As much history the universe of The Elder Scrolls has, and as much as I do enjoy reading some of the in-game books, does the lore really affect some people in a positive/negative way? I mean I don't understand why, honestly. To me personally I could care less as long as the game provides me with a good experience and hundreds of hours of replayability. I hope I'm not starting a fire with this topic because I know there are quite a few people out there that take the lore of this series, and the Fallout series for that matter, very seriously. But I must say the The Elder Scrolls history is probably the most interestingly unique and in-depth fiction I've ever read anywhere. Like I want to meet the person/people who writes all of the lore and just get in their head and find out what they plan on writing for the future after 4E 201.


How does the lore affect you guys? What would you change if you could, if anything? What interests you the most about the history of The Elder Scrolls?

For me, the Lore is what makes TES, The Elder Scrolls. The same as it's what makes The Forgotten Realms, or makes The World of Warcraft, or makes the world of The Witcher. The lore and background is what makes a world distinct, and it is the fundimental basis of experiencing that world. So, I guess, it's super important, because without it, TES would just be Fantasy-Land #139.


As for what I'd change, if I could...Valenwood. 'Amazon Jungle populated by cannibal elves' is too mundane. I like the Bosmer, but the Province needs a major makeover.

Blasphemer! Heretic!! Heathen!!! The lore is ALL!



Nah, I'm messing with you. I think the lore is pretty important for context, but honestly if I'm having fun in a game I really don't care that Cyrodiil is supposed to be a rainforest...

No. I play these games to create my own stories. I use bits of lore when it suits my storytelling purposes. If the lore gets in the way of my story I just ignore it and invent my own lore.

I love that the lore is rich and gives fuel to my imagination, but for me personally game > lore. If the lore prevents me from visiting Argonia for instance then I prefer them to make adjustments.

Me too.

TES lore is pretty great to learn about, but I appreciate that it's malleable and not mandatory to enjoying the games.

I think Bethesda strikes a nice balance on how they present the lore in game for all fans of differing interests.

The lore is useful until you find a small bit that changes your course diverting you from the mainstream sending you off into a story of your own. That happened to me after Oblivion during the Knights of the Nine. Something just didn't fit right. I'd read all the lore books yet I was unsettled. I was drawn to so called children's creation myths and to books many were claiming to be dubious or writings of fiction. So off I went clinging to lore books of my liking onto a path of my making, bending, shaping and more than likely breaking the lore to fit my story. Works for me, may not for anyone else.

The lore is important because it's adds immersion and context to the game.without it.its just a sand box.

This, I think. The lore and writing in the TES series are actually back-of-a-cereal-box level quality as far as I'm concerned, but the sheer quantity of it present in the games does add weight and detail to the series. If you strip TES of its lore the games would suddenly feel a bit... shallow.

What really makes the series for me however is the player freedom, the beauty of the world, and the narratives taking place within. It's the game type combined with its imaginative setting - I seem to be one of the few in here who love the classical European fantasy flavor of Skyrim and Oblivion too. The music, too, I think plays a larger role subconsciously than we generally give it credit for.

Its hard to enjoy a game that's selling point is its world, when the world itself is substantially boring.

Only thing I can lob off the face of the planet is Oblivion in its entirety. Its not about what it ignored, because that's not the problem. It put nothing in its substance to try and replace it, and that's what completely makes the game the most uncompelling part of the franchise for me. To the point that its literally the only game of the series that I never went back to. Way I see it, lore and what we experience in the game world is basically one in the same. If one has a reasonable amount of depth, great, I'm happy. If not? Well, a pointless romp through a world that's wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle just isn't going to cut it.

I think the lore is incredibly important, and one of the things that sets Elder Scrolls apart is that the esoteric mumbo-jumbo is actually relevant to something in-universe.

But I've still got to recognize that the series started out as barely distinguishable from most other generic fantasy DnD and Tolkien rip-offs. I'd call Arena schlock, and Daggerfall pulp fantasy. The setting didn't come into its own until Morrowind, and despite the massive leap they took at that point, that's where their vision for the Elder Scrolls only just started to form. So I'm not going to fuss myself too much with any inconsistencies or retcons. I think it's important to acknowledge that the lore is a changing, growing thing, and Bethesda will change or add what they need to tell the story they want.

As Lachdonin stated above, the lore is what makes The Elder Scrolls...well, The Elder Scrolls. It is an absolutely fascinating body of work that really helps you immerse yourself in the world and makes it feel real. It actually has some pretty clever ways of dealing with inconsistencies (i.e. dragon breaks, CHIM, unreliable narrator, etc.). While I obviously prefer as few retcons as possible and not too much reliance on plot devices to deal with inconsistencies, overall I think the lore is extremely well done. But at the end of the day, they are just video games. They aren't going to be perfect, just like any other fiction work (or non-fiction, for that matter).

Still, some fans take the lore far too seriously. Many self-professed lore scholars will jump at even incremental changes in lore, or not even consider why some lore changed. For some reason, the unreliable narrator aspect--probably the most important part of the lore--gets forgotten in some discussions to the point where fans will believe they have the one true interpretation, and if somebody else thinks differently then they're stupid.

Now this doesn't mean there aren't some parts of the lore you can't like. I can think of some both in-game and out-of-game, particularly some of MK's out-of-game stuff. He has contributed a ton to TES lore, especially with Morrowind, and his effect on the series should not be understated. But some people treat his work as infallible or completely objective. Some of it is cool, but some of it I just can't get into. For example, I don't like KINMUNE (the story about Pelinal Whitestrake being a cyborg) or C0da. But that is okay! There is lore for everyone to like or not like, and the best part? For a lot of the lore, you don't have to accept certain events and how they happened as canon if you don't like it, and certainly not things that aren't even in the games. Some people can think Cyrus the Restless fought Tiber Septim on the moon while others don't, and there isn't any contradiction. Some people can think the Dragonborn assassinated Titus Mede II while other don't, and there isn't any contradiction.

Does that mean that discussion then is unwarranted because people can generally believe what they want as canon? Quite the opposite, actually. That's part of what makes this series so much fun! There is so much room for discussion because there is so much subjectivity. And if you don't even care about the lore, you really don't have to. Just go out in the world of whichever game you are playing and do what you want. If you are playing Skyrim, you don't have to care what the Eternal Champion or the Nerevarine did, for example.

Personally, I love the lore and really like to get immersed into it. It makes it much more fun for me. But it is still a video game presenting a fictional world. So I think lore is important, but is THAT important in the grand scheme of things? Nah.

Nothing better than a good Tolkien rip-off. But seriously, this is not about being a rip-off. This is about the foundation (or part of it) of a whole genre. Stuff like Morrowind erodes that foundation, while not really being less "pulp" than Daggerfall. Only more messed up. Thankfully Oblivion corrected that.

Cyrodiil is kind of a rain forest, it's just not a jungle. at least it rains the majority of time I'm around the forests there, haha

My only issue with Oblvion is they tried to make it like Daggerfall with old forts and ruins all around, but due to the scale of it, it was nonsensical as there were abandoned forts and ruins everywhere, multiple within eyeshot, and it just didn't make all that sense given how few cities and towns there were.

To me, the lore in the individual game has to be consistent and detailed, because it's a fundamental part of what makes that world "what it is". Without that lore, you have a cartoon image with no rational or coherent background. With it, you've got a "world to live in", not a video game map to traverse.

The next game could have major changes in the lore and still be great, as long as it's equally consistent and detailed within that game. I actually don't mind the change all that much from a tropical rainforest setting to a pseudo-european world in Oblivion (although I suspect the tropical rainforest might have been more interesting), but the lack of detail, near absence of politics, shallow approach to religion, and cursory treatment of the culture in general left a whole lot to be desired. Blatant leveling and scaling soon destroyed most of my remaining sense of credulity. I didn't hate most of what we were given; I hated how LITTLE we were given, especially since most of what did exist was merely repeated from DF and MW, whether it was applicable or not. Quite simply, while the individual NPCs were more "lifelike" than in Morrowind, the world itself didn't come across as believable in Oblivion, largely due to the less developed and presented lore.

I saw Morrowind as a huge canvas with a well-proportioned and inspiring scene, but the details often weren't that clear or spectacular. Oblivion was more like a collage of pretty bits and pieces that sort-of fit, but lacked a grand vision to turn it into a true work of art, merely some rough idea of what the overall layout was supposed to look like, and some attempt to keep the pieces more or less in their proper places. The individual NPCs and smaller stories were frequently better, but the "big picture" didn't feel like a real place. Whether MK was the architect of that grand overview, or someone else, I can't say, but it felt to me as if the inspiration was lost between the two games.

While I do like Oblivion, I would agree for the most part with your assessment. While it would have been cool to see a tropical rainforest or jungle, I think it made more sense for its setting to change to what it was, although it certainly could have done with being less bland. And while you understandably wouldn't have strong opposition against the Empire right in Cyrodiil at the time like you have in 4E 201 Skyrim, the politics were pretty shallow for what it could have been. Some political rivalries between cities could have been added, for example. I guess the treatment of culture is due to the fact that it is the heart of the Empire, and being a melting pot a lot of the non-Imperial folk would be assimilated. Still, the game could've done with some segments of people trying to preserve their culture and refusing to assimilate into Imperial culture in the cities, for instance.

The leveling system was total garbage, especially when it comes to creatures like ogres, goblins, and ghosts. That is probably my biggest gripe with the game.

What many people don't see is that Oblivion was all about the contrast of "hell" and "home". Cyrodiil was absolutely OK in that game. If you step from a "weird" jungle scenery into an Oblivion gate, what's the point? Why defending hell from hell...

Besides interaction with the environment, the only thing these games truly excel with is the lore, in my opinion.

The hours I've wasted learning about the history and politics of these games were sometimes more fun than actually playing them, to me at least. It's so rich, fascinating, and engaging that it actually makes me forgive the often-times lackluster gameplay mechanics simply because I get to run around in such an awesome and interesting world, and yes, controversial to say here, I know, but to me, most of the main mechanics in the Elder scrolls games feel lackluster in comparison to how other games will approach those same mechanics, but again, because how the lore makes the world feel so much more coherent and intricate to me it makes me not care nearly as much. It's the glue that keeps this series together in my opinion and it would make me rage like a massive nerd if they were to drop it or treat it with any lesser care.

So yeah, I quite like the lore in these games...

1. Intellectually. Reading lets me slow down and think.

2. Tamriel would resemble the Indian and Malay sub-continent. The Empire would only crown a third of that untamed continent. The Breto-Nordics would be Hyperborian. The endo-Cyrodilic cultures would reflect the cosmopolitan and worldly Malay societies, while the exo-Cyrodilic/Imperial fashion themselves in Hellenism with a magitech slipstream veneer. Alinor remains as she was depicted in the First Pocket Guide. The beast races (including orcs) would be unplayable and totally alien; Elsweyr would remain reminiscent of Thra, and I would look to Brian Froud for redesigning Valvenwood. The Yoku would lend from the Talan from Outcast in appearance. Religion, I would turn to MAR Barker's World of the Petal Throne... I could go on.

3. The contradictions.

In my opinion, TES without the lore isn't TES. Part of the allure of a TES game is the opportunity to become a part of this vibrant, deep world. Without the lore, TES becomes a generic fantasy game.