The Elder Scrolls is one of the most popular RPGs ever created. The series of video games, that have been around since 1994, takes place in a land called Tamriel. The world of The Elder Scrolls is dominated by ten races that the player can choose from to create a playable character. Each game features a main quest that players can choose to pursue, or ignore entirely and instead work on building up their character’s standing within the game by working with various factions, guilds, and military legions to gain power and fame.
Renowned for its open sandbox style of gameplay that allows the player to go almost anywhere and do almost anything, the game boasts of one of the largest and most active modding communities in gaming. The game mods have had a huge hand in making The Elder Scrolls such a huge fan favorite by endlessly correcting bugs and glitches, and adding new features to the gameplay to meet popular fan requests.
Over the years, across several flagship games and add-ons and expansions, the lore of The Elder Scrolls Universe has grown and expanded exponentially. More information is being added to the main storyline every year. Previously unknown parts of Nirn are being revealed to the gaming community to pore over. Naturally, not all new things within the game narrative make sense or line up with what was established in earlier games. Here are 30 things that don’t make sense about The Elder Scrolls:
29 How Is The Axe A Blunt Weapon?
The Axe is listed as a blunt weapon in the game. The axe being the giant hammer-like instrument that carries at its top a big knife instead of a lump of metal. So how exactly does a weapon that can cleave through the enemy’s head be a blunt tool?
And it’s not like you can’t sharpen the blade of the axe, either. And yet, somehow, the game decided that the axe is a blunt weapon. Maybe this was done to make the axe a less formidable instrument and give other weapons a chance.
28 The Well-Lit Abandoned Crypt
Crypts are some of the creepiest places to visit in Skyrim. They are places that have been abandoned for thousands of years and are filled with the sinister Draugr, undead Nordic warriors that can end you quickly if you’re not careful.
But as creepy as the crypts are, they contain barrels of tomatoes that you can eat to keep your strength up. Also, the crypts are apparently cleaned meticulously by the Draugr and even the torches are relit regularly. So where do the fresh tomatoes come from, or the material to make fresh torches every day?
27 Your Clothes Make No Difference
The one thing that often breaks the immersion during an Elder Scrolls game is the fact that your clothes never affect the outcome of an interaction with other characters, even when it really should. For instance, you could wear the Dark Brotherhood armor and people on the streets will have no reaction to you.
Wear the thieves guild armor in Whiterun but the guards won’t attack you.
Really, only when you’re naked do any of the other characters make a remark about your clothing or lack of it. It just seems wearing different clothes should have a bigger impact on the storyline.
26 The Most Unfair Legal System
In the world of the Elder Scrolls, you can go on a rampage and come out of it without any repercussions by simply paying a fat fine. That is pretty messed up, isn’t it? After all, the best part of the game is how you feel you are a part of an actual, working society with a logical set of rules and direct consequences for your actions.
But the legal system is clearly set up in such a way as to favor the richer players. So you are basically living in an enforced anarchy.
25 Do Golems Have Souls?
This is actually one of the deeper questions the game poses through the gameplay, and we’re pretty sure it happened by accident. You see, when you use the ‘Detect life’ spell, it not only causes the living beings in the area to light up but also Golems and the Undead.
So does that mean that Golems and the Undead are also technically alive?
But they are trapped in their mortal shells, unable to move or do anything? What does it even mean to be alive? That’s a pretty deep question for an RPG game to ask.
24 What’s So Special About Daedric Armor?
So Daedric armor is considered of most value out of all the armors from different materials that exist in Tamriel. But why exactly is it so valuable? Light armor is just as good as Daedric armor at providing protection. Not to mention the fact that light armor is, you guessed it, lighter, and easier to make.
There is also the fact that Daedric armor is heavier, and slows down the mobility of the wearer to a considerable extent. It seems that just because Daedric armor is rarer, people tend to favor it more.
23 Bows Made Of Steel And Glass
The game lets you use bows for arrows made out of standard wood. But it also gives you the option to use bows made out of steel or glass. Except why would bows need to be made out of either of those materials? The whole point of a bow is that it should be able to bend as much as possible.
Neither metal nor glass is known for bendiness.
Not to mention the fact that it would be much more difficult to carry around a bow made of heavy metal rather than light wood.
22 A Vampire With A Beating Heart?
In the thieve’s guild, there comes a time when Karliah shoots you with a poisoned arrow. The effect of the poison in the arrow is instantaneous, causing your character to black out as your heart stops beating quickly. The entire sequence is very dramatic and makes perfect medical sense except for one thing: You’re a vampire at the time.
As everyone knows, vampires in the game are immune to poison. There is also the fact that vampires don’t have beating hearts that could be slowed down. So why did the poisoned arrow affect you?
21 Time Travel Messes With The Whole Story
It’s always a gamble to introduce time travel into any story if you hope to adhere to a set of rules that make sense. But it is also almost inevitable for any magic-based story to introduce time travel at some point or the other.
In The Elder Scrolls, ancient Nords use time travel to time warp Alduin to the future. There the Dragonborn ends Alduin in Sovngard. But why not just keep sending Alduin forward in time until the end of the universe? It could have saved the Dragonborn a lot of trouble.
20 No Children In Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion lets you travel across far-flung villages and distant lands as you complete one quest after another. During your travel through the villages, you might have noticed a disturbing fact: There are no children to be seen. So where did all the young ones go? Were they part of some mysterious sacrifice to appease ancient demons?
Are the people of the villages immortal and unaging?
Nope, turns out the game developers deliberately left children out of the game to discourage gamers who would have tried to eliminate them.
19 An Axe To The Head Is A Minor Inconvenience
The days of having a weapon that instantly ends your enemies have passed. To add realism, these days almost every video game enemy has parts of the body which can take a certain amount of damage, like the arms and the legs, and the more critical parts of the body, like the head, where a single arrow or bullet can cause an instant end.
Not so in The Elder Scrolls.
You can shoot a billion arrows at an enemy or explode them with a rune, and they’re still left standing there.
18 Why Does No One Know You?
Elder Scrolls lets you grow your own legend as a mighty warrior. You can be a part of multiple guilds and factions, and embark on countless adventures slaying dragons and battling sorcerers to achieve legendary status among other players.
Too bad no one in the game itself seems to be aware of you, though. You can have a list of in-game achievements that are several pages long, and other characters will still refer to you as ‘Milk Drinker’ or ‘Adventurer’. Dude, I slew Alduin with my bare hands. A little recognition would be nice.
17 No One Cares About The Emperor’s Disappearance
There is a questline known as the Dark Brotherhood. You complete a series of actions that culminate in your taking the life of the emperor. That’s a pretty brazen move, and you brace yourself to deal with the inevitable consequences of taking out the most important person in the kingdom.
Nothing happens.
People don’t riot on the streets. The law-and-order situation does not break down. The whole kingdom carries on as though nothing has happened. No one seems affected by your actions, which makes you wonder what the point of the quest was.
16 The Soulburst Should Not Have Happened
In The Elder Scrolls Online, the Soulburst is a planet-shattering event during which giant anchors descend from the heavens and crash into the earth, trying to pull the planet apart and into another realm.
First of all, it’s quite strange that such a huge event as the Soulburst occurred a mere 10 years ago, yet there is no mention of the occurrence in any of the history books. And then there is the fact that the event should never have been allowed to occur again. Many towers scattered across Tamriel had been built specifically to prevent another Soulburst rending.
15 The Horn That Anyone Can Get To
In one quest, you’re sent to get the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller. The basic idea behind the quest is that you, as the Dragonborn, are aware of the shouts that are needed to get inside the crypt and get to the horn.
… except that the Greybeards are also aware of the shouts.
So they can get inside the crypt when they want to. Also, how on earth did Delphine manage to get inside the crypt as well? Since apparently anyone can get in, how exactly does the quest help establish that you are definitely Dragonborn?
14 Why Are Chickens Such A Hot Commodity?
In the Skyrim universe, you have the option to cook chicken recipes among other dishes. It’s a fortifying meal that helps recharge your character while you trudge across endless distances on various quests.
Problem is, the harvesting of chickens is such a big deal that it leads to an entire army of guards coming after you trying to end your life. If getting to the chickens is an undertaking that is so fraught with peril, then how is cooked chicken a popular recipe within the game? Or are we talking about super-magically-tasty chickens that are worth fighting wars over?
13 Wrong Size Of The Maps
The older Elder Scrolls games had very large maps. There was a ton of detail in them, making you believe you were part of an intricate, sprawling land filled with exciting spaces waiting to be explored.
With later games like Morrowind and Skyrim, the maps appear to have shrunk in size.
They’re still big, but definitely not as big as the maps of yesteryear. The only possible explanation is that the world of The Elder Scrolls is as big as ever, but each new game chooses to focus on specific locations that the particular game explores.
12 The Strongest Locks For Random Stuff
Have you ever noticed that people in the game like to use the strongest locks to safeguard some pretty worthless junk? You spend a long time hacking through a really sturdy lock, only to finally open the case it was guarding to discover paintbrushes, earthenware, and yarn.
Just how rich are the people in the game that they can afford the best locks for nonsense that no thief would ever be interested in? Or maybe they’re being particularly clever, storing useless stuff behind expensive locks so thieves think nothing in the house is of value.
11 Why Are There No Guns?
So we get that The Elder Scrolls is a sword-and-sorcery game, and the entire point of such a game is to revert to an era when men fought face-to-face using swords rather than hiding inside tanks. But still, it’s surprising that there is no way to make gunpowder within the game, even though sulfur and charcoal are known to exist in Tamriel.
Gunpowder would be particularly useful for the Nords, who have an aversion to using magic. Having them discover guns would greatly increase their strength and add a cool new element to the game.
10 Who Eliminated The Cliff Racers?
At the start of Morrowind, your character meets a guy who makes the claim of having ended all the cliff racers in the world at the beginning of the Fourth Era. But then in Skyrim, which is set a long time after the events of the Fourth Era, you meet Mjoll the Lioness.
She mentions going to Morrowind in the past to hunt Cliff Racers with her father.
So… how do the two stories about the Cliff Racers make sense? Unless the Lioness was way, way older than she appeared. Or she straight up lied.
