A gallery of pics speaks volumes: http://postimage.org/gallery/by6tq1k/34bda856/

This thing with the character's arms has been reported to me before with Live Another Life. It always plagued the Dark Brotherhood start, and I never figured out why. I simply dodged it with some questionable Utility.Wait() use. Unfortunately now it seems to be affecting the two civil war starts in rather dramatic fashion.

Even to be able to get the screenshots I linked, I had to do all of this:

Game.ShowFirstPersonGeometry(true)Game.SetPlayerAIDriven(false)Game.EnablePlayerControls()Game.GetPlayer().SetRestrained(false)Game.SetHudCartMode(false)Game.GetPlayer().PlayIdle(OffsetStop)

after being transported to Tullius' war room. I pulled all of these commands from various stages in the Helgen sequence, but nothing in there has any affect on this arm thing.

In 3rd person view, moving around in this state doesn't animate. I simply slide all over the floor. If I switch back to 1st person view the camera bobs up and down and won't stop and looking down to the ground shows the 4th pick with my hands firmly stuck to my sides. I'm obviously missing something, but I can't figure out where. Anyone have any ideas?

*poke*

So, basically, you go to third person view without technically leaving first person view? I'm guessing the players' arms are disabled in first person view except when actually unsheathing weapons, and then it uses arms other than the actual models' arms (when you're in third person view, you don't hold both arms in front of you where you could see them if you were in first person view, so presumably your "first person" arms are handled separately from the actual model.

Ah, no, not quite. I switched the camera to 3rd person to illustrate the problem. Without whatever restraint is happening, you would normally see your own arms just like you see the arms on everyone else in the shot. Whatever is happening doesn't allow use of weapons or magic, and as I said, without the chunk of script commands I listed, you can't even switch camera views or even use your inventory or the journal or anything. You'd actually be locked out of everything except the console key.

I have no idea why this is even happening since technically you should be out of chargen mode by the time you click on the bed in the starting cell to get moved.

I found it. I don't know where or how, but there's a function in the MQ101 script that was getting called up. I pulled a statement from it to resolve the camera bob and armless problem:

Game.GetPlayer().PlayIdle(IdleWalkingCameraEnd)

Fixed it right up, although you'll see the bobbing for a few seconds before my script has a chance to undo whatever got called up.