So yeah.. we all know and love our Morrowinds, Oblivions, Skyrims etc. but playing another 5hr marathon of the latter yesterday just made me think what always bugged me most about ES games (hint, it's the topic title). I am not going to rant about crappy Oblivion, godly Morrowind etc but simply point out how Beth simply refuses to stop giving us quests that SHOULD have large emotional/consequential impacts but end up just throwing them under the carpet. In order for a game to truly be immersive you need to get a sense that you're affecting the world somehow and the world is affecting you, that decisions are really decisions and that there may, and should be, consequences. A simple example of how this CAN work nicely is the way you cannot work for the thieves AND fighters guild in Morrowind, but I'm thinking more long-term and complex stuff, the likes of which is missing from every ES game.

Let me give two of the freshest examples from Skyrim, not because these don't occur in Oblivion or Morrowind but because they're fresh in my mind from Skyrim. The issue here is two-fold.. one, sometimes the only way to progress is forward, even if you feel like what you're doing is wrong there is no option to continue the quest properly without doing it. This has gotten worse over various ES games and seems at its peak in Skyrim. Two, however, is really, my general ES games complaint: lack of post-quest consequences/events. This obviously excludes the MQ, for the most part. Warning: Spoilers ahead!!!



So yeah, these are just two examples off the top of my head, I'm pretty certain I'll run into much more stuff like this (as has happened in Ob and MW both). Question is.. are people as bothered by this kinda thing as me or am I the only one who wishes quests that set up dramatic events actually follow up to their premise?

I'd like to see some more consequences for one's actions, myself... tangible effects upon the gameworld stemming from one's choices. As it stands, Skyrim doesn't even seem to have a reputation system corresponding with our actions.

Heh, should have probably pointed out the spoilers aren't half bad. Anyway, yeah.. sometimes I get the impression Beth's version of your choices having impact is "is that fur around your ears"?! I realize this is very hard to accomplish in a framed narrative within a huge world, but why not cut down on the random, tedious near-infinite quest content (MMO-Style) and instead make it so there are less quests but every one of the side-quests (including guilds and daedric shrine quests) has multiple outcomes that don't necessarily end when the first quest is over. Beth could learn a thing or two from Witcher II where some decisions blocked or opened up whole new towns not to mention quests. But I realize this is not as easy to do while pleasing the "I WANT TO DO AND SEE EVERYTHING NAO" fans.. so instead, just focus on more follow-up quests, at least to those quests that are written in a way to suggest that they need them.

Yes I wish for more choices and consequences as well it makes the game much more interesting and allows you to better roleplay a character and make them more individual, it also gives more reason to replay the game to see different outcomes. Coming off of new vegas skyrim's linear quests are disappointing in comparison.

The TEs series has never done this well at all, the game world doesn't change much no matter what you do, unlike other RPG's TES games are basically dungeon crawlers and exploration games. If your looking for choice, consequence, TEs will not give you this at all. TEs has a very static game world really. I became head of each guild no one cares, nothing changes, after just a few quests to.

Skyrim may be open with regards to game map, it's quests are as linear as it gets...

I know, right? But the thing is, I've put more hours into Morrowind than any other game ever (Baldur's Gate II comes close, maybe) despite that fundamental flaw. My point is.. no game out there is quite like the ES series.. which is exactly why this choice/consequence system applied to at least -some- extent (other than choice - join guild, consequence - get guild quests :clap:) would make the games all that much perfect and unassailable by any other RPG. Perhaps Beth needs to consider trying Obsidian for an expansion pack.. how bad can it be? Despite the horrid ending Kotor II had some of the best characters and dialogues in a video-game ever, Mask of the Betrayer expansion for NWN 2 was some of the best RPG goodness in the last decade, New Vegas proved Fallout in 3d -can- (somewhat) work etc. These guys clearly know how to write fantastic storylines while Beth's strong suit is creating fantastic worlds, lore and immersion. IMHO, it could work.

Having only the experience of playing Morrowind before, I'll say that in terms of consequence, like said above, I never felt it that was TES strongest point. But then again, I'm O.K. with playing different styles of games with ups/downs about each.

One thing that bothers me more than lack of consequence is the huge leaps each individual questline takes as I progressed. They seemed too short and artificial (in terms of rising up in ranks), even for TES standards.

That being said, ironically enough:



Cheers my friend.

Ah, cool.. well, I suspected there must be -something- behind that quest after all.. good to know.. in fact, don't tell me anything, I'll try to figure it out myself next time.. really glad that there is at least the option to do better, if already there isn't any real consequence for doing it wrongly. And yeah, as for rising in ranks.. this is what REALLY baffles me.. I'd understand this decision if there hadn't been a million mods for Morrowind and later Oblivion where people -clearly- made it known we, in general, wanted a much harder, longer and realistic guild progression (as opposed to becoming arch-mage in Ob in 2 days without having to cast a single spell). I suppose the imminent danger of dragons + you being dragonborn makes everyone just want to get you in charge so you'd back to, uh, saving the world from dragons, I suppose?

Good post. I would like to congratulate you on genuinely constructive criticism. Your first example struck me as well, because it caused me a certain amount of anguish over whether or not I was doing the right thing. It.. didn't FEEL right, but I went ahead and did it, because character wise, I felt that the questgiver outranked pilgrims in the interpretation of the deities wish (lawful good type alignment). A chaotic good character would have flatly refused to do it.


One of the reasons I decided to play a stoic paladin style character for my first incarnation is that you usually end up in some interesting philosophical situations. Fundamentalist Good alignments are usually responsible for equivalent atrocities as a Chaotic Evil in balance. In a lore which often blurs the distinction between "good" Aedra and evil "Daedra", which is far from the truth, there is a ton of scope for stories that blur the lines.

Saying that, there are definitely moments where the game does challenge you a little in this respect,



However, the point I'm trying to reach hopelessly, is that you're not alone, I love those moments, where I simply have to sit down, and think in character what is the best course of action. Very few quests force you to delve into your characters motivations.

This man speaks the truth, choices and consequences are the RP part of RPG games and TES games have never had this done well. Daggerfall, Morrowind and Skyrim has done this part the best, but its far from other games like Fallout, yes even Fallout 3 had more choices. But those games also have less other content, but even if it meant less content i wish that Bethedsa would use more time to create more options to play the game.

O.K. my friend. Only one thing though, because I found this out the hard way, after hours of "fruitless" research (don't worry, I'm not gonna spoil the fun for you). The thing is that (as far as UESP, Wikia and Gamefaqs player-research confirms this), there's one script in that Quest that is broken (altough some are not experiencing this, which makes it more of a ramdom bug really). So my advice is this (a spoiler-free workaround for the bug that it's working for most players), but I'll hide it anyway:

I think we can all agree that the game we really want to play would take years to create. At some point you have to stop producing and start selling.

Ah, great, I was hoping for some thought-out replies like this.. too little of this kind of discussion on these forums nowadays it's mostly degenerated into flame wars and trolling. Yes, that quest that you mention struck me as a great one as well.. right up until the end I wasn't 100% sure if I made the right choice but
Anyhow, there's another quest that could have interesting follow-up, wouldn't you agree?

The problem I think is that there are too many people who would bury Beth if they came up with a game that didn't take 120 hrs but 40 hrs to thoroughly explore -once- but then truly made subsequent play-throughs completely different and therefore actually ammount to more truly unique content to experience. The radiant quest system as I've seen it so far only reinforces my fear of this so-much-quantity-it-starts-affecting-quality philosophy.. there are glorious quests in Skyrim, they are just buried under piles of generic stuff.. is it too much to dream that the next ES will cut down the generic and expand on the good? Probably :/

I'm usually the first one to say this, but its not actually asking for extra content, but rather that, when writing quests, some grey area is introduced occasionally that makes the player think a bit more about how they want to proceed.

TES has never done this well, you are correct. In this go-round even the small bits that go a long way, such as recognition for guild leadership are sorely lacking. One of the flaws in an otherwise brilliant game. As an exploration game, its awesome though. Just don't expect that what you do matters much.

At the very least, there are moments like this, and its not completely devoid of them. As for a 40 hour game, but with a larger scope of additional branches is a lovely idea, but I'm not entirely sure about how well it could be executed.

I think we're all guilty of thinking of some exceptional ideas, but when it comes down to it, the actual creation of these things turns out to be a lot more difficult.

I had a few Oblivion mods that, after days of work simply had to be dropped because the execution of the idea just didn't work. Its more than likely Bethseda have something similar on a grander scale.

FO:NV is really the only game Bethesda has ever published where decisions had true consequences like the old FO games did, but of course that was Obsidian's doing. There's also a price to pay for that, the game is a bit more linear, limited and has to have a definitive ending. None of those are particularly bad things if the consequences are handled well, as the replay value comes from making different choices more than exploring for what you may have missed. The TES games take broader strokes though. Larger world, more to explore, more NPCs, more everything. The price of this is that extending consequences over this broader game becomes torturous from a processing and assets standpoint. Instead what we get, and this is very improved from previous TES games is different NPC dialog acknowledging events and treating you slightly differently. It's superficial, as it doesn't actually effect a damn thing, but it's a nice touch.