As long as I can remember, Imperials were always the "social" race, and that was what set them apart. They've always had the biggest boost to speech/mercantile, and now speech isn't even in their skill set. It doesn't really matter as far as the game is concerned-I can still play as an Imperial Agent if I want, it just feels to me like the race just completely lost it's identity. Similarly, I kind of felt that the same happened to the Redguards, though to a lesser extent. They've always been the warrior elite, and now in Skyrim half their skill set is magic. Even in Oblivion Trayvond (Cheydinhal mages guild) basically said that Redguards were not big fans of magic. Other than that, I thought all the other races were done well enough.

So, any thoughts? Any races you were dissapointed with? To reiterate, I'm not talking about gameplay at all, I am strictly discussing the identity of Tamriel's races.

Remember, this is 200 years after Oblivion. I see Racial skills as a cultural background- and if this is the case, then the skills almost certainly would have changed after such a long period of time.

Take a look at Dunmer if you want a similar 'wtf' moment. Oh and guess who gets a speech bonus? Nords.

I hate it. I think Marss' post is just a rationalization for somersaults that Bethesda has to do to reshuffle skills as they keep subtracting to make sure everyone gets the same amount of bonuses. If anything Speechcraft and diplomacy is more important to the Imperial culture than it ever was before now that their military and political power is on the wane, they need their ambassadors and talkers to pick up the slack that the legions can no longer take up.

Agreed that it's a rationalization, but as for the Dunmer and Nords, Dunmer have always been kind of a mixed bag in the skills department, and I think that the Nords getting speech was to show that Nords weren't just Barbarians, as seen in the book "Nords of Skyrim."

I viewed the Imps even all till now, a group of folks who weren't outstanding as the other races, they aren't the Hit and run ambush tactics employing, waterbreathing Argonians. the fierce Dunmeri Warriors, the Powerful Sword brandishing Redguard or the Allpowerful Altmer. they simply are a group who rely on Discipline, group tactics and formations to overwhelm their foes, it is the one reason they were able to pacify 6 other provinces that border the home province for so long after the trumph card disappeared.


but yeah I see your point, and I agree, trying to hard to "balance" and spread things out after other aspects have been removed ;p

I remember Dunmer fondly as the ultimate hybrid class, with a bonus to some magical skills, a bonus to short and longblades and marksmanship, and I believe light armor. They made a great 'light armor, dagger wielding' class for stealthing, sneaking, assassinations, thieving, whatever else. But you could also make them into okay mages if Bretons and Altmer didn't appeal to you, and of course while they weren't as great as the three 'dedicated' warrior classes they did pretty well as a melee fighter too.

It's like ever since Morrowind the Dunmer just can't get a break. First there was their incredibly metrosixual portrayal in Oblivion, which stood in stark contrast to the masculine, patriarchal, racist, smokey-voiced Dunmer we came to love. Then Morrowind gets blown up. Now their racials are kind of crappy, and they look like neanderthals while still maintaining a less than smokey vocal tone. Now they're the 'second-rate magical elf' in terms of their skill bonuses....

You know, I just looked it up, and I had had no idea that the Dunmer now have no weapon skills. I would have to agree then, the Dunmer and their Cockney accents definitely get a WTF.

Right, they're not oustanding except for their ability to conquer a continent and successfully govern it, and that governance requires good diplomacy to be effective and that diplomacy implies that if they are good at anything, it should be speech.

Excellent descriptions by the way.

The current state of the Dunmer saddens me. They were quite cool in Morrowind.

I think they adjusted skill sets to fit the era and setting, Imperial influence is dwindling in skyrim and you want a speech bonus?

Imperial - I'm a imperial i'm a social race give me a price discount"
Nord Shopkeeper - "i'l chop your head off"

At least the Dunmer all have a gigantic scowl now, so you can tell how angry they are with the state of things.

My Dunmer is by far my favorite of 6 different characters and some 580 hours of play.

Lore redefined that Redguards hate Conjuration, but they don't have a problem with Destruction or Alteration.

Skills got cut out of the game, different racials now. I mean Orcs have an enchanting bonus now for crying out loud.

Same thing happened after Morrowind, Argonians had completely different skills than they do now, when they gave them lockpicking in Oblivion I was like wtf.

Now lockpicking is the Argonian's biggest skill bonus, the thing their race is known for better than anyone else. Oh well if only we still had spears...

I'm sure a lot of Khajiit players miss the +15 to acrobatics the enjoyed in Morrowind too.

Yeah, I picked Imperial for my stealth character for that very reason, and it turned out she was supposed to be a Battlemage or something. Threw me off.

Luckily racial bonuses don't really matter in Skyrim.

and thats what I don't like about alot of things in Skyrim, Hark the TES series in general, things like powers / racial skill bonuses and all that jazz make absolutely little difference in the long run...

Moral of the story?

Stop removing ~ish.

I honestly liked how in Morrowind I could kind of 'strategize' my character to give him the biggest possible bonus in something, and really make each character sort of unique. One character could step off the boat with a skill of 10 in Longblades but the next could have a skill of 50. It helped roleplay because it gave me direction to see what my character was good at, at level 1 and that could help with thinking of a backstory. In Skyrim your character was born the day before Alduin's return without any particular skill or trade that can't be owed to genetics...

Hooray for Skyrim giving us a lake that's only ankle deep.

Races have set skill sets in Skyrim?

People have made that clear and of course it's possible for such changes to occur in 200 years, but I think the point is here, from an AUDIENCE perspective, it's a very sudden and drastic change in "characters" we know and love.
It would be as if the evil antagonist in book one of a series is suddenly a nerdy sidekick in book two with little attention, explanation or acknowledgement provided for the change. Redguard have gone from hating the crap out of magic to being on of the more frequent users of it, Imperials are no longer the reasonable guys and Dunmer lost their fire-sword-bow combo.

It just seems like such changes at least require some form of explanation OR as an alternative, a more gradual, visual change over time. Again, Redguards -LITERALLY- pulled a complete 180, going from Trayvon being an oddity for the mages guild and that one necromancer fleeing Hammerfell because they wanted to kill him there, to now where they use it daily and look at us, the audience, and seem completely clueless as to why this surprises us.

Every race gets a bonus to certain skills, as in previous games. For example Orcs have +10 to Smithing and Altmer have +10 to destruction, among other things.

I kind of like Skyrim more, it is because race bonus no long governs which class I am going to play. Maybe I was influenced by many other fantasy game, lizardman type should be more on barbaric type than how they look like in Oblivion or Skyrim. If I play an argonian, I expect him to be melee type. I was always wonder among all the races in TES, human type got more physical advantages over most of the non human race, while many fantasy game gives me idea that lizardman and beastman should be more or less better in physical ability over human. I knew this is TES game, but I prefer the old fashion style of race image over TES preset.