Lore:
A huge identifier for Werewolves in this world is their need to kill. Unlike Vampires, Werewolves must kill on a nightly/monthly basis in order to survive. In case you ever wandered, THIS is why Werewolves are feared and hated. Prince Hircine's Sphere is the Hunt and his children reflect this admirably by hunting at night and being hunted during the day. This is, arguably/theoretically, why there are forced/involuntary transformations during the full moons, Hircine demands the hunt and thus those that refuse simply perish. Aela the Huntress perhaps stated better than I - "It means waking up every day knowing that you could die and having to earn your life by clawing for every breath.” This is what it means to be a child of Hircine.

Emphasis:
When it comes to Werewolf related conversations, the other Werebeast are never mentioned, save one book I know of, it's always "Werewolves". Yes, there are several different types of Werecreatures - Werebeast - Manbeast and Werewolves are not even the most numerous found in Skyrim, Werebears are. It is not that the opportunity to introduce or reintroduce a new Werebeast was missed, it is that they are completely absent in thought. Informed individuals such as the Silver Hand, Vigilants of Stendarr and actual Children of Hircine should know this.

Conclusion:
The Elder Scrolls’ unique take on Lycanthropy or more appropriately, Therianthropy is a well received respite from the over romanticized twilight/underworld/vampire diaries crap that is plaguing humanity. It should not be relegated to a two minute killing spree absent of substance and background but embraced and expanded upon. After Daggerfall and Morrowind, the Werebeast in Skyrim are just…meh. Bethesda, I implore you to fix this.

No one? How very disappointing.

You state lore like it's fact and expect anyone to feel like argueing with you? You've got to give us more credit than that. I've never seen any "lore" that insists that werewolves have to kill to live.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/hircine
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Lycanthropy
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Bloodmoon:Werewolf

Read.

In all the movies and books I've ever watched/read they don't have to kill or they'll die, so that aspect is certainly new to me. Is it used in any novels as I'll read any Werewolf books (unless it's poncy romantic stuff like Twilight) I can find.

Good news. Bethesda read your whining thread over the countless other ones they see daily, and took some time off of working on real issues like uncompletable quests to make a special patch just for you, changing this one thing you wish was different and not really giving any thought to what other people want. oh, wait

This is part of what bothers me. The Elder Scrolls version of Lycanthropy is unique but instead of embracing it, Bethesda didn't even bother to match the precedent they had in past games.

at least they are not as bad as vampires

I agree the werewolves are lackluster in this game. They also seems pretty weak with no hand to hand skill or stats to fortify. I transformed into a werewolf once with my Nord, realized it's attacks were weaker than my two hander, and never transformed again.

You expect us to argue?

Your post can stand on its own.

You made a good point.

Warevolves and vampires aren't supposed to be curable either, but it's just a game. I doubt dragons are supposed to rise from the dead and fly around as skin and bones either.

Umm yes they are. We're going by the lore of TES, not some other lore. For instance, in TES vampires are plague monsters; meanwhile, in the WoD a vampire is not a plague monster, you can't become one just by being bit you actually have to be chosen. But for a TES game, we don't care about that. We care about the lore of TES.

Thank you. Then add your opinion/thoughts to mine so that this problem is more likely to be rectified.

In the collectors edition game guide it tells you that you were lucky enough to have your shield brothers around and they helped you harness it so random transforms don't happen.

Bethesda: Why make a thoughtfull and lore-friendly gameplay element of the game if kids can't tell the difference?

I think this is one of the unfortunate casualties of 'gameplay before lore'. They simply didn't have time to make lycanthropy fit pre-existing lore better while remaining fun to play. They at least acknowledge the change though, as some characters state that it's not the usual form of lycanthropy and explain why it's different, and there is at least one other werewolf that still has involuntary transformations and a need to hunt/kill.

Werebears don't really fit with how lycanthropy is set up to work in the game, either. It wouldn't be as simple as just making a separate model for characters to use.

I just want werewolves that can equip stuff and cast magic.

Give me a wolf looking khajit, good enough for me.

And how dare you compare underworld to twilight, if I recall correctly at no point in the UW movies can you find a sparkilng vampire.

I agree 100%. It's sad to see Bethesda butchering their lore again. Right now it seems that becoming a werewolf is the best thing ever, without any drawbacks. I don't get why they chose to go this way. It's not hard to script monthly transformations and a need to kill an npc.
I really hope Bethesda is working on a DLC that will at least include werebears and possibly improve werewolf gameplay.
Really? I don't know whether to laugh or cry, this is such a cheap copout

The thing is that they didn't have this problem before. Werecreatures worked wonderfully is past Elder Scrolls games and were pretty faithful to lore. They handled two different Lycantrhopes in 1996, they can do it Now. And the lore applied to game-play would make playing as one SO MUCH better, it would be an actual experience. This Is Still A Roll Playing Game Dammit!

Pretty much, hence the copy-paste job done for Vampires.

Gosh, that musta been hard.

Well, I agree. The main appeal to me about Werewolves (in general, not just TES lore) is the self-torment and lack of control. It's an old archetype about Werewolves.. Werewolves never want to be werewolves really. The same with Incredible Hulk. He doesn't like being the Hulk. They always wake up in the aftermath of chaos and ripped clothing, amnesia, and spend a lot of their time trying to cure themselves or avoid people. I don't expect all of that, but there should be a little of those elements about it in the game. It loses some of the appeal of what werewolves even are.

No thank you. The whole appeal to me of a werewolf is that you become a savage beast, and can't think on a high level. That you're more concerned with killing and feeding your bloodlust than anything else, and can't control yourself.

If you want an anthro wolf race, then fine, but you don't need to mess with werewolves to do it.

Oh, no. Werewolves/boars had pretty nasty glitches in Daggerfall. You could still talk to some people, and if you tried to turn in quests, you could crash the game. On full moons, you could use your lycanthropy spell to change yourself back for a few seconds (allowing you to inappropriately use items and whatnot) before the game would detect it and force you back into beast form. Also, due to the requirement to feed on NPCs, you could find yourself with almost no health at very inopportune times, causing you to reload a much earlier save. Also, being that there was almost no NPC AI to speak of, there were a lot of things Daggerfall could get away with that simply couldn't be possible in later games without breaking everything.

In Morrowind, if you tried to keep your lycanthropy, if you were anywhere but Solstheim you'd run out of NPCs to feed on since they don't respawn. Transformations remained nightly and required nightly feeding, even after the Bloodmoon event was over. Your game would effectively be finished if any law-abiding NPC spotted you transforming. It was not designed for you to remain infected with lycanthropy for long once you finished the Bloodmoon MQ, and it took mods to fix it.


In Skyrim, there's a lot of things that could break if you changed into a werewolf during particular events. Although they can still break if you use the Beast Form power, they at least made it so it doesn't happen on accident by leaving out forced transformations. Allowing forced transformations would require more work to keep those quests from breaking (by either suppressing forced transformations during those events, or redoing the AI so it doesn't break the events in spite of it happening).

As it is, Skyrim is already pretty weak with some NPCs not recognizing you being in beast form (thieves and roadway robbers will still run up to you and demand money), and being seen transforming is only a 1000 gold fine. Given the witness system, I think a death sentence that you couldn't pay off would've been more appropriate (at least if there weren't so many unkillable NPCs)... if someone saw you, you could just kill them. Having a limit on the length of time you could be known as a werewolf would've also played nicely with the regional crime system, too. If someone saw you and you couldn't kill them, just avoid towns in that Hold for a while and they'd eventually forget and let you back in.

But again, that all would've required more development time to implement and get working properly, as well as needing to rewrite part of the Companions questline to handle these types of werewolves, and to handle the fact that you could be one before ever joining.

I thought I was the only one. This is what bothered me to a great extent. No lunar transformations. Lycanthropy in Skyrim feels more like a "power-up" than a gift/curse.

Idk what bull you been fed but werewolfs never have been on the need to kill to live thing. Im all for a forced transformation on a full moon night. Other than that any norm night i would like to have control. You want random transformations get your self the cursed ring.

In both Daggerfall and Bloodmoon, you'd lose a lot of health if you didn't sate your bloodlust. You wouldn't exactly "die", but it made you very easy to be killed until you ate someone. The Ring of Hircine was the only thing that helped.