I disagree.I love morrowinds main quest most.Oblivion was a let down,still good.But skyrim was better.

Not the worst, but the main quest isn't what I bought Skyrim for anyway, so i'm all good.

So the Blades tell me to kill Paathornax or they won't help me... exactly what were they going to help me with?

Apparently I'm the only person that liked the MQ in FO3 [as compared to Skyrim]??? So the ending wasn't what I was used to but lord forbid someone trying something new ....

Thats the ONLY issue I have...

If you're a master Speech with INTMIDATE Perk..I should be able to tell Delphine "PIPE DOWN WOMAN!" or something of that sort...tell her to take the mudcrab out her ass or something..lmao

The plot would have been alot better if they had kept dragons a secret until half way through the main quest. So, what ruined it the most for me was spoiling the dragon appearance almost a whole year before the game was released. They should have started the main quest with a Rebellion and Imperial dilemma, allowing you to choose to be a rebel, imperial, or neutral character. Then half way through the main quest you could be a guard, spectator, rescuer, prisoner, or maybe even headsman in the "Helgen Scene" with Ulfric on the block instead of you. It would not have hindered the main plot, and it would have made the appearance of dragons all the more awesome by utterly surprising you. Bethesda missed out on a chance to make this Elderscrolls story the best yet in the series, but they had to go and "show the entire movie in the Teaser trailer"...

TES III is still my favorite.... .


EDIT: Just want to add one final positive note.... I forgot to say that I still liked the main quest of TES V, regardless of its shortcomings. It definitely beats Oblivion.

Wasn't that bad, but your points are valid. My guess is they wrote the main quest before they even had much of a playable game or world so they didn't capitalize much on what the game is capable of but just followed the design doc and got it done and nobody messed with it again.

I usually don't run the main quest after my first character. Just like Oblivion once you get so far the gates pop up everywhere making it hard to enjoy the game (dragons do the same thing) as a role player. Maybe I just want to be a fisherman for a while and let the world rope me into adventuring a little.... then find a companion I like and when they get killed perhaps I need some revenge and let my character sort of evolve instead of dealing with dragonborn crap and grey beards and other main quest related junk. I like to do my own thing, so to me the main quest is annoyance until I'm ready for it anyway.

Both main and civil war quests felt short and not very interesting. They just fell flat and became tedious in my opinion. Great game, beth just needs to work on its story telling.

"Just anyone"? Alduin is "just anyone"? Really. It also helps that Shor is a dead god and is completely different from Hircine in the first place.

Also, Hircine svcks.

Skyrim = FO3 < Oblivion as far as the quality of the main quest goes, but all three are so tremendous otherwise I don't really mind.

I've played worse.

People don't complain because they really, really don't like something. They complain because they feel the need to prove something, even if it's an anonymous Internet forum. Someone has a bad day, feels like punching someone, and he decides to vent his anger on some easy target that he can get away with. There is, obviously, criticism and it's good but too many people dedicate their entire presence on this and other forums on showing off their *manhood* to everyone. For some reason, disagreeing and standing out makes you (look) smart.

Who cares? Some people like it and some people don't. In a perfect world we would get the open sandbox world of Skyrim, the utterly nail biting battles of Zelda and the intriguing story of The Witcher. Sadly we live in a rather mundane world and what's done is done. Stop playing if it gets on your nerves and find something better. I honestly don't get that people play 200 hours + and then come back to earth and complain how they've been cheated. $60 for 200 hours entertainment? Yeah, real thieves that Bethesda.

Agree...

I remember thinking "was that it ?" I am still not sure it was the end ??

I didn't really care for it much either, honestly, but it was cool how everything turned out with the Dragons at the end. The difficulty was also extremely easy, but thats not really a massive deal, except for the final boss... Whatever happened to Final Fantasy like boss battles?? Regardless, I don't play TES games for the MQ, I play for the exploration.

This

And This.

AND THIS. ESPECIALLY THIS.


OT: It's not just the main quest.

To be honest, most of us knew the main quest would be terrible. We were looking forward to the guilds.

But those are a joke (Except the Theives Guild, and I guess the DB, but it's a shadow of Oblivion's)

But hey, at least you can explore a huge world.

That never gets old.

Besides the ending, I agree FO3's main quest was pretty good.

Wow yeah, I just compleated that yesterday

It's more like they've set themselves up for a two-parter. They didn't even make it subtle, or give the player a sence of ending. Not even a final boss?
The game is even repeated, you end up going to a city and having to earn a place there twice, and then after that the autority shows up both times and you have to do something before they find you.

Mind you, the rest of the game was extreamly enjoyable, I thought.

Someone said that "destiny plot lines are a lazy cop-out", yes that might be true, but consider that a lot of Fantasy novels are build on a character's destiny. Even great ones, like LOTR! Isn't it Aragorn's destiny to be King?

Plus, all TES games start you out as a prisoner (well the one's I played did, Morrowind and Oblivion. I never had the pleasure to play Arena, Daggerfall, Redguard or Battlespire), so why should Skyrim be any different?

I think the message here is that no matter where you come from, you can rise up to greatness. A rags to riches story, you just have to work for it via quests.

As a writer, I think the story arc of the main quest progressed very well and was rather moving at times. Bethesda included strange objects and places filled with wonder in their main quest line. It was a true journey and when I arrived at the end, I was only sad that that my journey was over. I could have gone on forever. Oh and I did care for the characters, I cared for the Greybeards and for their leader! I would never have done anything to let him come to harm.

I guess because Tamriel feels so much like a living world, we are disappointed when we run into the limitations of the program, like free choice. I wish I could have chosen to reject some quests vehemently, or that my actions would impact the world around me (i.e. I am a known member of the Thieves guild, therefore the companions might reject me or some traders won't trade with me etc etc cause and effect), but I guess we have still a long ways to go in the technological aspect. lol

How is this a bad thing? It's no different than when you speak with Vivec in Morrowind. At least it wasn't as one-dimensional as the Mythic Dawn in Oblivion.

Why did someone necro this thread?

On this I'll agree. If you don't want to, you don't actually even have to inflict a single wound on Alduin in the final battle. The other guys will do it for you. The only thing you have to do is shout Dragonrend at him and the rest is done for you. It should have been situation where it's just you against Alduin because he's taken the other three warriors out of it.

And if you lose, you get sent back and then you have to do additional things in order to get back to Svongarde. The way it is now, once you get to Svongarde, the MQ is essentially over.

Also, I'm on board with not liking how absolutely nothing changes when you get back.

All of that said, Skyrim is still my favorite game ever. It's a wonderful game with imperfections. Decisions had to be made about what to include and what not to include, the timing of delivery to market was a factor, etc. And when the next TES game comes out it's going to be compared to the ones that came before it--it'll be flawed too.

I just love it when people offer obviously ridiculous absolutes. C'mon... "The worst rpg main quest ever."?
The only thing I take from that is that you've only just started playing RPGs.

Thieves guild in Skyrim is much more memorable and entertaining than cyrodiil's in oblivion. The Gray Fox is stupid.