Name the biggest retcon or narrative alteration you have personally seen in a video game.
>most is endless jungle>most>Nibenay valley is surrounded by rainforestThe issue is the game wasnt a rainforest but thats due to not having the power to render a billion trees.So you have a large landmass thats mostly jungle with a rainforest area within a valley.If all the other towns are written to be outside that bay then I'd agree its a retcon.
>>729607012>bay*valley
just open wowwiki and hit the random page button
>>729607012it was an open retcon anonthey wanted european forests.a temperate rainforest IS a thing, but they didn't make it like that. the rendering issue would have been around regardless though.
>>729607012Anon they literally said they retconned Cyrodiil to look more like something out of Lord of the Rings because of how insanely popular those movies were during the development of Oblivion.
>>729607327where did they say that
Based Todd ignoring contrarian virgins, european meadows are peak comfy and beloved by all normal people at an instinctive level, unlike cringe jungles and deserts.
>>729607201>>729607327Fair enough. I dont pay attention to stuff outside games.
>Todd watches the LOTR trilogy once and makes that the go-to template for all TES designs forever
>>729607412> Cyrodiil was going to be as described in the first PGE, which the book you’re talking about took its quotes from. The heart of the province being what you think of when you think of a traditional jungle, tumbling down to the fields of large rice paddies that fed the Empire, guarded by Romanesque troops and dragons everywhere. The Imperial City was to be vast, rolling across wetlands and swamps, with large sections lost and overgrown, full of too many cults to count, the oldest temples having obviously been around since the Merethic.Then Todd watched The Fellowship of the Ring and mistakes were made - MK
>>729606554Would Oblivion really have been much improved if it was dense, innavigable jungle with only the capital city as a major settlement? At the end of the day, the setting has to serve the actual gameplay.
>>729606554>ruins every previous gameYou cannot top this.
>>729606554CHIM
>>729606554Colovia was never a jungle, only Nibenay. At most Talos made northern Nibenay not a jungle since the southern parts are still marsh/tropical.
>>729607773TES lore discussion was much better when nobody knew or cared about this shit.You can't go 5 posts in any TES lore discussion without some secondary regurgitating some youtubers third-hand interpretation of someone else's TL;DR of Metaphysics of Morrowind.
>>729606554
>>729607750>making up fanfiction as the core of his argumentare you stupid?read this guys further post>>729607745
>>729607327>>729607676>>729607745Don't forget that the Imperial City is blatantly Minas Tirith and Whiterun is blatantly Edoras.
>>729606554Talos changed reality to have always not have been a jungle in Cyrodiil, even though WE know it used to be a jungle and there are still fragments of memories and records of it having been a jungle. But it was retroacted to have never been a jungle. If that bothers you then dont bother with elder scrolls lore because theres way more shit than that
>>729607574This. Who lives in European meadows? Who lives in jungles? Says all you need to know.
>>729607327and everything Skyrim that isn't LOTR (like fucking Rohan's hill castle aka Whiterun) is also just lifted from grimdark 2000s movies like Reign of Fire or 2004's King Arthur. and to top it off in the last six months of development Game of Thrones was already out so they lifted whatever they could from that as well.
>>729608315>how DARE anyone criticize the retcons!no and fuck off nigger
>>729607750The Imperial City is supposed to look more Roman with sea serpents swimming in the rivers, while boats take people to where they need to go. Theres just so much wrong with Oblivion or more accurately it just feels too generic.
>>729608387for comparison here are dragons in Skyrim. as you can see Bethesda employees couldn't even bring themselves to avoid the curled horns or spikes on the lower jaw. they just copied the entire fucking design outright.
>>729606554>and as man he said "LET ME SHOW YOU THE POWER OF TALOS STORMCROWN, BORN OF THE NORTH WHERE MY BREATH NOW IS LONGGGGGG WINTER.>I BREATH NOW IN ROYALTY AND RESHAPE THIS LAND THAT IS MINE. >I DO THIS FOR YOU RED LEGIONS BECAUSE I LOVE YOU"
>>729608561Yeah sure, the Imperial City could've been more visually striking, more alien in certain ways. But I played Morrowind and Vivec City was a pain in the ass to navigate, it's probably for the best it wasn't Venice. Oblivion as a game is generic but there are ways to change that without making the actual game a pain in the ass to play.
>>729609409Well Bethesda needs real level designers, something people have been saying for ages now.
>>729606554ooooh jungles, verrrry fucking original. just play far cry or something you pretentious faggot.
>>729608391>filtered by CHIM>AND buck broken by dragonbreaksYou are either a secondary flailing on the outside of something you know little about just to drum up outrage or you legitimately know nothing of Michael Kirkbride's contribution to the elder scrolls lore.
>>729608315>>729610490>ESO loreKYS
I just chimed all over my bed
>>729606554Mass Effect 2.Everyone forgot the events of the first game. It was like the devs were gaslighting you in real time.
>>729610490Look newfag, we get it.You are new to being a bethesda fan and getting filtered by all the criticism we regularly throw around.If this bothers you then just fucking leave.This is how its been for over a decade.
>>729607412A reddit post that disingenuous shitposters take to be canon because they are faggots.
>>729607412I watched an interview with Ken Rolston where he basically admitted they went for a more generic fantasy setting.
>>729607762I actually loved this game :(
>>729606554>actually the forerunners werent human
>>729606554>>729607012>picThe issue here is that modern audiences fully have lost the ability to see anything beyond the extremely literal. These games, like most games, are supposed to show you a "scaled down" version of a real thing. Prime example: World of Warcraft. In the "lore" version of Warcraft, Travel from Tirisfal Glades, through the Silverpine forest and towards Hilsbrad is a multi day trek. But in WoW going from undercity to old dalaran (even not flying) takes a couple of minutes. Because the world is scaled down. It wouldn't be fun to actually have an endless jungle. You'd be just walking through it for hours and hours and probably days or weeks if it was lore accurate. Think about how long you'd be walking if you were going from your home to the nearest big store. Now imagine how long it would take to go from there, to the next bigger city, on foot. Having shit on that scale just wouldn't be fun, unless you specifically tailor a game to work on scales like that. But fuck man, even Elite Dangerous implemented an FSD boost to deal with these many LS away planets.
>>729611426>we>newfag>bethesda fanVery strange response.
this game came out 20 years agoyou guys make this thread every monthplease, for your own sake, move on
>>729608762alduin is pretty blatant but paarthurnax is distinct enough, he's got like the spike equivalent of a five o' clock shadow
>>729608381>Who lives in European meadows?animals>Who lives in jungles?also animals
>>729608762>>729608387>dragons/wyverns look like dragons/wyvernsYeah no shit retard. That's not plagiarism any more than a sword looking like a sword.
>>729608762Todd said he gave explicit instructions to the devs to make the Dragons look like that though, its not some big secret - he wanted them to look like that
The heart of the Empire being in the middle of a jungle was stupid as fuck anyways.
>>729612929Nta, but I don't see the issue. There's only so many ways you can make a dragon look, this being one of them. Beyond that the main difference is size and mystical power. So unless you go "real dragons had feathers, actually" it's not like you're NOT gonna copy some design.
>the stunning conclusion to the halo trilogy and it really was ..
>>729613105Westerners don't know how to pay homage to their legacy which is what makes detail identifiable in spite chaos. FROM dragons and Yugioh Dragons are loved while no one cares for Baldurs Gate or Dragon Age Dragons - but every art of Blue Eyes White Dragon made for over 30 years has paid homage to the original manga design.
>>729613105On one hand, dragons in TES are supposed to be glorified time jannies. On the other hand they should've TRIED to make them unique. Even Fromsoftware gave dragons extra limbs, stone appearances and other attributes.
>>729613105Or in other words, there's nothing going for the Skyrim design in particular to separate it into making a distinct aesthetic. They had Dragons (Akatosh Martin) as close as Oblivion right before Skyrim and nothing they did would be considered 'inspired' to leave a sense of awe for the design.
>>729608315Meanwhile in Arena:>It is primarily comprised of grasslands, though the Dragon's Teeth Mountains stretch through the west of the province between Hammerfell and Valenwood, and small areas of desert, forest, and swamp exist where the Imperial Province borders southern Hammerfell, northern Valenwood, and western Black Marsh respectively.
>>729613456nobody gives a shit about any of those dragons outside of your echo chamberyou have lost your grip on reality
>>729614036>>nobody gives a shit about any of those dragons outside of your echo chamberWhat? People love FROM dragons everywhere, people literally consider them the best designed dragons period.
>>729612305Your post has nothing to do with OP's point and it's complete bullshit anyway.
>>729607012Oblivion was released in 2006 and Crisis in 2007. They could have rendered a dense jungle if they wanted, but they didn't because they were lazy.They could have had trees that exploded with realistic physics when hit by spells, or burned down, or whatever.Instead, it was shit.Don't cut those slackers any slack.
>>729613456>>729613645>yugiohfag starts prattling on about one of the shittiest dragon designs known to man>>729614527>reality is bullshit>muh feels!
>>729614735Does Crysis have hundreds of NPCs with their own inventories, daily routines, radiant AI conversations about mudcrabs and murder sprees over stealing an apple?
>>729614735>Oblivion was released in 2006 and Crisis in 2007.these two games were not run on the same hardware or even close to it. my PC that I played Oblivion with mostly high settings at like 40-50 fps was literally struggling in the single digits in Crysis sometimes, and that was with me using an optimized config of mostly low and some medium settings. it cannot be overstated how heavy Crysis was compared to its contemporaries. Oblivion runs easily at least three times as fast as Crysis on 2000s hardware.>They could have rendered a dense jungle if they wanted, but they didn't because they were lazy.They could have had trees that exploded with realistic physics when hit by spells, or burned down, or whatever.complete pipe dream. Far Cry 2 did a small fraction of this as an open world game and it was lauded to high heavens for it. no destruction to speak of by the way. a few canned props less sophisticated than Crysis' wooden fences, that's all they could afford on 7th gen consoles.Crysis' own port later proved that not even Crytek could get it to run on 7th gen conslows. they downgraded the physics and animations severely. and that's with "wide linear" levels visited in predetermined order. there's a reason not even Crysis 3 was anything close to open world, or had any destruction to speak of. 7th gen could not handle it. not in combination with nice graphics. 7th gen was strong enough for Red Faction Guerrilla and it was strong enough for Far Cry 2. combining the two? no.
>Every decision you make matters and you have endless plot paths>Well except in the end when we decide none of your choices mattered and force you on the one plot path
>>729613373I don't get it, what's the problem here?
>>729606554The Snake Eater support crew was just as moved by the Boss' final words as her most beloved student and had a giant philosophical war with him over their different interpretations
Baldurs Gate 3 Jaheira Level 8Larian really doesn't give a fuck do they?
>>729607327Meanwhile Morrowind was actually kinda unique. They really wanted the normals audience.
>>729613015no it doesnt, it sounds cool as fuck and way cooler than what we got
>>729616615>Valenwood is a jungle>Blacked Marsh is a jungle, deadliest of them all>parts of Elsweyr are a jungle>county Leyawiin is a jungle>Pyandonea is a jungleHow many brown people biomes do you need?
>>729606554>>729607012isnt the lore reason its not a jungle because of CHIM or something
>>729617212I think they might use the word jungle as synonymous with rainforest
>>729617417Majority of books in TES are written by sheltered, pampered shitperial scholars who never leave the walls of Imperial City. They're basically picrel.
>>729612553unironically there's a morrowind fans discord that has the mission to make periodical threads shitting on Oblivion and Skyrim
>>729612492>filtered newfag seethesjust fuck off if you are gonna be assmad over bethesda fans not being blindly loyal lmao
What do Argonians do anyway? Just jerk off in their shit ass swamp and get blasted off tree juice?
>>729606554in assassins creed valhalla if you chose to play as male several characters forget that you did not choose the canon female and treat you as a girl
>>729613645>>729613456Yugioh cards are so fucking ugly bro. I grew up with magic, and yeah there's some ugly magic cards, but god damn every single yugioh card looks like someone got their little cousin to draw it.
>>729606554gonna be real nothing about "endless jungle of cyrodiil" makes sense and nothing of value is lost in this "retcon"there's supposed to be THE cultural center of the continent they would be fertile plains ripe for agrarian exploitation if anything.Also it overlaps too much with Valenwood, the actual giant fucking death forest.It's flavor they wrote when they weren't thinking too much about it. End of story.
are there games where dragons arent cunts, also dinosaurs didn't exist they were dragons and we've been lied to
>>729618851It's Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st edition. Written and illustrated by Kirkbride when he was working on Redguard, the BLM power fantasy that almost sunk Bethesda. The jungle passage was copy-pasted into Provinces of Tamriel, a niche book featured in Morrowind.Earlier sources like Arena and Battlespire portray Cyrodiil differently, the jungle shit is a retcon in itself. It's one guy trying to meme his jungle into existence.There's also what Todd said about true and reliable information in the setting. There are three tiers of sources. The one that always takes precedence is places and events witnessed directly in games. The second tier is hearsay, notes and books found in games. Then the third tier is materials found outside of the game, which is where the Pocket Guide belongs.
>>729606554genuinely sad
>>729606554Modern wow, but to give a specific example>the old gods are tentacle monsters of corruption and insanity that are literal blights on the earth, your only interaction with them is stabbing the fuck out of them their minions and anything tainted by their touch>some guy adds a lore book written by a titan construct that basically says "let's all pretend the old gods are bad guys and censor all the charity work and puppy adoption they do. Boy I am authoritarian and evil and those piles of tentacles are being oppressed by me"
remember when gameplay came first and story was an afterthought?
>>729618851dude...the rainforests IRL are very fertile areas.its an easy source where you expand by cutting away the jungle and then farm.
>>729606554look the lord of the rings movies had just come out and man thirsted for pseudo europa
>>729620426so why would any be left after 2000 years? cyrodiil goes back to the merethic era bro
>>729613645i like jugioh but that design is gay as fuck
>>729618315What does your lawn mower do before you buy it?
>>729618851>>729619712Ah, the brainless Oblivion fan. You love to see it.
>>729606554The megacities in the Deus Ex prequels
>>729621209Beats being a braindead Kikebride fan who lives and dies by a single paragraph written by a junkie high on nigger semen. Self-proclaimed lorebeards outright claim that everything before Morrowind isn't canon even though maps from Arena were fairly faithfully recreated in all subsequent games including ESO and mod projects like Tamriel Rebuilt.
>>729606554>cradle of human imperial cultureThat implies the existence of non-cyrodiil imperial cultures.But it doesn't happen because TES is a fake and gay setting with a generic island world where everyone is neatly packed into their 8 monosyllabic nation states.
>>729612094Good?There is nothing lamer than a sci-fi pulling a "oh yeah the ancient aliens were actually humans"
>>729620716They were civilized people who understood renewal of forests instead of being retarded brown south americans who can't farm properly and keep ruining their fields, requiring them to go and cut down MORE trees for farmland.Also no massive global market for the wood.
>>729618315I imagine they mostly do menial tasks to keep themselves alive while not bringing nutrients for their tree minds.
Imperials didn't even exist until Morrowind.
>>729606554>filtered by languageanon, are you brown and ESL?
>>729607574>european meadows are peak comfy and beloved by all normal people at an instinctive level, unlike cringe junglesbased and correct>... and deserts.no you shut up now
>>729622006>That implies the existence of non-cyrodiil imperial cultures.There were smaller scale empires in the first era, when Nedes in Cyrodiil were busy being slaves of Ayleids and getting bummed by minotaurs.Nords had their own empire which spanned most of High Rock, northern Cyrodiil and parts of mainland Vvardenfell. Lasted almost 2 centuries.Dwemer had a mostly underground empire spanning entire north of Tamriel. Lasted since before human history until the end of Nord empire, thousands of years.Altmer had several attempts at Aldmeri Dominion which always ended up with Summerset conquering Valenwood and parts of Elsweyr.Sloads, Jabba-looking fat jews and necromancers, had an oceanic kingdom of Thras. After they spawned one of the deadliest plagues in history and sent it Tamriel's way, humans and elves united to send a massive naval force to sink the jew archipelago into the ocean. To this day, Sloads are hunted down and used to make soap.
>>729623264Anon I don't want to call you a retard but come on.It's not hard to figure out I meant imperials as cyrodiilians outside of cyrodiil.
>>729606554Ya'll expect too much from a xbox3060 game.
>>729623418Nedes had a late start compared to everyone else, they needed a literal divine intervention and outside help to have a shot at statehood and further expansion. They're the amerimutts of TES. Rapidly advanced from downtrodden peasants to the global police and created the biggest propaganda machine in the world. They even have their version of American exceptionalism, with the myth that their emperors with a special amulet are the only thing that prevents the whole world from turning into hell, even though the world was doing fine long before their independence.
>>729611542It was a really good game until you had to minmax with the boots of prowess.
>>729619712>Written and illustrated by Kirkbride when he was working on Redguard,Kirkbride was the best writer Bethesda ever had.
>>729607327And then you play starfield and each city is literally “what game or movie did Emil watch this week”.
>>729617212cyrodil is supposed to be a rainforest, and no other region of tamriel is that. not valenwood, not black marsh. yes those regions have a lot of trees, but they are not really rainforests or jungles in the classic sense
>>729606554Wow - dranei
>>729606554trvst the plan
I think they wanted the Empire to feel mythical and mysterious and otherwordly. Hench the jungle. The problem with Oblivion is that the cozy European forest makes it feel too normal, too calm.
>>729626510Imperial City by 2090.
>>729626637I will walk with the ancestor moths as I myself become an ancestor.
>>729626680Maybe you won't have to wait that long for that experience, the Ancestor Moth Monastery will probably come out before the IC just because it's close to the Morrowind border. I think the TR is going to be done with Morrowind by 2035 and then they will start on the border regions.
>>729606554Cyrodiil was a pretty forest in Arena. It being a jungle is never on screen in morrowind.
>>729617212I'm gonna tell you something really crazy, for a good portion of Earth's history nearly the entire planet was covered in trees. Tamriel is one continent on one planet, large portions of it being dense jungles and swamps isn't surprising.
>>729607762I got baited into this POS series by Anons suggesting it was a spacefaring RPG series that featured magic and swords alongside usual sci fi tropes. Complete bullshit. Maybe if my expectations had been properly tempered I’d have enjoyed it but I can’t see myself going back for another go at this point.
>THEY RETCONNED IT BECAUSE LOTR>Not knowing the Morrowind book description was already a retcon from Arena and BattlespireMorrowbabies grow up
>>729614268Other than Seath, show me x3 From dragons that aren’t generic dragon designs.
>>729627350I get you're retarded, but you already made that post. It's not good to be forgetting things that soon.
>>729626510I hate horseshit maps like this where the factions are color coded in the shittiest way.Oh yeah let me just carefully tell what this 80% opacity brownish color is over this map is it sutch, skingrad, ondo or minotaur?>BUH BRAH UR SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE
>>729615417but she’s so pretty though
>>729618491That’s just the game being coded by apes. If you play Feivor the same shit occasionally happens in reverse.
>>729625184He's overrated as fuck. Morrowind and Mournhold in particular were first conceived by Vijay Lakshman, Kirkbride only picked up the pieces.Telvanni mushroom stuff and the idea of mages bending every aspect of nature to their will came from Mark Bullock. That guy actually studied anthropology and picked up mycology as opposed to Kirkbride jerking off to Nation of Islam's Yakub scriptures.Ken Rolston wrote some materials about Dagoth Ur, the Cantas of Vivec and the House of Troubles.Douglas Goodall wrote most of the factions in Morrowind (including ashlanders) and some books about Khajiit; Jobasha was his avatar.Dwemer history was written mostly by Kurt Kuhlmann, with Ted Peterson co-writing Marobar Sul's fables.Almost everything ever written about Oblivion and daedra was Julian LeFay's ideas further worked on by Rolston.Septim Empire and political intrigue surrounding it was written mostly by Ted Peterson, with Todd of all people adding some bits in Morrowind.Majority of books about exotic provinces, guilds, organizations, mystical creatures and race dynamics were written by Peterson.
>>729608315>>729609116>Todd fires all the difficult nerd divas that made Morrowind good>Makes a LOTR ripoff that retcons Cyrodiil into a bland paste>one of those nerds plays damage control on the forums FOR FREE anyway
>>729609116Best npc in the whole damn game.
>>729606554How World of Warcraft keeps retconning themselves constantly. It’s especially bad how when they first announced the Chronicles lore book they specifically said this was the clear and definitive lore and story for the setting. Then comes Shadowlands and DF and they start retconning their own lore book and claiming it was actually just an in-universe propaganda book written by the mean old Titans who are now bad guys.
khajiit legs
>>729614016Arena is basically not a TES game, its only lore contributions were a loose framework of the races and a map of Tamriel. Aedra and Daedra aren't even mentioned.
>>729627686There is a bizarre obsession of worshiping a single factor in game development and ignoring everything else and I hate it.
>nooooo why my video game forests and mountains are not like real onesbecause it would be boring
>>729613645>what if we just appeal to the furries?
>>729607676I have never seen a good Imperial Legion design
>>729628796For many years Kirkbride had more public presence and was more approachable than all those guys combined, especially after the old Bethesda forums were shut down. He was a reddit celebrity until his meltdowns got him banned from TES subs. Ironically Kirkbride always emphasized how multiple other people were crucial in world building and quest writing and corrected people about who wrote which parts, but those posts of his were widely ignored.
>>729613645those hips should be illegal
>>729627521I've spent the past fifteen minutes trying to come up with a snarky response to this post, but I simply cannot understand how you could be having any trouble interpreting this map so I can't effectively mock you for it.
>>729630143You're just dumb and don't get it
>>729630223Thank you, I understand the difficulty you're having with the map much better now.
>>729606554MGS3 and all the circlejerking over The Boss that came afterwards. What a stupid fucking character.
>>729630143Minotaur tribes and Sutch are very similarly colored the map would be better if they were more distinct, and he also brought up Skingrad and Ondo because I assume he is colorblind.
>>729606554I get they couldn't really do it at the time because of processing power reasons but they're had multiple chances to undo the retcon since and haven't taken them
>>729630758That said todd howard did recently confirm that ES6 will easily have more trees than skyrim, so maybe they're going back and making it the forest this time
>>729630741That actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it, maybe Minotaur camps and Ayleid Enclaves should have distinct icons on the map. Not budging on Skingrad and Sutch though, the fact that both Kingdoms have capitals of the same name should be enough context to distinguish the two. They really should do something about the Kingdom of Artemon and the gold circuit though, that is an abomination.
>>729629065And what a surprise. Todd Howard was also directly behind the Legion questline in Morrowind. Biggest disappointed which I have ever had in gaming.
>>729606554>PokemonReal world animals existed in the first generation, but were retconned out of existence by the second, the Pokemon universe has now been established as a separate reality from ours where all life originated from Arceus, including humans.>ZeldaSkyward Sword retconned the origins of the Master Sword, prior to it it was established to have been forged by the magic of the sages, in SS it is Link who reforges the Goddess Sword into the Master Sword using the golden goddess' flames.Tears of the Kingdom MAY include a retcon on how Hyrule was founded, but it is also possible this is a separate Hyrule like in Spirit Tracks which would make the backstory presented in the game perfectly compatible with all prior games and thus not a retcon.>MetroidDread recently established that the Chozo had separate clans that were distinct to each other on a genetic level, the Mawkin and the Thoha, the Thoha created and were immune to Metroids, which is instrumental to the ending when Samus is entirely taken over by the Metroid DNA she was given in Fusion, and because both Old Bird and Grey Voice are Thoha an entirely new character of the Mawkin race (Raven Beak) was created to be Samus' original donor, explaining why she was not immune to Metroids in prior games.>XenobladeThe first game has some small discrepancies with the second and third, in particular in regards to the appearance to the Radamanthus, Klaus' reasons for carrying out the experiment and the way Alvis works.>BayonettaI don't know if I should call these retcons because they are actually worked into the story and not just unexplained changes, the second game radically alters the character of Balder and the reasons why he does evil things in the first, and Bayonetta's influence on Cereza creates the fractured timeline that results in Origins and 3.
