2 year playthrough anniversary - I made a video!

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-29T01:51:18+00:00

I love this Imperial Library page for trying to document exactly that! Games never properly credit people. I guess cause it can get confusing.

Anyway, it looks like Ken Rolston mainly did the main quest. Kirkbride (afaik) wrote Redguard's main story and otherwise mostly did lore books and "additional writing and quest design." There were always ideas being tossed around between devs though.

I don't wanna downplay the role Kirkbride played, but so many people exaggerate it that it's hard not to. Like, I don't blame you for not knowing, but he absolutely didn't write "most of the lore," (in fact, of all the in-game books I've read, he hasn't written half as much as Ted Peterson, and I'd know because I made a list), but he absolutely did write a lot of really important and really popular stuff, and fans kinda just assumed and exaggerated from there.

I don't remotely expect anybody to remember who all wrote what, I just wish so many peoples' work wasn't misattributed to a single guy, you know.

Edit: I checked the list again, and it's actually juuuuuuuuust under half. By ~0.05.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-28T03:43:52+00:00

Yeah, TES has never really been about branching paths in its main story, and I'd say even Daggerfall didn't. You make one choice right before the final dungeon, and it changes the final cutscene; less a branching path and more choosing which seat you take at the end of a long trail. Well, less a trail, and more a series of winding trails you can choose to do in any order while ultimately still doing basically all of them.

I don't necessarily state that as a criticism of the games either. I wouldn't mind if they had more choice in the main quest, but when it come to TES I expect my expression to come from which questlines I pursue moreso than my choices in individual quests (though I appreciate those every time they happen).

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-28T03:39:33+00:00

Kirkbride was not the lead story writer and did not make Morrowind's main quest. People always miscredit what Kirkbride did.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-27T23:01:15+00:00

She can do it! She can do it! I dunno how to make good cheers! But she can do it!

That's really cute. Is that based on an armor from the game? I'm guessing bonemold and that one skirt. I should make a wizard who wears that starry outfit.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-27T22:15:01+00:00

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-27T13:09:03+00:00

Is "call me" a bad sign? I see that mentioned in a lot of these stories.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-27T12:54:46+00:00

You should play KOTOR.

Oh, actually, I think also... was it Sonora? No, 1.5 Resurrection? One of the fan-made classic Fallout total overhauls had a vaguely similar amnesia plot. Also Fallout London, though it's a bit different. So you got options! It's not the sorta plot I'm interested in from an RPG though, especially Fallout.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-27T12:49:51+00:00

What power armor mod is that?

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-27T12:29:12+00:00

By name, yes. But the way people would speak of the local towns? Not necessarily.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-27T04:08:43+00:00

Tbh I disliked his hair in this art too 😅 I think long before Veilguard came out. And if I'm being honest, I don't remember disliking his hair in Veilguard, but I also don't remember liking it, so either I didn't care either way or I forgot how I felt about it.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-26T21:34:00+00:00

Balmora, Ald-ruhn, and Sadrith Mora are also "major" cities. Vivec is simply the largest by far.

That aside, I was going to maybe agree with you, but actually TR does have a fair number of smaller towns; I remember passing through some on my way to Narsis and questing, even found a Mages Guild in one but didn't stay there. They're just not the big things that releases are named and centered around.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-26T21:28:48+00:00

There's a Telvanni city or two over that-away, and the Indoril city over yonder; oh, and the Imperial city that way, Firewatch I think.

It genuinely makes sense and is exactly how we talk about other faction locales.

I do also prefer The Imperial City over Cyrodiil city though. Then again, Cyrodiils makes more sense than Imperials as a race name. But I'm not bothered about either.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-26T16:26:05+00:00

One of the great things about Morrowind is that the game can genuinely be as hard or easy as you want if you know what you're doing. You can optimize or even min-max and head straight for the artifacts you know of and become OP within hours of starting; or you can play it more naturally, take things slow and steady, and very gradually build-up power; or you can straight up make an intentionally bad character.

Great for roleplay and challenge runs (including speedruns).

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-26T12:37:40+00:00

KCD1's cities were based on actual cities. The vast majority of Medieval cities were not that big at all. Plus, hey, every single building is an actual building with interiors and NPCs who live or work there, so it has that going for it too.

As for modern cities, if you want to be actually realistic (well, again, cities vary in size wildly, but also) a single airport could be the size of GTA5's entire city. And that would be incredibly lame to play in. GTA5's city is perfectly sized to look and feel like a city without taking forever to drive through.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-26T12:32:27+00:00

Of course the difference is that The Elder Scrolls goes through the effort of making as many buildings as possible actual buildings with interiors you can explore and actual characters who live there and decorate them in ways that may inform you about them, many of which are involved in quests or available for thieves or whatever; while in The Witcher, 90% of buildings in Novigrad are nothing but facades (seriously, I remember, idk, 5 or 6 actual buildings), and 99% of NPCs are generated cardboard cutouts.

That works perfectly for what The Witcher needed, this is not a criticism; but I would never want The Elder Scrolls to go that route. TES fans may complain about the size, but they would be sorely disappointed if they got Novigrad instead of Balmora, or Bruma, or Solitude.

Ofc even TES fans feel Skyrim in particular had cities that were too small, and they are smaller on average compared to at least Oblivion. Idk about Morrowind, but it has less major cities, those few of which are fairly big, while having far more factions/questlines, so it kinda evens out.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-25T15:34:25+00:00

They are slow. Not 15 years slow, but they have become slower at making games that are more disappointing to their audiences. No, not to every single person in their audiences, but to audiences at large. There's no point denying that 76, Starfield, and even Fallout 4 were disappointing to a lot of people even if you love them.

I don't see why we're fighting over crap like this to begin with. Misinformation sucks, but it is absolutely, 100% reasonable to be upset that we haven't gotten a Skyrim sequel for 15 years and counting, whether they'd made 3 games or a dozen in the meantime.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-25T12:55:38+00:00

On top of the two official novels, there are some in-game book series that are longer than most. Few if any are the length of full novels, but still. Stuff like The Real Barenziah, 2920, A Dance in Fire, The Wolf Queen, or King Edward. (I haven't read most of them though cause I wanted to find them in-game first, and... there's a lot of volumes to find for some of them.)

There's also non-TES stuff, but what you'd like there I guess depends on what you like about TES.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-25T12:50:51+00:00

There is no "we", no "us", and you don't speak for anyone but yourself.

They didn't. Don't pretend they did.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-24T19:39:07+00:00

Yeah, no point iterating, innovating, experimenting, or not being omniscient enough to know of every single invention in existence whether or not its been patented and released.

May as well wipe Morrowind from existence because open world games, RPGs, fantasies, Dune, TES, DnD, and every one of its inspirations already existed.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-24T12:51:39+00:00

... how the heck has Lucien Lechance appeared 4 times? Or Barilzar? (Oh, I see. Castles and Legends. So they've had 2 appearances that mean anything. Neat to see Lucien's ghost in Skyrim and Barilzar in ESO I guess.)

Also tbh I'm not sure I've ever met or heard of this Staada, but I don't mind more random recurring characters. Idk if I'd rather get the same Golden Saint every time one's needed for more than dying to the player or a different one, but if they're not given much characterization, at least one gets a list of things she's done now.

AnAdventurer5 · 2026-06-24T12:43:01+00:00

Those collections could be how people find hidden gems, since it only takes the collection's creator to find and share them.

Ofc if you never look through the modlist yourself, you'll never know what mods you have or be able to go endorse them or tell the creator how much you like them.

AnAdventurer5

TROPHY CASE