Double-post

......That was an awesome statement.That's....actually a really good point. The sky is supposed to be on fire...

in the single player series you are "the chosen one" and your happy about it; yet in your mind you KNOW there are a couple hundred thousand people who are playing the same game as you, and they are the "chosen one" as well, so I don't personally see the difference.

A slip of the tongue that got through editing, reviewing the video before letting it release, etc.

Also, making coldharbour's sky on fire wouldn't make it look too much like dagon's deadlands. They look completely different. Dagon's sky is more like magma than fire, the landscape is surrounded by lava, the architecture is entirely different

apparently molag bal is boethia now....someone please correct them......... aside from that mix up the realm looks rather nice.

It's not a mix up. One of his titles is the God of Schemes. Go to page 3 of this thread and read the link there.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/molag-bal

Or just read this. Very first title is God of Schemes.

That literally makes no sense to me. Could you please explain that anology because I don't see how it applies in a relevant way.

There are so many...oh wait rhetorical...

It hasn't been the staple, it has been one of many plot devices used in it. RPGs are not about being the chosen one. They are about being your character, I would say pigeon holing your character into being the chosen one is often the anti-thesis of RPGs.

There is overused narratives and then there are far too overused narratives.

I also don't believe in the lack of originality. Talk about pessimistic and unrealistic. There is plenty left to be done in the writing department. TES even has the means of you consciously becoming an ultra powerful being. They are called the walking ways. Not prophetic predictions of your actions. You actively choose to become a god-like being through your own actions. Mantling, Incarnation, Enantiomorphs etc etc are ways of doing this.

Saying your actions were foretold in an Elder Scroll is both boring, uncreative, generic and lazy storytelling. Why would I applaud this device at all?(Which none of the previous TES heroes had done, there was Azura's Nerevarine Prophecies, Uriel VII's foresight and the Dragonborn Prophecy, none of which had anything to do with Elder Scrolls in terms of their origin. These devs don't even seem to understand what Elder Scrolls are. They are basically the recordings of possibility and once something happens it is burnt into the Elder Scroll and recorded) They don't really function as prophecies...especially prescient people interpret them and make prophetic declarations which are never absolute.

Ahhh, [censored] it. Not like anyone really cares. Yay, lets be the chosen one yet again...

On the one hand, I really like the look of Coldharbor. Suitably both monumental in scale but full of creepy detail.

On the other hand, I'm concerned that if we spend a LOT of time there and it is all the same shade of purplish-gray, it is going to get tedious fast Previous games had the same issue with the orange Oblivion rifts, the purple Soul Cairn (I actually got out of there before finishing all the sidequests because I was purpled out) and the olive green realm of Apocrypyha. These were all graphically stunning areas in their own right, but too monochrome. Don't Daedric Princes have access to a full palette? And yes, I know, not all of Oblivion is like that... Shivering Isles for instance were delightfully colorful.

So, here's hoping there's a lil more variety color-wise than we saw in the trailer!

Probably in those particular realms you are talking about, I doubt you will ever seen any changes to it. Like if we ever get to revisit Mehrunes' Oblivion dimension you can't be surprised that it will always be that red, fiery wasteland that it is. I think many people would be sourly upset if they decided to be like, "Let's add some blue to this realm, because red everywhere is just kinda boring."

I get where you are coming from, but we kind of know what all these realms are suppose to look like. Coldharbour is suppose to be a more twisted, dreaded, muddy version of Nirn. So the color palette needs to reflect that.

I hope that later on they might open up newer areas of Oblivion we have never seen/heard of before and they can let their imaginations soar from there.

In the single player games, I'm the only "chosen one" I ever see while playing my character. Everybody's single player game is different, each is a unique reading of an Elder Scroll (so meta). While in an MMO, it's the same game for everyone, just through a different set of eyes. If Derp1 beats the big bad and gets the leet loot in an MMO, then he will have done that and have it in Derp2's game when they run into each other. My character in TESO will run into other "Soulless One"s who were "prophecied by the Elder Scroll" (*gack*) to "defeat Molag Bal". Their game is my game. However, my character in Skyrim will never run into another Last Dragonborn who has defeated Alduin and learned Call of Valor and other complex shouts. Their game is not my game.

In any case, it's a common enough complaint that we have to be the "chosen one" at all, single-player or multi-player. It's a lame, uncreative excuse made as an attempt to make you feel special. Story-wise, I'd rather be a common bloke that rose to greatness out of my own sweat and hard work because I wanted it, rather than someone who was guaranteed to be a special little snowflake from the start. Every TES game since Morrowind has had this problem, unfortunately, but the fact that TESO will be an MMO (which you'd think the writers would know would preclude any one player from being truly special) meant it had a chance to break away. But nope. We're still wandering the fields of I've Seen This All Before (I suppose saying that kinda makes me a hypocrite; meh, writing's not my strong suit).

I agree with that last- the Special Destiny is tired and ridiculous even in single-player games (as are World Destroying Threats in any game). Having a million (millions?) people who all have a special destiny is fairly ridiculous. It reminds me a bit (slightly less comedic, but same concept) of the goblin starter zone when Blizzard plopped them into WoW- every single gobbo was the CEO of WhateverCompany, when random refugees would have made a lot more sense. Now, Zenimax could easily fix this. The players could all be captives, dragged into Coldharbor by the boatload (sent by the Imperial government as payment for whatever bargains they're making) ready for processing, but take advantage of of some crisis or incident (engineered by Boethia, as she's worried about all these souls? Or Meridia, angry at the vampire mess, or whomever). At this point a mass escape ensues, and they still have the tie to Coldharbor and some awareness of Molag Bal's plans, but no one is saddled with the Chosen One title. When you get right down to it, they're apparently tying the 'soulless' state to some justification of the MMO rez mechanics, but that seems convoluted and unnecessary. Just tag it as Somebody's intervention until the current crisis is resolved, and move on.On the another matter, I feel slightly teased. I watch the video the other day, and an email showed up in my mailbox with the title 'Discover Coldharbor.' Since I had already seen the video the day before, for a moment I thought it might actually be an invite. Sadly not, just the video I'd already seen, and a 'Sign up for Beta' link, which mocked me slightly.

Once again you perfectly say what I was thinking. I'd tip my hat to you, but I haven't got a hat.

In single-player, sure. It works in that context, even if it is a bit overdone and cliche. (Though I have to admit, I did like KoA's inversal of the trope: instead of being the 'chosen one,' you're the one who's *outside* of the whole fated destiny pattern.)

But in an MMO, the concept of 'the chosen one' is just plain ridiculous. Because unlike the SP games, an MMO does not revolve around a single character. 'One of the chosen,' implying that there's multiples - that can be stretched to work; but 'the chosen one' is just asking for your so-called MMO to be treated like a single-player game with online features.

And I don't particularly care that many or even most other recent MMOs have gone that route themselves, because most of them have also been heavily criticized for trending closer towards the SP experience than an MMO should be. Honestly, I can't believe any of the people who've been so loud about "MMO is different from SP" in defense of many other decisions are even trying to defend this bit.

Aye, but I was never talking about MMOs specifically. I was just saying in RPGs in general the 'chosen one' story line is one of the most used elements of the genre.

Not really.

See, setting aside the rather dubious aspects of the 'chosen one' implementation, and setting aside whether or not anyone is actually happy about it as opposed to (for example) grudgingly tolerant of it: none of those other hundred-thousand people exist in the same universe as I do. Their existence is no more relevant to my experience than the existence of some hypothetical alternate-universe version of myself.

But in an MMO, that's no longer true. Every one of the "chosen ones" is there, in the same world as me. If anything should be dropped in the transition from SP to MMO, this is it... but instead, it's one of the few things they're actually keeping.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/44396a8da3c65f507608a970581fbc94/tumblr_mfzh2tuL4E1s2o3l2o1_500.gif

This one understands...

Plot Twist: Everyone has the same soul.

Ok so I think personally I will steal a leaf out of J K Rowling's book (to be precise Order of the Phoenix). For the benefit of those who have neglected to read this masterpiece, there is a prophecy in it, and it predicts a 'chosen one' BUT it turns out that the criteria for being the chosen one could apply equally to Nevil or Harry. I think I can use this principle to rationalise the multiple chosen ones here.

I am going to go ahead and assume that a good number of people had their souls stolen (or have otherwise lost, corrupted, or traded away said soul) and the prophecy could apply to any of us. My character will spend most of the game hoping someone else will go kill the big scary Daedric prince so he doesn't have to.

I get that. I was referring to the communities outrage, where they are starting to complain that a particular plot development was used, where in reality things that you thought of as original were done countless of times in other works of fiction.

Ascending to godhood in that way was done. Budha ascended to higher state by meditation and his own journey (various accounts, depending on interpretation) Dune's Leto II Atrides does this. It was done in ""2001: A Space Odyssey" Also Chineese mythology has various examples of apotheosis , because they wanted to be immortal beings, so they became them .And Campbell's "The Hero of Thousand Faces" which is the origin of this trope in modern times.

The devs can also missinform the audience with familiar tropes as a part of marketing, or they are actually lazy and they chose THE CHOSEN ONE YOU ARE! archetype. We can't be sure until we see how it actually plays out.

Everyone is just a figment of the Godhead's imagination anyway, so this could be close to the truth.

"Truth", lol.

But seriously, I was thinking about this main quest specifically. Maybe there's some weird Numidiatian-soul-merging going on by all the players walking the same path to reclaim their soul and fulfill the prophecy. Which would explain why Molag Bal keeps the soul behind locks - releasing a godlike soul back to Nirn would certainly screw up his planemeld plan.

Or *TWIST* the soul is in completely diffrent location and when you unlock the seals you will find http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs14/f/2007/101/c/2/Bal__s_quite_moment_with_Vehk_by_TheOldYeBard.jpgO.O

I thought it looked very interesting. Someplace my darker self would like to live.

Are we going to be able to side with the Daedra Lord?

Thanks Beth for emailing it to me ..-s-

Turns out we're all just clones and we're trying to get to the reunion with Molag Bal.

All they need to do is hire M. Night and he will come up with the best twist for the story line.