I know that this is something that some of us were hoping to avoid, but apparently the Crisis affected all of the provinces. Black Marsh however managed to defeat the Daedra and close all the gates. If we do this right it could be a lot more fun than the vanilla ones. I'm thinking battles between argonian tribesmen and daedra inside the gates?
Since the Oblivion gates remain one of the most disliked aspects of TESIV, it'd be most reasonable to use them as little as possible. Preferably, to use a large variation of the incidents rather than to simply copy the spawn random gate-script.
Now, it'd be plausible, if a tad lore-bending, to claim that the Oblivion gates appeared mostly in Cyrodiil, as their "goal" was more or less the elimination of the Septim bloodline. The daedric forces in the other parts of Tamriel would've been more scattered and less organised (if at all) and hence would result in little more than a nuisance. This brings in something else that at least I'd like to see in BM; the portrayal of Argonians as a warrior-people. They're used to fighting considerably more than the Imperials, and are therefore much better equipped to deal with an Oblivion invasion. From a purely naturalistic perspective, this would be the most natural result of habitually living in such a dangerous environment. Swamp creatures and shit would be daily occurrences, as compared to the odd wolf and bandit of Cyrodiil.
With this setting, one or more factions would've taken it upon themselves to eliminate these gates. Maybe the Shadowscales set out to defend their home, maybe the royal Argonian Court, maybe both and they had conflicts inside the oblivion gates. Maybe the Shadowscales legendary secret hideout has long since been inside an Oblivion realm, opened up by their Ancestor magicians. Whatever the case, the result is that most Oblivion gates in Black Marsh were closed quickly. Hunters would seek them out to slay Daedra, prompting a spark of trade and alchemical and metallurgical usage of Daedroth teeth and such items.
What remains when the player enters Black Marsh are only a few gates. The ones that are left are deep in the jungle, past the point where it's economical to launch a raid. Maybe these gates transform the surrounding area, killing off some of the plantlife and ruining the soil. Maybe the daedra hunt the normal wildlife causing problems with the ecosystem, driving out large numbers of dangerous swamp monsters from an entire area, swarming all nearby settlements, leading to the Fighters' Guild's "any man we can get"-policy and a general state of alert.
Either way, the point I'm trying to make is that an Oblivion gate should have a considerable affect on the surrounding lands. In vanilla it amounts to little more than a rather impressive structure with a few miscreants rambling about. No attacks, no nothing. If we are to include Oblivion gates in BM, they should have that significant impact, causing all this chaos that the lore books speak of.
However, if there's not enough motivation to really dig in and make the very best of the Oblivion gates, then it's better to just claim that they were all closed and place the odd ruin here and there. In other words, if it's not worth doing properly, then it's not worth doing at all.
Guerilla wars in the jungle between daedra and the tribesmen.
I think that's a good idea. The massive battles that supposedly took place would be too hard to do effectively, so I think we should just imply from the dialogue in the villages that it pretty much already happened by the time the player arrives in the Marshes. Still, a couple of cleaning-up quests could potentially be quite fun, along the lines you suggested.
Agreed. Maybe one gate could be used. If Bhuru magic is strong enough, they might be able to hold open a gate to a ravaged Daedric realm. The remaining Dremora can be holed-up in a cavern or citadel.
As far as the remnant gates go, we will already have quite a full landscape in the beta so I wouldn't want many. You shouldn't be coming across a landscape feature too often IMO. So I would probably go for gates outside cities.
Definitely outside cities.
I wouldn't do to many if I were you, what I was thinking because the Argonians are a warrior people, some oblivion gates could have mini camps inside them with Argonians in them.
Like on one Fighters Guild quest you should have to go inside and form a raid on the citadel with some soldiers.
I'd love it if it was like that, but i'd hate it if they were random pop up gates.
We are definitely avoiding random gates. Every single one we include will have a scripted quest and some story elements attached to it.
I like the idea of a camp inside the gate as well. Perhaps even some of the Marsh creeping over into Oblivion, the same way the Deadlands creep into Cyrodiil around the Gates.
Aye, keep it scarce and use it as a novelty. Some good fun can be had there though.
When I saw this I thought of something almost immediately:
Maybe after the catastrophic failure of oblivons invasion of black marh, maybe the dremora that couldn't make their way back to the gates before they were closed so they try to integrate their way into tamriellic society. Maybe you may even have to do a quest to try and get a village to accept the dremoreans into their society.
Another thing I thought of is, that because Argonians are great fighters and like to fight, maybe some of them stayed in the oblivion planes after the gates shut to adventure, and a quest may use this when say an adventurers' wife wants him to return so you get a shaman to open a gate where you go to oblivion and look for the adventurers then persuade them to return as heroes.