The Empire are imperialistic dawgs, and the stormcloaks are a bunch of insular racists.

Conversely, the empire offers harmony and safety in comradeship, the stormcloaks offer independence.

yeah thats the 5% I was talking about.


Revolutions such as the french, spanish, italian, german "hitler was a revolution, a peaceful at first but it was" castro's in cuba etc have all been crap, evne today int he arab world the recent revolutiosn is just to replace crap with more crap.
Need I say more?

back to the game.... shouts: chop stormcloaks heads!

I really want to unite Skyrim under Bulgraaf (sp?). He seems like the most competent ruler in the whole game.

Independence of harmony, safety comradeship o.O? is that a good thing now

I agree that in the beginning if you don't look too closely it looks like the Stormcloaks are the way to go, but here are the reasons I chose the Empire, and felt so good about the decision I'm not even going to replay to do Stormcloaks even though I normally always do that:

- I know from previous games' settings and stories how important and beneficial the empire is.
- The empire is the only thing keeping the Thalmor — the real villains — out of Skyrim. If the Empire fell, or lost control of Skyrim, the Thalmor would take it over in a heartbeat — and they're not as weakened as the empire, so Ulfric would have a harder time fending them off.
- Ulfric is a racist [censored] who, as someone else said, keeps Dunmer in a ghetto.
- Ulfric murdered — yes, murdered — a King instead of using diplomacy.
- While the bond the game creates between you and the Stormcloak supporter at the beginning is notable, the bond the game creates between you and Whiterun over the course of the main quest is much, much stronger. Ulfric's plan was to attack and seize Whiterun without provocation or attempt at diplomacy. I found very quickly that Empire or Stormcloaks aside, my loyalties lied with Whiterun. And when that's the case, the choice of the Empire is very, very clear.
- Ulfric is seriously a horrible person. He'll slaughter his own people and overthrow his friends and colleagues to seize the throne. Meanwhile, the Jarl of Solitude and the General of the Legion in Skyrim have no interest in personal power. The Jarl of Solitude even says she won't consider taking the throne until Skyrim is unified behind her.
- Windhelm is a depressing, racist place full of miserable people — compared to Solitude, a beautiful, diverse place that clearly has its economics straight.
- Not to get too real-world political, but the Stormcloaks kind of reminded me of the Tea Party, with their wild fear of outsiders, total inward focus, and disregard for the forces at work in the larger world.
- I could really care less about worshipping Talos.
- My character wasn't a Nord anyway, he was a Redguard.
- Nobody would have been trying to execute me anyway to begin with if the Stormcloaks weren't forcing the issue.

The game did a great job of making it clear that both sides had their flaws, though. Tullius is generally a good man but his cultural insensitivity made me uncomfortable with working with him sometimes. And yes, the Empire is weaker than it was, and its value is less clear after it's been crushed by the Thalmor. But still... long live the Empire. (You have to understand though that I rarely am with the scrappy rebellion in these stories; I thought the people in Firefly were idiots for resisting the Alliance... so take from this what you will...)

I honestly didn't even know following Hadvar was an option, Ralof yells at him "we're escaping, and you can't stop us this time Imperial!" and I assumed that was my queue to go with Ralof, never even crossed my mind that I could go with Hadvar at the start...

That said, I haven't picked a side with my character, I have purposely remained neutral for the time being...

It doesn't take long to figure out that Ulfric's an a-hole, IMO.

What about when you find out that Ulfric killed the high king in the opening sequence and the guy with the list tells you "I'm sorry about this, I'll make sure you remains are sent to (character races homeland)

Yep I went with stormcloaks originally because of most of the things you mentioned. I very much regret it.

I've always hated the Empire. When I first played Morrowind I created a Dark Elf and I fell in love with the land and the Dunmer peoples. And the Imperials wanting to take over and lay down order pissed me off. Their forts were an eyesore on the beauty of Morrowind.

Then in Oblivion the Imperials and everything about their culture and land and laws were boring. I never created an Imperial.

Now with Skyrim, and Nords being my favorite race and the idea of getting rid of the empire made me go Stormcloak without a hesitation.

I liked the stormcloaks from the getgo, but I realize that the empire needs to be unified to stop the Thalmar so I go imperial. I also do not like the racism the nords have towards none nords.

What?
I know we shouldnt talk history here, but to say the french revolution was "crap" is really weird. Sure, Napoleon took power and alot of people died and all that () but the french revolution was an important step forward in the history of Europe and America.
And you know that there is people that say that the dictator before castro (Batista) was worse then Castro.
Actually, if you look back on the history, you can see that the couses behind a revolution is when a big part of the lands population is unhappy (French, cuban, russian, spanish etc).

Back to the game.

Im a supporter of the empire, went with Hadvar the first time. I think that the game gives you a pretty harsch picture of the empire at the intro, just becuse the stormcloaks is the biggest douches in the rest of the game

Just weak history design...Bethesda under the hood of the game is free, has become sloppy on most quest design.

Well, I'll be joining the Imperials personally. And since my character is Dunmer, even in the beginning Ralof mentions Dunmer being (probably) involved in their capture.

However, I haven't decided when I make my main game (waiting for next patch), if I should roleplay (to start with) following Ralof as it seems noble...but later my Dunmer sees that the Stormcloaks are racist and treat his kind horribly and starts learning some lore of Stormcloaks. Or if I should follow the Imperial guy (sorry name escapes me), right from the start.

The first way probably seems a bit more interesting, even if I really want to join the Imperials more. It is probably more in character to start following Ralof (as he seems most helpful), and learns overtime that the Imperials are better for him.

I came to that first initial impression as well. The Horse Thief states while in the wagon that everything was fine until the Stormcloaks started the civil war. So in the beginning I got a bit of a connection with both sides.

I did feel it tried to push me to like the Stormcloaks a bit more than the Imperials. Ralof is just a likeable guy in general, so I ended up going with him in the beginning.

After reaching Windhelm, though, I ended up siding with the Imperials. Found out the Stormcloaks are racist and I'm like "yeah... I'm not a Nord so I'm going Imperial. x)".

I'll eventually do it both ways. As of now, I've sided with neither.

[edit] Should add that I'll side with the Stormcloaks first...it reminds me of the movie Braveheart.

You think the Nords were racist? Try playing Morrowind as anything but an Elf and then you'll see racism. All the races are wary of the other races while in their homeland.

The bold is exactly why I finally decided on Imperial over Stormcloak. I signed up to defend Whiterun, my new home.

On my very first playthrough I didn't even know you could follow Ralof, I simply followed the imperial guy because well, you were following him and I wasn't paying attention to the quest objectives. In all my playthroughs so far, I've yet to join the Stormcloaks simply because of the way they treat non-Nords and rather than taking the fight to the Thalmor, who started the oppression in Skyrim, to me it looked like Ulfric simply used it as an excuse to further his influence.

I agree with you on this. Although there are some quests that have no answers... like the one with the...

They don't. If it weren't for the Stormcloaks, I never would have been taken prisoner. It's just Legate Rikke who is mean.

If you're already in roleplay mindset, for this time period summary executions of rebels are not offputting at all. Completely normal. Nothing in the opening turned me off the imperials. They thought I was a rebel, so they were going to execute me. I don't see anything damning about that at all.

With the notable exception of a couple in Leyawiin, I didn't encounter any racist Imperials in Cyrodiil. Instead, the Emperor's most trusted allies and protectors were mostly Redguards and Bretons, and an Altmer was second-in-command...

That's mostly because the Empire as a whole isn't racist. It's made up of those vast races. I play a Nord, but knowing what I know now after having completed both Stormcloaks and Imperial quests, I'll always remain true to the Empire. Ralof had the right idea in the end.