unfortunately they're doing the mmo,

( I may catch some flack for this) Fable did a great job of this, if you where rather evil not only did your appearance change but the way the towns folk reacted to you changed as well, and it was the same for playing the "good guy" but Skyrim lacks this and it's too bad.

I know what you're saying Smokeyman, and I like games like that too, but let us have a game where we can use our imagination. This message board has lots of posts by people who are creating their own unique stories in Skyrim. I don't know if it was the devs intention, but you certainly get the tools to be creative in that respect.

-implying beth is doing the mmo-

(Here's your flack, ha.) While I do absolutely agree that Skyrim needs more observable consequences of your character's moral alignment, I don't think that Fable is the best game to refer to. Does asking your childhood love to leave his current lover and marry you instead really sound all that ethically repulsive? 'Course not! It's not exactly the nicest thing to do, but it's certainly nowhere near 'evil'. And yet that exact situation occurs in Fable 3 and, yes, it earns you a whole heap of negative karma. It's difficult to roleplay a character effectively when the game keeps thrusting its own ideas of morality on you. Skyrim neglects to give you the impression that your responses to moral dilemmas really mean anything, but at least it doesn't have you walking around with black wings and devil horns because your concept of good and evil conflicts with that of its developers.

(Here's your flack, ha.) While I do absolutely agree that Skyrim needs more observable consequences of your character's moral alignment, I don't think that Fable is the best game to refer to. Does asking your childhood love to leave his current lover and marry you instead really sound all that ethically repulsive? 'Course not! It's not exactly the nicest thing to do, but it's certainly nowhere near 'evil'. And yet that exact situation occurs in Fable 3 and, yes, it earns you a whole heap of negative karma. It's difficult to roleplay a character effectively when the game keeps thrusting its own ideas of morality on you. Skyrim neglects to give you the impression that your responses to moral dilemmas really mean anything, but at least it doesn't have you walking around with black wings and devil horns because your concept of good and evil conflicts with that of its developers.

Well, with Skyrim, Bethesda did a beautiful job in putting more variety and detail into the game world, and dungeons. T'was a big complaint with Oblivion. (Love to see what an Ayleid Ruin would look like in the new graphic scheme!) So with TES VI, Bethesda should concentrate on improving quest story lines, seeking more depth within the writing and graphic execution of each tale. But they may need a new game engine to pull it off tho....

riting, and character development.

Quests that give the player a decision to make where choices aren't always easy to make. The quest with Saadia is a good example..

If your idea of 'wildly different, multi-faceted characters' stems from being able to hit the esc button to abruptly end conversations you don't like, then I think you may be fooling yourself. Haven't you noticed that a lot of quests don't even have a 'No thank you, sod off you evil fellow' option?

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I can think of one. Hint: It was released before The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion but after The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall...

Edit: I know the above sounded a little rude and I didn't quite mean it to be. But in response to .Joe. I really think that you're using your very active imagination to give yourself these great experiences and characters. This is a credit to you, not necessarily Skyrim or Bethesda. Think about it 'Sutclif the Ripper' will never be talked about by the people of Riften. No NPC in the game will gasp in fear as they whisper about the 'Riften Ripper', and if you commit enough murders then pretty soon Riften is a town of guards and NPCs too important for the game to risk you killing them. There's not any quest, infrastructure, faction, or in-game anything to support the idea of Sutclif the Ripper, it's all in your head, which just means that you're making up for the game's shortcomings with your great imagination.

Every quest has the same formula. Go there, pick up an item or kill an NPC, bring it back and get rewarded by a next quest, item, stat upgrade or resources.

How about meeting an NPC in a cave, having the adventure, then moving on. The character then re-appears sporadically , maybe to save your Ass, maybe you save them, or maybe it's just another chance encounter. There's some of this, but it's so hollow in its execution, and so infrequent, that no sense of connection is made.

Take yourselves seriously, as the world needs you!
It's 2012 and we are still doing countless one-dimensional quests with an incentive of sorts (gear, gold, stat upgrades), and it simply won't service anymore. It's time to look at quests as a form of art - a benchmark of how good an RPG really is, rather than a "means to and end" type of filler content that's only purpose is in forcing players to explore or engage in other gameplay mechanics.

There needs to be a complete shift in priorities. Quests need to be realized in their full potential.


How Skyrim handles questing
Every quest has the same formula. Go there, pick up an item or kill an NPC, bring it back and get rewarded by a next quest, item, stat upgrade or resources. It all sends a clear message - the developers only looked at quests as a method to force players to explore. Thus, Skyrim ends up feeling like an Exploration/FPS, rather than a real RPG.

If the quests are done right, players are encouraged to explore every inch of the beautiful world in order to find chances to exhibit their character's personalty. And each new playthrough feels unique.


The untapped potential within quests
A quest is a gameplay experience defining moment. A chance to bring the NPCs and the world alive. It cannot be downplayed into this randomly generated "content" that you do for their meaningless rewards.

The thing that makes role-playing games different form other games is that they should, ultimately, be replayable. Skyrim offers none of this. All characters will eventually end up doing the same quests and all the quests have same outcomes, choices don't matter and there are no consequences to speak of. This is wrong! Lazy! We are supposed to be playing an epic role-playing game (as advertised), not an Exploration/FPS game with swords and sorcery.

Playing a role is not about min-maxing and making a character "build" (what armor type he wears and what weapon he uses). It's about how he chooses to behave in the situations the quests put him in, and about dealing with the consequences. Old games, like Baldur's Gates (1998) realized this and used a primitive alignment axis (good/evil, lawful/chaotic) that would shift as a player would choose different reactions to different quests.


Quality>Quantity
One quest that has three possible outcomes is better than 3 quests with one possible outcome. It relieves a lot of pressure from the art department as the same graphical content, voice acting and story can be reused in the form of expecting players to revisit it during multiple playthroughs. Also, if you manage to get players guessing what might've happened if he had chosen differently, you have them much more emotionally invested within that character. Everybody wins.


Summary? TLDR?
+3 points towards Evil and the hateful, fearful reaction from NPCs is an infinitely better quest reward than Iron Boots of Peerless Magicka. Here's to hoping. Maybe next time.

hooray, another long pretentious wall of text that basically says "make things better" and millions of people going "OMFG THIS" AND "WHY DON'T BETH LSITEN".

quests like this are already in the game, quite a few of them. Oh sure, they all end up in "get item X" or "kill Y", but guess what, IN EVERY OTHER GAME OUT THERE EVER, THE QUESTS ARE THE SAME, including Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, Mass Effect, KOTOR, Wizardry, Ultima, Daggerfall...
You can simplyfy all quests in existance to this basic formula. Oh sure there are twists here and there, but it's not like Skyrim doesn't have those (actually people claim some of these twists ruined their character)
there are number of moments where you have a choice.

And frankly, this is hardly any different from the past games, hell Morrowind barely even had similar choices, like whether or not you'll murder someone for a Powerful Artefact, quests were as linear as they can get and there were at least the same amount of "boring fetchguests" there as it is in Skyrim (at least in Skyrim they try to randomize it).

Quests are about rewards and expz? No kidding, they always had been.if you expect more than the quest giver saying thanks and random rumors about it, then you have way too big expectations about mostly minor and unkown quests...

hooray, another long pretentious wall of text that basically says "make things better" and millions of people going "OMFG THIS" AND "WHY DON'T BETH LSITEN".

quests like this are already in the game, quite a few of them. Oh sure, they all end up in "get item X" or "kill Y", but guess what, IN EVERY OTHER GAME OUT THERE EVER, THE QUESTS ARE THE SAME, including Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, Mass Effect, KOTOR, Wizardry, Ultima, Daggerfall...
You can simplyfy all quests in existance to this basic formula. Oh sure there are twists here and there, but it's not like Skyrim doesn't have those (actually people claim some of these twists ruined their character)
there are number of moments where you have a choice.

And frankly, this is hardly any different from the past games, hell Morrowind barely even had similar choices, like whether or not you'll murder someone for a Powerful Artefact, quests were as linear as they can get and there were at least the same amount of "boring fetchguests" there as it is in Skyrim (at least in Skyrim they try to randomize it).

Quests are about rewards and expz? No kidding, they always had been.if you expect more than the quest giver saying thanks and random rumors about it, then you have way too big expectations about mostly minor and unkown quests...