This. Why would you consider ending the series for everyone just because you think it would fit you well to end it?

Comparing FNV to TES in this regard is apples and oranges. You don't decide the fate of all the earth at Fallout game time, just one small section of it. You have just as much choice and consequence in Skyrim by deciding who will rule Skyrim.

I actually took F3 back after it ended, never gave it a 2nd play through. Never tried any mods. Just took it back and traded it for something else. I would probably do the same with an ES game.

There are three games I can play year after year after year.

The sims, Elderscrolls and GTA. None of which have an "ending" to them. Games that do have endings tend to be played once, then traded in for credit.

I get what you're saying, it's just for me personally the Fallout-style endings haven't enough to make me want to replay the game to see all the different outcomes. Maybe if the different endings were more like short stories like the in-game books from the perspective of the characters instead of just being told that something happened, like they could have extra books that are unlocked from finishing certain paths that'd show the results of certain actions later on. We could read them through that Elder Scroll we're always lugging around.

I think part the reluctance to ending the game is that for many people the games are more about a personal story of a particular character than about the world, and the ending can get in the way of that. While it's true you can end the game anytime by saving before the last quest, it kinda messes up the character's narrative to do so. Like, right now I'm doing the quests to restore the Thieves Guild; it'd be hard to justify putting off finishing the main quest for that when I'm that close to the end, rather than beating Alduin first and then doing the less urgent things.

I kinda doubt that Bethesda would end one of the most successful video games series of all time just to satisfy the whims of a few disgruntled fans.

No, you read that Skyrim was going to be a "reboot" in the sense that it will be largely unconnected to the plot developments of the previous games in the series. Beth has not announced any plans to reboot the story line of the entire series.

I did not say that there should only be feel good games, games are meant to give you pride as Todd Howard explains nicely in his dice opening speech. games are, opposite of movies and books, not completely story driven, most people would argue that gameplay is much more important, as I said, Super Mario is a fantastic game but the story is completely simple: "save the princess from the big bad guy". That does not make it a bad game, just because it has a simple story.
Concerning the main quest, you said that you could stop the world from ending if you did not follow the main quest, well you could do the same thing in Oblivion, and that's the whole point of the TES-universe, you can do what you want, and there are a lot of people out there who would rage if the main quest were forced down their throats. Choice is important in TES because you can choose what you want to do at any time, but story-based choices takes the player away from controlling their experience, and forces them to do something specific.

Sry I can feel I'm kinda of topic right now, it was a reply to the discussion on page two. But I agree with the people saying that TES should not have an end.

I hope not, i love tes games and would be very disappointed if there was never a new tes game...not a fan of fallout

This totally ignores most of the gameplay for me. TES is not just about killing or not killing, participating in the civil war, and finishing questlines. I find lots of other activities to do. That's just me, though.

Depending on which character I'm with for the evening, some of them have some plenty-heavy consequences just by being who they are. I would agree with you that during quests it would be cool to have more options, although this also can lead to more bugginess.



As cool as this idea is, I prefer the fact that TES is open-ended and does not have a "definitive ending". It's a good idea, though. TES games never truely end, though. Not the way I play 'em.


Yup. Please keep this just as it is, Bethesda. If I want an ending, I can always fire up Tomb Raider.

Thank you.

I do. In fact, the reason I haven't completed the main quest yet is to me once I've done that the game is over - if I've saved the world, then I don't see the point in mucking about fetching stuff from dungeons and fighting endless dragons after I assume I'm supposed to have...done something about the dragons. I get bored with a character before getting round to ploughing through the rest of the MQ so I guess it will be the last thing I complete.

I think the curremnt design actually exacerbates the problem you describe. If the devs sat down and thought about what could happen with various guilds, they could build in options for the pl\ayer to influence events in a far wider fashion than would be practical to show ingame. It wouldn't be perfect, but then nothing is. I'm not sure about the thieves guild specifically because its a, well, guild for thieves. Turning them into a charity organisation or something wouldn't really fit. With them, it's really weird they didn't give you an ingame option to bring them down. After all, robbing people isn't nice and if it allows you to burgle it should also allow you to bring burglars to justice.

I know my opinion is very much a minority one. I've just never quite understood this mentality of wanting to potter around in the world forever when that realistically means that world can and will never really change in any appreciable sense. Particularly when after a point you're going to be totally unstoppable. It really weirds me out how people are so against the notion that if - at a point you choose and not before - the game has a definite climix if that meant a richer set of decisions. New Vegas wasn't any different to TES or Fallout 3 - you could play the same character forever if you wanted to and never end the game - but when you were ready you had quite a detailed description of what happened to various people and places depending on the choices you made. It did exactly the same, it just added something extra that made it to -to mew - far more satisfying and meant the devs had to be giving you those choices as you went along. People seem to think if TES ended when you wanted it to end it would somehow break the game - that makes no sense to me whatsoever. What would change in terms of the current sandbox if that's what you want? really? One end battle you have to defer until you choose to initiate it. Apart from deeper decision making - and you can bypass even seeing that if you choose to play the game with no end. What also doesn't make sense to me is the way you perform epic deeds then go back to a world where nothing you've done seems to matter.
People want to have their cake and eat it. They want meaningful choices in a game designed from the outset to remain freeze frozen in basically the same state as when you entered it because they demand it has to go on forever being that static world no matter what you do.

No thank you. I found it interesting that David Gaider commented in a recent interview that the might need to reboot the Dragon Age series at some point because tipping their hat to the various in-game choices folks make may become too cumbersome. I think that Tamriel needs a historical canon. I also don't want an end to either the game or the series.

I think that as long as we have the option to play a character who is not the Dovakhiin, we have choice. If the consequences of that choice include not being able to do certain other things in-game, we have choice and consequences. If you choose not to save the world, the world continues its wait for the hero that will--and your life has a smaller impact than that of the hero. Pretty true to life, I'd say.

Totally agree with you, and no particular flaming nice to see some good discussion going on on this forum

How awesome would it be if you decided to NOT step forward and announce your Dragonbornness, and various wannabe heroes tried to claim the title! Much like in The Wheel of Time series, until the real Dragon is revealed. You could walk around in anonymity and watch the world get torn apart by tens of "Dragonborns", and maybe challenge them once you decide to step up. This automatic being Dragonborn kinda kills the feel for me.

New Vegas made it abundantly clear when you passed a certain point it was going to end the game. People apparently couldn't read and got annoyed. I don't think games should be designed with people who blindly click through text without paying any attention in mind. Hell, pandering to the text clickers is probably what means your hand gets held so tightly in Skyrim. I actually got thrown out during Blood on the Ice - just because I got so used to the game spoonfeeding me everything it was a shock when the magic arrow of pointing wanted you to figure out a logical investigative action.
Fallout 3 didn't make it clear you were ending the game, and that was a mistake on Bethesda's part. One they compounded by making the ending seem totally pointless anyway with broken steel. You went from sacrificing yourself to save the capital wasteland to coming round in a world that isn't any different to how it was before except for some water caravans milling about. So why did you bother? Oh hang on - now you can wander round indefinitely filing your Megaton house full of even more loot you don't need and one-shot endlessly spawning deathclaws with your unique plasma rifle for all eternity. that's far better than real storytelling -right?

Either way what you did may not be canon apart from the assumption you've completed at least the MQ. . Will people seriously care if the next TES references the dark brotherhood but they destroyed it on their playthrough? With fallout, people just discuss what the canon ending should be. They won't get all cross if the NCR ending becomes canon but they prefer House. You can't have any consequence or choice anyway if you're remotely concerned a person's playthrough might contradict canon - that's arguing for a totally linear game.

As it is you will NEVER have really meaningful choices because no matter how good technology gets, coding a game to plausibly account for major outcomes will be a developer's nightmare. If New Vegas had carried on past the ending, it would have had to have had at least double the content to account for gameworld changes. Instead it had a proper story with a proper ending that gave you choices that really changed things. Skyrim is a fantastic game, but IMHO New Vegas totally crucifies it in the storytelling/choice department and I'm 99% sure that wouldn't have been possible without it building to a definitive conclusion.

Before ending, you need a better connection between the games.

Just to say: "Hey, this is a franchise." The story continues.

The story really continues, but it is not so obvious like linear games

Now that`s thinking outside the box!

I get tired of predictability... `Oh here`s the Hero- here he goes to ultimately save the world... again.`

How about the Player refuses to be the hero... Or even isn`t the hero in the scheme of things? Have the game revolve around more imvolving local, imaginative stuff.

i`m always impressed by movies (usually foreign ones, not Hollywood) that turn the Hero thing on its head and actually allow things to go crap because the Protagonist didn`t want to or wasn`t up to it. Eventually he steps up... Or not but the world still goes on whichever.

Right.

Bethesda has created a product that's wildly successful. If one were to get a Harvard MBA in Bizarro world they'd say "People love our product and we're making a ton of money off it. We should stop making it". IOW, the exact opposite of good business.

THIS

Yes there are a lack of consequences but setting a definitive ending will not solve badly written quests and I'm sorry to say that no matter how much I enjoy Skyrim some quests are so badly written that even if they'd put in ending A, B and C it will just feel like being tied to the same track that will only split off at the end and have three stations.
It's kind of like with Bioware. Great games but I only play them three times at most because even with all the choices you are still tied to an umbrella-like structure: do it good, do it bad or just blunder on in between. You might feel like there are consequences but the replay value for me personally isn't there like with TES games.

I prefer the sandbox, open-ended approach and the fact that people feel there is little consequence is mainly due to bad writing and not the style of the game.

I cannot support this, no matter how it might improve the story and choices made. Also I think Bethesda will never do so again after Fallout 3 because of the enormous rage they got for it.

NO.

If the Devs ever decided to do that than it would be the end of TES all together as a series.

Howbout.....
No

It will either end when they decide to stop making the game, or when i decide to stop playing it =)

Apart from that, TES will end eventually, or it will grow incredibly stale and the lore/story will become over convoluted.

Why? What couldn't you do than you can now besides continue after one defining moment? Why eould it end TES?

It really interests me how the very notion provokes such a strong reaction. I don't get why people think post MQ play is so fundamentally crucial.

I appreciate arguments that it wouldn't automatically solve problems with lacklustre quest design or any other such issues. But I really struggle to uinderstand why people thing the idea of a player controlled ending point would be so awful when it has the advantage of facilitating more meaningful choice and less lame endings that ultimately don't matter.

TES has always been about endless fun with you the gamer deciding on when to stop the character and start over. I just don't like the idea of changing what has worked since Arena. If you want to stop the game, no one is stopping you from doing it. Kill your character off in some famous battle if you wish. Let me decide when I want to stop and start another character.

Also, when you add DLC, like Shivering Isles, it's better to continue with the character you have than having to start over with a low level character to play the DLC.

I'd rather Bethesda got rid of the main quest completely. Of course, if the player always needs to be a huge hero demi-god, then all minor quests will seem irrelevant. The main problem here is: It'd be no problem having multiple endings, in theory, but after all of them, the player is the hero of Skyrim (or bane of Skyrim or whatever), and of course it breaks immersion that people will greet him as such, but then give him FedEx quests (great term^^). Morrowind had that problem: You were the Nerevarine, you had slain a mad god and changed the province! People would love you for it and greet you with "wow, is that really you, the Nereveraine, who saved us all? Thank you so much!" - but then proceed to ask you to fetch them a book or a potion or a couple of Guar skins because they're too lazy to do it themselves.

If the player would make decisions that only have local impact and don't change the entire world, you could have lots of decisions, lots of different outcomes for all sorts of quests, and each playthrough would be very different, each player character unique - but you'd not suddenly feel as if people would not treat you appropriately. You ARE NOT a hero with the power of a hundred men, you are simply an adventurer, so people WON'T be expected to hail you and praise you and become your adoring fans (^^). The world would make perfect sense even though each quest could have a thousand different outcomes. Save the life of the witch or let her burn - it will only impact the life of that person and the ones who wanted her dead. The next village won't know nor mind nor care. Become the arch mage of the mages guild and the guild members will respect you as such, but to the rest of the world, you're still just a silly wizard - among those with higher education you could, as a new dialoge option, pull the "but I'm the mages guild's guild master, I DEMAND AN AUDIENCE!"-card every now and then without massive programming requirements - and from those people who'd care about you being the arch mage, you'd never get simple fetch quests anyway.

I long to see the role playing game where the focus is the personal story of the player character, and not a pre-planned epic written by the developers.

I know I bring it up a lot, but it's just such a great example: Mount & Blade. That game HAS NO STORY. Yet, it constantly comes up with interesting situations and forces you to make decisions and allow for excellent role playing!
A typical quest could be: Follow the marshalls army with your own men. That's it. You follow him. He starts to besiege a town. You wait there with him until he's ready to start the assault. Suddenly, your men complain about a lack of food - not because anyone scripted that, anyone wrote that story; it's plain and simple: Your food inventory is empty. Now you have a new quest that started without anyone ever having thought of it: You need to get something to eat before your men start to desert! But now you have to make a choice and live with the consequences:

You could abandon the siege and move back to your home lands as soon as possible, go to your favorite city and buy loads of food for your men. Yay, problem solved, but you missed the siege and the marshall won't be happy that you left him there to be outnumbered by the foe, and will later let you know that he's not pleased with your behaviour and won't trust you as much if you should ever need his help.

Or you could abandon the siege only for a short while and raid a local village to steal their food supplies. A sensible choice for most, but if I roleplay a 'nice' character, he might not want to burn villages. And even if I don't care; once we have captured the besieged town, the town might be ours, but the villages who keep the town supplied with food will now hate us because we looted their homes. And the town will be in poverty and overall we now have to deal with a looted village whose surviving inhabitants hate us.

Or we could wait and hope that not too many of our men will desert before the actual siege begins. This comes at the risk of losing troop morale and later losing the battle because many of our men decided to leg it.

Or we could disguise ourselves and sneak into the very town we are besieging, trying to smuggle some food out of there. This means we won't miss the siege, nor do we risk the lives of our men - but if we get caught, we might end up in the towns prison!

THAT's choice and consequence and an interesting story, and noone had to write it! THAT's what 'radiant story' should be like! And: I'm not forced into the role of an hero at any point. In fact, I can role-play! If I want to be a heroic knight in shining armour, I'll obviously not loot the village but rather order my men to discipline and attack the town despite the low morale. Or if I'm more of the sneaky guy, I'll try to smuggle the goods out of the town. Or if I'm the tactician to whom lives are only a statistic, I'll go and loot the nearest village to maximize my combat effectiveness. Or hell, perhaps I'm even a pacifist and decline to besiege a town in the first place and rather go elsewhere to trade or learn a few poems and court a lady to increase my influence!

If it had a point where the player chooses to enter the ending point, that in no way precludes "endless fun with you the gamer deciding on when to stop the characte" - it just means more scope for the writing to incorporate bigger choices. New Vegas allowed "endless fun with you the gamer deciding on when to stop the character" - so did pre BS fallout 3 - it also had a set of possible endings you accessed when you so chose. If you never wanted to end your character, you weren't forced to - you just had to avoid a single end battle. The whole issue has nothing to do with when you start and stop your character as such because you can do that either way.

That's what's interesting about this issue - most people hate the idea, but there doesn't seem to be a clear reason why it's such an awful notion.