If anything Skyrim feels more like Real Earth than Oblivion did. Anything but more Alien.

Where are the strange trees and plants? Where are the wierd animals? Honestly 95% of the plants and animals in Skyrim you can either find in earth now or in the past.

Skyrim is definately more like earth than Oblivion was, and of course much more so than Morrowind. I don't mind, I like it, but it certainly isn't alien. In fact many times when walking around in Skyrim I can actually image myself in Switzerland or somewhere. The wolves, deer, rabbits, foxes, etc. don't look out of place. Course then my daydream is broken when a saber tooth tiger jumps me.

No, I think you may have misunderstood the article. Completely. I'll quote an entire excerpt of it, and explain the rationale behind my conclusions.


Okay so Morrowind felt Alien. Agreed. You're an outsider, you're uncomfortable.


Okay, so Oblivion lost that Alien feel because we wanted it to be familiar. Also agreed.


Here's where you missed the connection. Two quotes ago he said the 'Alien feel' was what made Morrowind special. Here in this quote, he says that Oblivion sacrificed what made Morrowind special: The wonder of discovery. Essentially, 'The Alien Feel' and the 'Wonder of Discovery' are one in the same, a different word to refer to the same, somewhat abstract principle. You know this because of how the two phrases are used, in terms of both being given as what made Morrowind special. They are synonymous. He goes on to say that they were going to bring at least some of it back for Skyrim, and I'd argue they did it only a little, if at all.

We've already discussed how there is virtually nothing in Skyrim that feels alien or unfamiliar. But I'd like to add that if I'm an Argonian, Khajiit, or Dark Elf I would expect some ill treatment in Windhelm. Instead my race is rarely, if ever commented on, and I can use the tavern without issue. If Bethesda was really trying, they'd make me slink over to the gray quarter, and use the shabby Cornerclub there for an inn, but of course they don't. The New Gnisis Cornerclub doesn't even have beds. This is just one example, and I think it stems from a desire from Bethesda to make their game so accessible and convenient that it borders on patronizing. I never had a part of the game where my actions or choices made me feel uncomfortable. For the most part, I'm welcome wherever I go, in this generic Norwegian fantasy land.

Also, quoted from a previous post of mine: The thing that irritated me more was the article's headline 'Skyrim has what made Morrowind special', 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will hark back to Morrowind and the "wonder of discovery" - something Bethesda wittingly "sacrificed" for Oblivion.'

Since this is an article rather than a transcript, clearly the interviewer got these impressions from talking to Todd Howard even if they aren't directly (re: explicitly) quoted in the article. Maybe I'm reaching too far here, but this article is just one example of dozens which I saw leading up to the release of Skyrim talking about how Bethesda wanted to get back to its Morrowind design, finding their roots again, avoiding the same mistakes Oblivion did. I just can't believe that all of these different writers got the same, but mistaken impression from talking to Todd and others, both on and off the record.

Actually, he doesn't say that Morrowind felt special for its alien look, he says that it should have had the alien look because it was, well, Morrowind. He refers to the tone of the game with the outsider bit.

The implication then seems to be that when they removed the alien feel from Morrowind they went too far - they wanted to remove the alien sure but they perhaps made Oblivion too bland and generic.

As a result they wanted to make Skyrim be non-bland without giving it an alien feel. That's why they focus on culture, they mostly seem to refer to the idea that Oblivion didn't have enough odd or interesting culture in it. Now, whether or not Skyrim has captured nordic culture well is up for debate, but this article when read carefully has no implication that it should be alien. That may however be a fault of either the article, or Todd's inability to explain clearly.

The only area like Morrowind is the swamp inbetween Morthal and Solitude.

Otherworldly, not alien. Yes, some of the landscape is Earth-like. But the combination of the environment and the music does create an ethereal, otherworldly vibe for me. There are some truly awesome moments when the perfect phrase of music starts to play as you encounter a particular environment, and it makes you just stop what you're doing and take in the atmosphere.

I must have missed that quote by Todd, but I honestly didn't expect a lot of magical appeal in Skyrim. If anything, I expected it to be even more realistic and generic than it is. I'm impatient for a game set in Black Marsh, Summerset or Valenwood for a higher alien world to experience.

He's talking about "the wonder of discovery", not the alien feel. They aren't the same thing. Todd never said Skyrim feels alien. He specifically said it has the wonder of discovery, instead of specifically saying it should feel alien.

Yes! Cyrodiil and Skyrim were "earthlike" enough, I'm starving here for a truly high fantasy setting with a lot of crazy [censored] in all acounts: story, atmosphere, architecture, animals, vegetation, culture, politics... Morrowind was sooo much better in creating an original and consistent world, full of character and atmosphere.

I actually have to agree on at least one account with "Skyrim has what made Morrowind special." There are a lot more individually memorable areas in Skyrim, enough to differentiate everything from everything else on at least a superficial level. As opposed to Oblivion, where the whole game felt like the same 100yrds of grasslands copy and pasted over.

Skyrim was never supposed to Feel Alien (To western audiences) though. The Human lands are supposed to be relatable to anyone familiar with Tolkien lores. The lands of Mer, on the other hand, tend to be extremely weird, but we've only ever been to Elven lands once, and that was Morrowind. I certainly don't envy Bethesda. They are officially out of Human lands for main games now, unless they want to do High Rock/Hammerfell as individual province/games, since even in Daggerfall, the entire land wasn't available. (Referred to as Iliac Bay region, which only covered part of Hammerfell, up to the Wrothgarian and Dragontail mountains in both games.

First off, this thread really just seems like another “I want to [censored] off to how much better I think Morrowind is,” variety of thread. Thus, I have called a wambulance on behalf of the OP. However, I will make a few points of my own.

1) Nords are basically humans (along with Imperials, Reguards, and Bretons), so their ways of thinking are going to be much closer to ours than the Dunmer, which is important. It makes sense that different species like elves would have culture very different to our own while the human races have ones closer to ours. As some have already mentioned, the moment the game was announced to be taking place in a human kingdom it was clear it was not going to be as alien as Morrowind.

2) How “alien” and environment is should not be the first and only criteria when judging how good it is. I think all the emphasis on “alien” is simplifying the issue. Skyrim certainly has qualities Morrowind did not; such as gradneur, and mountains that actually looked like mountains and not just big hills for one thing. Also, whether “alien” is such a good thing is entirely subjective; just because you think it’s a positive it doesn’t mean everyone thinks the same.

3) Morrowind was not even as alien as some people make it out to be. Besides from a few of the architectural styles and the odd plant and easy to kill animal Morrowind had plenty clichés embedded into it. Yes, it had a number of unique features, but I never felt it was revolutionary. If Morrowind was actually alien it would have had a pink grass lined with tiny eyeballs, with rivers of green water suspended in the sky, and people with boxes for heads, along with other assorted freaky [censored]. Clearly, the OP has an underwhelming idea of the word “alien”. The only really original and alien thing we got in Morrowind was the people with flutes growing out of their faces.

4) Bethesda exaggerated and bent the truth a bit, so what? Every company, political party, interest group, individual does it. Perhaps if the OP was savvier, by which I mean if he had the tiniest bit of wisdom on human behaviour, he would have realised from the get go that Bethesda were making comments that had obvious elements of fabrication in them.

In my opinion Skyrim doesn't have the alien feel Morrowind had. It has a more classical fantasy feel, but without the knights in shining armor. I personally prefer Skyrims feel.

I for one don't want an alien world. "High fantasy" games don't do it for me. Go play Amulets of Amalur or games that look plain daft to totally unrealistic. Go get a character that wears shoulder pads big enough that Joan Collins would die for.

Every single success in fantasy realm has elements of real life in it. Admittedly most are based on ancient mythology but this is still parallels of our world to identify with.

Elves, dwarves, Ogres, dragons, wizards are all characters from real world mythology passed down from real life cultures. Pirates, knights, Samurai, highwaymen, bandits are all things that identify with aspects of our own real world. They aren't completely made up creations. Even LOTR was based on a Germanic mythological world.

Good fantasy in my eyes just exaggerates our own world to something that becomes a breath taking imagination.

Watch the first 20 seconds of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l2qIszredU

"[...] And the vibe we were going for in morrowind was: Stranger in a strange land, that it felt alien. That feels wrong for Skyrim... right? Skyrim shouldn't feel like this isolated alien place; the way we treated that section of morrowind. [...]"

- Todd Howard


Edit: And yes, he goes on to talk about how they for skyrim wants to highten the "wonder of discovery" which they felt were great in morrowind. Precisely the same stuff that rather hastily written eurogamer article touches upon.

I'm just quoting this for truth as nobody appears to have read what was actually said.

Howard isn't saying he thinks Skyrim will look "alien". He's saying that it will feel alien because you're thrust into a hostile world where you feel like an outsider. He says nothing about the visual design at all.

Now, we can debate whether that happened or not - but just going off the title and making the rest up is really lazy on the part of most of the posters here.

Watch the linked video in my previous post. Skyrim is not supposed to be or feel even remotely alien. Straight from Todd Howard himself.

Proof has spoken. Any misunderstandings of the article can now be settled by watching a mere 20 seconds of an interview Cheers!

Sure, I knew watching all those pre-release interviews would pay off one day..

I sort of expected most of what Todd was going to say was a blatant almost lie. *shrugs*

Obviously our two interpretations of what Todd said are different. I think that his 'Wonder of Discovery' is equivalent, based on his phrasing, to the 'Alien Feel' he talked about. And then he says that they were trying to get back to some of that with Skyrim, which I contest did not happen. Either way, I explained in detail how I drew my conclusions in my most recent post, so you know I'm not being intellectually dishonest.


Watch the video through about 1:45. You'll see that Todd goes on to say what I've maintained all along, there should be distinctions and differences between Skyrim and other games in the series, but in the next breath he says (again) that in Skyrim they needed to get back to that 'Wonder of Discovery', which he says is what made Morrowind so great. He point blank says that 'at first glance' Skyrim should come off as traditional fantasy...but then talks about how in Morrowind you might have 'House Redoran acting differently from House Telvanni and treating you different, and we're going to bring that back in Skyrim, between the different holds'. (Last sentence was paraphrased). Basically I'm saying that none of this happened, especially the last part. But if your favorite game was Morrowind, you hear 'House Redoran and House Telvanni' and you instantly perk up, get a little excited. What if they're treating the different Holds like Great Houses? Are the gameplay of the Great Houses (so beloved from Morrowind and missed from Oblivion) coming back? So you see, he tosses out these little references even though there's no reality or factual basis behind what he's using them to support.

He also starts to talk about races at about 8:25. Todd says that they're really trying to make races different (not true, with less attributes and less skills than ever before, races are increasingly just cosmetic). He also talks about the racism in the game, playing it up (again drawing a comparison to Morrowind), but the fact is that though racism is in the game, it's just a light dusting. You encounter it in a scripted conversation when you first enter Windhelm, you maybe hear an occasional racist comment, but it never seems to have in-game consequences, or go any deeper than just references.

So these are all things that are more or less said and then not true. And I really feel that the continued stressing that Todd does 'This goes back to Morrowind, this reminds of us Morrowind. Morrowind was really great, no really we think that...don't believe us? We definitely do...' is a concentrated effort to hold onto the 'Old Guard' Morrowind and Pre-Morrowind base that they correctly assumed would face a lot of disappointment when they finally did get ahold of Skyrim and found how watered down its RPG elements were, and in some ways what a shallow world it is compared to previous games.

No, Skyrim felt too much like a weird hybrid of LOTR and Conan. Only thing alien in Skyrim is Blackreach, being in that place felt like I was in a different world.

amazing sir. 100% agree with you

What he says in that interview is not patently untrue though as you state in your opening post. Sure, it can be argued that one feel they could have done more. Again with the comparion to the different houses in morrowind which deals with the "wonder of discovery" part where they intended to draw upon morrowind. Whether they succeeded or not is up to interpretation and personal taste. Not a blatant lie or untrue per se. And he never spoke of any "alien lands" within Skyrim. It's the cradle of man after all and would make little sense.

Edit: Oh and on racism, he definitely downplayed it afterwards as more of a flavour thing. That's marketing though, one generally listen more to the first sentences said =P

Second edit: I thought this thread was resolved already

YAY!

Another Morrowind-related topic in a Skyrim forum!

-insert sarcasm here-

Is it not patently untrue that Holds treat and react to you differently? I mean okay, they each have an independent bounty system, if that's what he's talking about... But I remember in particular that late in the Imperial Legion quest line I openly walk into Windhelm wearing my Imperial Legionnaire outfit, walk into the tavern, and literally murder a Stormcloak courier or officer or whatever he was in cold blood, while he sits down to dinner. And then, I can calmly walk out of the tavern, walk out of Windhelm with my bloody sword in hand, and just fast travel away. They could at least have done something where Stormcloak soldiers/guards have a 'Kill on sight' setting for anyone wearing an Imperial outfit like happens in Fallout: New Vegas.


I believe I always stopped short of accusing anyone of a 'lie', which is a separate matter from not telling the truth, or being misleading. One interpretation is that Bethesda was careful enough to tell half-truths, or word their statements such that they could never be 'caught' actually lying and the other interpretation is that Bethesda said everything in good faith, and just made their own mistakes or fell short of their own statements through no fault of their own. I'm not sure I'm entirely committed to the first interpretation, but I believe there are definitely shades of it at work here.

So while it may technically be a subjective interpretation to say whether or not Skyrim hearkened back to Morrowind, or had a 'Wonder of Discovery (re: At least occasionally Alien)" feel, or any of the other things we've talked about, the broad consensus of this thread is that Bethesda fell short of these claims. Frankly, I think even you (Syv) and others who disagree with me in principle would concede that its true, Bethesda did not return at all to any of the principles, themes, or design aspects of Morrowind, or did so in a such a superficial way that it isn't worth mentioning. You're just arguing for the sake of 'someone', 'somewhere', who 'somehow' has reached the informed opinion (i.e. has played more than just Oblivion and Skyrim) that all of the statements Bethesda made which we've brought up in this thread are true. Which means that in a moral relativism mindset there can be no objective truth as long as there's at least a tiny voice of dissent.

Edit: You know Cooler3100, you seem to have a deep-seated, almost irrational hatred of even the whisper of 'Morrowind', yet in this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1365353-what-is-quality-writing-to-you/ and this thread http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1365377-an-idea-about-the-next-es/ and others like them I've observed that you seem to agree with everything I and others like me say in principle, that Skyrim had bad writing, that Skyrim is overrated, that Skyrim was buggy, that Skyrim has too many apologists. So I don't understand why you feel the need to go around and make completely unproductive statements from time to time bashing Morrowind whenever I bring it up when in fact you and I want the same thing: A broad revision of Bethesda's game design and marketing strategy to hopefully provide us with a better Elder Scrolls game going forward, because Skyrim simply was not 'it'.

Frankly I think you can agree that it'd be best to start a new thread and name it "Did Skyrim have a sense of discovery?"

Edit:

I think we can say with fair confidence that your interpretation of the article was correct, but that your source was patently rubbish.