I am not going to sugar coat it, I am not a fan of the main quest and found it lacking in depth and the number of holes is astounding. I was trying to understand what went wrong exactly, why does the man quest svck so badly? I realized the Civil War puts a damper into what could have been an amazing story for the main quest.

It causes the game to have too much going on at once. It is like watching a movie, where one person is trying to destroy the world, while some other person is going after the government. It creates far too much confusion.

I think the Civil War should have been left for a DLC this would have given the Main Story a little more meat. Hell I could have lived without the Civil War all together. While it is a good idea, it may be a bad idea in the end. Who exactly is going to win? If a player chooses the Empire, and the lore comes back the Stormcloaks won, players who devoted their time to helping the Empire are going to be pissed and vice versa.

I just hope Bethesda has a damn good reason for doing what they have done and not dug themselves into a hole.


However, this is my opinion; I am curious what everyone else thinks?

I agree. I tried to get it out of the way asap on this playthrough, as its just a distraction, and can cause bugs in some quests if not completed. *sigh*

I disagree entirely. The MQ is my favorite quest line, second is the civil war. A good political story line is so hard to come by in games- from what I have found. It's usually a simplistic kill the bad guys/ defeat the great evil thing.

Plus the civil war IS part of the main event. The prophecy on what's supposed to happen when the Dragonborn appears is:

The civil war is what you make it.

Bethesda made a hash of it, but that doesn't mean you have to. It gives you camps, patrols, forts, and sympathisers within cities - everything you need to be a guerrilla, an assassin, or a paid-up professional warrior. You don't have to pretend anything - it's all in-game. Just use the actual quests as filler, and spend the rest of your time assassinating Imperial/Stormcloak financiers or affiliates, delivering healing potions or equipment to the camps, and releasing prisoners of war. If you really want to RP it, don't go into lands held by enemies, except for raids, and spend more time on the roads rather than fast-travelling: the war does have consequences out in the wilderness, but not many players get to see them.

I find it best to mix things up a bit. It's not quite obvious, but the main quest sort of serves as a tour guide/hub for other areas and quests. Instead of trying to rush through each quest line in sections, I think it's fun to mix them all up. The MQ first takes you to Riverwood and Whiterun. There you can familiarize yourself and get situated. From there, it takes you into Hjallmarch/Morthal. From there it's Kynesgrove/Windhelm. From there it's Solitude, etc..

Now the reason why I think they may want you to slow down and smell the roses in each of these places are little touches here and there. Like once you're in Hjallmarch, you'll meet NPCs who need stuff done in Solitude (where the MQ takes you next). Even at that Thalmor party in Solitude, the Jarl of Morthal is there, and if you did her quests, she'll have a funny moment and help you at the party.

edit: Uh, I guess my point is is that it can be seen as one big quest in a way. It helps flesh out any individual quest weaknesses (or length) as well.

I personally had no problem with the questlines themselves. I do have a problem with the way they were handled. A lack of freedom, consequences, benefits / drawbacks to your actions, shallowness all around, only one way to do something. These are the real problems in my opinion. I also wish they'd have gone deeper into the complexity of what's going on in the main quest. The Elder Scrolls is fascinating because of the metaphysics and philosophy behind its mythos. They had a lot going for them with Alduin, and the idea that maybe the world is supposed to end. Even one of the developers for the game, the one who writes a lot of the in game books, stated that Alduin is possibly a different aspect of Akatosh, different from the one worshipped by the people of tamriel, and that Alduin is the aspect of Akatosh that focuses on destruction and rebirth rather than creation and permanency. The implications of this could be astounding. They could have gone so deep with these ideas, and yet they just glaze over them and are never mentioned again. THOSE are my main problems. Not the stories themselves, but the SHALLOWNESS of it all.

I think Bethesda's mistake was making a game in which a recurrent theme was tough decisions. Players can't really come to grips with the idea, it seems. The Civil War questline is just one example. Instead of the player being shown the obvious 'here's the good path, here's the bad path', the choices are most times ambivalent. Personally I feel this was done so that the 'right' and 'wrong' were left up to the player and how he or she feels or even how he or she roleplays.

Most players go on and on about how they roleplay this or that, but from reading these forums, what players expect to do is go along for a ride based on character selection (and I also believe that this is part of the gnashed teeth about the elimination of static 'classes')- they don't really try to figure out what that character of theirs would do, they just choose 'good' or ''bad'. Eating, sleeping etc is fine for RP but the motivation behind the character- how the character thinks and reacts, even if you're essentially RPing yourself- count for a lot in Skyrim, I think. The character gets put in a lot of situations in which right or wrong is muddled, or even not really possible- it's a 'make do with what you have' scenario some times, just so you can complete the goals you want to accomplish. "Mission oriented" behavior is required a lot of times. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does remove the soft "but I did this for the reason of good, because of X Y or Z, it says so in my quest log" mentality- the player needs to justify what the character does, and I'm fine with that. It's refreshing to me that the game doesn't ram some kind of morality down my throat and lets me consider what's best for my character.

A lot of players think that this was all through some big error on Beth's part, and I disagree. It would be much easier to have presented a 'good' path and a 'bad' path. I think the premise of the game revolves around tough choices and difficult moral questions on purpose in many instances.

It also makes the whole idea of a game in which any attempt at subtle, tough choice scenarios a thing whose time has definitely not come. Players want to be guided, they don't want to deal with the ramifications of making a choice and it makes all of the threads about 'I'm railroaded into this or that" very interesting to me, as are the 'dumbed down' threads. It's my opinion that the TES player today wants to be shown the path and can't get their heads around a more sophisticated premise than right vs. wrong.

I'd agree, but at the same time... I guess it brings me back to my point above. If I mix up questlines, it obscures the length of any individual one.

It'd be nice if they could be more extensive, but at the same time, that's a mighty workload. Perhaps we are entitled to that level of detail, but I think they handled the essential points of each quest well too. Like, everything is almost written as a cliffnotes/synopsis. The questlines touch only on essential points - enough to understand what's going on. And handled well enough that we get the point. It could have been worse, where nothing made sense, and they didn't touch on key points well.

The depth, I guess, is up to our imaginations.

In classic RPG's the good/bad choices were pretty obvious. There is a recent trend to do away with obvious moral choices. In fact, developers like to advertise their game as such. In most cases they fail. The ethical dilemma's are mostly very contrived. They lack nuance and credibility.

That's why I very much like how the Civil War quest was done. Imperial vs Stormcloak threads are always the most busy threads here (same thing on the Steam forums) with supporters of both sides making very good cases for their choice. Bethesda did this very well.

I think the Civil War was a very well done ethical choice.

There was no right answer. You just had a choice of the two factions.

very good point- a lot of players seem to have taken the entire question to heart and thought it out, which was what Bethesda probably intended. But unfortunately it's not really a roleplaying point of interest, rather a 'which faction is right' question. Oh well, its a start

Yeah, there's very little "choice."

You can say, "I agree" in three different ways to most quests.

People do the same thing in Dragon Age, with mage vs templars. Both are hung up on what is "right" and go on and on about their choice being canon, because it was more heroic.. etc..

But I don't think it's that simple.

But each choice is subltely different based on how a character feels about the subject.

That doesn't make it a more broad selection of choices, but it does make the consequences more interesting

Ultimately, I don't think it will matter who won the civil war. If the Empire wins, Skyrim is re-annexed, and they'll stand united to face the Thalmor. If the rebels win, the Empire will still turn on the Thalmor eventually. When they do, the Stormcloaks will see the strategic advantage of putting their past disagreements behind them... and they'll stand united to face the Thalmor.

The actual bottom line for me, after numerous toons, only one of which finished the MQ (though several played through at least parts of the civil war from both sides depending on toon) is that I do NOT want to be bothered with a civil war - which Beth will later decide "canon" for. I would much rather have had a far more fleshy MQ than a sidetracking into a stupid war. I really dislike war in my games - there's WAY too much of it IRL, and I play games to GET AWAY FROM RL. /grumble

Anyway, I expect as always that the modders will fix not to mention expand the stuff Beth failed on. Just like the last 3 games.... Can't wait for the CK to release personally.

I appreciate everyone's opinions, I really do.

I think the Civil War was OK, not the best writing, by Bethesda. My view point is the Civil War takes away what could have been an amazing Main Quest. IF something BIG was going on at the time of the Oblivion Crisis, I doubt the Main Quest would have been as good as it was.

Don't get me wrong, the dragon idea is nice, but I would have (further) preferred my character being apart of the "Great War."

Well, the civil war choice will be made completely pointless when the volcano in the east of Skyrim erupts.

It's a serious geothermal activity zone in those hotsprings, the fantastic version of Yellowstone.

And I would have preferred a much more expansive dragon MQ than any part of a stupid war. Especially one in which one's toons actions have no consequences, since as I said earlier, Beth will determine "canon".

Yeah, it's different strokes for different folks. The previous Elder Scrolls games were big mythic things so bringing it down to a Song of Ice and Fire civil war would be bad.

I agree, though Bethesda did a much better job with the civil war setup than DA2 on its political story line, which is all based on various forms of mania.

The big mythic stuff is here, too, with the Dragonborn prophecy and all that, but a bit of A Song of Ice and Fire is definitely welcome in my book. I prefer to play out real human conflicts with interesting characters, rather than a war in heavens where anything and everything can end up a deus ex machina.

The problem, inevitably, in real human drama is realistically - why do you necessarilly care? Frankly, the only reason I choose a side whatsoever is that I *HAVE* to in order to bring peace to Skyrim.

If there was a Peace Option, I'd take it.

Alduin, by contrast, makes me feel like a HERO than a garbageman.

Not all toons do. You can basically ignore the civil war quest line. For those that want to roleplay it, though, it makes for good roleplay possibilities. As for why you care, does the world have to be ending to do something?

We'll have to agree to disagree. I don't want anything "channeling" RL in my games. Which is why, after one toon finishing the MQ and a few getting part way into the civil war, I have bagged all that. I want games which do NOT pretend to any sort of realism or RL references. I have to LIVE in the RL - I play games to presumably get away from that.

I find it hard to seperate the two completely. Fantasy is usually fantastical for me in terms of setting and races and abilities. The rest is often realistic drama.

I mean, when it comes to books I read mostly. I guess games are the same as well.

As for war specifically, I don't care to be shoehorned into it. I could have easily enjoyed it as a backdrop. I hope this doesn't sound too corny, but say.. something like Gone With the Wind. It has the Civil War in it, but it's not a civil war movie.