Prefacing that I think this is an amazing game. I was very prejudiced against Bethesda, having felt that Morrowind and Fallout 3 were wastes of my money; it took me two days of playing my friend's copy to grudgingly admit that this was a good product and purchase it. Now I'm a big fan.

Even so, there are things I felt were disappointing, and I wanted to share/get some of your thoughts?
- If you pickpocket Calixto for his key, you can't solve the murders this way. I had no idea he was related, I was just like, "This funny old man's got to be hiding SOMETHING." He was one of... five? People I ever pickpocketed. Horrified at what I found, but couldn't advance the story anyway. Had to let him kill someone.
- Impossible to do anything about Maven Blackbriar, the Silver-Blood Family, or the Thieves' Guild. Very frustrating for a Chaotic Good type. At least after Cidhna mine, somehow my Dawnbreaker found its way into a certain Silver-Blood's back... But too many essential characters in general that had nothing to do with the main quest. I can understand the MQ NPCs, but radiant and sidequests?
- Delphine's bloodlust against Paarthurnax felt forced and to be a bit of an artificial conflict.
- You couldn't 'stand up' to any of the Daedra that I've encountered so far. Not really. You could tell them off, but you had no way of actively thwarting them. Except maybe Boethiah. I took out her whole camp, and that was nice.

That you can't cancel/abandon them.

"Why won't this NPC here give me his quest???"

I mean, seriously. Why does for instance Siddgeir care that I'm still unsuccessfully looking for an Amulet of Arkay for that dude in Windhelm?

I Think it would have been cool if your race made every quest kinda different.

Yeah, there are WAY too many things that get stuck in your journal because you make the mistake of saying "howdy" to someone and next thing you know you're stuck with a quest that you have no intention of doing (frequently because there's no way of doing it that appeals to you). After four playthroughs I know how to avoid a good many of them, but it would be nice if Just Say No was an option in a lot more cases, or if I could subvert a quest in some way that is more appropriate for my character, like the guy in Solitude who wants me to shut down the lighthouse, I would like an option to report him to the guards and have him arrested or thrown out of the city or something.

The Daedric quests in particular are a thorn in my side, although I have found ways to "fail" some of the really unsvaory ones it's not going to be possible with most of them. I still haven't figured out a way to enter Falkreath and do business with the blacksmith there without triggering an encounter with Barbas. And I can kill all the Boethiah cultists but she still gives me the ritual weapon and instructions to bring her a sacrifice so that's stuck in my journal forever, I can't even "fail" the quest by going out and knocking off a particular person who's integral to it like I have in other cases. You can't really thwart Boethiah there, she's just as satisfied with you if her kill all her people as if you joined them, because that's the kind of sick ***** she is.

The Namira quest I thought I had figured out, just kill Eola in the Hall of the Dead and never agree to go with her anywhere. But guess what - I still run into some NPC on the road who thinks I've joined their little cult and wants me to have the first bite of some corpse that's lying there. I kill the SOB and all that does is get me in trouble with the local guards.

And like many others I would love the opportunity to take down the Thieves Guild.

The Cidhna Mine quest is one of my least favorites ever, if not THE least favorite, since you are basically railroaded into it simply by entering Markarth (I avoided it for a while with one PC by continually telling Eltrys on every encounter that I hadn't seen anything when the murder happened, that worked 2-3 times and then he shoved the note into my inventory anyway.) From there on in it's a one-way track leading to an ending where (for me) both options are equally repugnant. I dunno, is Eltrys essential? I guess I could make him killable with the console and then just kill him in the Temple and be done with it, but my character has no reason to do that, it would just be to get rid of the stupid quest. And still no guarantee that it would come out of my journal.

it svcks that you cant talk to the blades anymore if you dont kill paarthurnax.. btw i have 12 characters and no one killed paarthurnax im now creating a new character to kill him but i wanna see how the blades questline goes forward any information if i should kill paarthurnax or not kill him (again?)

1. I agree that canceling/refusing a quest should be possible.

2. A creative modder will surely expand some of the B-plots (Silver-Bloods, Blackbriar stuff etc)

3. Daedric quests should be more hidden and less accessible (like in Morrowind)

• Too much of the dialogue writing is simply just too mean. If you ask someone what they do, they shouldn't respond "are you stupid, can't you see I'm a blacksmith/whatever!?", lots of mean kids and so on. I mean, seriously, everyone threats the player as an idiot/slave, including main quest people after the main quest, and yet the player is the damn Dragonborn. Some respect please, but not too far into the other spectrum so it turns into worshipping
  
• There are a fair share of quests that are painfully linear with zero player/dialogue choices. Most quests in the previous TES games have this issue too, but it really feels outdated now with a 2011 game. There are some amazing quests though, but the bad ones really stick out like a sore thumb. And if the game offer choices, it's often just between two evil ones. When I first entered Riften and heard from NPCs how bad things were in town, my first reaction was that I'm gonna do quests here and clean things up. That never happened, and after the Civil War things actually got even worse, as the most hateful NPC suddenly got in charge of the city. I feel it really should have been possible to clean up that place, and I'm a bit disappointed it isn't.
  
• The idea of becoming the master of the guilds, and it only take a few ingame days. The player isn't an administrative desk person, but an adventurer. Folks may appreciate the errands we run for them, but have never done the sort of politicking I'd expect of a future guild leader. I thought the Imperial Cult got it just right in Morrowind when they said that further advancement would require a full-time commitment to the work of the cult--a sort of commitment not really suited to adventurous types. The guilds in Daggerfall worked sort of the same way, you never became the leader in those either.

There really isn't any "Blades questline," they are part of the MQ and there are a couple side quests (recruiting new members, bringing dragon parts to Esbern) associated with them but that's it.

There is nothing that they can do for you, or will do on their own, that is any different after you kill Paarthurnax than before you killed him.

If you don't kill him, they just won't do for you the stuff they were already doing or offering to do. Esbern makes some kind of potion to help when you fight dragons (which supposedly never actually worked, don't know if it was fixed), he can give you some kind of Dragonslayer blessing (don't know if that works or not), he can tell you the locations of known dragon lairs if you want a dragon to kill, and you can recruit three new members for them who will then be available to help you hunt dragons.

If you have already seen/done/gotten all those things, and/or don't care about losing access to them, you don't lose anything by not killing Paarthurnax. if you do kill him, all you'll get is more of the same, the Blades aren't gonna think you're extra super special and find more ways to help you and they will never grow beyond Delphine and Esbern and the (up to three) recruits you brought them. None of them will ever leave Skyhaven Temple and do anything except for your recruits and that's only when you request it.

Not that big of a deal but if you pick up certain items before starting their related quests, they are stuck in your inventory forever and/or you can never start or finish these quests. The radiant quest mechanic is also way too random, sending you to places you already cleared or places that if you clear too early, might glitch certain quests and special items. Who ever designed the quest/dungeon system was high on something.

Its always Take Path A or B

A = Kill
B= Save

what about betray , frame or abandon people without it being mandatory in the quest line.

There's no real freedom in the game just the illusion you have it.

On one of my chars I didn't start the Companion line until i was level 30 (or so). BIG mistake.

Also I can kill the emperior (DB line) and STILL walk right up to the general and offer my services. Not like no one saw me involved in the emperior's death.

I can kill every Stromcloak I see, and STILL walk into the throne room in Windhelm and have a converation with Ulfric.

Issues like these drive me crazy. But with some excellent mods hitting, and the fact I RP - skyrim is a lot of fun. A big open world.

I am not running into this very often at all, I think quite a bit of it was fixed with subsequent patches. Some of it may also be fixed in the Unofficial Patch and I'm on PC so I use that, hard to tell what fixed what.

However the only problem I've had since 1.5 was with the amulet of Talos on Roggvir, can't get his sister to take it or get the quest properly updated in my journal because I took it off him before talking to her about it.

So far with every other quest item I've found, if I have it on me all I have to do is go to the quest-giver for it and hand it over. Sometimes I don't even need to have the conversation that initiates their quest, I just engage them and say "I have " and they thank me and give me my reward. This has also worked with killing certain NPCs like bandit leaders that another NPC wants dead, I clean out a bandit lair and kill the leader and get a thing saying "Go tell X that Y is dead" and so I go find X and tell him and get my reward.

Ugh. I purposely failed this quest on one of my characters, killing Eola in the Hall of the Dead. See, my character had just made it over the border from High Rock, and was shocked to be accused of cannibalism in the very first city she set foot in. Being an acolyte of Arkay, this disrespect of the dead and the taunts from Eola made her temper boil over, with fatal results. Anyway, now that that's over and the quest is failed, the dialogue options appear in NPC converation as if I've completed the quest! It's jarring and immersion-breaking to have Lisbet prompting me to discuss the events of the night that never happened! Maybe Lisbet should pay for her crimes, like Eola did...

It's like entering the Hall on behalf of the priest causes the game to assume that you completed the entire Namira quest by becoming Namira's champion, even if you go to the cave with the priest and save him and kill everyone else in the place, you still get NPCs in "the wild" who talk to you as though you participated in the feast and are carrying Namira's ring. I mean, kudos for actually giving the player a couple of choices here, but points deducted for assuming that every player is going to make the same one.

I just started a new character and will probably just skip the Markath Hall of the Dead altogether... as far as I know there's no other reason to go in there. I only did it the last time because I needed an amulet of Arkay for something and I knew the priest would give me one for taking care of his problem. Thought when I killed Eola that would be the end of it, no such luck. I meant to go to the cave on my own and see if it was possible to get all the way through and clear it, wondered if the guests would then show up for the feast that was never going to happen... but I bagged that character before I got around to it.

On my dude I went all the way to the outside of Reachcliff Cave and killed Eola there. He gets comments from the 'ones' in Markarth like he was at the feast. On my chick I killed Eola on sight in the Hall of the Dead and she doesn't get comments or dialogue options.

Maybe I should've killed her on sight, I waited for the dialogue options that made her go hostile.

MONTHS of in-game time later, I'm walking from Falkreath to Markarth and at that crossroads there right by the fort, I see a battle up ahead. By the time I get there, one named NPC is standing in between two corpses and promptly gives me the "ooooh Namira's champion, please, after me" line.

I'm pretty sure I 'waited' for her dialogue options because IIRC it's one of those dialogues wherein you have no choice - she just starts talking, right? Now, I'm also pretty sure I didn't really talk to her and just exited out of the dialogue menu as soon as the controller let me.

Biggest disappointment was the Civil War quests. Give me the option to challenge Ulfric and place Balgruuf from Whiterun on the high king's throne and get a negotiated peace.

Bard college had some nice quests but not very many of them. I'd like a little more content there.

The Blades insisting Parthurnaax having to die as well. There's a mod fix around this in the Steam Workshop but you have to be on PC.

I agree.

Some of the quests are very badly done.

There's no choice in most of them.

The deadric ones have the most choice. Do them, don't do them, it's up to you. And some have actual choices in them.
I have no problem with deadric quests. Some of best quests in the game.

Apart from the Nocturnal one, which is downright moronic and completely illogical.

The bards college is missing a lot of stuff.

The Blades quest is just moronic. They're idiots!
The demand by Delphine is completely forced and artificial.
It does'nt make sense, in any way.
If they're supposed to serve you, and you killed many dragons, you should'nt need to prove yourself to them at all.
The worst part is you can't kill them. You can't kill or destroy any faction other than the Dark Brotherhood.

Maven Black-Brier, fragging nasty [censored].
It's not like she's even in the TG quests that much in the first place.
She makes one appearance, and that's it. Nothing else.
And the only other thing the [censored] does is become Jarl for Imperials. That does'nt make the stupid fragwit essential!


And why the hell are jarls essential in the first place?!
The game won't die because on or 2 rulers get killed.

The damn essential tags, they're on people with no quests!

The bottom line is that you can do every single thing on your own without the Blades. Wanna find out where a dragon lair is? Look it up on the map that comes with your game. Wanna take a follower? No problem.

If there were some kind of actual quest line that you couldn't do w/out killing Paarthurnax then it would be worthwhile. But it's not.

Anyway...

As far as all the quests that are "stuck" in the journal; I don't care. I just don't do them when I get them or if I change my mind later, they're still there. I don't see the big deal about it.

I disagree. It's
A = Kill
B = ignore quest.


My most disapointing quest moment:

"Hey you there! We're from the college of Winterhold and have been following your expedition for quite a while. So glad we finally found you alive! Let's join forces and see if we can find a way out of this fallmer-infested hellhole…"
Lost expedition: "Die!"

Wow I remember that! That was so lame, The survivors excuse for turning on eachother was "so y

Wow I remember that! That was so lame, The survivors excuse for turning on eachother was "so your suggesting we leave because we lost over 8 people and your my bodyguard on this expetition, Nope im just going to assume you want the GLORY for yourself even though theres no treasure down here except for glow in the dark mushrooms, DIE!"

I could accept the expedition leader going mad, but that even his bodyguard, who remained sane and just wanted to get out, would turn on me… It made no sense.