I was just participating in a Hearthfire thread speculating on what a third expansion might have. It's been an idea in my head for a while - but I thought it would be worth it's own thread here - just to speculate.

Basically this expansion idea is simply a way to resurrect dead NPCs... but it won't come cheaply or easily.



What I would like to see is a nice expansion dedicated to Ark'ay... a series of dungeons and questlines that, after completing them, would allow you to do medium-sized repeatable quests/pay money to resurrect dead NPCs.

It would start at the temple of Ark'ay in Falkreath - where the story starts spinning about a visiting powerful priest of Ark'ay from another land... that priest then sends you to collect various items from new dungeons and events - explaining his/her story and some of Ark'ay's history.

After the primary expansion questline is over... you would get a repeatable questline where you can select any one individual dead NPC you would like to have resurected. You would have to pay an upfront fee for "provisions" (say, a 1000 gold) and then would be required to get some specific piece/item. After said acquisition of item - you ultimately would have to go to some new shrine of Ark'ay buried deep within some new ruins. At the altar, the corpse of who you wanted to resurrect would be there - along with the priest. After they're resurrected - the entire dungeon is filled with enemy ghosts - the story being that the ghosts are trying to keep that person's soul from escaping. Finally you would have to escort that person safely out of the dungeon THROUGH those ghosts in order to rescue them (think like a companion's kidnapping rescue questline)

This would be a neat way to bring in a much requested way to ressurect your NPCs, while not only turning it into viable content, but also making the quest/chore/finances long enough to provide a true/RPG sense of serious consequences involved in the cheating of death and truely resurrecting anybody to pure consciousness.

What say you all?

Oh, God, not a escort mission!

Seriously, that's a very inventive concept, but it all comes down to an escort mission at the end, and I don't know anyone who likes those.

hehehe... actually I detest escort missions too... and that's exactly WHY I believe the final step should be an escort mission!

Because resurrecting the dead to full consciousness should NOT be something as trivial as going up to an NPC and buying a "restore to life" scroll. It should come with dire consequences and REALLY make you feel like you went out on a limb for that person.

I think the reason most people hate escort missions is that the escorted is usually a complete [censored], incapable of defending themselves, always running into your line of fire, wandering off or getting stuck on the environment. Frankly, I don't think Skyrim's AI is sophisticated enough to avoid all that.

You're also up against the fact that it's a long-drawn-out way for game-console players to do something that PC players have probably already done with console commands.

You don't like escorting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgyUnir31Ks&feature=related

...that would be because I'm a console player and not a PC player.

I would also guess you missed the part of "new story about Ark'ay" and "new dungeons". I'd imagine that would still be appreciated by PC players.

Lastly, not every PC player is a console-command monkey user. Some believe in things like "integrity of role-playing experience"

I mean, what I'm proposing is adding a lot more than Hearthfire is - and PC modders can add houses 20x better than those in Hearthfire.