually been hand-crafted, the monsters are fun (elemental demon zombie ninjas known as flesh atronachs), the game even shows some originality in its setting, something which oblivion was sorely lacking (oblivion was mordor, white gold tower is white tower, blackwood is blackwater and the rest is "generic medieval fantasy setting #11"). The game also has great varied voice acting, another thing that oblivion and its twenty voices made me long for. Overall, I would say 8/10. It has a few bugs, some quite serious, but no game-breakers. Most new armours look pretty stupid, but that's not unexpected after oblivion. And, in contradiction to oblivion, I actually consider the vanilla version a good game.

 

knights of the nine

As I said before, this is really just a DLC. On the other hand, it is a very, very good DLC. It includes only a single quest, much like mehrune's razor, but it is handled very well. The cathedral in Bruma has been attacked at night, and a mad prophet is ranting about the return of a legendary villain. To defeat him, you must gather the armour of the eight, and re-create the order of the nine. I won't give specifics away, but it's well handled, fits perfectly into lore and is some degree of epic. The armour itself is pretty cleverly handled as well, with each piece having a cool bonus in addition it's normal stats. As a DLC, I rate this good and pretty much en par with mehrunes razor. As an expansion release (where it is coupled with all the other DLC, except battlehorn castle), it is however completely underwhelming.