Be warned.. pretty tired right now so everything i write may not come out as i want it to.. but anyways.. back on topic:

LUZ DA GAME... but... why in the hell is my strictly axe wielding, shout using warrior forced to go through the mage quest arc in order to get shouts! These shouts are in dungeons that can only be opened via keys which are gathered through doing the quest arc... i want my reputation to be 'dragonborn warrior', not a flimsy 'mage student'.. what do you guys think?

There are other shouts that can only be accessed from other factions like the Thieves Guild too. It's not just the College of Winterhold.


It gives replay value to the game.

It forces me to do these quest arcs that have no relevance to my character in order to obtain shouts and dragon masks that i had fully wished i could have collected fully.. at the very least these dungeons should NOT be locked...

I agree, they shouldn't be locked. If you want to collect all the dragon masks you should be able to without doing questlines, but oh well.

Don't get those shouts then? I'm not going to do any else faction than Winterhold quests with my mage, even if other factions had better mage gear or some spells you cant get from anywhere else.

Well, my dragonborn wields both 100 destruction skill and 100 one-handed weapon skill. In essence dragon shouts are magic, and simple barbarian with a sword should not be even able to use them.

He can use them because he's Dragonborn not because he's a mage . . .

same here totally ignoring the other shouts. My character is a Warrior so he won't be doing the magic wizard quests and he has no sneaking skills so he can forget being a thief. It doesn't bother me

I agree that you shouldn't have to join a faction to be able to collect all the shouts, but if you want them all then it is something we are going to have to live with. Personally i am only going after the dragon shouts i like and will use most eg fire breath, storm call etc As a non mage character i am not bothering with the ones that calm or frenzy.

Shouts are a power shaped by the language of the dragon, its not a simple 'Spell Fingers' concept, they are for use of the 'Dragonborn' this means ANYONE and therefore should be available to EVERYONE (since all our characters are Dragonborn) they shouldn't be seperated so its impossible for characters of specific classes to not able to collect them all no matter what quest arc(s) they wish to follow. That is my logical argument.

While true, it can be a minor kick in the teeth. I'm not a big fan of going through opening sequences, but thankfully Skyrim's is pretty minor compared to other games (Dragon Age for instance).

Was one thing I always liked about Oblivion. Didn't matter what decisions you made (Shivering Isles aside), you never limited yourself. You could create one character, ever, and do everything.

*EDIT*
Just realized I may sound exceedingly stupid, I'd like to point out I only bought the game the other night. Looking through achievements, it seems like the game forces you to choose sides. If this is true, and based on decisions your limiting yourself to certain shouts, or anything, my response is on that.

I have just searched it up... the mages quest is the ONLY quest-arc other than the main quest (obviously) that has restricted shouts... 'sigh' makes no sense..

Maybe they were compensating for pure Destruction mages being under powered. :shrug:

Maybe there's a console command for this.

Lets all turn to cheating! But seriously, i use Xbox xD

I am a little annoyed by this also. I have found 2 quests so far that have nothing to do with getting shouts or whatever, yet I still have to get through part of Winterhold.....IMO this is linear B.S. to force me to go there to finish certain quests.