How will ZOS choose to portray the various Khajiit forms?

Robo_Hobo

This will be a long post, because this is something I care deeply about. It's actually perhaps the most important aspect of the Elder Scrolls to me. With the Elsweyr chapter coming, I felt it was time to post this.

~

Imagine for a second, that your parents look like giant, mammoth sized cats, your sister looks like a common housecat, and you yourself look more like a Bosmer than the Khajiit we've come to know in the games. And all of you are just as sentient and intelligent as the other.

This is what the lore of the Khajiit has told us a family of Khajiit can look like.

Now imagine that on the scale of the whole province of Elsweyr. A chaotic mix of cat-like folk ranging from those extremes, all living and working together as a part of society in the cities, in the villages and tribes, and even the ones who live outside society. To them this is a normal part of life, and their society has adapted around the fact that not all of them have thumbs, or maybe even the capacity to verbally speak words.

Such a society would easily be the most alien culture to explore in a video game, but also, to me anyway, the most fascinating.

What are the most common things Senche-raht (the mammoth-sized cats) do for a living? Do they live in the cities? What happens if too many are born into small villages, where food is in scarce supply and unable to sustain a large populstion. I'm sure those Senche-raht take a lot of food.

What about the Alfiq? What jobs do they tend to have? How do they make trades in the cities when they don't have thumbs? What do they do to communicate with other Khajiit?

Do any Alfiq pretend to be normal housecats and live in other lands, whilst secretly spying for the Dominion?

What kind of problems does a society have that others wouldn't be able to. Does every Khajiit like the fact that their child might look more like a housecat than their son or daughter that they can teach their skills to?

What about a Suthay-raht (the kind of Khajiit in Morrowind and supposedly the standard you see in the games since) that's born to the tiger-like Khajiit living in the city. How do they raise their child and teach them how to speak, and use their thumbs? Do the Khajiit have community houses where different formd of Khajiit are taught things if their parents can't?

Okay, okay. I'll stop. The point is, the amount of potential for new and interesting storytelling with such an alien society to our own is massive - if done right...

And that's what brings me to post this.

How will ZOS choose bto portray our feline friends? Surely, developing a society so alien like that, not to mention the many models for the various forms would be a huge undertaking both narratively and mechanically - it's probably why we never get to see the other forms of Khajiit in other games, only hear about them.

But, it's easy to excuse their absence in Skyrim, or Morrowind, or even the rest of Tamriel, I guess...but in their very own Homeland?

This is the time that ZOS decides what path they will take with the lore of the Khajiit - to take the easy way and retcon the lore, or make an excuse for the absence of the other forms - or to stay true even in the face of overwhelming development difficulty and tell us the story of this alien, cat-like species true from the heart.

Some of ZOS's choices so far in ESO haven't boded well for the fate of the lore of the Khajiit in this regard, and the TES: Legends portayal of the Pahmar-raht only seems to dampen those hopes even more, but there's still hope left that they'll do the Khajiit lore justice.

The ball is in your court ZOS. How important is the lore to you?

Callous2208

"The ball is in your court ZOS. How important is the lore to you?

Of little to no importance. Seriously doubt with the focus on Dragons, we'll see any great detail put into the various forms of Khajiit. My guess is you might see an npc or two of the various forms like they did with Murkmire. Would be really surprised if any thought at all was given to this by ZoS, let alone resources to see it brought to life.

Faulgor

I'll be surprised if they are even mentioned somewhere.
Dragons are probably going to steal the show with Elsweyr being little more than a backdrop.

Edit: Also, there are Akaviri (Tsaesci and possibly Kamal?) in Rimmen in Elsweyr at this time. You think we will see those?

Bruccius

I think ZOS will make most of the Khajiiti breeds ''skins'', of a sort. There are certainly differences, but most of them can be cast aside by merely given a normal character a different skin.

Only a handful of the Khajiit would have to be specifically programmed in order to fit the lore.

RaddlemanNumber7

I'm expecting the Khajiit in the new areas of Elsweyr to have the same morphology as the Khajiit in Dune, Rawl'kha and Khenarthi's Roost.

Danikat

I hate to say it but I'm not optimistic. After their portrayal of Valenwood (which is supposed to be dense jungle where you can't see the sky from the ground and can travel for miles on the branches of trees because they're so close together) and Summerset where each city is supposed to have a distinct architectural style, not to mention stripping the mushroom towers in Morrowind down to a basic 2 room structure I'm not at all confident they'll take the time to do Elsweyr right.

If we're lucky you might occasionally see a merchant or other mostly static NPC (or some of the random NPCs in towns) using one of the cat models already in the game and maybe they'll scale up the existing senche-tiger model. But I think that's the most we can hope for, maybe with a lore book somewhere explaining why we hardly see any of the other kinds of khajiit.

MLGProPlayer

Callous2208 wrote: »

"The ball is in your court ZOS. How important is the lore to you?

Of little to no importance. Seriously doubt with the focus on Dragons, we'll see any great detail put into the various forms of Khajiit. My guess is you might see an npc or two of the various forms like they did with Murkmire. Would be really surprised if any thought at all was given to this by ZoS, let alone resources to see it brought to life.

The various Khajiit forms have essentially been retconned out of the series. They haven't appeared in any game since TES II. And even then, they only appeared that way because Bethesda wanted to re-use human/elf/cat sprites.

StormChaser3000

Here is a prototype of a cat-bear mount (apex from crates) for now:

xD

Callous2208

StormChaser3000 wrote: »

Here is a prototype of a cat-bear mount (apex from crates) for now:

xD

Yo I will only give you a fair price for those mounts. How does 2000 crown gems sound?

madeeh91rwb17_ESO

They will do what they always do.

Ask their L O R E M A S T E R to solve their, "problem" for them.

And that...genius... is going to pull his favorite..."actually all the historians and academics in the elder scrolls universe ever, got it all wrong. that's right."

Now shut up and look what is new in the C R O W N S T O R E

Shewolf075

The Khajiit forms will be portrayed as the already featured mounts and pets but this time with dialogue.

Shawn_PT

I want to believe but.... I think it's gonna be retconned. Either that or have a single NPC/boss represent that variety and call it a day, saying the regular type (I forget the name now) are just more common, 99 to one.

I'm personally more worried about the ubiquity of 'dragons' in an era where only a handful are supposed to exist. I'm more inclined to believe they look like dragons but are something completely different. Like.... Lizard-khajiit. Lizard-senches. Lizard-echateres.

Dragon-senches. Khahiit that were given the ability to look dragon-like by their long gone dragon overlords. Necromantic constructs of lizard flesh and dragon bones.

Anything. I just can't seem to fit proper dragons here.

MLGProPlayer

madeeh91rwb17_ESO wrote: »

They will do what they always do.

Ask their L O R E M A S T E R to solve their, "problem" for them.

And that...genius... is going to pull his favorite..."actually all the historians and academics in the elder scrolls universe ever, got it all wrong. that's right."

Now shut up and look what is new in the C R O W N S T O R E

No game has featured the different Khajiit models since TES II. They've been retconned.

Jhalin

Different Khajiit forms have NOT been retconned

The variety of forms appear in TES: Legends game, with distinct visual different between them. There is also already a datamined Senche-Rhat in the Elswyer files, as a mount but still the model exists. References to Alfiq Khajiit exist in the game currently.

gepe87

They wont. It will be unbalanced comparing with other races.

Kajuratus

I'm not filled with a lot of hope. If this were a smaller DLC, then sure, I'd expect to see a couple of different furstocks in an Elsweyr zone. But fleshing out the rest of Elsweyr all at once... theres no way that ZOS have managed to create 13 different skeletons for the remaining furstocks. And tbh, I doubt they'll even have Alfiq as housecats, or Pahmar as tigers. With the focus seemingly on dragons theres no way they're going to bother doing anything interesting with the Khajiit culture.

Prove me wrong, ZOS. Please.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

No game has featured the different Khajiit models since TES II. They've been retconned.

Nothing has been retconned yet. Devs have said in the past that the lack of different furstocks in the games is down to lack of resources, not indicative of actual lore about the Khajiit.

OtarTheMad

It'd be a huge miss if they didn't do them. It'd be massively smart to include all the different Khajiit races because like someone else said, you could put their "skins" into the Crown Store and people could buy them and RP as one of them. It's smart.

Callous2208

OtarTheMad wrote: »

It'd be a huge miss if they didn't do them. It'd be massively smart to include all the different Khajiit races because like someone else said, you could put their "skins" into the Crown Store and people could buy them and RP as one of them. It's smart.

Basic skins I could see as short term crown store exclusives for gems. Nothing facny mind you. Pretty much amounting to slightly different takes on what we already have. No way they're putting that much effort into having all of these variations show up in game though.

Palindiil

Jhalin wrote: »

Different Khajiit forms have NOT been retconned

The variety of forms appear in TES: Legends game, with distinct visual different between them. There is also already a datamined Senche-Rhat in the Elswyer files, as a mount but still the model exists. References to Alfiq Khajiit exist in the game currently.

Additionally, the canon novels Infernal City and Lord of Souls specifically portray a variety of khajiiti furstocks, in a 'word of god' kind of way.

Shewolf075

Though there is this "Riding animal - terrifying sench-rat" under this datamine https://elderscrolls.net/2019/01/06/30234-eso-elsweyr-izobrazheniya-i-podrobnosti/

OtarTheMad

Callous2208 wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

It'd be a huge miss if they didn't do them. It'd be massively smart to include all the different Khajiit races because like someone else said, you could put their "skins" into the Crown Store and people could buy them and RP as one of them. It's smart.

Basic skins I could see as short term crown store exclusives for gems. Nothing facny mind you. Pretty much amounting to slightly different takes on what we already have. No way they're putting that much effort into having all of these variations show up in game though.

It would be dumb for ZOS to ignore it. They read and saw the huge outcry when roofs weren't glass in Summerset. (And those were just roofs!) If they ignore the different Khajiit races I think it'd be extremely bad and this chapter would be an epic fail. (bigger than fallout 76)

Robo_Hobo

Shewolf075 wrote: »

Though there is this "Riding animal - terrifying sench-rat" under this datamine https://elderscrolls.net/2019/01/06/30234-eso-elsweyr-izobrazheniya-i-podrobnosti/

@Shewolf075

For a sec, I thought it was a joke, being a giant rat mount or something, but it's just a translation error - that does look like a legitimate interpretation of a Senche-raht! At least as far as I can tell from the small icon.

MajBludd

Why not put the skins, upon completion of of quests, as a reward?

Do not encourage zos to put more junk in the crown store and charge an outrageous amount of crowns for them.

Danikat

gepe87 wrote: »

They wont. It will be unbalanced comparing with other races.

I don't think anyone's suggested having different furstocks as playable characters (except maybe as skins/polymorphs, so purely cosmetic). We just want to see them in the world.

All the different furstocks are supposed to live together in Elsweyr, in theory if you go to a khajiit city you should be as likely to see a huge senche-raht or a tiny alfiq as a humanoid ohmes or cathay. But all the previous TES games have just featured 1 form (not the same one in each game but always bipedal) because there's always been relatively few khajiit in each and it probably wasn't worth making so many versions when they might only appear once.

We're hoping if we actually go to Elsweyr we'll see all of them, but it doesn't change the work required to put them in, which makes it unlikely, especially if this is "only" a DLC.

Chaos2088

It will be interesting, I do think that's why we haven't had any Khaijt lands in the game atm as I do think they were trying to figure out how to implement the different ones into game. If they do at all?...

....Also do we get to play as different types of Khaijt? That would be epic.

Finviuswe

Now people kept telling me I looked like Georg Clooney, I took to it

If I could be a poloar bear I'd take it as well lol