DarkBeckyhood
Member
So ever since I posted my thoughts in the Elder Scrolls 6 (VI): Where will it take place? thread, I've been stuck thinking about how Bethesda will consolidate the happenings of Skyrim in the rest of the series - especially the civil war.
And then I remembered the in-game books, 'The Warp in the West' and 'Where Were You When the Dragon Broke?'. For those who don't know, in TES II: Daggerfall, there were something like six possible endings, and rather than pick one of them as canon when making TES III: Morrowind, Bethesda decided to make all of them canon. They introduced the concept of a Dragon Break to explain this, which is a period of 'un-time' wherein multiple parallel timelines co-exist (the 'Dragon' representing Akatosh, who is associated with time). The people of Tamriel remember different, mutually-exclusive versions of history, all of which happened simultaneously, and even the passage of time itself is suspect and unreliable. Eventually, the Dragon Break ends and the timelines merge back together again, leaving a muddled period of history and a very confused population.
I thought that this was an ingenious, fourth-wall-mutating way of handling it. Oblivion didn't need this kind of treatment, as it didn't really have much in the way of decision-making (at least not in the main quest), but in Skyrim we have the civil war to consider. So my... not really a question, but a talking point I suppose... is, do you think that the next game in the series will have to deal with another Dragon Break? A 'Warp in the North'? Do you think that would be a good way to handle the unresolved threads of Skyrim, or do you think they should look at another means of settling the issue? I do hope they don't gloss over it, though.
My other talking point is a bit more 'out there'. A while ago (and it references the above points quite a lot) I read a series of articles that dealt with the 'metaphysics' of TES. The part I loved the most was the third, which delved into some of Vivec's (of TES III fame) lore and suggested that he was fully aware that he was a character in a video game. It also pointed out that every other Dragon Break in history, with the exception of the one caused by the Hero of Daggerfall (unless the following is true), was caused by someone who ultimately became a god of some kind or another - Tiber Septim, for example. It went on to argue that because of the way Vivec described his own godhood, that the players too, in the universe of TES, were themselves a kind of god because they had access to things like savegames, the Creation Kit, etc, and that Dragon Breaks might actually be caused by players doing things like reloading savegames and pursuing multiple paths. By this logic, Vivec's own powers had actually come from realising that he was in an imaginary world in a similar way without going insane, which granted him access to the same mechanics as the player, even if he described them in terms of TES terminology that he understood. If they do handle Skyrim's branching storyline as a Dragon Break, I wonder if the Last Dragonborn will similarly ascend? I'm not sure if Bethesda has the writing chops to wrangle with existential topics like this any more, though, unfortunately.
Anyway, this is more of a topic of discussion than a question, and a way for me to think out loud I suppose! What are your thoughts? I find it all fascinating!
P.s. I'm sorry if creating a new thread isn't appropriate, but I felt that this was separate from the stickied topic about where the next game will be set.
And then I remembered the in-game books, 'The Warp in the West' and 'Where Were You When the Dragon Broke?'. For those who don't know, in TES II: Daggerfall, there were something like six possible endings, and rather than pick one of them as canon when making TES III: Morrowind, Bethesda decided to make all of them canon. They introduced the concept of a Dragon Break to explain this, which is a period of 'un-time' wherein multiple parallel timelines co-exist (the 'Dragon' representing Akatosh, who is associated with time). The people of Tamriel remember different, mutually-exclusive versions of history, all of which happened simultaneously, and even the passage of time itself is suspect and unreliable. Eventually, the Dragon Break ends and the timelines merge back together again, leaving a muddled period of history and a very confused population.
I thought that this was an ingenious, fourth-wall-mutating way of handling it. Oblivion didn't need this kind of treatment, as it didn't really have much in the way of decision-making (at least not in the main quest), but in Skyrim we have the civil war to consider. So my... not really a question, but a talking point I suppose... is, do you think that the next game in the series will have to deal with another Dragon Break? A 'Warp in the North'? Do you think that would be a good way to handle the unresolved threads of Skyrim, or do you think they should look at another means of settling the issue? I do hope they don't gloss over it, though.
My other talking point is a bit more 'out there'. A while ago (and it references the above points quite a lot) I read a series of articles that dealt with the 'metaphysics' of TES. The part I loved the most was the third, which delved into some of Vivec's (of TES III fame) lore and suggested that he was fully aware that he was a character in a video game. It also pointed out that every other Dragon Break in history, with the exception of the one caused by the Hero of Daggerfall (unless the following is true), was caused by someone who ultimately became a god of some kind or another - Tiber Septim, for example. It went on to argue that because of the way Vivec described his own godhood, that the players too, in the universe of TES, were themselves a kind of god because they had access to things like savegames, the Creation Kit, etc, and that Dragon Breaks might actually be caused by players doing things like reloading savegames and pursuing multiple paths. By this logic, Vivec's own powers had actually come from realising that he was in an imaginary world in a similar way without going insane, which granted him access to the same mechanics as the player, even if he described them in terms of TES terminology that he understood. If they do handle Skyrim's branching storyline as a Dragon Break, I wonder if the Last Dragonborn will similarly ascend? I'm not sure if Bethesda has the writing chops to wrangle with existential topics like this any more, though, unfortunately.
Anyway, this is more of a topic of discussion than a question, and a way for me to think out loud I suppose! What are your thoughts? I find it all fascinating!
P.s. I'm sorry if creating a new thread isn't appropriate, but I felt that this was separate from the stickied topic about where the next game will be set.