Alright kiddies, why don't you sit down and let papa Fish tell you a story...

Alright that was very weird, sorry, I truly am, now back to the point: the factions of TES V: Skyrim. Is it just me or do the factions seem a little... Un-lovable? Now, I know there are those of you out there that will strongly disagree with me and others that will say vice versa but for some reason I can't live Skyrim's factions. The Empire, The Stormcloaks, and the Aldmeri Dominian can't pull my interest that much.

I'll use a comparison here, Fallout: New Vegas. For those of you who don't know (you should) Fallout: New Vegas is a part of Bethesda's "Fallout" series, a post-apocalyptic RPG series that takes place 200+ years after an atomic apocalypse. In every game some factions stay while other new ones are introduced. In the most recent game (Fallout: New Vegas) there are four very well written factions, two new and two old. These factions (Caesar's Legion in particular) hold such a large place in my heart that I've written Fan-Fics, changed my political opinion, and even changed some of my morals because of them.

I understand this sounds ridiculous but I'm serious. I had emotional connection with them and on my first playthrough I spent a day of nice, long thought on what side I would choose. On the otherhand in Skyrim when it came to my side choice I simply took five minutes and said "well... I don't really know much on these groups so... I'll go with the Stormcloaks because Ulfric has a cool voice.". Maybe I could enjoy the AD but there simply isn't enough information on them besides that their "Genocidal Elves". Maybe I could like the Stormcloaks but there wasn't enough background to them besides "Skyrim is for the Nords, we kill elves with big axes.". And maybe I could choose the Empire but even though theyve been in every TES game they haven't offered me any reason to... Like them, besides maybe that they want to keep all races together.

So whatdya' think? Am I simply a mad man ranting about things that are perfectly find or do I have a point?

(P.s. I have no idea where this thread will go...)

I think I know. There isn't going to be much discussion in this thread which hasn't been reiterated over and over again in other topics.

But for the sake of discussion, could you give a little more detail in why you liked New Vegas' factions more than Skyrims? And are we talking about factions in general, or just the joinable ones?

I think the Dominion gets a fair amount of lore coverage in Skyrim, TBH. Though they don't really have much of a presence in Skyrim, it seems believable enough, IMO.

Factions in general.

I don't expect this to be a mega-thread simply because it dosnt allow for discussion, I just want peoples opinions.

I liked FO: NV's factions because there was a huge amount of back story, all shades of grey, emotional connection, beleivability, and superior writing. (note: those are all opinions).

Yes it's kind of hard to connect with a faction when it is so rushed and poorly written. The guilds in Oblivion blow these out of the water. I had to work in several places for many peoples trust to earn admission to the mages. That makes sense, that makes me feel accomplishment. The DB was written very intriguing in Oblivion. I want factions where you work much harder over a long period of time before they trust you and give you ranks. And you should be skilled, better skilled than everybody in that specific profession before they even consider advancing you to leadership. The archmage should be a very very skilled mage in the first place. They went too far with all the content accessible to any character.

In order to fascinate me the factions in any TES game should be mutually exclusive concerning leadership (you can't be [censored] head of all guilds at once), loaded with politics, background lore that you must acknowledge before jumping into action, relevant skills requirements before you advance the story, slow paced progression, present a faction reputation system where you build influence in many ways and over a long period. Guilds where nothing interesting happens except pointing at the newcomer as their next favorite messiah can't be attractive for me, they're just level up hubs.

To be fair, this isn't an issue if you're roleplaying your character. Everything else though is spot on.

So if you a warrior/barbarian and join the mages guild, you aren't very good at roleplaying