Something that I've realized is that the more time that passes from the Oblivion remasters release and the initial hype of it, the less I find myself wanting to play the remaster over the original. In the first little while it was very easy to get caught up in the hype. But now with all the issues the remaster has as well as matters of taste in regards to graphics and some mechanic changes I think I can safely say that I prefer the original. And probably won't find myself returning to the remaster as much as the original. The biggest proponent of this is its art style, the remasters art style is realistic, it's the same kind of realistic that all of modern gaming is moving towards and to me that doesn't really feel like Oblivion. I much prefer the painting/Dreamlike visuals of the original.

Even looking at comparisons and screenshots of both of them there's just something special about the original version then how its colors just hit more. Now this is a sentiment that I know has been passed around a lot especially in regards to the color of the remaster and I know you could just use something like reshade to change the color scheme or whatever. But that's only a small part of my personal grievances with its art style. The realistic style I don't think really fits Oblivion that well. I think I prefer the original Oblivion style over the remasters any day in my personal opinion. how the grass and trees and other plants are modeled and animated, how the animals look, the original skybox, and even the character models of the NPCs player . Yes I'm saying that I prefer the potato over the remaster uncanny, this also includes beast races. There's a certain charm that the original Oblivion character models have that gets lost in The Oblivion remasters more uncanny models. I think visually I personally just prefer the original.

There are also some mechanical differences I'm not a big fan of and I know just like the rest of this not everybody's going to agree with some of my points. But I am really really not a fan of how they changed encumbrance in Oblivion especially as it kind of messes with one of the quests. There's also the removal of the directional level up perk combat moves and replacing them with basic stud changes which I also just really don't like. And I partially don't understand why they even got rid of those things. There are other things that I'm more on the fence about like sprinting. Part of me actually really appreciates the addition of sprinting but the other part of me never personally felt like I needed sprinting in the original Oblivion. Idk.

Now I want to talk about the changes in voice acting. I actually really like a lot of the changes with voice actors, At least in the cases where they were used to expand rather than completely replaced. Although there were a few iconic characters that they did replace that I feel like they shouldn't have, but there is another thing I also don't like about the new voice actors. And that is the fact that I think that,based on my own playthrough and what people have said, I'm pretty sure they completely replaced all of the original voice actors for the beast races and the orcs all together. Or they replaced the majority of them at the very least. And I don't really like that especially when for the elves and the races of men it was more used equally replacing some of the voices to just make them a bit more diverse.

There are also the more boring points like the matters of optimization which is a problem with the remaster. These are also things I don't like but don't like but honestly it's a pretty universal thing so I don't really need to get into it too much. As I'm pretty sure all of you have already heard about optimization and all that which is a problem with unreal engine 5 in general.

The original Oblivion was timeless. I think despite what some people say its art style holds up quite well. I don't personally feel that the original Oblivion is particularly dated although I don't like using the term dated at much anymore, at least in this specific way.

And that's it for now, these aren't even all of my grievances with the remaster but just some of the ones that come to mind the most. There's a lot of other issues that I have developed with the remaster as well but I really just wanted to fit some of my biggest stuff here and my general feelings about them. I would like to hear your thoughts on the remaster and why you might like it more or not like it as much as the original.

I've been thinking about writing some Elder Scrolls stuff, short stories, maybe a screenplay or some teleplays. Just for fun. And I don't mean like rewriting or retelling the plot of a game consisting of existing in game characters. I mean like original fan-made stories, or like transformative adaptations, or continuations of existing lore/fiction books. Like let's say taking "The Bear of Markarth" into a full fledged 60ish page teleplay.

I just don't know WHERE to publish the stuff. There are sites like Ao3 and Wattpad, but those sites are filled with some of the most disgusting shit I've ever had to witness in text format. They also only take raw text and I cannot for the life of me deal with html. PDF publishing would be preferred.

Any ideas?

Skyrim was and is such a wonderful experience that it's going to be genuinely hard to top it for Bethesda. Starfield kinda demonstrated that they might have lost their mojo and won't deliver us another masterpiece.

I'll share 5 of my greatest fears regarding the next game. At the same time they're my predictions.

1. ⁠The setting is gonna lean heavily into piracy, sailing, ships and that whole aesthetic. Don't like that period. I basically expect a ship management simulator.
2. ⁠We won't get to know who won the civil war and most or almost all threads from the time when Skyrim takes place will remain forever unresolved to us.
3. ⁠The ease of modding the game is going to get significantly nerfed by disregarding the need to design it with modders in mind. Starfield paved the way for that which is why it doesn't enjoy the robust modding support and isn't as popular as Fallout or TES.
4. ⁠The world will be bland, repeatable, procedurally generated yet empty, devoid of soul and care that comes with handcrafted location design.
5. ⁠The characters will be stubs compared to what we saw in Skyrim, where they got a limited amount of lines but were immensely memorable, memeable - sometimes annoying, sometimes endearing.

Now, I don’t wanna come off as a pretentious douchbag, but I’m realizing there’s no way not to sound like one while making this rant, so give me some grace lol.

Writing a book has given me a new appreciation for the deep story that the lore to these games I love tells. However, as I am a fan, I have come to realize the trap that the insanely in-depth world building has created for the conversations surrounding TES. The conversations What I’ve read/heard has largely ignored something that the writers have done such a good job with: the characters beyond their esotericism, and as mortal beings with lives and stories and motivations. In this post, I’m gonna lay down a character analysis on my favorite character (from Morrowind, as I am most knowledgeable about that side of the lore and I think they have the best written characters), High-Craftlord Kagrenac, and I’ll see if people read it. If you do, please let me know what you all believe and think, if you agree with both my take and/or my interpretations of these characters, and if you want more!

High-Craftlord Kagrenac

As a historical character, there’s not too much information such as dialogue for him, so much of this will be conjecture. But I know a LOT on the Dwemer.

Kagrenac, from what Yagrum Bagarn says, was one of the most respected and powerful people in Dwemeri society during the latter years of their existence. You could only get that far in Dwemeri culture by being an incredibly smart individual, and truly believing in the Dwemeri principles of ascension a divine equality—while also being loyal to his people. He was also something of a religious leader, or the closest thing to it in his society. In Kherakah, his followers were taught the importance of the Self, and its relation to his obsession: the Heart of Lorkhan. Seemingly to me, he was already researching the Heart before the Dwemer found it. But beyond being intelligent, I believe Kagrenac had a silver tongue, as shown by his amassing of followers amongst “the most learned people in the world” in Kherakah. We don’t know much of anything on his early years, but in his last few years of life, he gained an unparalleled importance in the history of Tamriel when his miners found the Heart of Lorkhan beneath Red Mountain.

When he laid eyes on the thing he presumably had been obsessing over for a long time, he may have thought of it as a sign from the Sixteen-And-One Golden Tones themselves that he was destined to bring his people to ascension and glory. He was but a mortal, but staring down something that was incomprehensible to almost all men and mer on Mundus. Almost all. He thought he comprehended it—he was so caught up in his own pride and faith in his immense knowledge that he thought he could understand what simply was not understandable to mortals. But he was devious, and politically savvy, and knew his contemporaries in the Chimer would never stand for the use of an Aedric artifact to build a heathen god, and he also thought that his honorable King Dumac would do anything to prevent a war with his friend Nerevar. So he lied—his silver tongue keeping the Numidium project beneath Red Mountain a secret from Dumac and the Chimer, and there, he began to build his Magnum Opus: Anumidium.

(NOTE: From here on in, historical events take on multiple perspectives, so making assumptions will be somewhat necessary.)

For presumably years, Kagrenac worked. He built the Tools—Wraithguard, Keening, and Sunder—to work the Heart. This possibly also helped foster a feeling of superiority over the thrumming Heart of Lorkhan. His ego slowly built and built, and he thought he could not just understand the Heart, but control it. He believed he had just enslaved a dead god. But those who were in the know of Anumidium were not unified in their thoughts. Kagrenac’s silver tongue could only go so far, and the more rational Dwemer not enthralled by his charisma, such as the writer Bthuand Mzahnch**,** thought he was flying too close to Magnus, and that his pride and obsession with the Dwemeri ideals of ascension that was engrained into him his whole life would be not only his own downfall, but the downfall of his whole race. But Kagrenac would not listen, for the sound of the beating Heart drowned out all dissenters. Well, until the drums of war beat louder.

Even with Kagrenac’s obsessive planning, something slipped. The Sixth House under Voryn Dagoth, who inhabited Red Mountain, found out about the Anumidium project, and almost immediately sent word to Indoril Nerevar. Desperate for answers and peace, he went to his friend King Dumac, hoping for peace. This is the Tribunal Temple’s account, which I choose to believe:

Finally, Nerevar, angered that his friend Dumac would lie to him, went back to Vvardenfell. This time the Chimer King was arrayed in arms and armor and had his hosts around him, and he spoke harshly to Dumac Dwarf-Orc, King of Red Mountain. "You must give up your worship of the Heart of Lorkhan or I shall forget our friendship and the deeds that were accomplished in its name!" And Dumac, who still knew nothing of Kagrenac's New God, but proud and protective as ever of his people, said, "We shall not relinquish that which has been our way for years beyond reckoning, just as the Chimer will not relinquish their ties to the Lords and Ladies of Oblivion. And to come at my door in this way, arrayed in arms and armor and with your hosts around you, tells me you have already forgotten our friendship. Stand down, my sweet Nerevar, or I swear by the fifteen-and-one golden tones I shall kill you and all your people."

But I believe the Tribunal Temple’s account leaves one thing out, something which Vivec does not:

But when Dagoth Ur, Lord of House Dagoth, and trusted as a friend by both Nerevar and the Dwemer, brought us proof that High Engineer Kagrenac of the Dwemer had discovered the Heart of Lorkhan, and that he had learned how to tap its powers, and was building a new god, a mockery of Chimer faith and a fearsome weapon, we all urged Nerevar to make war on the Dwarves and to destroy this threat to Chimer beliefs and security. Nerevar was troubled. He went to Dumac and asked if what Dagoth Ur said was true. But Kagrenac took great offense, and asked whom Nerevar thought he was, that he might presume to judge the affairs of the Dwemer.

Kagrenac, his ego soaring higher than the sun, was outraged and sought to put the ignorant Chimer in their place. Or, I believe, he was desperate. Ego and pride certainly was an aspect of this, but there was something more if Kagrenac would risk speaking for his King and threaten to break a hundred years of peace in Dresdayn. His cunning was one thing, his ego was another, but here we see another trait that becomes increasingly important to his character: his fear of failure. At this point, he could not stop this project until it was finished; he feared he would lose all credibility among his people. All he built for himself hinged on finishing the Brass-Tower—hell, he lied to his own king to finish it. If I meant war to finish it, he would take that over the humiliation and disgrace that would follow if he failed. So he provoked a war between two friends and sent his people to the slaughter all so he could finish what he started.

The War of the First Council was a roughly year-long slaughter for the Dwemer. As Dumac was pushed back, he knew this would only end with either the destruction of the people he was so proud and protective of as their King, or the completion of the golem he had been attached to by fate. But that doesn’t matter for Kagrenac, only Anumidium matters to him now—he sacrificed his position as a respected member of Dwemeri society, peace, the lives of the people he claimed to work for, and the stress got to him. He began to rush his research, pushing his workers hard to finish the Numidium, regardless of risk or consequence. But his work would all come to a head when Nerevar’s host met Dumac’s at Red Mountain, just meters away from Kagrenac’s workshop.

The battle itself does not matter for this analysis, but what ended it most certainly does. As the battle raged around him, Kagrenac frantically made the final preparations to finish Anumidium. It could not end here, not after all of this. His pride would not let him lose, his fear would not let him quit. His people would become gods that day. But when he saw Nerevar slay Dumac, he panicked. He donned Wraithguard and drew Sunder and Keening. When he saw the Tribunal and Indoril make their way towards the Heart, he knew this was it. All he had worked towards came down to this final strike. But when he cracked the Heart with Sunder, the only accomplishment he felt was the last breath of himself, and his race.

In short, Kagrenac was an incredibly smart man, but the nihilism of Dwemer philosophy, where it was taught they as mere mortals could rival the gods, led him to make many mistakes out of pride and a desire to ascend to godhood. But he was also a man obsessed with not just knowledge, but how others perceived him. When he realized he was in too deep, his fear of being judged as a failure and a fool drove him to rush his work, and doom a species. He is a tragic, cautionary tale on how one man’s arrogance can bring down empires.

Why I Wrote All This

C0DA is great and all, but I have found greater joys not in esoterica, but in the deeply human stories you can find and build in these games. There are so many other tales like Kagrenac’s Folly; the doomed friendship of Dumac and Nerevar, the false heroism and narcissism of Tiber Septim, the trauma and hatred of Ysgramor, the paranoid and shattered mind of Almalexia. All of these characters, when they’re mentioned in-game, are spoken of as almost mystical figures. But once you peel back the mystique and admiration in the writer’s words, you see these incredibly powerful stories of mortals who build and destroy empires, and go down in history for better or for worse.

But I’ve found this has been lost in favor of the oddness and sheer insanity of TES’s worldbuilding and other aspects of the lore. Which I understand, it’s fun to read and theorize on things like the Towers and poke fun at the wild amounts of racism and genocide. But I’ve found it’s at least more interesting for me to see the humanity (of elfity I suppose) of these great men and women, and not the prophecy and doomed destruction of the world they live in.

Thanks for reading this far, and please let me know what you think, and if I should continue these analyses. I had a lot of fun with Kagrenac, so if there’s other characters I should do let me know! Thanks again!

So, I didn’t think this through. At all.

So I started a Dunmer playthrough, and I was role playing as a priestess of Azura, devotee to Boethiah and Mephala. She was raised on worshipping the Reclamations.

I don’t remember WHY, but for some reason, probably “well she’s broke and she doesn’t have a choice” I decided to have her join the Thieves Guild 🤦🏼‍♀️

I can’t reload far back enough to undo that decision, so now I need to find a way to roll with it. Plenty of religious ppl are thieves, right?

So now I’m considering after completing the quest, roleplaying that she repents from theft altogether and turns to Azura for forgiveness

Ofc then she joins the Dark Brotherhood which she considers better because it’s in worship of Mephala 🙃

I purchased the game on steam a while ago but i didnt like it because i found the combat very boring, it was just run up to enemy and spam attack until they die.

However there seem to be mods that overhaul the combat to help remedy it, but idk how good they are for me.

I am also a big story person, and i heard that the main storyline is serviceable, but some side quests are good from what i heard?

Also, if mods are required to help me enjoy the game, i am willing to do some modding to help remedy some issues, although mods can only do so much

The thing i value most in a game is its story, followed by gameplay, then the world.

I am able to justify a serviceable gameplay if the story (and other aspects of the game, but mainly the story) is strong enough to justify (such as omori, im not a turn based fan)

some of my fav games as a reference and what i most enjoy about them

• Elden ring (combat and world)
• undertale/deltarune (story and character)
• expedition 33 (combat, story and character)
• hollow knight and silksong (combat and exploration)
• omori (story)

edit: forgot to mentioned i refunded the game, so if i wanted to play it i would have to buy it again

I've been wanting to ask this for ages: why is there basically zero visual diversity in Bethesda’s Argonian design?

Every Argonian looks like “Jurassic Park but make it a romance movie” and somehow we ended up with an army of bipedal dinosaur babies. Thick crusty scales, random horns, faces that look like they haven’t touched water since hatching.

Why are they all just… dinosaur guys?

Imagine an Argonian with huge gemstone-like eyes. Toothless mouths. Thin arms with delicate clawed fingers. Strange proportions—big bellies, short legs, bodies that feel fundamentally off in a way that reminds you this thing is not human.

That wouldn’t stop them from being cool, creepy, or even cute. Honestly, I think it fits the lore perfectly. The Hist literally bioengineers Argonians—why wouldn’t there be wildly different body plans? Why assume every Hist decided “yes, muscular velociraptor man” was the peak design?

And before people say “ESO added variety”—sorry, but most of them still just look like humans in reptile cosplay. I don’t want human-with-scales. I want actual lizard people.

Khajiit got wildly different furstocks, weird body types, and tons of personality in their designs. Why can’t Argonians get even a fraction of that treatment?

I am really into role-playing when playing Skyrim and have already lost 6 characters via permadeath.

I am getting much better at it and for fun, I want to document what happens to my 7th character.

As such, I am making a series of journals (like the ones found on dead explorers in Skyrim. should my character die, well, at least i can have a story out of it. the first journal has to use a little more imagination as I am just stating my run, but it’s mostly background as to my character.

Journal 1: Kazmirin Dres

My name is Kazmirin Dres and I may never leave Skyrim alive.

I was born in southern Morrowind, among what remained of House Dres after the Red Year.

They taught me the old ways—obey your House, trust your blood, and survive no matter the cost.

But before I was born, a Khajiit named S’Kata came into service of House Dres after the Red Year. My House distrusted him immediately. They said Khajiit were thieves and wanderers. When I was a child, I was warned not to spend time around him—so naturally, I followed him whenever I could.

S’Kata showed me how to walk through marsh water without sound, how to wait patiently before taking a shot, and how to notice danger before danger notices you.

In the marshes, we tasted the ingredients. Often, he would say, “Khajiit finds this one sour.”

Once, to prove my skill, I took aim at a Netch Calf, but S’Kata stopped me before I let go. “Pride long, life short. Khajiit know this.”

As I grew older, I spent a lot of time away from my House and traveled with caravans. Primarily, if I wasn’t hunting or fishing, I escorted refugees north along the roads.

After a few years, anyone who wasn’t a Dunmer had forgotten I was of House Dres. They called me Kazmirin or just Kaz, and I had a reputation for being good-natured—a trait my family and House were displeased with.

Then came the missing caravan. A refugee convoy traveling north toward Skyrim vanished near the borderlands. I was confident I could find them, but before I left, S’Kata warned me: “Skyrim is cold to Khajiit, and not just because of snow.”

I volunteered anyway.

I tracked the caravan north through abandoned camps and frozen trails. I was led to Darkwater Crossing. Skyrim was deep in civil war and Imperial patrols watched every road. I knew I should have turned back then, but I had already come this far.

I attempted to stay as deep in the forests and mountains as I could, but it was just too cold. As a consequence, I was caught in an Imperial ambush and by morning I was bound in a prison cart with Nord rebels, a thief, and Ulfric Stormcloak.

“Pride long, life short. Khajiit know this.”

We arrived at a place called Helgen. I was ready to meet Azura. I again thought on my mentor’s words: “Pride long, life short. Khajiit know this.”

And then, the dragon came.

I have not the energy nor the words to explain the details of the attack, other than the fact that a Nord named Ralof and I fought our way through Imperials and spiders to survive.

Once we escaped, I immediately discarded all my valuable Stormcloak and Imperial labeled gear and weapons at the river below the Guardian Stones. I couldn’t risk further exposure, and I pray any record of me in Helgen was left to flame.

Ralof was kind enough to offer me shelter with his sister Gerdur and her husband Hod. I was reluctant, as I wished not to be associated with the attack, but I had nearly nothing to survive with. I joined them in Riverwood but kept a low profile and spoke to no one else, with the exception of the blacksmith, who assisted me in crafting some scout armor.

As repayment to Ralof and his family, I chopped wood at Gerdur’s mill for two days and left their family a dozen or so assorted fish. By the morning of my third day in Riverwood, I decided, after being informed Whiterun was a neutral city, that I could travel there to catch a carriage to Windhelm. I became curious about Windhelm after speaking with Ralof and his family about what the Empire was doing to Skyrim. So I followed the river north to Whiterun and immediately caught a carriage to Windhelm.