This was what I always hated about Super Mario Bros, too. What if I don't want to go to the right?

I never said you couldn't escape the main quest, I just said the game makes it much harder for you as it's constantly throwing the main quest in your face. I feel as though this makes the game much more immersive for someone who's wholly invested in the main quest, but much less so for anyone else. The Elder Scrolls has never been about the main quests, and it's always been the consensus that the main quests were the worst parts of Morrowind and Oblivion. I don't see how building the entirety of Skyrim around it's main quest is a good thing.

Uh, you go into Whiterun and tell the Jarl dragons are attacking his hold.


...Any sensible person would do that.

Then he asks you to do a fetch quest to his Wizard and... Voilá! It's done, you don't need to do anything else. (Unless you want to be Thane and buy a house, in this case you just need to kill a Dragon and don't pay attention to old grey mans that live isolated in the top of the highest mountain of Tamriel)

Or, someone who wants to ignore the main plot would walk into Whiterun to buy some spells instead?

Why can no one understand what I'm saying? It's so simple; it's about player freedom and choice. You saying "Any sensible person would do that" is almost as bad as saying the game should just be nothing but the main quest, cause what sensible person would do anything else when there are dragons about, and a war to be fought?

Because you aren't provided with choices. You can't choose to help the Thalmor. You can't choose to help the dragons. You can't choose to disobey Delphine. You can't choose to simply kill the Greybeards and take over High Hrothgar. You can't choose to let the Stormcloaks win and take the throne for yourself. You can't choose to allow Potema to become Empress once more. You can't choose to do anything you wanted to do because the developers designed the game to play how they think it should play -- i.e., you can't do whatever you want, only what the developers want you to do.

Instead of focusing so much on making their game look pretty and making the main quest "Z0mGSO[censored]INGAw3s0m3" with dragons and whatnot, they should have spent more time developing the game so that we truly can do whatever we'd like to do. Want to become lich and destroy Solitude completely? Sure, go right ahead! Hell, you can marry Potema's corpse while you're at it. Want to help the Stormcloaks, kill Ulfric, and declare yourself High King after disposing of any Jarl who thinks otherwise? Sounds awesome, you can do that too!

Yeah, no. It's do this, do that, or, if you're a rebel, just ignore all those quests building up in your "journal" and play in a sandbox like a 3-year-old. If you choose the latter, the game refuses to help in any way, shape or form. No, you can't kill that character! He's essential for a quest you might not actually want to do..

2 guys tells you to go in to bleak falls barrows (which you can see as a part of the main quest from journal) one in whiteruns dragonsreach and other in riverwood and you don't have anything else to do in these places so you wont even see them if you don't want to do the main quest. Not really all the time in my face...

Also Skyrims main quest wasn't as bad as Oblivions or Morrowinds, it was almost good. I just had hoped that the dragons would have disappeared after MQ, luckily the patch broke them.

Sure if you wanted to explode the amount of content in the game by a factor of at least 10, then we could be playing "Uber Skyrim" with play how you want plot in 2038.

This one is really nuts. Why are the Thalmor even in the game? It's like a tease, I think they're the coolest faction and yet when I see them walking around, all I can do is get shouted at by them, or attacked. The game denies them any depth or characterization and prefers to make them the faceless villains. And what sensible person would want to help the villains?

This. As well as the choices you do have, which are essentially, do it or ignore it, offer almost no consequence to the game. What is the difference between letting the stormcloaks win, or the imperials? An empty sense of morality, because nothing in game is actually different.

It's not like it forced you into being Dovahkiin or whatever.

You just told some guy, sitting in a chair, dragons are burning everything. It, in no way breaks player freedom. Unless you're playing a stupid person.

We could be doing that now if, instead of sacrificing content over graphics, they did the opposite -- or at least found some middle ground.

All of those "choices" would simply lead us to a Dragon Break.
Bethesda likes to make what we do as players part of the Lore. It wouldn't make sense from a story and continuity stand-point to allow you to do that. (In this part I agree that the story is getting in front of player's freedom, but it's for a greater good IMO)

Could you become the King of Morrowind? No.
It never was possible in TES to simple do whatever you want to do, you just do what the developers let you do. In the case of TES the developers let you do A LOT of things, that's why its advertised as "do whatever yo want do do"
Wait... Almost every video-game is like this, you do what the developers let you do.

And then that guy gets out of his chair, and stands in the mage's room, waiting for you to do his quest. And he will stand there for all eternity if you never do his quest.

It's about the way the whole game feels structured to funnel you into quests and plotlines. Obviously you can still ignore them if you make an effort to, but it's the fact that an effort has to be made at all that makes the game feel so stifling. I made a myriad of other points in my OP by the way that people haven't touched on. The Whiterun issue is not the only issue by a long shot.

Or if they went to text based dialogue.

Actually, I'm sure EVERY video game is like that.

This is exactly the whole point. Games are always smoke and mirrors. The illusion of true freedom is simply an illusion because you're always confined in the bounds of what the developers included or didn't include in the game. But the whole point of Elder Scrolls is that it offers more illusion of choice than any other franchise. You can completely ignore all the story and quests the developer included, and do whatever the hell you want, making up a story entirely of your own.

Skyrim shows the first signs of abandoning this. For the first time in the series, Bethesda has made it clear they really want you to do their quests, and will force you to play in the shadow of the main plot no matter what.

They allow us to choose sides in the civil war and help determine its outcome. How is that any different than allowing us to side with the Thalmor? Because they've already decided on the lore and simply created a game that allows us to play through the adventure they've already written. That's not freedom. That's placing someone in a jail cell and telling them they can do whatever they'd like -- only they can't leave.

You couldn't become King of Morrowind, no. But you could kill anyone you wanted to kill, and there was actually more freedom to be had than there is in Skyrim. They still claim to allow us to do whatever we'd like, but our jail cell is shrinking with every game they release. I don't see how anyone could be okay with that.

You must not Role Play a lot because i Rped those problems away effortlessly. sometimes you gotta do some bad things for bad people to get the info you need for the greater good. and Im past those parts and not in any of the guilds.

You is describing every game already made (Or the vast majority of them). Most Games (Without counting Strategy Games) have a already-written history that you, as protagonist, must follow. There already are discussions about what will be canon Stormcloaks or the Empire. What would be the gain, from a developer point-of-view to let you side with Potema in her domination of the world? That would simply destroy many plots planned for TES VI.
TES games in general own every other game because what the developers let you do (content) is far superior to most other games.

You never will have the possibility do whatever you want, not until they invent Procedural-Generated-Content that is believable and looks good.

I like the part where people feel they have to listen to the quest thing. After the initial escape you can easily run around for 100 hours find misc quests, do dungeons, find loot, explore... Just because the quest log says something doesn't mean it dictates you.

Right now while i'm awaiting the new patch I'm just having fun running a new toon in no particularly fashion. I'm not doing any of the main quests, or even interested in them. When the patch comes I'll be focusing more heavily on a RP toon and will do MQs at times I deem appropriate... I mean you can do all the main quests in a row if you want and miss out on 99% of the other content in the game if you feel the game is beaten and put it down at that point.

Oh, come on.

Remember the Oblivion invasion? The invasion so horrible it changed literally nothing about everyday life, and people still went from town to town and about their business like they weren't worried about a single thing?

Personally, I'm glad something actually effects the world this time. Dragons attack and people react or get killed, the civil war affects cities and families, and so on.

I like other's explanations more.

However, I will say that you can side-step the thieves guild entirely, go down into the Ratway, find Esbern yourself. I did this and noone down there welcomed me with open arms into the thieves guild like you are suggesting.

I can see where you are coming from, first day in a city and you get 50 quests thrown at you. But by and large you can ignore them and exit dialogue before the NPC drops the quest bomb. Also, I am perfectly fine with the world over shadowing my character. In that respect it makes it more immersive that my Imperials pressing need for a house isnt interrupting a Jarl's interest in a dragon wiping out a town.

Its all just how you think about it. You're not being forced to do anything, just not the entire world is focused on you. They go about their daily business.

Also, why would stormcloaks sell a house to someone who might be an imperial in their city? You've gotta prove yourself first.

But my point was that the game shouldn't impose anything upon the player unless they choose it. Are you saying you wish the Oblivion crisis had a huge effect on the game world in Oblivion, regardless of whether you were playing the main quest or not? And that you were forced into expository dialogue surrounding it, regardless of what kind of character you were playing?

I feel like Skyrim is designed to be played with one character, and for that character to be the one and only dragonborn, who also does the civil war quest. Everything else is left by the wayside.