Nocturnal is evil? Since when?

In my playstyle, she fits into the evil bunch better than she fits into the "not precisely good but certainly not evil" bunch. And then, you know.... there's the whole association with TG. I don't DO TG in this game.

Last I heard, Alduin's army does not exist because Martin destroyed the amulet, but because they were never dead all along. After all, their soul is still there, only that they have no flesh for it to possess. When the Dragonborn kill 'em, their soul were absorbed the same way people trap souls, only in this case, the soul is literally absorbed

And yes, Ulfric is just as bad. That's my point. EVERYONE is bad, and where a better game would allow the player to influence whichever side he picked to do what he wanted, this game gives the player no influence at all. You're truly a pawn, no matter whether you can one-hit a dragon with an enchanted daedric warhammer or not. The lesson they seem to want to teach is, "If you want to be powerful, you're going to have to realize that the powerful are just as pathetic as anyone else." It's an ugly lesson, even if it were true, and it's not true. Who's writing this stuff?

This gets to the heart of something that has been bothering me about this game: The writers' insistence that there are no GOOD options, ever. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but how many questlines in Skyrim seek to hammer in the idea that morality is always gray? How many major questlines leave you feeling... vaguely unsettled?

Life is complicated. Sometimes the people we respect end up really being monsters. I get it. But you know what? Sometimes there *are* honorable leaders, who inspire those who follow them and aren't megalomaniacal racists. There *are* causes out there that are just - or at least more righteous than others.

This postmodern moral relativism seeping into adventure fantasy games is just ridiculous. I know we're not supposed to believe that there are any heroes in our own world. Can't we have any in Skyrim?

The Amulet of Kings is a soul gem, containing the souls of all the dragonborn emperors who came before Martin, all of which were fragments of Akatosh. When Martin shattered the amulet he released those fragments which fled to Martin, which gave him the power to Mantle Akatosh and become his avatar. Akatosh has no power except the power his fragments agree he has because the fragments of Akatosh are Akatosh. Akatosh (like the rest of the divines) does not exist except in his fragments. With Dagon defeated, Martin likely CHIMed then zero-summed (realized he is everything and everything is him and didn't have the willpower to say "I AM" and so he returned to everythingness instead of becoming a new god), and all those dragonsouls were free to reincarnate as their favored forms: dragons. Yes, Alduin's army exists because of Martin's defeat of Dagon. Now, by the end of the game, the Dragonborn is a damn-big fragment of Akatosh, due to all the dragon souls he's absorbed. It's possible he'd be able to Mantle Akatosh himself, just as Martin did, so he might be able to hold himself together when the bits of him that want to go and chill with the various daedra try to run away from all the dragon-ness. Chances are good though, that like Martin, you'd Zero-Sum and all the bits of your soul would go wherever they want to go to, the dragony bits to reincarnate as dragons (or, rarely, dragonborn) while the wolfy bits go off with Hircine and the Shadowy bits go off to Nocturnal. It's an issue of likenesses. If your soul is filled with Madness, when you die it will seek out Madness, and it will wind up with Sheogorath. If your soul is filled with beastial instict, it will seek out beastial instinct and it will wind up with Hircine. If you're both mad and beastial you'll wind up torn in half between the two The Monomyth explains it best, I think. When the world was created, Lorkhan tricked the Aedra (the eight we remember and the countless we've forgotten) into forming a permanent bond with Mundus, but they quickly discovered that this made them mortal. The only way they would survive is if they were to split their souls into smaller fragments. So they did, but not before dragging Lorkhan (aka Shor) down to Mundus with them. They divided and merged with each other countless times, and we were left with the Ehlnofey, the ancestors of most of the sentient races alive today, including Men, Mer, and Dragons. In general, like seeks out like. The reason the Dragonborn can absorb the souls of Dragons is because his soul is 100% Akatosh, the same as Dragons. The dragonsoul sees the Dragonborn standing there and is all "cool, that's Akatosh, I'm Akatosh, we should become one big Akatosh." and globs onto him. In any case, the TLDR version is: Aedra have no power except what mortals give them because they only exist as mortals. The Daedra have power, because they are not divided, and act with one mind.

To each his own, but I don't see how the world being a sludge of monochromatic gray is more exciting than allowing the player to feel heroic.

The Civil War is an example of this. I haven't completed either questline, but it became clear very quickly that the writers wanted me to realize that neither side was right, and whichever one I picked they'd make me feel like a jerk. (I'd tend to side with the Empire, actually, but the writers clearly piled on some disincentives to do that, what with the torturers and underhandedness.)

To get back to the OP, the Daedric quests are (often) similar in this regard. Now, I thoroughly like how the Daedra in Skyrim are actually intimidating, creepy, and mischievous. That said, the game seems designed overall to support a "dark" character rather than an "honorable" one.

I'm also seeing the kind of questlines that I hated in Oblivion: the ones where you'd stumble upon someone in trouble, but get there too late, so your only remaining task was too avenge the villain. Too little too late, hero! Thanks, devs!

This postmodern moral relativism seeping into adventure fantasy games is just ridiculous. I know we're not supposed to believe that there are any heroes in our own world. Can't we have any in Skyrim?

Then there's the Nazi Elves vs. the Empire and Stormcloaks.

Well, the Thalmor angle is pretty inaccessible to the player (unless I'm missing something - which is very possible, I admit).

To be honest, I have been studiously avoiding the main quest so far. I'll grant my opinion of Skyrim may be skewed by that. From what I've seen, the central conflict in Skyrim is the civil war - and while the player must indeed decide which side to take, it ultimately seems like a choice that doesn't matter. Either way, you get the feeling that it would be better to just ignore the whole thing, as neither side is particularly satisfying.

Yes, Vaermina's quest is a good example of choice. From my play experience, though, it's been drowned out by all kinds of horribleness, or at best situations where you're better of walking away from a quest entirely.