| For a lot of people, the Elder Scrolls series isn't really about the main questline. Once you're let loose in the world, you can forge your own path through it. It's a sandbox role playing experience. The main questline of Skyrim for instance, isn't generally considered to be groundbreaking or even good. It's your typical chosen one story, with maybe a few interesting sub-quests, but mostly long winded dungeons, and poorly written expository dialogues between characters you don't really care about. There's little to no narrative freedom, besides a few choices like: So my proposition (that no one at Bethesda will see anyway but I still just wanted to talk about) is this, the Elder Scrolls VI should ditch the main questline and focus on world building. Maybe spend some more time developing the AI routines for NPCs, build more unique locations, expand the role playing systems, elaborate on the guild quests. I know its just a pipe dream but I'm interested to hear what you think. Did you enjoy the main quest in Skyrim? Would you feel ripped off if they didn't include one? Would you be happy they focused their efforts elsewhere? |
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| I agree. The main quests in TES-games are redundant. I've been playing Skyrim for 200+ hours and the side quests along with free playing were much more interesting than being THE CHOSEN ONE. I do like hunting, crafting, being a travelling merchant and so on (with mods). If Bethesda just gets rid of the main quest and improve the role-playing part (you can do what you want), it will be very good. |
MamokaruAug 15, 2017 1:33 AM
| “All men are jealous idiots. And women are stupid too, to feel happy about it. It's true, there are idiots everywhere!” “I know it's difficult to look past my brilliant tail, brain and looks, but I also have excellent ears and eyes.” “I need to have a drink, and I need one soon!” “I am Holo the Wise Wolf so you shut up!” |
| What I meant by world building is a more believable world. So better characters, better AI behaviors, better or more locations to explore, better quests in general (unfortunately every second quest in Skyrim is like "go here, get that" etc) more role playing options, things like that. Not really lore or connectivity. For the most part, I find Skyrim to be the most fun when I go classic RPG on it, and put a bit of thought into what kind of character I want to play, their backstory, their personality, things like that. The main questline isn't the biggest selling point for most folks I believe. It's like the campaign in a Battlefield game for example. |
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| While the quality of the TES narratives isn't up to par with today's standards they are most certainly necessary to further the progression of lore and world building. Skyrim's story is easily the weakest in the franchise yet, the lore that is expanded upon is nearly invaluable to TES as a whole. Quite honestly I believe the narratives help in setting the thematic approach for the corresponding game for example, what would Morrowind be without Dagoth Ur? |
| @worldeditor11 I was pissed off with the fact that in Skyrim or even Oblivion you cant kill any npc you want to. That was so cool in Morrowind. |
| “All men are jealous idiots. And women are stupid too, to feel happy about it. It's true, there are idiots everywhere!” “I know it's difficult to look past my brilliant tail, brain and looks, but I also have excellent ears and eyes.” “I need to have a drink, and I need one soon!” “I am Holo the Wise Wolf so you shut up!” |
| Ehh I mean the main quest is a relatively small part of the experience playtime-wise but it still gives some sort of greater sense of global progression and importance for your actions. So I think taking it out completely would be a bad idea. It'd probably be better to just give the main quest a better storyline so that people would actually care a bit more about it for its own narrative |
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lady_freyja said: Woodcutter said: For a lot of people, the Elder Scrolls series isn't really about the main questline. This is just because the quests of Oblivion and Skyrim are poorly designed. If you remove entirely the main quest —meaning with all its background and plot devices— of Morrowind or Daggerfall, you remove a huge part of those games I mean, the whole world of Morrowind revolves around Dagoth Ur and the weakness of the Tribunal. While in Oblivion you have a freaking Fighters Guild which doesn't have job while there is a swarm of daedra all around the province. It's utterly stupid. While in Skyrim actually nobody cares about the dragons. In Oblivion and Skyrim the quest-lines are all built in a vacuum, isolated from the other quest-lines. The worst example is probably in Oblivion where during the Thieves Guild quest-line you have to steal yourself if you're already the arch-mage of the Mages Guild. In Morrowind the quest-lines are loosely connected to each other, and in Daggerfall all the scripted quests are actually part of the main plot, one way or another. You just have to compare Fallout 3 to Fallout New Vegas to understand how bad Bethesda is with quest design and world building. lady_freyja said: Woodcutter said: For a lot of people, the Elder Scrolls series isn't really about the main questline. This is just because the quests of Oblivion and Skyrim are poorly designed. If you remove entirely the main quest —meaning with all its background and plot devices— of Morrowind or Daggerfall, you remove a huge part of those games I mean, the whole world of Morrowind revolves around Dagoth Ur and the weakness of the Tribunal. While in Oblivion you have a freaking Fighters Guild which doesn't have job while there is a swarm of daedra all around the province. It's utterly stupid. While in Skyrim actually nobody cares about the dragons. In Oblivion and Skyrim the quest-lines are all built in a vacuum, isolated from the other quest-lines. The worst example is probably in Oblivion where during the Thieves Guild quest-line you have to steal yourself if you're already the arch-mage of the Mages Guild. In Morrowind the quest-lines are loosely connected to each other, and in Daggerfall all the scripted quests are actually part of the main plot, one way or another. You just have to compare Fallout 3 to Fallout New Vegas to understand how bad Bethesda is with quest design and world building. See the thing about Fallout 3 and New Vegas is that they're very different styles of RPG from a game like Skyrim. From here on out I'm just gonna say New Vegas because it's the stronger example: New Vegas is a narrative focused RPG. The role playing comes largely from decisions the player makes mostly in dialogue. In this way, it's truer to "traditional" RPGs and tabletop RPGs. It makes player agency within the narrative its core focus. Skyrim is a sandbox RPG. There's not many games it can be compared to besides Oblivion, because even Morroriwind and its predecessors were more inline with "traditional" role playing games like you mentioned. Skyrim on the other hand could largely be enjoyed with very, very few interactions with the main questline (exceptions being side quests like the Civil War, which requires the player to complete some of the main quest). An easy test for this is what game plays better with an alternate start mod. I installed one for New Vegas a few years ago, and despite a vast array of options, I found myself being pulled towards the main questline, because it is the core focus of the game. Most of the side quests in New Vegas feed into the main questline, and there's very little to do outside of the main questline. Skyrim on the other hand, with an alternate start mod, gets very close to the game I was describing in my original post. Which is why I suggested ripping the main questline out entirely. As you said, the main quests already exist in a vacuum to the greater world. So why not take the resources required to produce a 10+ hour main questline, and apply them elsewhere in production. |
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| I'd rather see more expansive questlines for the 3 big guilds (Fighter, Mage, Thieves') than an "epic" main quest. |
| no main quest would make the game feel boring and I probably wouldn't play it. sure it's good freedom, but there is no goal to aim towards. stupid idea in my opinion |
| No, because I play games to finish the story. But I've never enjoyed Bethesda games... |
| Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth. -Walt Whitman A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein |
lady_freyja said: @Woodcutter Yup. But for me Skyrim is the worst game of the whole franchise (which means I include stuffs like ESO, Battlespire or Redguard) because like you said it's more "sandbox" oriented than story-oriented. Or more exactly I ignore all those "sandbox" elements, so all it's left in that game is a bad FPS where you choose in which order you take your hallways story-lines. For me Bethesda totally lost itself. What I want is an organic world-building (and not all those systems set in different vacuums) and a good story-telling, ideally like what you have in New Vegas (but Bethesda never reached this level…) or at least like Morrowind. If I want to play a sandbox game, I'd rather play something like Don't Starve. Or, they make specifically a ES spin-off for that, not the main series. The spin-off are here for making different kind of games than a proper solo-RPG. So I want the exact opposite of you. EDIT: Although I know that I'm against the flow here. Like you spoke of the mods, the only mods I'm using are the unofficial patchs and the restoration of cut contents, plus maybe some cosmetic contents. The other kind of stuffs that can interest me are mods like Tamriel Rebuilt or Beyond Skyrim because they increase the story-related contents while being rather lore-friendly. I'm largely the same, I'd take New Vegas over Skyrim any day of the week. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the sandbox role playing Skyrim can offer. I just think Bethesda should play to their strengths. We saw with Fallout 3 and 4 that they aren't really good with the narrative focused RPGs I discussed earlier. And I don't think we can really get the best of both worlds, considering Fallout 4 was a Frankenstein's Monster of Skyrim and Fallout 3, and ended up being worse than both. |
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worldeditor11 said: I upvote this. bestThe problem with Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Oblivion and by large extend, Skyrim, without a main questline to follow or acting as an end goal, the whole game feel pointless. Why are you there? Why are you doing this? Why is this doing here? Why is that guy doing that? The simple answer is, because I/he/she can. There is no emotional connection between the player and the game. As unfortunate as this sounds, Skyrim is a shit game comparing to its predecessor. Everything that have been done in Morrowind and Oblivion, were repeated in Skyrim. Sure, newcomers will be guffaw with the multitude of things that can be done. To old timers, Skyrim is a huge step back on what makes Morrowind good in the first place. And that is making your actions matter and allow players to connect personally to the game world. And no, I don't agree with taking out the main questline just for the sake of connectivity and lore consistency. You are not solving the main problem, the writing. Hire better writing teams, get better level designers, iron out game bugs before release and most importantly, stop spending so much time and effort into hyping the damn game. By looking at Fallout 4 though, I am skeptical they have any intentions of doing so other than riding its franchise coattails for how long it may be. |
| Honestly, I've become too distracted by messing around with mods to have a strong opinion about the main story. |
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| I'm one of the few who liked skyrim main quest. It's nothing new, but it works well. |
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| I mean, Bethesda can try to do both at the same time. It's not like Skyrim' s main questline didn't have some worldbuilding to it. How they present it could be better I guess. |
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| IDK, if they followed the NV style where you are anyone you want to be but (cliche I know) can't remember due to amnesia it's less intrusive in RP. Personally I want to see them implement "Alternate Start - Live Another Life" officially into the game. But I cant see them completely taking a main quest out of the game. |
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PurplePanties said: IDK, if they followed the NV style where you are anyone you want to be but (cliche I know) can't remember due to amnesia it's less intrusive in RP. Personally I want to see them implement "Alternate Start - Live Another Life" officially into the game. But I cant see them completely taking a main quest out of the game. Yeah, Live Another Life is essential when I play Skyrim now. I feel like if they took out the main quest they could focus on the side quests some more, give us a more in depth Mage's Guild questline, or just generally improve the quality of side quests so they aren't all cookie cutter dungeon raids for an NPCs family heirloom they somehow lost at the bottom of a Dwemer ruin. |
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| My favourite quest lines in all of the Elder Scrolls games were the great houses in Morrowind, (especially because they were mutually exclusive, and thus mandated replays) followed by Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion. The main quest in Morrowind was probably the strongest of the main quests, but it wasn't amazing by any stretch of the imagination. Morrowind > Daggerfall > Skyrim > Oblivion (English meadow simulator way more boring than Norwegian mountain simulator) Shivering Isles was amazing though, definitely the very best DLC or expansion Bethesda has ever done. Whether or not they should do a main quest depends entirely on the location they choose for the game. If it's Valenwood, then they might as well drop it, and encourage exploring (especially tree climbing, lol) But if it's Sumerset Isles or Black Marsh, I think it needs a main quest since those are smaller provinces, especially Sumerset Isles, and also they have a lot of potential for an epic main quest. The Sload invasions of Sumerset Isles for example. One of the coolest enemies in the lore at a scale more like actual warfare than those crappy sieges they tried in Skyrim. |
Red_TuesdayAug 21, 2017 6:29 AM
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| i think they should remain main quest but to give player much more choices, and to be several different main quests depends on your choices, for example in skyrim, if you are playing with high elf you should have option to join thalmor instead of spying on them for blades(and if you would do that you would get completely different main quest), option to kill blades instead of paarturnax, and many similar different choices |
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| The problem with most side quests I've come across in Skyrim is that they aren't epic or terribly important. That's something I liked about the main quest, even though it was suboptimal in its execution - it's something very important that you need to do. Past the mq, Skyrim very quickly devolves into running back and forth across the map on tedious little errands. This swiftly utterly destroys the illusion of great scale and combined with the general sameness of trading, looting, crafting etc. it makes all the "cities" and most places kind of undistinct. |
leNerd said: This would suck so much ass, everything would feel pointless I would prefer if they would make the mainquest just better in regards to story and presentation If they should change something then make it so that in between big parts of the mainstory you have to do tons of leveling(=sidequests) to come back to the main story later Make it so you dont "binge" the mainquest and then do other stuff for 200 hours, but rather mainquest 20 hours sidequest mainquest 20hours sidequest.... Honestly I think more MMO elements like grinding would just make the experience worse. |
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RMSfreedom said: LICK_IT_GOOD said: i think they should remain main quest but to give player much more choices, and to be several different main quests depends on your choices, for example in skyrim, if you are playing with high elf you should have option to join thalmor instead of spying on them for blades(and if you would do that you would get completely different main quest), option to kill blades instead of paarturnax, and many similar different choices The problem with having too many choices in the main quest is how to integrate it into the canon of future games. I think another warp in the west would be a bit much. They can get away with little things (e.g. whether or not you killed Vivec) but I'm a bit worried about how they're going to deal with the outcome of the civil war. Other games have had to deal with this in the past though, take the Warcraft series for example. In Warcraft 1 there were two endings, the Orcs won or the Humans won, in Warcraft 2 they made the Orc victory canon, the same thing has happened in the Fallout series countless times. |
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| Elder Scrolls VI when? i just seem them rehashing Skyrim every month. and they already said they have no plans to make Elder Scrolls VI in the foreseeable future. all we know is that it will be argonia i think TES series will die if they keep up with this Payed Mod bs |
| "among monsters and humans, there are only two types. Those who undergo suffering and spread it to others. And those who undergo suffering and avoid giving it to others." -Alice “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” David Hume “Evil is created when someone gives up on someone else. It appears when everyone gives up on someone as a lost cause and removes their path to salvation. Once they are cut off from everyone else, they become evil.” -Othinus  |
| i agree, take it out so i can focus on screaming at chickens |
| yee |
lequack said: No. I get that elder scrolls is more about exploration however having a main quest gives you a sense of purpose. Removing that would make playing the game pointless for me. It would still have quests, it just wouldn't force you into a "chosen one" role. It would basically be the same Skyrim except without that part at Helgen and all the parts following it. That would mean the different guild questlines (and quests in general) would get a lot more love, which should make them drastically more enjoyable to actually follow. If that still feels pointless, add in a survival system where the player needs to eat to live, so you have to do quests to earn gold to buy food, etc. That way the player has a purpose (to not die, which is the core premise of almost every game anyway) and it doesn't restrict them by railroading them along a very poorly executed main questline. You dig? |
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| No they shouldn't, if you dont like it you can always ignore it, that's the beauty of this game, its has the most freedom of all games. I always enjoy doing the main quests, even though they are not as good as the main quest in a game where it's focus is on the story but at least we have good quests. I wouldn't mind if they added more quests. More Quests = Always good. Tired of waiting for Elder Scrolls VI, took them a lot of time. |
| i started playing skyrim in 2011 when launch and still plays sometimes, never did the main quest, but still thinks its a real important part of the game and need to be improved and get bigger tes6 should start to be a real RPG |
maumaumb said: i started playing skyrim in 2011 when launch and still plays sometimes, never did the main quest, but still thinks its a real important part of the game and need to be improved and get bigger tes6 should start to be a real RPG you never finish main quest after 6 years? teach me how senpai |
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| Skyrim was the 1st open ended [literally endless] game I played, and its main quest was good since I didnt play such games b4. I finished it at level 7. Alduin was dead. So now what? and thats when I realised, this game doesnt end with the main quest. it just tells a certain story in a world much bigger than that one story. I'd have like a dozen rp playthrus, and killed alduin only like 2 or 3 times.... but without a main quest, it would feel incomplete. instead they should include something which actually changes the world as it was upon finishing the main quest. EG: another bethsda game fallout 3. after yu switch on the purifier, either the irridiated problem is solved and the world is actually shown as better /getting healed or if you put the fev, all npc are affected adversely and you can live thru your terrible actions and look at the damage you inflicted and regret...... but the world remains unchanged and that is kinda lame. |
LICK_IT_GOOD said: maumaumb said: i started playing skyrim in 2011 when launch and still plays sometimes, never did the main quest, but still thinks its a real important part of the game and need to be improved and get bigger tes6 should start to be a real RPG you never finish main quest after 6 years? teach me how senpai It's not that unthinkable, I only finished it for the first time last year and I had over 100 hours in Skyrim before that. It's a really tedious experience, that involves a lot of busy work. Enough busy work, in fact, to make acquiring an actual Elder Scroll seem boring. |
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LICK_IT_GOOD said: maumaumb said: i started playing skyrim in 2011 when launch and still plays sometimes, never did the main quest, but still thinks its a real important part of the game and need to be improved and get bigger tes6 should start to be a real RPG you never finish main quest after 6 years? teach me how senpai despite the fact i'm really dumb (didn't even noticed that the riverwood quest was a main) i like to play with some mods and to explore the whole map...every time |
| i think they should work on how to make a better main quest. make it more interesting , dynamic and more fulfilling. better yet create more main quests you could choose from? i'm also not really satisfied on how skyrim's main quest pans out when i played it. the visuals is stunning but lacking on some aspects. like whether or not you become a hero who saved the world from the dragons or invaders and yet the townspeople still spits on you like you're worthless. i dont get that. and the consequences of your action didn't change your world much. i think the game focuses more on how you can modify the game to your liking than giving you something straight from the box. |
| As much as I abhor the snoozefest main questlines of Elder Scrolls games, I don't think removing such an integral part of the series would improve anything. I can already imagine Skyrim becoming an MMO of sorts without the main story lol. |
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| Should this game even matter? Now that Skyrim has been out |
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Capcum said: Should this game even matter? Now that Skyrim has been out We were talking about Elder Scrolls VI. It's right there in the title |
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Skittles said: As much as I abhor the snoozefest main questlines of Elder Scrolls games, I don't think removing such an integral part of the series would improve anything. I can already imagine Skyrim becoming an MMO of sorts without the main story lol. I mean games like DA:I and Fallout 4 are already too MMO-ish and they still have main questlines. The problem doesn't stem from the narrative of the game, more from the design of the game mechanics, like radiant quests *shudder*. |
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