The Elder Scrolls Online: General Discussion Options

[Dark Reaper]

Saw a trailer for the next DLC of TESO called Summerset. Now the isle is in the standard game kinda but only a small island other wise you're playing in Valenwood and Elsweyr if you're playing as the Aldmeri Dominion.

[monkeyemoness]

The UESP's Summerset Interview with Matt & Rich

Dunno whether this belonged here or in the "Here Is the News Topic" but I thought it fit here better. I'm not done reading it (and I'll get to the rest later) but uh...I went from 100 to 0 real quick when they got to talking about Summerset's design and lore.

Matt Firor: So I don't have to tell you guys this, but the lore – maybe some of your readers will know this – but the lore in Elder Scrolls is never definitive, it’s always told through the eyes of people that live in the world, which gives developers – not just us, but everyone that works on Elder Scrolls – certain leeway to kind of find what that person meant when they were telling the story. We used every piece of lore that we could find for Summerset, but a lot of it contradicted itself, so we found the path that we wanted to take and went from there. We're building on top of a foundation like we always do, but I think we came up with a really good direction. I don't think anyone will be shocked at any of the decisions we made if they know the lore. They'll go "okay, yeah, great, awesome!".

Uhh...okay I'm gonna hold you to that, but then

Alarra: So kind of related to that, there's been a lot of talk among fans about how what we've seen of it doesn't really match, necessarily, how it's been described - like Alinor's buildings looking like insect wings? Is that a matter of just, it's hard to reflect that in the gameplay, or was that a deliberate design choice, or is it the unreliable narrator?

Matt Firor:Yeah, you mean picking certain lorebooks, cities looked a certain way, but they're not definitive, so, you know… I think Elder Scrolls is, at its heart – and Todd Howard says this all the time – if magic left Tamriel, no one would notice, because it's very mundane at its heart.

If this is actually something he said, then I want to kick Todd Bethesda Coward in the Teeth. Because if there's one thing the games have consistently shown is that the complete opposite is true.

It's like, there's poor Altmer pig farmers, like, it's not like the high elves are better than anyone else, they're just different, right? They’re not like the super race, or they would’ve been able to control all of Tamriel. They have their own thing going, and so they can't be that much more advanced than everyone else. It just doesn't make sense in the lore. So with that in mind, that’s how we came up with the architecture for them.

First point about the poor farmers? Sure, that's true no matter where you go in Tamriel. But these are the Altmer. This is same nation that Tiber Septim had to use a goddang Giant Stompy Robot to conquer and the same nation that currently threatens the whole of Tamriel in the 4th Era. The same nation that apparently almost beat the Redguards during the Great War if it weren't for a Hero stopping them. (According to Legends, anyways, lmao) At the very least their capital should reflect their power and sophistication and not look like a fricking Breton City. Why would they come up with something that lines up to the high opinion that they hold of themselves and then throw it all away for something so goddamn terrible?

Before the Altmer's haughtiness and close-mindedness made sense, since they were the most magically advanced culture on Tamriel and were literally connected to their island through Magicka pulled directly from the Planets and stars. Now they're just insufferable fops with no redeeming qualities to their culture. Even if all of this was justified, did they have to go with the most painfully European architecture? Is that what we're doing now? Turning all of Tamriel into Europe? And here I thought Zenimax was above this, given their track record with the game so far.

Like, idk, these are the same assholes that misled everyone on the undead dragon in the Dragon Bones DLC dungeons (one of them claimed that the Dragon didn't get a soul from Alduin in spite of the DLC making no such claim), so maybe I really should wait and see what Summerset has before I judge, but uh

I'm not liking the implication that this is 100% what Bethesda wanted. Especially after the alleged quote from Todd Howard.

I'm still looking forward to the continuation of the story, but consider my interest in Summerset itself dead.

This post has been edited by monkeyemoness: Apr 10 2018, 09:03 PM

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Matt Firor:Yeah, you mean picking certain lorebooks, cities looked a certain way, but they're not definitive, so, you know… I think Elder Scrolls is, at its heart – and Todd Howard says this all the time – if magic left Tamriel, no one would notice, because it's very mundane at its heart.

Indeed people would notice Mr. Howard. The fans noticed that Skyrim’s magicka gameplay, either by happenstance or design, was severely limited. This quote is very scary, especially when you look at Skyrim’s magicka gameplay. Now, maybe Khajiit is just being an alarmist, but is Bethesda signaling that they are trying to get rid of magicka in TES going forward and turn future TES titles into a low fantasy hack and slash/hiking simulator?