Poll: Anyone else hate the Skyrim animal races?

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Don't forget when the Lore and history of these games came about it was in the earlier days of fantasy gaming, if you look at the lore there are a lot of other beast races that we havn't seen as well, some that sound even more farfetched than the ones we have seen!

To be honest I don't mind them... The races are linked to personalities, which makes it easier to build an expectation from the characters, which also makes it easier for the game to trick you into liking or disliking certain characters, which allows for easier dislocation of expectation!

The only think I don't like about the beast races is playing as them... but mostly that is becaus I don't like a character with a tail! Other than that I don't mind them at all!

 

[burningdragoon]

I will admit a few things.
I wish they looked a bit more beastlike, so not regular human models with scaly/furry textures. I thought the head models in Skyrim looked much more interesting and cool than the ones in Oblivion though. Of course Morrowind at least gave them different feat.
I also think it looks pretty silly to see them in the 'regular' human clothes as well (although that is true for orcs too).

That being said, lizard-folk are awesome, and anyone who says otherwise is just incorrect

 

[Kreett]

I've got nothing against Argonians... But those backstabbing, thieving, murdering, drugsmuggling Kahjiit on the other hand.

Hey now, I take offense to that....my Khajiit hasn't smuggled any drugs thank you. You're a Nord aren't you?

I am infact an Imperial and every Khajiit I have come across sold Skooma, tried to kill me or was fighting an innocent person.

 

[M0rp43vs]

I'm suddenly reminded of an old thread here WAAyyy back about someone complaining that the skyrim Elves didn't look human enough like J. R. R. Tolkein portrays them, no matter how many times people said told him this was a different lore and more importantly,to grow a suspension of belief and allow designers to be creative for once and don't have to follow the formula of hippy superior elves, mining greedy dwarves and humans who hog the spotlight.

And with that rant over, Yes I do like the beast races, all the way from Morrowind. My brother always plays as an argonian with a bent for comedic sociopathy and though my main is an altmer war mage, playing as a prejudiced against Khajit healer/trader make for fun roleplaying.
And I like meeting them around the world. They add some much needed variety in the NPC's I meet even if they are such a minority.

And best of all, they look much better in comparison to Oblivion *shudder*

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

I've got nothing against Argonians... But those backstabbing, thieving, murdering, drugsmuggling Kahjiit on the other hand.

Hey now, I take offense to that....my Khajiit hasn't smuggled any drugs thank you. You're a Nord aren't you?

I am infact an Imperial and every Khajiit I have come across sold Skooma, tried to kill me or was fighting an innocent person.

Hmm... I was sold Skooma once by some random person, but he was really shady about it so I didn't bother with him. Mainly because I was on my way to a thief mission and didn't feel like stopping and chatting.

Other than that, I haven't really seen anything like that, but I have gotta a lot of grief from the Imperials and the Thalmor, which I think is just about the norm for everyone.

 

[captaincabbage]

I'm more willing to let them slide on the assumption that they are simply other sentient races who evolved under slightly different conditions and ended up with slightly different physical traits, like the way we did. Yeah the orcs probably should be more mangled, and no specific reasons are given for why the elves look the way they do, but at least they aren't literally humans crossed with animals. There is absolutely no reason for them to have just evolved that way, at least without a huge "experiments gone wrong" storyline.

This world does not run on science, it runs on magic.
The various species didn't evolve. It was all magic. That's your reasoning.

The Dwemer tried science. To say it didn't go down well would be an understatement.

But that's not good enough for me! I like magic, but I also like a little reason behind it. It needs to make sense. It can't just be the glue they stick on anything to make it fit right.

Uuh, yes it can. It totally can. That's the entire point of magic. Magic could be pretty well described as anything that cannot possibly be explained logically with science.

Also to note, they tried the whole backwards joints thing in Morrowind. It didn't really go down well. I don't know if they were tripping on acid or what at the time, but it just turned out horrible.

Also, I'd just like you to know, completely parallel to this argument, have you ever read up on the birthing cycle of the Kahjiit? It's totally fucked up. Basically, depending on the cycle of the moon in which they have their baby, the child can come out as anything between essentially an anime cat-girl (almost human/mer looking), to a big sabre-toothed cat mount.
Yes that's right, depending on the moon cycles you could either have a regular cat-person, or a big mentally retarded cat-horse-thing.

 

[Malyc]

I enjoy the Khajiit, but the Argonians are... unsuited for skyrim. Not enough open water to justify playing them for the water breathing (which i did in Oblivion), and nobody uses poison. Similar issue with the dark elf. 50% fire resistance was fine in Oblivion, where everybody and their brother used it, but in Skyrim, everything that ever existed ever uses ICE magic.

So, to answer the question in the poll: I both like and dislike the beast races in Skyrim.

 

[Woodsey]

I like them, although it'd be nice to go back to the Morrowind leg design for the Khajiit.

As for the evolutionary argument, this is a world full of weird shit and magic. I'd imagine it takes more of a back seat.

I enjoy the Khajiit, but the Argonians are... unsuited for skyrim. Not enough open water to justify playing them for the water breathing (which i did in Oblivion), and nobody uses poison. Similar issue with the dark elf. 50% fire resistance was fine in Oblivion, where everybody and their brother used it, but in Skyrim, everything that ever existed ever uses ICE magic.

I've come across a lot of mages that use (some very fucking powerful) fire magic.

 

[Omnific One]

I have never played as an anthropomorphic in a TES game, but I don't hate them.

 

[The Shadowlord]

I'm quite fond of the Argonians in Skyrim. Hence why I took one look at the list of races and said "Heck yeah, I'm gonna be a freakin' awesome Lizard-man". And thus, I was. I'm playing Skyrim to role-play and I don't see why I'd force myself to be a human when I could be something far more entertaining. I even think they look pretty good, I prefer looking at them then to any given Nord.

The Khajit...well, I'm not too bothered about them. They're alright I guess.

 

[Dethpixie]

Note to self: Do not run a google image search for "argonian" with safesearch turned off. Yeesh.

I expected worse, but I see your point.

OT. I like the animal races, I didn't at first, I thought they looked silly and didn't really fit within any of the lore. But they grew on me and now I don't play anything else.

Who wants to be another boring elf or slightly varied human anyway?

 

[Varrdy]

Well I am all about the Khajitt but then again I am a furry and so am biased!

Wardy

 

[xPixelatedx]

Why are the changes in physiology restricted to the head and skin? Why aren't their joints reversed like animals legs?

Because nothing that walks on two legs has back-canted legs for a reason. They burn ungodly amounts of energy and they're basically pointless without a second pair to give you the speed advantage they're supposed to grant.

And yes, they used to have animal-like leg joints, until someone realised that legs like that would make nary a lick of sense for an upright creature because they wouldn't support their weight.

I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you have never seen a carnivorous dinosaur.
From where I am sitting those kinds of legs look pretty functional for a two legged animal. The real reason why they changed the legs is because they didn't want to make entierly separate armor/clothing variants for the beast races, they even came out and said this. You guys don't have to defend their lazy art design, they were happy admitting to it. You will also notice the werewolves have the legs the beast people should, which is relevant to what I just said because you conveniently don't wear anything in werewolf form haha.

As for the whole "Furry fantasy" thing, if you have difficulty seeing them in a non-sexualised light then that's your problem, not the developers.

I am also pretty sure OP wasn't saying they were sexy. The original furry comment was directed at the fact that Bethesda put as much effort (or lack there of) into the beast races as someone trying to fulfill a superficial sexual fantasy. People who make these kinds of these for that reason don't put any consideration into their design, they just attach animal heads to human bodies to meet their need quickly and easily. And so you get things like the Kahjiit and Argonians with perfect cookie cutter human shapes, rather then (the much better designed) werewolves in skyrim.

 

[Jadak]

I mean really, people who are EXACTLY like regular people but with animal hides and fur? REALLY? What is the evolutionary advantage to that? Why are the changes in physiology restricted to the head and skin? Why aren't their joints reversed like animals legs? Why aren't they more muscular, or more svelt, or taller or shorter or hunchback? It makes absolutely no sense. It's like they just said "Hurr derp, let's stick some random animal heads on our people and call it a day!"

Because this world isn't built on science, it's built on magic. Hence the gods, the dragons, the undead and ZE MAGICKS!

My first character was an Argonian warrior, tearing crap up with his mighty daedric mace.

That's kind of the main point right there. Complaining about how the races suck is fine, but complaining about the lack of realism in their theoretical evolution while simultaneously battling Dragons with demonic weaponry? Just.... No.

 

[NLS]

Argonians and Khajit had more animal-like legs in Morrowind, however that required a separate skeleton and animations.

 

[Fearzone]

Two things get to me, lizard women with boobs, and the cat people look like paper-mache dolls. I wanted to make a cat-girl assassin, but it just wasn't happening, so went with a red guard instead.

 

[Agow95]

I loved playing a Khajiit, I had night vision and was less crap at sneaking than normal, I RP'd him like Cat from Red Dwarf

 

[Char-Nobyl]

I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you have never seen a carnivorous dinosaur.
From where I am sitting those kinds of legs look pretty functional for a two legged animal.

Alright, I'm not going to dwell the problems with using a video entitled 'Gigantosaurus' as evidence of the effectiveness of back-canted legs, nor that you're citing a CGI dinosaur made for a sci-fi show for evidence in an argument, nor even the fact that the video itself neatly condenses everything that's wrong with half the videos on Youtube (random video clips with someone else's music taste spliced over it).

Moving past those, you'll note that there was another half to my argument, specifically the "uses ungodly amounts of energy" part. How much does a creature with back-canted legs have to eat per day just to sustain normal activity? I mentioned neanderthals earlier, and that was one of their big issues: they were only slightly bigger than the average homo sapien, but required significantly more food as a result. And when you're almost exclusively a carnivore, a fast-breeding competitor can literally eat you to extinction.

Also note the gigantic tail. See, that's the thing about having back-canted legs: they aren't very good at keeping things that stand upright balanced. The T. Rex was originally thought to walk essentially upright, with the tail dragging behind it, but as it turns out, that sort of thing causes horrific joint damage over time. The gigantic tail was a counterweight to make up for the fact that you don't have forelegs to keep yourself balanced. You can't take one pair of legs off a table and still expect it to hold itself up.

Take a look at the body structure of everything bipedal with back-canted legs. Notice a pattern? Heavy front, counterweight in back, and constantly with their back parallel to the ground? There's a reason for that, and it's simple: back-canted legs provide shit balance for bipedal creatures. Every seen someone get taken down by hitting them behind the knees? Dinosaurs had all their dangerous bits jutting a fair distance in front of their legs, so it didn't matter for them, but put those joints on something bipedal that walks upright, and you've got an animal that crumbles like a house of cards if you kick them in the shin.

Or push them anywhere, really. If you've ever been shoved when your knees were locked, try and remember how you responded. Was it by moving your legs/joints in ways that would be impossible if your knees faced the other way? Probably. You can't brace yourself when your feet are kicking up in front of you while you topple over.

The real reason why they changed the legs is because they didn't want to make entierly separate armor/clothing variants for the beast races. They even came out and said this. You guys don't have to defend their lazy art design, they were happy admitting to it.

Okay...so they made the right choice for the wrong reasons. I've no problem with that. The end result is still the same.

Besides, it's less about defending Bethesda's aesthetic choices and more about dismantling OP's complaints. That's the fun part for me.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

I like them but I prefer how they appeared in Morrowind in terms of physiology, they were much more unique. Oblivion changed that and they've apparently chosen to keep it for Skyrim and presumably the rest of the series. Their facial structure is better than before though, they just need to stand out a bit more than the man and mer races.

But that's my big issue with Skyrim now that I've played Morrowind: it's far too simple. There's less pressure placed on what sort of character you want to be and how you're limited by your choice. Now you can be a hulking tank of a barbarian Nord and still succeed in the thief, assassin and mage quest lines with little difficulty. You don't even have the same guild structure, you're either on par with everyone else or you're on top, which kind of takes out the importance of levelling skills specific to that guild and being actually good at your profession. There's more of how Skyrim is too simple but I think this is enough for now.

 

[xPixelatedx]

Moving past those, you'll note that there was another half to my argument, specifically the "uses ungodly amounts of energy" part. How much does a creature with back-canted legs have to eat per day just to sustain normal activity? I mentioned neanderthals earlier, and that was one of their big issues: they were only slightly bigger than the average homo sapien, but required significantly more food as a result. And when you're almost exclusively a carnivore, a fast-breeding competitor can literally eat you to extinction.

Also note the gigantic tail. See, that's the thing about having back-canted legs: they aren't very good at keeping things that stand upright balanced. etc.

I was just showing an example of how those legs could work, I did not say that the beast races should necessarily become dinosaurs. I also don't think it's right to assume they would need to meet the exact same requirements to have two legs like that, given that dinosaurs were creatures of gargantuan mass.
Here is a better video.

I am actually surprised that the dog is able to even hop and skip, and dogs aren't even designed to do this. I would have loved the Kahjiit to be a bit more like this (technically they were in morrowind). I do however acknowledge that an animal who has legs and walks like this probably would not be able to outright run this way. But if their overall body design is still very animal like, I don't see why they can't get on all fours and floor-it. Technically speaking, if that dog was somehow given working front legs, it could still walk upright if it wanted to, but then it would also be able to run alongside any other dog on all fours. That would have been a good design for Kahjiits.