I was watching the opening of Skyrim on youtube the other day and had a thought. What if you select High Elf from the start? Wouldn't that kinda just kill the game? The Imperials there in Helgen wouldn't have a incident by chopping the head off of a High Elf I'd think due to the Thalmar. Maybe I'm just got it backwards but it seems to make sense to me.

This isn't a thread about how Skyrim svcks or that just b/c of this the rest falls apart. I'm just trying to think of it from the other side. I can't see anyone in the Imperials willing to risk it.

thoughts? or am I way off?

Hadvar asks if you're with the Thalmor, then says 'No, I thought not' or something along those lines. And not all High Elves are Thalmor.

So... unfortunately another small bit of RP that can't be done.

It's just politics, race has nothing to do with it. Just because you're an Altmer, that doesn't mean that you have to support the Thalmor. Just like how not all Nords support the Stormcloaks.

The thalmor are almost like the elven version of the inquisition it did not matter if you were spanish or not go against them and suffer. If you were not apart of them then who cares.

who is to say though you do not join the thalmor later on though?

True: being altmer wouldn't deter the Imperials from executing you at all, and the Thalmor would not take your side just because you're a high elf.

Exactly and even though there is no real way of joining them does not mean you cannot work for them in an rp manner. Maybe you join a side in the civil war to further push both sides into expending resources. You could play it like you are absolutely covert so agents in the area will have no idea who you are. Plus I believe there is a few thalmor you can quest for I know of one in markarth.

As others have said the Thalmor are a government not a species.


If you joined the civil war your not helping the Thalmor end of story. And there is one related quest, find evidence of some guys Talos worship. Nothing happens when you complete it. I elected just to murder the judicator with a thunderbolt and pay the 40 gold bounty.

You missed the point.

This eliminates my ability to have my High Elf already a Thalmor. The game chooses for me.

Not unless you were a thalmor spy and had the misfortune getting caught illegally crossing the border and your character is loyal enough to choose death over exposure. In fact it would make good irony that hadvar was right from the start, but doubted himself.

As I said, the game chooses for me.

You can't join Dagon in Oblivion, you can't join whom ever the big bad was in Morrowind. Why should you be able to join the Thalmor? Your the dragonborn the very fact that Talos's shrines grant you a blessing related to shouts is proof he is the ninth divine and the Thalmor are wrong. The Thalmor would want you dead as your living proof to Talo's divinity.

"The 1 thing that breaks Skyrims story.."

The writers?

Well, they can only program in so many options. Since everybody starts in the same boat, just as in Oblivion and (I think) Morrowind, you don't really have the option to be part of the Thalmor overlords at the beginning. Of course, as somebody else said, you could perhaps RP being a Thalmor undercover agent that got caught by Imperials who took you for a Stormcloak sympathizer - or maybe they believed you, and said to themselves, "Well, you know, [censored] the Thalmor too. Let's just kill him and say he was lying. If the Thalmor find out and ask questions, we'll tell them they need to let us know when they're sending people undercover into the Stormcloaks."

You can't join them in the story, no, however for backstory you could have. But, because of the opening cut scene, you have to alter your backstory.


That's another continuing problem in TES.

Agreed.

Everytime I try to RP this game, at somepoint a NPC or a scripted quest (or even a Radient Story event) will hamper my experience. Examples:

The game decided to have my Markarth-born Nord "cross the border" for some reason, even though my character has never stepped foot out of Skyrim. Then the game had Galmar Stone-Fist call my Markarth-born Nord a "foreigner".

Out of the very few complaints that I have with this game, this issue is #1 on my "why the hell did Bethesda do that?" list

Probably because it would be too hard to account for every player that wanted their character to be a native of Skyrim. You wanted yours to be from Markarth, but someone else could have wanted their character to be from Whiterun. There would just be no way for Bethesda to include dialogue options to reflect all of this. If Bethesda did leave it open for people's characters to be natives of Skyrim, everyone would just complain that there were no dialogue options to support that instead, like NPCs recognizing your character and such. It's just easier this way.

I was kind of disappointed that my evil daedra worshipping type chars were forced to worship talos. Not a big deal....but I'm not too fond of my chars having their 'religion' decided for them. And was really hoping to see more things go on with an altmer character. The only things different were maybe the reaction from the one silver blood guy in markarth, and joining the stormcloaks. I was really hoping some kind of reaction from the thalmor, and nothing. :l it was the same for my altmer as it was my nord.

I believe it was mentioned in a wiki or a discussion here about how the Thalmor were powerful and leaders of the Aldmeri Dominion, but that the High Elves outside of the Aldmeri Dominion were usually not part of the Thalmor, and are in fact despised by them.

Wait - who said any character has to worship Talos? I've never run into any such requirement. Being Dragonborn just means the gods are intending to use you for a certain purpose. It certainly doesn't mean you have to worship them.

Ahh, but it's features like this that seperates good RPG's from the great ones.

If they ever implemented a "histories" or "background" feature to the character creation... then let the game dynamically alter/adjust to the players' input.... then we wouldn't be having this discussion about a RP-busting game experience.

As much as I get tired of the over-simplistic comparisons between WW2 and Tamriel's civil war and the Thalmor, the Thalmor can be compared to the Russian Communists (who took power in a revolution and cemented their power with purges) and the German Nazis (whose anti-Semitic racism is comparable to the Thalmor's anti-human racism) and so you can for the purposes of understanding the relations between the Thalmor and the Altmer as being like those between Nazis and the Germans. The Nazis were "for the German people" but of course had no hesitation in killing, say, American soldiers of German descent; surely you agree they wouldn't have missed any opportunity to kill the German-ancestry General Eisenhower? Well, it's the same with the Thalmor and the Altmer and all elves in general. If you're on their side, then good for you, as far as they're concerned. If you aren't, you're scum that they'll get rid of along with all the humans.

Well, do you prefer Dragon Age: Origins to TES? Because DA:O had just that. You chose your race and profession, and your backstory changed accordingly.

That's why taking a page from Dragon Age/Mass Effect is not a bad idea.

Keep the generic opener you have now for people who want to go with it.

But also include maybe a handful of other opening quests that a player can choose if they so desire.

Or.

Keep the generic opener we have now and just alter it based on things the player chooses from a list. So you don't always start as a prisoner, maybe you're a guard, or you're a person who is native to Skyrim and was caught in the Stormcloak camp because you rested there for a bit, etc, etc.