Why is it that I can't make my own decisions during quests? Time and time again I'm presented with quests, and and time and time again I have ZERO input as to what decision I want to make. No, I don't want to kill some old woman because some kid wanted me too, is that SERIOUSLY my only option? No, I don't want to lure some grumpy old man to an abandoned house and kill him. I can't, gee I don't know, refuse? There is NO OTHER WAY these quests can go without having to just walk away and leave these quests and NPCs frozen in time? And no I don't want to become a werewolf , or a cannibal, or any other thing that the NPCs (and apparently the developers) think I'm just going to go along with because they say so, but at the same time I want to have SOME SAY SO in how things go. This IS supposed to be a role-playing game...

Why are there NO OTHER OPTIONS?! Is this not a role-playing game? What role am I deciding to play when all of my decisions are made for me? Of all the flying horses and flying mammoths, of all the NPCs stroking my ego one second and berating me the very next, of all the times I've had an ENTIRE VILLAGE crowd around a dragon and attack him with daggers (it's just a tad annoying to have what's supposed to be a terrifying and legendary creature being confronted like an invasion of rodents. Am I the one who's supposed to be killing dragons or are the BARGIRLS also Dragon born?), of all of these silly and even sometimes hilarious anomalies, BY FAR the most game-breaking for me has been the inability of this game to let me make my own decisions.

Deciding which faction to join is not enough, deciding in what order I want to do things is not enough. In a role-playing game I expect to actually be allowed to play a role, and that means being able to make up my own mind about whether or not I want to murder old women at the whim of children. And no, simply not doing it is IS NOT ENOUGH.

You have the option not to do the quest.

What bothers me more is even when you get the rare opportunity to say "No" the quest still stays in your list, nagging you to finish it.

And this is for things that you walk into without realizing it half the time.

I agree 150%

You can't even touch Windhelm without getting the Dark Brotherhood quest.

BY FAR the most game-breaking

But I do agree, the lack of options when doing quests is frustrating.

This is a part where Skyrim is really lacking, I put a link with a rather long discussion about the underlined part of the quote (clicky!).

I encountered many quests in Skyrim that told me to "kill X NPC" and nearly always (meaning always except for 1 very important NPC) when I went to said NPC and talked to it I only got the dialogue option of "I was told you need to die" or something along these lines, and obviously if I'd press on it the NPC would attack me immediately. In Oblivion and Morrowind (mostly Morrowind though) I'd get the option to betray my quest giver, the NPC would perhaps make a counter offer and I'd get to choose what I did. In one good Oblivion quest, Paranoia you can...


There would not be such variation in what you can do if this was a Skyrim quest.

A quest is a mission, you have a goal. How you do said quest is up to you.

I know what you mean, i just slapped an old monk to death with a spikey mace for some deadric lord of domination in the house of horrors quest. I would rather have had the option to refuse it because that isnt the way i want to play the game, but i had to do it to finish the quest.

edit; thats probably what u meant with the old grumpy man.

What? The AI is perfect. It has to be. I keep seeing so many posts praising the AI.