Greymoor's Story and how it could have been better (Heavy Spoilers)

BlueRaven · June 2020

Hello,

A common complaint about Greymoor is that the story was the least interesting of the DLC's thus far. Not because of the subject itself, but in the rather predictable story that seemed very simple compared to past DLC's. I just thought I would post my ideas to make the story better by making giving the characters a bit more depth and fixing some of the other elements that are bothering me in the game's world.

Obviously these are just my opinions. (And spoilers.)

High King Svargrim

Basically most of the games story's issues fall on the rather two dimensional depiction of the Western Skyrim's king. In the game he is depicted as a two dimensional bad guy who has a lust for power (vampire), why exactly he is willing to destroy his kingdom to become a vampire lord is not really explored. It's simply written off that he is mad for power. Other dlc's handled a king going bad much better, such as Wrothgar, here it just falls flat mainly because it is so telegraphed that the king is a bad guy, that the player is waiting to see what the actual twist will be. Only to learn later that there is in fact no twist.

However, what if there King had some cause to think his kingdom was in trouble? What if there WAS actual reports of Eastern Skyrim troops amassing near the border? This could easily have been done with a quest that showed the troops were actually vampires dressed as Eastern Skyrim's troops, in fact what if the vampires that take over Karthwatch were dressed as Eastern Skyrim troops to add to that paranoia. THEN the kings motivation in becoming vampire becomes more of a devils bargain. He wants/plots to become a Vampire lord to get power to SAVE his kingdom from a threat of invasion from the Ebonheart Pact, but the whole thing is a trick. And ends up becoming a pawn of the true vampire lord.

Queen Gerhyld

Another problem character who is only briefly shown in game. The king has her killed quite early and without any remorse or anger. Was this a loveless marriage the whole time? The game does not present itself that way. When did the King actually stop loving his family and his kingdom?

Again a better way of having her killed would have been if the Vampire assassin was disguised as an Ebonheart Pack member. Again reinforcing the kings paranoia of an imminent attack.

Also was I alone in thinking the queen was going to turn on us at one point? A nice plot twist would have been if a vampire were to mesmerize the queen making her do a complete 180 in how she treats us. Not essential for the plot but I was a bit surprised that a vampires mesmorize ability basically did not become a plot device somewhere in the story line.

Princess Svana

So the only child of the King and Queen just gets left to her own devices? She feels left out and just goes to a tavern all day? I would have thought the only child of the King and Queen would have been much more spoiled and dotted upon. Instead she seems depressed as she is left out of most of the royal dealings.

To me this makes zero sense, unless... Princess Svana has an older sibling. An older sibling (making the Princess NOT next inline to become ruler) would make her disenfranchisement from the royal court much more believable. She goes along with the Vestige as a way of helping her kingdom yes, but ALSO to show up the older sibling. AND if the older sibling is also willing to become a vampire along with their father, and their transformation is not as successful (becoming a feral vampire instead), then the King Svargrim's rage at his bad decision in becoming a vampire becomes the reason why he needs to be stopped. Instead of thinking clearly he starts attacking everything and the vestige has to put him down.

Princess Svana arc then becomes a bit more interesting. She goes from someone who did not expect to ever lead, to being the sole surviving member of her royal family with leadership thrust upon her. And another interesting twist could have been if she becomes paralyzed in indecision because of the events, creating a (temporary) drama in the court as others players start vying for power during the crisis. THEN having Princess Svana step up and become a leader becomes much more satisfying.

Blackreach

First let me say visually I love the zone, BUT there are WAAAAY too many people down there. The zone should have been much more devoid of above ground interaction.This is a mythical area that is shrouded in legend. There are too many people for me to believe that this area is a secret, nor that it will be forgotten. So how do we fix it?

Dusk Town

Eliminate it. Just start over. The town makes little sense to me.
First how are they getting food? Where is it grown? And if it is being carted from above THEN even MORE people know about the town and Blackreach. And why is there traditional Nord structures down there? Did they really bring all this wood all the way down there? Wouldn't they just find a dry sub-cave and set up there? It's just too much.

Now I understand the area does need a quest hub, so here is a better idea.

Make the quest hub the survivors of the Karthwatch attack. They basically run to a cave or barrow and become trapped in this legendary area. Suddenly the quests of this hub becomes helping them get help (food, medical injuries), find other survivors in Blackreach, and then getting all of them out. I can see it playing out a bit like Bleakrock Isle story arc, and not a weird Ghost hunters story. (There seems to be spirits everywhere in ESO, is anyone really doubting they exist?)

As for the rest of the caverns, quest starters could have been mysteriously malfunctioning dwemer devices, a vampire wanting to leave the bad guy vampires (and maybe joining Ravenwatch?) and the like. You don't need people from above ground giving out quests down there.

Falmer

It also surprised me how little the game goes into them, lore wise. It seems like they were almost an afterthought as so little is talked about them. They exist surrounding Dusk Town, but no one there seems to care or at least seem a bit creeped out about them. When people go missing, I would thought that the Falmer would be their chief concern, but apparently not.

Why this is I don't know, but why more history of the Falmer was not brought up. even in a side quest, seems bizarre to me. I could come up with some quest ideas, but really they should be pretty obvious.

Anyway I could go on, but I am doubting there are much people who want me too. I just wanted to get some of this off my chest.

Thanks

kargen27 · June 2020

With the lack of fine detail in the story that allows you to come up with the backstory if you wish. I figure Svargrim wanted to unite the entire kingdom with him as king over the entire land and got sucked into a rotten deal. The Gray Host took advantage of his lust for power. He was just a tool they used who mistakenly thought he was in control.

Faulgor · June 2020

Some good suggestions! I especially like adding an older sibling and getting rid of Dusktown. The way the chapter treats Blackreach as something mundane is befuddling.

BlueRaven wrote: »

Anyway I could go on

That's the issue, isn't it. We all could. But we shouldn't have to develop their game for them.

I had some thoughts about how to bring more Nord culture into the story, such as enhancing the assistance from "Mother Wolf" that Old Mjolen grants us, which would seem a fitting theme for Solitude and a possible Werewolf connection. If there was Dragon Cult, it's not unreasonable to assume the other totem animals had cults too, and some might have survived in some fashion especially in Wolf-obsessed Solitude. Mara should be happy to help her Nord children to defend the hearth.

I would also prune some of the antagonists and make the motivation of the story more focused - Reachmen, witches, vampires, werewolves, stone husks, Svargrim, it just seems too much, while the more interesting enemies like Falmer and Sea Giants fall to the wayside.

But as I said, we shouldn't have to do this, and I have to stop myself from imagining something more interesting that's not going to happen.

Moonsorrow · June 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

Anyway I could go on, but I am doubting there are much people who want me too. I just wanted to get some of this off my chest.

Thanks

I enjoyed reading it all, was well written and good points.

I could have read more if you had more to say (uhh.. write) about your experiences and views. So do go on and make an additional post to it if got more to say about Greymoor story and related stuff.

Yeah, i enjoy reading walls of texts as much as i like writing them too.

bluebird · June 2020

Yeah, great ideas! And pretty much this:

BlueRaven wrote: »

Anyway I could go on

Faulgor wrote: »

That's the issue, isn't it. We all could. But we shouldn't have to develop their game for them.

Greymoor was so uninspired and poorly executed that almost anybody would have come up with better (not saying it to take away from your points btw, those were great)

. They really didn't do Skyrim justice and I feel sorry for any TES fans that came to try ESO and got ... this. If ZOS asked any random ESO fan, they could write them a better story than what we got:

Orphaned princess
Caricature-ish villain set up as a bad guy from the start, ruining any potential for a 'twist'
Kindergarden-level 'investigative' runaround mystery solving for 3/4s of the main story
Completely irrelevant plotlines and characters that are just discarded by the story without any point or payoff
Very mild and cliché plot and forgettable 2D characters

More about the villain

I agree with your points about a lack of motivations and depth. And also if ZOS want to introduce a 'twist' maybe don't signpost it miles away. Twists are pointless if the player isn't involved or implicit in the action. Did we trust them? Did they betray us? Did they have us fooled? Were we tricked into actually aiding them? Did they abuse our help and made us an unwitting accomplice to their schemes?

Cause 'Here's this guy with mutual mistrust, who does nothing for his kingdom, and tries to hinder any investigation in shady ways - oh yeah he's a villain' has no surprise or impact whatsoever. It would have been a bigger surprise is Svargrim was actually trying to do what's best for his country and was being all secretive and gruff for a good reason.

Or it would have been a better twist if Fennorian was working against us. We trusted this guy just because he said he was from Ravenwatch... we helped him investigate alchemy, we helped him get ingredients for a charm... imagine if it turned out that he was working with the Gray Host all along. He wasn't kidnapped but went to report in with his true masters. He tried to develop the 'charm' for people that would speed up the harrowing process, rather than protect them from it. That would have been a far more interesting twist and character.

More about the plotlines

So... 3/4s of the main story is about solving a mystery that is pointless. We try to learn more about covens and the Harrowstorms. About netherroot... about the rebirthing-husks and the Gray Host members... but does any of that actually matter? No. So much magical mumbo-jumbo for nothing when the plot is just 'kill this bad guy and you're done'.

We develop a protective charm against the harrowstorm... does it matter? No. Our understanding of the magic is completely irrelevant, we don't stop the magic, we don't use protective charms, we just kill the person whose death stops the whole thing. Very conveniently, I might add - the whole 'oooh Svargrim is actually the off switch for the storm' change in the last quest was completely pointless and no other storm had such a cop-out off switch before. The last 1/4 of the story completely invalidated and made obsolete the first 3/4 rather than providing satisfying payoffs.

Did our earlier experience with witch pikes matter? No. Did Old Mjolen's magic matter? No. Did Fennorian's alchemy or his knowledge of vampires matter? No. Did the Gray Host being resurrected matter in some way? No. Did the magic root and the husks matter? No. Not. At. All. We fight 5 husks on our way to the last quest, but what was even the point? So irrelevant. The plot is 'there's all this magic, and stuff, and mystery, but don't worry about it just kill a bad guy and it all goes away' so all the coven/husk/netherroot/witchpikes/storms plot could have been cut and we'd just have a 'kill this bad guy because he's bad' with no change whatsoever. The only reason for the first 3/4s of the story is to bloat the Chapter without players realizing how little story there is.

More about the characters

The issue you mentioned regarding the royal family applies to most characters too. Lyris was a boring and bland brain-dead bruiser archetype in this Chapter, which is a total shame. She had far more humanising characterisation in the main quest. In Graymoor she was rude and uninterested in equal measure. And that super cringy dialogue of 'I don't care his name is Fennorian I'll just call him Fenn'... she called Mannimarco 'Mannimarco' throughout the whole story not 'Mann'.

Come on.

And speaking of Fennorian, what was his purpose exactly? ZOS probably made the most boring vampire character in fiction. Hell, even the Eastmarch vampire clan was more interesting, or Ravenwatch from Rivenspire. But they choose... Fenn. Instead of giving him memorable individual qualities, they even took away what's interesting about vampires in general. They could have involved an interesting dilemma - like when he gets captured and injured, do we allow him to drink blood from a person, or stop him, or let him suffer on purpose? But no. We conveniently had his flask on us and he was a good little puppy throughout the whole story. Bland and forgettable.

And Svana... Another wayward princess who is half-orphaned for most of the story but ends up a properly orphaned Disney princess at the finale. The fact that Svana was raised non-traditionally didn't even matter. It would have been cool if she used some of her skills and insights that she acquired during her tavern upbringing. But no, halfway through the story she goes from a troublemaking drunkard to an upstanding princess on a mission, and ends up giving motivational speeches?!?

Such an inconsistent and wasted characterisation, it's like someone just discarded her back story and flipped a switch so she performs whatever functions the plot demands, with no consideration for believable character growth.

And ZOS really need to stop with their 'dead family member' nonsense. It gets old, from Ayrenn, to Valsirenn, to Khamira, to Svana... Jorunn's appearance at the end with Prince Irnskar was a relief, to know that some characters are allowed to have live relatives to explore the dynamics of that rather than just the same orphaned trope. The dynamics between those two was done really well in Eastmarch, and Irnskar got pretty good character development and his parent didn't need to die for it first. Or if you want dead family members, do it like Leythen where it fit into the character's motivations and his actions during the plot. But if I never see another bland princess in ESO it will still be too soon.

So yeah... Greymoor was a letdown.

If they wanted good family drama, the Balmora questline in Morrowind was great.
If they wanted a dark storytelling, there's the side quest chain with Tovisa in The Rift - where she starts by investigating a Reachman plot, liberating a mining village, then gets captured and has her eyes sucked out by Hagravens so you end up on a quest for vengeance as she wails about being blind.
If they wanted a memorable vampire, there's the Khajiit vampire with the Eastmarch vampire group who helps protect foolish human hunters from bloodfiends by telling you to throw his pet cats' *** on them.

I mean, ESO's strength as a game was its great story, but it doesn't have that anymore. The focus of these 'year-long stories' is on making people buy more DLCs, but it is resulting in fragmented plotlines, poor quality writing with plots that go nowhere, bland 2D characters and blatant marketing moves. Like the main vampire dude who does nothing in the Chapter and just appears and twirls his mustache and Team Rockets out of there, for no reason other than to force some over-arching story link into the game that will justify locking the story ending behind both the Chapter and Q4 DLC like they did with the Kalgrontiid finale. 'Member when we could play any DLC we wanted and still got a complete experience with good quality plot, rather than a shell of a fragment like we got in Graymoor? Pepperidge farm remembers.

Faulgor · June 2020

bluebird wrote: »

I mean, ESO's strength as a game was its great story, but it doesn't have that anymore. The focus of these 'year-long stories' is on making people buy more DLCs, but it is resulting in fragmented plotlines, poor quality writing with plots that go nowhere, bland 2D characters and blatant marketing moves. Like the main vampire dude who does nothing in the Chapter and just appears and twirls his mustache and Team Rockets out of there, for no reason other than to force some over-arching story link into the game that will justify locking the story ending behind both the Chapter and Q4 DLC like they did with the Kalgrontiid finale. 'Member when we could play any DLC we wanted and still got a complete experience with good quality plot, rather than a shell of a fragment like we got in Graymoor? Pepperidge farm remembers.

Spot on on all counts.

I'm really worried what is left of ESO when you take away the compelling story content. That and the lore are its strengths, and they dropped the ball on both counts in Greymoor, imo.

I think the year long story could work, though. They did a good job with the Daedric War arc, but the key difference was IMO that there was a sense of conclusion at the end of Morrowind and CWC. The villain didn't just abscond like Greymoor's vampire dude or Kaalgrontiid in Elsweyr. We knew there were larger forces at play, but there wasn't this immediate urgency to continue the story.
As you said, it was still a complete experience, not like Greymoor that is barely a first act.

Silaf · June 2020

Zos should have a contest for the next dlc story and pick the best. Keep the winner a secret to prevent spoilers and reward him with some crowns.
We have so many players i'm sure we can find a talented writer with a lot of passion for the game.

Graymore has the wrost story so far.
Main problem is that we have too many enemies and none get the development they deserve.
And please stop using the dlc as starting areas for new players. Tutorials are boring and it prevent important characters from other dlc or end of main story to reappear in all their glory.
My main character feel braindead when he has to ask questions like "Who are the Reachmen". If he fought in the main quest and completed the covenant or Wrotgar zone how the hell he dosen't know?

Glurin · June 2020

I think it might be suffering a bit from the fact that it's only part of the story. It's pretty clear that Greymoor is the setup for a confrontation with the Grey Host, so it's like taking a complete book and chopping it in half. In that context, the king wasn't as complex as you might expect because as a character he didn't really need to be. He is just there to create conflict for the larger plot. But since the story was cut in half, that put a great deal more weight on his actions since the primary antagonist doesn't get much screentime.

Imagine watching Psycho, but the movie simply ends after the woman is murdered in the shower.

VaranisArano · June 2020

Glurin wrote: »

I think it might be suffering a bit from the fact that it's only part of the story. It's pretty clear that Greymoor is the setup for a confrontation with the Grey Host, so it's like taking a complete book and chopping it in half. In that context, the king wasn't as complex as you might expect because as a character he didn't really need to be. He is just there to create conflict for the larger plot. But since the story was cut in half, that put a great deal more weight on his actions since the primary antagonist doesn't get much screentime.

Imagine watching Psycho, but the movie simply ends after the woman is murdered in the shower.

Which is rather problematic when I consider that this half, the "Greymoor sets up the confrontation" is the part they want me to spend real money on, as opposed to the real meat of the story, which I can buy for crowns.

The more I read/watch, the less I regret my decision to wait until Greymoor goes on sale.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO · June 2020

bluebird wrote: »

I mean, ESO's strength as a game was its great story, but it doesn't have that anymore.

Greymoor certainly failed to deliver on that. I replayed some of the earlier chapter stories to determine if I was just experiencing fatigue with the game in general. As it turned out, no. The Summerset plot, with strong ties to the deeply troubled Veya from Morrowind, was a lot more engaging and fun in comparison. The Elsweyr plot was a bit uneven, but it certainly had its great moments. In any case, both were definitely a lot better than Greymoor, which came across as sloppy, rushed writing with plot holes large enough to ride a guar through them. I hope this is a temporary setback and that we are not seeing the end of good storytelling in ESO.