It's Time to Fix the Elder Scrolls Series

[RufioGotStuck]

The Problem

"An incredible experience" - IGN

"Simply one of the best role-playing games ever made" - GameSpot

"The most captivating first-person role-playing game yet" - The Sydney Morning Herald

On The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

"One of gaming's richest fantasy worlds" - Trusted Reviews

"The best open world game I've ever played" - PC Gamer

On The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

"The more you put into this game, the more you'll get out of it" IGN

On The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The Elder Scrolls games are undoubtedly some of the most captivating and successful games to ever exist. Every entry into the series has consumed many hours of my life and I have no regrets regarding this, except one. This one regret only emerged just before the release of Elder Scrolls Online on the PS4 and it exists because of the Elder Scrolls Online. When I discovered that the Elder Scrolls Online had completely butchered the lore of the Elder Scrolls universe (it released earlier than the PS4 version), my optimism for the game dropped a fairly large amount (I don't care what your arguments are, or how you want to explain the multiple lore inconsistencies that exist in ESO, there is no denying that ESO breaks the lore of the Elder Scrolls universe worse in many major ways). After this my view of Zenimax was that they had completely broken the series for Bethesda Game Studios (how wrong I was).

I began researching, and as it turns out Zenimax's actions were not new to the Elder Scrolls Series. Bethesda has been creating major lore inconsistencies within the Elder Scrolls right from the beginning and Zenimax just took it a step further. The evidence is overwhelming and in reality quite devastating (check out these links: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/5wwc23/lore_inaccuracies_that_contradict_lore_of/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/613938693207880282/

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:841988

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/21o0gl/the_incoherence_of_solstheim/

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/123147/why-does-this-game-insist-on-totally-breaking-the-lore) and there is many more, but I will not place them here.

The Elder Scrolls lore is a complete and utter cluster f**k and many people agree with me on this front. These people include average fans just like me (as seen in the links above) and one prominent figure, Zaric Zhakaron (His youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5n2P_1F8nQhOo0fLGdh-iw), who has been called a "Lore Master" by some, despite the fact that he rejects the title. Some of the lore inconsistencies that really annoy me include; the lack of the Nordic Pantheon in Skyrim, the climate of Skyrim, the lack of jungle in Cyrodiil in both ESO and Oblivion.

Many people have tried to explain why the lore in the Elder Scrolls is so contradictory and broken with things such as the c0da, dragon breaks (Daggerfall) and the "unreliable narrator". These explanations are simply not good enough. "The Elder Scrolls isn't like other games, it's lore is fluent" blah blah blah. All of these explanations have been created to cover up bad writing and clumsy design choices by the producers. Most of the time these explanations make the situation worse than they were in the beginning e.g. the lore is fluent and all subjective (what's the point of playing the games then! Someone could deny that the last dragonborn even existed and argue that the chosen f*****g chicken killed Alduin and Miraak, with the glorious CLUCK and not the Thu'um). This could genuinely be the case in Elder Scrolls 6 (hopefully not). Let's face it the producers have broken the lore of the games hundreds of times, probably deliberately on some occasions (e.g. Skyrim being completely snowy would make the game miserable, or so they thought, the whole of Solstheim was covered in ash and the Dragonborn DLC turned out pretty good!).

Fixing the Elder Scrolls Series

You may have thought that this was going to be just a rant about Elder Scrolls lore, but no I believe these problems can surely be solved. An option is an Elder Scrolls "Reboot" (discussed in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikN-oAbGkBI&t=1164s). Now I do not know what this Elder Scrolls "Reboot" would entail but it would basically remake the series to be more consistent with the lore. In reality the fans of the series have been trying to fix the inconsistencies for years now with mods that basically just put band aids on huge wounds in the series. We don't need to hide behind explanations that try to cover up bad design choices and terrible writing, we can confront the issue head on. We would only fix the lore that exists in the series. If I'm honest I do not know how we would go about fixing the lore, but that is were we all can unite and find a solution to the problem. Stop putting band aids on massive wounds, let's fix these problems once and for all. No more explanations of lore contradictions that are objective just because a producer made them, no more subjective/fluent lore. I cannot deal with seeing one game contradict another game in the series (or itself) and let some ridiculous explanation fill in the gaps. Let's fix this once and for all!