Am I the only one pissed off by this?


I mean, it's not my first playthrough by far, but it's really getting to me. No matter what kind of character you try to play, the Dragonborn is a mindless, amoral, puppet. Want to be a noble knight? Oops, you stumbled into a daedric shrine and now you have to murder someone or the annoying quest will be stuck in your journal for ETERNITY! I mean, why the heck would a noble knight even WRITE IT DOWN!? It doesn't make any darn sense at all. So, okay, you accept it and decide to become evil and twisted. You pick a fight with a vampire just to catch vampirisim, and now you murder people in the streets for fun and you join the Dark Brotherhood. Oh, but then someone's like, fetch me some blah-blah-blah from here or the tree will die! So you're this hulking vampire in dragon armor with a massive warhammer, full of evil deeds and spite for all living things, and you go "Sure!" Why? Because if you don't, it will stay in your journal forever. SOS from Oblivion. Even when you're the top guy in the Dark Brotherhood, you still end up calling Martin "My king" or something like that. What if, get this, the PLAYER feels no connection or kinship to Martin? Why is the player a slave to the character? And SO MANY unkillable quest NPCs. What happened to the simple option of intentionally murderering a pushy NPC and "failing" the quest? Why is the Dragonborn so mindless that he/she absolutely will NOT harm a hair on a quest-essential NPC for fear of not having someone hold their hand? The Nerevarine can show you how it's done! Screw fate and destiny!

I mean, it's still a totally awesome game and all. I frickin' love Skyrim, it's just... you know. Just saying.

Definitely annoyed. I stumbled upon the TG headquarters and decided to take them down. And no matter how many times I hacked and slashed at them, none died. I had to reload. And it is annoyingly difficult to keep your journal clean of noise. It would be nice if there was a "Not gonna do" tab where you could place quests that you are not gonna do.

? thats easy you played the game alot of times right but you still go do the same thing ? i mean avoid the quests you dont want to do is it that hard? but i see a Noble Knight doing the quest to meridia... and why are all your characters Dragonborn? and why dont you Roleplay? "Ukzill"(my 3rd character) havent done any quest yet... (Well only Unbound) and i dont care about the Journal really...It was like that in Everygame and only know you complain?In morrowind The NEREVAR also pointed "DARK QUESTS"

The DragonBorn only is there for the Main Quest, The rest was probably other guy.... do you really think it was DragonBorn Helping Sithis or Nocturnal? there is people who can explain this better then i.

inb4 another "you Roleplay/ignore what doesn't fit your roleplaying."


but no it's the point. always has been, leave the char as blank as possible so that the player can relate better and have their own perceptions about whats going on, nothing bad about that. it'd be nice to deny a quest or "hide it" from the journal, but otherwise you can't blame the quest really.

and tbh there is always a way to rationalize it away according to however you desire it.

I agree, "don't do the quest" isn't some amazing role-playing feature. I would rather you have multiple ways to complete fewer quests, rather than just knowing there are "essential" good/bad guys you can't deal with.

Um... I think your character is mindless and amoral only if you choose to play it that way.

Nothing forces you to do quests that don't fit the character you want to play. You can just leave them unfinished and/or live with the consequences of not doing them. I agree that it would be better to have a "refuse quest" option to get them out of the journal if you don't intend to do them, but that still doesn't force you to do them. And doing one "evil" quest doesn't force you to become evil and twisted, that's your choice.

I'm as annoyed by having unfinished, unwanted quests in my journal as anyone else, probably more so as I've complained about it more than once. But if I find it so intolerable that I go ahead and do quests that are completely out of character for my PC, and decide to do a total one-eighty on who my character is supposed to be, that's not the game's fault.

And one reason that so many NPCs are unkillable is because there are so many ways for them to die other than the player killing them. Sure it's fine if they die when you know you don't need them for anything, it's not so fine when they die in a dragon or vampire attack or through some other random event and you get there two days later for a quest that you *want* or need to complete only to find that a whole questline is completely broken because the person you need to talk to, kill, etc. is already dead.

Even better would be a dialogue option with "No, sod off" when NPCs run up to you and force a quest down your throat.

Sure, you can simply ignore those quests. But it's just an annoying design decision to me. That the quests that are forced onto you are among the worst in the game is probably not helping things.

I think this game need to be more open minded and whole Elder Scrolls.
Let see for example if my character want to be or to become jarl he should be able just to kill rightful jarl and threatens all in hold to acknowledge him as rightful ruler.

You do have a point, quests are often forced on the player even though from an RP point of view, it would make no sense (the knight in the Daedric shrine was a good example). Unfortunately the game can't tell what sort of character you're RP-ing because it's in your head. The only way around this was if they included some option to fail a quest , or better yet erase it from your inventory so if you wanted to do it, you'd have to go back to the source again to get it (theoretically allowing you to do this an infinite number of times).

Well until gamesas learn how to do multibranching quests that aren't linear affairs that rail road you down set piece endings and force them down your throat by just stumbling or seeing some NPC we're stuck.

Though in some cases it can.
For example the Thieves Guild. Brynjolf should not run up to you and go "Hey there, stranger! You're a thief! I can tell... somehow, don't ask." Ignoring the clumsy writing of that quest for a moment, the game tracks various things your character has done; amongst others how many things you've stolen, pickpocketed, etc.They could have used that as a trigger.

Have the ability to fail a quest? Don't be ridiculous. What kind of a game could let that happen to you?

they do have triggers, unfortunately its used in the wrong way.

there's triggers if you're broke, or filthy rich. He always assumes that you're a thief, could have easily been rectified by using tracking, of skills like sneak and pickpocketing or even lockpicking DONE.

but instead the game passive aggressively railroads you into him, and makes a third of riften annoying to traverse be cause he hounds you down like that idiot Glathir.

I don't like Oblivion, but how they handled the Thieve guild initiation was....good. why was that not continued in Skyrim, that line of thinking.

Even though it's obvious that this will be the general answer (don't do what doesn't fit your character), one does have to admit that the dialog choices you're given DO reflect into the "canon" character, and I DO think it's nice when the player can feel sympathetic to the default, canon character. When I played FO3 I loathed the Lone Wanderer and thought it was a whiny daddy's boy dork, because all of the good karma speech options basically REQUIRE you to whine and cry about how much you miss your daddy and how helpless you are without him. For me it was just kinda like "holy crap dude you're 18, no wonder Butch and his gang made fun of you." The Courier from New Vegas though? Loved him. He was like a cowboy James Bond with a great sense of humor, and a deep thinker while simultaneously not being the sharpest tool in the shed. I wasn't running around crying about my daddy, I was meeting people that shot me and going "WOoooOOOooooo~ I'm a GHOOOOOST~~~" while swooning several in-game women. I wasn't defusing nuclear bombs like it was nothing, I was asking "'The hell is a Chicago?" or "What the hell is a fish?"

I know it seems simple as obviously most people make their own character and don't follow the canon character via gameplay, but PERSONALLY I think it's nice to have dialog options and a general direction with them, because it creates a story for the canon character that, even if you DON'T pick the canonical-looking dialog options, you get to read it, and simply by reading it you get a feel for the canon character and grow attached to them.


Having said that....
Some people might like the amoral, power-hungry bastard that is the Dovahkiin. Hell, I'm actually fairly sure that's WHY he's such an amoral, power-hungry bastard. People eat up the stereotypical "badass" protagonist. Some other people probably like and relate to the Lone Wanderer etc. Different strokes for different folks, just like some people might love the snowy tundras of Skyrim and others might prefer the more alien world of Morrowind. It's preference rather than superiority, and although I can sympathize with being dealt a character you can't sympathize with (Lone Wanderer), that's just how it goes. Sometimes you get one you like, sometimes you don't.


I think the real issue here is more that Elder Scrolls dialog options are limited and admittedly, perhaps lazy. There's no attempt to anticipate what players might WANT to say, but rather we're expected to pretendinate that our character said something else, when really we're generally given "yes" and "no." The other thing is that quests lack branches. I mean there's quests where you do a good deed but by the end of the quest you're doing something evil or vice versa. It'd be nice if the game gave an option for us to be PURE good or PURE evil, but that doesn't happen, and the result is that Dovahkiin seems completely amoral, literally taking on any job.

Yes you're right, there are cases where the game is at fault and the TG questline is probably the best example of this. It's ridiculous they couldn't come up with any more interesting and "voluntary" way to get you do to it than literally shoving it in your face as soon as you walk into the city. I for one would love to brutally kill Brynjolf and all his little buddies.


Ummmm, gee let me think.... what was answer c) again? Huh... you know I think I'm going to use my phone call on this one. **bring, bring** Hey mom... yeah sorry to bother ya... yeah I know it's late but I need the answer to this question; "Have the ability to fail a quest? Don't be ridiculous. What kind of a game could let that happen to you?"... is that what you think? Okay thanks mom. **click** Okay I'm going with a) A Realistic One, and I'm putting that in as my final answer for the $10 000 mark. Was I right?

I really don't like the dialogue and the choices you get in it. That is one of Skyrim's weakest points, and one of the reasons I didn't enjoy the game as much as I wanted to. You're morality is constantly being challenged, and you are shifting between doing evil and good things without having too much of a choice of trying to find a more rational solution to the problems the quest has.

I wouldn't mind the quests so much if the game gave you more freedom to interact with the quests in more ways.

This is like complaining how Gordon Freeman cannot jump...


Also these complaints about the Molag Bal quest is quite funny. I mean, the first thing I saw when I did that quest was "I WILL NOT DO YOUR BIDDING", but it is in the journal so we have to complete it?

It's just there bothering you. It's like Bethesda is treating you like a toddler and doesn't even trust you to make your own choices. Saying "But you may want to go back and do it later so keep it in your journal." is like saying "Just take the soccer ball, you kids may want to play some after you're done making sandcastles." It's ridiculous.

I don't remember people complaining about this in Morrowind... other than me that is...

And what you're trying to say here is...?

Not to mention it's kind of a controversial quest to force someone into.

I mean they force the Thieves guild intro in your face while having a character accuse you of being a thief and they force the Molag Bal quest on you, forcing you to kill a good guy and then showing your character practically crapping himself in fear in the face of Molag Bal. If you're playing a good-at-all-costs character, you have to go out of your way to avoid that guy. If you're playing a badass who never gets scared, tough cookies, you're gonna cower in fear in that basemant.

Thus, ta-da. The Dovahkiin is amoral. Because unless you REALLY REALLY REALLY try to avoid that quest activating (hella annoying), you're gonna kill someone and you're gonna look like a coward in front of Bal. Brynjolf just should NOT approach the player unless certain requirements are met. Maybe a sneak of 50, and accusations of being sneaky with subtle hints he wants to hire you as a thief? Not "HEY ARE YOU A THIEF? ME TOO, WANNA ROB THIS TOWN BLIND??" There should be an option to help that Vigilant who's after Bal, etc.

But we have no options and get railroaded in quests, the result being the Dovahkiin is amoral as hell.

He's saying it was no different in Morrowind.

I don't think he realizes Morrowind isn't the topic here.

The journal in Morrowind was way worse, everything stayed there even if you completed the quest, it wasn't even organised until the expansion packs.

Yet the problem in Skyrim is that this is apparently too "handholding", but not in Morrowind... this is beyond me.

Hell, New Vegas did this too, even with quests that did nothing other than inform you of certain things.
I fail to see what is oh so REALL REALLY REALLY hard in "going into the building, go to Molag Bal, say NO, leave and never return". How are you forced to find that guy again?

Nor do I really think Morrowind was a fair comparison, either. Morrowind had a slightly different dialog system in that you didn't directly ask questions or full sentences, they simply offered key words and YOU filled in the blanks. You were expected to pretend and imagine what your character said. You'd get "Imperial Legion" as a key word and a response. Also, while it WAS similar at times, I don't recall "twist" quests in Morrowind. Skyrim has plenty of twist quests where it can start out good but turn evil (or vice versa), Oblivion and Morrowind lacked these by comparison.

Perhaps TES should go back to that system if they're unwilling to accomidate more than one character type.




Oh this should be good....Lemme pull up a chair.

Please, tell me how New Vegas held your hand.

He starts up the dialogue EVERY DAMN TIME you walk past him. It's like trying to avoid that other a-hole who shoves the Forsworn Conspiracy down your throat; you can't even enjoy some cities any longer cause you're trying to avoid these quest-giving [censored]ers.



TBH I can't judge this fairly because I've never played Morrowind, but if it is like you say that still doesn't justify Skyrim's system, if anything they should have improved it.