Do you think "men" lacks unique culture in elder scrolls universe?

Lyserus · November 2018

^This

I don't need to say a thing about each mer and beast folk race, their unique culture can be easily spotted in elder scrolls series
I can't say the same to men races

Men races are, at best, some real world race(s)'s culture smash together, while other races are quite unique.
you can say that the features of men races come from real history, while features of other races are mostly "created" by lore teams.

Here are "culture stereotypes" of each men races:

Imperial - Rome. Colovia is more like Lombards and other barbarians that "romanized", Nibeny have daedric worship yet still civilized, which makes them a little bit more unique. I hope ESO can dive deep and make colovia and nibeny really culturally distinctive

Breton - West europe nobles. Basically that, the generic "westerners". And sadly with all highrock mapped out in vanilla their culture aspect is hard to expand in ESO. The elf part of breton is bascially just a lore to give them some non-stamina racial passives, nothing important story-wise

Nord - Civilized Vikings, north europe. Yeah, basically that. Nord culture is too similar to historical races, and in both Skyrim and ESO (for now at least), there is hardly anything special. Reachmen represents the non-Christian part of Vikings without sea raiding, and concepts of new holds & old holds was never dived upon. I hope we can see something different when west skyrim in ESO comes out

Redguard - Monk-ish middle eastern. Usually the culturally "furtherest" western games can go. The only "new" feature of them given in ESO is the distaste of necromancy, but that is implemented rather poorly in vanilla ESO, it basically is stupid superstition stuff, and you'd think forbears are more open than holding onto stupid traditions. Also, I hope in further contents we can see more about the crown/forebear thing, and just HRA is way not enough to show yokudan cultures.

So basically that's it. Men cultures in elder scrolls resembles too much to real life cultures, and due to limitations (no navy battle / sea exploring -> no seafaring culture, no calvary -> no nomadic cultures etc) it's "variety poll" is even less than that. And upon that some other cultures are simply not shown (or not enough) in Tamriel (eg Afican woodoo, argonian have a tiny piece of that cultuer; Native american ancestor worship, basically side-kick for europe druid culture in elder scroll; Chinese/asian cultures are in Akaviri, which means we won't see them in a decade or more)

Do you think the men races are too "plain" in elder scroll, and if to expand them, what culture aspects should be given to each men races?

Rake · November 2018

Lizards

Lyserus · November 2018

I believe ESO team can do some real good racial expansion culture-wise, as seen in Summerset and Murkmire, but I just afraid given the current lore of men, there is so little for them to expand upon....

Aliyavana · November 2018

Only Bretons to me are the most generic high fantasy race in the elder scrolls series as far as humans go. Their architecture is bland and their high fantasy stuff is too meh for my tastes. some of their more unique lore is just minor and only really rivenspire got my attention

Waffennacht · November 2018

Creatures of sithis

cheops · November 2018

What constitutes a ‘civilised viking’ as opposed to an ‘uncivilised’ one?

TheShadowScout · November 2018

Lyserus wrote: »

Men races are, at best, some real world race(s)'s culture smash together, while other races are quite unique...

Kahjiit - medieval-ish royal caste-powered india in kitty

Argonians - native central american tribes in lizard

Bosmer - native north american tribes with pointy ears and a dab of celtic "forest folk" legends...

Altmer - sidhe nobles of irish legend, per middle-earth "high elves" which are derived from those, and once more reworked for TES...

Orsimer - hun and mongol "demi-settled barbarian horde" in orc...

Dunmer - classic generic "oriental" influence for the houses and generic "nomad tribes" for the ashlanders, in svartalfar

Akaviri - strong southeast asian influences from what little we know...

Maormer - seafolk raiders (the ones from the times of the pharaos?) and atlantean legends, in fish elf...

Dwemer - fantasy steampunk...

...so, truth to be told, they are not all that unique.
And how could they be, as they each are depicted deriving from historical templates, just with more or less "culture smash" to be mixing it up.

Lyserus · November 2018

cheops wrote: »

What constitutes a ‘civilised viking’ as opposed to an ‘uncivilised’ one?

Vikings do pillage, ancestor and old gods worships, sea raids and blood sacrifice

"Civilized" basically takes that all away, they are now just rude and brutish people, with plenty of "exceptions" to make them even less unique

Speaking about warmonging, in the lore it seems Colovians are more warmonging than Nords as well, making them........well, just your average human in middle age with a bit of drinking problem

cheops · November 2018

Lyserus wrote: »

cheops wrote: »

What constitutes a ‘civilised viking’ as opposed to an ‘uncivilised’ one?

Vikings do pillage, ancestor and old gods worships, sea raids and blood sacrifice

"Civilized" basically takes that all away, they are now just rude and brutish people, with plenty of "exceptions" to make them even less unique

Speaking about warmonging, in the lore it seems Colovians are more warmonging than Nords as well, making them........well, just your average human in middle age with a bit of drinking problem

We are now living in very uncivilised times....

Lyserus · November 2018

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Lyserus wrote: »

Men races are, at best, some real world race(s)'s culture smash together, while other races are quite unique...

Kahjiit - medieval-ish royal caste-powered india in kitty

Argonians - native central american tribes in lizard

Bosmer - native north american tribes with pointy ears and a dab of celtic "forest folk" legends...

Altmer - sidhe nobles of irish legend, per middle-earth "high elves" which are derived from those, and once more reworked for TES...

Orsimer - hun and mongol "demi-settled barbarian horde" in orc...

Dunmer - classic generic "oriental" influence for the houses and generic "nomad tribes" for the ashlanders, in svartalfar

Akaviri - strong southeast asian influences from what little we know...

Maormer - seafolk raiders (the ones from the times of the pharaos?) and atlantean legends, in fish elf...

Dwemer - fantasy steampunk...

...so, truth to be told, they are not all that unique.
And how could they be, as they each are depicted deriving from historical templates, just with more or less "culture smash" to be mixing it up.

Argonians - Hist and Sithis worship are quite unique. Kinda like native americans, true, but executed REALLY well. Also don't forget about their unique herbs and alchemy

Bosmer - native north american tribes with pointy ears and a dab of celtic "forest folk" legends...
Okay not all "live in forest" share the same culture, and certainly not native american culture. Bosmers have their "beast-side", cannibalism and "carnivorian" culture. Sure some forest folk aspect, but again it is well executed, not all folk lore can be summarize and altered to become a "culture"

Altmer - Yeah kinda like LOTR, but their magic is way cooler...and again an well executed "folk-lore turned culture"

Orsimer - Orsinium features the struggle of Trinimac and Malacath faith. While for Malacath orcs you can argue they are nomads without calvaries (which make them less cool), the attempts to worship Trinimac and reforming society to be more stable is something quite unique

Dunmer - "Special houses perks" are not something you see in real history, let's leave it at that. Dunmer is THE most unique culture in elder scroll series, which is why ES III was the best ES game story-wise

Akaviri - we know so little of them

Maormer - seafolk raiders (the ones from the times of the pharaos?) and atlantean legends, in fish elf ->we don't know much about them, and again, a race from legends is bond to be have more unique taste than a race from history

Dwemer - fantasy steampunk.....Aren't steampunk fun and special?

Brittany_Joy · November 2018

Nords are not just a reflection of Viking culture. Nord culture also has a combination of Viking/Native American/Inuit culture shown in Solstheim and Skyrim. The Imperial conflict in Skyrim is reminiscent of Post Colonialism among Native Americans. Solstheim have architecture and clothing similar to Inuit culture. So ZOS needs to improve the cultural representation of the human races.

cheops · November 2018

Brittany_Joy wrote: »

Nords are not just a reflection of Viking culture. Nord culture also has a combination of Viking/Native American/Inuit culture shown in Solstheim and Skyrim. The Imperial conflict in Skyrim is reminiscent of Post Colonialism among Native Americans. Solstheim have architecture and clothing similar to Inuit culture. So ZOS needs to improve the cultural representation of the human races.

It’s a fantasy realm - why does it have to be representative of anything in the real world?

Lyserus · November 2018

Brittany_Joy wrote: »

Nords are not just a reflection of Viking culture. Nord culture also has a combination of Viking/Native American/Inuit culture shown in Solstheim and Skyrim. The Imperial conflict in Skyrim is reminiscent of Post Colonialism among Native Americans. Solstheim have architecture and clothing similar to Inuit culture. So ZOS needs to improve the cultural representation of the human races.

That is simply not true. Comparing europe's invasion to native americans to Skyrim's civil war is laughable, the situation is not at all similar, in fact you can find more of a resemblance in imperial conquest to blackmarsh (except that blackmarsh basically won and maintained their culture).
On a side note, you will never ever see western games featuring what their ancestors done in america. in elder scroll Nord's slaughter to falmer is justified by letting falmer attack first, in CK2, you have aztec invading west europe first, etc. one way or another the invasion to natives is justified for the "protagonist"

Solstheim is more like a melting pot for nords/ashlander/tribunal dunmer cultures, which weight heavily towards dunmeri culture

CatchMeTrolling · November 2018

What is culture to you? The “men” culture in the elder scrolls series is pretty good. Think you’re focused on the magical aspects of the other races more than how much culture they have. Such as giant mushrooms and the hist.

Brittany_Joy · November 2018

cheops wrote: »

Brittany_Joy wrote: »

Nords are not just a reflection of Viking culture. Nord culture also has a combination of Viking/Native American/Inuit culture shown in Solstheim and Skyrim. The Imperial conflict in Skyrim is reminiscent of Post Colonialism among Native Americans. Solstheim have architecture and clothing similar to Inuit culture. So ZOS needs to improve the cultural representation of the human races.

It’s a fantasy realm - why does it have to be representative of anything in the real world?

No, I think you misunderstood me. I am saying that the lore masters used real life events to influence their story telling and that ZOS just needs to explore Nord culture more.

Lyserus wrote: »

Brittany_Joy wrote: »

Nords are not just a reflection of Viking culture. Nord culture also has a combination of Viking/Native American/Inuit culture shown in Solstheim and Skyrim. The Imperial conflict in Skyrim is reminiscent of Post Colonialism among Native Americans. Solstheim have architecture and clothing similar to Inuit culture. So ZOS needs to improve the cultural representation of the human races.

That is simply not true. Comparing europe's invasion to native americans to Skyrim's civil war is laughable, the situation is not at all similar, in fact you can find more of a resemblance in imperial conquest to blackmarsh (except that blackmarsh basically won and maintained their culture).

Post colonialism is what all the races are experiencing from the Imperials. Nords in Skyrim are reminiscent of the real-life governments outlawing native traditions in an effort to assimilate them to the dominant culture. The assimilation of aboriginal peoples is the key movement for the creation of post colonialism. So simply, post colonialism is a concept only brought forward by the colonization of aboriginal peoples. Skyrim nords exclaim how their way of life is threatened by Imperial rule (post colonialism).

Lyserus · November 2018

Brittany_Joy wrote: »

Post colonialism is what all the races are experiencing from the Imperials. Nords in Skyrim are reminiscent of the real-life governments outlawing native traditions in an effort to assimilate them to the dominant culture. The assimilation of aboriginal peoples is the key movement for the creation of post colonialism. So simply, post colonialism is a concept only brought forward by the colonization of aboriginal peoples. Skyrim nords exclaim how their way of life is threatened by Imperial rule (post colonialism).

Wrong.

Tiber Septim unifying Tamriel is most regions are only figuretively, most of the provinces get to keep their way of life

the "pre-colonization" way of life IS the imperial way of life. Nord and Imperial (and basically breton) share their culture since the first empire (establish of the eight), and they "updated" to nine divine aedra culture together on the third empire. What nord and imperial have is not a colonization, they share their culture long before the current empire is even established.

You either not fully know Tamriel history, or don't understand the term "colonization" at all

Let me give you an example:
There are white,black,asian all sorts of people live in US, some racial groups have their own culture, while some others, like the dominant ireland white people and german white people, while they are different race, they basically share the "US" culture

for example (just an example), they both eat popcorn during movie

Now an Ireland US president makes a law that from now on, when you watch movie you must only eat sushi.
Some people accepted, some people don't, and among them some german white people are strongly against it

You are basically saying that one law makes the relation between ireland ppl and german ppl from co-exist races under one government to "colonizer" and "colonizee"

Zekka · November 2018

The Reachmen are more related to the Bretons than to the Nords, see https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_%22Madmen%22_of_the_Reach
Their culture seems more druidic/celtic than nordic.

Carbonised · November 2018

Sure, the human races in ESO have obvious real life counterparts that they were drawn from. Why is this necessarily a bad thing? Most fantasy settings do that.

Middle Earth is heavily inspired by real life, with many of the kingdoms of men being drawn from real life historical cultures, like how Rohan is heavily inspired by Vikings and Norse culture. Even the languages Tolkien made were often build upon words and grammar of the old Norse tongue.

Warhammer is heavily inspired by real life cultures as well. Kislev/Russia, Bretonnia/Bretons(France), Empire/Germany, Norsca/Norse etc.

Forgotten Realms even has some very strong similarities to historical cultures. There's your "eastern exotic" cultures with heavy themes from Arabia, Egypt and India (Mulhorand, Thay), your typical "northeners" (Icewind Dale, Silver Marches) and your "mainland continental Europeans" (Sword Coast, Waterdeep).

Most fantasy settings with different human cultures have their origin in our real life counterparts, and then they usually set out on their own paths of history and development, and flesh out the details, just like Elder Scrolls have done over the years. I don't necessarily see how this inherently makes the lore bad or inferior.
Gods know that most fantasy settings involving elves, dwarves, orcs and other fantasy staples also do the same, while sometimes adding their own twists and changes that make them stand out from the generic template.
All the settings I mentioned, for instance, have some kind of High Elves, both in Middle Earth, in Warhammer (they're even called the name High Elves here), Forgotten Realms (Sun Elves) and our own ESO High Elves, or Altmer.
Complaining that all human cultures are drawn from the real life counterparts, is sort of like complaining how all elves draw on the same roots (mostly Tolkien). Again that doesn't necessarily make for bad lore, as long as some kind of identity and unique history is added into the generic template.

As for Nords, sure there's some heavy viking and nordic influence there. But Reachmen aren't really "savage" vikings at all. They are Bretons by race, for the most part, and in their culture, names and lore they appear much more Gaelic or Celtic than Nordic or Scandinavian at all.

ArchMikem · November 2018

The Imperials don't even really have their own Culture. They were originally Ayleid slaves and more or less commandeered what was left after Alessia's rebellion. The Imperial City itself is just an Ayleid city with "manly" additions.

The Bretons are the same way, having been greatly influenced by the Direnni.

The only true unique Cultures of Men are the Nedes/Nords and Yokudan/Redguard, even if theyre based off real world peoples. The Elves are too, the Aldmer architecture looking quite Greek to me.

ESO_Nightingale · November 2018

cheops wrote: »

What constitutes a ‘civilised viking’ as opposed to an ‘uncivilised’ one?

"Less talking! More raiding!"

ESO_Nightingale · November 2018

ArchMikem wrote: »

The Imperials don't even really have their own Culture. They were originally Ayleid slaves and more or less commandeered what was left after Alessia's rebellion. The Imperial City itself is just an Ayleid city with "manly" additions.

The Bretons are the same way, having been greatly influenced by the Direnni.

The only true unique Cultures of Men are the Nedes/Nords and Yokudan/Redguard, even if theyre based off real world peoples. The Elves are too, the Aldmer architecture looking quite Greek to me.

#slave......culture?

dtsharples · November 2018

Not sure why, but I always though of the Bosmer as having Polynesian influence.

Jeremy · November 2018

Lyserus wrote: »

^This

I don't need to say a thing about each mer and beast folk race, their unique culture can be easily spotted in elder scrolls series
I can't say the same to men races

Men races are, at best, some real world race(s)'s culture smash together, while other races are quite unique.
you can say that the features of men races come from real history, while features of other races are mostly "created" by lore teams.

Here are "culture stereotypes" of each men races:

Imperial - Rome. Colovia is more like Lombards and other barbarians that "romanized", Nibeny have daedric worship yet still civilized, which makes them a little bit more unique. I hope ESO can dive deep and make colovia and nibeny really culturally distinctive

Breton - West europe nobles. Basically that, the generic "westerners". And sadly with all highrock mapped out in vanilla their culture aspect is hard to expand in ESO. The elf part of breton is bascially just a lore to give them some non-stamina racial passives, nothing important story-wise

Nord - Civilized Vikings, north europe. Yeah, basically that. Nord culture is too similar to historical races, and in both Skyrim and ESO (for now at least), there is hardly anything special. Reachmen represents the non-Christian part of Vikings without sea raiding, and concepts of new holds & old holds was never dived upon. I hope we can see something different when west skyrim in ESO comes out

Redguard - Monk-ish middle eastern. Usually the culturally "furtherest" western games can go. The only "new" feature of them given in ESO is the distaste of necromancy, but that is implemented rather poorly in vanilla ESO, it basically is stupid superstition stuff, and you'd think forbears are more open than holding onto stupid traditions. Also, I hope in further contents we can see more about the crown/forebear thing, and just HRA is way not enough to show yokudan cultures.

So basically that's it. Men cultures in elder scrolls resembles too much to real life cultures, and due to limitations (no navy battle / sea exploring -> no seafaring culture, no calvary -> no nomadic cultures etc) it's "variety poll" is even less than that. And upon that some other cultures are simply not shown (or not enough) in Tamriel (eg Afican woodoo, argonian have a tiny piece of that cultuer; Native american ancestor worship, basically side-kick for europe druid culture in elder scroll; Chinese/asian cultures are in Akaviri, which means we won't see them in a decade or more)

Do you think the men races are too "plain" in elder scroll, and if to expand them, what culture aspects should be given to each men races?

I"m no expert on ESO Lore, but most of the races seem pretty well-developed to me. Certainly more so than most other games I have played.

TheShadowScout · November 2018

Lyserus wrote: »

Kinda like ... but executed REALLY well.

...and that pretty much sums them ALL up.
I am just saying, the "only breton/redguard/nord/imperial men are kinda like classic medieval/1001nights/viking/ancient rome fantasy" is faulty, as everyone is. And everyone is done rather well, the imperials are "kinda like" ancient rome, but with a nice execution through their "saint alessia" history; the bretons are "kinda like" classic high medieval fantasy, but with a nice execution with the various kingdons, the redguarda are "kinda like" 1001-nights middle-eastern tales, but with a nice execution with their "sons of yukuda" history and traditions, and the nords are "kinda like" vikings, but with a nice execution mixing shamanistic and other tales into the whole thing.
Just like all the non-human races I mentioned.

If anything, the races of men -seem- less unique because their backgrounds are the ones most commonly drawn from in ANY fantasy setting (well, okay, maybe not any, but most). So theirs is a pattern done a hundred times, while not all that many draw on asian themes for example... but that is the only reason why it feels like that despite being the same parretning process all over.
The makers of TES just did more then most.

Unit117 · November 2018

Not really. If you look at it that way so are the mers. Really all of them have ties of fantasy and real life together

Brittany_Joy · November 2018

@Lyserus , did you edit your original post? I do think ESO should spice up the men races. I do think the race styles resemble too much of their real life influences. I still think ZOS should take inspiration from real life to make it believable but still add in the magic and alien feel to it. I love the crystal tower and it does suck that the human races don't have any culturally rich content.

BWS2K · November 2018

Argonians are not just the native peoples of North America though - they draw heavily from Central and South America as well (Incans, Aztecs, Mayans, etc.). Notably, all these nations experienced slavery and/or destruction at the hands of 'civilization', though traces thankfully remain. I think they're more fleshed out as a culture, or at least appear so, because they are also the most readily alien to us and so lend themselves to more creative license. And I think that's key to appreciating the variance in cultures presented - many of us have a Western/European background, or else a background dominated by it, and so the things we recognize don't seem so exotic.

Rest assured, dryskin, the 'men' of TES are quite strange indeed to native Saxhleel.

Benemime · November 2018

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Bosmer - native north american tribes with pointy ears and a dab of celtic "forest folk" legends...

except that they were whitewashed in the game lol

.

temjiu · November 2018

No, I don't think that men's races lack unique aspects. Were more familiar with many of them, for sure, but the uniqueness isn't something that is only for the non men races. Look at the Dragon priests of Nord culture...very interesting and unique twist to the whole dragon fantasy. Only reason it doesn't feel "unique" is that it was detailed thoroughly in Skyrim, so most of us are dragon'd out the ears.

Yokudan history is very interesting and unique...we just haven't had any real delving into it. I'd say that the Breton is probably the most Mainstream of all the races. But I think that a focus on one of those cultures in the next few expansions would probably bring things around. I'd love a Redguard expansion (season of the Yokuda anyone?)Wonder if something like that is possible as we get closer to the release of ES6. A Dragon cult uprising could be a good stint into NOrd culture, but that probably wouldn't titillate as much since it was done and killed in Skyrim. Still, it IS the Nord thing, definitely an interesting twist on the otherwise "bland" nordic culture concept.

Not sure what they could do with Bretons, I'm not that savvy with the ES lore, but either way, it would be easy to add some more interesting aspects to the man races with stuff that's already there. definitely solid food for the next few expansions (hint nod wink Zenimax...)

TheShadowScout · November 2018

Benemime wrote: »

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Bosmer - native north american tribes with pointy ears and a dab of celtic "forest folk" legends...

except that they were whitewashed in the game

Wrong.

"Whitewashing" in this context refers to taking something of one (non-white) racial background, and doing it in "caucasian". Letting a "white" actor play an egyptian prince, or an native american warrior, or a asian kung fu student, or jesus for that matter would be good examples. (And yes, that happens a lot, way more then I for one would like to see... but that is a RL topic, and not something we should be talking about on these forums)

They are not having "white" people pretend to be "colored" people, or create the impression some group of "colored" people were actually "white" or somesuch...

This is more... taking inspiration from one culture, taking a racial template from a different one and using the pieces to make up something new for their "fantasy" background; they have been taking bits and pieces of different legends and reassembling them frankenstein-style into their own fluff. A bit of irish legends, a bit of native american style, add a dab of radical environmentalist reserve-vegan fluff to make poison ivy proud, and volia... bosmer.
As does pretty much -everyone- who works on a rich fictional background... take stuff they know, file off the seriel numbers, slap on a fresh coat of paint and reassemble the bits in a new configuration.

Acrolas · November 2018

It's really a combination of population and ordinance.

A very small population determined how each game map looks, and to maintain their control over the region probably enacted ordinances that current and future construction had to remain in conformity with the existing architecture.

Because change threatens tradition.

The player base itself, much larger and without any real in-game governing authority, has created cultures that defy both convention and authority. Sure, our housing instances are mostly built on existing architecture but just the notion of filling them with a myriad of styles and inspirations is a rather progressive movement.