Whilst playing oblivion it sort of bothered me that some quests would compel you to do things that your (RPing) character just wouldn't do. Ex: Your paladin-esque character wants the Ebony Blade (a strong sword for those that don't know). Well Mephala wants you to commit double homicide for you to get it, no ifs ands or buts.

Instead I would like a few more options. Still going with the above example, maybe Mephala still wants you to kill those two people, but instead you have to bring her object X and Y from each of them (as "proof" you killed them) and to get those objects you could 1. Kill them 2. Steal it from them 3. Do them a favor and have them give it to you. I know tricking a god isn't easy but that's just an example I thought of in two seconds; you guys understand what I'm getting at right?

I still think some quests should not have alternative routes. For example if your in the dark brotherhood, you gotta murder your targets and be evil cause you chose to join the Dark Brotherhood. But it bothered me that to get some quest rewards that I wanted I had to do things I didn't want my character to do (and I'm not specifically talking about good vs. bad here). Were you bothered by this? Do you think the whole thing should stay as is or should they change it (I think they're getting at something with Radiant Story)? Do you have any other suggestions?

that was an evil weapon so a true paladin would never consider using it in the first place. :toughninja:

I couldnt vote because all the options were biased towards the op's pov. I don't think there should be alot of quests forcing players to pick one or the other gameplay style and all the choiced for this poll made it seem as though not having moral quests was like having linear quests which I think the is the opposite of fact.

I would like multiple path quests, but forcing a player to make a good or bad choice is even more linear than normal.

i agree. you had to be nice in almost every quest in oblivion, except in the dark brotherhood of course. being vicious is more fun, and even better if you could have chosen to be good.

and yes i want more open quests. like "fetch this, i dont care how you do it"

I know people hate to have Fallout 3 brought up as an example, but I will in this case just to point out that Bethesda did a really great job of allowing for multiple quest paths. So I feel fairly hopeful that this aspect of Fallout 3 will spill over into Skyrim.

There were multiple ways to end a quest in Oblivion. If you killed a key character, that was it.

Edit: Oh, of "accomplishing your goal". Yeah, I guess. :shrug:

yah hope so

Agreed 100%. Quests and random encounters should have multiple paths, but they should mostly have a degree of moral ambiguity/sacrifice. I loathe being forced to choose between "right" and "wrong," because who the hell are you to tell me what is right and what is wrong? Force me to make some real decisions, decisions that involve testing my own moral willpower (and/or my character's) by weighing the value of morality against the value of power/wealth ingame.

Most games tend to reward the player for being "purely good." IMO, if you want to truly be "purely good," that should involve missing out on a lot of awesome benefits. You may think the damsel your about to save is an innocent woman, but once you do rescue her, you find that she is a haughty, racist daughter of a nobleman. As a result of your saving her, you just enabled further persecution of Argonians in her family's Hold... And if you're an Argonian yourself, she'll attack you immediately, as will any guards loyal to her family.

Basically, eliminate all black-and-white moral "decisions."

none of this will likely be a problem any ways since the way radiant ai is supposed to work is that it adds elements to quests based on your stats, whethor that be a skill level or maybe even fame or infamy (which is as close to good or bad stats as I have seen TES come to) so maybe an infamous character will be given more evil quest elements as opposed to a high fame character.

No good. No evil. Just consequences.

"Morality is but the herd-instinct in the individual" - Friedrich Nietzsche



there should most definitely be multiple ways to finish a quest though.

But then I can't get my Oghma Infinium...

and sorry that poll wasn't very thought through.

I hope this will happen
Good and evil are just opinions
Consequences are not

That's the sacrifice your character has to make if he/she really wants the daedric artifact. There is no way your going to get that for doing good, Daedric Princes aren't usually the most empathetic beings. If your paladin commits double homicide for that weapon, then he is a very evil paladin :tongue:

But there have been many quests in all of the TES games that have had multiple outcomes. Next to Daggerfall, Oblivion had the most.

I agree with your initial idea, I think SOME quests should have different options and different paths that allow you to complete them. Personally, I'd like the main quest to, for the most part, have one major path (or, in the case of Morrowind, a path that is practically the same one but accounts for certain things.)

However, I don't agree with anything you just said. You seem to expect to be able to do EVERYTHING with one character. If you want to make a "good" character and you consider joining the Dark Brotherhood to be "evil" then just don't join ( (and, by the way, the "dark" in Dark Brotherhood is referencing their discretion, not any type of evil or anything like that, they stayed in the "dark" as opposed to the Morag Tong who attacked in the open under the idea of honorable execution.) It doesn't make sense from a roleplaying perspective for your virtuous character to join a guild of malevolent assassins, so why did you do it? That's your fault, not the game's fault. The Ebony Blade was said to be an evil blade as well, why would you want it?

Thus the way to RP it, if your character "just wouldn't do that" is to refuse to complete the quest. No big mystery there.

Perhaps the real question should be "Why would a character RPed as 'lawful boring' even consider asking a 'chaotic destructive' Daedra prince what they want in the first place?"



Agreed. Like the quest to kill two people and throw a town into chaos for Mephala. :thumbsup:

more quest options the better!

The witcher does this the best; nothing is evil nothing is good everything is perspective, just like IRL. As for weapons/gear being good evil they're not they are only tools for either or. Multiple paths sound great but dont make it a mass effect sort of lame sauce of choice that, that game was; example.

In mass effect you have OBVIOUS CHOICES and the game even highlights them for you (if they are good/evil/neutral) it's like bioware thought everyone playing the game was at an IQ lvl of 30

I like choises but not ones that are strictly good or bad. So agreed but minus the moral part.

Actually not completing the quest is also an option, a good character will not do the first dark brotherhood quest.
Killing the quest giver is also an option, a valid one in some low level quests as the loot is better than the reward.
But yes I hope some questslines has branches, perhaps not just bad/ good but perhaps hard or easy.

I like the idea of multiple routes when appropriate, but pretty much never in the form of good/bad. Games that do this are usually limiting and insulting.

If multiple routes are presented, I'd rather see them from either a local viewpoint (x and y have no difference except to you, z maybe angers a particular NPC), or the viewpoint of role-playing a type of character (a loner, a comedian, a diplomat, an idiot, a schemer, etc.), but I have a feeling the latter option would almost be as bad as good/evil.

I don't think multiple options should exist for every quest, and I would like there to be a way to remove "dangling" quests, either through a simple delete option, or by going back to the quest giver and telling them.

I hope most quests don't go the Teen rating route and spell out which choice is good and which is bad. Let's have some moral ambiguity here.

A simple way to do this is more dialoge options. They can lead to the same thing, but if the dialoge is different then that's good enough for me.

For insteance, if there's a dialoge option in the main quest saying that you'll save the world and all the good people in it and another one saying this is your world to mess with so buzz off, that would be enough for me.

For me, the great example of a multiple solution quest is the Tenpenny Tower vs ghouls quest in FO3. There you could kil all the (good) ghouls or kill all the people in the Tower, and that was easy, but if you tried a little harder, you could reconcile ghouls with people and get a bigger reward. So what I expect is few easy, but 'bad' ways of quest solution, and one more difficult and 'good'.

You sir have a good point.

^This. You can't really define good and evil unambiguously IRL so I don't think that any game should try to do that either. The game will become more immersive that way IMO if there are only consequences.