I know Foul Murder is mostly taken for granted in fandom discourse, and I feel like this must have been theorized before by other people, but my headcanon (as an elaboration on the popular theory that messing with the Heart caused a dragon break or some similarly reality-distorting business) is that the Tribunal simultaneously experienced every possible reality surrounding the Battle of Red Mountain when they struck the Heart -- including realities where they did kill Nerevar, realities where they didn’t, and all possible variations on those circumstances.
The consequence is that whether or not they can definitively say that they killed Nerevar is both unclear and irrelevant, because they all experienced it both ways, they all know that they killed him more often than not (imo), and they all benefited from his death either way. Effectively, they are culpable for killing him, but the awareness that they both did and didn’t do it – whether they accept that guilt or choose to claim a reality where they didn’t kill him as their own – is something they all react to in their own ways.
It fits perfectly into Vivec’s obsession with duality. He both did and did not kill Nerevar. He would say this anyway. What fun it is to both deny guilt and freely admit to it. Sotha Sil recognizes that he killed Nerevar in most timelines and maintains that killing his friend was the right thing to do from a utilitarian standpoint, so the knowledge that in some timelines he didn’t do it provides him with no comfort or absolution. Almalexia’s perspective is way more complicated and dependent on how you interpret her relationship with Nerevar and her personality in general, which is (and probably will be) a whole other post.
You see this trope in other pieces of media where a character gets a glimpse of the multiverse and has to consider that their reality is exceptional and decide how other, worse realities reflect on them (Invincible realizing that he’s committed horrible atrocities in most other timelines; Dr Strange saying he’s seen billions of realities and the Avengers only beat Thanos in maybe one). But usually those characters are able to resolve their multiverse-related angst by choosing to take personal accountability for their own actions only, deciding that those alternate selves are not them.
In this headcanon, by contrast, the Tribunal post-apotheosis are an amalgam of every possible Tribunal that existed in the moment(s) when time broke due to interference with the Heart. It’s not that one thing is true in this timeline, and they must contend with how they acted differently in others – it’s more like one pre-Red Mountain timeline briefly split into several simultaneous realities before merging back together. And the Tribunal, having achieved apotheosis, retained their memories of every reality, unlike those who emerged each remembering one reality only.
This has probably all been said/theorized before, but that’s my thought process about why the Tribunal has internal confusion/conflict on the whole Foul Murder thing and not just an obvious external impetus to conceal their guilt.
I've been replaying the Clockwork City ESO content on the heels of a recent Morrowind playthrough, and I have lots of thoughts to share, but tonight I'm thinking really specifically about all the oil. Inordinately long post incoming.
This might seem like kind of a specific hangup, but the fact that almost all the naturally occurring liquid (so to speak) in ESO's Clockwork City is oil bothers me. Because obviously, Sotha Sil is isolated and out of touch. The tension between his compassion and utilitarianism; between his desire to protect the world and his being out of touch with the people who live in it; these things are central to his character, and in general I actually think ESO does a decent job portraying this. But I also think that sometimes the narrative drives home how out of touch and irresponsible he is in a way that loses sight of how he's still a fundamentally pragmatic and utilitarian character.
They portray this well through the general pattern of him leaving behind a trail of projects that his Apostles must struggle to maintain so the realm doesn't implode. It reflects his drive for innovation and his irresponsibility without undermining his utilitarianism or personal competence. The issues arise from him leaving his followers to struggle without guidance, and not from short-sighted, obvious flaws in the groundwork he lays for them.
They portray this way less well with the Halls of Regulation -- by having almost all of the water in the realm start out as oil that has to go through an extremely complicated filtering and refinement process before it can be remotely potable. Having a machine-regulated water cycle makes sense for the setting, but the oil... The ubiquity of oil/absence of water reads to me as a wildly impractical thing that Sotha Sil could have (and, imo, would have) avoided, because the extremely complicated operation and maintenance of the Halls of Regulation is a huge resource sink and an easily exploitable weakpoint that the survival of his realm depends on, at least as long as there are people in it.
And, of course, it begs the question: if he can create a pocket realm where there’s oil all over the place, what stopped him from including water? I could come up with some answers for that, and you could too, but it’s kind of beside the point. I think that the writing regarding the water/oil cycle leaned too far in the direction of critiquing the clunkiness of bureaucracy without considering how that would manifest specifically in the context of Sotha Sil.
Sotha Sil making all organic life dependent on the Halls of Regulation seems contrary to his mission, because, unlike Vivec keeping Baar Dau suspended over his city to make a point about how the people can’t live without his love, Sotha Sil seems more interested in creating something that can outlive him. I think a good explanation for this discrepancy (and everything else I've said) is simply that Sotha Sil's long-term plan was for the Halls of Regulation to eventually become obsolete due to all life in the Clockwork City being fabricated. It was never really meant to support organic life, which is why things like fresh food and water seem like afterthoughts.
The thing about this explanation that I find dissatisfying, though (aside from my personal opinion that Sotha Sil is a compassionate utilitarian who cares about his people in his own way), is that there IS a lot of water in the Clockwork City as depicted in Morrowind. I think the opposite progression – water in the second era and oil in the third – would make more sense, indicating that he started by creating something more hospitable to Tamrielic life and veered more and more in the direction of an entirely mechanical, self-sustaining world as he became increasingly out of touch and disillusioned. Of course, they weren’t planning for this when they were developing Tribunal in 2002, but I think it makes the lack of water in ESO less compelling because it makes me think the decision was less grounded in lore and existing material.
I have lots of other thoughts but this post is very long. I am interested in what other people think.
I recently played The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard for the first time, and I’ve had a lot of thoughts about it rattling around in my brain ever since, so I’m posting some of them here. The following post will contain some generic spoilers as I discuss the game’s narrative structure, but I’ll warn for things that spoil more specific/less predictable moments in the game as I go.
My main idea here is that the mechanics and narrative elements of Redguard are remarkably well-integrated and play off of each other in a way that I think truly and effectively makes use of the video game as a medium for storytelling. There is a great attention to detail given lovingly to each piece of the project, and the game encourages and requires thoughtful engagement with almost everything it contains. So while the story itself isn’t necessarily anything groundbreaking, the way that it’s crafted and told through the medium makes it deeply interesting and engaging.
The aforementioned integration of mechanical and narrative elements requires, for example, that you cannot advance the story and come to lead the revolution without thoroughly interacting with the community of Stros M’Kai and becoming a part of it. Cyrus starts out as a politically disinterested mercenary figure who hasn't been to Hammerfell in ages and has only come to Stros M’Kai for personal reasons. This is relevant to the mercenary-to-folk-hero character arc that’s laid out for him, and it’s also important on a meta level because it gives Cyrus a reason to ask people for the historical/political context that the player lacks. This is an immediately apparent case of mechanical and narrative integration.
But more importantly, transitioning from that politically disinterested figure to someone who ends up leading the charge against the Empire’s colonial puppet government is a process that requires Cyrus to personally talk to every named NPC on Stros M’Kai. And each of these NPCs has unique, voiced dialogue for and perspectives on every conversation topic, whether it’s something you can ask anyone about or something uniquely relevant to them. You have to be intimately acquainted with the community and become a bridge between its disparate parts before you can become its leader or convince anyone to join your rebellion. Interacting with NPCs and exploring your environment are necessary mechanics for unlocking new content, just like they are necessary actions to realistically achieve the growth Cyrus achieves throughout the game.
Combat mechanics and boss fights are also thoughtfully designed based on how Cyrus realistically could and would defeat each specific enemy as an unarmored, mortal man with a sword. Generally speaking, boss fights are usually hard because the boss has a bigger weapon & health bar than you and/or because there is some kind of trick/strategy you need to work out to defeat them, and Redguard does both of these to different extents and very thoughtfully depending on the enemy.
For example, [SPOILERS for the rest of this paragraph] it would make no sense if the N’Gasta boss fight was winnable by just stabbing him to death faster than he can kill you. If Cyrus could defeat N’Gasta with a plain sword, was N'Gasta ever that powerful or dangerous? It would diminish how formidable and untouchable N’Gasta is supposed to be and take away from the importance of this victory. It makes perfect sense that Cyrus could only defeat someone as powerful as N’Gasta by turning his own power against him, and that Cyrus would prioritize protecting himself with the flask of Lillandril over trying to rush in sword first, and that this would lead to him discovering that he can aim N’Gasta’s magic back at him. The mechanics complement the narrative and make the boss fight more interesting.
On the other hand [SPOILERS CONT. in this paragraph], the combat mechanics with Dram do take the bigger weapon/healthbar approach. However, it makes sense in this case, where the enemy is similar to Cyrus but has the advantage of, as Dram says, a couple hundred more years of training. Dram hits harder than other, less impressive sword-wielding enemies, and he also flees after being hit a few times. Again, this makes sense for his character. An assassin/stealth build like him would not risk serious injury and try to brute force a direct confrontation he was not 100% sure of winning, even if he's stronger than you and probably could. You don’t beat Dram by being inexplicably stronger than him, and Dram's own strength is not arbitrary – all the mechanics of the fight are clearly grounded in an understanding of each character.
The mechanics of fights with generic enemies (imperial guards, etc) also strike a nice balance between requiring real-time input from the player and demonstrating the swordfighting skills of Cyrus independently of you. The player has to think about when to strike and when to block – again, the best strategy is not to button mash – and the animations show Cyrus, who has skills distinct from those of the player controlling him, competently executing different moves.
Less along the lines of narrative/mechanical interwovenness, I also appreciate how hand-crafted everything is in general. There are a lot of puzzles in this game, for example, and while I am personally not someone who seeks out puzzle-based games, I love how every dungeon requires different types of problem-solving to move through each space. It prevents rote dungeon crawling patterns of running down a hallway, fighting something, running some more, fighting some more, picking up some loot, running some more… Again, this is achievable partly because it’s a smaller game, and I think there’s really something to be said for that given its overall cohesion.
In an interview before the release of Redguard, Todd Howard talked a lot about how the whole thing was supposed to be and feel hand-crafted; small but dense; meant to give players room to explore and discover even though it’s not an RPG like previous games. While Todd is often taken to task online for exaggerating game features, I actually think the developers successfully followed through on almost everything he said.
The mechanics of this game require enough peaceful interaction, problem solving, and violence to characterize Cyrus effectively and congruently with his dialogue. The game as a whole does a great job combining linear and open-world elements in the sense that you have to do certain things to advance the plot, which does not change based on player choices, but you can do those things in many orders and explore relatively freely as you do so. And all of it happens within the scope of a tiny island, a pre-existing character, and a relatively short in-universe timeframe.
I like this game a lot more now that I’m writing about it and not sitting at my laptop digging through the SAVEGAME folder trying to identify and fix corrupted files, but yeah! Good stuff and thoughtfully designed if not perfectly executed. I have many other thoughts on the messaging, its place as a bridge between Daggerfall and Morrowind, the fact that this was, iirc, the first Game where Todd was the project lead, the representation of Tiber Septim, the representation of different tes races, and more, but this post is long enough. If you read this far, I love you. Consensual, metaphorical, and largely up-to-interpretation kiss on the forehead.
wip: mask of Dagoth Ur. I haven’t made the extensions that go out around his face yet, but as things stand it’s fully wearable. More process details below, as per usual.
I made this by sculpting paper clay (shredded/soaked/blended paper towels, glue, and cornstarch) into shape & then adding thin strips of glue coated paper on top for a smoother finish. I cut the neck off an aluminum bottle to sculpt the chin around. I used an old plastic mask to support the clay while I sculpted & removed it once the clay was dry/the mask could exist on its own.
I had sculpted nostrils to begin with, but I had to drill actual breathing holes in there after the mask was dry. I then spray painted the whole thing gold, added some details with acrylic paint, and added black mesh behind the eye holes. Then I drilled holes in the sides of the mask through which I could thread the string or ribbon to be tied behind the wearer’s (my) head.
There are things I could have executed better, but I feel pretty good about the results so far given that it’s my first attempt at this medium.
I haven’t decided yet how I want to make and attach the rest of the mask (directly attach to mask? Make as a separate wearable piece?) but until then my incomplete Dagoth Ur is a new Face for the Face Wall in my bedroom.
One of my favorite things about Daggerfall is the sound that the skeletons make. A couple years ago I downloaded the sound file and edited it over itself several times so I could add it to my playlists :) thought I’d share
