It lets your imagination wander. I personally don't mind. Most of the time the stuff that's left out and left to our own imagination is the best kind of story; we can't be disappointed by it. Unless the person is you..

Wow!...I know this game will be great,I just voice my opinion,the way the 500,000 people are doing about attributes. I as a paying costumer and fan,would maybe like something different...this time.

...so you want them to provide you with a backstory? Go play a different game if you aren't interesting in crafting your own character. There are plenty of linear games for you out there.

Even if it wasn't a tradition (which it is), there are gameplay reasons why it makes sense.

Being a prisoner makes it so that...
1.) You don't have money
2.) You don't have property
3.) You don't have an established place in the world

These three things are necessary so that you can feel accomplishment from working your way up from nothing. By starting as a prisoner, you not only have a blank backstory that you can fill with your own imagination, but it gives a legitimate reason for having a "fresh start" in the world without a penny to your name.

Listen to Todd Howard in this vid at about 6:30

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/todd-howard-gt-tv-extended/713230.

It's just a shame that your post was rude and insulting about a game feature that so many people love...and people are just expressing their opinion back. It's traditional for role players to imagine whatever they want to imagine and I thank Bethesda for sticking with that.

:tes:

Kind of, I guess you could have been a prisoner in an nontraditional sense, but he put you in there to be left to die. I always thought it was less of a way to imprison you and more of a way to kill you.

Nice video. I never got to watch it, thanks for the link.

Its actually NOT repetitive if you consider the different "prisons" you start in for each game and where/how you are released. Its not repetitive because your character's reason for being in prison is LIMITLESS to your imagination. Its only repetitive if you aren't RPing *at all* and just taking in only what the pixels on the screen show you without investing your imagination any.

But that aside, prison can happen to anyone. You could have even been rich and powerful once, or you could have been poor before you were put there, or anything in between. If they start you out in a specific type of house (or lack thereof), its harder to imagine that your backstory was anything other than tied to that place and the station in life you are presented with. You could imagine that your station in life were different before, but you are still stuck with imagining that at least in recent days if not longer, your story ended up with you living the specific type of life you are presented with at the stories opening at least for one day. If you start in prison, there is not one single thing that is forced on your backstory for even one day of it except that you ended up in prison, and you can RP that that was for a good reason or falsely accused, whatever. Any other starting location/station will force it such that your backstory includes a situation where you have the status of the home (or lack thereof) you are given.

I suppose you could start homeless in a small cave, but, its harder to freely RP that you were a noble knight or a powerful mage and have a reason you are now a homeless beggar in a cave than it is to RP the same but be wrongfully thrown into prison where your strength was sapped away during your incarceration. And really, those are your only two options for starting with nothing and a clean slate: homeless in some random wilderness, or prison... and prison offers both better RP and more believable starting dialogue from your captors to get the next thing rolling.

Well that makes all the difference, then. In other games you supposedly commiting a crime, but in both Arena and Daggerfall there's none of that. Not that I care how the game starts off, I don't mind the prison.

It's an elder scrolls tradition... I'd expect every last ES game will start in prison, why even complain about this of all things.

Yeah, I stated wrong. I meant that literally everything except for the fact that you ARE in jail can be decided by the player.

so do you think christmas is lame? or you know we have been breathing a lot, do you think that is lame? some stuff just works .... if it aint broke dont fix it

yes, this is the point. this is also why mass effect is kinda lame, they tell you your backstory kind of.
in elder scrolls games, well from the ones i've played morrowind and oblivion you had no idea why u were in jail. actually, in morrowind weren't you a prisoner being transported on a boat? i think that's right if i can remember correctly, and there was sum badass dunmer on tha boat too

I don't think it's lame at all. I'm really glad they do it this way. There have been different details in every game and having your back story undefined allows us to be creative and unfettered by whatever back story the developers would have created.

Peace, +Petrose

I don't have a problem with it...it's their game, if you want to tell them how to make it buy the company then it'll be your game.

"Especialy since there is never any backstory!"

That's kind of the point, see...they leave the backstory open for the player to choose how their character arrived at that point in time and space, so as...aw skip it, why even bother. Let's jsut say they do it for people who actually have imaginations and leave it at that. :rolleyes:

No it doesn't bother me, and I don't want any pre-defined back story. Now I have to say that I don't mind playing games where you start out with a backstory (love The Witcher for example, and fully expect TW2 to be the second best cRPG this year!) but it's not a part of TES and I wouldn't want it to become a part of this series. I can let my imagination run riot - maybe I am a thief who got caught, maybe a cold-blooded murderer, or maybe I injured someone because I was defending a beggar from a drunk aggressive noble and with no-one willing to stand as my witness it was an injustice that I was imprisoned. You can play it any way you like, it's fairly open. I like that.

You pretty much don't have any history when you start in jail in TES, makes things more simple.

I like the fact your character is blank canvas, clean slate or whatever but i think a different opening sequence could be cool beth could do anything a long as they kept that blank canvas idea, but the prison opener has become a tradition so beth areprobably gonna stick with it

doesn't bother me at all as others said its a blank slate.. Beats Fallout 3 start by miles

I disagree with every part of your post. The absolute last thing I want is a provided backstory. The prisoner intro is a solid choice in that it quickly and reasonably explains how you start with no possessions, and whatever it is that interupts your execution will probably set the plot rolling the way the Emperor escaping through your cell did in TESIV.

I like the fact that you start out as a nobody, but I wish it wasn't prison. I like playing good characters, and if I start out in prison, my only back story for myself is like, "I was framed!" or something.
And that's totally lame.

It's tradition - clearly, the Rules of Drama? for the TES universe includes "The Path of the Hero? begins in a prison."

:D

or you could have taken the heat for some one who would have died in the imperial dungeon, that would be noble and not so lame.

Well, actually I like it, usually if I'm making a good character it makes it so I could be wrongly imprisoned, though I normally make evil(evilish) characters.