Ok so... Johan Od the bastard son of Torygg, who was sent off to join the Dawnguard as a ranger, forms a party consisting of an exiled Colovian knight who has sworn to place Karliah on the Ruby Throne. A former Thieves Guild smuggler turned Thane. A blacksmith's apprentice who works the Skyforge and is the secret bastard son of Balgruf. A Reachmen barbarian who leads the Forsworn after Madanach's death. A disgraced Imperial warrior who has recently joined the Companions along with a cleric from the Vigilints and a paladin who carries Dawnbreaker. To travel into the Forgotten Vale so that they can bring back proof that the ancient threat of Falmer Ice Vampires still exists and stop the Civil War. 

Missandei: Behold -Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons! Davos: This is Jon Snow. Er He’s King in the North.

Calling it a "Real World Skyrim" is just a marketing gimmick. It's just a medieval simulator. 

The translation of Calcelmo's Tablet does hint that there was something mythic about what the Dwemer did to the Snow Elves. And as your vision clouds, as the darkness sets in, fear not. Know only our mercy and the radiance of our affection, which unbinds your bones to the earth before, and sets your final path to the music of your new eternity. I think that Falmer are in a pupal stage right now and their culture will evolve into something different, something more, over time. However, we won't get to see what that is since I doubt we will be going back to Skyrim in a game. I agree about the Forgotten Vale. It's one of the best depictions Beth have done on how haunting a fallen civilisation can be and the diary just reinforces that. It's just I wish it was less giant bugs, mushrooms and Dwemer. We have all that with the Dunmer already. Just imagine under the barren snowfields of The Pale, carved into the glaciers, there were Falmer ruins. They start off as normal, rundown ruins but the farther you go into them, the more they change, mirroring the change that was done to them. And it could have been real weird, what would a city built by nocturnal blind elves even look like?

I hate the Falmer. I hate them because of how much wasted potential they are. I am a fan of elves. Especially elves presented in a non-traditional fantasy way and I feel like Beth could have done pretty well with the Falmer but instead, they ruined it by doing a big wink and nod to Morrowind fans by making the Falmer just Dunmer 2.0 but less interesting. The Falmer are an offshoot faction of elves who war with humans, team up with the Dwemer, backstabbing ensues then the Dwemer disappear and the Falmer come out the other end ugly grey-skinned elves who farm giant insects, maker armour out of chitin and live around giant mushrooms. Don't get me wrong tho, I love the Dunmer. They are my favourite race and I think Morrowind is the greatest RPG ever made and I wish Bethesda would make more ES games like it. But when I say I want more games like Morrowind, I don't mean I want them to look like Morrowind, I mean I want them to give me the same feelings Morrowind did when I first played it. I don't want repeats or call-backs and I feel like if Beth hadn't leaned so far into the "oh aren't they kind of like the Dunmer wink wink and oh here are the Dwemer again" then they could have fleshed out another unique culture in the TES world. A race going through a radical change and becoming pretty much a new one is an interesting trope in TES and I think a race of blind nocturnal tribal elves who live in hollowed out glaciers is super interesting. The Falmer first appeared as the "Ice Tribes" in Elder Scrolls Travels: Dawnstar and Shadowkey and I think Bethesda should have built on that instead of reworking them into insect herding Dunmer knock-offs that all live in Dwemer ruins. Some of them should populate Dwemer ruins in Skyrim of course, but the original lore that the Falmer lived in cities made of ice was much more interesting and there is a whole barren ice field in the north of Skyrim where Bethesda could have built an underground tribal civilisation of nocturnal elves. They also could have built an interesting religion around them as well. The Ancient Snow Elf religion is pretty much just the standard TES Altmer religion but they could have done something more interesting if they played with their origin a bit. We don't know anything about the origin of the Snow Elves other than they probably weren't there when the proto-Nords were first born on the slopes of Snow-Throat but they were there when they returned from Atmora. The legends say that there were Elves native to Atmora but the Nords killed them all but what if the surviving Elves fled Atmora to Tamriel and set up shop in Skyrim and then thousands of years later the Nords return and the same things happen all over again? Beth could have hinted at this by having connections between the Ancient Snow Elf religion and the Ancient Nordic one. Maybe even make it a pre-schism one. Some type of amalgamation between the Skaaldic and Psijic Order philosphies. It would be super intresting and ironic for the Elves to have the last bastion of old Atmoran culture. The post-Dwemer Falmer relgion could have also been cool. The Dwemer say the blinded the Snow Elves so that they would find enlightenment. So the Falmer relgion could some weird philosphy based on tones with traces of the old shamanistic relgion. Something TES is usually quite good at is deconstructing a traditional fantasy race and putting there own spin on it. For instance, belive it or not, Tolkien's orginal insperation for his Dwarves was actually the Jews. TES regocnised this and whent whole hog and made their Dwarves ancient Babalonians and gave them their own spin on it. I feel like they could have also done this with the Falmer but doing a spin on their own insperation. The insperation for the Falmer are the Drow. No, not the Dark Elf Drow from D&D but the IRL Drow from real life Scottish myth. The Drow or Trow are ugly nocturnal elf like beings who lived underground and kidnapped people and were also obsessed with music. In folklore it's said that the ancient Pictish clans of Scotland became the Drow after they dissapered. Imagine the Falmer clans living in underground iceforts and wearing starfrost woad facepaint. I think that would have been more intrestin than what we got anyway.