Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2165692-20140425203121/@comment-24590102-20140825022313

Harold Burned-Mane wrote: Lore = Reality

Gameplay (Mechanics and Design) = In-game reality

Reality =/= In-game reality

The reason why the player can see while wearing the helmet is the same reason why the Moth Priest can walk around Fort Dawnguard while being blind and wearing a piece of cloth over his, now useless, eyes. The Moth Priest is blind, he clearly states that he is, yet if you attack him he fights just like a normal person would. This is because the game was never designed to take into account a person's ability to see or not during combat, much like for the Falmer. They are blind yet they don't act blind because of the game's limitations, not because they want to trick people into thinking they are blind. That is completely stupid speculation.

Also that effect is from Morrowind, and in no way appears in Skyrim. You can't state that because you aren't blinded like you could be in Morrowind as an argument for being able to see through the helmet. Those two games have different mechanics. It would be like saying that a person couldn't use a spell and a weapon, one in each hand, before Skyrim...and such that skill must only have been learned by the population of Tamriel during the 4th Era. That is absurd. These are different game mechanics that only appear in certain games, they don't influence anything lore wise in the other games. Unless Bethesda wants to explain why they removed or added a certain game mechanic, like levitation from Morrowind. They explained that it was outlawed by the Mages Guild so people wouldn't keep asking. "Why can't I use levitation?! I could use it in the last game!"

It doesn't matter if gameplay =/= lore creates immersion breaking, because it is impossible to make a game that is 100% immersive. The developers have to decide what they want or don't want to add to the game, and sometimes that breaks immersion. Like for example how weapons and armor don't degrade in Skyrim. Does that mean that during the 4th Era they found a way to make indestructible weapons and armor? No, it is just a game mechanic that they didn't add for some reason. It doesn't mean that now everything is indestructible. This is immersion breaking, yes, but that doesn't mean that gameplay =/= lore is wrong. In reality, those weapons and armor would degrade and break down, like they did in Oblivion and Morrowind. A few points

1. A question: If "lore = reality", where is Chicken Little?

2. Nobody said that "reality =/= In-game reality". What was, and is still, maintained is that: game-mechanics = in-game reality

3. The game mechanics in question were never removed and can still be accessed via the Creation Kit

The rest of what I have to say has already been explained. The onus is on the author to write clearly and uambiguously and this is more so in the case of game developers having to work with game mechanics instead of against them to communicate something other than nonsense.

Invoking game-engine limitations, by way of explanation, is no different to arguing that Tolkien's mithril was the product of limitations to Tolkien's literacy (e.g. a spelling mistake).

Game-engine limitations = game-grammar; Period , full stop, bring out la Prima Donna and fiddle till she bursts into song!