Don't know if there's already a thread on this, but, when I go out onto the balcony and use Call Dragon and Odahviing, and I use Dragonrend to bring him down, and get him trapped, I am unable to interact with him whatsoever. None of the NPCs attack him when he comes, and he doesn't start flying around the castle attacking from the sky. He lands, attacks me, and if dragged to the trap, just sits there. I have tried many various things to fix this including walking out the door and waiting, going to a different quest, using two different saves before I called him down, getting a companion to attack him while I sit by idly and pray something happens, and nothing ever happens. This is extremely frustrating because my only other saves besides the ones that I have already tried are 20+ hours behind my current progress. A courier keeps running up to me mid fight to give me a note, and at first I thought that that was the problem, so I used one of my saves and waiting for him to come, and then I called Odahviing, but still nothing. I understand that there are multiple glitches and bugs with Skyrim, albeit all I have encountered, aside from the occasional game freezing, is easily fixed or avoidable, I just can't believe that it would happen on a main quest. Someone help, please.

I'm having the exact same problem. I've tried killing paarthurnax first, not killing him, getting the shout to call odahviing from esbern, getting the call from paarthurnax. Nothing changes. I finished the storm cloak rebellion story before starting the main quest and I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Doing the storm cloak rebellion screwed up my chance to furnish my home in whiterun as well (purchased the house but did not furnish prior to attack on whiterun). I really hope Bethesda reads this and addresses this problem quickly because I see a lot of similar issues all over google with no answers.

yeah i have the same glitch going on and it svcks!

Yeah I finished the stormcloak rebellion before I started the quest also.

Well then it seems we've figured out the root of the problem. Now all we need is for Bethesda to read this and address the problem.

I too have this problem, and I also finished the stormcloak rebellion storyline before doing this quest. It's just so frustrating to spend 60+ hours on a character and get stuck on the main quest like this. For now I'm just playing a new character until they hopefully fix it.