.. That makes Skyrim so.. thrown in my face kind've. As in "forced".. now don't get me wrong I love the background of the Story and the Dragonborn, etc. But something lately is just.. I can't put my finger on it.

When you started Oblivion you had NO idea what was going on, why you were locked in a Prison, and your future for that matter. It brought a bit of sense of drama and mystery behind it. Why were you in there? What did you do? Where did you come from? See what I mean?

Skyrim? You KNOW you got caught at Darkwater Crossing, you KNOW that you were trying to cross Cyrodiil's/Skyrim's borders for some reason. And by the time you're done making your Char. you know that you are Dragonborn becauses Alduin King Dragon himself comes and attacks the city ONLY because you are there.

Also, don't get me wrong the dungeons are great, some are just absolutely breathtaking compared to TES IV. But most of the times it feels like I'm going into the same "kind" of dungeon over and over. ESPECIALLY Nordic Ruins. Dwemer Ruins are different and what dungeons should truly be like. Almost everytime I enter a Dwemer Ruin it looks diff. whether it be an area to fight enemies, or just a hallway. It's different.

IDK what I'm trying to accomplish with this post really. Just some things have been bugging me lately and making it harder for me to keep making new characters and just stick to the ones I got. =/

The only thing I knew about Skyrim before I played was that there was going to be a Civil War, Dragons would be flying, there was some new thing called a Thu'um, and the dual-wielding mechanic.

The prophecies and lore had given me an idea of what was going to happen in Skyrim, but I had no idea what to expect really.

Not going to get into the whole dungeons are repetitive because of this :


You basically said they look different, and then proceed to call them all the same.

Also, there could be no way you knew that the first Dragon you see in Skyrim is Alduin when you first see him.

Did you read too many reviews? Accidentally look at spoiilers or something?

How did you know that Alduin was attacking the town looking for you when you didn't even know you were Dragonborn yet? Alduin's name isn't mentioned anywhere in the starting scene, and your character doen't even know what a Dragonborn is. And the opening gives as many RP options as in Oblivion.

Why were you crossing the border? Why would your Bosmer ever want to go to Skyrim? Why was your Khajit traveling alone, without a caravan? Why was your Nord outside of Skyrim in the first place? You really have a lot of possible backstories.

As for the dungeons being linear, I really don't know what you're talking about. Especially since the dungeons are actually hand crafted one by one this time, instead of being copy/paste like in Oblivion.

Although the color palette for Nord ruins remains the same, the layout has a lot of variation, I think.

If you turn subtitles on in the beginning they will show "Alduin: [Dragon gibberish]" whenever he does the firebreath. That may be how the OP knew.

There are some lines where the scenes go so quick, I can't figure out what he's saying,even with subtitles. The only ones I know is Toor Shul and Fus Ro, but that's his Fire Breath and Force shouts.

Yup, man got it right.

I turned them on as soon as I got the game.. for some reason I swear people are WAY quieter in TES then any game.. even have subtitles on for Fallout 3/NV as well. Really helps to not only make out what people are saying.. but helps you get into what's going on more in the process..

Plus I had a friend text me the same night when he was playing and told me of the talking Dragon you meet with Delphene at the Burial. And he said if you put Subtitles on you could actually read what he was saying both English and Dragon tongue.

Have just kept it on ever since... it does get rather annoying though sometimes like if you talk to someone and quickly back out of dialogue.. there whole dialogue they said will still be on screen.. other then that though.

Okay.. I can agree a lil on the Nordic ruins thing. Color Palettes always the same but SOME have different twists and turns.. but the fact all of them open with some kinda Animal Puzzle is kinda redundant. Even Yngol Barrow at least had a twist to the puzzle.. it actually took me awhile 1st time I tried.

That's where it did GOOD, but the fact Yngol Barrow was so SHORT made it BAD also. IDK how to explain it really..

Pretty much you can't have a good ruin with a great puzzle and length imho. Most of the lengthy ones you find the Claw in the process and it's as simple as looking at it in the Items Menu.. (this got old.. way too quick Bethesda)..

But I'm not just going to randomly guess what the puzzle is.. nah.

LoL I think the first trailer of Skyrim let us know that your going to be dragonborn -.-

Pretty much when I saw the first trailer I knew I was going to be this ''dragonborn'' and that dragons have returned in Tamriel (hence I assumed I'm going to kill dragons).

Oblivion had better quests, all from main- to sidequests. Skyrim naturally had better dungeons (each one felt different), but when just looking at Oblivion and Skyrim on general view, you will notice that Skyrim was rushed and so many things could have been better.

Not all of them have an animal puzzle, but there's a good reason for it. They're not exactly Nord ruins so much as old dragon priest temples. If you think of various temples of the same religion, they might carry the same motifs. Maybe because the rituals are the same, no matter locale. Mosques, churches, buddhist temples.

Some also seem more "platform-y", some seem to encourage sneaking, creeping around, and overhearing conversations. There's a cool one outside Whiterun, run by a renegade mage, like that. It looks like a Nordic ruin, but it plays differently than just running around corridors.

Where does it ever say you were at Darkwater Crossing (if it's part of a quest or something don't spoil it )? All I ever heard was that you were caught crossing the border.

If you follow Ralof, he says they were ambushed at Darkwater Crossing. So that's assuming you were near there too.

I sort of imagine my character's story like... umm.. the beginning of the first Rambo movie. lol. In there, he's traveling into the US, back from Vietnam, and gets harassed by some local cops. He doesn't behave and just let it be, and a whole bunch of crap ensues. Only my story is that I'm not coming from a war. Just traveling. My character already got mugged. He's in rags, after all. He's been floating down rivers, crawling through mud.. he just looks like he had a bad day. The imperials judge him on appearances alone. At that point, my character has had enough, and slugs one of them. That's why they decided to execute me. No big story. He's just pissed off.

Your past isn't any more decided for you than it was in the previous games, IMHO. Darkwater Crossing is your cave/ship/cell, and that bit has been cut out, so they can fit in some more exposition on the world and recent events. The intro and tutorial sequence is just paced differently than in the previous games, but your character is just as much a blank slate. Except for the being dragonborn bit, of course...

I also have to disagree about the dungeons. Skyrim's dungeons are a vast improvement over Oblivion's ones. They all seem to have some hook to them that justifies why they are inhabited, etc. And they seem fairly varied, considering the limited sets of statics available to the map designers.