And of course in Morrowind would have been wearing slave collars.
And why is that exactly? If he is actually treated unfairly (I don’t know as I haven’t been to Windhelm yet), why doesn’t he have legitimate complaint just because his country of origin has racist policies? Unless he’s responsible for those policies, I don’t see why he deserves to be treated as a second class citizen. Two wrongs don’t make a right and whatnot.
Two things to remember, though, is that slaveholding wans’t universal even in Morrowind, and that Vvardenfall specifically is (was) supposed to be far more xenophobic than the rest of Morrowind. Not all Dunmer are racist, and even if they weren’t doesn’t mean discrimination against them is fair. And it seems to go back to ancient times; the Nords rather brutally conquered the old Dunmer (when they were still Chimer) and seem to hate the Dark Elves and Dwarves for being able to finally turn it around and kick their butts back to Skyrim.
Prejudice against Khajit is very annoying, but I liked that it added some character to the world. Also funny that caravans can’t enter the towns, but individuals can. Still, not too cool. Ironically, there’s not one Khajit in the Thieves’ Guild or Dark Brotherhood.
Every single youtube video i see on skyrim features a whole host of “arrow to the knee” jokes.
But that’s not even what the guard says. He says “arrow IN the knee”. So there’s a minor quibble.
I think that this is the funniest permutation of that joke though:
>>>------knee----->
I cracked up the first time I saw that…cuz it was after weeks of overusing the whole line in the comments section of every website on the intertoobs. It was a frickin’ CNN news story and somebody just posted >>>>-------knee------->.
Epic cultural influence!
Well, to be fair (and I find it rather amusing that this sort of discussion can even be had about a fictional culture in a video game), we ought to be judging Skyrim by a relevant standard. By the standards of Tamriel, the Nords aren’t very racist. Compared to Cyrodil, Skyrim is a bit hostile to outsiders, but on average it’s better than even the more cosmopolitan city of Mournhold in Morrowind. Ulfric’s bunch are a bit racist, but even look at the complaints people make against him - he doesn’t rush his Stormcloaks out to help non-Nords who are attacked by bandits like he does for Nords, and the descendents of a refugee group in his city live in a ghetto and aren’t treated well. Other than that, nomadic Khajit traders aren’t allowed inside city walls across the province. We see Bretons, Imperials, and Redguards mixing at all levels of society (except in Windhelm, where there’s virtually no one other than Nords and Dunmer to begin with).
For a medieval clan-based society, big whoop. Their neighbours to the east are significantly worse, to the south a little better, and to the west we don’t really know because Daggerfall just didn’t flesh out High Reach and Hammerfell the way subsequent games have. I’ll bet you a septim that the Summerset Isles are more racist than Skyrim, though.
So anyways, I think the Stormcloaks’ Skyrim for the Nords thing is pretty small potatoes, and the whole Ulfric-as-an-agent-of-the-Thalmor thing is ridiculously overplayed. Yeah, so they took him prisoner during the Great War and fed him some lies, and since then he’s done a few things hostile to the Thalmor that nevertheless play a bit into their hands. That doesn’t make him an agent. Plus the “Markarth Incident” ran directly counter to the Thalmor’s interests in fragmenting the north.
My response is that Skyrim isn’t (and didn’t used to be) particularly medeival. Ulfric is trying to make it much more so…
Except that Ulfric was actively working with them for years. It’s only after he became a power figure that he tried to cut the ties.
But traded (from the Thalmor’s view) a small advantage for a huge one…
Not loving the whole unkillable essential NPC system. Rolff Stone-Fist certainly could have used a good throat slitting from my dark elf Dark Brotherhood Listener, but apparently he’s invincible so no one accidentally kills him and is deprived of the thrilling quest of challenging him to a fist fight.
How so? He was captured by them in the Great War. Not even the Thalmor dossier alleges active cooperation (and why should we trust the Thalmor dossier anyways?) After the war he came home to Skyrim and has been doing Jarlish stuff, not least of which was to ruthlessly put down the Forsworn uprising. He’s rebelling against the Empire because he’s a selfish power-hungry nobleman who can use the anti-Talos provisions of the White Gold Concordat to enhance his power base. That plays into the Thalmor’s hands as it pits two anti-Thalmor factions against each other, but he’s not rebelling at the Thalmor’s bidding.
Re: Ulfic. I assume you guys are talking about “Thalmor Dossier: Ulfric Stormcloak”? It calls him an “Asset (uncooperative), Dormant, Emissary Level Approval.”
I take that as: asset = informant or similar, not a wetworks agent. Uncooperative = not friendly with the Thalamor anymore. Dormant = no contact with the Thalamor, this doesn’t mean a sleeper.
Ulfric’s loyalty is to himself first, Skyrim a distant second.
Re: racism, Morrowind was over 200 years ago. Slavery was ended around that time.
I have been quickly averting my eyes but I think people are posting main story line plot points without spoilers. Can we not do that?
I just finished the main quest a few hours ago (hey, what can I say- I was taking my time), and I’m… underwhelmed.
Don’t get me wrong- the journey itself was certainly epic. I enjoyed every step. But at the end, my first thought was, “That’s it? Really? Maybe I missed something…” Basically, there’s one good “graduation moment”, but then the world continues, kind of oblivious to the fact that I did all that work.
I’m pretty sure that’s the whole point of this gigantic world they created. To let you know that you can play around in it, but it’s still gonna be there regardless of your presence. Ya know, to allow for the next installment of the series to be completely detached from this one if need be?
I appreciate a game that puts more emphasis on the journey and not the destination.
I get the distinct feeling that at some point in the design process someone said or thought “You know, gamers always say that in sandbox games like this they get sucked into the sidequests and neglect the main storyline; let’s roll with that!”
The ending story is an improvement over Oblivion. At least you get to be Nerevarine and Dovahkiin in some games; “Champion of Cyrodiil” doesn’t have the same cachet. No spoilers are necessary because you know from the beginning how it will end.
Was it like that in the first two Elder Scrolls games? I read that the first one was supposed to be stricly an arena game (hence the name) but turned into a sidequests-centered game through mission creep. Which would mean that we have bad planning to thank for the series. I haven’t played the first two ES games so I can’t say from experience.
Arena and Daggerfall were both this large, especially Daggerfall.
I think “Arena” refers to the continent of Tamriel, but that could be a retcon. Daggerfall had a main quest with a decent ending (search for “warp in the west” for a summary). Thanks to Bethesda’s head-slapping moments, you could permanently lose the MQ because of time limits. Tons of sidequests, although many suffered from being too randomized (kill x in city y and get z gold, repeat forever, changing the variables).
Yeah, Daggerfall was very much the other way around: the MQ was a bear but the sidequests were pretty much all slightly randomized formulaic crap. You could join 12.542 proudly different knightly orders, 26.328 discrete fighter’s guilds, 35.008 different temples dedicated to 256 different gods across 2 continents, and they all gave the same 5 or 6 quests over and over.
Not that it really mattered, because gold didn’t matter, because you could just go into a shop, wait inside until it closed, then take everything on the shelves with zero consequences. Then you waited until it opened and sold what you didn’t want to the very shopkeeper you filched it from. If you really needed major cash, you could also go off to a dinky province out in the sticks, find a town with a bank, take out a loan for… I think 5k was the max. Then leave and never come back. Rinse repeat (except in the three provinces where the MQ happens). You see, the Law would come down pretty hard if you skimped on bank loans for too long, but since each province had its own individual criminal rating that did not carry across borders…
So yeah, basically you never did sidequests at all, just goofed around on your own in between bouts of industrial-scale shoplifting.
One thing I loved about Daggerfall though was that there was none of that oohing and aahing about what loot you were going to take back to town from a dungeon and sorting things out by coin/weight ratios. No, the Daggerfall adventurer had a *horse cart parked outside *to schlep his shit around. Iron kite shield ? Screw it, I’ll take that too. Once you got filthy rich you could even buy a huge boat that would then similarly be parked outside. Yes, yes, even far inland.
Daggerfall was a silly game, is what I’m saying 
Got my first Blood Dragon at level 20. Luckily he was more interested in a nearby Frost Yeti, so I sniped with my bow whenever he came to breath attack the yeti. When he landed the yeti charged off to fight him, I finished him off when the yeti went down. Probably cheating in some form…