Shunravi wrote: »

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dragon_Break

MY ARGUMENT ADDS TO YOURS!!!

IT DOES! ARGUMENT MOAR FINISHED!

Lava_Croft wrote: »

The only ones who have any monopoly on TES lore are the developers. The rest just feels entitled because they played Morrowind.

I see this argument all the time and I just don't agree.

When you make any kind of franchise, you create expectations in the minds of your fans. When you start retconning everything and going against the fans' wishes, you're pretty much spitting in their face. What's that popular saying...something like "when an artist releases a piece of art it no longer belongs to him, it belongs to the world".

That said I don't feel that race changes violate lore simply because I don't believe they have anything to do with the lore at all. My views on this are probably going to be hard to understand but I'll try my best to explain.

As far as the fictional world around you is concerned, even after race changing you were always that race. NPC's aren't going to ask why you suddenly grew a tail, there's no quests involving a race change or NPC's that offer race changing services, there's no magical explanation for how race changes work, so on. The world treats you as if you were always that race and nothing has changed. Zenimax offers you a service outside of the game to change your race, and then you could simply pretend you were never your initial race to begin with, and the in-game world around you wouldn't disagree with that, it would simply reflect it. The only problem here isn't a lore one, it's personal immersion and being able to fool yourself into accepting you never changed race at all.

It's only when the developers start explicitly tying race changes to lore (i.e. inventing an in-lore explanation as to why race changes are possible or how they work, acknowledging that an actual change took place) that it becomes a lore issue. Because now they've actually changed the canon, and caused canon debates.

Non-canon race changes sold as a service in the non-canonical crown store don't cause lore issues because they don't touch canon at all.

Making up some contrived dragonbreak theory to half-heartedly explain the changes from a lore-perspective is just going to seem entirely forced and cause unnecessary debate. It's not a lore issue so it shouldn't be treated as one.

Pshh they broke lore when they decided a Kajiit could be crowned emperor of cyrodiil and lead the ebonheart pact.

(this works for any other odd combo of races/alliances too)

It doesn't violate lore because nothing that happens in Cyrodiil PvP is canon. Again the important thing is distinguishing canon and non-canon.

It's not like the thousands of battles taking place between AD's gate and EP's Nearby Keep on Thornblade are actually part of the universe. It's not like there were actually a hundred different emperors in that time period.

@golfer.dub17_ESO, well it's a yes and no about the multiple emporers. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Interregnum they chose this period of time because 'During the entirety of Interregnum, petty warlords had attempted to seize control of Cyrodiil's capital and to reestablish the Empire. None of them lasted for long,' referenced in a book from Redguard. Many false emporers with short reigns.That's pretty lore centered. But you are right, there are things that shouldn't be worked into the lore and should just exist mechanics wise.

Lava_Croft wrote: »

The rest just feels entitled because they played Morrowind.

Because there is no reason to be ashamed for it.

Lore also has an entire race of shapeshifters and some lore states that some members of this race were used to create another race by a Devine being. Lore also has multiple retcon tools (CHIM, Dragon breaks) as well as some pretty far out things including (if you include the writings of Kirkbride to be cannon) queen Ayren being a space ship (synthetic exoform) from the future called KINMUNE.

This should be in a different forum than PVP Combat and Skills.