In Oblivion, before you even leave the tutorial dungeon, it was all "GET TO WEYNON PRIORY NOW, DELIVER THAT EXPENSIVE HUNK OF JEWELLERY AND FIND THE HEIR!!! GOGOGOGGGO!!!!!" and throughout the quest it was all "gogogogogog" Skyrim came along, and starts off a bit less urgent. When you leave Helgen, your buddy tells you it's "probably" best if you split up. You don't have to, but you can. Your only directions are to head to Riverwood, and possibly join up with a faction. That's it. I liked that, because I don't feel rushed right off the bat like I did in Oblivion. The problem is, once you start the main quest, it's back to Oblivion with it's "goggogogogogoo!!!!!" Since being an Imperial requires you to start the Main Quest, you will feel pressured to finish it. I like to take my time, and do bits here and there. I like to get started in the main quest, but I don't feel like "dedicating" the next few hours for the MQ alone. This is where I think Beth could have taken queues from one of their previous installations, Morrowind. In the Morrowind Main Quest, you have to do tasks for your Blades Spymaster, Caius Cosades. He sends you on tasks, but tells you you should come up with a cover story, an excuse to be in Morrowind and suggests you do freelance work, such as joining a Great House, doing Guild work or helping strangers you meet. This is the opposite of what Skyrim did, and encourages you to explore other parts of the game and take your time. Several times in the main quest, you have to report back to Cosades. He will tell you he needs to look over and digest the information you have given him, and it would be best to go out in the world and continue your work in the guilds or adventuring. He says that he should have new orders by the time you get back. So you can go out and quest for a month, and when you get back Cosades will most likely have your new orders ready.(he has them ready immediately, but it gives you the feeling that you have time for yourself, for once.)

So I have been allowed to dip my feet in the main quest and not feel rushed. Plus it's encouraged me to explore Morrowind more. This is what Skyrim could have done, too. I don't like the fact that as soon as I do one piddly quest, I'm now entangled in the whole thing and it would seem rather "odd" to just take some time off and do Guild quests, or work on misc. objectives. There comes a point where you will have to feel "dedicated" to complete the MQ and have a huge feeling of urgency, but at least it's not right in the beginning. I think Skyrim would have benefited from this.

Anyone else agree? Disagree? Overall opinions?

I agree, but you should space out your text a bit.

Other than being told to find Priory, Oblivion did not prod you until the MQ happened. In Morrowind, it was more like, "Hey, I will be waiting for you when your ready" or "This NPCs wants to talk to you when you get there". In Oblivion, it was like, "I am heading to this place, meet me there" which gives more urgency. I can see where you are coming from there.

The MQ in this game has some of that "Hey we need to head there now" kind of thing. Like one quest where I had to run across the map following some people. I know now I did not need to follow them, but at the time, it seemed like it.

But in all these games, including the Fallouts, the MQ or any Faction for that matter, the quests will wait for you to show up. Take your time getting there.

I agree Morrowind has the best beginning.

Agree to some extent. For example, it'd be far more realistic and enjoyable if the next plot hook of the main quest was locked until 24 hours (in game) after you completed the previous quest, then have the quest show up next time you enter the area where the quest progresses. It would give you the opportunity to partake in other quests (if you're the roleplayer who completes everything he was asked that suited him before freeroaming)

I didn't even notice that there was a main quest until 32 hours into the game, and I've not paid attention to it since. There is no one telling me what to do and no popups, so I actually have no idea what you are talking about.

I've made a similar point about the difference between TES III and IV. I've come to think that the real game in a CRPG is to assemble a coherent narrative, and you pretty much break any coherence to the narrative if you so much as do a sidequest in TES IV before completion of the main quest.

It's not so bad in TES V. The jarl is going to hear about the dragon attack on Helgen pretty soon, anyway. In fact, as soon as you've escaped Helgen, you're presented with what seems like an alternate main quest: choosing a side in the civil war. Trouble is, once you choose a major quest line, whether the main quest, or the civil war, or the "guild" quests, each seems to insist on your sticking to it exclusively.

In TES III, everything seemed much less rushed. In fact, you are told several times, in the main quest, to take some time off from the main quest and do other things. In the final confrontation, you learn that your foe had been waiting for millenia for you to show up; another century or so either way wouldn't have made that much difference. Things escalated because you started looking for him.

You can't structure every storyline the same way, but it was novel, and made for great flexibility.

I agree. I don't think I even completed the main quest in Oblivion but, although it was a long time ago, pretty sure i finished everything in Morrowind. I like the idea of just being a pretty regular adventurer dude who just does whatever he feels like not instantly being the hero who's gonna save the world and feeling compelled to do the main quest with those annoying bastard dragons. I just don't want to do the MQ because I don't like the uselessness of trying to kill a dragon with my battleaxe while he frosts the poo out of me from the sky, and I go through 30 health potions just hoping he'll land somewhere so I can smite him, just ruined the whole 'fighting dragons' excitement for me straight away.

I guess they used up the perfect line "go do random stuff so you have a cover story" in Morrowind, the whole oblivion crisis and now dragon crisis just seem maybe too epic to not be urgent? I would be pissed if I lived in Skyrim and the dragonborn was just mooching about collecting sweetrolls instead of saving the province as quickly as possible.

no tutorials needed.

I agree. I really disliked how in Oblivion the MQ was forced upon you in the beginning and had this sense of urgency (but it was not that urgent after all and the Oblivion crisis would patiently wait for you while you were picking up nirnroots or trying to get into the Mages Guild). But I understand the design behind the MQ in Oblivion and what Beth was trying to achieve.

I prefer how the MQ was in Morrowind, though it could be somehow vague and not very gripping in that game.

Yep, definitely agree. Also feel like it came from Morrowind's 'classier', slightly more chilled main quest, which was more like a detective novel and less high-fantasy.

The other difference is that in Morrowind (unlike OB and Skyrim), the factions were actually built into the world, rather than being a separate framework through which to explore it.

So each major town had a set of guild halls, each of which had a bunch of jobs for the player to take on, and there was no forced linear narrative. I could take a job in Balmora, go wandering, and then do some work in Ald'ruhn, before returning to take another job in Balmora again.

This definitely meant that Morrowind's factions were less epic and enthralling than Skyrim's or Oblivion's (although the last few quests always had a narrative of sorts), but from a role-playing perspective, that's actually a virtue. Makes for less exciting and instant-reward gaming, though. Beth had to make a choice. (And Radiant Story in Skyrim actually allows them to strike a pretty neat balance)