whitecrow wrote: »

There is a stock NPC line, "What's that terrible smell??" I remember hearing it in Senchal but it probably can be heard ... elsewhere. I am both amused and offended (in a roleplaying way).

I don't think I've ever heard that one! Ha, well, I'm going to be on the listen for it now. Mostly I hear npcs I'm walking by (and maybe get a bit too close to) say: "I'm busy." And I think, "Ok, didn't want to talk to you anyway!"

There were also dremora (I think particularly from Clan Darkbinder in Solstice) that complained about the smell of mortals. Just checked, there were even several different lines about that very topic, introduced with different chapters. They prefer the homely scent of sulphur, I guess.

(I'll reply to the long message later.)

Okay, so now I'm finally back from that clandestine meeting You know how it is, Council stuff, etc. Anyway,

metheglyn wrote: »

I don't see why not. Rewards are fun to get! At the very least if someone caps CP they should get a nice gift. (I say this as someone who will probably never cap CP).

A title perhaps?

I'm at cp 2130 or so now, which is more than actually ever needed. And I have dozens (or even hundreds by now?) of xp scrolls left. I originally intended to use them for companion levelling (as they count for companions, too), but now I've already levelled all of them that I care for (well, except or the tiny bit that's still missing for Zerith-var, but that's not much), and sadly we don't know if we'll get any new companions in the future. Which is a pity - most companion quests were very well-written. I'd even say that Zerith-var's was one of the best stories we've seen in the past few years.

Now I'm wondering, by the way, how fastly all those daily login reward items that I've kept on a storage character might be used up, when we won't be getting new ones anymore (at least not for just logging in). Not only talking about xp scrolls; I have masses of potions, poisons, repair kits and other items left. Actually I had always hoped they'd add a gold value to them one day, so I could sell them, at least.

metheglyn wrote: »

You see, this is why I want that article about how a quest gets made. If I knew more about the process and the limitations, I could understand why some things are the way they are. But a forum thread where the writers talked about their writing with the community? I have my doubts that would be productive.

It's true that online discussions, no matter on which website, often tend to attract a few people who don't discuss fairly, who get disruptive and/or aggressive. But I think ESO's lore and story/questing-focused players are generally very civil. Whether a discussion would end satisfactory, is another question, of course - for example if it turned out that perhaps writers and community might have rather contrasting ideas.

metheglyn wrote: »

Technically? Likely. If they felt a need to travel underwater, I believe they could have come up with a way to do it. I don't know that it would have been much on their radar, however.

Hard to say. Maybe a general interest in exploration? Or they could have been searching for some rare materials underwater? Or maybe they were interested in going to Thras to visit the Sloads?

metheglyn wrote: »

That feeling of things going out of control is powerful and could be effective for storytelling. Would everyone appreciate it? Unlikely. And since we can't actually "lose" in this game, that would dampen the effect a little bit. Kind of like quests that say, "Hurry and find him!" There's no real urgency; you can get to it whenever you want. I've played games where they control for that by adding a literal timer to the quest, and that does prompt a certain, "I better get this done!" feeling, but if that's overused it just becomes annoying. A loss of control quest could actually be quite interesting if used sparingly and where it makes sense.

We actually have a few situations in game where there's a timer, so the functionality is already there. For example, I remember the signal fire sprint that's part of the New Life festival, that desert gambling camp led by bandits in Reaper's March, and that quest where we need to complete a few tests to join the Veiled Heritance. I personally didn't find those racing tasks very interesting, though. Would I like it more if it hadn't been races but actually story situations that were supposed to be dangerous and urgent? A bit perhaps. I think I'd still rather prefer other narrative methods to make a situation feel urgent (no matter if it actually is fatal for the player character not to hurry, or not).

When it comes to failure, I think having a longer questline fail in the middle would be rather frustrating to most players. But a short, one-part zone quest - why not? I also wouldn't mind it happing at the very end of a longer, multi-part questline. I've already written it some time ago, but I really would have hoped that the Solstice story has different endings. Including one where we fail, and, for example, the whole island would get planemelded and Mannimarco would leave the place triumphantly (even if it's a bit ironic: it doesn't make a big difference for possible future stories involving him if he dies at the end of Solstice or if he just leaves to ponder his next, future plans somewhere in the background; we know he will be back in Tamriel one day, after all).

Now when I think of situations whre the player character could be powerless or unable to intervene in a bad situation... Not sure if most people would hate it and would complain? It would be something different to the usual "bad thing happens, hero comes and saves the day" at least. I'm just wondering what could be done to make stories less formulaic and a bit more interesting. Things that could evoke emotions, or maybe make people think for a bit.

Which reminds me of one Oblivion quest now; the one where the Fighters Guild sends you to infiltrate the Blackwood Company and you join their ranks. They gave you Hist sap and then sent you out to the village of Water's Edge to kill goblins. And when you returned to that village after the influence of the Hist sap wore off, you'd notice it weren't goblins but the village's human inhabitants (or you might have noticed earlier that something is off - I can remember when I played that quest for the first time, I thought it was weird that the goblins were peaceful, so I retreated and didn't kill all of them, at least). But no matter on which point of the story the player noticed that something was very wrong there, it was shocking. Thinking of it, there were quite some serious emotional moments in Oblivion, despite it often also having some more humourous tone - and despite the rather strange character models.

metheglyn wrote: »

Off-topic a bit, but my husband and I bought those guide books for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. We considered them mandatory for getting the most out of the game.

I had the one for Oblivion back then.

metheglyn wrote: »

As far as ESO goes, I do think they could put more information in the game. I realize it makes sense for us to not know exactly what the codex entries are for antiquities before we find them, but once we've found it, why couldn't there be a little reminder tooltip telling us where so if we want to farm up the other two entries, we know where to go? It wouldn't be any more immersion breaking than finding fifty sacred chalices of Ysgrammor.

They could actually make those hints related to a skill somehow.

metheglyn wrote: »

That would be fun! Of course that brings up the entire notion of: will we ever get to go to these other places.

Some people might be complaining about asset reusal then, I guess... But anyway, generally I don't think chances are high to ever get to Akavir in ESO. I'm slightly more optimistic when it comes to Pyandonea. I'd just hope Maormer society would feel really unique, and that the depiction would not shy away from aspects that clearly do not adhere to today's real world morals. That's a thing that concerns me a bit considering how "negative" aspects often feel to get avoided now, not only in ESO's Sanguine depiction, for example, but generally in game writing.

metheglyn wrote: »

Lol...I was just imagining someone explaining that they're human. Even saying it once would be weird, since that's really the kind of thing that doesn't need to be brought up. But, yes, a quick reference to the Aldmer claim would be all that is needed.

I'll see what I'll do with it, if I find enough time.

metheglyn wrote: »

I had no idea the Ancient Egyptian culture had such a detailed view of the soul's aspects. It does put the 'stamina, magicka, and vitality' aspects of the Great Mage into perspective. But so far he's the only one we've seen that happen to, and he did it to himself to prevent the larger plan the daedra had. (Kind of makes me wonder why he didn't do it when Mannimarco went to use him as ye olde magicka battery). So is that an innate part of everyone on Tamriel, or just something the Great Mage was able to accomplish?

Maybe Mannimarco had some special anti-splitting magic preventing Vanny from splitting? If I had to guess, I'd say all these aspects are innate parts of all beings on Nirn (we know there are animals with magic abilities, too, like indriks, so I'd assume they must also have some magicka part as a layer of their being). The average person would probably just not have the ability to split them.

metheglyn wrote: »

Traitor's Vault is an odd construct (speaking figuratively, though literally the layout is also quite odd). On such a small island, to have one part of it sealed away, and called that with no real explanation--is it any wonder students wanted to get in there and poke around? We know from the flashbacks that, even back then, Mannimarco had to get permission to use it, so that makes me think it was always off-limits. They don't name it in the flashback, so we don't know if it was called Traitor's Vault back then. If it was--well, who was the traitor to the Psijic Order? If they named it after they expelled Mannimarco, was that really the best name for it? Was he really a traitor to the Order? And if they named it after finding out he was a traitor to Varen, well, that's the strangest of all. Yes, we definitely need a lore book about the history of the Traitor's Vault!

I really need to replay Summerset sometime soon. It's somehow hard to believe that there's no lore on that whole structure, right? It wasn't just the Traitor's Vault, after all, but the whole complex also extended to the South. I'm aware there's the Vault of Moawita with that artifact collection quest, but the whole structure looks much bigger, and also half ruined for some reason. It's like most of the island is just left in that state, unused, while the students don't even have some place to sleep.

metheglyn wrote: »

Well, he never finished his Psijic training--left the island in a rage and all.

Thinking more about it, the whole place is a strange concept. Secluded, completely disconnected from the rest of the world, always just watching over it, normally not interacting. For an orphan it might not be too bad, but I guess many people with a family on the mainland would possibly see staying there as a sacrifice. Well, except for those who prefer the calm of just sitting on some island in tropical climate, staring at the sea, drinking wine

metheglyn wrote: »

It does amuse me, mostly because I imagine everyone in Tamriel is kind of stinky--there really aren't many baths to be found.

I have a bathtub in all of my homes (funny thing, the only bathtub furnishings available are a Dunmer bathtub made of marble, a rather rustic wooden orc style tub, and an Altmer bathtub that's only available for crowns) But perhaps that npc didn't like my perfume...



...or maybe it didn't mix well with the natural flowery scent of magicka (unless it's necrotic energy; we've already speficied that that smells of strawberries).



Seriously though, the average fighter would probably smell horrible. And I don't mean only sweat, but all the blood and whatnot that would stick to weaponry and armor, especially if someone walks around like that for hours in hot climate.

metheglyn wrote: »

Everyone's attached to the smells of their own home, aren't they? But do all oblivion planes smell like sulphur, do you think? Or is that reserved for princes like Bal and Dagon? I figured Apocrphya would smell like book dust mostly. Maybe mildew and ink. The Evergloam I could see having a musty kind of dank smell, like a damp evening in winter.

It would make sense for all planes to have their unique smell, even if there's some underlying tone of sulphur - I think according to lore, that's supposed to be typical for all daedric beings. The more I think about it, perhaps a unique smell would not make sense? If we assume that all we see there is just an imitation made of daedric chaotic creatia anyway? That would make it a bit dull, perhaps; but on the other hand it's also unsettling to see, let's say ink or an ocean or ice, but everything smells unreal, strangely sterile, or wrong somehow, only having that typical daedric matter smell (which would also explain why dremora might dislike the smells of the mortal world - because they're different, varied and possibly confusing).

metheglyn wrote: »

I didn't keep the potions and poisons. Those were 'accept, mark as junk, delete all junk' for me. But I do have quite a lot of XP scrolls (only use those when I'm leveling a companion), a fair amount of research scrolls for the crafts, and that's about it. I've been using up the repair kits and soul gems all along.
I know someone who hasn't played the game for years, but he has made sure to log on every day to pick up his log-in reward. By the time they end, he'll probably have quite a stash of items. The funny thing is, I don't know how much he keeps up with the news of the game and I have no idea if he even knows they're doing to stop the daily log-in rewards.

I didn't feel like checking my total number of repair kits, xp scrolls and poisons when I logged in earlier as I've split those between different characters, but I was logged in on my storage guy - and he holds 10.301 tri-potions right now (52 stacks). And each of my characters has another 200 of these potions (or about 200, as I don't restock them after every time I've played them). Now imagine I could sell those for a reasonable amount of gold

metheglyn wrote: »

I agree that ESO's story and questing-focused players are generally civil. When I said I doubted it would be productive I wasn't imagining the conversation devolving into insults or anything. I just don't know what could really be discussed in any meaningful way. They could tell us how the process works, and that would be interesting, but beyond that? Maybe they could answer some general questions.

I think there are tendencies in writing that lots of players who care for the lore and stories are concerned about, such as an increasing number of lore inconsistencies that can not be explained with an unreliable narrator. If I had to define when it became very noticeable for me, I'd say it was in the High Isle year. We had inconsistencies about ToT, and a certain Naryu dialogue at the Zenithar fest. Maybe it did catch my attention because both happened at about the same time, in June/July 2022, and naturally that does leave a different impression than smaller mistakes happening within the course of several years, for example (let alone that "Naryu saved the Tribunal" thing was not a small, more or less meaningless mistake).

Another thing that led and still leads to discussions are certain changes in writing that we've seen in the past few years - all those moral lessons (I'm aware that also the base game main quest had the Prophet say something about friendship at some point, but still, everything was much more subtle - the thing making it rather unpleasant last year was the level of obtrusiveness), the simple and rather unspecific themes, the reduction of deeper lore (though we did see a few nice things on the Argonian tribes last year, it was less than in the early chapters), the clichéd and one-dimensional portrayal of many characters,... Well, we've talked about it before. I've seen an increasing number of players becoming discontent with this, feeling like they're not playing a game for adults anymore. And every player becoming bored or disappointed is one player that might leave. I think this is a problem that needs to be adressed; and perhaps discussed through an open conversation, if the perspective of these discontent players is not understood yet (I'm not sure if it is - perhaps, perhaps not).

metheglyn wrote: »

One of the videos ZOS once released, I think it might have been one of the group where the voice actors talked about the characters they voiced, there was a quick shot, very brief, of a branching dialogue chart written down/printed out. It looked fairly complex and I would have liked to have seen more about that.

Thinking more about it, I'd actually also be interested in learning more about the translation process. I know that might be harder to do for the ESO US stream team, but perhaps the German team could do something like that (or any other international ZOS team - I just know that the German team leader is a very cool and dedicaded guy)?

metheglyn wrote: »

I think you're the only one who wants to go to Thras. I could see the dwemer being interested in searching for rare materials underwater, but were they much in the explorer line? I guess as much as any race of Tamriel is: for conquest reasons.

They've also built at least one airship. So I think if they had the technical means to also explore the ocean, they would have probably done that, too.

Generally, I'd love to learn more about their culture (which would also be possible without solving the whole mystery, I think). Surely they didn't just build robots all day. And I'm not saying that as a joke, but I truly mean it: A functioning society must have had other aspects in their daily lives, too. What did they believe in? How did their schools look like? What's with basic things like agriculture? What did they do for entertainment? How was their society structured? I know we have a few hints on their daily lives, but not many.

metheglyn wrote: »

Yeah, but I wasn't thinking about racing tasks, which kind of need to have a timer. I was thinking of rescue quests where people tell you to hurry. WoW had a few of those early on that I recall--a quest with a timer that wasn't about running a race. One that I remember was you had to find a person who needed an antidote. If you didn't do it in time, you would fail the quest and have to do it over (not a great feeling) but the timer at least did give you enough time to do it. So it was more to focus you on getting it done now, and not waiting until you just happened to be in the area.

If I'm not totally wrong, even TES3 Morrowind had something like that, as part of the Bloodmoon/Solstheim dlc? I can't remember anymore though what it was about. Delivering some message perhaps? What I remember is that it was neccessary to be mindful when fast-travelling, as fast-travel would also take time in that game. Every route had some passing of time attached to it. I remember that the taxi from Balmora to Ald'ruhn took 4 hours, and taking a ship on the Eastern coast of Vvardenfell could be an 8-hour endeavour (Sadrith Mora to Tel Branora it was, and even a few hours more to get to Ebonheart to take another boat to Vivec City). The only thing that did not cause travel time were the Mages Guild teleporters, obviously.

metheglyn wrote: »

I wouldn't mind failing a longer, multi-part questline, as long as it fit with the overall narrative and world. In Blackwood, we couldn't fail to stop Dagon, for example, because the stakes were too high. I think that's a problem in general with the main story quests in the chapters. They did try a sort of failure ending with Necrom--we weren't able to keep Torvesaard from freeing Ithelia--but then of course next chapter we took care of her like usual. In that case, I would have preferred to team up with Ithelia to spite Mora. I don't see why they couldn't have left her in the game for now. Just because she isn't known about in later timelines doesn't mean we had to do away with her immediately. Maybe if she had stuck around a little longer, we could have seen what Mora was talking about when he said she wasn't good for reality.

I think that's the consequence of wanting to keep the game world the same for every player. Even the Solstice ending looks to me like the next story will start the same way for everyone, with some small changes in dialogue about what happened at the end of the Solstice story - despite time passing now and new stories building upon older ones.

metheglyn wrote: »

In the case of Solstice, if we did fail, wouldn't that have led to Mannimarco getting his body back and becoming even more powerful? In which case why would he just leave? He wanted to become a god and rule over Nirn; if he was triumphant in Solstice, it wouldn't have made sense for him to leave. But if we had still scuppered his plans to get back into his original body and yet he slipped away instead of us "killing" him and sending his soul down to Coldharbor--that would have worked, I think. Then we wouldn't have been completely victorious.

Not leaving Tamriel, of course. Leaving Solstice because why would anyone want to stay there?! he has finished his business there - to continue his work on the mainland, or making specific plans about that, somewhere else.

metheglyn wrote: »

I wasn't thinking of the player character being powerless; just that our efforts wouldn't work out. One of the siuations where, no matter what you try, it just isn't quite enough, and you don't get to fix it and make it all right in a later story. I don't think most people would like that, though, and that's probably one reason we haven't seen a story like that.

But I was thinking about that. Is it realistic that never anything - meaningful - would happen that the Vestige can't interfere in, but is forced to watch?

metheglyn wrote: »

Something I've noticed about people and choice is that, increasingly, people seem to think "choice" means "two equally favorable options from which I can pick." They seem to have forgotten, or maybe never realized, that a choice can be difficult, there can be choices that are not great but you take them because it's better than not choosing, or that you have to make the best of a bad situation and choose accordingly, or even that sometimes you have to make a quick choice and it turns out to not be the best one.

I've been wondering whether everyone would even enjoy seeing consequences for their choices. Take that situation in the Solstice prologue with Vanny - how would people react if they insulted him and that would have actually brought them a disadvantage in that situation? I'd find it realistic and wouldn't mind something like that to happen (with a different npc - I don't insult senior wizards ) , but would other people complain? I think some would. The question is whether it'd be a significant number.

The question how many story branches would even be possible is a different question, on top of that - so I'm very curious what will happen if we ever see Cariel again after the Aldwilne Citadel quest. I'd hope for a meaningful difference, depending on which choice we made in that quest. But sadly, I'm rather expecting some conciliating greeting (something like "Surely you had your reasons for that choice. But anyway:"), followed by the same new dialogues for everyone, not really taking into consideration anything that happened before. We'll see!

metheglyn wrote: »

Why do you take the Hist sap, though? Is it an intiation rite or something? Was there an option for you to not take the sap, go to the village, realize it's not goblins, and then advance the quest somehow (like maybe you don't care and you kill them regardless or maybe you do care and you figure a way out of it)? As you write it, it sounds like an interesting quest, but if there's no way for you to not take the hist sap, you lose some agency and it kind of turns into a 'gotcha' quest. Which still has its place, of course. People do get manipulated into doing things they might not otherwise.

No, there's no way to not take the sap. The recruiter, who is an Argonian, presents it positively as a potion to enhance your combat abilities ("Take this. It will increase your skills in battle. We use it often. It is a good, good thing. It is a gift from the swamps of Argonia. Sap of the Hist. A present from my homeland. The Hist are generous to us.") and you aren't able to leave for the mission (the conversation takes place in the guildhall) if you don't drink it. If you try to talk to the Argonian again, he'll just say "Drink. It is time to go." You're basically pushed into it a bit. Also by the Fighters Guild, in a way, because they told you to play along and do everything neccessary for a successful infiltration. So, yes, the player doesn't have much agency there, the group you're supposed to go with will not leave for the village before you've drunken the sap, but it still felt like it fit the situation. Also, during the mission, the player character can turn away and not participate in the killing (during my first playthrough, I also stopped as soon as I noticed that something is wrong, which was rather early). If you just turn around and run from the village, you'll get a loading screen and then you'll awake somewhere else and get told you were found passed out on some road. Then you can report what you saw.

metheglyn wrote: »

Honestly, I don't really understand most of the complaints about asset reusal. That is to say, I don't agree with most of them.

The thing that matters most to me is whether it's plausible according to lore.

metheglyn wrote: »

That aside, I wonder if we ever do go to one of the other places on Nirn. For me the most important aspect would be the why of it all. That, and once we got there, how the denizens of those lands treat us. It doesn't seem probable that any of the alliances would be in a position to send out exploratory expeditions (unless maybe we canonically get some kind of truce out of those peace talks). And it might seem, to those living in these places, that the sudden arrival of a sizable force of people from Tamriel would mean one thing--invasion--and then they'd react accordingly. What are the odds we receive a message from Pyandonea, asking for aid? What are the odds if we just show up in Pyandonea that the Maormer don't just kill us on sight?

If we ever see Pyandonea, it will probably be populated with all of Tamriel's races anyway, just like the remote, cursed, mostly unknown island Solstice. But seriously, they could make up a good story as for why we'd be invited to that place. I actually don't even see a big difference between that and suddenly allowing all of Tamriel on the Summerset Isles, or in the sacred city of Necrom.

metheglyn wrote: »

It is odd how much wasted space the Psijics have on their little island. I do have a character in the midst of a Summerset play through, but it's been awhile since I made much progress on him. I've poked around in the unused section of the Vault of Moawita. I think there might be hostile mobs in there somewhere, but I could be misremembering.

What kinds of enemies? Or is it directly related to the Summerset main quest?

metheglyn wrote: »

That's actually part of Josajeh's questline, with the Augur of the Obscure. She knows she's supposed to remain removed from the problem her family is having, but she struggles with that.

Wasn't that more about caring equally (not about not caring at all)?

metheglyn wrote: »

I have bathtubs in my homes, too, but I've never seen one in any npc's home that I've entered to...inspect.

Revus owns one (Of course he does). And I'm quite sure actually that I've seen more when I last played through Morrowind.

metheglyn wrote: »

Plus, my characters who participated in the Hearts Week festivities both had to do a lot of travel to get there, since neither one had ever been. Since inns don't have bathtubs either, I imagine they were pretty well travel-stained by the time they reached Belkarth. But maybe every npc does like people used to do in medieval times, and just douses themselves with scent to cover up everything else. There are a lot of jugs sitting around everywhere--they're probably full of scent for everyday people to use, those who don't have the means to acquire fancy pants perfumes that make one smell like magic.

Oh, people did wash in the Middle Ages. It wasn't as easy as today where you have water pipes at home, but they did wash themselves. The decline of bathing was a Baroque thing and began in the 17th century. Ironically, one of the main causes was that people needed to use public bathhouses for bathing, which had become an infection risk through the bubonic plague and other epidemics. So people avoided those places and tried to find other solutions for cleaning themselves. They changed clothes often, and perfume wasn't only used for the scent, but also because of its disinfecting properties; not only some herbs they used in them, but also the scent-carrying base fluid, which was alcohol already back then. Even today, even the strongest perfumes are still at least 70% alcohol. During the first covid months, there was a shortage of disinfectants in my country - I just bought some simple 86% alcohol cologne to use that for my hands instead (desinfectants need 70% minimum to work).

metheglyn wrote: »

That would be a very unsettling experience--that clash of visual and olfactory. But doesn't Mora collect actual books, not just daedric imitations of them? Don't they all fill their realms with things they've stolen from Nirn? What effect would that have on the 'natural smell' of Oblivion? Just some kind of nauseating melange?

Sulphur doesn't mix particularly well with anything. But that's actually a good question - are the items they steal from Nirn changed somehow after being in some daedric realm for a while?

Different topic: I played my Sixth House Dunmer (the harmless young one who has no clue about his family history yet) for a bit today. I wasn't quite sure which story to continue. He last was in Balmora, then West Solstice changed his plans. I wonder if I should go for East Solstice now, or return to Morrowind, CWC and Summerset first. I also haven't fully finished his Mages Guild questline yet (I thought about doing it before starting Solstice at all, but then got stuck at some point because I hadn't levelled that skill line enough for the next quest to start - I hadn't played much with him before).

Then I noticed that he also hasn't gotten the jewelry crafting certification yet. I remember I tried to get that quest done right after creating that character - but couldn't, since for some reason is has a minimum level (Not sure why, as the other profession quests don't have one). So after a while, I forgot... Well, got it done today. And immediately got complimented on by an Argonian with a lore-appropriate name in Alinor Made me wonder whether it was someone from the forums?

After that, I went to Sunport to continue the main quest there. Current quest objective was to talk with Darien about the notes left by Gabrielle in that study inside the palace. It felt incongruent, somehow. I mean, Darien talks so much about how difficult those scholarly notes are to understand for a non-mage, and then you look at those documents, and they don't contain any complicated terms or descriptions at all. Or at least nothing more complicated than what I'd think Darien (or any other non-mage) would understand. He even uses more formal terms in the following dialogue himself. I also wondered why every player character is supposed to be more well-versed in these things than Darien? Why would, for example, a Bosmer hunter from some remote village, or a Nord farmer, understand more about these things than a Breton knight? Also it made me think about what you said some while ago: Texts often sound a bit same-y today, no matter if they're supposed to be said/written by a scholar, a merchant or a peasant.