Well, I know that TES goes farther ahead than any RPG about the freedom.
But, I dont think it could be considered truly free to role play.

Your Character is always the same person so to speak.
What you do is change the characteristics and how he goes about his predetermined story.

You always start in the same place, everything happens the same way in the beginning. And you are always doing things exactly the same way despite the order.
You ALWAYS start in a jail, you are ALWAYS given the amulet, you ALWAYS break out of jail, All quests or choices in quests give the same ending, and usually there are only 2. Despite your character and his/her race and who you want him/her to be in the sense of "RolePlay" (s)he is always the same person.

Will we ever actual get a free rpg? a game where you can start different, with different backrounds, yet still have the wide open world of Oblivion, with the freedom to live however you want.

Let me take an example of freedom to start with different backrounds. To me by far the best game to do this is Dragon Age Origins, allthough they were all already predetermined with few interchanging variables. It is the best example of being who you want to be. Even though through the rest of the game your race means little.

So, in anyone elses opinion, is this really a free rpg franchise? Or just something closer, yet not there?

You are never the same person. Whenever you start up a new game, you are different person, starting at the same spot the same way.
The start that you describe is how it is in Oblivion. A starting sequence I'm not really fond of, because of the really direct way, you are pushed into starting the MQ already.
In Morrowind, you are only thrown of the ship, an told to see a guy, who then orders you to go out an make your own way, and come back later, when you feel for it.

But to sum up, you are right about the choices missing, in the TES games.
But in FO3 you almost always gets a choice HOW you want to react when you are told to do a quest by an NPC.

So the progress have already come, and i hope that the same kind of choice of reaction, that you see in FO3, will be in all future TES games.

Dragon Age, for me, is the perfect example of a game that didn't feel free.

I felt the racial starter areas were cosmetic. I went through each of them and did not feel they made any difference to the game, other than unlocking slightly different lines of dialog now and then. I always had to go through the joining, go to Lothering, ect. I had an illusion of choice after that: I could "choose" which of the next few areas to visit first. Then they all converged into basically the same ending.

I felt the game was on rails. I couldn't go anywhere the developers didn't want me to be. At no point during the game did I feel I had the freedom to go where I wanted. I had to go where they developers wanted me to go, and I had to go there when they wanted me to go there.

Oblivion, on the other hand, allowed me to roam anywhere I wanted. I could enter any dungeon I wanted. I could begin any quest series I wanted at any time. And I could finish those quest series whenever I felt like finishing them.

And here's the most important thing for me: I didn't have to do the main quest in Oblivion. Only one of my characters has done it. And when the main quest was over the game didn't end. I could continue to play as long as I liked. Dragon Age did not allow me that freedom.

I would put it this way. Bioware makes game for people who like to be told a story; Bethesda makes games for people who like to tell themselves stories. I'm happy making up my own stories in Oblivion, doing only those quests I feel my character would do, visiting only those areas I feel my character would visit. I make up my own stories and the Elder Scrolls series allows me the freedom to do that better than any other game or series of games I have ever played.

why did you say "no TES game" when you only mention Oblivion?

I agree, Oblivion had very little choices in quests...but morrowind sometimes had multiple choices in its questlines (who to give an item to, how to presude a person etc).....even to go as far as choosing between factions. Though some of its simler quests (go here, kill this and return) were still linear. You could also choose the sequence of the quests in a faction, to an extent. I admit morrowind still has linearity in it and often the choices were really small and all achieved the same result, it is way more 'free' then oblivion in the way of choices.

Fallout 3 showed that Bethesda can make an RPG where the choices have impact and develop a character along certain lines. If they can do the same in the future then it will only make better RPGs.

This is not entirely true for OB. I really hate the "You need a key to open this lock" thing. Why can i lockpick the one lock and need a key for the other. In MW this was never the case (only in BM i think).

There are limits to what you can do in a computer RPG compared to a pen & paper RPG. The computer game can only allow you choices that the developers thought to include when the game was made and costs mean that at best you're only going to get a couple of choices to choose between in each given situation (and they probably won't be major ones if they would affect future quests in the same questline). So yes, even the freest of computer RPGs doesn't offer you the choices that a good referee will in PnP. Still, the TES series has always offered more choices than the linear-style RPGs than Bioware makes. Even the negative choice to not do the MQ is denied you in Dragon Age.

That's not true; there is such a concept as "emergent play", where the simulation of the game (this includes both physics stuff as well as simulating psychology of the actors, or their biological functions, and other stuff like economy, weather and the interaction of all this) becomes complex and complete enough to allow for ways to play it which the developers didn't foresee or plan for. Dwarf Fortress is an excellent example of such a game.

Thats not the same thing is it thoug?. Quests in Dwarf Fortress are all very similar, go somewhere, kill something/someone, no choices offered.

I know what you mean, I can't wait till I get Two Worlds II because I can make decisions that could either end up destroying a town or killing someone important.

No. I'm not talking about Dwarf Fortress' adventure mode, I'm talking about all the stuff you can do and all the interesting effects you can pull off with Dwarf Fortress' fortress mode, and its flow mechanics, ability to transform terrain, traps and levers and mechanics and floodgates and so on. I mean, somebody made a http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/User:BaronW#The_Almighty_Dwarven_Calculator using this simulation.

I don't understand - how does Morrowind offer a more free-form introduction than Oblivion? In both games, you start as a prisoner. In both games, you are told to either start the main quest or explore on your own. In both games, the only thing forcing you to start the main quest is your character's sense of obligation. Either they have it, or they don't. There's nothing forcing my Argonian Thief in Oblivion to deliver the Amulet of Kings. If he wants to, he will. If he doesn't, he won't.

So, yeah. Does this really need to become one of those threads?

The thing with DF is that its a very simple game compared to TES. They can work in all sorts of weird mechanics because its easier to implement it into an indy ascii game rather than an expansive TES world. The sort of people who play DF don't mind getting wiped out by a totally random Balrog or having all their dudes starve because they forget to eat. Most people who play professionally published games (like TES) wouldn't be quite so thrilled by those possibilities.

It is physically impossible to think of everything, and even more impossible to implement it all. Developers can work to give players as many choices as possible, yes, but they can't foresee and implement every possible action a player might want to take. More possibilities also means more production time, more ways something can go horribly wrong, more testing, and more bugs.

I really can't think of a game more free-form than TES.

This.

You don't get it, do you? I brought up Dwarf Fortress not because of "the developers think of everything" (if I wanted to point that out, I'd take Nethack, which has a bigger game engine than Oblivion ...). It's a counter-example to Amazon Queen's idea that "The computer game can only allow you choices that the developers thought to include when the game was made." The Dwarf Fortress developers didn't think about including an option to make a working calculator, or any of the other thousands of strange ideas floating around among this game's community. Still, the players took the game and did something with it the developers neither thought to include, not anticipated. That's "emergent gameplay".

Well I wish they would stop starting over again they could have made morrowind's graphics better(like mge did but since I'm talking about bethesda they could make it even better),replace all the old quests with new ones,add mainland morrowind,they could of added ai,make way more choices in quests,improve the textures and allow you to go anywhere you want.If they did that then they could release that as tes iv and they would have made the best rpg ever.

Sooo... you're talking about mods? Cause we've got plenty.

And my reply wasn't really aimed at you directly.

No. I'm talking about the fact that you can create a game which is extensive and free enough so people use the tools provided within the game itself (so no, not mods) to create solutions to their problems which the developers neither foresaw nor explicitly implemented.

The thing I like about the elder scrolls games, are that there aren't as many scripted choices, as in a lot of other rpgs, but that you're usually only given a situation and goal, and then how you reach that goal is completely up to you. Of course there still are scripted choices, and scripted choices are better than no choices.

If they can make all the mechanics to work, speechcraft, spells, combat, stealth, and then just hand you a living breathing world, with it's own schedules and affairs to play around with. Then only your own creativity will limit your options.

you use your imagination to make each character and story unique, TES gives you an opportunity

in retorspect in games such as dragon age and fable this and this and this is happening and you have to either go save the world or do a bunch of boring sidequests

in TES you can pay lip service to the emperor, ignore his every word and go make your own story

Well, I know that I used the oblivion beginning, but the Morrowind beginning is used in the same context

You always start on the jail boat, you always meet that guy in the robe, you always are given a package to give to caius cosades.. See a pattern? look at this
You always start in a jail cell, you always meet the emporer, you are always given an amulet to give to jauffre...

Im not saying that they need to give a limitless world. But a few different ways to start you game would be nice. (excluding changing as I said the "characteristics")

@Mishaxh iOn the same note, I love how the Emperor seems to respect you more if you're a wiseass to him in your cell ("I go my own way.") If you ask him for advice, he basically tells you to figure it out yourself

and when you give the amulet to Jauffre he tells you to go to kvatch etc.
and you give the package to Caius and he tells you to come back when you feel like it, and the you come back and kill him :bonk:

But you don't have to go to kvatch.

You dont have to give Jauffre the Amulet. You dont have to give a package to Caius Cosades (Which I never did. except for 1 game where i decided to start the mainquest)

You dont HAVE to do anything, you are not required to do anything in any Morrowind or Oblivion, except start out in jail and get released (in 2 very different ways)

I never played Arena or Daggerfall so I dont know their plot or beginning

In Daggerfall, the main quest is pretty much begone before you even start to play, the difference is that you can fail it just by ignoring it. What background you choose, determines why you originally decided to start it.