What's interesting is that the dragon break at the end of Daggerfall changed the course of history not only proactively but also retroactivelly. That means that all the previous lore was wiped and replaced with new one. An example would be the fact that according to new lore Tiber was always a god, even before the events of daggerfall (wich is not the case in the game). Basically Numidium nuked the old world and replaced it with a new one. That means that while playing Daggerfall and Arena you're exploring a world that doesn't exist anymore.
That also could explain why ESO isn't recognized in the earlier games.. as a dragon break could have happened when they first fired up Numidium during Tiber Septim's reign, thus wiping tamriel of the dolmens and other signs of the events of the mmo.
Biggest retcon is that Alduin isn't just how the Nords see Akatosh. A god of time being destructive to short lived humans and Alduin eating the world being a metaphor for entropy.
Ah yes the Elder Scrolls equivalent of "he did it." Todd and Patio are not the people who should be touching this series. They are creativity bankrupt and greedy with their marketing.
@@spartanq7781 creatively bankrupt doesn't even begin to explain what bethesda did to cyrodiil and skyrim a land of jungles and plains filled with the ruins of an old elven regime, turned into flatlands and run-of-the-mill forests, not so bad compared to skyrim, which ended up being a surface-level offshoot of what game of thrones looked like in season 1
People say this a lot but I have yet to see an actual example of a retcon being explained away by a dragon break. Almost as if that doesn’t actually happen and you’re just talking out your ass
Umbra is a daedric artifact. Daedric artifacts are notorious for making their way back to the Princes that made them and are able to reform eventually if destroyed. Also, what Akatosh did to end the Oblivion crisis doesn't prevent portals from being opened from Mundus. It stops daedra from invading on their own.
@@bozthekillerNot only that it had a whole city formed/warped named Umbriel which floated around Tamriel. Umbra was destroyed in the story abt the ingenium. Its whole shtick was that it would bring ruin to Clavicus Vile if he keeped trying to get it. The creation Club story is just weak, it infantalizes the original novel that expanded upon Umbra.
thats also a retcon. Umbra was just a sword of a powerful orc warrior in morrowind who wanted to die because he had already seen it all. And he called himself "Umbra" to you, because you may as well know him by his sword's name for all the difference that would make. The whole bullshit about daedric artifacts and clavicus vile and umbriel and whatever was made up later
@@Gabranicus Retcon means retroactive continuity. Meaning to have written something later that alters something earlier in the chronology of the story itself. The concept of Umbra SIMPLY being a powerful warrior's sword was THE original. The whole point was that the sword was just a fucking sword. Changing it into some magical daedric prince shard of hypergod arcane chosen magic witch special destiny whateverthefuck is a de facto retcon. Changing it retroactively is a retcon. What difference does it make if you did it by adding or removing?
It's theorized that the song is talking about Rorik's Steading, mentioned in "Holdings of Jarl Gjalund" which may have been changed over time to be known as Rorikstead, as it is mentioned in the Second Era "Atlas of Dragons" where it states the dragon Nahagliiv is buried west of Rorikstead. The bards do call it OLD Rorikstead, after all. Though Nahagliiv is still west of the Rorikstead of the Fourth Era and the ghost of Ragnar the Red does travel from the current Rorikstead to Whiterun city. Rorik, the founder of the modern Rorikstead, makes no mention of Rorik's Steading (AKA Old Rorikstead). It could be he had no idea that he founded his village over the ruins of a town of the same name. Also there's clearly some Daedra meddling going on, so I think he has other matters to worry about. Maybe it was a Daedric Prince that had him resettle the area. Perhaps Rorik's ancient ancestor was the Rorik of Rorik's Steading.
I know a retcon that very few are aware of. In Arena, East and West are swapped in a few situations. If you take a quest from the ruler of a city, if they tell you to go east, you must go west- and if you look at the official strategy guide, one of the pages has a large statue with east and west swapped. If you look at the sunset, it sets in the east. I've asked Julian Lefay and he doesn't remember this.
It's worth noting that none of the Creation Club stuff are canon for the purposes of tallying retcons and inconsistencies. Bethesda treats CC in Skyrim & Fallout 4 (also the two non-canon Fallout games, BoS and Tactics) as partially canon; as in they are can be used for information when there is no conflict, but they are also allowed to violate canon and in that case they must be disregarded.
Someone has probably mentioned this already, but in Skyrim there's an old man living in the mountains southeast of Ivarstead. He sends you on a quest that involves hunting various ghostly animals to prove your worth to Kyne. You can ask him about the Divines, and he basically goes on a boomer rant about how modern Nords are all milk drinking wusses who worship Imperial deities. So it's pretty safe to assume that the original Nordic pantheon had indeed been gradually replaced with an Imperial one, with only a few old timers remembering the old ways.
Lore inconsistencies in ingame books for me make the game world much more believable and immersive. If you have knowledge in history studies you would find that the real world "lore" inconsistencies can be much more bizarre and hard to understand without other evicences to back up on, as seem in the unearth of archeological artifacts proven or disproven historical claims, and much more.
When they are *intentional*, yes. I don't know enough to say which those are, but unintentional changes can't always be intuitively explained like that and sometimes hurt immersion. TES is generally too big for that to happen often, though. And despite really only playing the first three games in the last 5 years, I still think the writers are good enough that there probably are very few unintentional mistakes. Too bad these original writers are mostly retired/elsewhere now...
Exactly, like in real life Herodotus says that Cyrus the Great conquered the Median Empire and subsumed their system/territories but no other sources actually mention a Median "Empire" at this time and the archaeological evidence doesn't support a Median "Empire" either. Meaning that Cyrus would have had to have conquered all that territory himself.
the tongues didn’t really get retconned, the world has just changed a lot since they were described in Varieties of Faith in the Empire. The province of skyrim has undergone massive imperialization by the time the game takes place, and the old ways have largely died out. where there once were many tongues and wielders of the voice, there are now just the graybeards, a lone group of select few practitioners of the old ways. even them having to go gagged is still canon, the reason the graybeards aren’t physically gagged is because they’re far secluded from civilization. arngier is the only one you ever see speak, and he never shouts as he’s more of a speaker for the group, whereas the ones that shout are never seen speaking. the rare exceptions are when one will whisper to you “dohvakiin”, but even this whisper is accompanied by the mountain itself shaking.
it's amazing how Skyrim imperialized in 200 years under the weakest of the Syrodil empires and yet under the Septims retained its identity. It's even more amazing that Skyrim doesn't see as many imperial rulers and other cultural elements, yet somehow it has imperialized in other matters
it's bs in any case. Skyrim is fun and all, but what they did with the lore was boring af. It should have been a massive place of mainly small tribal settlements, not "Cyrodiil with snow"
@@xiriusthesoulwatcher3955it is STILL wind magic. The Nords believe that Kyne, the embodiment of the wind who is viewed as the Nordic aspect of Kynareth, breathed onto the land at the Throat of the World to form them.[4] As such, the Nords believe that their voice and breath is their very essence, and that channeling this life essence is how the thu'um operates. This is an official description of how Nords see thuum and it's very consistent with what we know in Skyrim and before.
@@rustamsafarli4909 Its speaking in dragon language now, and thats based on Akatosh, so no. And who gives a shit what the nords believe, given the objective information of what is actually in the game. Are we gonna argue Talos isnt a real divine because the high elves say he isnt? I mean its in the game and they believe it and so on
My theory with Rorik is that he just renamed the town, probably expanding and or rebuilding it in the process. So perhaps the town did really exist in some form much longer, but only as Rorikstead for a short time. Perhaps the town was destroyed or near abandoned at some point, then Rorik buys it for cheap because the land wasn't fertile. Which might be why it was abandoned. So Rorik ends up taking credit for founding the town, because most of the people who live there now either work for him, bought their land from him, or are his progeny.
It's theorized that the song is talking about Rorik's Steading, mentioned in "Holdings of Jarl Gjalund" which may have been changed over time to be known as Rorikstead, as it is mentioned in the Second Era "Atlas of Dragons" where it states the dragon Nahagliiv is buried west of Rorikstead. The bards do call it OLD Rorikstead, after all. Though Nahagliiv is still west of the Rorikstead of the Fourth Era and the ghost of Ragnar the Red does travel from the current Rorikstead to Whiterun city. Rorik, the founder of the modern Rorikstead, makes no mention of Rorik's Steading (AKA Old Rorikstead). It could be he had no idea that he founded his village over the ruins of a town of the same name. Also there's clearly some Daedra meddling going on, so I think he has other matters to worry about. Maybe it was a Daedric Prince that had him resettle the area. Perhaps Rorik's ancient ancestor was the Rorik of Rorik's Steading.
@@walnzell9328 i think it's funnier if rorik is just a common nord name that's never gone out of style, so the entire story is just that two completely unrelated dudes started a farming community in the same general area millennia apart and named it after themselves, and they just so happened to have the exact same name like, just imagine if "rorikstead" was basically the nordic equivalent to something like "johntown"
Im more curious what Skyrim would've looked like with Morrowind's "lets be weird and original" ethos. As it stands the game is pretty generic in what creatures are in the wilderness as far as fantasy goes. No weird two-limbed reptile mounts living around giant mushrooms, you know what I mean?
Oblivion has some concepts for what it would look like if it followed morrowinds worldbuilding style. iirc Kirkbride made a joke about Todd watching LOTR and opting to make Cyrodill a generic fantasy realm instead.
@@ibrahimalee23 i think it was a todd issue (bad, bland taste, wanting to maximize mainstream appeal) but also probably a budget issue, some of the shit they describe would be more difficult to map out and design, and make look cool, i guess
@@clickbaitable6320I personally agree with this reasoning. Creation Club content isn't canon, but all of the Anniversary Edition content that's from Creator Club is, in practice, in the "base game" now.
25:06 this isnt necessarily a recon, this is the explanation for the Drauger from the Skal, a Nordic culture group on Solstheim. Going from what is said about it in lore, the island wasnt always an island and only broke off during the time of the Dragon Cult when Valok the Jailer defeated Mirrak, which is how it is explained why their are drauger on the island Edit: the worship of bears and wolves mentioned in other books about Skyrim can also be explained by the beliefs of the Skal, who hold them in high regard in their religion
also, the nordic gods are associated with animals (the ones found in the "hall of stories" in every ruin) with Tsun having the bear, Kyne the hawk, etc
@@ProphetTruth95 Draugr* And as a Scandinavian, I can tell you that Skyrim's depiction is truer to Norse mythology/folklore where draugr were a form of revenant rising to haunt it's own burial mound and guard it from graverobbers, while Morrowind's drift closer to concepts like the Wendigo, it's only vaguely draugr-related theme being that some stories depict draugr as having a ravenous hunger (but not inherently cannibalistic).
As a kid playing Oblivion, I loved the landscape design they crafted in that game. Later, when I was older and read the lore of past games, I never found myself caring too much whether it was a jungle or not. They really made those high fantasy landscapes with love and care and they took me to a whole new world that I never got to experience before. Was it alien? No. Was it foreign? No. Was it cool? Yeah. Was never even a big LOTR fan as a kid back then either so that was my first real experience having a fairy tale come to life, then getting to have a cool low res blood paint job over it when the Oblivion Gates open was the icing on the cake for me becoming an Elder Scrolls fan. I think it's kind of funny that when I first played Skyrim I missed the bright colors of Oblivion's forests a lot. The gritty realism and greyscale of some landscapes never caught my imagination as much as Oblivion did. So no wonder Morrowind players, starting up Oblivion for the first time, were completely caught off guard by how "normal" feeling of an Elder Scrolls game it was. "Alien" and "Foreign" fantasy was Elder Scrolls appeal for all of Morrowind's lifespan. And high-Tolkien fantasy was Elder Scrolls appeal for all of Oblivion's lifespan. Makes you wonder what Elder Scrolls 6 art design will be like. But god were the fucking face models awful... such a jarring and weird creative decision.
Personally for me, I love how each province have different themes and aesthetics, Morrowind being more Alien, Oblivion being more like Rome/Medieval, and Skyrim being Nordic/Viking, you can tell they did a ton of research into these cultures too, most Imperial names are based off of Rome/Medieval era names, and Nords are based off of Nordic names, they definitely put a ton of effort into making each land different instead of every land being the same, it would've been more interesting if all of Tamriel was "Alien like", but I think if we're dealing with different cultures here, it's better for different provinces to have their own "uniqueness".
@@smergthedargon8974 i mean, that depends on where it's going to take place, if it's High Rock, then it's definitely going to be more High Fantasy and have generic themes, but if it's Hammerfell, it's going to have desert, pirates, and a more Arabic-like culture, plus a ton of other things that are in Hammerfell, also I don't think Bethesda goes for realism.
To be fair, ESO is set during the Interregnum, a time where not much is known, explaining why most of it isn't mentioned in later games, as the events are lost to history.
Also after Daggerfall the whole world got wiped and replaced changing the course of events , meaning that the world of Arena, ESO and Daggefall are on a no longer existed world
Why play it then? If nothing you do impacts the future games what’s the point? For fun I suppose but I wish games remembered your past in previous games like if you were evil, mischievous or a benevolent godlike warrior priest. Like Witcher games where you can import some of that past data. It’s far more interesting than what we’ve gotten since Morrowind.
@@clickbaitable6320chim exists so all possible events from previous games are cannon. Just not in the specific dimension youre in. But factoring in all the things players can do into future games would bloat develooment into ungodly large projects. Just look at mass effect and how bloated that is despite being pretty linear.
On the Mara/Nord connection, she was established to be a Nordic deity all the way back in Morrowind, so Alga might have been taking issue with the Imperial style of worship and marriage (Mara is seen by the Nords as Kyne's handmaiden instead of the true mother of men), although I find it odd that she calls Honmund her live-in partner instead of her husband, but perhaps that's down to them being unable to be legally recognized as a married couple in the traditional Nord fashion
Keep in mind that in the main quest of Oblivion, you give a Daedric artifact to Martin so he can use it in the ritual to open the gate to Paradise, and he says that doing this will destroy the artifact. And yet, most of the artifacts you can use in this questline also appear in Skyrim. So there's clearly some precedent that destroying a Daedric artifact doesn't mean it's gone forever. Martin even says something like "We won't be seeing it's like for many years" when you give it to him, implying that they do come back eventually.
umbra also disappears in a flash of light, thats very non specific so it may not have been destroyed at all but banished similar to dagons defeat in (insert all the times hes been defeated here)
@@aldiascholarofthefirstsin1051 So much of WoW lore is well written and interesting. It's fine if you want to throw it all out because they made some horrible decisions, but I still see the unique and cool world that was built from years of adding onto it.
Great list ceedot! The "Jungle Cyrodiil" recon always bugged me, from what has been shown off in various showcases, Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil seems to be bringing back some of that biome; so I cant wait to see how it turns out!
personally ive always been of the opinion that "inconsistency" can be relatively easily explained away by changing climates, seeing as jungle cyrodiil and oblivion cyrodiil are set centuries apart from eachother. i dont think a jungle would make for a more interesting setting than regular generic forests though.
While the Volkihars are diffrent in the Dawngaurd DLC. A theory I've heard is that there is a secondary group we encounter in the base game. In Falkreath after you do a couple quest for the former Yarl he'll inform you of a rather dire situation. Apparently one of his ancestors was a vampire who was sealed in his grave, but recently grave robbers robbed said grave and reawakened him. Now he's fled to his castle in the mountains and you'll need to go slay the vampire and his brood. Some theorize thus could be another group of Volkihar especially since this Vampire Brood more closely resembles the description of the Volkihar, although this group is located in the mountains not a frozen lake.
Here's one: what race was Tiber Septim? Lore is back and forth about him being a Nord or a Breton, but Oblivion and Morrowind have his avatars as imperials. And Skyrim hammers it hard that he was a Nord. Which was he?
Almost everything says Nord (including the new Castles game), the Breton thing comes from an out of lore book that calls him a manmer. Unless you're referring to the possiblity he's from Alcaire, which still refers to him as "Hjalti", a Nordic name.
The inconsistency is intentional, but the general consensus is that in his original timeline he was a Nord raised in High Rock, in the new timeline he made he was Atmoran, and he might have fiddled at one point with trying to make himself a descendant Reman but that probably didn't take and was effectively limited to propaganda. Its possible that his original timeline had him be partially Breton, so if he had a Nord father and Breton mother he would have been ethnically Breton but potentially thought of himself as a Nord.
A lot of these, like lizard men disappearing, Skyrim changing, and maybe even the biome and description in Cyrodil changing can be potentially chalked up to the passage of time between games.
I think the interesting part about the map location inconsistencies between each game, is that with the passage of time between each game, it's almost identical to how real life places have their locations drift through time. Some towns, especially the larger ones in Europe that grow to encompass what was once outlying villages, have some of their older named villages pushed even further out than where they historically were.
Considering how little of our history humanity has properly recorded (or what we've yet to rediscovered or reinterpret in different ways), It very well could be for all we know.
You don't _have_ to wear Wraithguard, you just need enough HP to not die immediately. Fortify Health and Recover Health potions work fine for this. And, powers of enchanted items have consistently changed (or mostly lessened) over the years and between games, both in and out of universe, so I guess diminishing power of the items could justify it.
It's also worth noting that Arniel is surprised that the player is alive whilst handling the improperly stored Keening, it even still gives you a "mortal wound" when you equip it prior to completing the quest. Though the debuff is rather mundane. So unless it has simply been weakened (perhaps a consequence to it being used on the Heart), it could otherwise be assumed that the Dragonborn simply resists its effects at a natural level (for some reason).
@@trainershade1937 And then Arniel ends up wielding Keening in his experiment, with no apparent regard for what he just said about it. It could be that he had some sort of defense against the mortal wound ready to handle using it, but I think maybe the mortal wound was connected to the Heart of Lorkhan, so a good 200ish years after it was severed from the Mundus might've weakened its effects in general.
I have always thought that back in Morrowind a better design decision for them would be that wraithguard protects you only when applying tools to the Heart and it is only then you insta die of it because of the immense power flowing through them in the process. Killing the holder just at nowhere never made sense to me. Though of course it is mostl likely devs were trying to prevent player from getting items too early and not spoil the main quest like for example selling them to some trader and then forgetting which one. But there were more clever workarounds than that to invent, tamriel rebuilt devs have shown how insanely creative one can be with tools provided by elder scrolls 3 engine.
True but it’s just that they never mention changes to the items so it’s still not canon to say it just lost most of its power. It’s a reference item that doesn’t function the same as it once did so it’s just another thing with the same coat of paint.
I just want to point out that people have been calling foul on ESO because of its retcons but the developers have been retconning the games since Daggerfall.
The problem between main entries and ESO is, the maingames didnt retcon for retcon's sake in most cases (the ends of Daggerfall with the Dragonbreak are a big exception). ESO retcons simply for the purpose of luring in fans of the series with iconic locations and items. This is why most players are fine with retcons of main entries, but calling out ESO for simply bad lore and worldbuilding.
@@Randleray Didn't retcon for retcon's sake? Someone hasn't played Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim, whose retcons are far more glaring than anything ESO has done.
Just because they’ve broken lore b4 doesn’t mean you should be ok with them continuing to do it. The fact that they’ve done it so much means they should try extra hard to do better.
Same. I can't even care for ESO's inconsistencies and lore due to not even being into MMO's but I can hope that ES6, where ever it is set can have some nice mythic aspect to its lore.
One thing to note is that names change over time in real life. So the river and bay examples could be that way. That said in most fantasy they don’t usually care about this so probably still a retcon
you DO see the tongues though! 3 of the greybeards shake the entire world by merely whipsering dovahkiin, otherwise they only greet you with hand movement
Apparently the next ESO expansion is suppose to address the difference between how the Imperial Province is described in Arena and how it actually looks in Oblivion. Sounds like we may actually experience Jungle Cyrodil
Skakmat may be a nickname. It's the Danish word for checkmate, so you could imagine it's actually just in reference to him being the ultimate weapon to decide a battle
theres also a lot of mythical precedent irl for the importance of names and power they can hold, pair this with dragon language stuff and taking a dragons name and forcing a new one on them could be a way of controlling them even changing their nature
There are so many inconsistencies that they literally wrote in a mechanism to canonically retcon anything and everything. Dragon breaks. They’ve outright stated that every Elder scrolls game occurs during a dragon break, thus allowing every choice to be canon simultaneously.
I can just imagine both groups of assassins hiring the thieves guild to steal and replace history books with a version that gives them credit for the kill.
I'm imagining a scenario where one member overhears a townsfolk claiming the other group got the credit‚ deeply sighs‚ then hires the guild to swap the books (again).
i mean arena was a game not intended to become something like this... it was planned out to be an early hack and slash game in an arena, but the developers went a bit overboard and it became much more than that. it wasnt intended to become an franchise it wasnt intended to become "lore" so arena is something you can basically forget. world building started to become more of a thing in daggerfall, they even employed "lore writers" to get it going. again arena was supposed to be a one time thing
So, books aren't supposed to be 100% correct. They're perspectives and theories from authors living in the world. Not histories written by the developers.
@@icefarrow7959The point of Elder Scrolls lore is to posit that someone made up random terms for the elves in Daggerfall? Or that the Nine Isles of the Imperial City were One this whole time? I think you misunderstand the point of the lore, are dead wrong, and plain of mind.
@@icefarrow7959 The ESO bits are clear inconsistencies. Developers make mistakes and sometimes parts of lore need to be sacrificed to make expansions to the worldbuilding.
It doesn't apply to all, but there's more. The names of the elves could have been regional for the time, the 9 islands could have been a misunderstanding for the districts of the city. Then there's more like how he calls the dragon break a retcon, when it's clear there's a God of Timelines and it makes perfect sense. Or when he references Cyrodil being a jungle, yet the lore reason for deforestation makes sense and has ties to the previous game i.e. Chim.
Martin mentions in Oblivion that Daedric artefacts will eventually reform if destroyed, so I don't see Umbra as an issue. The Ring of Khajiit alternating between Mephala (in Morrowind) and Meridia (in Daggerfall and Oblivion) is a weird inconsistency though.
To this day I'm convinced the only reason Oblivion and Cyoriil was generic fantasty rather than the Tropical rainforest it had been spoken as in past games was down to Todd Howard really being into Lord of the rings and just being all "Make it like the films"
It was literally that. They wanted to appeal to a broad audience and they preferred to sell their soul instead of keeping their identity until they reached the top (kinda like from software)
Yet the only person to say this is butthurt Kirkbride. And the only, 'lore' about Cyrodiil being a jungle came from a game no one's played, Redguard. Yet every Youchoob cultist tells you it's fact, (like it even matters). People just rinse and repeat. Oblivion looks like the more Imperial areas of Morrowind, that's it, and the story was set up in it to. The More You Know, eh.
@@reviewbridge3400 false, it was a jungle ever since Daggerfall, in the "pocket guide to the empire", I believe. Kirkbride just gave some artwork to the company for a fourth game set on Somerset isles and then on Cyrodiil, until the project became Oblivion. I don't understand why you criticise Kirkbride over absolutely nothing
@@anonymousanon6913 pffffff not only it was never stated that such magic exists, there is also no reference to this in the games. Plus, it's an overall dumb and pointless retcon
I think all these inconsistencies is why i love the lore so much. There isnt always a straightforward answer, and theres conflicting tales from different sources- it feels very realistic, in a way. This video was really enjoyable to watch, and made me think about how they could fit into the lore in a fun way
When you base your lore off of Philosophical Wiritngs, Medieval Propaganda, and the Monomyth, things tend to be inconsistent. Almost nothing is original, but it is woven together beautifully.
It's very hard to come up with ideas that haven't already been used in some other kind of fantasy. Might as well go all out and just steal, then make the original part how all these concepts intersect.
@@plebisMaximus The age of Novelty has come to an end. Also, "Steal" is not an applicable word in this context. All ideas are propagations of the first idea. To retell a story is not to steal, nor is the focus intersections. It is all perspective shifting. Perhaps the rebels were the tyrants or the Fall was a flight. Either way. The story ends the same. The Mushroom wins.
which SPECIFIC "philisophical writings" and medival propaganda you think inspired TES? (lol) It isn't based on "the Monomyth". The lore in Elder Scrolls is originally simply based on this thing called "DnD". Later it also decided to ape the film version of Lord of the Rings (oblivion) and Game of Thrones (skyrim) only morrowind has any real originality and literary merit in it's lore.
Uncharacteristically of Bethesda, I think the worst lore changes weren't from the most recent mainline game (Skyrim) but the one before that (Oblivion). Skyrim's main content mostly adds to and enhances the world, except for maybe making the Nords too mundane compared to some of the more flowery old books. Oblivion on the other hand retconned a whole province and sanded _a lot_ of the edges and weirdness from Morrowind and back off the series.
Yeah, but I still can't forgive the massive retcon on dragon blood and Bethesda showing dragonborns everywhere and putting this whole "Dragon Cult Slave Kingdom" period. It's just so bad imo.
@@Knoloaify idk what you mean by that, I don't really think that was a retcon, since the Dragonborn is a gift from Akatosh, it's not really a retcon, Miraak being the First Dragonborn is the only retcon that revolves around Dragonborns. So anyone can be a Dragonborn, because it's up to Akatosh if he wants to make them one, and by the time Skyrim happens, YOU are the last one.
@@it2spooky4me79 It's a retcon because it retroactively turned key figures into Dragonborns and completely changed the understanding of having "dragon blood" (which used to simply mean being of Imperial lineage).
@@Knoloaify ehhhh, idk, even in Oblivion Mancar forced himself to have Dragon Blood, it doesn't just mean that you need a lineage, because even different rulers who weren't related to the lineage had Dragon blood.
21:54 actually the tongues do exist in Skyrim to at least some extent, as the graybeards. All but one of them are incapable of speaking without causing destruction and stay selectively mute as a result
Same. For some reason, I was under the impression that Arena to Morrowind was consistent with Oblivion being the big upset. But looking at the comments‚ it seems like the fandom is grappling with whether or not Morrowind's version is better‚ cause whenever it comes down to lore inconsistencies it comes back Morrowind and Kirkbride.
Great video. I know people in the Elder Scrolls community like to overuse the unreliable narrator for inconsistencies. "The Warp in the West" did some weird 'Timey Whimey" Things which may explain The disappearance of the lesser deities from Elder Scrolls 2. It's kind of a shame they don't rework "The Lessers" into different champions of divinity representing the 9 Devine.
my favorite way to look at inconsistencies like this is that the information written in the lore is whats known to be true at the time it was written, hence why later sources have the changes, yeah its obv an inconsistency, but looking at it like that makes it more paletable imo
Tamriel's lore spans so long that someone could make a really cool skyrim mod that explains all the retcons/inconsistencies as revisionist history by whomever was ruling at the time. Put in "first editions" of books that were changed. Some NPCs that are considered crack-pots but know Daggerfall era knowledge.
I like the lore expansion for "The Lusty Argonian Maid" so much. Its actually pretty frickin close to how old folk tales, fairytales and such actually come about. Sorta like Romeo and Juliet, which was a old folktale long before Shakespeare turned it into a play.
22:45 i mean the Bear in Skyrim represents Tsun, so that makes complete sense, with Tsun being such a specifically Nordic deity. The wolf represents Mara which makes less sense but also, who doesn't want some love? It doesn't make the most sense on its own but if you consider the book almost definitely wasn't written by a Nord and as such lacked a lot of the nuance of Skyrim's mythology, it makes more sense that they'd just point to animals and say "isn't it weird that they worship beasts?" without considering that they represent the more commonly known gods
I actually have a fair point to make on the CC(Creation Club) content. It's all *technically* not canon. It's just modded content that you pay for that only exists in the way it does to pay modders for, y'know, modding. I believe that was the original intent when they tested it on Skyrim(and then spread it to FO4, and whatever other games). It's sort of like all the masks you can get in Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, the Majora's Mask in BOTW isn't canon! lol. A lot of the other stuff seems to be debatable, but I think it's a mix of two things: Unreliable narrator logic and slight tweaking of lore and details as each game goes on. I think logistically it made sense for the entire lore for Cyrodiil to be more of a "western europe/american" wooded area biome. I don't know enough about Highrock to say if it would fit that biome as I believe per its name its much more hilly? They already had a jungle-like environment with Black Marsh, Elsweyr, and Valenwood. I think Valenwood is supposed to be more of a forested wilderness and Black Marsh is a swampy area(although that is not mutually exclusive from jungles). Elsweyr I believe is explained as being very deserty but also having jungles or something similar. I think they had to flesh out Cyrodiil as being more unique, especially with the added lore at some point that *technically* the only native human races to Tamriel are the Bretons and the Imperials. Ebonarm seems to just be an 'aspect' or 'reincarnation' of the Yokudan equivalent of Talos, but I believe this part of the lore is very confusing and ambiguous for obvious reasons. Imperial Knowledge has a video detailing each race of Tamriel's version of Talos for example. For the longest time I thought Ebonarm was supposed to be a tale of a legendary warrior who just happened to wield the Ebony Blade. There's also a bit more lore that has been developed over time that goes into the possible details around the overall culture and history of the Redguard. It includes the Yokudan/Redguard's own unique magic(Sword singing I think is what it is?) and their own mysterious/ambiguous history as one of the races that came from a completely different continent/land mass. Similarly to the lack of details around Atmorra. It is entirely possible that Ebonarm is just a manifestation of a god(HoonDing I guess is the Redguard's head god). Funnily enough the UESP wiki(always a dubious source of information) says that he is an enemy to all daedric princes(barring sheo/jygg) and the Temple of Stendarr, so unless that changed at some point I doubt the Divines are fighting amongst themselves lol. Races changing over time was most likely due to a change in lore and an attempt to make each race stand out more(ironic with the Khajiit and Argonians). It can be explained away with the face that they have had plenty of long dead races(such as the sea elves, and the sun elves or whoever the redguard fought with). There's a possibility that varieties of Khajiit and Argonians existed but were integrated into the overall population and were indistinguishable unless you knew more about the local diversity. Honestly, I think a series as big and ambitious as The Elder Scrolls, they really have a lot to cover and it's no surprise that some stuff leaks through the cracks that is a very shoddily built lore(although the shoddiness comes from them not explaining anything not directly related to the quests and story you engage with / being vague so they don't over explain things that then have to be changed or expanded on later). They have offloaded a lot of the lore building for older eras off to ESO. I haven't personally played it yet(I have it but the time to install it is insane, too long of a wait for a mediocre experience I hear) but I am not sure if it has been worth it.
Sithis is treated less like a Death God and more like an Annihilation of some kind. More an absence of life and reality than a specific entity. Which makes its relationship to the Night Mother more interesting.
The Morag Tong/Dark Brotherhood inconsistency is actually handled in game as historians not have enough actual sources and being mistaken by the sources that they do have
The volkahar bit could just be explained as the author relying on folklore/second hand stories for the book. It wasn't uncommon for pre-modern authors of nonfiction work to rely on questionable and/or embellished second hand sources in our own world. I don't see why this couldn't be the case here.
23:57 Volkihar exists in the ESO DLC for Greymoor (Western Skyrim). In the Blackreach-ish area you can get a side quest from a woman who mentions this family among others. While the family is big enough to get a mention, it is not the focus of her or her mission that she has you undertake. Still, its inclusion indicates that it existed in some form throughout all of the playable timeline.
For the worse: Any time they change something that has to do with dragons Also Kirkbride HATES Ebonarm for some reason. Of course it's well known that he feels a more intimate connection to some of his characters than an author ordinarily would; He based Tiber Septim's appearamce in the PGE on himself, for example, and we all know how he feels about Vivec. Both are supposed to have been mortals who attained godhood through CHIM, and Ebonarm, possibly the early lore basis of Reman (another favourite of Kirkbride's), was supposed to be a mortal ascended to godhood. One has to wonder what he thinks about the lore as it stands on Ar'kay and Mannimarco, with Mannimarco literally becoming a tenth Divine (cosmologically speaking) orbiting Arkay.
@@ΣτέφανοςΔημόπουλος-η7τ I know, that's why I said I wonder what he thinks about Ar'kay (how Mannimarco writes Arkay, and by which name Arkay is identified as a mortal ascended to godhood; As Arkay he is a Divine in the Imperial pantheon and therefore traditionally an Aedra/Aedroth, and as Xarxes he was a mortal, now deceased, elven ancestor spirit, but as Ar'kay with the apostrophe, from which Alessia's Arkay presumably came, he was Xarxes as a merchant ascended to godhood) AND Mannimarco (who was directly inspired by Ar'kay and considered him a personal rival and enemy- which in the context of a thousands-of-years-old wizard who has seen most of history makes perfect sense, as to shorter-lived mortals Arkay's order is to stop monstrous undead beings from preying on mortals and disincentivize murder, but from Mannimarco's perspective Arkay is first and foremost a god of death and killing, and the opposition to necromancy stems from the fact that it is the victory of a kind of life over death).
@@ΣτέφανοςΔημόπουλος-η7τ That part is pretty simple. Most of the ways to become a god assume a new god being made (eg Mannimarco was not replacing or becoming a part of an existing god), including the other one which gets talked about a lot, which is CHIM (which is just Buddhahood or Nirvana in a world where Buddha and the word Buddha never existed). Incarnation and Mantling both rely on an existing entity, and result in replacing or becoming a part of that entity. In the case of incarnation, one is imbued with the spirit of the previous entity by divine will- If that entity has perished, one replaces them, and if that entity has not perished, one becomes a part of them. With the et'Ada that's actually a little vague because both can be true at the same time (eg Lorkhan is dead but also still alive, and the Shezarrine are parts of him, but also Talos replaced him- But Talos is complicated because he was actually 3 people prior to apotheosis, Hjalti, Zurin Arctus and Wulfharth, and used several ways at once to become a deity). In the case of mantling, one inherits the "mantle" (powers and responsibilities) of a resigning entity, as when Elisha inherited the mantle of Elijah, all that remained when the latter was taken away to the Kingdom of God. Elisha was Elijah's student, but showed no proclivity toward performing miracles; After acquiring the mantle (a type of short cloak), he was able to perform the same miracles as the prophet Elijah, because he became the prophet. We use the same idiom in modern English- eg "When his father retired, the blacksmith's son took up his mantle and manned the forge." As for specifics of the ritual involved in TES, Shivering Isles is a detailed look into all the steps involved- The CoC submits himself to Sheogorath, reenacts events from the previous mantle-bearer's life (because it is also revealed that the previous Sheogorath was not the original, but a person presumably from House Sul who took up the mantle, Arden Sul), is chosen as his heir, acquires an important symbol of office (the Staff of Sheogorath), and then witnesses the predecessor's demise, becoming Sheogorath thereafter. In Skyrim we see that the CoC is still Sheogorath, and we see that he resembles his predecessor to a high degree with some subtle differences hinting at his slightly different nature (eg his eyes are blind instead of mismatched), and he retains memories of his life as the CoC (mentioning his experiences with Martin Septim), but speaks of them as though he were always Sheogorath. I feel like beyond understanding the cultural reference of the term "mantle" this should answer any other questions one may have about the lore concept.
I find that the town names between games isn’t an inconsistency or retcon, because 800 years pass between Arena and Morrowind and places go through name changes depending on who rules and landscapes change, especially over a period of 800 years
I heard that they made oblivion mostly planes and hills because they were limited by the hardware and they already had to restart the xbox mid loading screen sometimes because it would crash otherwise. So they just opted to change it to spare the hardware and increase the render distance
While there are some things that change so significantly over the series, they can't be really anything other than retcons, but i actually like the conflicting accounts to an extent: That people's view of history and culture changes over time and from different sets of biases, just as happens in the real world.
The idea that Crassius Curio took the folk tale of The Lusty Argonian Maid, wrote it down, then claimed it as his own is absolutely vindicated though history. Most of Shakespeare's stuff just the first time that particular story was written down and wasn't new to him. Nearly any (older) Disney movie is just a classic folktale with an animation budget.
Cities appearing, disappearing and reappearing through thousands of years is realistic in my opinion. Even today only a few really big cities are more than 200-300 years. old. Historically cities have also collapsed or "disappeared" fairly often. If there was a legendary city that then vanished and later popped up again it would probably be because the new settlers wanted their new city to have a historical legacy behind it.
Regarding Rorikstead perhaps the books you read from the distant past that mention it are modern reprints with Rorikstead being added as a modern location the reader could use to get a better understanding of location. So "X is located Y miles from Rorikstead" instead of "X is located Y miles from the Z Forest" or "X is located Y miles from [Settlement that was once located near the location of modern Rorikstead but no longer exists]".
The "inconsistancy" with the Bal-Mora and "Stone Forest" isnt an inconsistancy. Balmora MEANS "Stone Forest" in Dunmer. Bal being stone, and mora being forest.
Good video. I've always wanted to make TES lore videos but You, Imperial Knowledge, Master Neloth ( and Recently Boreal Knight) already make such good videos that I don't see the need for me to do it. listening to this while I cook my fried rice.
The dragon cult isn't an inconsistency. They said in the game that most people thought the dragons were a myth. And there are people who are so powerful with their shouts that they can't talk. 3 of the Grey Beards.
I’m exactly like that, in that any time i talk, everyone around me rolls their eyes or palms their face. Because i have this incredible power, i rarely open my mouth. It’s better for all those poor mortals.
I can say one thing for sure - about books. If there were no problems with copyright and other things like that, Bethesda could add absolutely any book to the game. And at the same time, this would be considered completely legitimate and canonical. Even if it is LotR or HP. All because Hermeus Mora who can bring any price of knowledge, and some time-dimenton traveled books in the world.
The creation club content is technically not canon so umbra technically still isn’t in Skyrim As for Keening, my head canon is it’s just the Dragonborn being so powerful to be able to use it
Daggerfall got changed hard due to budget and technology, there was supposed to be an active war and dragons. it's still good af though. It's def the most ambitious one.
Almost all the games have been changed in some way or form due to limitations in technology from what was intended. In Morrowind, the cantons of Vivec were supposed to be open and sprawling, with even more interconnectedness between the areas. That had to be cut down drastically for the tech at the time to handle the game. The same story plays out with the Imperial City in Oblivion. I don't know how majestic it was supposed to be exactly, but iirc it did get cut back to be less grandiose and golden in order to have it be playable. No idea on Skyrim, that I've heard of.
@@ChronoSquare Skyrim's Civil War was supposed to be more "grand", but due to limitations and it overshadowing the Main Quest, they had to cut a lot of it out and shorten it, would've probably been one of the best "Factions" Questline in Elder Scrolls history, but sadly, we got a half baked one, story wise and decision wise, it's really good writing, but gameplay wise, VERY lackluster.
This is a really excellent, exhaustively-researched breakdown! The inconsistencies are definitely worth discussing, but I also think their existence adds flavor to the canon. Because what is canon, really? Fantasy stories are generally recorded/recounted by the protagonist (unreliable narrator) or the victors of some conflict (culturally/racially biased). Travelers and explorers can be counted on to exaggerate and embellish their stories. Info gleaned from in-game books would be prone to errors, because I assume the books were copied by scribes, who are potentially (inevitably?) fallible... We never saw a printing press in Tamriel, right? Anyhow, thanks for taking us down this rabbit hole. It was a very fun ride :)
For rorrikstear it could be referencing current rorrickstead as a location rather then inferring that's what it's called at the time As for tiber spetims sacrifice, conjourers summon daedra all the time so clearly it banished the daedra involved in the oblivion crisis
this series is decades old and has had hundreds of people working on it probably not just the same two guys writing everything. I hope people are not actually butthurt over these inconsistencies and just find this video interesting like i do.
Cyrodil not being forest and the descriptions of it are easy to explain even without Tiber causing a dragon break that changed it. 1st references to the inhabitants of the area likely refer to the Needes before Ayelid enslavement, where they were somewhat of a primitive tribal people similar to how the Forsworn are pertrayed in Skyrim. 2nd the Imperial City being the only city in the province is likely due to it being the largest city built by the Ayelids as for the appearance given the Ayelid ruines are underground perhaps at one point there were underground portions of the Imperial City that were lost to time, think of Markarth in Skyrim. 3rd the forest is gone due to deforestation by the Needes and their descendants after the Slave Rebellion when the Human population began building all the cities we see. Basically it all boils down to a natural evolution of culture in society that is reflected in our own history. As far as books written after these things happend, we call those history books. Oh and remember almost all refrences to Cyrodil prior to the games stem from Topal the Pilot who charted Tamriel during the Merethic Era ie prior to the Slave Rebellion and possibly prior to the Ayelids claiming Cyrodil. He describes the area as being inhabited by preliterate Birdmen, which could possibly be Needes dawning feathers as there are no other mentions of Birdmen in the entirety of Elder Scrolls or again similar to the Forsworn it could be a reference to Hagravens as the leaders of the local Needes.
I think Daggerfall was when the development and writing team realised they had something special, a real believable world that people truly wanted to ROLE play in. After that it was just a matter of tweaking some lamer parts of the world's history, making it more unique to the Elder Scrolls, and processing that vision of an expansive explorable Tamriel. Really cool.
What's interesting is that the dragon break at the end of Daggerfall changed the course of history not only proactively but also retroactivelly. That means that all the previous lore was wiped and replaced with new one. An example would be the fact that according to new lore Tiber was always a god, even before the events of daggerfall (wich is not the case in the game). Basically Numidium nuked the old world and replaced it with a new one.
That means that while playing Daggerfall and Arena you're exploring a world that doesn't exist anymore.
I never thought about it that way, that's a really interesting take.
That also could explain why ESO isn't recognized in the earlier games.. as a dragon break could have happened when they first fired up Numidium during Tiber Septim's reign, thus wiping tamriel of the dolmens and other signs of the events of the mmo.
Bro turned it off and on again 💀
So basically it did What Warhammer fantasy did and Nuked the Old world.
That is simultaneously the most interesting yet cheapest explanation explaination for a retcon.
Biggest retcon is that Alduin isn't just how the Nords see Akatosh.
A god of time being destructive to short lived humans and Alduin eating the world being a metaphor for entropy.
To be fair its a grey area is skyrim...
Biggest retcon is nords being cold resist Imperials and skyrim being cyrodiil on ice.... and Colovians not existing
It's not really a retcon. Alduin could still be an aspect of akatosh. Notice how hes the only dragon whose soul the dragonborn does not absorb
@keinkanal7382 True but it's still a bit watered down compared to Alduin 100% just being how The Nords see Akatosh.
@@CzechAvailabilitie
That's the kind of lore that I'd prefer to be watered down because it's not good.
Found an inconsistency? A dragon break did it!
Ah yes the Elder Scrolls equivalent of "he did it." Todd and Patio are not the people who should be touching this series. They are creativity bankrupt and greedy with their marketing.
@@spartanq7781 creatively bankrupt doesn't even begin to explain what bethesda did to cyrodiil and skyrim
a land of jungles and plains filled with the ruins of an old elven regime, turned into flatlands and run-of-the-mill forests, not so bad compared to skyrim, which ended up being a surface-level offshoot of what game of thrones looked like in season 1
@@noahsylvester1754Tbh Skyrim felt a lot more unique than Cyrodiil
Gg
People say this a lot but I have yet to see an actual example of a retcon being explained away by a dragon break. Almost as if that doesn’t actually happen and you’re just talking out your ass
Umbra is a daedric artifact. Daedric artifacts are notorious for making their way back to the Princes that made them and are able to reform eventually if destroyed. Also, what Akatosh did to end the Oblivion crisis doesn't prevent portals from being opened from Mundus. It stops daedra from invading on their own.
If I recall Umbra is special as it is so powerful that it broke free of its deadric princes influence and basically does what it wants
@@bozthekillerNot only that it had a whole city formed/warped named Umbriel which floated around Tamriel. Umbra was destroyed in the story abt the ingenium. Its whole shtick was that it would bring ruin to Clavicus Vile if he keeped trying to get it. The creation Club story is just weak, it infantalizes the original novel that expanded upon Umbra.
thats also a retcon. Umbra was just a sword of a powerful orc warrior in morrowind who wanted to die because he had already seen it all. And he called himself "Umbra" to you, because you may as well know him by his sword's name for all the difference that would make. The whole bullshit about daedric artifacts and clavicus vile and umbriel and whatever was made up later
@@xiriusthesoulwatcher3955 adding new lore isn't the same as a retcon. A retcon is something new that contradicts something already established.
@@Gabranicus Retcon means retroactive continuity. Meaning to have written something later that alters something earlier in the chronology of the story itself. The concept of Umbra SIMPLY being a powerful warrior's sword was THE original. The whole point was that the sword was just a fucking sword. Changing it into some magical daedric prince shard of hypergod arcane chosen magic witch special destiny whateverthefuck is a de facto retcon. Changing it retroactively is a retcon. What difference does it make if you did it by adding or removing?
I don't know how old of a song "Ragnar the red" is supposed to be but it does mention old Rorikstead
Rorikstead could be destroyed and the new village could be built in simillar place
@@indrickboreale7381 true, that's a very common thing historically
It's theorized that the song is talking about Rorik's Steading, mentioned in "Holdings of Jarl Gjalund" which may have been changed over time to be known as Rorikstead, as it is mentioned in the Second Era "Atlas of Dragons" where it states the dragon Nahagliiv is buried west of Rorikstead.
The bards do call it OLD Rorikstead, after all. Though Nahagliiv is still west of the Rorikstead of the Fourth Era and the ghost of Ragnar the Red does travel from the current Rorikstead to Whiterun city.
Rorik, the founder of the modern Rorikstead, makes no mention of Rorik's Steading (AKA Old Rorikstead). It could be he had no idea that he founded his village over the ruins of a town of the same name. Also there's clearly some Daedra meddling going on, so I think he has other matters to worry about. Maybe it was a Daedric Prince that had him resettle the area.
Perhaps Rorik's ancient ancestor was the Rorik of Rorik's Steading.
@@walnzell9328 To be fair, it's bards. They could just call it old because they needed an extra syllable in a line for chosen meter.
What's cool is that you can actually find Ragnar the Red in the form of Skyrim's headless horseman.
I know a retcon that very few are aware of. In Arena, East and West are swapped in a few situations. If you take a quest from the ruler of a city, if they tell you to go east, you must go west- and if you look at the official strategy guide, one of the pages has a large statue with east and west swapped. If you look at the sunset, it sets in the east. I've asked Julian Lefay and he doesn't remember this.
@@pirate4460 I’ve heard about this one but wasn’t certain if it was true. Thank you for sharing!
Is that a retcon or a typo
That's not a retcon.
@@KahavaveCAPIPI They retcon east with west ya see?
A retcon is a change in lore. You don’t get retcons in a single game; that’s just an inconsistency because someone mixed up east and west.
It's worth noting that none of the Creation Club stuff are canon for the purposes of tallying retcons and inconsistencies. Bethesda treats CC in Skyrim & Fallout 4 (also the two non-canon Fallout games, BoS and Tactics) as partially canon; as in they are can be used for information when there is no conflict, but they are also allowed to violate canon and in that case they must be disregarded.
No shit
Fallout 4 does not need help from CC to break the Fallout lore.
@@pepeedge5601 Cry more
Bethesda won't admit this but my jiggle physics mod is canon
@@artur24able
You can't tell me what to do.
I am going to cry LESS.
Someone has probably mentioned this already, but in Skyrim there's an old man living in the mountains southeast of Ivarstead. He sends you on a quest that involves hunting various ghostly animals to prove your worth to Kyne. You can ask him about the Divines, and he basically goes on a boomer rant about how modern Nords are all milk drinking wusses who worship Imperial deities. So it's pretty safe to assume that the original Nordic pantheon had indeed been gradually replaced with an Imperial one, with only a few old timers remembering the old ways.
Lore inconsistencies in ingame books for me make the game world much more believable and immersive. If you have knowledge in history studies you would find that the real world "lore" inconsistencies can be much more bizarre and hard to understand without other evicences to back up on, as seem in the unearth of archeological artifacts proven or disproven historical claims, and much more.
When they are *intentional*, yes. I don't know enough to say which those are, but unintentional changes can't always be intuitively explained like that and sometimes hurt immersion. TES is generally too big for that to happen often, though. And despite really only playing the first three games in the last 5 years, I still think the writers are good enough that there probably are very few unintentional mistakes.
Too bad these original writers are mostly retired/elsewhere now...
You mean like when the publish dates of books are off by 2 eras and predate their authors birth?
Exactly, like in real life Herodotus says that Cyrus the Great conquered the Median Empire and subsumed their system/territories but no other sources actually mention a Median "Empire" at this time and the archaeological evidence doesn't support a Median "Empire" either. Meaning that Cyrus would have had to have conquered all that territory himself.
@@OCinneide Herodotus has been right about things that we doubted before... :^)
Exactly. Quick question do you think Romans really salted the earth at Carthage? Well turns out that information actually comes from a dodgy source.
the tongues didn’t really get retconned, the world has just changed a lot since they were described in Varieties of Faith in the Empire. The province of skyrim has undergone massive imperialization by the time the game takes place, and the old ways have largely died out. where there once were many tongues and wielders of the voice, there are now just the graybeards, a lone group of select few practitioners of the old ways. even them having to go gagged is still canon, the reason the graybeards aren’t physically gagged is because they’re far secluded from civilization. arngier is the only one you ever see speak, and he never shouts as he’s more of a speaker for the group, whereas the ones that shout are never seen speaking. the rare exceptions are when one will whisper to you “dohvakiin”, but even this whisper is accompanied by the mountain itself shaking.
Yes they have. Thu'um was nordic wind magic, not dragon language. The entire underpinning of the concept and the order has been replaced altogether
it's amazing how Skyrim imperialized in 200 years under the weakest of the Syrodil empires and yet under the Septims retained its identity. It's even more amazing that Skyrim doesn't see as many imperial rulers and other cultural elements, yet somehow it has imperialized in other matters
it's bs in any case. Skyrim is fun and all, but what they did with the lore was boring af. It should have been a massive place of mainly small tribal settlements, not "Cyrodiil with snow"
@@xiriusthesoulwatcher3955it is STILL wind magic. The Nords believe that Kyne, the embodiment of the wind who is viewed as the Nordic aspect of Kynareth, breathed onto the land at the Throat of the World to form them.[4] As such, the Nords believe that their voice and breath is their very essence, and that channeling this life essence is how the thu'um operates.
This is an official description of how Nords see thuum and it's very consistent with what we know in Skyrim and before.
@@rustamsafarli4909 Its speaking in dragon language now, and thats based on Akatosh, so no. And who gives a shit what the nords believe, given the objective information of what is actually in the game. Are we gonna argue Talos isnt a real divine because the high elves say he isnt? I mean its in the game and they believe it and so on
My theory with Rorik is that he just renamed the town, probably expanding and or rebuilding it in the process. So perhaps the town did really exist in some form much longer, but only as Rorikstead for a short time. Perhaps the town was destroyed or near abandoned at some point, then Rorik buys it for cheap because the land wasn't fertile. Which might be why it was abandoned. So Rorik ends up taking credit for founding the town, because most of the people who live there now either work for him, bought their land from him, or are his progeny.
It's theorized that the song is talking about Rorik's Steading, mentioned in "Holdings of Jarl Gjalund" which may have been changed over time to be known as Rorikstead, as it is mentioned in the Second Era "Atlas of Dragons" where it states the dragon Nahagliiv is buried west of Rorikstead.
The bards do call it OLD Rorikstead, after all. Though Nahagliiv is still west of the Rorikstead of the Fourth Era and the ghost of Ragnar the Red does travel from the current Rorikstead to Whiterun city.
Rorik, the founder of the modern Rorikstead, makes no mention of Rorik's Steading (AKA Old Rorikstead). It could be he had no idea that he founded his village over the ruins of a town of the same name. Also there's clearly some Daedra meddling going on, so I think he has other matters to worry about. Maybe it was a Daedric Prince that had him resettle the area.
Perhaps Rorik's ancient ancestor was the Rorik of Rorik's Steading.
@@walnzell9328 i think it's funnier if rorik is just a common nord name that's never gone out of style, so the entire story is just that two completely unrelated dudes started a farming community in the same general area millennia apart and named it after themselves, and they just so happened to have the exact same name
like, just imagine if "rorikstead" was basically the nordic equivalent to something like "johntown"
That's a lot of mental gymnastics
Im more curious what Skyrim would've looked like with Morrowind's "lets be weird and original" ethos. As it stands the game is pretty generic in what creatures are in the wilderness as far as fantasy goes. No weird two-limbed reptile mounts living around giant mushrooms, you know what I mean?
The College of Winterhold would have been conjured out of ice by the mages a la Superman's Fortress of Solitude.
@@danielmcelhatton1724 shit, why NOT do that
So much cooler
Oblivion has some concepts for what it would look like if it followed morrowinds worldbuilding style.
iirc Kirkbride made a joke about Todd watching LOTR and opting to make Cyrodill a generic fantasy realm instead.
@@ibrahimalee23 i think it was a todd issue (bad, bland taste, wanting to maximize mainstream appeal) but also probably a budget issue, some of the shit they describe would be more difficult to map out and design, and make look cool, i guess
I don't think we should take Creation Club content as a canon lore piece. Therefore Tools of the Kagnrenac and Umbra isn't a retcon
By making them part of their “anniversary edition” aka making all their paid mods available for a good price they opened the bottle.
@@clickbaitable6320I personally agree with this reasoning. Creation Club content isn't canon, but all of the Anniversary Edition content that's from Creator Club is, in practice, in the "base game" now.
Keening was in the base game though
It SHOULDN'T be canon. But it's in the game now. Just like Dragonborn dlc.
The fact that they suck and break lore just cant be reconciled
Iirc they’re canon but less canon then the games, if there’s an inconsistency between them and the games, the games take priority
25:06 this isnt necessarily a recon, this is the explanation for the Drauger from the Skal, a Nordic culture group on Solstheim. Going from what is said about it in lore, the island wasnt always an island and only broke off during the time of the Dragon Cult when Valok the Jailer defeated Mirrak, which is how it is explained why their are drauger on the island
Edit: the worship of bears and wolves mentioned in other books about Skyrim can also be explained by the beliefs of the Skal, who hold them in high regard in their religion
Froki still worships some animals
also, the nordic gods are associated with animals (the ones found in the "hall of stories" in every ruin) with Tsun having the bear, Kyne the hawk, etc
Dragur was 1000% a retcon.
@@ProphetTruth95 Draugr* And as a Scandinavian, I can tell you that Skyrim's depiction is truer to Norse mythology/folklore where draugr were a form of revenant rising to haunt it's own burial mound and guard it from graverobbers, while Morrowind's drift closer to concepts like the Wendigo, it's only vaguely draugr-related theme being that some stories depict draugr as having a ravenous hunger (but not inherently cannibalistic).
@@The_Real_Mr_Alyou can talk to a draugur in morrowind who willing became one to secure his family tomb
As a kid playing Oblivion, I loved the landscape design they crafted in that game. Later, when I was older and read the lore of past games, I never found myself caring too much whether it was a jungle or not. They really made those high fantasy landscapes with love and care and they took me to a whole new world that I never got to experience before. Was it alien? No. Was it foreign? No. Was it cool? Yeah. Was never even a big LOTR fan as a kid back then either so that was my first real experience having a fairy tale come to life, then getting to have a cool low res blood paint job over it when the Oblivion Gates open was the icing on the cake for me becoming an Elder Scrolls fan.
I think it's kind of funny that when I first played Skyrim I missed the bright colors of Oblivion's forests a lot. The gritty realism and greyscale of some landscapes never caught my imagination as much as Oblivion did. So no wonder Morrowind players, starting up Oblivion for the first time, were completely caught off guard by how "normal" feeling of an Elder Scrolls game it was. "Alien" and "Foreign" fantasy was Elder Scrolls appeal for all of Morrowind's lifespan. And high-Tolkien fantasy was Elder Scrolls appeal for all of Oblivion's lifespan. Makes you wonder what Elder Scrolls 6 art design will be like.
But god were the fucking face models awful... such a jarring and weird creative decision.
Personally for me, I love how each province have different themes and aesthetics, Morrowind being more Alien, Oblivion being more like Rome/Medieval, and Skyrim being Nordic/Viking, you can tell they did a ton of research into these cultures too, most Imperial names are based off of Rome/Medieval era names, and Nords are based off of Nordic names, they definitely put a ton of effort into making each land different instead of every land being the same, it would've been more interesting if all of Tamriel was "Alien like", but I think if we're dealing with different cultures here, it's better for different provinces to have their own "uniqueness".
Unfortunately, ES6 is probably going to be realistic and even more generic looking, going by the trashfire that is Starfield.
@@smergthedargon8974 i mean, that depends on where it's going to take place, if it's High Rock, then it's definitely going to be more High Fantasy and have generic themes, but if it's Hammerfell, it's going to have desert, pirates, and a more Arabic-like culture, plus a ton of other things that are in Hammerfell, also I don't think Bethesda goes for realism.
@@it2spooky4me79 You say that, but after Starfield I'm sure they'll be doing everything in their power to sand anything interesting off.
@@smergthedargon8974 how come?
To be fair, ESO is set during the Interregnum, a time where not much is known, explaining why most of it isn't mentioned in later games, as the events are lost to history.
Shut up, ESO isn’t canon. Cope somewhere else nerd, to be fair.
That doesn’t excuse all the lore breaks, especially with cyrodil being a forest instead of a jungle
Also after Daggerfall the whole world got wiped and replaced changing the course of events , meaning that the world of Arena, ESO and Daggefall are on a no longer existed world
Why play it then? If nothing you do impacts the future games what’s the point? For fun I suppose but I wish games remembered your past in previous games like if you were evil, mischievous or a benevolent godlike warrior priest. Like Witcher games where you can import some of that past data. It’s far more interesting than what we’ve gotten since Morrowind.
@@clickbaitable6320chim exists so all possible events from previous games are cannon. Just not in the specific dimension youre in. But factoring in all the things players can do into future games would bloat develooment into ungodly large projects. Just look at mass effect and how bloated that is despite being pretty linear.
On the Mara/Nord connection, she was established to be a Nordic deity all the way back in Morrowind, so Alga might have been taking issue with the Imperial style of worship and marriage (Mara is seen by the Nords as Kyne's handmaiden instead of the true mother of men), although I find it odd that she calls Honmund her live-in partner instead of her husband, but perhaps that's down to them being unable to be legally recognized as a married couple in the traditional Nord fashion
Glad my man found his password back (jk jk). Looking forward to watching this on the train soon, im sure its going to be a banger. Welcome back!
Good to be back :)
Omg it’s a crossover
Got retconed by a dragon break? You may be eligible for financial compensation!
Keep in mind that in the main quest of Oblivion, you give a Daedric artifact to Martin so he can use it in the ritual to open the gate to Paradise, and he says that doing this will destroy the artifact. And yet, most of the artifacts you can use in this questline also appear in Skyrim. So there's clearly some precedent that destroying a Daedric artifact doesn't mean it's gone forever. Martin even says something like "We won't be seeing it's like for many years" when you give it to him, implying that they do come back eventually.
umbra also disappears in a flash of light, thats very non specific so it may not have been destroyed at all but banished similar to dagons defeat in (insert all the times hes been defeated here)
I remember one theory that the ring of Khajiti or whatever is the one canonically picked just because it didn’t show up in Skyrim
@@Hello-lf1xs You could say the same thing about Goldbrand though. Or Umbra.
Coming from WoW; I can definitely say that TES' retcons are not nearly as bad as they could be.
Truuuue
Go on say how bad it could be
After Shadowlands, WoW will forever hold the crown for worst retcons ever 😂
Only Warcraft 3 is canon to me, WoW doesn't exist.
@@aldiascholarofthefirstsin1051 So much of WoW lore is well written and interesting. It's fine if you want to throw it all out because they made some horrible decisions, but I still see the unique and cool world that was built from years of adding onto it.
Great list ceedot! The "Jungle Cyrodiil" recon always bugged me, from what has been shown off in various showcases, Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil seems to be bringing back some of that biome; so I cant wait to see how it turns out!
Same here!
personally ive always been of the opinion that "inconsistency" can be relatively easily explained away by changing climates, seeing as jungle cyrodiil and oblivion cyrodiil are set centuries apart from eachother. i dont think a jungle would make for a more interesting setting than regular generic forests though.
Starfall Bay is the smaller bay that branches off of the Illiac Bay and is where Sentinel sits.
While the Volkihars are diffrent in the Dawngaurd DLC. A theory I've heard is that there is a secondary group we encounter in the base game. In Falkreath after you do a couple quest for the former Yarl he'll inform you of a rather dire situation.
Apparently one of his ancestors was a vampire who was sealed in his grave, but recently grave robbers robbed said grave and reawakened him. Now he's fled to his castle in the mountains and you'll need to go slay the vampire and his brood.
Some theorize thus could be another group of Volkihar especially since this Vampire Brood more closely resembles the description of the Volkihar, although this group is located in the mountains not a frozen lake.
Here's one: what race was Tiber Septim? Lore is back and forth about him being a Nord or a Breton, but Oblivion and Morrowind have his avatars as imperials. And Skyrim hammers it hard that he was a Nord. Which was he?
Almost everything says Nord (including the new Castles game), the Breton thing comes from an out of lore book that calls him a manmer. Unless you're referring to the possiblity he's from Alcaire, which still refers to him as "Hjalti", a Nordic name.
He was a Nord by ethnicity, a Breton by citizenship and an Imperial by choice.
The inconsistency is intentional, but the general consensus is that in his original timeline he was a Nord raised in High Rock, in the new timeline he made he was Atmoran, and he might have fiddled at one point with trying to make himself a descendant Reman but that probably didn't take and was effectively limited to propaganda. Its possible that his original timeline had him be partially Breton, so if he had a Nord father and Breton mother he would have been ethnically Breton but potentially thought of himself as a Nord.
@@normanfury8259 I don’t think the castle game is canon just like shelter wasn’t
a man
21:40 I'm pretty sure Skyrim still says the Thu'um was taught to non-Dragonborn mortals by Kyne.
Yes, on one of the memorial on a way to High Hrothgar
@@primarchvulkan4013 Don't the Greybeards also say it?
@@ChrissieBear can't remember them saying something about that, but i can definitely remember that being written on one of the memorials
A lot of these, like lizard men disappearing, Skyrim changing, and maybe even the biome and description in Cyrodil changing can be potentially chalked up to the passage of time between games.
Would be cool to see a couple of mods providing lore and explanations for retcons in the respective games. Well researched mate
I think the interesting part about the map location inconsistencies between each game, is that with the passage of time between each game, it's almost identical to how real life places have their locations drift through time. Some towns, especially the larger ones in Europe that grow to encompass what was once outlying villages, have some of their older named villages pushed even further out than where they historically were.
Thank god our history isn't like that
🤔🤔🤔
Or is it????????
Lmao
@@it2spooky4me79 wait...OH NO!!
Considering how little of our history humanity has properly recorded (or what we've yet to rediscovered or reinterpret in different ways), It very well could be for all we know.
You don't _have_ to wear Wraithguard, you just need enough HP to not die immediately. Fortify Health and Recover Health potions work fine for this.
And, powers of enchanted items have consistently changed (or mostly lessened) over the years and between games, both in and out of universe, so I guess diminishing power of the items could justify it.
It's also worth noting that Arniel is surprised that the player is alive whilst handling the improperly stored Keening, it even still gives you a "mortal wound" when you equip it prior to completing the quest. Though the debuff is rather mundane. So unless it has simply been weakened (perhaps a consequence to it being used on the Heart), it could otherwise be assumed that the Dragonborn simply resists its effects at a natural level (for some reason).
@@trainershade1937 And then Arniel ends up wielding Keening in his experiment, with no apparent regard for what he just said about it. It could be that he had some sort of defense against the mortal wound ready to handle using it, but I think maybe the mortal wound was connected to the Heart of Lorkhan, so a good 200ish years after it was severed from the Mundus might've weakened its effects in general.
@@trainershade1937 and in unmodded skyrim the enchantment is just completely broken, so probably did weaken lol
I have always thought that back in Morrowind a better design decision for them would be that wraithguard protects you only when applying tools to the Heart and it is only then you insta die of it because of the immense power flowing through them in the process. Killing the holder just at nowhere never made sense to me. Though of course it is mostl likely devs were trying to prevent player from getting items too early and not spoil the main quest like for example selling them to some trader and then forgetting which one. But there were more clever workarounds than that to invent, tamriel rebuilt devs have shown how insanely creative one can be with tools provided by elder scrolls 3 engine.
True but it’s just that they never mention changes to the items so it’s still not canon to say it just lost most of its power. It’s a reference item that doesn’t function the same as it once did so it’s just another thing with the same coat of paint.
For the lizardmen, head cannon for the Fandom usually goes those guys are just wild born "histless" Argonans.
Since they made retconns canon, this is just a normal lore video 😂
I just want to point out that people have been calling foul on ESO because of its retcons but the developers have been retconning the games since Daggerfall.
The problem between main entries and ESO is, the maingames didnt retcon for retcon's sake in most cases (the ends of Daggerfall with the Dragonbreak are a big exception). ESO retcons simply for the purpose of luring in fans of the series with iconic locations and items.
This is why most players are fine with retcons of main entries, but calling out ESO for simply bad lore and worldbuilding.
@@Randleray Didn't retcon for retcon's sake? Someone hasn't played Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim, whose retcons are far more glaring than anything ESO has done.
@@colovianhastur5962 Someone literally stopped reading after 5 words into my comment.
Just because they’ve broken lore b4 doesn’t mean you should be ok with them continuing to do it. The fact that they’ve done it so much means they should try extra hard to do better.
Also ESO started development in like 2007. Way before Skyrim. So I think it's likely that some things will be inconsistant just because of that.
Great video, I really don't mind ESO's inconsistencies. I hope ES6 brings back some of the more mythic qualities of the lore
Same. I can't even care for ESO's inconsistencies and lore due to not even being into MMO's but I can hope that ES6, where ever it is set can have some nice mythic aspect to its lore.
I HOPE you are right, but I expect just more loading screens than Skyrim in Space.
One thing to note is that names change over time in real life. So the river and bay examples could be that way. That said in most fantasy they don’t usually care about this so probably still a retcon
TES would be the series to care about that though. The world building is obsessive like that.
you DO see the tongues though! 3 of the greybeards shake the entire world by merely whipsering dovahkiin, otherwise they only greet you with hand movement
Apparently the next ESO expansion is suppose to address the difference between how the Imperial Province is described in Arena and how it actually looks in Oblivion. Sounds like we may actually experience Jungle Cyrodil
Skakmat may be a nickname. It's the Danish word for checkmate, so you could imagine it's actually just in reference to him being the ultimate weapon to decide a battle
theres also a lot of mythical precedent irl for the importance of names and power they can hold, pair this with dragon language stuff and taking a dragons name and forcing a new one on them could be a way of controlling them even changing their nature
No doubt a fun addition from Mr. Lefay :-)
There are so many inconsistencies that they literally wrote in a mechanism to canonically retcon anything and everything. Dragon breaks. They’ve outright stated that every Elder scrolls game occurs during a dragon break, thus allowing every choice to be canon simultaneously.
I can just imagine both groups of assassins hiring the thieves guild to steal and replace history books with a version that gives them credit for the kill.
I'm imagining a scenario where one member overhears a townsfolk claiming the other group got the credit‚ deeply sighs‚ then hires the guild to swap the books (again).
Speaking of Nordic Pantheon, before Skyrim, Alduin was just the Nordic equivalent to Akatosh, and not an entirely separate entity.
And Shor was the most important deity alongside Kyne, until they downplayed both of them and made Talos more important in Skyrim
i mean arena was a game not intended to become something like this... it was planned out to be an early hack and slash game in an arena, but the developers went a bit overboard and it became much more than that. it wasnt intended to become an franchise it wasnt intended to become "lore" so arena is something you can basically forget. world building started to become more of a thing in daggerfall, they even employed "lore writers" to get it going.
again arena was supposed to be a one time thing
So, books aren't supposed to be 100% correct. They're perspectives and theories from authors living in the world. Not histories written by the developers.
Yep, this dude completely missed the point of Elder Scrolls lore. This video is plain stupid and dead wrong.
This doesn’t apply to a quarter of the retcons he mentioned.
@@icefarrow7959The point of Elder Scrolls lore is to posit that someone made up random terms for the elves in Daggerfall? Or that the Nine Isles of the Imperial City were One this whole time?
I think you misunderstand the point of the lore, are dead wrong, and plain of mind.
@@icefarrow7959 The ESO bits are clear inconsistencies. Developers make mistakes and sometimes parts of lore need to be sacrificed to make expansions to the worldbuilding.
It doesn't apply to all, but there's more. The names of the elves could have been regional for the time, the 9 islands could have been a misunderstanding for the districts of the city. Then there's more like how he calls the dragon break a retcon, when it's clear there's a God of Timelines and it makes perfect sense. Or when he references Cyrodil being a jungle, yet the lore reason for deforestation makes sense and has ties to the previous game i.e. Chim.
Martin mentions in Oblivion that Daedric artefacts will eventually reform if destroyed, so I don't see Umbra as an issue. The Ring of Khajiit alternating between Mephala (in Morrowind) and Meridia (in Daggerfall and Oblivion) is a weird inconsistency though.
I don't think we should be considering creation club content as cannon to begin with.
@@goatslayer3160 i think we can regard it as "canon until something more official contradicts it"
19:45 To quote Michael Kirkbride: "Then Todd Howard watched Lord of the Rings, and mistakes were made."
To this day I'm convinced the only reason Oblivion and Cyoriil was generic fantasty rather than the Tropical rainforest it had been spoken as in past games was down to Todd Howard really being into Lord of the rings and just being all "Make it like the films"
It was literally that. They wanted to appeal to a broad audience and they preferred to sell their soul instead of keeping their identity until they reached the top (kinda like from software)
Yet the only person to say this is butthurt Kirkbride. And the only, 'lore' about Cyrodiil being a jungle came from a game no one's played, Redguard. Yet every Youchoob cultist tells you it's fact, (like it even matters). People just rinse and repeat. Oblivion looks like the more Imperial areas of Morrowind, that's it, and the story was set up in it to. The More You Know, eh.
@@reviewbridge3400 false, it was a jungle ever since Daggerfall, in the "pocket guide to the empire", I believe. Kirkbride just gave some artwork to the company for a fourth game set on Somerset isles and then on Cyrodiil, until the project became Oblivion. I don't understand why you criticise Kirkbride over absolutely nothing
Erm the Elder Scrolls has magic and Talos or Reman did a magic thing and made it temperate instead of tropical.
@@anonymousanon6913 pffffff not only it was never stated that such magic exists, there is also no reference to this in the games. Plus, it's an overall dumb and pointless retcon
5:00 a war between the nords and House Redoran is mentioned in oblivion, heard it recently from two NPCs talking to one another
first video ive seen by you, was expecting tens of thousands of subscribers, but saw only 2k??? you need more attention
PELINAL FANS ASSEMBLE
(The best Cyrodiil Retcon Explanation Theory)
One hundred six hundred and ten, two hundred six hundred and ten, three hundred six hundred and ten
I think all these inconsistencies is why i love the lore so much. There isnt always a straightforward answer, and theres conflicting tales from different sources- it feels very realistic, in a way. This video was really enjoyable to watch, and made me think about how they could fit into the lore in a fun way
When you base your lore off of Philosophical Wiritngs, Medieval Propaganda, and the Monomyth, things tend to be inconsistent.
Almost nothing is original, but it is woven together beautifully.
It's very hard to come up with ideas that haven't already been used in some other kind of fantasy. Might as well go all out and just steal, then make the original part how all these concepts intersect.
@@plebisMaximus The age of Novelty has come to an end.
Also, "Steal" is not an applicable word in this context. All ideas are propagations of the first idea.
To retell a story is not to steal, nor is the focus intersections.
It is all perspective shifting. Perhaps the rebels were the tyrants or the Fall was a flight. Either way. The story ends the same. The Mushroom wins.
which SPECIFIC "philisophical writings" and medival propaganda you think inspired TES? (lol) It isn't based on "the Monomyth". The lore in Elder Scrolls is originally simply based on this thing called "DnD". Later it also decided to ape the film version of Lord of the Rings (oblivion) and Game of Thrones (skyrim)
only morrowind has any real originality and literary merit in it's lore.
@@fakename4642 No. Reductionist.
Uncharacteristically of Bethesda, I think the worst lore changes weren't from the most recent mainline game (Skyrim) but the one before that (Oblivion). Skyrim's main content mostly adds to and enhances the world, except for maybe making the Nords too mundane compared to some of the more flowery old books. Oblivion on the other hand retconned a whole province and sanded _a lot_ of the edges and weirdness from Morrowind and back off the series.
But then you have Shivering Isles, which is all the more weird.
Yeah, but I still can't forgive the massive retcon on dragon blood and Bethesda showing dragonborns everywhere and putting this whole "Dragon Cult Slave Kingdom" period. It's just so bad imo.
@@Knoloaify idk what you mean by that, I don't really think that was a retcon, since the Dragonborn is a gift from Akatosh, it's not really a retcon, Miraak being the First Dragonborn is the only retcon that revolves around Dragonborns.
So anyone can be a Dragonborn, because it's up to Akatosh if he wants to make them one, and by the time Skyrim happens, YOU are the last one.
@@it2spooky4me79 It's a retcon because it retroactively turned key figures into Dragonborns and completely changed the understanding of having "dragon blood" (which used to simply mean being of Imperial lineage).
@@Knoloaify ehhhh, idk, even in Oblivion Mancar forced himself to have Dragon Blood, it doesn't just mean that you need a lineage, because even different rulers who weren't related to the lineage had Dragon blood.
21:54 actually the tongues do exist in Skyrim to at least some extent, as the graybeards. All but one of them are incapable of speaking without causing destruction and stay selectively mute as a result
All this video proves to me is that the Elder Scrolls has never been consistent for more than one game
Basically
Same. For some reason, I was under the impression that Arena to Morrowind was consistent with Oblivion being the big upset. But looking at the comments‚ it seems like the fandom is grappling with whether or not Morrowind's version is better‚ cause whenever it comes down to lore inconsistencies it comes back Morrowind and Kirkbride.
This did a great job putting me back to sleep in the middle of the night so I'm watching it again today to actually pay attention to it
Great video. I know people in the Elder Scrolls community like to overuse the unreliable narrator for inconsistencies.
"The Warp in the West" did some weird 'Timey Whimey" Things which may explain The disappearance of the lesser deities from Elder Scrolls 2. It's kind of a shame they don't rework "The Lessers" into different champions of divinity representing the 9 Devine.
my favorite way to look at inconsistencies like this is that the information written in the lore is whats known to be true at the time it was written, hence why later sources have the changes, yeah its obv an inconsistency, but looking at it like that makes it more paletable imo
24:20 Funnily enough, the book "Immortal Blood" also exists in Skyrim, where it says the very same thing.
Tamriel's lore spans so long that someone could make a really cool skyrim mod that explains all the retcons/inconsistencies as revisionist history by whomever was ruling at the time. Put in "first editions" of books that were changed. Some NPCs that are considered crack-pots but know Daggerfall era knowledge.
Ah but you see,
Dragon Break
tru
I like the lore expansion for "The Lusty Argonian Maid" so much. Its actually pretty frickin close to how old folk tales, fairytales and such actually come about. Sorta like Romeo and Juliet, which was a old folktale long before Shakespeare turned it into a play.
22:45 i mean the Bear in Skyrim represents Tsun, so that makes complete sense, with Tsun being such a specifically Nordic deity. The wolf represents Mara which makes less sense but also, who doesn't want some love? It doesn't make the most sense on its own but if you consider the book almost definitely wasn't written by a Nord and as such lacked a lot of the nuance of Skyrim's mythology, it makes more sense that they'd just point to animals and say "isn't it weird that they worship beasts?" without considering that they represent the more commonly known gods
The Elderscrolls, the franchise where each New installment there is a retcon that changes everything
It’s not that surprising considering each installment is so far between. After many years, revisiting the world, all the writers have changed.
I actually have a fair point to make on the CC(Creation Club) content. It's all *technically* not canon. It's just modded content that you pay for that only exists in the way it does to pay modders for, y'know, modding. I believe that was the original intent when they tested it on Skyrim(and then spread it to FO4, and whatever other games). It's sort of like all the masks you can get in Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, the Majora's Mask in BOTW isn't canon! lol.
A lot of the other stuff seems to be debatable, but I think it's a mix of two things: Unreliable narrator logic and slight tweaking of lore and details as each game goes on.
I think logistically it made sense for the entire lore for Cyrodiil to be more of a "western europe/american" wooded area biome. I don't know enough about Highrock to say if it would fit that biome as I believe per its name its much more hilly? They already had a jungle-like environment with Black Marsh, Elsweyr, and Valenwood. I think Valenwood is supposed to be more of a forested wilderness and Black Marsh is a swampy area(although that is not mutually exclusive from jungles). Elsweyr I believe is explained as being very deserty but also having jungles or something similar. I think they had to flesh out Cyrodiil as being more unique, especially with the added lore at some point that *technically* the only native human races to Tamriel are the Bretons and the Imperials.
Ebonarm seems to just be an 'aspect' or 'reincarnation' of the Yokudan equivalent of Talos, but I believe this part of the lore is very confusing and ambiguous for obvious reasons. Imperial Knowledge has a video detailing each race of Tamriel's version of Talos for example. For the longest time I thought Ebonarm was supposed to be a tale of a legendary warrior who just happened to wield the Ebony Blade.
There's also a bit more lore that has been developed over time that goes into the possible details around the overall culture and history of the Redguard. It includes the Yokudan/Redguard's own unique magic(Sword singing I think is what it is?) and their own mysterious/ambiguous history as one of the races that came from a completely different continent/land mass. Similarly to the lack of details around Atmorra. It is entirely possible that Ebonarm is just a manifestation of a god(HoonDing I guess is the Redguard's head god). Funnily enough the UESP wiki(always a dubious source of information) says that he is an enemy to all daedric princes(barring sheo/jygg) and the Temple of Stendarr, so unless that changed at some point I doubt the Divines are fighting amongst themselves lol.
Races changing over time was most likely due to a change in lore and an attempt to make each race stand out more(ironic with the Khajiit and Argonians). It can be explained away with the face that they have had plenty of long dead races(such as the sea elves, and the sun elves or whoever the redguard fought with). There's a possibility that varieties of Khajiit and Argonians existed but were integrated into the overall population and were indistinguishable unless you knew more about the local diversity.
Honestly, I think a series as big and ambitious as The Elder Scrolls, they really have a lot to cover and it's no surprise that some stuff leaks through the cracks that is a very shoddily built lore(although the shoddiness comes from them not explaining anything not directly related to the quests and story you engage with / being vague so they don't over explain things that then have to be changed or expanded on later). They have offloaded a lot of the lore building for older eras off to ESO. I haven't personally played it yet(I have it but the time to install it is insane, too long of a wait for a mediocre experience I hear) but I am not sure if it has been worth it.
Sithis is treated less like a Death God and more like an Annihilation of some kind. More an absence of life and reality than a specific entity.
Which makes its relationship to the Night Mother more interesting.
Thrilled at your success lately, king!
means a lot coming from you, thank you!
"Why's your wife not with you?" - "She's in bed with laryngitis." - "Oh, is that Argonian bastard back in town?"
-a joke book in Daggerfall
The Morag Tong/Dark Brotherhood inconsistency is actually handled in game as historians not have enough actual sources and being mistaken by the sources that they do have
The volkahar bit could just be explained as the author relying on folklore/second hand stories for the book. It wasn't uncommon for pre-modern authors of nonfiction work to rely on questionable and/or embellished second hand sources in our own world. I don't see why this couldn't be the case here.
"One of the most amazing and detailed universes out there" only until the next game
Skakmat is a familiar, so hes just a thrall, a magical creation that resembles a dragon, not a real dragon
I love the detail put into this video! I’d love to see a video highlighting some of the lore consistencies or reoccurrences between the games!
As far as the nords worshipping bears and wolves in solstheim it’s pertinent info to mention that hircine is very powerful in this region at the time.
23:57 Volkihar exists in the ESO DLC for Greymoor (Western Skyrim). In the Blackreach-ish area you can get a side quest from a woman who mentions this family among others. While the family is big enough to get a mention, it is not the focus of her or her mission that she has you undertake. Still, its inclusion indicates that it existed in some form throughout all of the playable timeline.
For the worse: Any time they change something that has to do with dragons
Also Kirkbride HATES Ebonarm for some reason. Of course it's well known that he feels a more intimate connection to some of his characters than an author ordinarily would; He based Tiber Septim's appearamce in the PGE on himself, for example, and we all know how he feels about Vivec. Both are supposed to have been mortals who attained godhood through CHIM, and Ebonarm, possibly the early lore basis of Reman (another favourite of Kirkbride's), was supposed to be a mortal ascended to godhood. One has to wonder what he thinks about the lore as it stands on Ar'kay and Mannimarco, with Mannimarco literally becoming a tenth Divine (cosmologically speaking) orbiting Arkay.
@@ΣτέφανοςΔημόπουλος-η7τ I know, that's why I said I wonder what he thinks about Ar'kay (how Mannimarco writes Arkay, and by which name Arkay is identified as a mortal ascended to godhood; As Arkay he is a Divine in the Imperial pantheon and therefore traditionally an Aedra/Aedroth, and as Xarxes he was a mortal, now deceased, elven ancestor spirit, but as Ar'kay with the apostrophe, from which Alessia's Arkay presumably came, he was Xarxes as a merchant ascended to godhood) AND Mannimarco (who was directly inspired by Ar'kay and considered him a personal rival and enemy- which in the context of a thousands-of-years-old wizard who has seen most of history makes perfect sense, as to shorter-lived mortals Arkay's order is to stop monstrous undead beings from preying on mortals and disincentivize murder, but from Mannimarco's perspective Arkay is first and foremost a god of death and killing, and the opposition to necromancy stems from the fact that it is the victory of a kind of life over death).
@@ΣτέφανοςΔημόπουλος-η7τ That part is pretty simple. Most of the ways to become a god assume a new god being made (eg Mannimarco was not replacing or becoming a part of an existing god), including the other one which gets talked about a lot, which is CHIM (which is just Buddhahood or Nirvana in a world where Buddha and the word Buddha never existed). Incarnation and Mantling both rely on an existing entity, and result in replacing or becoming a part of that entity.
In the case of incarnation, one is imbued with the spirit of the previous entity by divine will- If that entity has perished, one replaces them, and if that entity has not perished, one becomes a part of them. With the et'Ada that's actually a little vague because both can be true at the same time (eg Lorkhan is dead but also still alive, and the Shezarrine are parts of him, but also Talos replaced him- But Talos is complicated because he was actually 3 people prior to apotheosis, Hjalti, Zurin Arctus and Wulfharth, and used several ways at once to become a deity).
In the case of mantling, one inherits the "mantle" (powers and responsibilities) of a resigning entity, as when Elisha inherited the mantle of Elijah, all that remained when the latter was taken away to the Kingdom of God. Elisha was Elijah's student, but showed no proclivity toward performing miracles; After acquiring the mantle (a type of short cloak), he was able to perform the same miracles as the prophet Elijah, because he became the prophet. We use the same idiom in modern English- eg "When his father retired, the blacksmith's son took up his mantle and manned the forge."
As for specifics of the ritual involved in TES, Shivering Isles is a detailed look into all the steps involved- The CoC submits himself to Sheogorath, reenacts events from the previous mantle-bearer's life (because it is also revealed that the previous Sheogorath was not the original, but a person presumably from House Sul who took up the mantle, Arden Sul), is chosen as his heir, acquires an important symbol of office (the Staff of Sheogorath), and then witnesses the predecessor's demise, becoming Sheogorath thereafter. In Skyrim we see that the CoC is still Sheogorath, and we see that he resembles his predecessor to a high degree with some subtle differences hinting at his slightly different nature (eg his eyes are blind instead of mismatched), and he retains memories of his life as the CoC (mentioning his experiences with Martin Septim), but speaks of them as though he were always Sheogorath. I feel like beyond understanding the cultural reference of the term "mantle" this should answer any other questions one may have about the lore concept.
I find that the town names between games isn’t an inconsistency or retcon, because 800 years pass between Arena and Morrowind and places go through name changes depending on who rules and landscapes change, especially over a period of 800 years
I heard that they made oblivion mostly planes and hills because they were limited by the hardware and they already had to restart the xbox mid loading screen sometimes because it would crash otherwise. So they just opted to change it to spare the hardware and increase the render distance
While there are some things that change so significantly over the series, they can't be really anything other than retcons, but i actually like the conflicting accounts to an extent: That people's view of history and culture changes over time and from different sets of biases, just as happens in the real world.
The idea that Crassius Curio took the folk tale of The Lusty Argonian Maid, wrote it down, then claimed it as his own is absolutely vindicated though history. Most of Shakespeare's stuff just the first time that particular story was written down and wasn't new to him. Nearly any (older) Disney movie is just a classic folktale with an animation budget.
Cities appearing, disappearing and reappearing through thousands of years is realistic in my opinion. Even today only a few really big cities are more than 200-300 years. old.
Historically cities have also collapsed or "disappeared" fairly often. If there was a legendary city that then vanished and later popped up again it would probably be because the new settlers wanted their new city to have a historical legacy behind it.
Regarding Rorikstead perhaps the books you read from the distant past that mention it are modern reprints with Rorikstead being added as a modern location the reader could use to get a better understanding of location. So "X is located Y miles from Rorikstead" instead of "X is located Y miles from the Z Forest" or "X is located Y miles from [Settlement that was once located near the location of modern Rorikstead but no longer exists]".
The "inconsistancy" with the Bal-Mora and "Stone Forest" isnt an inconsistancy. Balmora MEANS "Stone Forest" in Dunmer. Bal being stone, and mora being forest.
So basically Todd makes it up as he goes and it just works? Sounds about right.
"Two moons for sugar" for khajit is 🔥
Good video. I've always wanted to make TES lore videos but You, Imperial Knowledge, Master Neloth ( and Recently Boreal Knight) already make such good videos that I don't see the need for me to do it. listening to this while I cook my fried rice.
The dragon cult isn't an inconsistency. They said in the game that most people thought the dragons were a myth. And there are people who are so powerful with their shouts that they can't talk. 3 of the Grey Beards.
I’m exactly like that, in that any time i talk, everyone around me rolls their eyes or palms their face. Because i have this incredible power, i rarely open my mouth. It’s better for all those poor mortals.
Great video! I wish Cyrodiil matched its original description
I can say one thing for sure - about books. If there were no problems with copyright and other things like that, Bethesda could add absolutely any book to the game. And at the same time, this would be considered completely legitimate and canonical. Even if it is LotR or HP. All because Hermeus Mora who can bring any price of knowledge, and some time-dimenton traveled books in the world.
The creation club content is technically not canon so umbra technically still isn’t in Skyrim
As for Keening, my head canon is it’s just the Dragonborn being so powerful to be able to use it
I don't know much about ES lore, so it kinda feels likei'm watching an ancient history youtube video. It's rad as hell
22:00 We DO see this in Skyrim. They aren't called "tongues" though, they're the Greybeards!
In Arena it was mentioned that Uriel had a daughter called Ariela Septim
Don't take Arena as a 100% canon game, only its main mission is canon, everything else is not canon.
@@l0y3lg45 I mean yeah but this entire video is about retcons and had a section about Uriel's heir that aren't cannon anymore
I like this because if you have your own head cannon, then it’s completely as legit as someone else’s head cannon
Daggerfall got changed hard due to budget and technology, there was supposed to be an active war and dragons. it's still good af though. It's def the most ambitious one.
Almost all the games have been changed in some way or form due to limitations in technology from what was intended.
In Morrowind, the cantons of Vivec were supposed to be open and sprawling, with even more interconnectedness between the areas. That had to be cut down drastically for the tech at the time to handle the game.
The same story plays out with the Imperial City in Oblivion. I don't know how majestic it was supposed to be exactly, but iirc it did get cut back to be less grandiose and golden in order to have it be playable.
No idea on Skyrim, that I've heard of.
@@ChronoSquare Skyrim's Civil War was supposed to be more "grand", but due to limitations and it overshadowing the Main Quest, they had to cut a lot of it out and shorten it, would've probably been one of the best "Factions" Questline in Elder Scrolls history, but sadly, we got a half baked one, story wise and decision wise, it's really good writing, but gameplay wise, VERY lackluster.
This is a really excellent, exhaustively-researched breakdown! The inconsistencies are definitely worth discussing, but I also think their existence adds flavor to the canon. Because what is canon, really? Fantasy stories are generally recorded/recounted by the protagonist (unreliable narrator) or the victors of some conflict (culturally/racially biased). Travelers and explorers can be counted on to exaggerate and embellish their stories. Info gleaned from in-game books would be prone to errors, because I assume the books were copied by scribes, who are potentially (inevitably?) fallible... We never saw a printing press in Tamriel, right? Anyhow, thanks for taking us down this rabbit hole. It was a very fun ride :)
For rorrikstear it could be referencing current rorrickstead as a location rather then inferring that's what it's called at the time
As for tiber spetims sacrifice, conjourers summon daedra all the time so clearly it banished the daedra involved in the oblivion crisis
this series is decades old and has had hundreds of people working on it probably not just the same two guys writing everything. I hope people are not actually butthurt over these inconsistencies and just find this video interesting like i do.
Cyrodil not being forest and the descriptions of it are easy to explain even without Tiber causing a dragon break that changed it. 1st references to the inhabitants of the area likely refer to the Needes before Ayelid enslavement, where they were somewhat of a primitive tribal people similar to how the Forsworn are pertrayed in Skyrim. 2nd the Imperial City being the only city in the province is likely due to it being the largest city built by the Ayelids as for the appearance given the Ayelid ruines are underground perhaps at one point there were underground portions of the Imperial City that were lost to time, think of Markarth in Skyrim. 3rd the forest is gone due to deforestation by the Needes and their descendants after the Slave Rebellion when the Human population began building all the cities we see. Basically it all boils down to a natural evolution of culture in society that is reflected in our own history. As far as books written after these things happend, we call those history books. Oh and remember almost all refrences to Cyrodil prior to the games stem from Topal the Pilot who charted Tamriel during the Merethic Era ie prior to the Slave Rebellion and possibly prior to the Ayelids claiming Cyrodil. He describes the area as being inhabited by preliterate Birdmen, which could possibly be Needes dawning feathers as there are no other mentions of Birdmen in the entirety of Elder Scrolls or again similar to the Forsworn it could be a reference to Hagravens as the leaders of the local Needes.
I think Daggerfall was when the development and writing team realised they had something special, a real believable world that people truly wanted to ROLE play in. After that it was just a matter of tweaking some lamer parts of the world's history, making it more unique to the Elder Scrolls, and processing that vision of an expansive explorable Tamriel. Really cool.