A few hours ago, I found myself thinking about the guilds in Skyrim as I was playing through New Vegas with a new character. It occurred to me after thinking about how important the Courier would be in the history of the Mojave Wasteland, and how no matter who tried, the Courier was an unstoppable force. It got me thinking about Skyrim, and the way that the Dovahkiin impacts the world.

In terms of the actual plot, I won't argue that your player in Skyrim does a great many important things, such as stop the world from ending and other such accomplishments. In terms of the guild lines, you can re-establish factions who's influence had diminished for a few years now. But then I also realized that in order to do so, you have to go through many obstacles that by the end of it all, can have forced you to ,


While these things are quite cool and grand in scale, it irks me that you are forced to do this. You are absolutely nothing besides a remarkably talented individual who is simply spinning on a hamster wheel, a pawn of those who have greater ambitions than you. Never once, do you make a decision for yourself.

Just think about that. For a game that markets itself as an open-world RPG promising absolute player freedom, this is a very narrow corridor of options that you have here. Sure, you could just not do the guilds, but then you rob yourself of opportunities to feel like you've changed anything in the world.

Anyone else feel the same way about this stuff?

You know Bukee is going to come in here and tell you to just not do the quest.

I find Skyrim demeaning in general.

Not doing quests* that make up a huge portion of the game is pretty insulting to me, if that's the only solution.

I can't be bothered to do the quests, nowadays. The exploration aspect of the game is nice, I'll give you that.

Slightly confused. Are you upset that in order to complete the guilds you cause bad things to happen?

Sorry if I didn't explain myself properly, my mind isn't working all that well today.

I'm upset that while the outcomes of guild questlines are kind of cool, there's no other way to do them other than what the game tells you to do. Granted, the Companions give you that small choice at the end, but that was it. What if I don't want one of those things that I listed to happen? Nope, doesn't matter.

I do agree.

Same idea, different thread. I'll throw my 2￠ in again...

"Options" in resolving quests are only illusions of options. Multiple play throughs of a single "quest choice" game will underline this for you, with exclamation points, if you haven't noticed it already. It comes down to a matter of preference. For me, I see it as a transparent illusion of "choice" that is, blatantly, only a finite branch on a finite tree. For me, this breaks immersion and I'd prefer Skyrim's "drop out" method. After all, in a circle of werewolves, becoming accepted as "alpha" without actually BEING one of them? Not gonna happen. And then, if you remember your character, play your character, you can take great pleasure in thumbing your nose at Nocturnal by becoming immortal.

ACTUALLY, if you do take that Companions' out, I don't think you can FULLY complete the after quests, I don't think you get them. Anyone confirm?

Oh yeah, one more thing. Why the hell did the Companions trust you with the "great and sacred honor" of the Companions after one mission?

I'm just gonna come in here and say, don't do the quests.

I just made a character that is not interested in Magic or dark things, he is gonna avoid most of those dirty Daedra.

BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME!

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/King%27s_Gambit

This was in theory a simple assassination mission. Look at all the different outcomes and options that the player has access to.

Skyrim doesn’t have that and it bothers us A LOT. When there is only one way to do something with the option of not doing it at all, it is still railroading. You can just choose to stand still instead of traveling the rail.

The only real choice in Skyrim is who you side with during the civil war, and that basically amounts to: "Go attack the blue guys in this fort" or "Go attack the red guys in this fort."

This^

Well... It really is cause and effect usually ~isn't it? If one wants to be paid, one needs to do the work; so it really does boil down to either do the quest or not.

* Or are you commenting that there could have been more than one specific method to achieve the goal... IE "Bring me the Urn of [whatever]" and the PC can break in steal it, fight a tournament to win it; buy it in a secret deal, or blackmail one of it's keepers to deliver it in exchange for their continued silence.

Kind of both. I hate that there is only one path to your objective, and only one outcome.

Hooray, another one of these threads.

I don't necessarily feel the need to do a single guild storyline in the game. I'm just one person so why do I need to be head of the Companions, or lead the Thieves Guild, or whatever?

Its a shame that people feel that they HAVE to do these things, when its easy to get to level 50 doing things like collecting daedric artifacts, or the stones of barenziah, or the gauldur amulet quest, etc.

Are we nothing more than this in our lives? (WHOA SUPER DEEP PHILOSPHY!!!)

Sometimes people need to do things that they don't necessarily want to do. Tamriel is no different to our world in that regard.
I'd like greater freedom in factions and such as much as you, but to be honest that's never been the point of Elder Scrolls games. Fallout is very focused on storyline and dialogue, while The Elder Scrolls is very focused on world exploration and character development.

I don't understand this obsession with bringing elements of every other game into Skyrim. At this rate, TES VI will need a ten year development period just to fit in everything that fans want. And even then I'm sure it will be proclaimed as shallow, lifeless, boring and inferior to every other game in every single way.

That's something I loved about NV, but the game failed on other levels. NV and Skyrim are polar opposites when it comes to where they excel, and where they flounder.

There will always be criticism, but it actually tends to be very constructive with recent RPGs.

No one complained about FONV writing and quests but everyone complained about the bugs that seemed to be EVERYWHERE.

Despite the fact that Skyrim is still buggy people tend to complain the most about the bland quests and the poor writing. What does that tell you? lol

The sad thing is that to do it right would take about as much time as to do it wrong when it comes with dialog and quest design. A few different lines of dialog could really fix all the issues with the thieves guild and a few more lines of dialog could have fleshed out the mages guild. How can you not frown upon something like that and point it out repeatedly in vain hopes of it being fixed next time?

The only real difference I see is that one side wanted to tell me an amazing story but let me decide what role I played in that story.

The other side didn’t bother making a story and tried to pass it off as if they wanted me to “imagine” a good story to cover up their failure.

Sure Skyrim is prettier, but it’s a newer game that took longer to make…