Plot Hole in High Isle Prologue Quest

Sevalaricgirl

Naw, the worst part is that Jakarn doesn't remember my Breton when she saved his ass. Raz remembered my Bosmer though even he seemed to forget that she was also an eye of the queen. Oh and Lyris had no idea that she was working with a vampire even though my Breton had fangs and red blazing eyes. No for me, the worst part of all these chapters is that there are no, or very few, flags.

Iselin

Kahnak wrote: »

Considering all of the unrealistic or impractical aspects to this game, this comes off as such a nitpick.

That is never a good argument.

Good fantasy needs a solid grounding in reality to sell the fantasy.

If you don't so that you end up with goofy fantasy that is just a parody of itself with characters wearing tuxedos riding jet-propelled skateboards while killing orcs and goblins.

Kahnak

Iselin wrote: »

Kahnak wrote: »

Considering all of the unrealistic or impractical aspects to this game, this comes off as such a nitpick.

That is never a good argument.

Good fantasy needs a solid grounding in reality to sell the fantasy.

If you don't so that you end up with goofy fantasy that is just a parody of itself with characters wearing tuxedos riding jet-propelled skateboards while killing orcs and goblins.

That isn't an argument. It's an observation about an irrelevant aspect of a story that is being called a MAJOR PLOT HOLE. You know what actually isn't a good argument? Hyperbole.

"Good fantasy needs a solid grounding in reality to sell the fantasy."

You've obviously never read any of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. But you're right, the reason why Legend, The Dark Crystal, Willow, or the Neverending Story are so beloved is their grounding in reality. Lol. Right.

kieso

I thought the same thing, I was like "we're in a hurry and taking a little rowboat?".

ArchMikem

Kahnak wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Kahnak wrote: »

Considering all of the unrealistic or impractical aspects to this game, this comes off as such a nitpick.

That is never a good argument.

Good fantasy needs a solid grounding in reality to sell the fantasy.

If you don't so that you end up with goofy fantasy that is just a parody of itself with characters wearing tuxedos riding jet-propelled skateboards while killing orcs and goblins.

That isn't an argument. It's an observation about an irrelevant aspect of a story that is being called a MAJOR PLOT HOLE. You know what actually isn't a good argument? Hyperbole.

"Good fantasy needs a solid grounding in reality to sell the fantasy."

You've obviously never read any of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. But you're right, the reason why Legend, The Dark Crystal, Willow, or the Neverending Story are so beloved is their grounding in reality. Lol. Right.

Bud, it's a "major" plot hole WITHIN the quest itself, not the entirety of the game. Major as in its the biggest one in its confined story.

Why are you taking such issue with me using the word major?

SilverBride

Iselin wrote: »

Good fantasy needs a solid grounding in reality to sell the fantasy.

If you don't so that you end up with goofy fantasy that is just a parody of itself with characters wearing tuxedos riding jet-propelled skateboards while killing orcs and goblins.

Or flaming apex mounts and over the top skins.

Frogmother

If you want to know why you had to take a ship instead of being teleported by a mage, you need to ask the mages what they think about it and what their opinion on boat travels is.
They are already used to explain everything to the Vestige.

The_Boggart

Also the vampire prologue, you arrive in a boat at the top of a waterfall

Nomadic_Atmoran

I remember thinking we had gotten to Game of Thrones levels of time and distance jumps in that quest. I always find it funny that there are times where the game immersively acknowledges the fact that your characters current location is extremely far from the objective and something like a portal is conveniently utilized to further that story along without the ridiculous notion that you had to possibly travel days or weeks to accomplish your quest (something that was literally done earlier in the quest). Especially when the quest is time sensitive. Only for them to immediately forget about this limitation and treat the game world like a game and have you utilize a travel method that doesn't fit the narrative.

Iselin

SilverBride wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

Good fantasy needs a solid grounding in reality to sell the fantasy.

If you don't so that you end up with goofy fantasy that is just a parody of itself with characters wearing tuxedos riding jet-propelled skateboards while killing orcs and goblins.

Or flaming apex mounts and over the top skins.

I didn't want to go there but yes, there's definitely some of that goofiness here already.

Supreme_Atromancer

I agree that gameplay is an important focus, but world-building is one of the fundamental elements of TES. A crucial part of that is verisimilitude. And that needs thought and commitment in the design process.

ArchMikem

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

I agree that gameplay is an important focus, but world-building is one of the fundamental elements of TES. A crucial part of that is verisimilitude. And that needs thought and commitment in the design process.

You just taught me a new word!

Molydeus

This seems like a minor plot hole, not a "MAJOR"

SerafinaWaterstar

Used my own imagination & decided that they rowed out to a bigger boat. Don’t need everything explained to me in detail.

And what would you prefer? A cut scene with a red line across a map? Or time spent explaining they got on a bigger ship, or whatever?

Syldras

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Used my own imagination & decided that they rowed out to a bigger boat. Don’t need everything explained to me in detail.
And what would you prefer? A cut scene with a red line across a map? Or time spent explaining they got on a bigger ship, or whatever?

That's what I normally say: They don't have to show every single detail, just use your imagination instead. But this time, even I found it a bit silly. I wouldn't really complain, I wouldn't call it a plot hole either (I too imagined we used the row boat only to get to a bigger ship), but it made me wonder why they chose a row boat of all things, if you could have easily designed that quest differently. Same goes for choosing Vvardenfell as a location; I assume they just did that because they decided to make the Morrowind DLC free and give people a reason to go there. I found it a bit of a pity as it was just so completely random, it could as well have been any other place on Tamriel.

Northwold

Wait if I get to spend a month in a rowboat with Jakarn I am reinstalling immediately.

Major plothole = Citizen Kane, an entire movie in which people search for the meaning of someone's last words when... He died alone so no one was around to hear them.

Minor plothole = relative to everything else in ESO, taking a rowing boat. Like, why are the dark anchors still dropping. Are the harrowstorms just amusing themselves now? Etc.

ArchMikem

I removed the word "Major" from the thread title since people believe it's an exaggeration.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

As we've had to remove a few non-constructive comments due to baiting, please remember that while it’s all right to disagree or even debate with each other, provoking conflict, baiting, inciting, mocking, etc. is never acceptable in the official The Elder Scrolls Online community.

While we completely understand everyone has their own opinions, thoughts, feelings and even frustrations, we want the forums to be a civil and constructive platform for the game and its community as a whole.

Zephiran23

There is a continuity problem. We get a portal to Windhelm due to the urgency of the situation and still arrive too late to stop the delivery. Fortunately there is some common sense in the palace guard and no one's worn the medallion yet. Then we have to take boats everywhere.

Previously we've had a least a partial explanation from Vanus Galerion that the Mage's Guild (or him personally) can create magic (sailing) boats to take you to your destination. Just not able to be shrunk down to pocket size. For the main story we get ported around as part of the Stirk plot, even though nothing there is quite as urgent as far as individual lives are concerned.

Also in this prologue we find that there are tunnels under Vvardenfell that take you two thirds the length of the island Apparently these are empty since you don't need to fight anything down there before you exit. Empty lava tubes make sense for the island, but that long?

NotaDaedraWorshipper

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Used my own imagination & decided that they rowed out to a bigger boat. Don’t need everything explained to me in detail.

And what would you prefer? A cut scene with a red line across a map? Or time spent explaining they got on a bigger ship, or whatever?

No, but they can just briefly mention a ship off shore, or better, use a portal if it's urgent. Ships still take time especially for such a long distance.

AzuraFan

I think the rowboat was sucked into one of those magic whirlpools that I'm sure exist not too far from Skywatch, and it resurfaced from the adjoining whirlpool right near the island.

(It's a fantasy world. While I agree that it should hang together somewhat, I'm always surprised by what people choose to pick on vs. what they ignore. This isn't aimed at the OP, but at everyone who does this. And in ESO especially, if you can overlook the crazy mounts, the thing you just killed spawning back to life again, that horses don't swim, that you can jump off cliffs and not die, that you can die over and over again but not really die, etc. ad nauseum, then surely you can come up with some story to explain why they took a rowboat and still made it on time. Use your imagination!)

FluffWit

Eh it's still better then Daeny showing up at the frozen lake.

Supreme_Atromancer

AzuraFan wrote: »

(It's a fantasy world. While I agree that it should hang together somewhat, I'm always surprised by what people choose to pick on vs. what they ignore. This isn't aimed at the OP, but at everyone who does this.

If you agree that it should hang together somewhat, there's some level of coherence that's important: you're expressing perpetual surprise that this varies for people.

And in ESO especially, if you can overlook the crazy mounts, the thing you just killed spawning back to life again, that horses don't swim, that you can jump off cliffs and not die, that you can die over and over again but not really die, etc. ad nauseum, then surely you can come up with some story to explain why they took a rowboat and still made it on time. Use your imagination!)

No one except you says we're happy with those other things. Immersion is one of the most important elements of an RPG to a lot of us. Our own imagination is only half of the equation: we buy the game to have something imaginative and cohesive to push back against. We expect that pushback to be believable.

I understand that you don't think these things are important. I suggest that if you want to move past being "always surprised", its good to remember that not everyone has the same values, and instead of feeding people's opinions to them, approach what you don't understand with openness and actually listen and try to understand where people might be coming from.

Varana

AzuraFan wrote: »

I think the rowboat was sucked into one of those magic whirlpools that I'm sure exist not too far from Skywatch, and it resurfaced from the adjoining whirlpool right near the island.

(It's a fantasy world. While I agree that it should hang together somewhat, I'm always surprised by what people choose to pick on vs. what they ignore. This isn't aimed at the OP, but at everyone who does this. And in ESO especially, if you can overlook the crazy mounts, the thing you just killed spawning back to life again, that horses don't swim, that you can jump off cliffs and not die, that you can die over and over again but not really die, etc. ad nauseum, then surely you can come up with some story to explain why they took a rowboat and still made it on time. Use your imagination!)

Two aspects to that:
- Story and gameplay separation. People can distinguish between setting/background features, and game features. NPCs standing over their own corpse, large herds of overly flashy mounts, people in bathing towels running around Skyrim's north, heroes one-shotting powerful story bosses ... that's just due to gameplay requirements or limitations. We don't have to come up with an ingame explanation for them - nice if someone finds one that works, but whatever.
- Internal consistency. In one quest, the game establishes a certain procedure (like opening portals on the spot to some place); in the next, it conveniently forgets about that option. All TES games suffer from that a bit, but ESO the most, due to the sheer size of ESO's content, its long development history, and sometimes sloppy quest writing. (The amount of "rituals" in ESO's quests doing very specific but potentially useful things ... and never mentioned again, is staggering.)

Both are different things. You can point out plotholes and inconsistencies in a game world's internal logic, i.e. how the world is presented to be, and overlook other stuff that is clearly due to technical or real-world constraints. Now, the exact line between the two is sometimes a bit blurred, but the case here is a relatively clear example. On Tamriel, shipp travel takes time - there are no indications that it works fundamentally different than real-world sailing. Compressing time (travelling by loading screen) or being vague about it, is fine. Explicitly establishing really urgent time pressure, and then ignoring well-known fast travel methods, is an inconsistency. If there were a conventiently placed "teleport boats around" whirlpool, then mentioning it might have been good - because it had to be part of the plan in the first place.

Even fantasy worlds have rules. They have more ways to come up with different stuff, but even then, they should retain internal consistency.

Obligatory TVTropes links:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GameplayAndStorySegregation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForgottenPhlebotinum

Supreme_Atromancer

Varana wrote: »

(The amount of "rituals" in ESO's quests doing very specific but potentially useful things ... and never mentioned again, is staggering.)

Great post, but as an aside, I wanted to say that this is something I'd love for ZOS to improve on. The current "disposable lore" doesn't feel anywhere near as satisfying. It seems almost like a repetitive kind of 4th wall in-jokey play on non-committal hand wave and big words. OTOH, cultivating and canonising this sort of thing would be a great opportunity to foster lore that can be explored. It teaches us about the world and its meta-physics, which is something the lore-oriented people really seem to dig.

AzuraFan

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

I understand that you don't think these things are important. I suggest that if you want to move past being "always surprised", its good to remember that not everyone has the same values, and instead of feeding people's opinions to them, approach what you don't understand with openness and actually listen and try to understand where people might be coming from.

I understand where you're coming from, but no fantasy worlds are completely consistent. There are always inconsistencies and holes. My point wasn't that I'm surprised some people can't get past that, but rather about what they choose to pick at vs. what they ignore. For example, that it's perfectly okay for ESO characters to not have to eat or drink on a regular basis, bathe, go to the bathroom, sleep, etc. They can ignore that or come up with some story for it. But the same person might not be able to get past a rowboat getting somewhere within a certain amount of time, that in a fantasy world with magic, they can't come up with a single explanation as to how that could happen.

I understand your point that different people can't get past different things. That was never in dispute and it's obvious that I get that from what I said in my original post. But that has nothing to do with "values". One person's way of thinking about it isn't better or more moral than another's. We're talking personality quirks, here.

AzuraFan

Varana wrote: »

Even fantasy worlds have rules. They have more ways to come up with different stuff, but even then, they should retain internal consistency.

Totally agree about internal consistency, though I've noticed that most made-up worlds break their own rules when it's convenient. I suspect the rowboat thing was an oversight. However, there are quests in this game (and others) where we manage to miraculously arrive somewhere in a time frame that doesn't really make sense, that it made me wonder why this particular case got to the OP. Maybe the straw that broke the camel's back.

Supreme_Atromancer

AzuraFan wrote: »

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

I understand that you don't think these things are important. I suggest that if you want to move past being "always surprised", its good to remember that not everyone has the same values, and instead of feeding people's opinions to them, approach what you don't understand with openness and actually listen and try to understand where people might be coming from.

I understand where you're coming from, but no fantasy worlds are completely consistent. There are always inconsistencies and holes. My point wasn't that I'm surprised some people can't get past that, but rather about what they choose to pick at vs. what they ignore. For example, that it's perfectly okay for ESO characters to not have to eat or drink on a regular basis, bathe, go to the bathroom, sleep, etc. They can ignore that or come up with some story for it. But the same person might not be able to get past a rowboat getting somewhere within a certain amount of time, that in a fantasy world with magic, they can't come up with a single explanation as to how that could happen.

I understand your point that different people can't get past different things. That was never in dispute and it's obvious that I get that from what I said in my original post. But that has nothing to do with "values". One person's way of thinking about it isn't better or more moral than another's. We're talking personality quirks, here.

The things you listed in your first post as things that we readily deal with (characters running in arctic biomes with bathing towels and ridiculous flash-bang mounts) are actually quite grating and remain controversial to many people. We're not happily ignoring them, but begrudgingly accepting them as necessary if we want to be part of this experience. Highlighting this is the fact that the MMO design, and its conceits to immersion were major barriers for many Elder Scrolls fans. Even though they wanted more Elder Scrolls content, they couldn't get past the sort of impacts upon immersion you described.

No fantasy worlds are completely consistent, but a major appeal of fantasy worlds is immersion - not the need to imagine up our own solution to plot holes, but to explore the imaginative and creative setting that someone else has set. Arguably we can get bob down the road to do a half-baked world and we can just imagine through all the holes and whatnot, and that might even be fun, but the Elder Scrolls market IS, to a large degree, the idea of cool, interesting worlds that are immersive, believable and that offer depth of exploration, not bob's stoner dream. Consistency is a key part of that, and I think its fair to say that the greater the consistency, the more immersive it will be, and therefore, the more satisfying the experience for those of us who care about it. The more the immersion is intruded upon or broken by silly or thoughtless stuff, the less internally consistent, the less its doing what we signed up for. The fact that we might begrudgingly accept some things doesn't mean we don't think the instances of this should be minimised especially in instances where the only issue is the writing, which shouldn't be difficult to accommodate.

In fact, it shouldn't be an accommodation but a priority.

AzuraFan

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

I think its fair to say that the greater the consistency, the more immersive it will be, and therefore, the more satisfying the experience for those of us who care about it.

I completely agree.

The more the immersion is intruded upon or broken by silly or thoughtless stuff, the less internally consistent, the less its doing what we signed up for. The fact that we might begrudgingly accept some things doesn't mean we don't think the instances of this should be minimised especially in instances where the only issue is the writing, which shouldn't be difficult to accommodate.

In fact, it shouldn't be an accommodation but a priority.

I think in a perfect world, consistency would be a priority. But with games, if it gets in the way of fun (like involving tedious travel), then it has to go in that instance. The rowboat thing was likely an oversight. I guess, for me, I wonder how people who are very concerned about consistency can enjoy make believe worlds in games, books, movies, etc. There's always going to be something that's inconsistent or silly and requires a gigantic suspension of belief (or disbelief - never sure which one that's supposed to be).

The inconsistency I chuckle about the most with ESO (I choose to chuckle at inconsistencies rather than let them get to me, otherwise I wouldn't be able to play some RPGs) are when you're told some ritual (usually Daedric) is taking place and if you don't rescue a person or stop it urgently, RIGHT NOW, bad things will happen. Of course, if you choose instead to craft, do one of the other 20 quests in your log, do a dungeon, decorate your house, and three months later think, maybe I'll do that quest now, that ritual will still be going on. You don't find a dead body or some town that's been sucked into oblivion, but some poor sod who's been tortured for the last three months while you were out drinking at the local tavern.

What should really happen is that a timer pops up when you accept that quest and if you don't stop the ritual in time, bad things happen. But gamers generally don't find timers fun. So that doesn't happen, and that's the right call for a game.

I also chuckle when I'm near an NPC who is grimacing with pain, tied up, whatever, saying, "Please help me," and I'm like, "Sure, just let me mine this node or loot this chest before another player comes along."

I guess I'm saying that consistency is important to me, but I choose to overlook it in games.

(one of my favourite RPG series is Dragon Age. Don't get me started on the inconsistencies in that world - if I didn't overlook them, I wouldn't be able to play it.)

morrowjen

BloodyStigmata wrote: »

You know how it goes in videogames. The bad guys have to conveniently sit around and wait however long it takes for you to just barely arrive in time and save the day.

Just once, I'd like an NPC to be like, "Yeah, so and so died like four weeks ago. The bad guys were way ahead of you. What do you mean you chased them by boat? WTF were you doing?"

Yeah I played a mod that did that. If you didn't arrive in what they considered a timely matter you basically failed/got a horrible ending and didn't get to experience the rest of the mod. It sucked. And left me hating the idiot that did that because why go through all the trouble of writing all of this only to give players a kick in the privates for not dropping everything to do a quest.

It might work better in a game with multiple quests though since failing one quest is hardly a big deal. It's just one of those things that sounds pretty fun/funny in theory but ruins things in practice.