The Elder Scrolls

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Jace on ice said:
Replaying Oblivion makes me realize how unbelievably nerfed and shit magic is in Skyrim.

Yes 100 lightning damage a second and a spell that turns you invisible while also giving you 100% damage resist is OP as fuck but who cares?

I always thought the whole point of videogames was to be fun not for everything to be perfectly balanced.
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legit its more limited in skyrim, its better handled in Oblivion its fun to just Cold Touch your way through an Oblivion Gate
 
Well, I'm 260 hours into my Morrowind + Project Tamriel/Rebuilt playthrough and I've run into my first explicit alphabet person content in Project Tamriel: Cyrodiil. It's a quest where you help a noble have a gay date with a commoner but the other noble bigots won't let him! They aren't even against the gay it turns out - they're against the class mixing. Overall, it's not terrible offensive but the writing is what you'd expect - yes, several of your 1 of 3 red text options chains have your character calling them a bigot. The literal most cliche example you can think of for involving the gays. I choose the option where I argued it on behalf of the nine divines because the other two options where cliche 'well, bigots?' stuff.

It's a shame writing about gay stuff often falls into the defensive victim tropes, I'd expect a world as big as having Morrowind, Cyrodiil and Skyrim together with 1000s of NPCs to have some gay people and don't have a problem with it when it's not 80% of the population like most other stuff these days... but the writing always comes from a perspective where it snaps you out of the immersion because the hand of the author becomes too obvious and sticks out from dialogue in every other quest.

I'll give the credit to detail where it's owed though - the noble's date is a 'young, charming breton' and because I am playing a male breton they accounted for that and had him assure me that it wasn't me he was talking about.
 
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Professor G. Raff said:
Well, I'm 260 hours into my Morrowind + Project Tamriel/Rebuilt playthrough and I've run into my first explicit alphabet person content in Project Tamriel: Cyrodiil. It's a quest where you help a noble have a gay date with a commoner but the other noble bigots won't let him! They aren't even against the gay it turns out - they're against the class mixing. Overall, it's not terrible offensive but the writing is what you'd expect - yes, several of your 1 of 3 red text options chains have your character calling them a bigot. The literal most cliche example you can think of for involving the gays. I choose the option where I argued it on behalf of the nine divines because the other two options where cliche 'well, bigots?' stuff.

It's a shame writing about gay stuff often falls into the defensive victim tropes, I'd expect a world as big as having Morrowind, Cyrodiil and Skyrim together with 1000s of NPCs to have some gay people and don't have a problem with it when it's not 80% of the population like most other stuff these days... but the writing always comes from a perspective where it snaps you out of the immersion because the hand of the author becomes too obvious and sticks out from dialogue in every other quest.

I'll give the credit to detail where it's owed though - the noble's date is a 'young, charming breton' and because I am playing a male breton they accounted for that and had him assure me that it wasn't me he was talking about.
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You should have killed him for being gay and seen what the story did.
 
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Professor G. Raff said:
It's a shame writing about gay stuff often falls into the defensive victim tropes
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I think the only time I've seen a game handle the idea of someone being gay in a mainstream success was Witcher 3 and it was a one-off character you needed to speak to for the griffon quest in the first act. Guy calls himself something derogatory (don't think it was as harsh as freak but in that vein), geralt just says "I can cure lycanthropy if that's your problem". Very funny to see geralt's reaction when the guy clarifies but it doesn't put this guy's story on airs. Fucked up shit happened to him because of him being gay and he lives in isolation because of it, but was still useful in that moment. That kinda shit's gotta be very touch and go to pass normie brains
 
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TrainWreckWatcher said:
You should have killed him for being gay and seen what the story did.
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I briefly considered it, but it would have to have been an option within the dialogue for it to effect the story... if I just killed him it would have most likely just turned everyone hostile as any murder would. I also wasn't bothered enough to do so, unlike in BG3 where I did execute the superfluous trans they obviously included just to tell you it was trans. Sometimes there is dialogue for when characters involved in quests are dead, but usually it's just more of an "Oh, well we can't do it then." type thing. Wouldn't happen because of subject, but if they wanted a true RPG experience you would have the ability to agree with the noble who comes to stop the rendezvous or maybe even say he's a pussy because your problem IS that it's gay and not the noble/commoner angle.

I probably have a quick save pre-quest completion as you've got me curious, tomorrow I'll check and report if there are any dialogue changes for such a contingency... I doubt it, but you never know if people are passive aggressive enough to chide you for stuff like that.
 
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Going through the arena quests in between some light exploring and day to day role-playing. Hit the fight where you go against the 3 Argonian slaves. I forgot all about this fight.

They bumrushed me immediately, started sapping my stamina, and punched me to death in like 45 seconds. Constantly staggered, falling down from the drained fatigue, my equipment broke like 20 seconds in.

It was a fucking slaughter. Had a great laugh.

HTTP Error 404 said:
But if your single player game isn't balanced how will they sell you live service content?
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Honestly fuck balance in any game where you spend the vast majority of your time fighting AI. I dont care if it's single player rpgs or co-op horde shooters. If a mechanic is busted like spell craft or the various resto-alchemy loops, just don't use it. If certain weapons are OP, don't use them or buff other weapons. But no, devs have to patch fun out and even gamers themselves will bitch and whine about shit being too strong in their PvE game because they're retarded.
 
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Professor G. Raff said:
Well, I'm 260 hours into my Morrowind + Project Tamriel/Rebuilt playthrough and I've run into my first explicit alphabet person content in Project Tamriel: Cyrodiil. It's a quest where you help a noble have a gay date with a commoner but the other noble bigots won't let him! They aren't even against the gay it turns out - they're against the class mixing. Overall, it's not terrible offensive but the writing is what you'd expect - yes, several of your 1 of 3 red text options chains have your character calling them a bigot. The literal most cliche example you can think of for involving the gays. I choose the option where I argued it on behalf of the nine divines because the other two options where cliche 'well, bigots?' stuff.

It's a shame writing about gay stuff often falls into the defensive victim tropes, I'd expect a world as big as having Morrowind, Cyrodiil and Skyrim together with 1000s of NPCs to have some gay people and don't have a problem with it when it's not 80% of the population like most other stuff these days... but the writing always comes from a perspective where it snaps you out of the immersion because the hand of the author becomes too obvious and sticks out from dialogue in every other quest.

I'll give the credit to detail where it's owed though - the noble's date is a 'young, charming breton' and because I am playing a male breton they accounted for that and had him assure me that it wasn't me he was talking about.
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A problem I have with gay shit in fantasy games is that it ignores the social and political ramifications of a setting where social positions are usually hereditary. There's a plethora of reasons why other nobles would be upset about this, and maybe commoners wouldn't be too keen on living under such a person either. I think it would make much more sense if this noble guy was having gay affairs away from his wife while keeping it on the down-low or something and the conflict comes from the risk of being exposed. Or maybe it's an open-secret and everyone pretends not to notice due to his power and authority. "But that makes homosexuals look bad" they might say, but I can't imagine any situation where "my lord is a poofter and he's not going to have heirs" is going to be welcomed by a populace with open arms. I think it would be possible to make a character who comes off as sympathetic to modern sensibilities, but what would the people in-universe think about it?
 
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Professor G. Raff said:
It's a quest where you help a noble have a gay date with a commoner but the other noble bigots won't let him!
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Just:
PointOfNoReturnPoint said:
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I'd sever a million prophecies if it means I won't suffer a faggot existing in my vidya.
Binary-Tyrant said:
Btw anyone's waiting for Skyblivion instead of playing Oblivion Remastered? I hope I won't be disappointed.
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Rather just play Oblivion, truthfully though I might actually play Skyblivion when it releases just to try it out. I'll be fucking damned if I'd ever play the Remaster.
Professor G. Raff said:
if I just killed him it would have most likely just turned everyone hostile as any murder would.
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Can't turn NPCs hostile to you if there's no proof you did it. Whether that means mass murder or stealth is up to you.
 
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One thing that really bothers me in the remaster, besides performance problems, is the number of invisible walls. It really kills immersion when you run into them. The Oblivion.ini file still exists, and you can probably remove the walls by setting "bBorderRegionsEnabled=0". If you want Oblivion to be more like Morrowind, you can even change "bEssentialTakeNoDamage=1" to "bEssentialTakeNoDamage=0" in the same file.

There are necromancy mods, like Dark Path of the Necromancer, if you want an immersive way of reviving essential NPCs you may kill on accident. One issue, however, is that the reanimation animation is bugged since the thrall can not get up after you case the spell (though there is a mod that fixes this). Mods that turn reanimated NPCs into permanent thralls often cause the thrall to die when fast traveling or entering cities.
 
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Spooky Dogwood said:
A problem I have with gay shit in fantasy games is that it ignores the social and political ramifications of a setting where social positions are usually hereditary. There's a plethora of reasons why other nobles would be upset about this, and maybe commoners wouldn't be too keen on living under such a person either. I think it would make much more sense if this noble guy was having gay affairs away from his wife while keeping it on the down-low or something and the conflict comes from the risk of being exposed. Or maybe it's an open-secret and everyone pretends not to notice due to his power and authority. "But that makes homosexuals look bad" they might say, but I can't imagine any situation where "my lord is a poofter and he's not going to have heirs" is going to be welcomed by a populace with open arms. I think it would be possible to make a character who comes off as sympathetic to modern sensibilities, but what would the people in-universe think about it?
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There were tons of homosexuals in the German nobility, including Frederick the Great himself. It was so bad that the French referred to sodomy as "the German vice." But yes, it was still a big deal to not have an heir, and Lord Poofter would have sex with his wife just enough times to produce one, and pound man ass the rest of the time. So yes, society's relationship with homosexual nobility was at best, "it's complicated." "Love is love, rainbow flag march yaaaayyy" crap is a luxury belief of a highly technological society that think it's outgrown the need to produce future generations because it invented Tiktok.
 
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Oblivion Remaster done. 60/60 achievements gotten. Apparently the most recent patch fucked something with the end of the main SI quest, the boss Juggaboo crashes when he tries to speak or something. Apparently the workaround is to spam the shit out of the wait 1 hour thing with subtitles on, so when the game triggers him having said something (but NOT actually played his voice line) you skip forward an hour, cutting him off before he crashes the game.

I didn't care, I got the achievement for shooting him in the face and moved on.

By the end I had just gotten bored. I was running around with 40,000 mana (exploit) 101% absorb magic (powergame build) and 100% chameleon because I just wanted it to be over, heh. It was already basically 0 difficulty long before I reached that point, however, thanks to spellcasting (drain health shock damage weakness to shock weakness to magic, repeat). The spellcasting was new to me, but I do have fond memories of being a teenager and abusing chameleon in the game, so. Feels like home. More like this than Starfield or Fallout 4, please.

Now what's next? Daggerfall Unity + DREAM? A quick run-through of Arena to experience it once? Morrowind with OpenMW or TR (or both? I don't know what's what). I hear TR has some tranny shit in it but it's pretty low key, I can put up with that.

Could fire up Skyrim, I don't think I ever bothered with the DLC. Meh.

Been eyeballing ESO. Apparently if you do it right you can basically solo everything. Best way to play a MMORPG.
 
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