I didn't say APPEARANCE. I said that the forced ORIGIN you have to pick for your character ruins it, I also didn't mention the stats. I was talking about creating a background for your character. For roleplaying purposes. That is now reduced from "anything you can think of" to "pick between these two choices".

Congrats. You either can't read, or your comprehension skills are at zero. You literally wrote a whole post arguing against stuff I never actually said.

You're right - sorry. I think my misunderstanding was triggered by you mentioning "body types", my mistake. I'll update my earlier post accordingly.

With that said, the question remains how these origins affect the game itself, and if OR's way of doing it "is as anti-elder scrolls as it can possibly get". If they don't affect playing the game in a significant way, you're free to just ignore them and create your own background (talking about imagination) and play accordingly. It's what I've always done and do when playing a TES game.
I don't play OR (and probably never will), and have no idea what its origins or body types are. I just think they can't be as central for the TES series as you put it,
But, of course, I accept that you may feel differently.

In addition, I don't see any evidence for saying that "they did it for one reason. To justify replacing male\female with body type 1-2". Bethesda (and its mother company) are still businesses, and the introduction of "body types" serves business purposes. You can speculate why they think the replacement is a good business move (for them).

The devs literally said that was WHY they added the origin bits to the game. To justify the body type options they added. It is right there in one of their development videos.


The origins gives you a brief backstory of your character and explains why\how you got the stat bonuses from said origin. That removes your ability to create any backstory for your character, since you are now limited to "pick between 1 or 2". You can no longer have a Breton who was raised by orcs to be a warrior, after they found him as a baby in a wrecked wagon, or something like that. You can no longer play as a high elf who was raised in Skyrim because her parents had a merchant company there.

Just making up two options out of billions. That was all removed now, due to the remaster forcing you to pick between two options they force on the player.You can't create your own background when the background forced on you is right there in text in the damn game.

Why is this simple information too hard for you to understand? Or are you simply trying to argue against it because you happen to like that retarded remake?

Looks like I'm not alone -). If I may quote myself (see above):

"the question remains how these origins affect the game itself, and if OR's way of doing it 'is as anti-elder scrolls as it can possibly get'. If they don't affect playing the game in a significant way, you're free to just ignore them and create your own background (talking about imagination) and play accordingly. It's what I've always done and do when playing a TES game.
I don't play OR (and probably never will)."

You didn't answer my questions, and ignored the last sentence, "I don't play OR (and probably never will)".
Whether or not OR is "retarded", I can't judge - but you didn't give me any reason to view it as "retarded".

Regarding "difficult to understand", I have two problems:

- You're vague: You said "they did it for one reason". Who is "they"? It must be a decision maker (developers or designers don't decide at Bethesda), someone who approves and signs off the design (origins are a design decision). This is why I constantly mentioned "business processes" and "business purposes" in my replies to your posts. It means that "replacing male\female with body type 1-2" is not a reason, but possibly a gamble hoping to get more people to pay for OR (and if it works, it says more about the buyers than about Bethesda).
If this is not what you mean, you didn't notice the way I interpreted "they" (and I made it explicit), or you didn't bother to make me aware that you meant it differently. I can't help it.

- I'm confused: Your approach to character generation (correct me if I'm wrong) is that you imagine a character, and then create it in-game - as close to your imagined character as possible, I suppose. I do the same, by the way - except that I don't go as far as imagining a whole CV, going back to childhood ("grew up").
It looks like you can do this in all TES games (at least the first 4), and it's for you what constitutes the Elder Scrolls.
Unfortunately, you think you can't do it in Oblivion Remastered (OR), and for this reason you call OR "as anti-elder scrolls as it can possibly get". I hope my summary is not too bad.

I can't really compare Oblivion with OR, but I did read what UESP says about OR's "origins". To me it sounds like there are two differences between Oblivion and OR in this respect, genders and origins: instead of genders you have body type 1 and 2, and the body types link the characters with geographical regions. You're probably aware that the Oblivion genders come with character differences, too (I haven't looked at the details).

To use your example (your other two examples are similar), "you can no longer play as a dark elf who grew up as a pickpocket in The Imperial City": I'm not sure that this is really significantly different from Oblivion (assuming UESP is correct):
In Oblivion, for example, the Imperials (male and female) are described in-game as "Citizens of ... Cyrodiil", the Khajit as "Hailing from ... Elsweyr", and for Dark Elves the homeland is Morrowind.
In OR according to UESP the origin is "the location from within their race's province that they hail from". The only difference is that the origins of body type 1 and 2 characters are linked with two different regions within the same province Oblivion uses.
Is this a significant difference?
If you manage to play as a "dark elf who grew up as a pickpocket in The Imperial City" (which isn't in Morrowind) in Oblivion, then you shouldn't have a problem to play as a "dark elf who grew up as a pickpocket in The Imperial City" (which isn't in Vvradenfell or Mainland Morrowind either) in OR.

Did you ever play the first three TES games? They do have genders, but they restrict your character's origin to provinces, just like Oblivion. Only Daggerfall has real and explicit backgrounds, which influence stats and equipment.

Assuming the first 4 TES games aren't "anti-elder scrolls", too, this leaves genders vs. body types as the only significant difference between those 4 and OR. Is this what makes that OR is "as anti-elder scrolls as it can possibly get"?
(By the way, UESP notices that "characters will however still address the player using gendered pronouns during gameplay").

Not that I would welcome this change, but it would certainly not hurt my imagination, wouldn't prevent me from playing the character I want to play.
I won't play OR because I see no reason to pay for something which doesn't give me any (for me) noticeable benefits compared with Oblivion.