Blades! (Patreon)

Just in case you don't follow me elsewhere, and for posterity's sake, I wanted to mention two things in relation to Elder Scrolls Blades: 

I finished transcribing the main quest for TIL. I've not actually finished playing it. Are spoilers a thing when your job is archiving information? 

Second, with the transcription complete, I wanted to write a bit about my feelings towards the game's lore. While I'm rather meh towards the general premise of the main quest, I think the game unfairly gets a bad rep for not having very much, or very interesting lore. I eventually want to talk about some of the specific cool things (including about the aforementioned main quest), but, for now, I just wanted to speak in generalities about what the game has to offer. Here's the text: 

The lore community, such as it is, places a lot of emphasis on “dank” -- mythological, gonzo, obscure -- lore. It’s not hard to understand why: “the entire world is the dream of a hallucinating god” or “the cat people have a moon colony that they reach by getting really high” are compelling elevator pitches. They make you want to know more, elicit the sorts of emotions that make you want to fight for or against them. But they’re not all there is to lore.

Blades is a victim of this mindset. It does not present us with any big questions or revelations regarding the nature of the universe, and while Sheogorath's dialog in it does have metaphysical implications, they're not right in your face. What it offers, instead, is mountains of subtler, more mundane lore and storytelling, nicely buffering the broad strokes "find mcmuffins*, defeat ancient evil" main quest.

By way of example: Urzoga Gra-Batul, the Bloodfall Queen, is the ruler of the small kingdom in which the game takes place. This is told plain text to us in the game. We can infer from this that Imperial authority, even with the borders of what we once considered Cyrodiil, is severely weakened. We're no longer one province with half a dozen counts all under the ultimate authority of Empire -- we're a land of many smaller kingdoms, at least one of which receives next to no Imperial aid or oversight. Bandits pose a serious threat to the government (rather than being a minor nuisance on the roads), as do goblins (which the Empire attempts to address by offering bounties to adventurers). Other dialog reveals to us that the situation has gotten worse since the Great War (Urzoga's grandfather had loyal soldiers, while she is forced to staff up with mercenaries and scare people into paying taxes). The Thalmor are free to do as they wish. All of this is important information, and can be used to extrapolate the potential political situations in places like Morrowind, the sovereignty of which has long been under debate.

We can also infer that despite yet another sack of Orsinium in the north, the Orsimer are still accepted as citizens in the Empire proper, and even allowed to rule over their own territories. Urgoza’s tenure as queen is also the first appearance of the egalitarian orcish society mentioned in TESIII but entirely absent from TESV and (more importantly) ESO.

Blades has other quests which build on what it’s like to live in Tamriel, such as goblin society and religion or people’s relationship to the Thalmor and the ban on Talos worship. It also has a hundred item descriptions with tidbits of lore and some really cool visual designs for armor and enemies. There’s plenty here to explore.

If anything, I wish we focused more on the political and social side of things. My favorite quest comes about midway through, and has you questioning all the citizens in town about who tattled to the Thalmor. There’s a lot of detail there in the characters’ relationships with each other and with their land. I would much rather learn about that than stop the world from ending again.

Also, the game has some seriously cool visual designs. Just look at this absolute badass: 

*at first typo, now intentional.