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How exactly does ESO get all the accusation of "breaking lore"?

Lyserus
Lyserus
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I only know 3 accusation atm, none of them CAN'T be explained with lore. feel free to point out more.

1.Cyrodii rainforest. It is said it's changed by Talos using CHIM at the start of 3rd era....But who knows exactly how CHIM works? No one except lore writers themseves, and they didn't make clean about what exactly it is. It can be explained simply with "CHIM change all the perspective, like elder scrolls, it alters the reality of past, now and future" Talos used CHIM in 3rd era doesn't mean it affects only afterward. Maybe the CHIM changed cyrodii in all time, and only documentations (and probably those that kept by Mora get pass back so ppl know about it) about rainforest cyrodii remain

2.Post-era lorebooks. Again I believe it can be explained with the existence of Hermaeus Mora...the dude collect books, who can say he can't possess books in the future and throw them to you, because as we all know those princes know who is the main character in every ES games and try to seduce them since the start of game.

3.Children of cross-breed. It is stated that most children have the race of mother, and ESO clearly has examples where children follow the race of father's. However I do see exceptions in other ES lores as well, so I guess it only applies to majority, exceptions exist not only in ESO.

When ppl talk about "breaking lore" they need to realize ZOS is part of "lore-writing team", which means they get to decide what wasn't filled in, and even if they have contradiction between old lores, as long as there is a plausible explanation like the ones I have given, they are good to go.

Only lore/immersion thing ZOS need to be accused of is about having no children :)
Edited by Lyserus on November 13, 2017 1:22PM
  • Elsonso
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    Talos? CHIM? 4th Era?
    ESO Plus: No
    PC NA/EU: @Elsonso
    XBox EU/NA: @ElsonsoJannus
    X/Twitter: ElsonsoJannus
  • FloppyTouch
    FloppyTouch
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    Talos? CHIM? 4th Era?

    Cake?
  • LadyNalcarya
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    Well, I've seen many people who hate ESO just because its an mmo and thus "not a TES game".
    Dro-m'Athra Destroyer | Divayth Fyr's Coadjutor | Voice of Reason

    PC/EU
  • Lyserus
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    Talos? CHIM? 4th Era?

    my bad.
    corrected it now
  • VaranisArano
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    The whole Cyrodiilic jungle thing can be laid squarely at the feet of Oblivion, and I don't think its fair to blame ESO for choosing to go with Oblivion (an entire canon game) over the Pocket Guide to the Empire. Especially not when the Gold Coast zone is a loving homage to the Oblivion game that nearly made me boot up my copy of TES IV. Just walking up the road from to Kvatch was the purest experience of Oblivion nostalgia I've ever had.

    My only complaint is that they turned my beloved Benirus manor in Anvil into a bank. A bank!
  • Elsonso
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    The whole Cyrodiilic jungle thing can be laid squarely at the feet of Oblivion, and I don't think its fair to blame ESO for choosing to go with Oblivion (an entire canon game) over the Pocket Guide to the Empire. Especially not when the Gold Coast zone is a loving homage to the Oblivion game that nearly made me boot up my copy of TES IV. Just walking up the road from to Kvatch was the purest experience of Oblivion nostalgia I've ever had.

    My only complaint is that they turned my beloved Benirus manor in Anvil into a bank. A bank!

    Isn't that the other way around? Your beloved Benirus Manor sits where there used to be a bank?
    Edited by Elsonso on November 13, 2017 1:45PM
    ESO Plus: No
    PC NA/EU: @Elsonso
    XBox EU/NA: @ElsonsoJannus
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  • VaranisArano
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    Well, actually, now that I think about it chronologically, my Master of the Thieves Guild did use that place to store his ill-gotten gains. So perhaps it being a bank of sorts is still true. Hmmm.

    Still, I was most disappointed that the Gold Coast doesn't include a small Anvil-style Imperial home for ownership.
  • ToRelax
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    There actually was a book ingame about the rainforest...

    http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Subtropical_Cyrodiil:_A_Speculation
    DAGON - ALTADOON - CHIM - GHARTOK
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  • LukosCreyden
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    Those who say that ESO breaks the lore are, quite ironically, lacking in knowledge regarding the lore themselves. Not only that, but the writers can add things as they see fit. For example, the alliance war and the details surrounding it. I would be very surprised if ES6 did not have any books referencing the alliance war and maybe even the Vestige.

    As a whole, ESO has done a superb job on expanding on the world of Elder Scrolls, including covering more obscure subjects that have been left mostly untouched by the single player games.
    Struggling to find a new class to call home.Please send help.
  • swippy
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    Those who say that ESO breaks the lore are, quite ironically, lacking in knowledge regarding the lore themselves.

    thank you. i couldn't find a way to say this without sounding like a poopyhead
  • rhapsodious
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    Lyserus wrote: »
    2.Post-era lorebooks. Again I believe it can be explained with the existence of Hermaeus Mora...the dude collect books, who can say he can't possess books in the future and throw them to you, because as we all know those princes know who is the main character in every ES games and try to seduce them since the start of game.

    That's exactly what happened, he sends books through time and space to mess with people. There's a book by Septimus Signus in the game, which some people freak out about without noticing the Moth Priest footnote that basically says "wait, 4E201? the hell? this must be a transcription error..."

    I'd give myself about an 8/10 on knowledge of the lore, and there's only been one thing that bothers me.

    The Imperial City districts are rotated about 30 degrees.
    ESO:
    Dailies-ImperialCity.jpg
    Oblivion:
    t_e_s__iv_imperial_city_by_samofsuthsax-d312le9.jpg

    One era needs to fire their cartographer. :P
    Edited by rhapsodious on November 13, 2017 2:16PM
  • ThePrinceOfBargains
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    Pretty sure there was this whole huge post here detailing why the Planemeld could not have taken place. Some players like to think this game takes place during a concept called a “Dragon Break.” But imo, this would just be a way to get around lazy writing. I hate that concept. They really should’ve just had this game take place long after all the others. Would’ve made things simpler for them.
  • Jamini
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    Most of the lore complaints come from two sources.

    1. Some people fail to recognize that any lore we do not directly experience firsthand in Elder Scrolls games comes from unreliable narrators. Everything is written by a character in-lore, with their own biases and preferences. Not only can (and often do) authors for lorebooks have an agenda, but sometimes they can be flat-out wrong on many things.
    2. Lore in Elder Scrolls can and does contradict their own headcanon/fanon in a way they don't want to admit.

    The lore in Elder Scrolls is vague, and is consistently changed and updated by various game teams. If one cannot accept this, there will almost always be severe discrepencies
    "Adapt. or Die."
  • Huyen
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    Lyserus wrote: »
    2.Post-era lorebooks. Again I believe it can be explained with the existence of Hermaeus Mora...the dude collect books, who can say he can't possess books in the future and throw them to you, because as we all know those princes know who is the main character in every ES games and try to seduce them since the start of game.

    That's exactly what happened, he sends books through time and space to mess with people. There's a book by Septimus Signus in the game, which some people freak out about without noticing the Moth Priest footnote that basically says "wait, 4E201? the hell? this must be a transcription error..."

    I'd give myself about an 8/10 on knowledge of the lore, and there's only been one thing that bothers me.

    The Imperial City districts are rotated about 30 degrees.
    ESO:
    Dailies-ImperialCity.jpg
    Oblivion:
    t_e_s__iv_imperial_city_by_samofsuthsax-d312le9.jpg

    One era needs to fire their cartographer. :P

    Its the same dude actually for all the maps (I own several of them), so I guess either came to new insights, or the imperial city was build up from scratch again after the planemeld.
    Huyen Shadowpaw, dedicated nightblade tank - PS4 (Retired)
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    "Failure is only the opportunity to begin again. Only this time, more wisely" - Uncle Iroh
  • Elsonso
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    TheMaster wrote: »
    Pretty sure there was this whole huge post here detailing why the Planemeld could not have taken place. Some players like to think this game takes place during a concept called a “Dragon Break.” But imo, this would just be a way to get around lazy writing. I hate that concept. They really should’ve just had this game take place long after all the others. Would’ve made things simpler for them.

    Simpler for ZOS, but harder for BGS and the TES single player titles.

    One could argue that the mass of Lore being generated by ESO is considerable in size compared to the lore generated by the TES games, though. It might be easier to fit the next TES game into the lore generated by ESO than the other way around.
    ESO Plus: No
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  • runagate
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    Here is the main reason you hear these complaints. Because this personality archetype is prevalent in the nerd world:

    The-Simpsons-Stan-Lee-620x338.jpg

    I've done it. I had a comic book where an unnamed Apocalypse appeared with Logan and Steve Rogers in WWII.
  • Robo_Hobo
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    I agree with all of your points OP, as a lore-fanatic myself (although not as obsessed as I used to be), it saddens me when stuff like that happens, not just with ESO but other games, or even movies and novels and other things.

    I always see lore as pretty flexible, especially in fantasy settings, due to a lot of other explanations being available. Naturally there is a point where some things can and do deliberately contradict accepted facts about a universe's lore, and when those do happen, any dissent or criticism is fair in my opinion.

    More often than not though any slight difference, change, or revelation often always brings a lot of lore fans raining down on the developers, sometimes pretty extremely, when in fact if given the time and patience to look at it and really think about it, it could be explained pretty well - especially with Elder Scrolls lore, due to the narrators of our sources of lore (books, npc's, etc.) often times giving biased incomplete information (purposely intended by the devs) which makes studying the lore all the more interesting.

    I do have my criticisms about some things I'm ESO (and other TES games portrayals so far) but overall I'm really happy with it all (or I probably wouldn't be playing). Honestly my main hope right now is for when ESO gets to releasing more of Elsweyr that the other Khajiit furstocks are portrayed appropriately to the lore. That's a big hope though, because I know a ton of new models would have to be made, new animations, etc, but I think it would make it for a very interesting and complex storyline and culture representation of the Khajiit for the game.
    Edited by Robo_Hobo on November 13, 2017 2:50PM
  • rhapsodious
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    Huyen wrote: »
    Lyserus wrote: »
    2.Post-era lorebooks. Again I believe it can be explained with the existence of Hermaeus Mora...the dude collect books, who can say he can't possess books in the future and throw them to you, because as we all know those princes know who is the main character in every ES games and try to seduce them since the start of game.

    That's exactly what happened, he sends books through time and space to mess with people. There's a book by Septimus Signus in the game, which some people freak out about without noticing the Moth Priest footnote that basically says "wait, 4E201? the hell? this must be a transcription error..."

    I'd give myself about an 8/10 on knowledge of the lore, and there's only been one thing that bothers me.

    The Imperial City districts are rotated about 30 degrees.
    ESO:
    Dailies-ImperialCity.jpg
    Oblivion:
    t_e_s__iv_imperial_city_by_samofsuthsax-d312le9.jpg

    One era needs to fire their cartographer. :P

    Its the same dude actually for all the maps (I own several of them), so I guess either came to new insights, or the imperial city was build up from scratch again after the planemeld.

    That's fair, the most plausible explanation is human error, be it an in-universe human or a real one. It seems a bit silly to rebuild the whole damn thing, since it was mostly moderate structural damage. But it's certainly not impossible... I've actually been wondering how they got rid of all the blue spiky rock things. Don't envy the guy who has to keep track of everything.

    It's just an inconsistency, nothing really important. But people will hang on to a single line mentioned in a single book and be like LOOK!!! CANON!!!

    The game does a great job of adhering to the lore for the most part while still working in jokes about later games and events. I still giggle at "hey, maybe we'll make you the new Thane of Whiterun - they'll take anyone!"

    Anything that ESO isn't "correct" about isn't really worth getting one's panties in a twist over.
  • ereboz
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    I think they're doing great with the lore. Although it's only months after white gold tower that the alliance war ends. So unless they plan on making a massive change to PvP, there's gonna be some lore breaking there soon
  • Lyserus
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    ereboz wrote: »
    I think they're doing great with the lore. Although it's only months after white gold tower that the alliance war ends. So unless they plan on making a massive change to PvP, there's gonna be some lore breaking there soon

    hmmm why is that? :| the war ends after wgt part
  • Jusey1
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    ereboz wrote: »
    I think they're doing great with the lore. Although it's only months after white gold tower that the alliance war ends. So unless they plan on making a massive change to PvP, there's gonna be some lore breaking there soon

    Not necessarily. They are obviously making the game's zones being taken place at different times and the current time in the game is actually Vvardenfell/Clockwork City... If you hadn't notice, newer zones (Craglorn, Orsinium, Vvardenfell, and Clockwork City) doesn't have active dolmens, mentions the Molag Bal invasion as a "thing in the past", and so on... Very muchly, they wouldn't need to touch PvP at all because that zone is a "past zone" and takes place in the past while newer zones takes place in the storyline's current time. This is why NPCs can remember you in Vvardenfell if you do their quests in the base game first, but NOT vice versa if you do their quests in Vvardenfell first. Because the base game is in the past, and doing that content second is more like "going back into the past".
  • VaranisArano
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    ereboz wrote: »
    I think they're doing great with the lore. Although it's only months after white gold tower that the alliance war ends. So unless they plan on making a massive change to PvP, there's gonna be some lore breaking there soon

    The entire game world doesn't exist in the same time frame.
    The base game faction zones exist concurrently through the faction story lines, so Glenumbra, Stonefalls, and Auridon are happening at the same time (Meridia just sends you back in time to experience them). Without doing the quests in order, we just assume that the base game zones all happen more or less simultanteously in whatever order you want to do them, culminating in Coldharbor and the end of the Main Quest.

    Morrowind can chronologically happen whenever, because the lack of dark anchors is due to Vivec's intervention, more or less. Though its connection with stuff hinted at the end of Orsinium indicated that it happens afterward.
    Orsinium, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood happen several years after the Planemeld, hence the lack of Dark Anchors.
    Imperial City takes place shortly after the Planemeld ends, as this is Molag Bal's last ditch attempt to conquer Tamriel as seen in the questline. (Though there's some indication that the timeline is Coldharbor -> Imperial City -> WGT -> End of the Main Quest
    Cyrodiil seems to take place at some point between the start of the Planemeld, the siege and/or invasion of the Imperial City, and the end of the White Gold Tower dungeon where you break that Dark Anchor.

    So as you transition through zones, you are also transitioning through time. Cyrodiil is locked into the time of the 3 Banners War, just like the Imperial City is locked into Molag Bal's invasion even after you've finished the questline and White Gold Tower dungeons.


    My problem with them bringing lore from this game into future games is that the whole reason they put the game in this time was that this time period was so chaotic that there are practically no records of what happened. That was the whole answer to "Why doesn't everyone remember the Planemeld for centuries to come?" So while I do expect them to use some of the lore in the future, especially when it comes to enduring entities like the Daedra, I really hope they keep it subtle and within the limits of very few records should have survived these times.
  • ZioGio
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    The Imperial City districts are rotated about 30 degrees.
    ESO:
    Dailies-ImperialCity.jpg
    Oblivion:
    t_e_s__iv_imperial_city_by_samofsuthsax-d312le9.jpg

    One era needs to fire their cartographer. :P

    The way I read the Oblivion-era map, the seal at the top left points north, so both maps of the Imperial City are accurate.
    PC NA
  • Thogard
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    ESO occurs during a dragon break so it doesn’t count anyway. All of the vestiges are different but all are the same.
    PC NA - @dazkt - Dazk Ardoonkt / Sir Thogalot / Dask Dragoh’t / Dazk Dragoh’t / El Thogardo

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  • emilyhyoyeon
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    Jamini wrote: »

    1. Some people fail to recognize that any lore we do not directly experience firsthand in Elder Scrolls games comes from unreliable narrators. Everything is written by a character in-lore, with their own biases and preferences. Not only can (and often do) authors for lorebooks have an agenda, but sometimes they can be flat-out wrong on many things.

    I'm so glad you brought this up since people seem to forget about it/not realize, not even necessarily in terms of TESO lore but TES lore in general.
    IGN @ emilypumpkin, imperial pumpkin seller & ghost hunter
    main TES character: Tullanisse Starborne, altmer battlemage & ayleid researcher
  • Kharnis
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    Jamini wrote: »

    1. Some people fail to recognize that any lore we do not directly experience firsthand in Elder Scrolls games comes from unreliable narrators. Everything is written by a character in-lore, with their own biases and preferences. Not only can (and often do) authors for lorebooks have an agenda, but sometimes they can be flat-out wrong on many things.

    I'm so glad you brought this up since people seem to forget about it/not realize, not even necessarily in terms of TESO lore but TES lore in general.

    What makes this even worse is the fact that these people are given a direct example of this with the on-going scholarly spat between Lady Cinnabar and Phrastus. Their in-game books directly contradict each other, and even use the opportunity to call the other an idiot who doesn't know what they're talking about (usually by Cinnabar to Phrastus. She really doesn't like him).
    "Technology today is a race between engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof devices, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

    - Rich Cook
  • TheUndeadAmulet
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    Honestly, I don't care if it "breaks" lore. The lore is interesting by itself!
    XBOX NA 1000+ CP
    PC NA 400+ CP
    nerf ping please
  • Storymaster
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    Lyserus wrote: »
    I only know 3 accusation atm, none of them CAN'T be explained with lore. feel free to point out more.

    1.Cyrodii rainforest. It is said it's changed by Talos using CHIM at the start of 3rd era....But who knows exactly how CHIM works? No one except lore writers themseves, and they didn't make clean about what exactly it is. It can be explained simply with "CHIM change all the perspective, like elder scrolls, it alters the reality of past, now and future" Talos used CHIM in 3rd era doesn't mean it affects only afterward. Maybe the CHIM changed cyrodii in all time, and only documentations (and probably those that kept by Mora get pass back so ppl know about it) about rainforest cyrodii remain

    2.Post-era lorebooks. Again I believe it can be explained with the existence of Hermaeus Mora...the dude collect books, who can say he can't possess books in the future and throw them to you, because as we all know those princes know who is the main character in every ES games and try to seduce them since the start of game.

    3.Children of cross-breed. It is stated that most children have the race of mother, and ESO clearly has examples where children follow the race of father's. However I do see exceptions in other ES lores as well, so I guess it only applies to majority, exceptions exist not only in ESO.

    When ppl talk about "breaking lore" they need to realize ZOS is part of "lore-writing team", which means they get to decide what wasn't filled in, and even if they have contradiction between old lores, as long as there is a plausible explanation like the ones I have given, they are good to go.

    Only lore/immersion thing ZOS need to be accused of is about having no children :)

    @Lyserus , have you considered changing your name to Lore-serious?
    Character Profiles:
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  • SisterGoat
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    The Elder Scrolls lore can vary due to Dragon Breaks and history books (FAKE NEWS) in the real world can be inconsistent with actual events anyway.
    Jumps-In-Water - Magicka Templar
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  • Urza1234
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    Lyserus wrote: »
    I only know 3 accusation atm, none of them CAN'T be explained with lore. feel free to point out more.

    3.Children of cross-breed. It is stated that most children have the race of mother, and ESO clearly has examples where children follow the race of father's. However I do see exceptions in other ES lores as well, so I guess it only applies to majority, exceptions exist not only in ESO.

    IMO the in-game sources of this information are not reliable, I wouldnt take it without a grain of salt. Also cross-breeding in this game is just *** anyway.
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