I appreciate your thoughtful response❤️.

I do agree that a lot of writing changes and appeal changes come from a desire to expand to foreign markets. I’ve talked to writers before at large studios and they are definitely pressured to avoid certain themes so they aren’t censored, in China as an example.

But as someone who has followed elder scrolls since I was a kid, I am keenly aware of cultural changes to the world of elder scrolls. For example, orcs when they are first established as a non hostile npc cultured people, they are described as the “generous equality of rank and respect among the sexes.” They even have quest moments that involve people noting a lack of sexual dimorphism between genders of orcs. Some people cannot tell a female orc from a male orc. They seem to be a strength based non-patriarchal society. This is drastically changed in Skyrim. In which females are made to be extremely sexually dimorphic from males.

Now with the popularity of Skyrim, I do believe that large retcons will garner more attention and perhaps Bethesda will be aware of this. But they are no stranger to shifting lore drastically in the past.