Elder Scrolls XII: Twelve Worlds of Creation

[factotum]

Yeah, I agree. The Aedra (Akatosh, Arkay and the rest) are what you want to be looking at if you want to find more benevolent immortal spirits in the Elder Scrolls universe. The best of the Daedric Princes are not actively hostile towards mortals, but that doesn't mean they won't steamroller them if it suits their purposes or they get annoyed.

[VoxRationis]

Though notably the Aedra barely do anything.

[Triaxx]

Akatosh: Well, you're welcome for your magical shouting. Ingrate.

Kyne: And for the wrinkly old tutors, for when the devs ran out of places to stick word walls.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

The Celestials (barring the Serpent) seem pretty nice too, although they don't interfere much either. We do get various buffs from them throughout the series though.

[VoxRationis]

Playing through the Dawnguard questline as a vampire, and I'm noting something—it's just not that fun! For an expansion supposed to be about making vampires more interesting, it seems pretty dull. The Vampire Lord stuff is all right, but I can't use it in the sight of anyone I don't plan on murdering immediately thereafter, and the drain life spell doesn't scale very well, so by level 30 I've almost entirely forgone the transformation, since its perks and skills only make itself better and I do much better in normal mode anyway. I'm getting pretty freaking tired of everyone commenting on the "bad hunger" in my eyes and how pale my skin is (particularly the latter, since there are lots of equally pale people around, given that the local ethnic group is called Nords), and remembering to only travel at night, lest I get caught by the Dawnguard while hobbled by non-regenerating magic and stamina, is a pain.

Moreover, the Volkihar aren't any fun either! There's no sense of camaraderie or family, since my superiors will send assassins after me when I haven't even done anything against them, and they just sit around in the same couple of cobweb-filled rooms in the same crumbling castle all the time. These people enslave humans to devour them as a matter of routine, but they can't get anyone to do some dusting? Moreover, they've done almost nothing, it seems, in the last five centuries. One wonders how they ever bothered to build Castle Volkihar (in an original architectural style, no less!) in the first place. They don't enjoy their immortal life or do anything with it. I suppose it's thematically appropriate, showing the hollowness of their unholy existence, but this is the same game that makes being a nihilistic assassin entertaining and optimistic—I was expecting to be able to rrrevel in my darrrk power.

Edit: I mean, I expected the Dawnguard to be all serious and grim, since they're fighting against dark and terrible powers that lurk in the night. But the vampires are the ones who've let morality go to feed their impulses—shouldn't that be more fun?

[Feytalist]

Frankly, if it's the fun kind of violence you're after, the Dark Brotherhood questline is better in basically every way.

[factotum]

One wonders how they ever bothered to build Castle Volkihar (in an original architectural style, no less!) in the first place.

Maybe they built the castle before they became vampires? It's pretty clear by talking to Selena that her family got "turned" into the original vampires at some point.

[VoxRationis]

Maybe they built the castle before they became vampires? It's pretty clear by talking to Selena that her family got "turned" into the original vampires at some point.

But their annex to Dimhollow is in the same style, and they definitely built that after becoming vampires.

[Admiral Squish]

Perhaps it's a 'fall to decadence' scenario, where they were once incredibly rich and powerful and dangerous, but immortality has allowed ennui to set in and they turned inward and petty, to the point that they were all but forgotten, only recently rediscovering purpose in the form of the quest for Auriel's bow. I mean, they did build a castle that is easily as large as, if not quite a bit larger than, both the Blue Palace and the Palace of the Kings, on a remote island FAR away from any of the infrastructure that its creation would have required. Moving that much stone that far CANNOT be cheap, and you'd need to keep an army of laborers on-site for years.

[DigoDragon]

Frankly, if it's the fun kind of violence you're after, the Dark Brotherhood questline is better in basically every way.

It's worth it for Festus. I love that old grandpa. XD

[Triaxx]

Dark Brotherhood as a Dawnguard Vamp is kind of fun.

[VoxRationis]

Perhaps it's a 'fall to decadence' scenario, where they were once incredibly rich and powerful and dangerous, but immortality has allowed ennui to set in and they turned inward and petty, to the point that they were all but forgotten, only recently rediscovering purpose in the form of the quest for Auriel's bow. I mean, they did build a castle that is easily as large as, if not quite a bit larger than, both the Blue Palace and the Palace of the Kings, on a remote island FAR away from any of the infrastructure that its creation would have required. Moving that much stone that far CANNOT be cheap, and you'd need to keep an army of laborers on-site for years.

It's much larger than the Blue Palace. The Palace of Kings might be equal to it, if you include the vaulting upper portions that you can see from the outside but never get into.

Which brings me to something that bugs me about Skyrim: the largest structures are all dungeons. In particular, the Halls of the Dead are egregious offenders in this regard, because they clearly date back to the time of the ancient Nords but, unlike the ruined barrows and crypts, been in continuous use there since that time. And yet, we see that the catacombs under Whiterun and Windhelm are a fraction of the size of those at Korvunjund or Saarthal (and Saarthal was a city, not a crypt, destroyed during the earliest days of human habitation in Tamriel).

[Admiral Squish]

Dark Brotherhood as a Dawnguard Vamp is kind of fun.

I'm actually doing that right now. Can confirm.

[Keltest]

It's much larger than the Blue Palace. The Palace of Kings might be equal to it, if you include the vaulting upper portions that you can see from the outside but never get into.

Which brings me to something that bugs me about Skyrim: the largest structures are all dungeons. In particular, the Halls of the Dead are egregious offenders in this regard, because they clearly date back to the time of the ancient Nords but, unlike the ruined barrows and crypts, been in continuous use there since that time. And yet, we see that the catacombs under Whiterun and Windhelm are a fraction of the size of those at Korvunjund or Saarthal (and Saarthal was a city, not a crypt, destroyed during the earliest days of human habitation in Tamriel).

I assume that this is because monsters can be generic, while people need at least a semblance of a personality. Creating a city full of even a hundred unique people would seriously tax both the writers and the game engine.

Personally I use mods that add areas of different cities we can see but not access, and a bunch of generic people wandering around living their lives and generally making cities seem more populated than the villages.

[Rynjin]

Much like a lot of things about this game, vampires are only really fun with mods. If there was an equivalent "Make the Dawnguard side fun" mod it'd be cool too.

I suggest either Brehanin's Better Vampires (for the ninja vampire power fantasy) or Sacrosanct (for the "I am encouraged to be subtle and feed often and stay out of the sun because it's dangerous" type of vampire).

[The_Jackal]

Which brings me to something that bugs me about Skyrim: the largest structures are all dungeons.

This is a function of systemic limitations of the target hardware. A dungeon is an enclosed space, you only need to render the room you're in and into the adjacent hallways or chambers. Thus, it is very easy for it to scale to ridiculous size without bringing your computer's graphics capability to a stuttering halt. A city, on the other hand, has many objects to be rendered at the same time. Even the largest settlement, Solitude, engages in a number of tricks to sub-divide the city and occlude sectors of the city to make it easier on your system. Even the largest indoor structures in the big draugr ruins have lower polygon counts and smaller texture buffers than, say, looking down on Whiterun from Dragonsreach.

This is one reason that I feel like city-scaled sandboxes work better. Assassin's Creed, Arkham, GTA, these all scale much better to the hardware and convey more verisimilitude. As "vast" as Skyrim is supposed to be, you can ride from Castle Volkihar to Fort Dawnguard in less than an hour.

[Rynjin]

As "vast" as Skyrim is supposed to be, you can ride from Castle Volkihar to Fort Dawnguard in less than an hour.

In-game time that's 20 straight hours of hard riding though.

[Temotei]

Speaking of hard riding, does anyone else like swimming to Castle Volkihar?

[Triaxx]

No. *Water Walks to castle*

[Admiral Squish]

Speaking of hard riding, does anyone else like swimming to Castle Volkihar?

I was not even aware that was an option. I assumed going to the island was like going into a city.

[moossabi]

Speaking of hard riding, does anyone else like swimming to Castle Volkihar?

I'm a console user, so I swam simply because it was the quickest option.

[VoxRationis]

In-game time that's 20 straight hours of hard riding though.

20 hours of hard riding is still pretty small for what is supposed to be a large part of a continent-sized empire.

[Keltest]

20 hours of hard riding is still pretty small for what is supposed to be a large part of a continent-sized empire.

Indeed. Traveling to opposite corners of the country, through mountains no less, should be a weeks worth of travel unless you use magic.

[factotum]

A city, on the other hand, has many objects to be rendered at the same time. Even the largest settlement, Solitude, engages in a number of tricks to sub-divide the city and occlude sectors of the city to make it easier on your system.

So, why wasn't that the case in Morrowind? Vivec is far larger and has far more people in it than Solitude--heck, even the relatively small down of Balmora is probably equal in size and complexity to Whiterun. And in Morrowind they couldn't even farm off the city interior into a separate cell so it didn't have to be rendered from outside, the cities and the surrounding countryside were completely contiguous.

[Aeson]

Also, if we're being overly-realistic, you cannot do 20 hours of "hard riding" without changing mounts unless either you aren't riding that hard or your horse is something of the kind which only exists in myth and legend (which, granted, is possible, TES being a fantasy setting). The Pony Express, for example, only averaged ~10-15 miles an hour or so and riders generally changed horses every 10-15 miles (and in bad terrain such as mountains, the mount changes would be more frequent and the average speed lower than in good terrain like open plains).

[Divayth Fyr]

Indeed. Traveling to opposite corners of the country, through mountains no less, should be a weeks worth of travel unless you use magic.

Considering how good at climbing skyrim horses are, they may count as magic in and of themselves...

[Admiral Squish]

In a world such as Skyrim, is there really a difference between 'magical' creatures and non-? I mean, a troll is just another animal. We'd call it magic, but to their world, it's as much a part of nature as a bear or a wolf. Who's to say their horses aren't actually different than ours somehow?

[The_Jackal]

So, why wasn't that the case in Morrowind? Vivec is far larger and has far more people in it than Solitude--heck, even the relatively small down of Balmora is probably equal in size and complexity to Whiterun. And in Morrowind they couldn't even farm off the city interior into a separate cell so it didn't have to be rendered from outside, the cities and the surrounding countryside were completely contiguous.

More cloning, and different 3d technologies. Vivec is modular in its design. Each City 'pod' has different inhabitants, and IIRC, there are loading-boundaries between them. Also, modern 3d engines use more aggressive use of occlusion culling, ie: the computer is better at deciding what it needs to render based on what is hidden by objects in the foreground. IIRC, Morrowind, everything within a static draw distance was rendered and rasterized, whether or not it could actually be seen. Skyim uses repeated doodads as well, but they're still far more diverse in terms of what's shown. Newer 3d engines (Id-Tech 5 or later) include texture streaming, where you can vary the surface detail of objects more widely within the same memory footprint.

Also, technical constraints aside, I think part of the motive behind the perfunctory settlements in Skyrim was driven by aesthetics. Given the modest REAL size of the Skyrim map, putting a gigantic sprawling metropolis in the middle of it would definitely change feel of the surrounding natural areas.

[Triaxx]

Morrowind was the first game in the series to hit consoles. (Original XboX) That meant that you had the PC version, and then a console version with even closer distance fog than the PC version.

After that they realized it's easier to build them all for consoles and then boost for PC.

[Temotei]

I'm a console user, so I swam simply because it was the quickest option.

This made me laugh.