Cyrodiil Options

[Alexander]

Ok, so for the unavoidable introduction babble, as most of you know I was rather pleased with Morrowind. I thought it was far better then the dribble I wrote prior to that, and most people seemed to agree with me. After I finished Morrowind I already had an idea for a sequel, I actually wrote the very first chapter of said sequel while I was posting up parts of Morrowind. Unfortunately though, after that first chapter I kind of lost interest. I didn’t think the ideas I had back then were enough to weave an entire story together, and I was probably right.

But as these things have a habit of developing themselves, over the past months I kept thinking back to the sequel, and kept adding ideas to the pile I already had. Now it’s done. I once again enjoyed writing this, and I hope you’ll have similar fun reading it.

As I’ve explained in the past, I’m not very good at making up things like titles, Akatosh knows it took me about as long to come up with the various titles of the chapters as it did to write the entire thing, so I’ve named the story “Cyrodiil” (catchy wot? )

Before I end my babbling and get on with posting the story, I once again would like to thank Treydog for agreeing to help with my story as editor, and for fixing the many, many, many grammatical and spelling errors, and placing every comma, semicolon and whatchamacallit in the correct place. And thanks to everyone who ever read Morrowind, and commented. I really enjoy the comments.


Now, while you don’t have to have read Morrowind, I believe in order to get the most out of Cyrodiil, it would be recommended.


So, enough babbling and on to Cyrodiil.

[redsrock]

I like how you start at the end of the game, rather than the beginning. A very good touch, and I was literally filled with joy by it. I'm not sure why, but I was. *shrug*

The one thing I didn't like was the dialogue at the beginning. Rather than cope what had been said straight from the game, I would have liked to see your own creations. You could have said the same things, but it wouldn't have had to sound so...boring and robotic. I didn't like the game dialogue because I was looking for more of a panicked and fast-paced speech. Mehruhnes Dagon, a Daedric god, had just entered Tamriel with a full army of monsters at his side. I high doubt anyone would have been able to stay as calm as Ocato.

The situation must be terrible, Varvur found himself thinking

Meh, I rather like it when thoughts are italicized, but that's just a personal preference of mine. I thought I'd tell you anyway just to give you another perspective.

and all was quiet again, for now anyway.

This seems a bit odd to me. Since it's an all-out invasion, even if they had cleared their section of the city, wouldn't they have heard the screams and roars coming from the other districts, or at least the ones beside them?

“Thank you Varvur..."

“Don’t mention it Baurus..."

This is something I see from writers a lot, and I always find it very important. When in speech, when we are addressing someone by name there is usually a slight pause before that person's name. So, in the above sentences there should be commas; a comma before "Varvur" in the first, and and a comma before "Baurus" in the second. And that takes care of the slight pause. Do you know what I mean?

I personally thought your battlescenes were fairly weak. You didn't do a whole lot of detail in the scenes, and mostly you said stuff like "They defeated the "etc, etc" and moved on." I don't like that, because I can't picture in my head what's going on. I can't picture the spilled blood, the torn limbs, the screams of agony, etc. You know? And you didn't describe the Xivilai at all, other than saying that they were blue. The Xivilai are indeed much different than the normal Dremoras, so it would have been better if you had explained why.

All of that said, it was a wonderful first chapter. I love the twist at the end, and I simply can't wait for the next installment.

I'm sorry if you find my critique harsh or nitpicky, I apologize. It's just that while I enjoy a good read, I'll always do my best to try and help the author get even better as well.