This poll should have been separated into two parts:

• How long do you want the tutorial session to be?
  
• How much do you want to get involved in "Main Quest" when in tutorial phase?

For the first question I would say I would like a thorough tutorial session, and not in a closed dungeon like in Oblivion or Daggerfall, but in an open space, like in Morrowind, or off in a secluded island, but with an option to bypass it all if we liked.

And for the second question I would say as little as it is possible, even it can wait for an event to happen, or a player action, or a mile stone for the player to reach, like this:

You are released from the prison and said to mind your manners from now on.

You look around the village for job opportunities, and develop your character.

The instance you enter a place, by accident, the man inside the house would look at you and say, "At last...", and from now on the main quest begins.

Or after you passed level 5, or if you go far away from the initial village, there is a chance that a man approaches you with an offer.

Or something like that.

i think a lot of people are judging Oblivion's intro too harshly. Thing is, the majority of customers are not playing the game through with 9 different characters. Oblivion's intro introduced your character into the main quest line, gave you the majority of the information you needed, and started off with some excitement. In the context of the story, it allowed us to meet the emperor before he died. This was absolutely necessary for the main quest to function properly. I agree that it wasn't ideal for those playing the game through multiple times, but I think that the 9'th playthrough can be somewhat compromised in favour of really enhancing the first.

I would like a race based Tutorial or a chosen tutorial but that is probably too complex to ask when they have other things to do with the game and less then a year left

i enjoyed morrowind the most it was simple the longevity of oblivion made me not want to create other accounts because after the first time i know what to do and its a pain

I hated morrowind's begining, I know a lot of people liked it, but for me it was just "er, thanks, wtf do I do?"
it made me put down the game and not pick it up again for years, and for those years I've had a bitter unreasonable hate.

I never get tired of oblivion's beginning, but I know other's do, so the only way to remedy this is to make it optional.
"if you go through those tunnels I'll give you a bit 'o gold (10 gold) but if not, we can just leave right away

something like that only, y'know, I svck at making stories :dead:

While the Oblivion tutorial was informative, it was WAAAAY too long. And since it was important to the storyline, you couldn't skip it while replaying. So if it isn't important to the story, then it can be as long as they want.

Nice and long - But optional.

I prefer short tutorials like in Morrowind. Feeling like a stranger in a strange land is an awesome way to start off a game.

I voted the Morrowind approach, but really just something that makes sense for the game. The previous games' tutorials and introductions all made sense (more or less, that maze of sewers in Arena was a tad much and essentially suicide if you stayed there too long) for the start of the story. I really only hope that Skyrim fits as well, so long as that happens, the beginning could go anyway it wants.

I liked Morrowinds tutorial because it didn't tell you much about the game. In a way, I liked it because you don't know anything about the world, you don't know if magic or combat is more fun, you don't know anything. That had an appeal when you found your own way, discovered it with no direction.
But I also enjoyed Oblivions, it was probably the best dungeon in the game. I liked how it seemed like the goblins had their own lives down there, while every other dungeon they stand there waiting to die, still. It may have been long, which could have been annoying (but if you made a lot of characters, just make a save before you exit...) but the first time was fun, at least for me.

So I voted other, because I couldn't choose between them. Morrowinds starts you off with no direction, its just a whole world set before you, and Oblivions was a more interesting dungeon crawl for me.

in my opinion that mod is a waste, unless you roleplay with that mod, its useless because you can just have a save before you leave the exit. So anytime you wana make a new game just load that save and edit.

Oblivion's long intro really killed some replay value. It was awesome the first time, but after a few times, i would just rather not play then have to do that again.

What if you saved over it, or deleted it? or what if you are like me and cant stand the sight of seeing an unused save.

I would like a lean towards Morrowind's intro, but with a bit more direction. It's convenient, actually, because Esbern would provide a great tutorial. (and it makes sense that he would be teaching you)

Given the fact that Bethesda seems keen on continually refining the main quests in the Elder Scrolls series, I would be surprised to see an into similar to Morrowind's. After all, one needs to establish the main questline somehow, and if effort is being put in to make things immersive and apply some sense of direction, then we would most likely end up starting with some sort of tutorial/introduction quest that establishes the danger of the dragons.

Of course, this could conceivably be done by starting the player off as following an NPC in a building/village which gets attacked by a dragon and sets in motion a rather quick tutorial. However, given the abrupt start that this would provide, it probably will not end up being the case. Additionally, such an instance would be heavily reliant on scripting and could serve as a poor introduction to the game if someone decides that they do not wish to follow said NPC (unless of course the game somehow opens with a Half Life style cutscene to establish this) and unless the battle is done right, it may come off as rather uninspiring if designed purely around teaching someone the controls.

I think what really needs to be addressed here is the difference between a first experience and multiple playthroughs. The system used in Oblivion was great for a first experience in that it established the plot, trained you on many basics of the game, and provided you with some great starting equipment, in addition to granting some sense of direction for the player to pursue the main quest if they so chose. However, subsequent playthroughs proved rather boring given the heavily scripted nature of this dungeon as well as the fact that it was simply too long to repeat if one wanted to create a new character quickly. In Morrowind, however, you were dropped into the world almost immediately, with a tutorial that can be completed in mere minutes. This made it quite easy to create new characters as well as hop into the game immediately. However, it kind of lacked the "wow factor" of Oblivion's tutorial. Granted, Morrowind had the advantage of being a relatively advanced game graphically at the time, so the world itself provided some great initial impressions. Though the exit of the imperial city sewers in Oblivion provided a similar feel in regards to the first glimpse of the outside world.

So one thing that I would want above all else is for the game to provide some sense of awe at its environments within the opening moments. The experience of first exiting a dungeon/boat and seeing the outside world for the first time is something that this series has really excelled at, and I can only hope that such a feeling is replicated in Skyrim.

As for tutorial in the sense of "learning the ropes", I would not want the tutorial to be completely removed from the game (relegated to a menu or something) because that would break the immersion. However, I would prefer some option to skip it in future playthroughs, given the generally repetitive nature of these tutorials. Assuming that we start in a prison, maybe the game should detect an existing save file that is past the tutorial and have a guard mention that you "look experienced" and then somehow bypass the need for training without resulting in some absurd immersion-breaking instant escape from the dungeon. Although I can always manage to do what I did with Oblivion and keep a save file at the exit of the sewers for quick character creation, should Skyrim's tutorial end up being somewhat repetitive.

In regards to length, I would obviously prefer something not much more than a half hour or so. As I mentioned earlier, I really love the experience of first entering the true game world. Stepping onto the docks in Morrowind and emerging from the sewers in Oblivion are easily two of my most favorite moments in all the games that I've played. So obviously, I will be itching at the ability to first see the game world in all its glory. Making a tutorial that is long enough to the point that I can purchase the game and not be "set free" that same night would be kind of disappointing, even if the tutorial was important for plot reasons and intensely polished.

Although perhaps this stems from the fact that I get the greatest enjoyment out of these games from the sense of freedom that they provide, and much less the actual art of a tutorial. This makes sense given my mixed feelings on the Oblivion Gates and Siege of Kvatch in Elder Scrolls IV. Even though dungeon exploration is great in this series, I enjoy the ability to leave the dungeons at my own free will as well, and continue to explore the countryside.

So, I would enjoy a rather quick dungeon romp that introduces the plot and provides a brief introduction to combat basics. Something along the lines of a condensed version of what we saw in Oblivion that serves as a solid introduction to the game but is also over quickly enough that I can start to explore at my leisure. I say to include a brief dungeon in that it makes the actual escape into the real world much more fulfilling when you are coming from a dark, cramped building.

Well, it seems like they have already told us how the beginning of the game starts right? In the GI article there is a story about how Dovahkiin goes to a shop and the shop asks you to get this thing and then you get the thing but it gets stolen then you go to a cave that reads in Dragonic that you are dragonborn... I might be wrong but this seems like the beginning to me.

I'd like something akin to New Vegas, myself. The compulsory bit is short, the rest is optional, and it gives a pretty solid sense of how to play the game. Additionally, you're given enough plot information to create involvement early on, without it being pressed on you as an OMG SUPER IMPORTANT THING at this stage, so you're under no real pressure to follow it immediately.

I'd just love to have "wash up on the beach, make character, off you go!" But modern games need tutorials and [censored], people can't be bothered five minutes to learn how to play a game and need things explained to them.

Lets you save everything about your character... except what you picked up. A warrior wouldn't have picked up the bow as a starting weapon, while a stealthy character might have. An assassin or mage may have picked up the alchemy equipment, while a barbarian wouldn't have. Also, for a first time player, you may not feel that you did that great a job when you first reach the exit, so you wouldn't want to use it as a starting point for replays.

I didn't really like Morrowind's (non-existant) tutorial the first time I played. Even though I had played Oblivion quite a lot by then, starting out in Morrowind just overwhelmed me. I didn't have any idea what I should be doing, beyond the get-to-Balmora objective. I didn't know what kind of equipment I would need (ie, what do I need now to keep from getting killed, vs what would be good to get later), and there were three ways to leave (the one path through the swamps past Tarheil, the one through the foyada, and the Silt Strider).

On the surface, Oblivion's was good, but upon retrospection, there are problems. First, it was a bit too long, which, although there was that great sense of awe once you got out the first time, it made subsequent replays annoying (Oblivion was my intro to TES, and I can't count how often I had to restart a character because I just wasn't getting the hang of it). Second, it didn't (couldn't) assume anything about your character, so it was throwing all different types of items at you and encouraging you to use them regardless of your character type (alchemy equipment, bows, daggers, lock picks, hammers, etc), it always starts you off with some spells, and at one point even encourages you to be stealthy even though you may not be playing the appropriate character type. That really messed me up in the beginning, because even though I was playing a mage character, I was being given non-mage items like I would require them, and being asked to do non-mage tasks like I had to do them to advance.

Other

And by other I mean both. See Saints Row 2 for example.

Since we know you're going to start in jail, the intro could be the jail being attacked by some unknown enemies (allies of the dragons or whatever).

As soon as you get out of your cell, there is a door to the main hall and a side passage to the caves under the prison, another escaping prisoner tells you that you can either try to sneak out through the catacombs/caves (tutorial) or fight your way through the entrance (skip tutorial).

I really liked Oblivion's long tutorial.... the first couple of times through. After that I'd seen Patrick Stewart die often enough that I was tired of it. Unfortunately, by this point I was so into modding, that I had to start a new game a lot, to accommodate new mods. When I discovered Alternate Start, it was one of my favorite mods, because after a quick character creation in a ship, I was on the docks at the Imperial City, with just a dream I had about an amulet to get me going.

Maybe if the tutorial dungeon were included, but give an option to skip ahead.

"You... I've seen you... Let me see your face."

*groans*

Modern games? Is that why Arena and Daggerfall had little tutorial dungeons in which you messed around before actually getting out into the game? They sure aren't modern by the definition I think you're using. I've always read manuals, but I still like an introductory dungeon crawl in which I can mess around and get used to the game as well as escape from, as escaping leaves me with a very profound sense of freedom and awe at the exterior world.

Morrowind was perfect for veteran players. In, out BAM play as you please. Unfortunately i do recall it being completely overwhelming my first time without any kind of real direction or explanation of controls/skills/combat. Of course that's the problem the start needs to be designed to allow new players to learn how to play.

Really Fallout New Vegas probably had it done best. It told you the basics and you could skip it entirely if you wanted to. Not to mention the start itself was rather short and somewhat chained into the whole Goodsprings quest chain.

I chose "other". I liked Oblivion's beginning but not for the reasons that you stated. I liked it mostly because it let the anticipation build up as I prepared my character and learned the basics; couldn't wait until I was finally let out into that huge open world.

However, I prefer Fallout 3's beginning because it was more creative and interesting.

Ultimately, I'd love for Skyrim to have a tutorial that is a mixture of both: Fallout 3's creativity with Oblivion's length and deep story telling to give direction. (And, of course, I'm glad we start in prison again ).