Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2165692-20140425203121/@comment-24590102-20140826101645

1. I never said that you only play TES for hacking and slashing. I was expressing how I felt about this trend to assume all users are idiots and "dumb down" software so that the users can supposedly figure out what they've been doing all along. This why I think the whole "Lore=Reality" fantasy idea is beyond the pale, even for a fantasy. The whole idea of "dumbing down" the game to the point where one can believe anything about the game which is presented as "lore" or "canon" is objectionable and offensive to me because that would show the developer underestimated the users and thought it necessary to obviate the kind of critical thinking which typifies the necessary openness of role-play.

Moreover, if the lore is so accurate that it obviates playing the game, then there is no point playing if you've "read the book". Conversely, if you have the game for the sake of playing, then there is no point reading up on the lore if it's going to correspond precisely with everything you experience in the game. In this case, the lore becomes a waste of time because it adds no diversity to the experience of gameplay. But if the lore is not always true, and the mysteries are not always spoon fed, then it adds to the game and makes it more interesting because, by observing the in-game environment you can make inferences about the accuracy of specific elements of game-lore - which means that you can role-play exploration to the point of discovery - which is the point of exploration and exploration is the point of role-playing games.

2. Being able to see out of the Falmer helmet is in-game reality. The supposition that maybe someone got this wrong is superfluous and has nothing to do with in-game reality. By the way, they took away Hardcore Mode which was introduced Fallout: New Vegas. The modding community brought Hardcore Mode back and the popularity of [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/187943/? Chesko's] mod, [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11163/? Frostfall], is proof that playing hardcore is not considered "stupid" or some sort of obstacle to gameplay. People have also been asking for mods which bring back armour and weapon decay and I think especially tailored Khajiit and Argonian armours and the inability of Khajiit and Argonians to wear other armours would make a mod that is very popular among those who play as Khajiit or Argonians.

3. About the bow thing, being legally blind is not blindness in most cases. If you cannot see out of one eye but have perfect vision in the other you are still legally blind because legal blindness is a measure of how much vision loss prevents other people from being willing to take the chance that you can drive a vehicle safely. If you have severe enough colour-blindness you are considered legally blind - but will colour-blindness prevent you from finding and aiming at your target? If you have visual impairment shown in Boots of Blinding Speed (which is one way things can appear when cataracts are severe enough), you are legally blind - but in this case you can see more than enough to hit a target once you understand the defect in vision. It's just there's a very obvious reason why nobody would want you driving a vehicle. I mean, you see the two semi trailers coming at you but which one is the real thing?

Being blind, on the other hand, means to be "unable to see" (i.e. no vision at all) and does not mean being able to see enough to obviate a cane when walking or hit a silent target with an arrow or read a web page without a Braille-reader. And being able to hit a target, blindfolded, in a precisely known position on a fixed target range (a popular parlour trick) is not even remotely comparable with hitting a target of no fixed position on broken ground.

I'll admit the possibility that the Falmer are legally blind but I think you'll find that legal blindness is strictly modern concept which may be a little out of place in a medieval setting - given the lack of motor vehicles.

And I've already explained the distinction between the Falmer "blindness" ability and the blindness magic archetype used in all other blind NPCs. The difference clearly shows, via NPC behaviour, that the Falmer are faking blindness because, as s70 pointed out, the Falmer have no trouble staying locked on a target once acquired. They only have "trouble" in initially finding their target, after which their "blindness" is no longer an obstacle. This is a characteristic of faking blindness until it is convenient to take the advantage - at which point the blindness disappears. The question which the story of Falmer blindness raises, in this context, is why go to the trouble to cook up a whole new behaviour unless you are trying to communicate something else? Also, the faking of blindness behaviour fits better with the Falmer deceptive and predatory history than any kind of idea that they are poor blind victims of deception. If they are blind, why sneak out in broad daylight and attack passers-by who clearly have the advantage in terms of vision?

Taking a closer look at things in the Creation Kit, the base magic effect abBlind propagates into both the abFalmer ability at 80% intensity and MS04Blindness at 100% intensity - which confirms that two different types of "blindness" have been set up; total blindness for some NPCs and not so total Blindness for Falmer. There are two ways this can be read. Either the 80% has been tweaked to gain exacly the desired effect (indicating that the Falmer are intended to behave as if they are faking blindness) or someone has accidentally let the cat in and the cat has created all this mess walking over the keyboard and, oups, Houston, we have this most amazingly historically-consistant bug. Again, why go to all the trouble of setting up a special type of blindness for the Falmer? I mean, if it's balance we want to achieve then just add more Falmer, higher level Falmer or, better still, more chaurus.

But it's still only a checkbox dictating in-game usability of the Falmer Helmet; If the Falmer Helmet is checked as "Playable" it can only be because there is something to be seen by trying the helmet on and that can either be:

1. an effect which removes player vision when the player puts the helmet - in the event the helmet was designed for a user that can't see

or

2. no alteration of vision - which indicates that the helmet can be used by a sighted actor, such as the player, and could not have been designed for blind actors.

Remember:

It's a checkbox which could have been more easily left unchecked in the event that the Falmer really were intended to be blind.