» Thu Sep 27, 2012 7:17 am Don't know about everyone else, but back when Skyrim was announced, and we started to get info on the game, the teaser trailer, etc., I began to imagine what I thought the game would be like. And I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of people disagreeing with me here, but I'm gonna go ahead and speak my mind anyway. And please keep in mind, this is in the spoiler section, there will be a lot of spoilers.
The Main Quest, while I didn't feel it was awful or anything, really dissapointed me in Skyrim. Most of it was probably the overall feel, but there were a lot of things I would've done completely different, and that's what this thread is about.
Starting off, the beginning of the game. You're on a cart with some stormcloak prisoners, it's a little cloudy but suddenly the clouds go away, it's a nice sunny atmosphere, and you're lead into Helgen to be decapitated by the Empire. Not at all what I was expecting, and while it was ok, I didn't really care for it.
What I would have liked to have seen : You are a lone prisoner, you're escorted out of a cell of a prison by 4 guards. They don't really speak to you, and only mumble to each other. One says something like " What did this one do?" or something to that extent. The other replies " Doesn't matter, his sentence is death. Let's just get it out of the way so I can get some rest." They take you outside to a snow covered field. It's a cloudy day, you were apparently being held in a small cell in the middle of nowhere. The guards are just normal guards, not stormcloak, it's unclear if they're even Imperial. All you can see in front of you is a tree line and the gallows. The guard captain drags you up on the scaffold and pulls the noose around your neck. The other guards are all standing on the ground watching. Suddenly, you hear a guard gasp out in pain as he is stabbed through the chest from behind. An old Nord man wearing common robes begins fighting the remaining guards. As the captain turns toward the commotion, you kick him off of the scaffolding. The Nord man dispatches of the remaining guards, including the captain, and walks up to remove the noose from around your neck. The Nord man is the last surviving member of the Blades, Esbern.
- Ok so, why I liked this setup better. One, the atmosphere. I didn't care for Helgen's atmosphere, it was too bright, too crowded. I didn't like being thrown into the middle of the civil war already. I didn't like encountering a dragon that early on. I understand why they did I, I just personally didn't care for it. I feel with my version, there was way more room for you character's backstory, since the guards can't be identified, your location is pretty much the middle of nowhere, and there's no explanation of why you are a prisoner, who imprisoned you, why you were being executed, or what you were doing previously to be being captured. The way Skyrim is setup, they force you to be an outsider trying to cross the border.
Now onto Esbern, which was probably my biggest complaint. We hear Esbern's voice in the teaser trailer, find out he is one of the last remaining members of the Blades, and he helps and guides you along through the main quest. Well, I suppose all of that ended up being true but.. His role was so small, it was virtually non existant. You don't even meet him until like halfway through the main quest, he's not really good for anything other than discovering Alduin's wall, and then tells you that you have to go talk to everyone else to find out more information. Also, I didn't care for the scrawny look he had, coupled with the shut in, crazy hermit personality. Not at all what I had in mind.
That said, what I would have done : In my version, Esbern saves you from being executed. He says something along the lines of " No time to explain, follow me. We need to get somewhere safe." You follow him through the woods, across a creek or something, back to a small clearing containing a secluded cabin. It appears to be his home. Once inside he explains to you that for the last several years, he has been researching a certain family line that he believed to be connected to the previous Dragonborns, and that you were the only living person he could find that had a connection to that family. Obviously it would all be very vague, so that your character's backstory would not be in jeopardy. I would have liked to have seen Esbern perhaps a bit younger, maybe early 60's, a bigger guy (closer to Ulfric's build), and obvious warrior, and not some crazy book keeper. He explains that there is a great evil coming, and that you may be the only one who can stop it. In time he will prove it to you, but for now you'll have to trust him, after all, you owe him your life.
So the first few quests involve you training with Esbern, maybe he teaches you how to fight, make a weapon, the two of you go and clear a cave of bandits together as part of your training, etc. I'm not trying to rewrite the entire main questline here, just spitballing ideas. The point is, Esbern helps you become a better fighter. After a few quests, he deems you a capable fighter (please note, I'm not pushing the fighting skills towards melee, you can fight using stealth or magic all the same.) At this point he gives you a choice. He needs to know you can handle yourself, so you are tasked with going out and either joining a guild and doing work for them, or adventuring on your own for awhile, to prove that you are indeed ready and can handle yourself. (really, all you would need to do here is pass about a week's time in game. But this gives you a good reason to go join a faction and do their quests.) Afterwards, you are to report back to him.
- I liked this idea of having Esbern being your guide and mentor. He would clearly be your closest ally in the main quest, and honestly, Max needed some more voice time. In my version he is portrayed as an aging warrior, a knowledgeable agent, and an early guardian of the player.
From here, Esbern decides it's time you learned what's going on. He leads you through an ancient Nordic ruin, and shows you his latest discovery.. Alduin's wall. He found it a few years ago, and with help from some trusted contacts, he has learned that Alduin's return is almost here, and that the world is about to end. Only you, the dragonborn, has the power to prevent this. He insists that you must go with him now to the throat of the world to speak with the greybeards. The two of you reach the peak of the mountain, and find the greybeards. Old nord men (roughly 10 or so), with long grey and white beards are found sitting on the slopes of the mountain, covered in plain grey tattered robes, with their mouths gagged. There is a small hut in which they seem to dwell, and one younger man, who appears to be an innitiate. He greets you and welcomes you into the hut where you find their leader. The leader uses sign language to communicate with the innitiate who interprets for you and Esbern. Esbern explains your situation and asks that the greybeards help you to learn the Thu'um. This would basically play out similar to the actual main quest, in that the leader will teach you a word, and as dragon born, you are able to learn a shout from it. However, I can't say I cared for the whole "cast a word on the floor and absorb the power from it." In my version, the word would be spoken from the greybeard, and being Dragonborn, you are naturally able to use it in a shout. It would be weak, and the greybeard would explain to you that you can only increase your power from more practice, or by absorbing the soul of a dragon, if you were ever to encounter one. Esbern assures you that you will, indeed, encounter dragons, and leads you back down from the mountain.
- So here I've set up the Greybeards to be much less significant than they were in the actual Main Quest. They're more of a one time curiousity that helps you uncover your true nature as dragon born, and they help you with your ability to shout. But remember, you still have to kill dragons and asborb their souls to unlock new shouts, and find word walls to discover new shouts.
Now the fun begins. You and Esbern return to a nearby city, and it seems the Blade was right. Your first encounter with a dragon. Everyone in the city is screaming and running for cover as a dragon attacks, even the guards are terrified and retreat from the mere sight of the great beast. Esbern tells you he cannot help you with this task (he is too old for this kind of fight), but you must stop the dragon from destroying the city, and he runs off to seek shelter. You make your way through a terrified crowd, and come face to face with the dragon. After you slay it, you absorb it's soul, and find that your shout has become more powerful.
- I like this setup better. Dragons wouldn't be introduced until much later in the main quest. People are actually afraid of dragons. It annoyed me in the game that everytime I went to fight a dragon, I had to compete with every other freaking npc in the game to kill it off. Why on earth is the average commoner not terrified by the sight of a 30 foot flying lizard that eats people with one bite? I like the feeling that you alone stand against the threat of the dragons (much like the overall feel in the Skyrim live action trailer.) A few other points - Dragons are intelligent creatures.. why do they attack wolves when they're in the middle of a battle with me? Why does everyone in Skyrim cheerfully face a dragon in battle? Why are there so many dang dragons, and why are they so easy to kill? In my version, there would be far less dragons (maybe encounter 5-10, including Alduin). The dragons would be gone after the main quest, and every dragon battle would be the most difficult battle in the game (excluding future expansions perhaps.) For instance, one battle between you and a dragon might take place over an entire city, where you run through buildings collecting healing potions, weapons, etc, anything you need to defeat it. The point is, it's hard to kill, and takes a long time (trying for at least a 10 minute fight against a dragon.)
Now from here on out, I haven't planned so much, but there are still a couple of points I feel I'd like to address. One, I didn't like that Dragons were being ressurected. I'd rather have it that Alduin (who's supposedly a god) is sent from the heavens with his minions (say the other 9 dragons or so.) So pretty much, the gods made more dragons. They can conjure them all up out of thin air once, I see no reason they can't do it again, especially if they're ending the world.
Didn't care for the whole deal where you recover an Elder Scroll and see into the past to learn a word. I would've removed that completely, just felt really out of place to me.
Alduin should be the final battle, obviously. I'm not really sure how I would fit a battle in Sovengarde into my version, or if I even would. True, I thought it was cool to see Sovengarde in the game, but I don't know.. I feel like the final battle with Alduin should take place on Nirn, the plane that's existance is actually at stake. Anyway, more quests, battles, etc, like I said, I haven't really written out a whole main quest here. But you end up defeating Alduin, who is banished from Nirn and you are greeted by Akatosh who explains to you that every so often, he sends Alduin out to recleanse the world, but if a worthy champion (the dragonborn) can defeat him, then there is still hope for Nirn's inhabitants and it is spared for another cycle.
- Why I like this better. One, Alduin/Akatosh, while seemingly seperate, can kind of be linked to the same entity, because Alduin is obviously a part of Akatosh's will. Akatosh obviously made you the dragonborn, and gave you the power to defeat Alduin, but from how he explains it, it is possible for the dragonborn to fail. That said, it's basically set up as a test to see if people (the races of Nirn) are still worthy and good, and deserve to continue to exist. This gives a reasoning as to why Alduin would appear in the first place, and I like it a whole lot better than "Big brother got mad at everybody, and decided to go have a little rampage. Dad didn't like that he was doing this, so he made a dragonborn to stop him.) I don't mean to belittle the writing here, I just didn't care for what they had in mind.
A few other notes. This pretty much writes the Civil war out of the main quest. I would obviously still want it's existance occuring throughout Skryim, after all it's a part of the prophecy, but I don't really feel like it's necessary to be part of the main quest at all.
The Thalmor don't really play a role in the main quest. It would be made evident that they hunted down the blades, and that Esbern must obviously keep his identity secret, but again, I feel like they don't have a place in the main quest.
Delphine is removed from the game. Not that I had anything against her (apart from being completely rude to my character on several occassions), but only one Blade is necessary for the storyline, and the fewer of them there are, the more mysterious they become.
At no point do I see a need to trap a dragon and have it become your ally. Didn't care for that move at all. Didn't care for Paarthanax either, being the leader of the greybeards. He could be removed from the story, said to have been killed off. Now obviously I know he helps the Nords learn the Thu'um, so we can pretty much take the Blades idea that "he needs to die to account for his previous sins against mankind" and just say the blades hunted him down long ago with the rest of the dragons.
I think that about sums it up. Just felt like the game would have been a lot better (in my opinion of course) had it's story gone in this direction as opposed to the way it actually did. I'd just like to hear what you all think about it. If I've made some major mistakes, please feel free to point em out. I think I addressed everything, but I'll leave it up to all of you to find some way I botched the story completely lol. Anyway, thanks for reading.
