Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2165692-20140425203121/@comment-24590102-20140826064453

Kadilkhajiit wrote: The Falmer are blind.There are blind people who play video games and ride skateboards and bikes,blind people are not nearly as helpless as people think.

The dragonborn can see out his helmet for the same reason armor no longer degrades even though Oblivion and Morrowind show they could have easily added that mechanic,because it was annoying feature they felt ruined the game play.Saying that this proves the falmer aren't blind is like saying the fact that you don't see diseases like the flu or other airborne diseases,means they don't exist in Tamriel.It's like saying in Tamriel clothes can't get wet because yours don't in game,it's ridiculous. Gameplay =/= Lore.

This is pure supposition whereas taking the gameplay for what it is is not supposition but fact. Moreover, this entirely neglects the fact that TES is as much mystery genre as it is medievalist fantasy genre. Moreover, it is utterly ludicrous and absurd to even suggest the existence of a world, imaginary or otherwise, where all book and lore statements are true in the context of that world. That would be infinitely less believable than a world with no consistent laws of motion.

Lore =/= Reality - this is fact as we all know that there is no Easter Bunny in reality yet Easter Bunny exists in the lore attached to real life. This creates a very nice little set of mysteries when set in a fantasy world because we have to discover for ourselves, if we can, which lore entities are real and which are in-game red-herrings which are added to spice things up and make the game so much more interesting than some empty-headed hack and slash grind - like certain other games I know of.

For example, compare and contrast:

The Alduin-Akatosh Dichotomy and Alduin is Real and he ain't Akatosh

They can't possibly both be true, in the context of the game, can they? Moreover, this is a very real and very obviously deliberate attempt, on the part of Bethsoft, to communicate the fact that In-Game Lore =/= In-Game Reality and, by extension, Gameplay = In-Game Reality. After all, gameplay is the only way to decide the matter. Moreover, the defining aspect of problems in the mystery genre is that misleading and erroneous assertions are a vital part of lore and can only be revealed for what they are through the observation of conflicting elements of the reality presented (i.e. by conflicting elements of gameplay in the case of TES).

TES is not just medievalist fantasy genre. TES is also mystery genre as well which dictates that some parts of lore must be false and decided by gameplay, else there be no mystery to investigate.