Do not get me wrong I like Sykrim but I think Bethesda may have backed into a corner. In previous ETS games, Bethesda seemed to be careful not to fold out quests that can have a major impact on the world of Tamerial, which would affect the next game. In Skyrim however it seems they threw caution to the wind and decided to give players a much broader choice on what to do.


You have a choice to do the following:


*Join the Stormcloaks or the Empire

*Let Paarthurnax live or kill him

*Destroy the Dark Brotherhood or join them

*Allow Madanach to escape or kill him



The problem I see with these is, let us say the player choose to let Madanach live. Now the king of the Forsworn is free, but when ETS XI comes out the Bethesda team chooses to say he died in the prison. Of course they could say he died by a random group of bandits out in the wild, but that still shows the player helped him escaped.

Then you have the Stormcloaks or the Empire. You know whichever side you choose its going to have an impact on the world. However, the thing is, how is Bethesda going to determine which side won. Since I am a Stormcloak supporter I would not be exactly happy in ETS XI hearing the Empire won and the same would go for those who support the Empire hearing they lost and the Stormcloaks won.

After the Oblivion Crisis, [snip] pretty much hit the fan, but nothing you did outside of the main quest mattered because all your choices were minor and had very little impact on Tamerial years afterwards.

Now you as the player are given these huge choices and which could have ever-lasting effects on the world. So how exactly is this going to work for the next games?

It's true that Bethesda will likely have to make some decisions on the canonical outcome of the Civil War, although I think most of those can be left in the air. Chances are dragons won't feature prominently in future games, so the fate of Paarthurnax may not need to be determined. Likewise, chances are good they won't have to explicitly state the fate of Madanach.

Maybe like our world, where it's the winners that get to write the histories but with a note at the bottom mentioning that a less popular faction claims that this is all lies and that what really happened was that .......

Unless TES VI is set in Skyrim or a province neighboring Skyrim I doubt any these factors will have a large impact. Did it have a large impact on the Romans living in Spain when Trajan won territory from the Persian Empire? Did it have an impact when Hadrian gave it back? Not really, to those Romans it was a war on the otherside of the known world.

That said, they could either allow a save game import that sets what happened in Skyrim (like Dragon Age 2), or just choose a cannon ending and let the events of the cannon ending stand (e.g. Fallout 2, 3 and NV). In the end it would add some flavor text and maybe affect a subquest or two.

or have a little questionaire determening the choices you made, but all this won't be for a long time

Hopefully it will be like Mass Effect 2, where you can either carry on from a previous save or do the tick-box thing. Different ticks will open certain side-quests/dialogue options, adding a bit of replay value when you know there are different quests for your initial choices.

The Dovahkin screwed around with the Eye of Magnus and caused a Dragonbreak, making every possible outcome happen, then unhappen, and somehow merge into a strange combined reality after..... Oh wait, we used that one already.

Heh. Doesn't mean we can't recycle it.... It's not an invalid plot point after all.

Seeing how current events are, the part were the DLCs will be quite extensive, I would suspect one of the DLCs to have a major impact on the story. Though this is my idea.

On a side note, if it turned out are wonderful mad prince came back to Tamerial & had a few.. dealings with the Thalmor. That would be quite interesting due to them claiming they stopped the Oblivion crisis.

Gotta love Auriel-Ei...

Time is on everyone's side.

They could do this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RocksFallEveryoneDies

Fear denys faith.

I was thinking the exact same thing! It would be super cool if they did that. Then it would feel like a serial story.
Like if you did the guild quests in skyrim, then in the next game maybe your character from skyrim makes a cameo appearance as a guild leader.
Wow, that would be freaky.

Even though I sided with Madanach, I randomly stumbled upon http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/632987624137952955/02609D256F4C6BEB99890A167B29A214A270EEFF/

And yes, all of his buddies appear to have met the same fate.

I imagine the next game will take place X number of years in the future with this:

"Skyrim suffered a Civil War, which was resolved by the Dragonborn. The Dragonborn was then elected High King by a moot, forcing the Empire to repeal its membership in the White Gold Concordant and removing any reason for Skyrim to remain independent. The Dragonborn eventually disappeared, leaving no heirs, with the current High King descended from the Jarl of Whiterun. Legend attests that the Dragonborn went to chase Alduin's spirit in the Netherworld."

"Paarthurnax left the Throat of the World after the events of Skyrim, disappearing completely. Some believe he was assassinated by agents of the Blades, possibly the Dragonborn himself. Others believe he went on to teach the dragons about the Way of the Thu'um. Possibly both."

History will be written in a way that the choices you make here are not remembered. For instance, does it matter whether history records that you killed the Emperor today or the dark brotherhood killed him sometime soonish? He's weak so its not much of a stretch to imagine he dies whether you choose to kill him or not. Matter of fact, its likely that history wont know who killed him. Just that he died. And he will. Everyone dies. Eventually Ulfric dies. Tullius too. No matter what you do. The details can easily be swallowed up in between unrecorded history and propaganda and PR.