Well said! Is there an applause emoticon? Or a high-five one? I agree with you 100%. People expect everything to be like Morrowind, and are disappointed when Skyrim (and come to think of it, Oblivion) aren't.


I disagree. I thoroughly enjoyed the Shivering Isles questline - I've completed it recently - and find the whole place to be intriguing. Of course, I prefer to more realistic environments that Cyrodiil and Skyrim provide, but that doesn't mean that the Shivering Isles were 'designed by an 8 year old who was high on sugar'. I think that the Shivering Isles was an excellent expansion to Oblivion.

I think he wanted the realm of madness to be bland and absolutely sane

But, but, but... that's not fantasy... that's... real... life... I guess...

Skyrim and Nords were always real-world Nordic "Viking" inspired since the series' conception (just look at the name, "Nord"). Also, http://uesp.net/wiki/File:DaggerfallTiger.gif and http://uesp.net/wiki/File:ArenaSpider.gif have been around for a long time (and for the hell of it, http://uesp.net/wiki/File:ArenaWolf.gif, http://uesp.net/wiki/File:ArenaMinotaur.gif, etc).

For one, Tamriel was not created with anything like Cliff Racers (unless you count dragons), Silt Striders, or anything like that. Those were added almost a decade after the series started.

Personally, I'm not a fan of weird for the sake of being weird. Not that weirdness is bad, but it should have a purpose or reason. It's unrelate-able if it's not tempered and kept in check, and pulls me out of the world more than it pulls me in. Horses, wolves and sabertooth tigers help to present a viable, living, breathing world more than Silt Striders, Nix Hounds, and Netches (seriously, am I to believe Silt Striders are actually supposed to move anywhere? have you seen their legs? I can barely believe they're standing).

And don't get me started on those Telvanni Towers.

You just don't get it, do you?

They DON'T have to be like the zombies in Oblivion. Who says they have to?

In tradition with Elder Scrolls law? You mean: lore?
http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Zombie#Zombie

And you keep insisting that they should not be called zombies:
Then why the hell did BETHESDA (the creators of the game and the entire TES series and lore) are calling them zombies, and included zombie spells and staves?

I keep providing you with all this evidence, from two different wiki sites, and the fact that the term zombie IS used in Skyrim, and the fact that those zombies/thralls behave like the prototypical zombie (which is usually a reanimated corpse, thus undead). You are simply ignoring the evidence. And then the evidence from Wikipedia:

"A zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) is an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means, such as witchcraft." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie
"Zombies are fictional undead creatures regularly encountered in horror and fantasy themed works." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_%28fictional%29

So, can you provide any evidence to the contrary?

I wonder if perhaps the reason we have so many unusual and fantastical creatures, as opposed to normal/real world animals, in Morrowind is simply because Bethesda couldn't make convincing animations for real creatures (horses, cattle, deers, bears, wolves, etc.). I mean, they couldn't even get humanoid animations right!

In Oblivion and Skyrim they had access to motion capture, so both humanoid and beast animations are many orders of magnitude better and more convincing than in Morrowind.

Or maybe they wanted to make Morrowind feel more "paleolithic", alien, ancient, distant. The exception being rats, I guess, which were probably brought over by the empire when they started repopulating the Vvanderfell district.

We have only one moon.
Lucky I don't see a dragon diving from the sky to eat me alive.
I really worry about Solitude. Who would build a city on a rocky arch? Don't they have earthquakes in Skyrim.
Mages with lightning bolts. I don't see them around here.

I like the way Beth make things grounded in Skyrim. It suits it.
A DLC that takes me to another world away from Skyrim like hum Shivering Isles. I like that as well.

Of course I meant lore, I wasn't thinking. But, no the thralls in skyrim are not enemies. They are ressurected by a spell. In oblivion the real zombies were back 'alive' for unknown reasons. It still does not mean they are zombies like in oblivion. Don't bother replying I can't be bothered. They are just resurections of recently died humanoids, and not the rotting corpses that tried to kill you like in Oblivion.

Personally I like the apporach Bethesda has taken in Skyrim. One of my complaints with more traditional fantasy setups is there is nothing fantastic about the other races, they become so common they grow boring. I perfer the fantasy races to be rare and seeing them to be a moment of rememberence.

Anyone think aquatic "Atlantean" type humanoids sound fantastical enough without coming across as too run of the mill fantasy? I don't think I've seen anything like that in TES. Wonder if something like that could be developed at some point?

Argonians and dreughs

But Argonians are more desert lizards, aren't they? Dreughs are a bit more along the lines of what I meant, but they're more crab like than bipedal humanoids. Now, if you make Argonians amphibious underwater beings with gills, fins on their bodies and webbed fingers and toes, then that's more like what I meant.

argonians are from a swamp...where is this desert stuff comin from?

I take that back. They're more like humanoid crocodiles or alligators, rather than actual "http://www.worth1000.com/entries/544301/", meant more for swamps rather than the open sea.

Exactly. It's simple... a reanimated corpse is... drumroll please... a zombie.

Zombies are undead for no apparent reason and do not have the intellect to use weaponry or magic, Thralls are voodoo-style mage servants, draugr are cursed dead

Come to think of it I do see lots of trolls, ice wraiths, and undead when I ride my dragon to work every morning

Credible? lol sorry. I know what you meant but it did strike me as funny all the same.

We seem to be getting there!

Thralls:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thrall
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thrall
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/thrall
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrall

I guess a thrall could be a zombie. The term zombie appears to originate from the Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe.
Some sources define a zombie as strictly a reanimated undead person (and there are no strict limitations as to their capacities), but other sources say that it simply can be a person who is under the complete mental control of another person (thus similar to a thrall). The common factor I keep finding about zombies is that magic (of some sort) is supposed to be the controlling agent.

I don't think Bethesda paid too much importance to the difference between a thrall and a zombie:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Conjuration_Spells

As I suggested earlier, the term "thrall" appears to be of Scandinavian/Norse/Viking origin, so it makes sense that it was used in Skyrim.

In any case, the point being that there ARE zombies in the game, even if they are not exactly like those in Oblivion (and the zombies in Oblivion are not exactly like the zombies in Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" or the Voudou zombies).

Yet, enough of this derailment of the thread!

IMO, the OP is right in that there may not be "enough" fantasy creatures in the game, when compared to other games.
In one of my previous posts, I listed all the creatures that appear in Skyrim, and there are in fact more fantasy creatures than normal ones, but that may not be enough for some people.

Compared to Morrowind, Skyrim is much closer to our own world and reality. The same can be said about armor, weapons, plants, architecture, etc. when compared to Morrowind.
This was made clear way before release by Todd Howard when he explained in an interview that Bethesda was trying to make the game a bit more Low-Fantasy.

I personally don't have a problem with that, as long as creatures are interesting in some way, and fun to fight, and there is enough variety.
Yes, we get to fight lots of wolves, bears and skeevers, but we also get to fight lots of trolls, dragons, ice wraiths, spriggans, and ZOMBIEEEEES!!!

well in viking mythos a draugr is a warrior who is slain and then rises again to slaughter the living. So bethesda just replaced the zombies with draugr to fit the setting EVEN though they are not the same
While the thrall idea was used because of the awesomness of oblivion's staff of worms over summoning a corpse from oblivion

There's a lot of fantasy in the game to be found!

But I admit I miss the creatures from Morrowind, they made it feel like you were on another planet. And though I love more familiar creatures like dogs and horses, there needs to be alot of creatures specific to elder scrolls.

Personaly, I think most 'low fantasy' is ashamed fantasy pretending to be some mainstream idea to appeal to people with no sense of fantasy or fun.
Like the scifi that is ashamed to be scifi and they call it scifi drama, or drama, to appeal to people with no sense of fun or scifi.

Fantasy and sci fi should be proud of what they are, not pander to people with no imagination.

Skyrim, well it is fantasy, but not enough.

And there are things common to all things. They just are.

Magic zombies(raisd by a necromancer etc), virulent zombies(bitey and infectious), and other kinds of undead.
They're all the same thing most of the time, with diferent variations.
All worlds in the multiverse and stories have things in common.

I'm sorry but what?
Do you even know the difference between Low and High fantasy?

I suggest you go away and look it up - for further reference see also: "hard" and "soft" science fiction.
Here are some links you may find helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction

You can't be serious..

We have Khajiit, Argonians, a million different breeds of Elf, Giants, Giant Spiders, Trolls, Talking Dragons, Witches, People who can summon lightning storms by yelling, Demons(Daedra), Walking Dead, Tree people, etc.

Seems pretty fantastic to me.


What? Hell no.

That's not the point. Of course it's fantasy. But it's among the least fantastical in the TES series.
Of course, not every game has to be as fantastical as Morrowind. There are differences between the provinces, and the elven ones are indeed the stranges. There is no "true Elder Scrolls" in that sense. But speaking for myself, I like more fantasy in my fantasy RPG than Skyrim offers.