About the dialogue not fitting the setting of the story and characters, it really shouldn't matter who the writer is or what their age bracket is if they just consider role-play to be the core part of the experience. The problem I see today in ESO is a lot of resorting to out-of-place comedy relief to fill out dialogue which breaks the sense of role-play.

The encounters with NPCs getting themselves killed by poking the local monsters/wildlife is waaaaaaay overdone and started back in Blackwood I believe. The writer probably thought it would be funny, and it would be fine as a one-zone thing but every single update since has had some variation of that joke and it just makes it look like the world of Tamriel is not being taken seriously. The NPCs all lack a sense of self-preservation for one thing, but the ones that can survive then have the mildest of reactions to just having been swallowed whole or nearly being incinerated.

The most well-crafted overland encounters are older ones like Choixth, which actually plays out like a story over two zones, but it fits the world and everything going on within it. T encounter with Briggan the Lost in Deadlands was a nice touch though since it was actually connected to events that played out in City of Ash if you had played through that story. These are the kind of things that fit Elder Scrolls' style of role-play.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The more complex stories are mostly moreso in smaller stuff from smaller games. Elder Scrolls massive success has been both a blessing and a curse for its writing. On the one hand, they can make grander games than they could before. On the other hand, since they're no longer niche, there are more obvious attempts to make the writing appeal to a broader audience. Stuff like the cannibalism of the wood elves is downplayed for more broadly relatable stories, and those stories are being executed with varying quality.

I quite like what is going on in the Star Wars franchise, with the smaller scope series delving deeply into side characters and other non-mainline story and character arches.

I think the Elder Scrolls franchise could do something similar. With Bethesda owning both the ES and Doom it made me wonder what it would be like if they did something like a linear Doom-style game but featuring Pelinal Whitestrake themes instead. Or a survival horror game similar to The Evil Within, with themes similar to how some great Skyrim mods such as Vigilant and Asylum apply the ES lore from a horror perspective. Simply going for the next version of the last major ES title doesn't seem like the best strategy.

Similarily if ESO is to break away from the assembly-line, cookie-cutter DLC content as the intention was communicated in the wake of the High Isle/U35 breaking point, smaller and cooler mini projects that launch when ready may be a superior approach rather than the next version of the last chapter each year.

AScarlato wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I'm an American and was taught that stuff in public school. The Odyssey, Beywolf, Gilgamesh, Shakespeare, etc. Dating myself a bit but I remember reading Romeo and Juliet and then watching the movie in class. Education level varies greatly by state.

Very good point. I grew up in Southern California, and went to a very large high school. Shakespeare was taught, yes, I guess I spaced on that. It's been awhile. But many of the things mentioned were absent from my curriculum. I know our teachers work very hard, and I look forward to seeing what my sons highschool curriculum is.

Where I grew up, I was fortunate to have been tested into our district's very small "gifted" program, where a small group of 5 of us were removed from the rest of the school a few hours a day to learn things from Aesop's Fables as first graders to more advanced ancient readings and Shakespeare by graduation.

For the hundreds of other students, our school had more emphasis on basic life skills and there was a huge disparity in what was being learned in both literature and mathematics.

I live in California now, and my friends who are parents are outraged at the quality of some public school systems here and it is known that some students leave the system barely literate at all.

https://californiapolicycenter.org/the-reading-crisis-why-illiteracy-threatens-californias-future-and-what-we-can-do-now/ - here is an organization claiming a shocking 35% of students are leaving schools proficient in reading.

Yes, I get the impression that my son couldn't fail. He's inherited my ADHD and can have a very hard time sometimes with work and staying on task. I never got the impression that he would be held back but just pushed to the next year. I would hope I'm wrong.

Anyway, on topic. As I said earlier, I'm tired of my characters being treated like they have goldfish brains. Having to ask in mid quest what's going on, what's the story so far like I'd forget. I'm a big fan of Orsinium. When it came out, it's story of local politics as opposed to world ending threats was refreshing and well done. If we could get back to that kind of writing, or Morrowind and CWC and Summerset. What a story arc. Idk where we went left instead of right (idk why but I feel I need to stare I don't mean political leanings, just direction) but something needs to give.

Syldras wrote: »

Tariq9898 wrote: »

It doesn’t seem common based on recent writing not just in games, but in other media as well. If anything, it’s starting to feel the opposite. But that could just be me. As for your first paragraph, much of that depends heavily on the country, current climate, both political and societal as well as personal (not just agenda, but what kind of writer they are/aspire to be as well as their personal life experiences). There’s also huge influence from other works too.

What I meant was that people were generally aware of the value that classical literature has for education and personal development - as a way to broaden the horizon, to learn about human nature, etc. It might depend on the country, of course, but where I live, it's a normal part of the school curriculum from elementary school on. Perhaps the focus was even bigger a few generations ago; at least I knew several elderly people who grew up very rurally and only received minimum education since they were supposed to inherit their family's farm anyway, but even they had read classical works at school and knew the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Song of the Nibelungs, and so on. It's also still very common to learn Latin or Ancient Greek here. It's basically impossible here to finish school without having read literature from all eras.

Which is also the reason the banality of the current ESO writing leaves me a little perplexed - surely these people must have read narrations beyond mass entertainment novels from the past decade, fanfiction and memes before, especially if they chose to become writers for a living (which, I'd assume, people do out of love for literature - it's not a job typically chosen out of financial interest alone, after all)? So why do the stories feel so uninspired then?

Tariq9898 wrote: »

But why? I think much of it is an attempt to make characters, especially villains relatable.

But to be relatable, they don't need to exact copies of the current modern world. People can read the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, or Tristan and Iseult today and still relate with many of the characters, despite these stories having a completely different setting compared to whichever 21st century western society.

Tariq9898 wrote: »

But anyways, with this nuanced writing often comes with adding in personal life experiences and views. Mainly because it’s a gateway to making a character relatable. Statistically speaking, one person’s struggle-whether it’s environmental, political, gender, health-is something many (maybe millions?) can relate to, given there are billions of us. This in turn, can lead to modern day sentiments in storytelling. Which I agree isn’t best for Elder Scrolls.

But why aren't they aware that their personal struggles as a 20/30-something 21st century western human citydweller might just not fit into a story about feudal-Asia-inspired elves living under the rule of three powerful godkings (or tree-venerating tribal lizard people living in swamps, or cannibalistic forest-dwelling miniature elves,...) in a pseudo-medieval, magic world threatened by dragons, demonic forces, pestilence and war?

Sometimes it almost feels like some people today revolve around their own personal issues so much they can't barely comprehend that other people might live (or have lived) a completely different life (especially in other cultures and eras) where none of that matters.

Yes, your last paragraph completely nailed it as far as young people nowadays are concerned in America. We used to have Public Service Announcements (PSAs) as commercials on TV about not littering, not starting forest fires, being kind to others like giving up your seat on the bus to an elderly person, but we as a society have recently shifted our ideals about common good to individual ideas of fairness instead. It’s hard to negotiate different versions of fairness compared to when you used to accommodate other people instead of yourself. Hence the struggles we have nowadays. It is being reflected in the media we have in the US now too.

Also, as others have mentioned, the public school system is not as robust at math, science, reading, literature, history, or just about any of the core pillars of education.

People saying the same thing I did about differences in cultures and generations when it comes to literature yet my responses got deleted because some are too sensitive, tsk tsk.

Thanks for the interesting insights. I truly mean it, as it helps me understand what might be one reason for ESO's changed writing - both younger writers possibly not being familiar with older literature anymore, as well as possibly the mindset it could be too complicated or not appeal to the current main target group anymore. Now out of curiosity I'd be interested to learn how it's in other countries - maybe someone will also add their account on that.

In my county, literature and also learning about the myths and history of other regions of the world is a huge part of the school curriculum - of bog-standard public schools, nothing specialized. I also can remember we learnt about Aesop's Fables in first grade, and about (some more child-friendly) myths and beliefs (especially pantheons) of different cultures the following years; I think the first was Ancient Egypt, then a bit about different Mesopotamian peoples, after that some lessons on the Celts and Germanic people, and I can remember we had a huge focus on Greece and Rome in about 5th and 6th grade. I do think we also did a bit on the native people of North and South America and a bit on the Aboriginal people in Australia, but I think that was already in 7th grade, during English lessons. Generally, our language courses also always involved learning not only the language itself but also the culture of the countries where it's spoken, so in English lessons we also learnt a bit of the history of Great Britain, the USA, Australia, Canada, and I think we even had a bit on Hong Kong when it was British until 1997.

Generally, from what would be middle school on, literature (with a shift from myths to other literary works) and history were mostly taught as a part of their respective language courses when possible; we also had general history lessons (and also seperate courses for geography, politics/economics and philosophy which also often touched upon similar topics), but where it was possible to move a topic to its respective language course it was done. You learn your first foreign language here from 3rd grade on (usually English), second language from 7th grade on (usually French; Spanish in some regions), Latin or Ancient Greek starts in 8th grade, and it's possible to learn another language, but not mandatory, from 11th grade on. So what were the language lessons about? Apart from learning the basics of the language and the mentioned cultural aspect, the main focus (after the basics - grammar, common vocabulary - were learnt within the first years) was literature - reading, discussing and interpreting it (reading at home, discussion in lessons). English-language literature in English lessons, French-language literature in French lessons, German-language literature in German lessons,... you get it. And what meant works from all eras; in English we had, among many other things, Beowulf, some poetry by Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron, Edgar Allen Poe, I think also a bit of poetry from William Blake, and for sure we also had Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, Huxley and Bradbury of course (with Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451), Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Paul Auster. At least that's the ones I still remember. We also had a young teacher who wanted to be the "modern cool young guy" and discuss rap lyrics with us, but most students actually perceived that as a silly, unpleasant attempt at pandering and laughed about him.

And while within the "living" languages, it was about interpreting and discussing works, in Latin we also discussed them, of course, but the main focus was translation. Which could be everything from myths, ancient comedies and tragedies, philosophical texts, political and law texts. It was something I enjoyed a lot - except for Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, which was horribly boring (but easy to translate, at least). But I generally liked it so I chose to study history and philology at university (and learnt another few historic languages there in both subjects, and had even more philosophical and ancient political texts to translate and discuss in the Antiquity part of my history studies, now not only in Latin, but also in Ancient Greek - Aristotle, Draco, Solon, Cleisthenes, Thucydides, all that; and when it came to the Middle Ages, I focused on epic poems and bardic verse).

But anyway, I never had the impression that students were overchallenged with that. Especially in elementary school many loved to learn about ancient cultures, even the students who were struggling with reading or maths enjoyed hearing interesting stories at least - and many ancient myths and epics are stories that, in their core, appeal to lots of people, with their common themes. I think they can even motivate students to improve their reading skills because they make them curious to learn more about them, and for that, they need to be able to read.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

I even go one step further: I think it's a problem that real world morals are even applied to this fictional world which has its completely different cultural norms and morals. There's no arguing that some aspects that are seen as normal in some of Tamriel's cultures are horrible from a real world perspective - no matter if we look at slavery, writs of lawful assassination, Altmer eugenics, or whatever - but I want to look at this fictional world and learn about their cultures, including all "good" and "bad" aspects, without it becoming a moral lecture. And if I interact with npcs in this world, I want to see them written in a way that reflects Tamriel's ideas of morality and lawfulness, not the real world's.

PREACH

Unfortunately, this is not strictly a ZOS problem, it's more of a "writing anything after the mid-2010s" problem. It seems that every entertainment industry has pivoted to a "we need to lecture our audience on morality in the modern age" regardless of what setting the specific story is.

It is unfortunate that nobody seems to be able to differentiate between "these are the ideals of the fantasy culture" and "these are the ideals of modern humans" anymore. This also really makes it so "bad guys" are irredeemable and are clownishly over-the-top evil while the "good guys" are paragons of light and virtue, so there's no nuance anymore. The shades of grey is what makes stories like this interesting.

I like to go back to Skyrim thinking about this: the Civil War has the two sides you can support, and - let's face it - both are bad choices. But both have reasons for supporting them: are you going to stand with an oppressed people who have been colonized and now their very religion is being banned against the very colonizers who are little more than puppets of a supremacist organization? Or are you going to fight with the army that has upheld peace for hundreds of years to bring these racist cult-of-personality rebels in line to be able to have the strength to repel the elven supremacists? Are both true? Are both false?
It's when you end up with - exactly what the Solstice story was advertised as - that it becomes disappointing.

“I love the Worm Cult because they’re over-the-top bad guys,” says Baker. “As they say, every villain is the hero of their own story, however misguided it might be. However, the Worm Cult is a different kind of villain. They’re irredeemable, power-mad megalomaniacs. You never have to ask yourself if it’s right for you to stop them, because they want bad things for bad reasons. That’s fun!”

Really? That kind of a story is boring because you're doing the thinking for me. I don't want to be told which side is good or bad, I want to be able to see it for myself. I like the moral quandries. I like needing to consider which side is best to support... and to live with my decision.

Another thing that a lot of fantasy settings are sanding off lately is the racial (ok fine, we'll say "species") upbringings and personality types. Again, a lot of this has to do with trying to make each of them acceptable to modern sensibilities. And the usual example is elves.
ESO's Altmer are shells of what Altmer should be. We got some feelings of it back in Summerset, but for the most part the Altmer of ESO are very generic - which I suspect has a lot to do with the idea of "oh [snip], they were modelled heavily after a certain political movement back in Skyrim, so we need to make them the opposite here!" And they overcorrected - where's the superiority come from? Where is the tension in the AD? Ayrenn herself is constantly seen in game as a competent fighter and proud beloved ruler... so where is the desire for Elven Supremacy that we see in the lorebooks, notably from her own Aincatar of Shimmerene, Sapiarch of Indoctrination?
About the only race that ESO shows consistently as their stereotype is the Nords, in that ESO has almost gone out of their way to make 90% of them Rigurt. Which is just as bad.

Basically, I have no hope that this will change in the near future. I only hope that TES6 spends long enough in production that this "Social Media centric" style of storytelling is over before they write that one.

Not talking about ESO specifically but in general, the entertainment industry is seeing writers that aren't just the best writers anymore but "the best" activists instead.
I can get disliked how much people want, but that's the sad truth, generally speaking. Luckily we have some saviors in this landscape...

I came to the conclusion that the writing issue isn't just a Bethesda issue, but probably more an issue for american video game companies in general.

On the american side we got games like Dragon Age - The Veilguard, Starfield, Outer Worlds 2, Mass Effect Andromeda, Diablo 4 and ESO, which all displayed writing issues.
All of those games narratives follows the good vs bad scheme, which is very common for american culture. This often leads to a predictable storytelling (we just had 2 decades of trashy Marvel movies). It feels like the writers are afraid to let the player exist in a morally ambiguous space.

Now let's have a look at Europes RPGs:
There we have Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher, Baldurs Gate 3, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Kingdom Come for example.
All of them got rich stories & deep morale decisions and narratives.

Instead of good vs bad worlds these games respect the players intelligence by presenting choices where there isn't always a right answer. This writing style creates a much more immersive and mature experience, because it reflects the complexity of real life.

While American companies seem to focus on mass market appeal and avoiding risks which leads to dumbed down narratives, european studios are currently the ones pushing the boundaries of what a narrative in an RPG can actually achieve.

Do you remember how american game media and american game developers tried to turn down the success of Baldurs Gate 3 in a collective reflex by stating "BG3 is just an anomaly"?

Baldurs Gate 3 isn't just an anomaly. Baldurs Gate 3 is a standard setter and a wake up call to the entire industry.

I excluded japanese RPGs from this because I am not familiar with japanese narratives and games.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

That’s a good point. American companies tend to focus on younger audiences. Do European companies make content more for mature audiences?

Their mass market approach in fact is one reason that younger folks are also one of their target audiences.

Americans tend to be socially conditioned with the concept of capitalistic endless growth, which is an explanation for american companies and their mass market approach.

But I think another reason is how those companies perceive their playerbases or customers in general.

That's no offense. Humans are conditioned living beings, who are shaped to a certain point by their environment. There will always be individuals who break free from their program to see the bigger picture, but many stay stuck in their predetermined patterns for their whole lives without ever questioning themselves, their environment or their social conditioning. But that's another topic for sure.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. US companies are pivoting from older age groups to newer, younger ones because of their increasing buying power too, I believe.

Yes, but I also believe it has something to do with how these companies see their customers and playerbase.

Do they recognize their customers as fully grown up adults who are mentally capable of understanding mature content or do they hold their customers for not being capable of understanding it.

To be honest:
While I was playing many of these american titles I’ve often found myself asking if they think their players are stupid. I never had that feeling when playing one of the european mentioned games.

But that's just my feeling.

Syldras wrote: »

Thanks for the interesting insights. I truly mean it, as it helps me understand what might be one reason for ESO's changed writing - both younger writers possibly not being familiar with older literature anymore, as well as possibly the mindset it could be too complicated or not appeal to the current main target group anymore. Now out of curiosity I'd be interested to learn how it's in other countries - maybe someone will also add their account on that.

In my county, literature and also learning about the myths and history of other regions of the world is a huge part of the school curriculum - of bog-standard public schools, nothing specialized. I also can remember we learnt about Aesop's Fables in first grade, and about (some more child-friendly) myths and beliefs (especially pantheons) of different cultures the following years; I think the first was Ancient Egypt, then a bit about different Mesopotamian peoples, after that some lessons on the Celts and Germanic people, and I can remember we had a huge focus on Greece and Rome in about 5th and 6th grade. I do think we also did a bit on the native people of North and South America and a bit on the Aboriginal people in Australia, but I think that was already in 7th grade, during English lessons. Generally, our language courses also always involved learning not only the language itself but also the culture of the countries where it's spoken, so in English lessons we also learnt a bit of the history of Great Britain, the USA, Australia, Canada, and I think we even had a bit on Hong Kong when it was British until 1997.

Generally, from what would be middle school on, literature (with a shift from myths to other literary works) and history were mostly taught as a part of their respective language courses when possible; we also had general history lessons (and also seperate courses for geography, politics/economics and philosophy which also often touched upon similar topics), but where it was possible to move a topic to its respective language course it was done. You learn your first foreign language here from 3rd grade on (usually English), second language from 7th grade on (usually French; Spanish in some regions), Latin or Ancient Greek starts in 8th grade, and it's possible to learn another language, but not mandatory, from 11th grade on. So what were the language lessons about? Apart from learning the basics of the language and the mentioned cultural aspect, the main focus (after the basics - grammar, common vocabulary - were learnt within the first years) was literature - reading, discussing and interpreting it (reading at home, discussion in lessons). English-language literature in English lessons, French-language literature in French lessons, German-language literature in German lessons,... you get it. And what meant works from all eras; in English we had, among many other things, Beowulf, some poetry by Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron, Edgar Allen Poe, I think also a bit of poetry from William Blake, and for sure we also had Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, Huxley and Bradbury of course (with Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451), Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Paul Auster. At least that's the ones I still remember. We also had a young teacher who wanted to be the "modern cool young guy" and discuss rap lyrics with us, but most students actually perceived that as a silly, unpleasant attempt at pandering and laughed about him.

And while within the "living" languages, it was about interpreting and discussing works, in Latin we also discussed them, of course, but the main focus was translation. Which could be everything from myths, ancient comedies and tragedies, philosophical texts, political and law texts. It was something I enjoyed a lot - except for Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, which was horribly boring (but easy to translate, at least). But I generally liked it so I chose to study history and philology at university (and learnt another few historic languages there in both subjects, and had even more philosophical and ancient political texts to translate and discuss in the Antiquity part of my history studies, now not only in Latin, but also in Ancient Greek - Aristotle, Draco, Solon, Cleisthenes, Thucydides, all that; and when it came to the Middle Ages, I focused on epic poems and bardic verse).

But anyway, I never had the impression that students were overchallenged with that. Especially in elementary school many loved to learn about ancient cultures, even the students who were struggling with reading or maths enjoyed hearing interesting stories at least - and many ancient myths and epics are stories that, in their core, appeal to lots of people, with their common themes. I think they can even motivate students to improve their reading skills because they make them curious to learn more about them, and for that, they need to be able to read.

Thanks for sharing! It's nice to know that somewhere in the world, great literature is still taught and appreciated. Reading this also makes me wish we invested more in foreign-language learning here, even though I know most people will never leave the states. When I was in school, we were only required to study one language and only for 2-3 years in middle or high school. I don't think we were anywhere close to having the skills needed to read actual literature in that language by the time we finished. Although, we did at least have a few history/culture lessons, from what I recall.