Camoran's speech was the first and only wow moment in Oblivion for me, until the SI expansion.

In Morrowind, you start with "Dagoth Ur is the evil, immortal enemy...", then gradually discover that DU was Nerevar's ally, and the only one to (initially) stay true to his word. Then you find out that the Tribunal murdered you, and stole their divinity. All the while you're piecing together the Dwemer backstory that is tied into everything. By the time you confront DU, and he explains his plans to you, it's likely that you'll feel actual sympathy for him--for about a second until you wake up and realize he's a crazed psycho spreading corprus who's about to break out and go on a murderous worldwide rampage. There was a complex and mature storyline that was expertly told (if you paid attention) that involved a charismatic archenemy with a twisted nobility, that resulted in emotional engagement from the player. And people still talk about the Dwemer, the Tribunal, etc. Many elements of the story have achieved a legendary status in a way that I don't see from Oblivion lore, even from big Oblivion fans.

IMO: Oblivion was a generic hi-fantasy good-vs-EEEEEVIL pseudo-Middle-Ages Europe mishmash, safe for the kiddies and people who don't like to interrupt their button-mashing with any fancy distractions, beyond the occasional view over the Imperial City. It boggles my mind that anyone would try to argue depth or quality of the stories. Which is more fun? Better combat? Better gameplay? The better game? OK, i can see the arguments. But I just really don't get how anyone can argue about the story or atmosphere.

I'm currently replaying Oblivion after a 5-year hiatus, and maybe I'll see something I didn't before.

Mankar Camoran's goal was the typical Altmer goal of returning to the Dawn and making himself a god. It tied into Lorkhan and Dagon was merely the tool. Pay attention instead of blindly mimicking complaints. The Enclave wanted to purge those they deemed as unclean to allow repopulation of the United States in their image... with only pure human citizens. No, real life really isn't more gray than that.

1. People like power.
2. "Ethnic cleansing" (read: genocide) has occured many times on earth, so why should the eradication of all genetic mutations separating one group of people from another come as a shock in the Fallout universe?

I don't think this was a response to me, but my question to you is: how it that gray? That's the textbook definition of evil.


Item 1 is a fine start towards developing motivation in a story, but if that's as far as the writer goes, it's just one-dimensional and superficial.
Item 2: same as item 1, and I'd also like to know: how is that (genocide/ethnic cleansing), by any definition, anything other than evil?

FO3 had a plausible back-story, but they needed to flesh out the motivation and characters driving the events far more if they were trying for anything deeper than good-vs-evil.

The OP wanted a reason. Those are reasons, and yes, they are realistic reasons. It goes deeper than that in both cases, but that's the general gist of things and those are reasons people have had and do have in real life. The OP wanted a decent reason, and I'd assume what could be a real reason is a decent reason. A decent reason does not correlate to a "gray" reason. Regardless of what people like to think, no, the world isn't full only of opposing forces with equal moral standings... and neither were Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, or the majority of fictional pieces of media in existence. Many of the works we recognize as masterpieces were pretty black and white.

Fair enough. Most classics, at least pre-20th century, are straight-forward good vs evil. I even got svcked into Harry Potter despite assuming that it didn't have anything to offer me. (Not arguing it's a classic, just making a concession.)

For me, at least, I think there are 3 issues.
- I usually get more satisfaction from a story that provides shades of gray, which usually involves more depth than "so and so is very bad and must be stopped to save the world". That just seems lazy (see below).

- A modern story that IS black and white has to KNOW that and embrace it. For example, the story doesn't get to be good-vs-evil and "gritty realism" at the same time. Otherwise, the result is either comedy, or it grates.

- The other exception is: you just sloppily threw together a generic story as an excuse for carnage. But then the story can't pretend (unless it's kidding) that there's more to it than that.

Lol i no!!!! Oblivion was annoying about that. good post <3