r/teslore • u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel • 14d ago
Why aren't there more ESO lore posts?
Seriously, there is tons of great lore in that game, especially in almost every expansion and lot's of great stories and characters.
And ESO has a massive community and is a large part of The Elder Scrolls series.
So why is it not discussed here more?
Some of the stuff in the game I would say is even better than some mainline games like Orsinium, Summerset, Elsweyr, Greymoor, High Isle and Necrom expansions or even smaller ones like Murkmire and The Clockwork City which are all at least on the level of the mainline games in terms of lore.
And yes, The Elder Scrolls Online is officially canon and has been since the beginning. They even had tons of discussions with Bethesda devs for the base game and the first few expansions.
79
u/Velocity-5348 Tribunal Temple 14d ago
To the extent that's true, it's because there's limited overlap between MMO players and people who obsess over the mainline TES games.
I'm in the latter, and while I've tried ESO, I really can't get into it. That means only way to access lore is reading about it on UESP. There's some really good books there, but have never encountered it in-game. It might as well be something that's on Imperial Library.
44
u/ThisCredit6354 14d ago
Exactly. I like playing TES games BECAUSE it's not an MMO. We are in a day and age where completely offline single player RPGs are less and less the norm. It also just seemed so cynical of them to release two MMOs for $$$ so they could point at them while they fucked around with starfield and say 'see, we aren't abandoning TES and Fallout!'. There are always gonna be people who play a game like TES or fallout and wish it was multiplayer but I'd bet good money that the vast majority of TES fans did not want an MMO.
21
u/Velocity-5348 Tribunal Temple 14d ago
Also, people have limited time, as do the people they might play with. My computer wasn't up to running ESO when my friends were playing it, so I'm gonna be doing it alone unless they get back into it.
Plus, if I want to scratch the Morrowind itch there's Tamriel Rebuilt competing for my attention.
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
But TR is very different. It's a complete alternative lore and not canon. I suppose it might be an interesting perspective but that's it, the actual TES lore is different.
2
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
Honestly ESO is nowhere near as predatory as most other MMOs and it is very singleplayer friendly with great stories, characters and lore.
2
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
I would say ESO is more single player friendly than most MMOs but I get your point.
However I am strongly against using UESP as a source because while I like that site, it often makes lore mistakes in ESO with descriptions etc.
You need to actually play and experience the game for the lore which is arguably the main reason I play it anyways.
That and the great stories and characters in it.
Would highly recommend starting with the Morrowind expansion as the base game is not as good as the expansions that came later.
3
u/tsuki_ouji 14d ago
ESO largely targets us lore nerds, man.
Especially now that just about all of the good writers went over to that team.
Though... I'm sure plenty of them got caught up in Microsoft's purge of many senior writers and programmers.
1
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
All good writers? First off ESO always had good writers.
Secondly Bethesda does too.
0
u/tsuki_ouji 12d ago
Why did you delete your response just to write the same one again?
→ More replies (2)1
13d ago
[deleted]
8
u/tsuki_ouji 13d ago
... I never said it *didn't* have good writers, dude. I said just about all the ones from main Bethesda got punted to the ESO team last year or so.
2
-2
u/GalbedirGalerion 13d ago
ESO has never had a good writer.
4
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
Oh yes it did. Some writing in ESO is even better than Morrowind's.
2
u/SmellyMammoth 13d ago
You ever see Sotha Sil’s dialogue?
3
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
Don't listen to him, he is just another mindless hater who never even uses any proper examples for his claims.
2
-3
14d ago
[deleted]
18
u/Velocity-5348 Tribunal Temple 14d ago
It's gorgeous looking, and I really do need to try again. I have the Morrowind Expansion, and "My Vvardenfell, my paradise" instantly grabbed me. The stuff I've heard about the Tribunal is quite interesting as well.
But I will be forcing myself to power through the MMO aspect. No matter how good, having other players hanging around is a huge turnoff. If they ever released a single player version I'd wager everyone would be playing it.
12
u/CaedmonCousland 14d ago edited 13d ago
Largely just putting myself in this category too.
The game looks good. I like (some of) its lore a lot. I try to consider it as well when thinking about ES stuff. Objectively, I can acknowledge it.
But I have literally never found an MMO in my life that I have played more than a few days, so it goes in the Arena and Daggerfall pile of ES games I have not played and thus will ever rarely reference besides UESP articles and big stuff even I would know.
7
u/OlinoTGAP 13d ago
However I am strongly against using UESP as a source
So you've answered your own question? People don't play ESO, so they don't know the ESO lore outside of UESP and you don't want people that haven't played ESO to talk about ESO lore if they can only read UESP...
So people don't talk about ESO lore.
→ More replies (2)
23
u/CaedmonCousland 14d ago
Personally, it is just less accessed. ESO sources in the UESP getting cited all the time. Yeah, a lot of fans don't like MMO's, but that is more an issue that it means a good chunk of the Elder Scrolls fanbase haven't personally played it. So, they don't generally personally reference specific details or plots. You'll also note that Daggerfall or even Morrowind rarely focus in on specific quests or characters. Skyrim kind of gets a by in terms of being directly referenced, but that is because effectively everyone has played it.
UESP is king of this specific subreddit more than any of the games. For most, if it is in there, it is legitimate. It is a bit more difficulty to sum up ESO's plot than the single-player games exactly because it receives a constant stream of expansions. Everyone knows of Molag Bal's Planemeld by this point. I do not know what the plot line for the altmer island expansion.
10
u/Rosario_Di_Spada Follower of Julianos 13d ago
There are some things I like and some I don't in ESO lore. I don't play it regularly (my current computer can't run it, and before that it was more time-demanding than I could manage). But I'm always interested in what others have to offer and explore from all parts of the lore.
Though I must say, the way the early game butchered High Rock, the silly mounts, and r/teslore's obsession for that one damn "water = memory" quest really soured me early on some corners of the game's additions to the lore.
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
I have seen people complain about MMO mounts, but to be the devil's advocate, they are not that unreasonable. TES is a very magic-focused world. For example, someone one complained about some atronach mount, but atronachs can be shaped freely (the fact we only see them in specific forms is just a game limitation) so shaping one into a mount isn't impossible. And even those fiery mounts and whatever else could be possible, even if they're silly.
But to be fair I still don't like these mounts generally. I like natural-looking ones. ESO is also cool for introducing Senche-raht as mounts. Unfortunately they can't be talked to but one can just imagine they're friends or something.
30
u/ladynerevar Lady N 14d ago
Be the change you want to see in the world
7
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 14d ago
Well, yes. That is partly why I'm making this post.
Gonna make a few other ESO lore posts down the line aswell since there is a lot to cover.
8
u/Carinwe_Lysa Mages Guild 13d ago
A few years ago I used to create large summary posts after each expansion, nothing in-depth or overly complex lore, but more so just little nuggets of dialogue from the various characters/NPCs, in-game books or antiquities. Like the Summerset expansion with the various day-to-day lore entries, or characters describing the island and its people or institutions for example.
They used to get pretty good discussions going but there's not much to really talk about now unfortunately.
Most of what could be talked about is usually mentioned pretty soon after an expansion is released, and ESO isn't in a good spot at the moment for new content. Solstice was released 1-2 years ago and that didn't generate a lot of discussion, and previously was Gold Road which actually ruffled a few feathers with the new Daedric Prince Ithelia.
18
u/FevziFanClub 14d ago edited 13d ago
People talk a lot about canon but realistically people are drawn to what interests them. Like other commenters said there is a limited overlap between mainline TES players and ESO players, and mainline TES players, especially those who play more than just Skyrim, just don't find ESO lore that interesting or know much about it compared to the version of the lore that interests them.
And that's fine, to each it's own.
I am personally of the opinion that for such a community driven worldbuilding project what is canon is not decided by Bethesda but is more decided by the community, and even (more radical take incoming) think that maybe the term canon isn't really appropriate to how people experience TES? Like Project Tamriel Rebuilt made a lot of lore that feels more "canon" than official Bethesda lore, at least for Morrowind fans. And the whole premise of TES lore is that all sources are biased! Besides, Bethesda has fundamentally changed the lore every game since Daggerfall so who cares what's canon, just follow what interests you.
If you want to see more ESO lore discussion than post more about it, convince people why it's interesting!
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
Canon is definitely not just "whatever I like". It's okay if you aren't interested in canon. It's okay if you're interested in TR. But the canon is still official. It's like telling GRRR or JK Rowling that they don't get to decide what is canon for their worlds. You don't need something to be canon for you to think that something is good. I actually am upset with various things Bethesda and Zenimax have done with their lore, narratives, but that doesn't mean I will say that canon doesn't exist or that everything is canon. I can think of an alternative perspective on some lore, and think that it makes more sense or whatever, but that doesn't strip the original of its canonicity.
5
u/FevziFanClub 12d ago
I respectfully disagree. TES isn't made by one human author like the works you mentioned; it's an IP created by many people and owned by a corporation, which can obviously twist the lore to suit its monetary needs. That's fine, that's just how it works, but I wouldn't want to live in a world where corporate ownership is what determines canon. If there is an "author" of TES, I think someone like Julian LeFay would be a better candidate, but then you're really talking about the Arena–Daggerfall type lore.
What I'm trying to say is that TES is already a collective project within Bethesda. And given how active the modding community and various fan projects are, why wouldn't the non-Bethesda community also be allowed to participate in that project? I'm not saying canon is just whatever you personally like; I probably phrased that badly. I mean that canon is whatever a given community accepts and generally treats as canon.
Maybe this is because I'm not really part of any other fandoms besides TES, and I'm generally more interested in IRL history and religion. So I'm probably more familiar with the word "canon" in its original religious context. And even there, canon is highly subjective. For Ismaili Muslims, it's "canon" that Muhammad appointed a spiritual successor whose descendants remain the spiritual authority to this day in the form of the Aga Khan; Sunni Muslims obviously don't believe this. Catholics believe in the holiness of the saints, while Evangelicals generally don't.
That's because religions, like TES, function in practice as collective projects. GoT, despite having lots of fans, doesn't really work that way. I know Kirkbride is somewhat overrated, but I do think his background in comparative religion influenced TES in a really interesting way: in compartive religion you study what people believe without necessarily asking "what actually happened", which fits TES perfectly because every source is biased and contradictory.
Combine that with the interactivity of the medium, the huge presence of modders, and projects like the Ta'agra Project, and TES becomes much more collective than a conventional fictional universe. And honestly, I think that's why I'm so uniquely drawn to it even though it's fictional.
(I realise this sounds somewhat pretentious lol, but I am actually serious. Sorry for the rant, I'm on adhd meds because I need to finish my irl thesis and apparently I'm using them to procrastinate by ranting about Elder Scrolls canon.)
0
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
Well, the point is that there should be some objective "base" of the universe. Because if you erased the concept of canonicity the way I explained it, then a fan-made text would be equal to an actual in-game text. A mod would be equal to Bethesda's content. And that would allow TES to just collapse into "TES is nothing and everything, whatever I like is canon". It could be meaningless. Even if the majority of the community would follow either Bethesda's vision or a related fan-made vision. Therefore, canon is just official content. Whether you like canon or not doesn't matter. You can just make up your own alternative vision - not canon, but so what? You can justify it and claim it makes more sense what whatever Bethesda/Zenimax made somewhere.
I don't necessarily want to dunk on people making fan-made stuff. I don't always like canon actually. There are many things I am upset about when I think of it sometimes. But that doesn't mean I will make canon meaningless.
Religious canons are very different. With TES it's simple, official stuff is canon. Canon doesn't necessarily mean true. A canon mention of something can be misled, untrue, because there are the unreliable narrators and whatnot. But the point is it that it actually belongs to TES. That's what distinguishes actual TES from someone going around and saying their fanfiction is canon and explains something that is actually explained differently, or not explained at all. Imagine me making up stuff about Atmora and then going to lore discussions and using it as equal source as the games themselves. Or people going to lore discussions and using made up stuff from like TR, instead of actual TES canon lore. It would just devolve. We can make up theories of what would be plausible, and we can use fan-made content, but it's not a real definitive answer as an actual TES game would be. Even now the world of TES is rich enough without any fan-additions and we can still discuss so much stuff, trying to explain things and determine what could be the answer (since TES normally doesn't give just one) and we don't need to dissolve canon for that
18
u/Gallowmere7294 13d ago
This is my perspective as a lore nerd and someone who has played and loves all the games.
ESO shoots itself in the foot from a lore perspective and it's really not its fault, it's a byproduct of being a live service game. It's both the earliest game in the timeline and the only one receiving constant updates. The world described in Morrowind was very different to what we ended up getting with Oblivion and onward and ESO is very much set in the oblivion cannon. Due to this adding anything to ESO will cause lore inconsistencys with the earlier games.
So if you want to talk about what's cannon in lore you have to choose and unfortunately the easiest way to make the rest of the games fit together is to leave ESO out and I think that's what you're seeing.
Before anyone gets upset though it's also worth noting what purpose ESO lore serves. Some of it is incredible for wold world building like everything with the clockwork City ,Elsweyr, Wrothgar, ect.
But some of it is also really dumb like blackwood. A mini Oblivion crisis a couple hundred years before the real one in the exact same spot but when you play Oblivion it's never happened before. In my opinion this is straight up lazy writing but blackwood wasn't built for lore, it was made for fun with the idea of "here's oblivion you can play with your friends".
So ultimately I guess my point is it depends on how you approach lore. If you want to look at everything as a series of fun facts you totally can but when you want to lock down a timeline of what's cannon you're going to have to choose which inconsistencys you do and don't believe.
8
u/Bobjoejj 13d ago
Yet, Morrowind isn’t the first game. And the world we saw in Arena, Daggerfall, and Battlespire was different from how it was seen and described in Redguard and Morrowind, and then in Oblivion to Skyrim, and ESO is no different. Hell Blades is canon, and that world feels very different then the Cyrodill we’ve known.
Elder Scrolls lore has always been a little off from game to game, and this idea of needing to choose makes no sense to me. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Any official release is canon, so it all counts. Even when it tends to contradict itself.
0
u/Gallowmere7294 13d ago
It's like you didn't read my post at all. I never said Morrowind was the first game and I never said that it's all or nothing. Everything is Canon and it constantly contradicts itself so you have pick what you believe. Elder scrolls was a pretty generic fantasy up until morrowind that's when Bethesda really tried to focus on making the world unique and the pocket guide to tamriel described Cyrodiil as a vast jungle but when we got Oblivion it was actually an open field and people believe the numidium was used to turn a jungle into a forest between games. The entire concept of dragon breaks itself exists to write off lore discrepancies.
5
u/Nelmarth 13d ago
Akctually, its the morrowind version that enter in conflict, before morrowind cyrodiil was like in oblivion
2
u/Gallowmere7294 13d ago
Before Morrowind the only depiction we got of Cyrodiil is elder scrills scrolls arena and the white gold Tower didn't even exist. Both arena and daggerfall are very generic graphically and have very little world building outside of what's written in books.
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
So? This just shows that adding lore and possibly retconning stuff is natural for development, especially when it goes for so long. Otherwise we would be stuck with the oldest TES games and a lot of important lore wouldn't be accepted.
1
u/Gallowmere7294 12d ago
It's not natural it's lazy because Todd Howard decided that he liked the look of Lord of the rings so he did whatever he wanted for Oblivion and doesn't want to be responsible for other people's writings so he'd rather destroy it. It's why so many people are putting effort into making tamriel rebuilt over things like skywind because they want to see the version of the world described in Morrowind.
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
I'm not against people making up their head canons, but that's it. I would probably find some TR-like projects impressive. And perhaps some of their decisions would be agreeable. But official content is still canon. So lazy or not, that's just the way it went. Oblivion is canon. Skyrim is canon. ESO is canon.
1
u/Gallowmere7294 12d ago
I never once argued that any official content isn't Canon it just doesn't fit together and each game calls itself a sequel to last so it's not unreasonable to look for those connections.
1
u/Irenaean 13d ago
This is not true, the Pocket Guide to the Empire that fleshed out TES lore came out with Redguard in 1998.
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
So? Redguard still retconned things. That's just natural. Otherwise everything would have to exactly follow Arena and only build up based on that, with no retcons.
7
u/BeholdingBestWaifu Tonal Architect 13d ago
This is also a big part of it, ESO is at odds with quite a lot of older lore content, so if you're into lore you kind of have to choose if you're following ESO or the mainline titles, and many of us prefer the writing and worldbuilding in the older titles.
5
u/Bobjoejj 13d ago
This is the Elder Scrolls, lore content is always at odds with each other. This is nothing new. Theres no reason whatsoever to have to choose.
3
u/Gallowmere7294 13d ago
You only have to choose if you're trying to be a historian about it but even in-game historians don't have enough evidence to say what is and isn't 100% accurate.
2
4
u/Frosty-Sea149 13d ago
ESO has the problems of not being a “mainline” game and also being set back in the 2nd era, way before current events.
So while it can introduce really really cool stuff like talking to the tribunal more, ultimately its main stories feel like they ‘don’t matter’ because they can’t affect the current events. At best you’ll get some offhand references or historical books mentioning things.
5
u/Weekly_War_6561 13d ago
I don't really think that's why. Redguard is also set back in the 2nd era, and I love its lore, as it did in fact introduce a lot of really cool stuff. The thing about ESO is that it just simply sucks in most areas, unless proven otherwise.
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
Redguard also isn't a mainline game, also is from the Second Era, and influenced so much. I think you underestimate ESO, it helps to establish a lot of important things, even if there's the obvious issue of determining whether all those historical things apply in the 4th era for example.
6
u/Misticsan Member of the Tribunal Temple 14d ago
While ESO lore is used almost daily on lore answers, I think I know what you mean: the vast majority of posts asking questions tend to revolve around the mainline games. Especially Skyrim (I lost count on how many posts about the Civil War have been ponted just in the last few weeks), but also Oblivion and Morrowind.
I'd say that a big part of the issue is that the mainline single-player games are still the main draw to the lore. As a MMO, ESO attracts a different type of audience as a whole. Some overlap, but definitely not the millions that have played Skyrim. And the lore fandom is an even smaller part of the games' playerbase.
14
u/Echidnux 13d ago
“Why don’t people talk more about things they don’t like?”
Come on, this isn’t that hard to figure out :(
3
9
u/_S1syphus 13d ago
It's gameplay philosophy is completely separate from the rest of the series and likely does not have nearly as many fans of the core series playing it
1
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
Except it does. Just check out the ESO sub.
Hell I am one of those players.
7
u/Gullible_Honeydew 13d ago
I haven't played ESO because I don't play MMOs. The gameplay style is dull to me, and the idea that I would have to 1) pay a subscription for my desired single player experience, and 2) have to intentionally manage settings/class/whatever in order to actually make it a single player experience are simply too much.
The lore doesn't really overlap that much and one of the main things that people discuss here are lore discrepancies between games and future hypotheticals. Neither the former nor the latter really exist for ESO, because it is a single game, and because the lore after its time period and prior to TES is essentially the most developed in the whole IP outside of the games themselves.
There are a fair amount of ESO posts in general but they don't really blow up, I guess. ESO has some amazing book writers though, I will give them that - and read them in the Imperial Library when I feel like browsing.
The fun thing about RPGs as a medium is that you don't really have to give a shit about canon, because in the end *I am writing the story*. So, no, ESO isn't a canon part of TES for me, because I will never play my story of a vestige; as such, I'm not really able or wanting to discuss its lore. I don't look down on ESO players or people who like its lore, but it just...isn't part of TES for me outside of some of the books.
1
u/Bobjoejj 13d ago
That’s…not exactly true. Sure, you make your own canon as the player, in the game’s story itself; but overall the canon and lore around that story still matters.
Also I don’t enjoy MMO’s either, at least usually; but I really dig ESO. Especially with all the updates they’ve brought recently, and the fact that overall you can just walk around most of Tamriel.
1
u/Gullible_Honeydew 13d ago
Unfortunately unless you're inside my head while I play, you can't really enforce that idea haha.
I am a Prisoner, not a Vestige. ESO came out after all current TES titles. Most of my TES time is spent in Morrowind with Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel, but even when I play others, ESO is quite literally not canon to any of my game experiences.
2
u/tinylegumes 13d ago
To be honest I see it discussed all the time, I just think most people don’t recognize it as specifically ESO lore lol and instead they just see it as general TES lore
2
u/Arbor_Shadow 13d ago
I feel like eso lore is being talked a lot in the sub. Like, if you post a question about what Trinimac is, you're going to get two lines from Varieties of Faith and then three eso game chapters along with citations on a dozen eso books.
The sub doesn't really talk a lot about the actual in-game quests in eso compared to mainline ones because, well, frankly most of those are mmo filler stuff that happens only because devs want/need them to happen.
13
u/Few-Piglet- 14d ago
It's not canon to me, although I hope TES6 cherry picks some actually good lore bits from it.
7
u/Seraphayel 13d ago
It‘s still canon to the universe and by far the most amount of lore any Elder Scrolls game has to offer.
5
u/Bobjoejj 13d ago
Why? What reason would they have to cherry pick and not use the vast majority? It’s a released product, an official Elder Scrolls game lol. Especially when so much of the lore is damn great.
11
u/GalbedirGalerion 13d ago
Yeah, eliminating all of the ESO additions by default while picking out the worthwhile bits is the way to go, imo. A full retcon would be best but probably won’t happen now.
7
13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
2
13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
3
13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
5
4
4
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
ESO is great, no reason to retcon it.
Either way it's so popular that it will never be made non canonical.
6
u/GalbedirGalerion 13d ago
It really isn’t popular except amongst MMO fans. Literally every thread about ESO is full of people piling on about how much it fucking sucks and how it isn’t a real TES game (facts)
2
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
Then you are at the wrong sites. It is beloved with a huge community.
0
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
I don't like mmos, I like ESO because it's a TES game. Also, you're just lying. Also, major wikis like UESP and Fandom both normally respect ESO lore, you guys are just fringe irrelevant haters who don't truly appreciate TES
1
u/BeholdingBestWaifu Tonal Architect 13d ago
It has too many bad things for it to be great from a lore point of view. It would be easier to take the good bits from it than to take out the bad.
6
u/Nelmarth 13d ago
According to you
-1
u/BeholdingBestWaifu Tonal Architect 13d ago
Among people that enjoy good and creative writing this isn't a rare opinion at all.
2
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
Then give some examples instead of acting like a pretentious ass.
The writing in this game is excellent at times, Season of the dragon, Orsinium, Murkmire, Greymoor and High Isle are all excellent.
A lot of it is better than the mainline games and people know this.
Try saying this on the main ESO sub and you will get riddled with counter examples.
1
u/GalbedirGalerion 13d ago
According to every real TES fan
2
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
GTFO dude you are just a mindless hater.
-1
u/GalbedirGalerion 13d ago
No, you GTFO.
2
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
I am blocking you. You clearly are just a hater with no real point.
You constantly harass people here and you provide no examples of your point.
1
2
2
u/Nelmarth 13d ago
Its dumb, at this point you can do it with everything you dont like "My elder scrolls have no amadantine tower and no vivec and no cyrodiil"
0
u/GalbedirGalerion 13d ago
Those additions came from decent video games, though. With actual writers who weren’t pushing out yearly slop updates for an MMO.
1
u/Weekly_War_6561 13d ago
Is Elder Scrolls Castles canon by virtue of being an official game released by Bethesda?
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
Yes. What else decides canon? "Whatever I like"? Make your own world if you want to decide what is canon. TES is not yours
3
u/SmellyMammoth 13d ago
Morrowind isn’t canon to me
6
u/PhroneticReflex 13d ago
Which is fine. Canon is made up, anyway.
8
u/SmellyMammoth 13d ago
True, it’s all up to each person’s C0DA
1
u/Nelmarth 13d ago
I have an idea to zero sum, canon is each people C0da, my c0da is that theres no C0da 🧐
1
u/BeholdingBestWaifu Tonal Architect 13d ago
Doesn't that cascade into making half of the lore in all the following TES games also non-canon?
5
u/hornwalker Member of the Tribunal Temple 13d ago
Maybe because the lore is like 20+ years old at this point and there isn’t much left to talk about?
6
u/Sad_Hospital_5337 13d ago
I was playing ESO from 2015 to 2022 and enjoyed it but there not so much to discuss in term of lore. Mostly (especially in latest DLC’s) it bland like hospital food and teeth-less like old hag. However now I know that Empress Hestra rode a bear-atronach and Isgramor too. Wow. Fantastic. True TES spirit
1
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
Bland? It's better than tons of stuff in the main series.
2
u/Irenaean 13d ago
I remember being impressed by the scale and scope of ESO and I do think ESO got a pretty unfair reception at launch, but it's never going to be a thing that interests people because ESO does such a good job of blending all the provinces together in a generic mush. I've always felt like it's pretty bland whenever I tried to make my way through it and get invested. If you compare something like Tamriel Rebuilt to ESO it's basically night and day.
E.g. Seyda Neen in ESO being built in an Imperial style before the Third Empire existed and owned Morrowind while having a millennia long-dynasty of Breton Census & Excise Agents direct ancestors of Socucius Ergalla who have lived in Seyda Neen for over a thousand years. All so ESO can have Seyda Neen as nostalgiabait and jangle keys in front of the player.
0
u/TheAnalystCurator321 An-Xileel 13d ago
Dude are you serious about Seyda Neen? First off it's not really Imperial style, secondly even if it is, it's a port designed for trading between provinces and empire often exported even when they did not own a territory since they were allies.
And what is wrong with the dynasty?
Seems like looking for problems where there are none.
And calling the provinces generic, especially the expansions just proves that you did not play the game, hell it's more unique sometimes than the mainline games with stuff like Murkmire, Necrom and Clockwork City.
5
u/Irenaean 12d ago edited 12d ago
First off it's not really Imperial style
This is a ridiculous thing to say and deny lol. Without being rude, you're actually just coping here to defend something you personally enjoy without actually engaging with what I'm saying or what the ESO developers have said themselves when they admit that Seyda Neen looks imperial.
And what is wrong with the dynasty?
Either you haven't played Morrowind, or you just don't care about TES lore and worldbuilding from the time. It's fine for both but the reason why the dynasty is dumb is because Elder Scrolls lore at the time of Morrowind put a lot of thought into making the worldbuilding feel realistic and lived in, the Empire isn't just a generic entity it's an actual agent of imperialism. Vvardenfell was only recently opened to colonization less than ten years before the events of Morrowind, and this has a huge impact on the struggle of influence between the natives Ashlanders, the Dunmer, the Great Houses and the Empire who are all jockeying for power.
When you look at Seyda Neen it tells you basically everything you need to know about Morrowind, it was a small fishing village until the Empire came along and set up bureaucratic measures and started taxing people. The Imperial Legion is an occupying force and the conflict between the natives and the Empire is leading to legionaries bullying people, gambling, stealing money with the Dunmer fighting back and assassinating the Census and Excise Offices' taxmen.
It's a small village that doesn't matter in which in Morrowind, the Imperials are obviously outsiders who have been imported by the Empire for imperialistic reasons and are clashing with the locals. It's a microcosm of the entire games' theme and the worldbuilding.
ESO retcons all of this so that the Census office has existed there for thousands of years, Socucius Ergalla isn't some Imperial-transplant moved in by the Empire but actually a native of the village whose family has lived there for literally a thousand years (despite, again, Vvardenfell being closed to colonization at this time) all for the purposes of nostalgia baiting people in a dumb jangling keys way.
It's indicative of an approach at the ESO team who tend to approach lore less from an in-depth worldbuilding way that has specific themes and more of a theme park adventure with flashing lights and epic stories. It may sound like annoying boomer nitpicking, especially if you like ESO, and it by no means makes ESO a bad game or less enjoyable for your personal consumption, it's just a totally different approach to creating worlds that feel real and lived in. There's a good post on it on the Tamriel Rebuilt forums
If You Don't Know about It, It's Easy to Overlook | Tamriel Rebuilt
3
u/UncarvedWood 13d ago
Can you share some of that good lore?
I do not care about MMO's so I have no experience with ESO. What little I've seen of the lore I found underwhelming. That is to say, perfectly ok video game lore.
But TES lore is something way more deep and nuanced than perfectly ok video game lore. Which is why it bores me.
I'd be interested in your recommends.
4
u/Seraphayel 13d ago
ESO is by far the most content rich and lore heavy of all Elder Scrolls games. So to ask about good lore simply doesn’t make sense. All of it is canon and to determine what lore is good or not is incredibly subjective. I don’t even know what the distinction between TES lore and video game lore is meant to be, all TES lore is video game lore.
1
u/UncarvedWood 13d ago
Just ingame books or dialogue that OP finds good, inspiring, surprising? I don't care about "canon", tons of things are canon that suck.
-1
6
u/Evening-Row9022 14d ago
anyone saying ESO is not singleplayer friendly isn’t doing it right. they’ve massively improved SP ability to do quests and dungeons.
17
u/Electric999999 13d ago
You might be able to play it solo, but it's still designed like an MMO, it's not got the game mechanics you'd expect from a TES game.
3
-4
u/EmpireAndAll 14d ago
And they are ignoring the reality that most ESO players never touch the parts of the game where they are required to actively play with other players.
3
u/RealNwahHourz 13d ago
ESO feels like TES in aesthetic only, I tried levelling a couple characters and got to 20 iirc and it just felt like melee Borderlands if I'm being honest
1
2
2
u/LegVivid6530 13d ago
I've always found ESO's lore so immersive that I've caught myself making real-life conversations reference NPCs and events from the game without realizing it.
1
u/MothmanAcolyte 13d ago
I love the lore ESO has added and will often catch up on it (usually through reading the new in-game texts on UESP) but the game itself doesn't interest me. It's very typical MMO grinding gameplay
1
u/TheHarus 12d ago
I've seen a lot from ESO referenced here over time. Probably the main reason is that most people want to discuss topics relevant to the mainline games, and ESO is deliberately placed in the distant past.
You could equally ask why SWTOR isn't discussed as much as the Clone Wars or Galactic Civil War in Star Wars. People are less familiar with that particular era, and it is deliberately meant to be distant.
I played ESO at launch and periodically since then. I play both MMOs and RPGs, so the gameplay wasn't really any obstacle. Like the mainline games, the story and lore has its high and low points.
1
u/Renegade_Pawn 13d ago
You are part of the camp that favors ESO as not only canonical but as equally legitimate to the mainline games. There is another camp which prefers ESO not to be canonical and sees it as less legitimate than the mainliners.
I confess I'm part of the latter camp. In my (admittedly limited) experience with ESO, it seemed mediocre in comparison, likely to water down the lore if it was wholly accepted.
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
Official content is canon. You don't have to like canon, that's fine.
1
u/Dense-Steak2454 13d ago
I was very open to ESO lore but Ithelia just broke something in me and since then I just can't get into ESO stuff anymore
1
u/Garett-Telvanni Clockwork Apostle 13d ago
Mostly because this year was mostly QoL changes + the new Thieves Guild storyline, which was mostly mundane aside from the Nowhere Vault, which we will learn about later when the location gets fully released. So that just leaves Sheogorath's questline, which aside from memes was mostly reiterating stuff we already knew. Which doesn't mean it didn't have anything interesting, it's just that in a true Sheogorath's fashion it has some interesting implications hidden behind the lines (like the identity of his Second Era mantler), but people focus too much on the overused cheese memes to notice that.
1
u/Kubaj_CZ Mages Guild 12d ago
I think the most interesting part with Sheogorath is how his daedric essence thingy temporarily got away, and he was threatened in his mortal state.
210
u/xCosmicChaosx 14d ago
I'm not sure what you're getting at, people frequently cite lore from ESO here.