Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-10197675-20130806142227/@comment-24590102-20140403124200

I tend to think that it's the developers' story and, what makes it interesting is that it does not unfold as I would tell it, but takes a path of its own which I don't anticipate. The high degree of flexibility in the game-lore (via the device of superstitious writings, academic suppositions, and outright mysteries) does much to preserve the surprises yielded up by next chapter.

Most successful modern authors/producers/developers (the ones who consistently get repeat business) do so because they keep the storyline consistent enough to be followed by existing fans while moving onto new ground without disappointing expectation by corrupting the established genre of the work. For example, had Dirty Harry reported for duty on the Starship Voyager, this might not have gone down so well. Likewise, we would not expect Greg House, Patrick Jane, Sherlock Holmes, Horatio Cane, Yoda, King Peter or Greg Mandel to invade the next installments of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. It's not the gimmick factor which wold be deadly to the product. It's the, "This is not what I paid for" factor which would potentially kill the product. That's why Tamriel is technologically stagnant. It's about remaining true to the genre throughout the series and this is, possibly, one of the things which would make bringing the Dwemer back difficult to execute effectively - especially if the technology they brought with them tended to alter the genre by becoming ubiquitous (which is one way to preserve game-balance without breaking immersion).

The flip side of this coin is immersion. Even fantasy is subject to limitations as to how far an author/producer/developer can expect to stretch audience imagination and get away with it. Seeing an NPC still conscious and functioning after being shot 26 times consecutively in the head is the sort of thing which might work in terms of "balance" but it just ruins the experience because we all know that it just can't possibly work that way. Even in the magical world of Skyrim, we still have a viable system of gravity, arrows are shot rather than swung, swords are swung and not shot from bows and, even magic must pay homage to some semblance of ballistics instead of the style of destruction magic delivery used by the Arch-vile. And there is, as shown in this thread, great expectation among the players that the parts of the story connect with oneanother in a way which makes sense. So, returning to the example of George R. R. Martin's upcoming volumes of Song of Ice and Fire, I think that we could say that King John the Oathbreaker, King Henry II the Pirate and King Richard the Thief ("Lionheart") would probably fit right in as far as conserving genre goes - but there is another slight difficulty with including such characters, no? A Song of Ice and Fire takes place, entirely, on another world. The three characters I just mentioned are Medieval kings who, although being of well-earned ill repute, have never been known to leave Planet Earth during their lives. So, there are two basic requirements which I think must be met if the continuation of any work of fiction is to be successful: Mod authors, for example, can do quite well when introducing characters and races from other works of fiction in similar enough genre (e.g. the Drow, Viconia DeVir based on a race and lore drawn from the Forgotten Realms world portrayed by R.A. Salvatore) via common mechanisms. Both worlds, for example, experience dimensional ruptures and rifts (which would include Dragon Breaks) and these mechanisms readily allow the flow of elements between different worlds which share such mechanisms. [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28941/? Viconi DeVir]'s arrival in Tamriel just happened to coincide with the appearance of Mithril artefacts on Nirn where Mirthril™ is not a naturally occurring resource on Nirn. This happy coincidence just happened to close a great gaping hole in the lore by drawing attention to a mechanism by which something from Middle Earth (namely, Mirthril™) could just happen to find its way onto Nirn; namely, the same way as [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28941/? Viconia DeVir] did. And, simpler still, Forgotten Realms has its own Mithril so, maybe, it's that one.
 * 1) Conservation of genre
 * 2) Conservation of immersion

So, that's why I think that conservation of immersion and conservation of genre are important. I would also go as far as to say that technologcal advancement can be part of genre if it is exhibited either within every episode/release or consistently from one episode/release to another beginning with the transition between first and second episodes. Given that this hasn't really taken place in TES, it may not work so well in future releases. However, it's the developer's story and we can only live in hope that they keep up the good work.