Overall i would say Bethesda's writing is passable, it's not terrible, it just isn't brilliant.

Only the ones that trace their roots to "Choose your own adventure Stories"... and they are generally horrible because of the massive amounts of Gameplay and Story Segregation thrown in to tell the story the developers want, and nobody else really cares about

BioWare's RPGs can trace their roots to "Choose your own adventure" books. Black Isle/Obsidian and Bethesda Softworks RPGs trace their roots to Tabletop RPGs, and use the philoposphy of "Emergent Gaming". Here's a world with stuff to do in it. Do stuff in this world. Your character will level up.

I could go into a massive rant about how horrible computer RPG designs look from a PnP perspective, and how Bethesda is the only surviving company to keep PnP design in CRPGs, even with its limitations.

Emil's a good designer, probably the best under Bethesda's roof. But a good writer? No way. And even his quest designs ultimately have some glaring faults. Both the plots of Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood and main quest of Fallout 3 (of which he was the lead designer) have two eerie similarities; railroading in the most infuriating way imaginable at the very end. In the former, despite spending all time on the previous quest uncovering proof of LaChance's innocence (and more importantly, that the traitor is still at large), you have no choice but to wait for said traitor to strike. Never once do you get to present the the diary you found, nor act when you pretty much identify who it is using a certain severed head, and nor could you just simply fail the quest (if you were like me and ready to just let the Black Hand die as they deserved). Likewise, for Fallout 3, despite being able to bring along three companions immune to the effects of radiation, the game won't even let you send any of them in to the chamber.

Surprised I haven't seen this yet, or maybe I shouldn't be.

As far as games are concerned, the writers do so much more than flesh out a story. Everything that isn't programmed, that is written within the game, is a writer's doing, and it all really helps tie the world together. From Idle Dialog, to item descriptions to the books in the game, The Elder Scrolls is second only to Mass Effect, in terms of reliance on it's in-game writing (And thus the writers generating that). Without good writers, you see the world unraveling, and not making sense.

What's more, is writer's are also responsible for a lot of "Unwritten" things. All the little "Unwritten" stories of Fallout 3, were the result of great writing through context, and that's really taking advantage of the medium. Where some games beat you over the head with details and context through dialog (Metal Gear Solid III, Heavy Rain), an actual, talented writer, can get a story made, and properly communicate it through the medium, which for videogames, is surprisingly nuanced and contextual. You really just want to tell as much as necessary, and let the player fill in the intentional blanks.


So, basically everyone saying "TES isn't about good stories/writers" I can only say, do a little research on what writing in games actually means, and how important it is, even outside a "Story Sense", often, your most lauded examples of 'great writing' are the most technically faulted examples imaginable, often because they fail to recognize the medium they are being written for. (If I had one Message for Hideo Kojima, it'd be Games are Not Movies, get over it.)

I'm looking for my father. Middle-aged guy. Maybe you've seen him?

Never again, please.

nevermind this

Well put.

really please

TES writing was never [censored] or good it was mediocre and full of cliches , morrowind's story was good and not black/white .
TES games are targeting younger audiences so i would never expect to see VtM:B dialogues or witcher's kind of plots that i guess do not make much sense to 13 year olds.
Speaking about railroading ends i 'd say that they are the rule in rpgs not an exception .

What? How can TES writing not be good, if Morrowind's story and writing were good? And I'm calling bull on your second assertation. A game with an "M" rating is not targeting younger audiences. And honestly, the Witcher and Vampire: The Masquerade have dull, boring, pretentious, convoluted, overly-long railroaded stories.

If you think Railroading is the "rule" in RPGs, not the exception, then you need to get a much, MUCH better Game Master.

The Elder Scrolls games manage to do an excellent job sticking to the original idea of the RPG, pioneered by Gary Gygax and David Arneson with the game Dungeons and Dragons, released in 1974 by TSR. I'm glad the Main Quests are so ignorable (Caius Cosades gave me cash and told me to buzz off and get a feel for Vvardenfell, I came back as Grandmaster Redoran, Head Thief Archmage Dragon Knight Master of the Fighter's Guild. Jauffre took away my amulet, told me to go look for someone, and I got distracted by an Argonian in Distress.), because then I can do more.

I hated what they did in FO 3 with the "Power Armor Training" thing, and was so glad for Operation: Anchorage for giving me the Power Armor training quickly, instead of taking me until I was 75% of the way through the main quest before I could wear it.

the OP is certainly right, I wouldn't mind better story and dialog than the stuff we got in Oblivion...that was puke worthy. Morrowind was decent, still nothing to write home about when it comes to story/dialog. FO3 was also okay.

Still all of them kinda lacking.

Story was good writing was average , looks like you didn't understood what i posted.



Let's take the Oblivion equation : T + nipbles = M nothing to do with writing .




LOL that's hilarious coming from someone who plays TES games , in any case CDPR concluded the story of the first game well , it looks like they run out of money in the second. Troyka just run out of time. Have you ever tried to compare one of the best TES lines against one of the worst from those 2 games?



can not think of any rpg -excluding sandbox and free roam- that wasn't railroaded towards the end , care to give some examples?



TES games are not story driven , wrong example you brought here. If bethsda gets short of time , money or both they will start cutting stuff from the entire game not only the MQ

Probably not. So, I guess I can agree with you there.


This is Skyrim. It's target rating is M. Most games go for the T rating because, honestly, a T rating's less likely to turn even mature gamers away. The sixual content in Daggerfall added nothing to the game.

And Oblivion was rated T because the ESRB missed the entire Dark Brotherhood questline, and half the main quest, apparently.



Hah! The worst lines spoken in TES are Far more fun and memorable than almost any lines in those games


Well, considering your qualifications excluded the only good RPGs, I guess I can't.
Games that come to mind: Daggerfall, Deus Ex, Nethack, Fallout 1, Fallout 2, and Morrowind, to an extent. Sure, they become more focused as the end approaches, but it's not outright railroading. Railroading is not being told you have to reach a certain destination. It's told you have to reach a certain destination by going through specific points in a specific order when it would be otherwise possible to achieve the goals in a different order, or bypass certain steps (Like avoiding circumstances that would lead to an ambush). Railroading sets in in Oblivion whenever your character freezes to watch an event.


I forgot where I was going with my praise of the forgetability of the main quest. I meant it allowed me to do the things I wanted to in the game (Such as flood the Imperial City with Watermelons, or see how many ruins I can loot in 30 minutes), instead of what the game wants me to do.

What do you mean by wrong example? Gygax and Arneson RPGs aren't "Story Driven". They are about 2-6 guys (At a time) dropped in a massive world and given a handful of "Quest hooks" that can be ignored (Though this isn't recommended: It's far more fun to annoy the GM by subverting his quests along the way instead of beligerently disregarding them), or dropped in front of a dungeon and given the objective "Loot this until you have everything, or you get bored". The GM's job is [i]not[i] to tell a story, but to arbitrate the rules of the system and challenge the player characters' abilities.

Um, well. the thing is aComputer Game with the most obtuse, complicated, multi layered rpg with a thousand plot threads that recognises and reacts to player actions isn't just playing make believe. You select a certain dialogue choice and the game runs a script placed into the results script of the dialogue that does something (rewards you with money, updates a quest objective etc). You kill someone for a quest and the same thing happens, the ondeath script triggers. You cast a spell, eat an item, hit something with an arrow, etc, all of these are things that the game recognises, acknowledges and reacts accordingly. In other words the game world reacts to you choices, which is the fundamental part of a role playing game (as opposed to just pottering along like some people think constitutes and RPG).

When you stand in a room for a few hours using the physics engine to place wine bottles in a rack the game doesn't acknowledge it. There is no functional difference to the game as to whether the wine is on the floor or in the rack. That's why it is called LARPing (short for live action roleplaying) or as more cynical people term it 'playing make believe'. There's a whole page on the UESP that has ideas for how to LARP (or as they curiously term it 'http://www.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Oblivion:Roleplaying&oldid=203483').

Putting on guard armour and going around killing bandits doesn't mean that you are a member of the imperial legion.