Worldbuilding in question: Summerset Isles and Eyevea, architecture and flora

Ajaxandriel · August 6

This is after we pass the magical portal in Sunnamere (Sunhold, so Summerset Island's biome and architecture) and before we enter the Scholarium by a mundane door.

We are next to the Scholarium.
This place is physically in a cave of Eyevea.

Yet Eyevea is like this:

Main Eyevea got the Auridon architecture, and got the Stonefalls x Auridon flora (notice the giant mushroom and yucca).

As a reminder, there are 3 different "packs of assets" in Summerset Isles:

- Auridon (base game 2014)
- Eyevea (base game 2014) that is hybrid with Stonefalls
- Summerset (summerset 2018)

Auridon buildings' styles are "auridon high elf" when modern, and "ayleid"+yellow culanda crystals when ancient.

Summerset buildings' styles are "alinor high elf" when modern and "ancient high elf" when ancient. No cities' proper style, unlike the Dark Elves and their Houses.
Its biome is also consistent anywhere, with some minor differences of ambiance using different density of each type of flora asset: Mountain - Hill Forest (Ebon Stadmont) - Meadow (Russafeld) - Low lands. And of course the caves, and the coasts, Beaches - Mangroves. Also Cloudrest instance have unique flora because of its many planters and maybe its climate.

Artaeum architecture and flora is the same as Summerset, justified as a former part of the archipelago. Minor uniqueness like the tea field and crop fields. Some psijic architecture (somehow implied to be former Sload architecture).

Balfiera (new tutorial zone, 2021) is offshore Highrock and not in Summerset but has fully Summerset architecture and biome. Explainable as a Direnni colony?

I think there are also tiny parts of the Isles as story instances in some prepatches and quests, let me know if you remind them. IIRC like Balfiera they got all Summerset Style, in biome and architecture, past 2018.

Anyway, how would Auridon and Summerset-Balfiera-Artaeum be so different?

Out-of-universe wise, we all see why. Different development time, creative decisions...
(We see the same issue with Stros M'Kai getting the same style as Northern Alik'r while being offshore Hew's Bane, and Khenarthi Roost like Dune while south of Senchal.)

But in-universe?

I'd hardly explain this by culture - Auridon is near Mainland Tamriel but Balfiera is even more.

Perhaps the bedrock, underneath - Summerset is marble and limestone ; Auridon is shale or gneiss.

But with Eyevea vs. Scholarium (a cave in Eyevea) the discrepancy is even worse.

Are the Auridon-styled buildings newer than the Ancient Elf ruins in the Scholarium? at least we didn't see any Ayleid-styled ruins on Main Eyevea so it could be an interseting case of overlay.

Did Sheogorat altered the island this much, imbuing it with the Shivering Isles' biome and even bedrock?!
Main Eyevea is gray-stone gneiss while Scholarium is built in a cave of limestone - maybe a geological inclusion that can occur naturally.

PS: The advertised Homestead Update43 (Seabloom villa) is an Auridon biome getting Alinor architecture!!
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Do you think the landscape should be changed/retconned here and there to mitigate discontinuities? Are such mixing even worse?

LunaFlora · August 7

i do not think base game assets should be changed no.

i love that we got an Alinor style home in Auridon.
the base game High elf architecture is nice and it's good that the Aldmeri ruins assets are used for Balfiera and the underground of Eyeveya.

it is a little weird that the Aldmeri ruins on Auridon use the same assets as Ayleid ruins, but im fine with it staying just so the game isn't wildly different.

reg369 · August 12

Ajaxandriel wrote: »

Did Sheogorat altered the island this much, imbuing it with the Shivering Isles' biome and even bedrock?!

Yes, I am pretty sure that was the intention and how I always interpreted it. At least the flora not sure about the bedrock.

KnightofGears · August 13

Sorry for the long post; I don't think there should be any changes, the difference in architecture doesn't seem that strange to me.
There's not two but three distinct styles being used in the Summerset isles btw. The more rural buildings on Summerset are very different from the cities.
To me it looks like the Alinor style is mainly for show (very formal and expensive) while rural Summerset style is more practical. Auridon always was the "buffer" between mainland Tamriel and Summerset, so probably got attacked more over the course of history, necessitating rebuilding more often, therefore leading to a more practical and simple approach using local materials.
This happened in real life too, see the difference between say, London city buildings and the more rural areas of england. The most showy buildings in the countryside were usually built for the purpose of showing off (manor houses)like many in the city and often share a similar style, while the rest is much simpler and usually locally sourced.
So to me it makes sense that some buildings would be Alinor style in areas with an overall different style; It just means they're probably built by a rich person trying to show off. All three styles can exist at the same time in this scenario.

birdmann1230 · August 19

Just adding to this conversation that the Ayleid style in the West Weald does NOT match the Ayleid style in the rest of the game. The stone is not the same color and the style is just a little different.

Syldras · August 19

birdmann1230 wrote: »

Just adding to this conversation that the Ayleid style in the West Weald does NOT match the Ayleid style in the rest of the game. The stone is not the same color and the style is just a little different.

And I prefer it that way because it's obviously other regions of the world, which usually leads to architectonical differences.

It's the same in real life: If you take Gothic style architecture in different European countries, for example, it has overall the same stylistic elements (like high columns, pointed arches and tracery), but they will vary slightly from country to country or region to region (and not only because of differences in the local stone they used).

Of course I understand that buildings are often complete duplicates in a game, because it's easier to copy the same assets over and over, so it takes less time to finish building a map, and it also means less data stored on the server, so I won't criticize that. Still, I'm happy every time they indeed create something unique or give us different regional styles instead of a generic one for one race.

tsaescishoeshiner · September 4

I think the style of asset doesn't have lore meaning. Not because there are out-of-game development reasons for style differences, but because they're meant to be representative. To me, the assets mainly give off an impression of the item or place, and don't serve as a text to be read literally as a fact.

For me, it's just like how we wouldn't compare how something looks in Oblivion to how it's portrayed in ESO and assume every single difference has a lore explanation. (Obviously some do, like a caved-in part of a ruin.) In fact ... Oblivion came out in 2006, and ESO is 10 years old. So there's more time difference between ESO's original Ayleid tileset and the new West Weald Ayleid tileset (10 years) than there is between Oblivion and ESO (8 years). Auridon and Summerset styles are 4-5 years apart in that sense.

The same way thay I don't think it's canon that all the altmer before the Ancestral High Elf motif was introduced are meant, in lore, to be dressed more tattered or in a different style that means something. Or Ayrenn's new outfit from a recent DLC.

In Summerset, there are a few architectural styles: ornate (Alinor), rustic, ancient. The Scholarium is in the ancient Summerset style specifically—I forget exactly, but I'm pretty sure other buildings in that style could date back to the pre-altmer aldmer.

So the same visual asset (say, ancient Summerset) could be meant to represent various things—altmer, ancient aldmer, Direnni—and from various time periods. Just my take that they're not best taken literally. Still, I like reading about what impressions we could take from the architectural styles.

Ajaxandriel · September 10

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

I think the style of asset doesn't have lore meaning. Not because there are out-of-game development reasons for style differences, but because they're meant to be representative. To me, the assets mainly give off an impression of the item or place, and don't serve as a text to be read literally as a fact.

Interestingly, for me "the text to be read literally as a fact" in question is moot.

On the contrary the graphical assets always give off more precision and witnessable facts than any text would ever be able to. Indeed as soon as you adapt a text, in a drawing, or an animation, or a live-action or any visual form of art, you actually reduce the possibilities of interpretation and you refine the preciseness of what is meant to be "in that world".

For this reason I always find very odd that many people use text sources as a finer and more reliable source of evidence regarding fictional universes, especially when such world was designed for a movie or a video game.

However I agree there are limitations - narrative or technical - where text should be able to qualify and put the assets into perspective. The world scale is a good example, as the zones are mockups, designed to be travelled fast and not to be a 1:1 replica of the intended world.

So you can argue that the assets can vary at some degree from what could be the unknown "100% lore accurate" representation. I agree we can imagine variations.

Yet these "out-of-game development reasons for style differences" exist and you aknowledge them

In fact ... Oblivion came out in 2006, and ESO is 10 years old. So there's more time difference between ESO's original Ayleid tileset and the new West Weald Ayleid tileset (10 years) than there is between Oblivion and ESO (8 years). Auridon and Summerset styles are 4-5 years apart in that sense.

which is a wild fact I just realized.

Regarding Eyevea, I'd interpret this odd mixture of Auridon and Stonfalls assets as an "intended" unique style of landscape, giving us a glimpse of a summerset isle under Shivering isles influence. If I were 100% face-value I would argue the plants are canonically the same as Morrowind's, which again could be justified by the daedric influence over Dark Elven lands, but I won't

I guess we can give it some leeway, I'd say, neither 100% canonical face-value nor 0% lore-relevant. I simply feel it should be somewhere about 80% lore-relevant, that is 80% of details and impressions to be still taken as canonical.

The impression of the place - both stone, flore and building - is widely different between surface Eyevea and the Scholarium's cave Eyevea.