cyclonus11 wrote: »

I find character backstories (and backstories in Elder Scrolls games in general) to be impossible as the game constantly takes that away from you by forcing you to be completely ignorant about yourself and literally anything else in Tamrielic lore.

If you're an Argonian, you don't know what the Hist is.
If you're an Imperial, you don't know who Alessia is.
If you're a Dunmer, you don't know who the Tribunal are.
If you're an Orsimer, you don't know who Malacath is.
If you're a Bosmer, you don't know what the Green is.
If you're an Altmer, you don't know who Auri-El is.
If you're a Nord, you don't know what Sovngarde is.
If you're a Redguard, you don't know who Tu'whacca is.
If you're a Breton, you don't know who the Wyrd are.
If you're a Khajiit, you don't know who Jone and Jode are.

And you can't be from anywhere because you are a stranger everywhere.

I think it's because the players don’t necessarily know. That said, personally the way my characters are written tends to bend canon questlines rather than follow them. The single exception being my Hero of Kvatch who has a simple background before capture and all the rest of the story is created by connecting the events of Oblivion together that Sheogorath mentions in Skyrim.
My main quester for playing is not my Vestige, my Vestige doesn’t quest (unless we get repeatable quests!!!), questlines are split up among characters while most characters never really participate in any quests (I guess you could say I have a tendency to make members of a faction instead of the hero). I’ve actually found that since Blackwood I haven’t had a fill-in for who does the main quest due to my displeasure and disconnect with Blackwood-now stories. Though, I guess the current one would be my Vestige again…

I think a lot of this goes back to the quality of ESO writing/storytelling too - the better the writing is, the more you are interested in building off of it. The worse… well, some people can imagine hard enough to fill in the gaps and others don’t think that they should do the mental gymnastics to make something fit.

We have people who are already mad that the player character is perpetually brain dead. We have companion NPCs who need to reexplain every minor detail in case we the player couldn’t figure out which Daedric Prince lords over the realm of destruction. We are forced to ask NPCs about any lore that by all rights we should know. And yes, people are mad that somehow one person can do all of these stories and somehow it’s still 2E 582.

Easy answer for me: it’s not. There’s a lot more going on, but it’s only in my mind. I can’t possibly expect an MMO like ESO to cater to everything, so I fill in the gaps manually. Heck, in my mind, I rewrite most quests from scratch so it fits me better. And yes, pretty well everything after the Main Quest happens after 582, and with many different heroes who may or may not intersect.

Case in point: my main is an Orc who was raised by Nords since infancy. He knows nothing about the Orcish way of life, or really anything beyond the “Orcs are savages” stories he heard as a kid. So Orsinium for him is really important - I cut pretty well everything non-Orc from that story since it’s about my main learning about his people, and it ends up fitting so much better in my mind. I even managed a few really cool connections involving Old Orsinium as well, where he learns the history of the Orsimer and the six clans who built the first Orsinium… and in the story we have Kurog as the representative of clan Bagrakh, Bazrag from Fharun, the leaders of Tumnosh, Shatul, and Morkul, but clan Igrun has died out. Totally makes logical sense for my main to find out that he is the last scion of Clan Igrun through his mother’s line, thus bringing together the six clans of Old Orsinium one last time.

Another one I’m super excited about: my edits to the Blackwood line. Yeah, as written was irritating, but it now stars my teenage Reachman as the thief commissioned to get the book from Black Drake Villa. His story is fun since he’s a complete mystery - the Spiritbloods found him as a baby near Red Eagle Redoubt next to the charred remains of his mother, but nothing else. The Binder in the Dark took to raising him, but she knew there was something there, something Daedric. She keeps that power contained in him with blood sigils drawn on his face, but even he doesn’t know about it besides that he needs to keep it contained. And then he does the Blackwood line, where Lyranth becomes quite interested in him because she ca sense that he has some Daedric blood in him… which by all logic should not be possible. And then by the end of the story, it’s revealed that he’s essentially also an Ambition, in his own way, and then he has a chance to really unleash that power he didn’t know was inside him.

I really like filling in the blanks completely rewriting the stories to relate to my characters, since it makes them feel so much more connected to the world than just “hello [insert name here], please spam ‘E’ through my dialogue and follow the magic arrow to get a skill point.” But it does take some creativity to do so if you don’t have much to work with in the first place.

Oh, and another really fun thing: connecting stories. My next character (who I’m making the second we get a new Class and already has a story 90% complete save for a bit of whatever his Class is) already has a plan to meet with my Reachman for that line since they both connect. My next character’s a former Legionary who saw too many people die and asked too many questions and is now on the run. Long story short, he becomes the avatar of Morihaus (there’s like a two-year period here of him searching for Chrysamere). But then you have a minotaur who knows where the Imperial Council is, but he can’t exactly go into town as a beast… so he and the boy from the Reach end up in an uneasy alliance while he tries to contact the remnants of the Empire… and then he finds out about Leovic’s secrets and how one of the sacrifices to create the Ambitions was his own mother…
Ooh, even thinking about it makes me want to start that character. I need a new Class stat - I’ll take anything because anything could fit, but I’d love an Artificer most.

But that’s the best part for me: that moment when you consider your potential character interacting with the world in your way, not just the way the game is written. And then you finally get that satisfying *click* when everything falls into place and your character just writes their own backstory and you really get to see them take on a life of their own.

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I can't imagine playing an RPG (even one as nominal as ESO) without your characters being, well, characters.

That said, the vast majority of my friends/guildies play that way, so maybe I'm the one who's wrong.

One of the things I find interesting about games with a character creator, especially RPGs, is how many different approaches there are to using it.

It would never have occured to me to try to make a character which looks like me if I hadn't heard of other people doing it, and every time I've tried it quickly hits an 'uncanny valley' point where it just looks weird to me. But I've talked to other people who seem genuinely confused that anyone would ever do anything else - they assume everyone's characters either look like they do in real life or look the way they wished they look.

I imagine at least some of them don't make up backstories for their character because - it's them - the story is it's them inserted into the game world.

I know other people who don't make up backstories because they say the game will do that if there's supposed to be one. (And after Baldur's Gate 1 I'm wary of getting too attached to mine, I had to re-write so much once I found out what the game had predetermined about you).

I suppose the point of giving the player a character creator and (sometimes) little/no backstory is it's your choice, so there's no right or wrong way to do it.

I don't have backstories for my characters in ESO, because I believe that the game is the backstory anyway, and I cannot in any way, change it. So I guess that backstories are not crucial to me.

Not like in a table RPG, where I always make backstories for every character I want to play a bit.

If naming characters is backstory, I carefully choose the name of my ESO characters though, it needs to work with race and gender; it that counts.

Here in ESO, when I started all my characters had a back story.

These days, the back story for new characters is about the same as some random person someone meets in the aisle at the grocery store.

All mine have some degree of background and are connected in sone way to an overarching story. Even the mules. Even if im not actively playing them i like to have an in universe reason why they're there.

MJallday wrote: »

i want to load up the game and kill stuff.

i dont begrudge those who want to do that.. i just personally find it a bit weird.

each to their own.

There is nothing weird about crafting a character with a backstory in a Role-Playing Game; the backstory is part of the Role.

If anything, you finding that weird is weird.
I mean, like you say, to each their own, and it's perfectly fine if that's not your thing and you just want a stat-stick to kill stuff with, but robust character creation is an intrinsic part of these types of games.

My characters (in any game) have personalities that are fleshed out as I proceed in the game, because a character's personality depends so much on dialogue choices and, where relevant, voice acting.

They don't really have backstories though, or maybe just simple ones, like where they got their talent from and where they grew up. In ESO, I didn't create a backstory for my character, and I don't feel the need for it. She does have a personality though. I don't really enjoy RPGs without knowing my characters' personalities.