I can see how you may have being frustrated by all that goblin fighting, but:

1 you can just skip it with console mostly.

2 Every time you make a new character it sets up the game for you. I liked the opening length and I would like to see that same in Skyrim.

just my opinion.

awesome ->:flamethrower:

Er, thats why you just start from the save right before you exit X area. If you cant be bothered to go through the tutorial at least once, then I dont know what to say.

Some of us were too excited to get out, and didn't save their first time through, or we just accidentally overwrote it. There should at least be an autosave that saves in a different spot as when you save your own game. that way you can't overwrite it.

I don't see the problem, you only have to play through it once. The save file before the sewer = win.

wow closes poll ever..i liked how it was in OB

You clearly haven't read any of the early posts.

Long video opening all the way...This provides a grand introduction into the game and teases the player with excitement of what to expect...

I'd like a long, drawn out opening but the ability to skip directly to character creation would be great. Maybe the option could be unlocked after the first playthrough of the intro. If doing the long intro playthrough though, I'd like for some of your interactions and conversations with NPCs to determine some of the history and attributes of your character. You should at the end be able to manually override/tweak what the playthrough came up with, but still it would be cool for the actual gameplay to determine your back story.

I have Oblivion for PC and 360, and i've got a mod for PC that shortens the intro to starting on a boat, and filling out some forms (Birthsign, Class, Race) and then arriving at port. A measly 5-minute affair. The long-winded intro of Oblivion was fun the first time, but after replaying it plenty of times it just got boring.

A short start is the way for me.

I actually prefer Oblivion's longer "drawn-out" opening quest. I dunno, it was just enjoyable for me. Even though I have a save file at the end of the sewers for a new character, I still go through the whole first dungeon for fun sometimes.

Then go through it twice. It takes less than a half an hour to speed through the tutorial to get to the sewer.

I actually liked the Fallout 3 opening, though I can understand why people didn't. Not at all the oblivion one though. Probably because oblivion's was an uninspiring dungeon whereas Fallout 3's had a lot of interaction with NPC's and helped integrate my character into the world and lore. But yeah, somewhere in between. I really dislike mandatory starter dungeons so hopefully none of that.

The saving-at-the-entrance fix quite honestly doesn't matter. I feel as though it's just bad design to create something long and drawn-out that the player will have to go through over and over unless they take action for themselves to maneuver around it. Especially in a game like this where replayability is so very high.

My ideal opening would combine the immediacy and reactionary nature that was presented in Oblivion's opening, remove the obviousness of the player getting shackled to the MQ, and squash it down for brevity. I think one of my favorite opening ideas presented from before Skyrim was announced was your character creation taking place below deck on a ship headed to Skyrim, MQ-leading motivation already on the player when they're started (think letter or something like that). You walk out on deck to find the ship overwhelmed by a storm, ship being ripped apart by winds/sea, immense dramatic tension and player "fighting for life,", player capsizing or jumping into the sea, either going unconscious after swimming away and waking up on shore, or just straight swimming to shore.

Brief, intense, visceral, and no saving required.

As said earlier here, the no-starting-class system will not nead a long "tutorial" starting mission. But if it is short, then it has to somehow have a reason for it. I don't want to suddenly spam in the biggest town with a good luck message. There needs to be an introduction to Skyrim that doesn't feel boring/annoying etc the times after you play it. But that is not a big deal imo either. Oblivion was fine, Morrowind was fine. I'm sure Skyrim will be just as fine

Edit: OP, do add the option "It doesn't matter" or "I don't care how long the start is". That's what I'd vote for.

The trick of any opening of a game is to set the hook. The game was all ready baught, so the goal now is to impress the buyer enough to encourage their friends to buy the game as well. To do that, dropping people off in the middle of no where isn't always going to set that hook. Long intro's may set off players after multiple playthroughs, but it has a much better chance of setting that hook.

As a writer, you have to give the players a reason to care, but then once the intro is over the ending has to be open enough to allow the character to do what they want. That's what games like TES and Fallout have to do because of the game world the story is being placed in. To linear and the player may feel forced to do something they don't want to. To open, and new players won't have a clue what to do.

Fallout 3 did a good job in telling the player to go investigate Megaton for your father, but once there the details are a little scetchy, and its open enough for the player to choose to help...or kill, the people of Megaton. The reason that Fallout 3's opening wouldn't work in a TES game however would be because a backstory is forced upon the player. You're always a vault dweller, and your goal is always to find out why your father left you. TES games allow for hardcoe rpers to come up with their own backstories but at the same time not demand the player to do that, allowing you to just play the game and your character's story to start now.

A good opening for Skyrim would be about Fallout 3's length, because it can really get new players into the lore and entice them to stick with the game and recomend it to others. The main quest however should not be forced upon the player, instead being written in an open format so that the player can choose what to do and not feel like they have to close their eyes and pretend that the world doesn't hinges on your actions.

At least, if I were writing the main quest, that's how I'd do it.

The introduction video can be skipped entirely by the press of a button. As for the tutorial opening, Todd Howard hasn't confirmed that it's not gonna be in Skyrim, but he did say that you're no longer gonna be asked all those questions.

I totally agree that the opening needs to be short and concise, the Oblivion Emperor-escape lasted for far too long. The opening should be around 1/3 of that length, and tutorial tips should simply just pop up once you do the various actions - with an option to turn tooltips off.


Also:

Why the heck do openings have to be so incredibly linear? I don't buy it that you need an opening to make players care. If the Main quest chain is poorly written, then people are gonna fall off sooner or later anyways. So why not just let the lore etc be a part of the chain in its entirety? Why force the players to follow them?

Ugh yeah regarding the tutorial pop-ups, they either need to scrap that or do it Daggerfall style with a yes/no message box to run the tutorial. Oblivion suffered heavily from RTFM-syndrome.

I like it in Fallout New Vegas where you could skip the tutorial if you wanted to, if Skyrim could do something like that it would be good

If the opening doesn't make the player care, then nothing else is going to do it. If the main quest is written very well, but the opening is bleh the player may set the controler down then and there. If the opening is very well written, but the main quest possibly lack luster the player may hang on longer with hopes of getting that feeling the opening gave them weither it is there waiting for them or not.

Fallout 3's opening wasn't that linear either. There were things you could do while escaping that you didn't really need to do, but you could. Take the gun from what's her face so she doesn't kill whats his name guard. Save your bully's mother from the radroches or not. There were a lot of ways that the opening could be different from playthrough to playthrough.

Second thread I've seen on this in 2 days. Come one people, read for once, listen to the podcasts. Do something!!!

I prefer the quick openings because I will end up replaying the game many times and the long tutorials get annoying after the second time you have to play them. If it doesn't have a quick Morrowind style beginning I will just use a mod to change it.

I thought Fallout: New Vegas did a great job with the opening, although I wished there was a quicker option for character creation instead of answering questions like in Morrowind. It had a short tutorial but it was completely optional and you could break away from it at any time.

I don't care if the start has drama that hooks you in. In fact I prefer it, but the opening was just way to long when all it was telling us, "The emperor's sons are dead, he tried to escape too, that didn't work out, and now he wants you to bring his amulet to some monk" A 30-60 minute opening is too long to tell that. It could have been shorter and still engaging.

The obvious solution is to make an opening that is as long as it needs to be to set up the story, and then have the option to skip straight to class/character creation on subsequent playthroughs.

I am pretty sure MW's was longer than OB, but its irelevent since you could skip both. so I would prefer a long one that feels epic and I can choose not to skip it every so often if I feel like watching it.

I'm sure this has been mentioned (I didn't read the whole thread) but since there are no classes in Skyrim it seems a long opening would be pointless. The opening area can give you tips, if necessary, but I don't feel a need for a tutorial where at the end someone says, "Oh, you're a " like in OB. I think MW had it right. You learned some basics like lockpicking (when/if you picked up the lockpick) and you were on your way. Just give a quick way to make a few gold in the opening are so you can buy a few pieces of armor or a weapon so a spell or two.

If there is a long opening leave a way to skip it. Although in OB you could save before leaving the sewers so you can use it to "skip" the tutorial with new characters I didn't quite like that option.



On a side note: If Morrowind is refered to as MW for shorthand and Oblivion is refered to as OB, what do we use for Skyrim? SK? SR? Just throwing that out there. :wink_smile: