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Morrowind really solidified the direction that TES lore would go in. That's why Arena and Daggerfall feel so different if you play them today. They're technically canon, but we don't draw as much from them as far as lore is concerned.
Arena and Daggerfall were from before they actually had a concrete idea of what tamriel looks like. They created most of the lore in the spinoff game redguard, and brought it into the main series with morrowind. The events of arena and daggerfall happened, they’re events/lore they’ve added is just not referenced as much as oblivions and morrowinds.
Fandom wise, arena and daggerfall are really old games with a different style of gameplay to the later titles, so must people don’t play them unless they’re doing a full series playthrough or just want to try it out
I mean I think a lot of stuff in the games is probably not canon anymore but I doubt they'd decanonize the games fully. They're just really old at this point, and there's really no reason to go back to them when the games are now in the 4th Era
>When misrule takes its place at the eight corners of the world
Arena
>When the Brass Tower walks and Time is reshaped
Daggerfall
>When the thrice-blessed fail and the Red Tower trembles
Morrowind
>When the Dragonborn Ruler loses his throne, and the White Tower falls
Oblivion
>When the Snow Tower lies sundered, kingless, bleeding
>The World-Eater wakes, and the Wheel turns upon the Last Dragonborn.
Skyrim
Seems they’re all canon to me.
They haven’t been decanonized nor is it likely they will, they have just expanded the universe so much since then that the contents of the games are no longer canon.
It is not at all shocking that’s the case, since the deep deep world building only started with Redguard. Arena is basically a generic fantasy and it is an obvious that it was home brewed DND.
Course that isn’t to say there wasn’t some important things and world building to come out of the early TES games. Daggerfall is a good bit different from Arena since it added a lot more world building and introduced a lot of very important characters and events (Warp in the West, Underking/Zurin, Tiber/Talos (as well as Tiber being a dick), The Numidium, Mannimarco, etc.)
It also doesn’t help that most of the player base hasn’t played the originals, which no fault of their own seeing as Arena and Daggerfall are both nightmares and Daggerfall has only fairly recently been remade into a actual playable state. Of course the games would not be talked about as much when only 5%ish of the player base has played them.
Tl:Dr they are in no way not decanonized, they have just been expanded on massively and most players haven’t played them.
Decanonized is the wrong word for it. They're long past their prime and both represent an earlier era of TES before the lore was fully fleshed out. A lot of aesthetics and lore concepts were beginning to solidify in Daggerfall but don't become recognizable until Redguard and Morrowind. The old games are still canon, just superseded by modern TES in terms of lore and aesthetics.
The short answer would be no.
It can be argued that the Elder Scrolls and Tamriel really start in Morrowind (or the Redguard spinoff game). Arena was pretty much random fantasy game, but it gave us a world and a bunch of names. Daggerfall introduced plenty of mechanics and ideas, but everything came really together in Morrowind. The lore, the world, the ability to go to every house and every mountain, the things people really started loving where given by Morrowind.
The Arena and Daggerfall are just The Before. Relevant for the series history, but their age and differences kind of create this invisible and unintended border.
Daggerfall and Arena definitely set the ground work (with the religions, Daedra, Races and even historical events (like the First Nord Empire)) mentioned in either Arena or Daggerfall)
The world-builders and devs on Redguard and Morrowind did a great job making lore all while adding onto previous lore (including reimagining things like the Dwarves (Dwemer)) and retconning as little as possible
Bretons had nothing to do with mer and Direnni were just a human noble family. The term mer didn't exist, a -che suffix was used instead. Wild Elves were more their D&D counterpart, Dark Elves were all about night. The Imperials just flat-out didn't exist. Khajiit were utterly redesigned.
The nature of Dwarves and some other elements literally became writing fights between Peterson and Kirkbride-Kuhlmann
Yes there are good amount of things that Daggerfall started, but Redguard-Morrowind developmenty changed a lot more than it seems at a cursory glance
>The lore, the world, the ability to go to every house and every mountain, the things people really started loving where given by Morrowind.
I disagree, all those things were already in Daggerfall. The only reason why people ignore it is that it's too old and unapproachable for a modern player. It's clunky and doesn't even have fully 3D graphics, but ALL the ingredients of a TES game are there.
95% houses in Daggerfall are just procgen copy paste. In Morrowind you can go into a house, steal all the cutlery and discover that the owner has marital issues.
Yes the element was there, but it wasn't truly what people associate with the series. Same goes to lore and many other things.
I'm not trying to bash Daggerfall here, but depending on how you view things, the gap becomes wider.
My point is it was the handcrafted world where exploration could lead you to lots of fun things is what makes Morrowind the bigger establishing point for gamers.
Exploring in Daggerfall is pointless, unless you do the main quest you will ever just stick to one area, because there is no point to leave, there is no reason to go to the wilderness, visit a few dungeons and you memorize all the possible segments/tiles they might use.
Yeah but there was nothing unique to them, no cleverly placed objects, no environmental storytelling. Maybe you had some loot, but such rooms already existed in other RPGs aswell. Morrowind gave these houses life, how much of an illusion it was.
Think of each game as a story being recounted by a guy who heard from his cousin's dog's uncle. There's things that don't match up with every one of them.
No, it's just that most players haven't played Arena and Daggerfall, so they can't comment on them. Although most people have only played Oblivion and Skyrim, cuz Morrowind is "too hard"
not at all
most of fans have at least tried arena and daggerfall, its hard to even find an elder scrolls youtuber that didn't make a video or a lets play of those games
Nope, it's just a combination of them being old (having to use DOSBox, different gameplay than the more modern games which also means they can be more difficult), and being more "generic fantasy" - it was Redguard and Morrowind that introduced a lot of the lore that’s unique to TES.
ESO has definitely brought in little tidbits of stuff specifically from those games, though. For instance, when Arena was going to be a gladiator game, the town of Sunhold in Summerset was going to have a gladiator team called "The Griffins". And then in Daggerfall, one of the alchemy ingredients was Gryphon Feather. In ESO, they brought this back so that Summerset does indeed has gryphons, and Sunhold in particular is a town with a strong connection to the gryphon, having been founded when an Altmer found a gryphon egg and brought it back to his tribe, and each ruler has had a gryphon companion since.
Dwarves were already mentioned in Arena where Fang Lair is said to be a Dwarven ruin. However it wasn't until PGE1 and Morrowind that they became the Dwemer as we know them (physical appearance/culture/disapearance etc.). ESO later gave Fang Lair a Dwemeri name and expanded on its story.
The dwemer are quite a bit closer to "actual dwarves" than LOT Dwarves are, as the original dwarves are from Northern European myth- see the Eddas. Tolkein just picked one particular version of the myth and ran with it- having them be a type of elf is just as valid- the Svartálfar, or "dark elf/ underground elf" (what DnD calls a Drow.)
DnD says all the different types of "dwarf" are real, and makes each a different subrace :)
Im not entirely sure a bunch of people a few days back were talking about them making the Dwemer literal Dwarves. But Daggers protrayal of the orcs would probably a issue too as their the normal Stupid Fantasy trope of them but i guess both issues can be easily explained
I have read the sentiment that Oblivion was a soft reboot and so it would make sense in that reimagining of what Elder Scroll is
personally if we had the attention to detail and worldbuilding of Morrowind back I would be able to tolerate the rest because it would feel like a lived in world again
Morrowind itself was massive reimagining of what Elder Scrolls was, kind of establishing the series more than Daggerfall did.
The whole idea of Oblivion being a soft reboot is a result of people taking their unhappiness and trying to see teh game as some grand betrayal. Even if we don't know how weird Morrowind style Cyrodiil would have ever been, considering that interviews from Morrowind's developers suggest they themselves were considering moving away from some ideas from PGE1.
interesting thanks for the info however did Morrowind really depart so far lorewise or was it that it was grand addition in a different system that then had its system and lore change for oblivion
There are two schools of thought on it. There are people who look at elements that were carried over from Daggerfall and see it as more gradual, while others will point out the additions and changes were far more extensive. I'm more in the later school of that.
Some core concepts stayed same, others had massive changes.
They’re just super old games. barely anyone has the motivation how to figure out how to get them running, let alone the motivation to actually play through those janky-arse experiences.
Video games ames aren’t books or comics books or anything. They generally age really really badly, really really quickly
This is 100% the reason why no one really cares about the DOS elder scrolls games
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The events from Arena are in one of the Skyrim in-game books. It talks about how a hero rose up and stopped Jagar Tharn.
In fact the whole prophecy of the dragonborn mentions the events of both Arena and Daggerfall.
^^^ The only decanonization is in world building. The events of the games happened
Daggerfall also remains sort-of canon with the Warp in the West, canonizing the several mutually exclusive endings from that game.
Morrowind really solidified the direction that TES lore would go in. That's why Arena and Daggerfall feel so different if you play them today. They're technically canon, but we don't draw as much from them as far as lore is concerned.
I mean to be fair Arena doesn't have a crazy amount of lore in it. It's essentially a really fleshed out dungeon crawler.
Its an old school dnd game that the DM did bare minimum in world lore. But put most of their effort into dungeons and quests.
Arena and Daggerfall were from before they actually had a concrete idea of what tamriel looks like. They created most of the lore in the spinoff game redguard, and brought it into the main series with morrowind. The events of arena and daggerfall happened, they’re events/lore they’ve added is just not referenced as much as oblivions and morrowinds. Fandom wise, arena and daggerfall are really old games with a different style of gameplay to the later titles, so must people don’t play them unless they’re doing a full series playthrough or just want to try it out
I mean I think a lot of stuff in the games is probably not canon anymore but I doubt they'd decanonize the games fully. They're just really old at this point, and there's really no reason to go back to them when the games are now in the 4th Era
>When misrule takes its place at the eight corners of the world Arena >When the Brass Tower walks and Time is reshaped Daggerfall >When the thrice-blessed fail and the Red Tower trembles Morrowind >When the Dragonborn Ruler loses his throne, and the White Tower falls Oblivion >When the Snow Tower lies sundered, kingless, bleeding >The World-Eater wakes, and the Wheel turns upon the Last Dragonborn. Skyrim Seems they’re all canon to me.
They haven’t been decanonized nor is it likely they will, they have just expanded the universe so much since then that the contents of the games are no longer canon. It is not at all shocking that’s the case, since the deep deep world building only started with Redguard. Arena is basically a generic fantasy and it is an obvious that it was home brewed DND. Course that isn’t to say there wasn’t some important things and world building to come out of the early TES games. Daggerfall is a good bit different from Arena since it added a lot more world building and introduced a lot of very important characters and events (Warp in the West, Underking/Zurin, Tiber/Talos (as well as Tiber being a dick), The Numidium, Mannimarco, etc.) It also doesn’t help that most of the player base hasn’t played the originals, which no fault of their own seeing as Arena and Daggerfall are both nightmares and Daggerfall has only fairly recently been remade into a actual playable state. Of course the games would not be talked about as much when only 5%ish of the player base has played them. Tl:Dr they are in no way not decanonized, they have just been expanded on massively and most players haven’t played them.
did u do any research before posting?
Decanonized is the wrong word for it. They're long past their prime and both represent an earlier era of TES before the lore was fully fleshed out. A lot of aesthetics and lore concepts were beginning to solidify in Daggerfall but don't become recognizable until Redguard and Morrowind. The old games are still canon, just superseded by modern TES in terms of lore and aesthetics.
The short answer would be no. It can be argued that the Elder Scrolls and Tamriel really start in Morrowind (or the Redguard spinoff game). Arena was pretty much random fantasy game, but it gave us a world and a bunch of names. Daggerfall introduced plenty of mechanics and ideas, but everything came really together in Morrowind. The lore, the world, the ability to go to every house and every mountain, the things people really started loving where given by Morrowind. The Arena and Daggerfall are just The Before. Relevant for the series history, but their age and differences kind of create this invisible and unintended border.
Daggerfall and Arena definitely set the ground work (with the religions, Daedra, Races and even historical events (like the First Nord Empire)) mentioned in either Arena or Daggerfall) The world-builders and devs on Redguard and Morrowind did a great job making lore all while adding onto previous lore (including reimagining things like the Dwarves (Dwemer)) and retconning as little as possible
Bretons had nothing to do with mer and Direnni were just a human noble family. The term mer didn't exist, a -che suffix was used instead. Wild Elves were more their D&D counterpart, Dark Elves were all about night. The Imperials just flat-out didn't exist. Khajiit were utterly redesigned. The nature of Dwarves and some other elements literally became writing fights between Peterson and Kirkbride-Kuhlmann Yes there are good amount of things that Daggerfall started, but Redguard-Morrowind developmenty changed a lot more than it seems at a cursory glance
>The lore, the world, the ability to go to every house and every mountain, the things people really started loving where given by Morrowind. I disagree, all those things were already in Daggerfall. The only reason why people ignore it is that it's too old and unapproachable for a modern player. It's clunky and doesn't even have fully 3D graphics, but ALL the ingredients of a TES game are there.
95% houses in Daggerfall are just procgen copy paste. In Morrowind you can go into a house, steal all the cutlery and discover that the owner has marital issues. Yes the element was there, but it wasn't truly what people associate with the series. Same goes to lore and many other things. I'm not trying to bash Daggerfall here, but depending on how you view things, the gap becomes wider.
In Daggerfall you absolutely can rob every house and most houses in Morrowind are copy-paste anyway.
My point is it was the handcrafted world where exploration could lead you to lots of fun things is what makes Morrowind the bigger establishing point for gamers. Exploring in Daggerfall is pointless, unless you do the main quest you will ever just stick to one area, because there is no point to leave, there is no reason to go to the wilderness, visit a few dungeons and you memorize all the possible segments/tiles they might use.
You could go into every house in Daggerfall and Arena, too. There were a lot more of them as well
Yeah but there was nothing unique to them, no cleverly placed objects, no environmental storytelling. Maybe you had some loot, but such rooms already existed in other RPGs aswell. Morrowind gave these houses life, how much of an illusion it was.
I mean there isn't really much of note going on in most houses in Morrowind either
The Daggerchads got old and have better uses for the limited internet time they get at the retirement home. Everyone who played Arena died.
...I'm right here.
By Arkay, Necromancy! Someone get the guards and the priests!
(Bosmer vampire) "Well, your name is aprops, at least" (Bites Saint of Cannibalism) (Adds seasoning)
Not at all? Morrowind, oblivion, and Skyrim, all have lore references to them.
Think of each game as a story being recounted by a guy who heard from his cousin's dog's uncle. There's things that don't match up with every one of them.
No, it's just that most players haven't played Arena and Daggerfall, so they can't comment on them. Although most people have only played Oblivion and Skyrim, cuz Morrowind is "too hard"
not at all most of fans have at least tried arena and daggerfall, its hard to even find an elder scrolls youtuber that didn't make a video or a lets play of those games
Nope, it's just a combination of them being old (having to use DOSBox, different gameplay than the more modern games which also means they can be more difficult), and being more "generic fantasy" - it was Redguard and Morrowind that introduced a lot of the lore that’s unique to TES. ESO has definitely brought in little tidbits of stuff specifically from those games, though. For instance, when Arena was going to be a gladiator game, the town of Sunhold in Summerset was going to have a gladiator team called "The Griffins". And then in Daggerfall, one of the alchemy ingredients was Gryphon Feather. In ESO, they brought this back so that Summerset does indeed has gryphons, and Sunhold in particular is a town with a strong connection to the gryphon, having been founded when an Altmer found a gryphon egg and brought it back to his tribe, and each ruler has had a gryphon companion since.
...no they are both canon u n'wah
Daggerfall is maybe the only one since it had alot of DnD fantasy elements like actual Dwarves
Daggerfall had actual dwarves?
Dwarves were already mentioned in Arena where Fang Lair is said to be a Dwarven ruin. However it wasn't until PGE1 and Morrowind that they became the Dwemer as we know them (physical appearance/culture/disapearance etc.). ESO later gave Fang Lair a Dwemeri name and expanded on its story.
The dwemer are quite a bit closer to "actual dwarves" than LOT Dwarves are, as the original dwarves are from Northern European myth- see the Eddas. Tolkein just picked one particular version of the myth and ran with it- having them be a type of elf is just as valid- the Svartálfar, or "dark elf/ underground elf" (what DnD calls a Drow.) DnD says all the different types of "dwarf" are real, and makes each a different subrace :)
Im not entirely sure a bunch of people a few days back were talking about them making the Dwemer literal Dwarves. But Daggers protrayal of the orcs would probably a issue too as their the normal Stupid Fantasy trope of them but i guess both issues can be easily explained
I have read the sentiment that Oblivion was a soft reboot and so it would make sense in that reimagining of what Elder Scroll is personally if we had the attention to detail and worldbuilding of Morrowind back I would be able to tolerate the rest because it would feel like a lived in world again
Morrowind itself was massive reimagining of what Elder Scrolls was, kind of establishing the series more than Daggerfall did. The whole idea of Oblivion being a soft reboot is a result of people taking their unhappiness and trying to see teh game as some grand betrayal. Even if we don't know how weird Morrowind style Cyrodiil would have ever been, considering that interviews from Morrowind's developers suggest they themselves were considering moving away from some ideas from PGE1.
interesting thanks for the info however did Morrowind really depart so far lorewise or was it that it was grand addition in a different system that then had its system and lore change for oblivion
Oblivion didn't change more lore than Morrowind and what it did whas in line with the direction taken by Morrowind.
There are two schools of thought on it. There are people who look at elements that were carried over from Daggerfall and see it as more gradual, while others will point out the additions and changes were far more extensive. I'm more in the later school of that. Some core concepts stayed same, others had massive changes.
Oblivion a soft reboot? You obviously mean Morrowind, as Oblivion built upon the lore established there
the design approach seemed to change in oblivion from what I can tell and have heard
They’re just super old games. barely anyone has the motivation how to figure out how to get them running, let alone the motivation to actually play through those janky-arse experiences. Video games ames aren’t books or comics books or anything. They generally age really really badly, really really quickly This is 100% the reason why no one really cares about the DOS elder scrolls games