I know probably it's going to be a good few years until the next installment of TES comes out, but in skyrim you can choose two sides, heads for Imperials and tails for Stormcloaks...but how are they going to explain which side looses? each persons game is different and they can't have the Stormcloaks taking the fight to the Thalmor when their rebellion was crushed back in skyrim, or vice versa. i do like how you can choose a side, but I'm just intrigued to how they are going to continue the Civil war/ Great war quest line's without letting people down. Ideas?

With the Civil War I think they'll have the outcome kind of lost in history. I reckon a Second Great War will happen, as a result of the Civil War's conclusion. The Second Great War will overshadow the Civil War and when the War ends, nobody will remember if the Stormcloaks won or the Empire won in the Civil War, all they will know is that the Civil War happened and the conclusion of the Civil War caused the Thalmor to strike. Or something like that.

They probably won't; these civil war events might be mentioned as "civil unrest" in Skyrim in the lore. They can't create a fork in the lore, one telling the story where the Empire wins and another where the Stormcloaks prevail.

1) Even if the Stormcloaks win in your game its still completely possible that the Empire will reconquer all of its lost territories. This could easily be integrated by putting a line in a book that says "Although the Empire was weakened by the loss of a number of territories at the start of the 4th Era, Emperor _____ was able to reclaim them all." So Skyrim may or may not have been one of the lost territories.

2) Even if the Empire wins in your game, that doesn't mean the Empire won't dissolve later and lose all of its territories. This could especially be true if . All they have to do is put in a line that says "While the Empire struggled to hold onto its remaining provinces, the effort was ultimately in vain as the dissolution of the Empire in the year _____ lead to complete independence for all provinces anyway."

It's likely that Skyrim will fall apart after the civil war- if Ulfric wins, his death means that the Jarls start fighting amongst each other for control, turning SKyrim into a patchwork of city-states. If the imperials win... well, they can't keep Skyrim and the Holds turn into semi-independent city-states.

At least, that's how I think gamesas will define it, or in a similar way. It might make a mention of who won, but the victory will be short-lived, and the outcome would be plausable from both sides.

but almost, if not all cities in Tamriel are city-states bound to a high king/queen and then the Emperor if it's on the empire, also the Jarls have no need to fight among themselves for the throne because the Moot was created (LONG before the Stormcloak rebellion) to prevent exactly this situation, when a high king/queen dies, the moot gathers and who receive more votes is aproved as the new high king/queen, the Stormcloak rebellion will not change a thing in this, it's not their goal
(and the rebellion only started because the Empire flaged Ulfric as a murderer and traitor because of a duel and prevented this way the moot to gather, otherwize after the death of High King Torygg, the moot would gather and a new high king choosen)

I think they'll say that the Thalmor conquered Skyrim during a period of political unrest resulting from the civil war and just leave it at that.

One side will be declared canon.
/Discussion

An event will make the outcome trivial.

My tip? Do the Dark Brotherhood questline. There's your tool to make the entire Civil war trivial.

They could just treat it like the events at Red Mountain from Morrowind. Different outcomes depending on who you talk to. They might give you their biased opinion on who won the war.

It'll just be a universal ending such as eventually the Empire/Stormcloaks won after multiple conflicts, under which this civil war will only be considered one of many.

If ES VI is set in a faraway province like Elsweyr or Summerset, the people you encounter may not care enough about the war to mention it.

Viarmo, the Headmaster of the Bard's College, sums up the civil war and how it will (rather won't) be viewed. Regimes and rebellions rise and fall all the time, but the return of the dragons doesn't happen everyday.

Maybe something will happen in the next DLC which overshadows the entire conflict, although I highly doubt it. I think it will all come back to the Thalmor.

My guess is, although it is kind of obvious, the Thalmor will test their luck again. This will force all the domains of man to unite against them. This would make the Civil War an important piece of history because it would show that the Thalmor threat was so great that the likes of men had to put aside their differences to face a greater foe. Something that makes the bitter enemies of the Civil War unite must be very important, it would make the Thalmor seem that much more dangerous too. Then when they look back in history the Civil War will be brushed over as just a reference point that reinforces how great the threat was and how important the "great unification" was or something like that.

I'm willing to bet that the default ending is the one you get through the main questline if you don't side with one of the two factions

"Our story starts off with you, the " [are you a son or daughter] " of the Dragonborn. Here's a sword, a bow, and a book of spells, classless one whose attributes are already assigned. Go forth, and go do something that'll be whittled down into a line in a book in our next chapter."

Did I miss anything?

I would have to agree with this. The TES games are always rather vague about what happened because of the freeform nature of it.

...With the exception of Arena...Everyone knows how that went. I think the player character was even given a name in canon.

They made the Dark Brotherhood quests from Oblivion canon. As well as what happened in the Thieves Guild and the Mages and Fighter's Guilds.

They did the same thing with the Lore concerning the Morrowind Guilds as well.

It's a pretty good bet that the Lore will say that the Dark Brotherhood assassinated the Emperor during the time of the Civil War once TES VI drops into our lives.

These games can take years between installments, or centuries, or even millennium. It is the rare event that matters in one year as much as it did today, and even rarer to have events that matter a 100 or more years later. The Civil War was a blip in the history of mer, there were many Civil Wars before this and there will be many more after. This civil war will long forgotten by everyone but Ulfric's relatives in 20 years.