#and this is how you def blacklist yourself from your art being featured on zeni's website lmao

[ja-khajay]

Hi! I was wondering: what do you think about ESO in terms of lore? I've seen some people hating the game because "Cyrodiil was a jungle" and such, and as a Half-Life/Portal fan I don't understand people so violently putting "canon" above playability. I've only played TESV and ESO so I wanted to know from someone with more knowledge and you also seem to be a rational person. Have a nice day!

Hello! I tend to be very big on lore - after all, I got into teslore before getting into the actual games. I however do not really blame devs for some inaccuracies, the lore for tes is absolutely huge and retcons itself constantly, so minor problems I’m fine with.

I see a lot of hate for ESO in tes fan circles online and how it’s an abomination who murders the good established canon for it’s greedy horrible gameplay, and I disagree with it. ESO is a huge game and did wonders in furnishing it’s world with stories and other trivia. My opinion of it is majorly good (as my 3k+ hours on it can probably tell lmao) but I do have some nitpicks.

First of all...the “crown lore”. ESO has this neat little thing or adding a lore description to it’s items. Crown (cash store for those who dont play ESO) store items also have them and some people will count them as canon. However, if I like the fact they’re relating fancy cosmetics to ingame places and history, the descriptions remain an often shoddy polish that’s added above the big edgy wolf mount they’re trying to sell. I don’t like counting these as cold hard canon lore. I don’t like when people brandish them as a strawman of ESO being shite either.

Second of all, there’s some choices ESO made that kind of tamed down the lore? I understand why they woudln’t want to portray weird shit especially in the base game where it was hard to implement, but it really does feel like some cultures were nerfed from the strange early Tamriel histories to Just Normal because of how everyone joined the alliances. Recently Summerset was a big dissapointement, and even if they remain one of my absolutely favorite races, Bosmer feel like they skipped over how chaotic the people are. (even if it’s probably a good thing when i see how mind boggedly racist r/teslore writes any tamriel “tribal” culture)

And as a final......Morrowind and everything that came after ESPECIALLY including the thrice cursed clockwork city DLC. It’s not a secret that almsivi are among my fav characters, and OG Morrowind remains to this day my most treasured tes game. But it really feels like since the vvardenfell expansion came out, they stopped writing out lore to be creative and started cashing out on tesIII nostalgic fanboys instead. Good for buisiness since morrowind elitists were big on hating on ESO when it launched but oh god does it make for bad writing..they mischaracterize almsivi and clockwork city outright felt like a cringy mess. Here’s a great post that sums up what I hate about it pretty much.

But enough for the bad, time for the good and there’s a lot of it so list format we go :

spotlights for every race, including most excellent ones like argonians and redguard who have big lack of content in tes games

they dug back stuff from enemies to books from older games like daggerfall

the items you steal and quest items all have lovely little descriptions that detail life for tamriel inhabitants in such a good nice simple way that would be hellish to implement

I personally found the MQ boring as hell but the sidequests in vanilla have very fun and interesting tidbits

the Orsinium DLC who i owe my soul to

Maw of Lorkhaj bringing great insight into khajiit religion despite being a raid most people come to to farm. Khajiit are the best and every text and dialog option found in that goddamn dungeon is amazing

craglorn, Ra Gada and Celestials, which I don’t believe to have popped up before ESO. I haven’t finished that zone but i have a great fondness for the lore it introduced

same for the Reach

In your ask, you mention canon over playability and it plays a big big role in how ESO handles lore. ESO is not an elder scrolls game. It’s an MMO set in tamriel. How elder scrolls handle lore cannot be achieved in ESO, due to how they have to format the dungeon and quests to fit multiplayer. The MQ is weak because of that, but strong in how it justifies how your character interacts with the world. Yes there is less to explore and talk about because NPCs don’t have much dialog, but the quest dialog we have is written way better than what TES games usually do...Etc, etc etc. I don’t really have a definite opinion on ESO’s lore, it changes at each new expansion, and varies hugely depending on the zones (and my personal biais too. fuck bretons) but I will continue pissing upon people blindly insulting the game’s writing. It’s nice!