Arcanum and Morrowind are still unsurpassed

[skaraher]

That's actually a good thing since it makes the character more complex. If Vivec talked to you like a madman you could dismiss his books and legends as crazy ramblings, however since he looks articulate and down-to-earth it gives more weight to his backstory and power. Also reminds you how much of a mortal he is still and that despite accessing to godhood and unveiling the secrets of the universe he ends up weak and isolated. And that fits really well in the backstory of the Tribunal ego tripping and leading the dunmers astray from the daedras.

Of course, it is all good but probably tangential to the point that having him talk clearly to the player was needed gameplay-wise, since he gives instructions and lore and his dialogue entries are long enough to not have them obfuscated by crazy talk and weird hints at some books most players never read.

I never said the contrary, it's just that now on the community there is a tendency to put on a pedestal all of Kirkbride's rambling (even tho a lot of his works are of a less than stellar quality and some shit he pretty much made up with very flimsy regard to coherent worldbuilding) instead of considering what the characters actually are like in game. Morrowind strength is it's synergy between in-game experience, character dialogue and background lore. OTOH Oblivion was completly divorced, Kirkbride crackpot book in it (Mankar Camoran's commentaries) had little to no relevance as to what you experienced in game.

Some exemple of Kirkbride fuckup : Arbitrarly imposing his shtick of "main province area is a jungle with mesoamerican pyramid" even tho nothing in the first two games alluded to it, it wasn't thematical with the visual aesthetic the rest of the team was going for with the Empire in Redguard and Morrowind, and it evidently wasn't the artistical direction the head honchos wanted for latter game set in this place.

While as an isolated quirk it would have been "interesting" there isn't really any cause to it except that "subverting expectation" and creating "weird fantasy". But Imperials in Morrowind were Roman-influenced western europeau Knights in plate armor, with late middle age european architecture, and west european social structure. They never were a race of mysterious jungle dweller with an alien aura, there were always mean to be the recognizable, medieval point of view any player could put himself into to engage the actual alien culture of the game. Morrowind world functionned not because it was weird for the sake of being weird, but because of the balance between it's atypical worldbuilding, the coherence of the social architecture and the flow of the mundane interaction a character could live in this world. It was weird but it felt like a believable place.

 

[Demo.Graph]

and it evidently wasn't the artistical direction the head honchos wanted for latter game set in this place.

As (probably) we all know, Bethesda's vision for post-Morrowind games can be summed up as "pure decline".

it's atypical worldbuilding

 

[JarlFrank]

Arbitrarly imposing his shtick of "main province area is a jungle with mesoamerican pyramid" even tho nothing in the first two games alluded to it, it wasn't thematical with the visual aesthetic the rest of the team was going for with the Empire in Redguard and Morrowind, and it evidently wasn't the artistical direction the head honchos wanted for latter game set in this place.

But the lore books that describe Cyrodiil as a jungle don't speak of Mesoamerican pyramids.
The Imperial City in Morrowind-era lore, as written by Kirkbride (and others, it wasn't his solo effort), is basically Venice in a jungle. And just like Morrowind has its ashlands, grazelands, swamps etc, the Imperial Province also has various different areas. It's not all a jungle.

The way I'd imagine Cyrodiil as described in Morrowind's lore would be a mix of ancient Roman and Renaissance italian architecture with some central European influences, and most of the landscape is lush rainforests that would mix mediterranean, near eastern, and tropical vegetation into something that looks exotic yet consistent with the Roman theme of the Empire.

This is Spain, for example:

 

[luj1]

Whats the problem with jungle Cyrodiil?

Its hella lot more original than whatever Oblivion is anyway