You know, if done correctly, I'm not bothered by a 'main boss" that you don't see until the end of the game. If his actions cause enough impact, and his presence can be felt, that's good enough for me.


The only thing that really bugs me when it comes to end-game bosses is actually most common of japanese rpgs: Human badguy that you see all game long, then he either dies/transforms right before the fight and you battle some massive monster thing instead -_-

yeah like you goo fight alduin dye but you come back????????do lose again and win at the end of the main quest????????????

I just hope the battle is epic. Alduin should be like a reskinned frost dragon about 10 times the size of a normal dragon and have so much health you would have to swing your sword about 600 times to get get him below 10% of his health at which point he transorms into an even bigger dragon and his health triples.

He also has a special attack he uses every 20 seconds that drops random items in your inventory on the ground around you and disarms you and leaves you stunned for 19 seconds. And when he dies you should get a really good reward like a strong health potion or summat. :celebration:

That's the kind of battle you would dread throughout the whole game and would fit in really well wit the whole world-eater theme








:brokencomputer:

The only thing I can think of is maybe Alduin cannot "eat" worlds, but that it is rather creative license given with the prophecy and stories of old. Perhaps Alduin could be responsible for the end of the world, in that he does some particular thing, such as a magical rite of some sort which enables some other cataclysmic event to occur.

In a story I wrote for a pen-and-paper RPG I ran back in the day (which I had been in the process of converting into a mod for Morrowind), the adventurers were up against an unimaginable threat that they could not possibly hope to defeat face-to-face. However, this power could only establish itself in the world through specific events, and basically had to be "invited" into the world through rites and summonings, and a specific sequence of events had to occur. Trying to stop these events from occurring was considerably more feasible for the adventurers than fighting a nearly omnipotent being head on, and it would accomplish the goal of preventing the destruction of their world.

Maybe this is similar to the case here?

Also, in the RIFTS pnp rpg, gods could never manifest their true selves in the world, only avatars which were much weaker. Killing the avatar did not truly kill the god, although it could take several millennia for them to reassert enough power to establish a new avatar.

"anime'ish" how, japanese style games started the one boss per level/area in games so you mean the exact opposite of what you said. Oh and don't be hateing on the anime.

What if...

The main villain... is YOU!?

"Time eats all thing."

That's Alduin, only taken more literally and more Cosmic Horrorish.

World of Warcraft tried doing that with the main villain of its second expansion. Unfortunately, the guy would appear often and spare you (or let you escape easily) 90% of the time. It kind of made him look like a wimp. I think rumors or occasionally glimpsing Alduin on the horizon towards the end of the main quest would be better. It should be hard to empathize with a giant world-eating dragon anyway.

Please, dear God.

If Bethesda pulls the same move as Blizzard did with the Lich King, I'll [censored] a gold brick.

"I see once again you've led a successful assault to destroy a large portion of my army, and possibly kill me. But I won't kill you. I'll get somebody else to do it for me, even though every other time I did that, you easily killed my minion, and then led another assault and destroyed more of my army.
MWUAHAHAHA!
*teleports away, twiddling mustache*"

And then, on the final confrontation:
"Mehehe. You've made it to my throne-room. And instead of making you fight more than one of my top minions at once, which would have surely bested you in a matter of moments, I let you fight them one at a time. Now I have nobody to help me. I could still kill you instantly, but I'll let you bring me to near death, so a single ghost could easily defeat me, and THEN I'll kill you.

BEST PLAN EVAR!"

Dear god. I hope Alduin kills us the first time we encounter him, if we aren't strong enough to face him alone at that moment.