Eternal champion canonized in The Elder Scrolls

[DamarisK]

I played arena for the first time today, and according to the game manual the player's name should be talin and he is leader of the imperial guard. Can anyone confirm this? Is his identity hinted or known? That’s the guy who is thrown into Oblivion with the Emperor is Talin and you save him in the end as well. Manual's little story isn’t exactly canon. It just shows what happened. So I am bit confused with all this? Please share your opinion on it thank you.

[Apalachee]

It's a pretty consistent aspect of the games that the hero is known only by a title and afterward fades into history. Not to mention that the character mentioned in the OP is clearly Talin Warhaft, who was imprisoned with Uriel VII in the actual game. I actually agree that the Eternal Champion, and for that matter the heroes of TES II, III, and IV, don't have a single "canonical" storyline later decided by the Devs. Not only are references to these characters in subsequent games purposefully kept quite vague but Bethesda has bent over backwards with metaphysical events like the Dragon Break to allow for this.

[Tionontati]

As for Douglass Goodall, I talked with him often here when he was an active participant on the forums and even chatted with him several times on LiveJournal. I'd never want to insult or degrade him and I hope if he ever did feel that I was treating him badly he'd let me know - although I realize while saying this that it's unlikely he'll ever see something I type. That's rather disappointing really; it would be nice to have a conversation with him now that I'm more than a teenage college student.

[MacIntel]

As for canon, from my understanding Bethesda defines canon as anything in an officially published product. Any peripheral content, regardless of author, is non-canon. It is certainly possible for something to be included in a later game or other official media which would then make it canon, and this has happened before. If you wish to discuss the issue of canon further I'd prefer a PM as continuing it here would be off topic.

[Wappinger]

What I mean to say is that the fact that things by Michael Kirkbride don't appear in game has been used as a basis for attacking Michael Kirkbride in the past, often in unconscionable ways, always by people who did not understand the least bit of what Michael Kirkbride has written. It is, I think, with that in mind that Hairdo Galosh Jam made that response, which I don't think was fair. I'm just trying to explain why he took your post the wrong way.

[Adonis]

In ES, although it could be intending to indicate avatars of a single being, it feels like the meaning is a bit different - that of a line of distinct characters who step up to the mark. Reason I say this is that there is no ongoing material to identify the player as taking on avatars of a single being. To the contrary in Morrowind the player was put forward as potentially an avatar of a historical figure, the Dunmer Hortator Nerevar, who is not identified as the Eternal Champion in any material I am aware of.

[Susquehannock]

They write out the protagonists of each game, the daggerfall dude gets stomped; neravarine gets killed for becoming too localized with the dunmer. I mean goes to akavir, and the coc becomes a lunatic who may or may not be a god. Also the neravarine getting assassinated by the empire is my own personal conspiracy theory, don't get mad about it. I like it that way because I make up my own cannon about the es universe with my own main characters, if they said the coc was an imperial warrior, it kind of invalidates whatever choice you made about your character. I haven't played arena, but from the sound of it the ec's identity was concealed with magicka so it’s no wonder his identity is debatable