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The Elder Scrolls: Difference between revisions
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The principal games in the ''Elder Scrolls'' series are:
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls Arena
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind
** ''Tribunal'' (2002). An attack by the [[Murder, Inc.|Dark Brotherhood]] brings the PC to Morrowind's capital of Mournhold. After a while, the PC finds themselves at odds with the local deities and has to [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|kill them]], now that their immortality is lost.
** ''Bloodmoon'' (2003). Arriving on a Northern island of Solstheim, the PC runs into ravaging [[Our Werewolves Are Different|werewolves]] and is soon embroiled in a ritual conducted by the Daedric Prince [[The Wild Hunt|Hircine]] to determine the strongest fighter on the island. Naturally, the PC has to participate.
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion
** ''Knights of the Nine'' (2006). The PC investigates a [[Bloodstained-Glass Windows|brutal attack on the local chapel]] to discover that an [[Evil Sorcerer]] plans to destroy Cyrodiil and only certain artifacts can defeat him. [[Order Reborn|Reestablishing the order]] of eponymous Knights of the Nine, the PC recovers all artifacts and kills the evil wizard.
** ''Shivering Isles'' (2007). The PC is summoned by the Daedric Prince [[The Mad Hatter|Sheogorath]] to help prevent the [[Eternal Recurrence|regular destruction]] of his Oblivion realm.
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim
** ''Dawnguard'' (2012) The Dragonborn gets involved in a conflict between an Order known as the Dawnguard and a race of vampires who wish to blot out the sun.
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls in Universe Books]]'' covers the various [[Exactly What It Says
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Both ''Arena'' and ''Daggerfall'' run quite nicely under [http://www.dosbox.com/ DOSBox], though, so grab them [http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/downloads_games.htm here] (see also installation instructions) and enjoy.
Bethesda has announced a new TES MMORPG set during the Second Era, ''[[
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=== Provides examples of: ===
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* [[Bring It]]: The ogres in ''Oblivion''.
* [[Cain and Abel]]: Orvas and Vedam Dren in ''Morrowind.''
* [[Call a Smeerp
** Similarly, Skyrim features a ''solid'' metal called "quicksilver".
* [[Card-Carrying Villain]]: Egregiously so in ''Oblivion''. ''Morrowind'' was much more morally ambiguous, with even the local assassins' guild operating within legal framework and according to [[Even Evil Has Standards|a strict honor code]]. There was also less of the trope in ''Skyrim'' -- Alduin is an example, but the secondary conflict of the civil war is [[Gray and Gray Morality|much, much more ambiguous]].
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* [[Cultural Posturing]]: the Altmer and Dunmer are particularly fond of this.
** As of Skyrim, the Altmer have taken this up several notches. Even to other Altmer.
* [[Cursed
** Vampirism. It grants players with increased speed, health, damage, etc and the ability to suck blood from people but makes them take damage it out in the sun, and so ugly that people (including quest givers) will not talk to you.
*** ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'' seem to handle vampirism in different ways. While in ''Morrowind'', you'll definitely get ostracized by virtually everybody (except the Telvanni, where you pretty much count as normal) no matter when you fed last, this is not the case in ''Oblivion''. There, you'll just get ostracized if you haven't fed for a few days, else you usually pass for human... or at least mortal.
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* [[Damn You, Muscle Memory!]]: Go from any installment to ''any other'' installment and you'll run into this problem, guaranteed.
** Worst off is probably ''Skyrim'' (on the PC at least)--the Z key was the button used to pick up and move objects around in ''Oblivion'', but was in this case remapped to trigger a shout--so there's a good chance you'll accidentally FUS RO DAH while trying to decorate your house, sending items flying every which way.
** This was the same on the [[
* [[Darker and Edgier]]: ''Battlespire'' is possibly the darkest ES game, despite being only a spinoff. Unlike virtually every other game, you're utterly alone, trapped in a horrific [[Fire and Brimstone Hell|Oblivion Realm]] filled with equally horrific monsters just waiting to tear you to pieces. Throughout the game, you are subjected to various nightmarish imagery, forced to fight against seemingly impossible odds as the [[Big Bad]] viciously taunts you the entire time.
* [[Deader Than Dead]]: In ''Knights of the Nine'', where you must kill Umaril twice, first his body and then his soul. That's ''after'' he was [[Sealed Evil in
* [[Dead Star Walking]]: Uriel Septim VII, voiced by [[Patrick Stewart]] in ''Oblivion''.
* [[Death of a Thousand Cuts]] - Cliff Racers drove the ''dragons'' out of Morrowind despite being small annoying things that die quickly.
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*** Which makes perfect sense, given the events of the ''Shivering Isles'' expansion to ''Oblivion''.
* [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]]: This is sometimes seen in the in-universe writings, as well as character interaction.
* [[Deus Ex Homine]] - An attempt by the Dwemer to do this is how they met their end. [[Unreliable Expositor|It could also have been]] [[Ascend to
* [[Did Not Do the Research]] - Deliberate in-Universe use of it. In ''Daggerfall'', many works of in-Universe fiction claim that there are negative and positive types of magic, and that the material "Ebony" is laced with the negative kind. Neither of those facts are true in-game or in-Universe, and one of the works is actually called out on it by characters.
* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]]: Minor Daedra are fought and killed as regular enemies, especially in ''Battlespire'' and ''Oblivion''. There are also several times when you get to fight and kill a physical incarnation of one of the Daedra Lords, i.e. Mehrunes Dagon in ''Oblivion'', Hircine in the Bloodmoon expansion to ''Morrowind'' ([[I Let You Win|but he is going easy on you]]), and Jyggalag in the Shivering Isles expansion to ''Oblivion''.
** Averted at the end of the main storyline in ''Oblivion'' when Mehrunes Dagon himself (not an [[
** Also averted with Sheogorath, {{spoiler|who any attempt to attack leads to a rather spectacular and untimely death. }}
** Averted again in ''Battlespire'', where any attempt to attack Mehrunes Dagon results in instant death. Although you do banish him by striking him (once) with a sword, that's only the last of a chain of actions resulting in him getting banished (not killed).
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** More or less played straight with Alduin in ''Skyrim'', as he is truly supposed to be unkillable. Although by the time you fight him properly {{spoiler|you have the heroes who banished him in the first place helping you out}}, so perhaps it makes sense.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: In the opposite direction. Azura's response to the government of a certain tribe of elves snubbing her? Give them all dark skin, strangely shaped cheekbones, and red eyes. [[Sarcasm Mode|That'll teach 'em to ignore the warnings of a Goddess.]] ...Weaksauce.
* [[Dropped a Bridge
* [[Drugs Are Bad]]: Skooma and Greenmote. Inverted somewhat in that alcohol is worse and of negligible value, alchemic or otherwise, and the illegal drugs are very useful for alchemy.
** In the one quest involving Felldew, it's much, much worse than alcohol. Finishing that quest renders you largely immune to it, though.
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*** In Skyrim its revealed the Dark Brotherhood used to have standards but has degraded in that regard. The only rule they have now is if you kill a fellow guild member, you pay a 500 gold piece fine. They had even gotten in the habit of taking any jobs given to them as opposed to waiting for the Night Mother (since no one could hear her.)
* [[Everybody Hates Hades]]: Depends on the culture. Arkay is the Cycle of Life and Death; he is one of the Divines, and rather popular in other cultures. However, the Nords vilify him as Orkey, or "Old Knocker."
* [[Everything's Better
* [[Evil Counterpart]]: The Camonna Tong to the Thieves Guild in ''Morrowind''.
** Amusingly, [[Ax Crazy|the Dark Brotherhood]] [[There Can Be Only One|to the]] [[Even Evil Has Standards|Morag Tong]] in the same game. ''[[Eviler Than Thou|Both of which are assassin guilds]]''. Only the Morag Tong is playable, however, because the Dark Brotherhood is trying to kill you.
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* [[Fantasy Gun Control]]: The Dwemer had [[Humongous Mecha]] [[Ragnarok Proofing|durable enough to function after 3,000 years of neglect]] and the power to [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|mess up the fabric of reality]], but never invented the musket.
** Gunpowder and cannons exists canonically (or is it [[Incredibly Lame Pun|cannonically]]?) but is never seen in-game.
* [[Feeling Oppressed
** To the point that they're attempting to destroy the ENTIRE mortal plane.
* [[Fictional Document]]: Hundreds of them, most all of which the player can read in-game. All of them are also written by authors of varying (non-zero) bias and knowledge levels.
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* [[Multiple Endings]]: ''Daggerfall'' had seven possible endings depending on your actions in the game; ''Morrowind'' takes at least five of them as [[Canon]] through some very weird [[Retcon|retconning]]. The entire region ''Daggerfall'' takes place in experienced the "Warp in the West" and in the course of three days, 44 citystates become four, someone became a god, orcs joined the Empire, the Underking was laid to rest, and the Hero (you) died.
* [[Murder, Inc.]]: A considerable number of organizations qualify, including the Morag Tong (a government-sanctioned assassin's guild in Morrowind Province) and the Dark Brotherhood (a fully criminal offshoot of the former).
* [[Needle in
* [[Noodle Incident]]: The Republic of Hahd was this for the Summerset Isles and the Septim Empire.
* [[Numerical Hard]]: Changing the difficulty slider in ''Oblivion'' only changes your damage multiplier against your enemies and your enemies' damage multiplier against you. This allows for an engine exploit on 100% difficulty, as even though you do only one-sixth base damage to your enemies and they do six times base damage to you, allies and summoned creatures do not suffer from this.
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* [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same]]: Subverted rather ingeniously. TES Dwemer actually ''are'' very dwarfy - they're reclusive, they live in underground strongholds carved into the mountains, they're superb metalsmiths and engineers, they don't get along with the (other) mer, and they have big, long beards. Bethsoft managed to keep the archetype almost completely intact, yet the way in which a simple change of the visual portrayal makes it new and unique and exciting again is quite remarkable.
** And they're also as extinct as the dinosaurs. Despite being so much more technologically advanced than everyone else in the world, for some mysterious unexplained reason they all died out, and all the Dwemer are officially dead and gone by the time the Elder Scrolls games take place.
*** The prevailing theory is that they essentially [[Brown Note|Brown-Noted]] themselves out of existence. That's what happens when you start [[All Myths Are True|screwing with the fabric of reality]], especially when that reality includes [[Physical God|Physical Gods]] to be offended by your hubris. Another theory is that they succeeded in [[Ascend to
** Their size is also ingeniously subverted. According to historical evidence, they were no smaller than the average Mer. The reason for their "Dwarf" name was due to giants interacting with them and viewing them as short. This eventually made it into common knowledge of all of Tamriel.
* [[Our Orcs Are Different]]: They started out as [[
* [[Our Vampires Are Different]]: Vampire characteristics vary between games, but each are consistently unique in some way.
** More specifically, Vampire characteristics vary between region to region. To list a few, vampires in Skyrim have dens under frozen lakes, and attack their victims from under the ice (Without breaking it), vampires in Black Marsh capture victims alive and keep them in a magicka-induced coma, and vampires in Valenwood, depending on the tribe, disintegrate into mist, eat people whole, prey on children, take their place and then kill the whole family, or are indistinguishable from normal people unless seen in candlelight.
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* [[Pieta Plagiarism]]: A large statue in the town of Chorrol in ''Oblivion''.
* [[Plant Person]]: Dryads and Spriggans.
* [[Powered
* [[Powers That Be]]: The Daedra & The Nine Divines, Sithis may qualify too.
* [[Playable Epilogue]]: These games do not really end until you get bored of exploring.
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* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]]: You are able to murder people all you want and just pay a fine for it. You can literally steal something, pay the guard to leave you alone, murder the shopkeeper, pay a fine, kill the guard (if you're lucky), pay the fine, then murder a random person on the street, pay the fine, take a nap on said street next to their corpse, then pay the fine....
** However, you can't murder people who're important to the story: in ''Morrowind'', you receive a message that says "You've doomed the world" and have made the game [[Unwinnable]].
* [[Screw You, Elves]]: Happened thousands of years before the time of the games, when an enslaved human population rebelled against their Elven masters and eventually formed their own Empire. Relations between the Human and Elven races are were better, but still somewhat strained during the Third Era. By the Fourth Era, the Altmer have taken over much of Tamriel and are doing their best to restore the pre-Empire human/elf dynamic. Needless to say, the humans are pretty pissed about this.
** Not just Man but also Argonian, Khajiit and other Mur are pretty pissed off with the Thalmor. [[My Species Doth Protest Too Much|Even a great deal of Altmer despise them]].
* [[Serrated Blade of Pain]]: Daedric weapons.
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** The entire problem was thankfully averted in ''Skyrim'', for the most part. There are now more like four or five voice actors for each gender of each race, so you're much less likely to hear two NPCs conversing in the same voice. Nearly all of the plot-important characters also have their own voice actors whose other roles are minimal.
*** There's still a fairly limited pool (much bigger than ''Oblivion'', but still). It's just that instead of being assigned by race and gender, they're more closely tied to age and social standing. It's also helped by the fact that there are no more random conversations, all instances of NPC chatter are scripted events that come off as more natural. Though it is noticeable that orcs, Khajiit, and Argonians are still limited to one voice actor per gender, though this is probably because they're the least common races in the game.
* [[Tech Demo Game]]: Both ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'' were the ''[[Crysis (
** Even ''Arena'' and ''Daggerfall'' were this when they came out - both of their graphical capabilities were beyond their time. It may not seem like it since they're obviously way outdated now, but they're really great by early-mid 90's standards. (''Daggerfall'' was a ''little'' dated; though. The developers even put in a [[Take That]] at fancy graphics in the readme.)
* [[The Spymaster]]: Caius Cosades in ''Morrowind'', Jauffre in ''Oblivion''.
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* [[Weirdness Censor]]: People get stuck trying to walk through each other. Guards ignore people trying to punch you out, but when if you do it, they immediately report your crime. Guards walk away after you pay them money to go away after you murdered someone on the streets. You stick a knife into peoples' back and they just walk around like nothing happened. Guards try to murder ''each other'' and they don't mind. You wake up and there's a zombie inside your room and the person you're bunking with doesn't mind.
* [[Welcome to Corneria]]:
{{quote| "[[The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall
"[[The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion|Stop right there, criminal scum!]]"<br />
"[[The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion|I saw a mudcrab the other day.]]"<br />
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* [[Wutai]]: Though it's never shown in any of the games, Akavir, in at least architecture and art style, seems to be one with tiger people, snake people, monkey people and [[One of These Things Is Not Like the Others|Ice Demons]] are apparently the origin of the Katana style blades in the various games. Bizarrely the ''Redguards'' (who look like Earth Humans of African decent and have a civilisation remenescent of the Middle East) had a samurai-esque class (Sword singers) that at one point had the ownership of swords restricted to them (with the really skilled even having the title "Sword Saint") on their original homeland of Yokuda (which [[Unreliable Narrator|may]] have been destroyed by rogue sword saints spiting an atom with their swords) .
* [[Xanatos Roulette]]: Almalexia's plot in ''Tribunal''.
* [[You All Meet in
* You [[Can't Argue
** Considering the actions of the Thalmor in Skyrim, many players are taking joy in attacking Altmer on sight.
* [[Your Soul Is Mine]]: part of the enchanting system.
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