Board Thread:Online Discussion/@comment-109.78.74.133-20140222001044/@comment-13446185-20140622034708

Dark Jeto wrote:

It's obvious that this is just used to cover up the fact that they made a mistake. Just as the Dragon Break was made to allow all endings in Daggerfall to have happened all at once. It would be easier to accept had it been more properly planned, if it didn't have all the signs of retcon sickness. I can understand making mistakes when writing stories, and keeping it consistent with previous lore. But it is better to accept mistakes when they are made and simply move on, then try to pretend that there was never a mistake to begin with. You don't see the Fallout trying to use some kind of Dragon Break argument for any of its games. They just pick the endings that they want to work with and go with it.

Except these retcons have helped create genuinely interesting lore-concepts that make TES stand out from just about every other fantasy-based story. I honestly may have never gotten interested in TES lore if it weren't for the intriguing ideas behind Talos, Dragon Breaks, and CHIM.

In my opinion, "Word of God" retconning is the bane of lore-continuity, I mean how the hell are you supposed to take a story seriously when you get told "No that never happened, we changed that". While you see Bethesda as taking the cowards way out, I see them as actually putting some effort into keeping the games own credibility and showing that Bethesda actually takes their lore seriously.

I don't know about you but I'll happily take CHIM and Dragon Breaks anyday over Zenimax saying "sorry, no jungles for you".