You're just as close to Falkreath as you are to Riverwood when you exit the dungeon.

Fair enough

It wouldn't necessarily have to be a specific hold if you're already shaking things up, as suggested



Whatever, though. I'm just not particularly fond of Morthal

very true, if you look at the map you are actually in Falkreath Hold when you exit the tutorial dungeon..

I can see why Whiterun would make for a poor choice of city. Not only are you pretty much urged to march there according to the MQ, but it has literally everything you'd ever want. It's probably a blessing that the College, Thieves Guild, and Dark Brotherhood HQs weren't all also at Whiterun, or else we would not have any real need to pay those cities a village.

Morrowind - Silt strider to Balmoraa where there's then an npc that can teleport you all over the place

Oblivion - You begin literally right beside the Imperial city

Skyrim - At least you begin half the province away from any Major city, all you have is Falkreath and Riverun.

But it is kind of annoying having the MQ sitting in your log when your trying to rp, and the first like 30 minutes of the game is screaming at you to go do it. I hope that in the next game they try something a little different and make the game not start with the beginning of the MQ, at least make you go off to the closest major city or fort or something to begin it.

I don't know. The next game might have us be inside a major city with a cart just outside that can take us anywhere we want to go.

That seems to be the general trend with all games now unfortunately

I would have suggested Dawnstar, though it seems clear they wanted a central location that was neutral to the Imperials and Stormcloaks.

Coming in on a ship would have been awesome, harkening back to Daggerfall and Morrowind.

Wouldn't of bothered me creating Skyrim bethesda nuked Morthal during development.

I disagree. Whiterun is the perfect place to visit early on for new players as it gives you a small taste of everything for you to sample and learn from...Riverwood does this to a lesser extent anyway. On a second playthrough you're experienced and can easily avoid the pigeonhole to go do your own thing.

I've done playthroughs where my character, terrified of both the dragon and the headsman's ax, takes the 'we should probably split up' line to heart and bolts in the opposite direction to Ralof/Hadvar. Usually results in a life of crime.

Of course, on PC, there's Arthmoor's brilliant Live Another Life mod which opens up a multitude of options.

I did this in my very first game. My character took a sharp right as soon as Ralof said that line and headed for Riften. Before the game was released I'd seen that Riften was on a lake and I love lakes, so I headed there first. 100 hours later I still hadn't seen Whiterun...

Maybe Beth could vary the starting city based on the difficulty level - Whiterun for default, Falkreath for Master, Morthal for Legendary.

The thing I don't like about that, is that once you get out of Morthal, you would never want to go there again. Not only is the first glimpse of a city a terrible one, but it has nothing in it, so players would never go there again unless a quest made them. They would start the game with a bad taste in their mouth.

Instead of doing that they should have just made Morthal more interesting and easier on the eye. I feel physically sick whenever I go to that place.

If anything exploration is diminished for me in a hold where the capital is a mere village. I guess I get a feeling that since a hold capital is so unimaginative, so tiny in NPC and building count, that I feel the rest of the hold is the same and just as boring. I would question Todd Howards sanity if bethesda decided to introduce Morthal as the 1st hold capital to players for a new game. Whiterun was perfect after following the road out of Riverwood to see this proper city in the distance. Made me explore everything from Riverwood to Whiterun when I first fired up Skyrim.

True. Plus, Whiterun was easier to deal with, it looked bright and cheerful, and not so depressing. It was and still is very memorable. I can't really remember what Morthal is supposed to look like, to be honest.

Think of the most depressing settlement in the Fallout series. Imagine it nuked.

i find Whiterun to be memorable because its a rip-off of Edoras... just sayin...

Well, Oblivion had the Imperial City. I do miss that place. Massive sprawling city feeling. Skyrim's cities are drab and wretched by comparison (oblivion disposition mini game reference)

Not for me. Legion64 mentioned Seyda Neen. Seyda Neen, for me, was a near-perfect place to begin a game. Small, but inviting. It offered us a few of the the things we would need in the game (a handful of repair hammers, a few pieces of Chitin Armor, ect), but not everything we needed. If we wanted an entire set of Citin, or more repair hammers we needed to venture out into the larger world.

I like the Mortal idea, in theory at least. Myself, I would probably choose Riverwood. And I would re-position Riverwood to be in a corner of the game world, as Seyda Neen was. I don't like this idea of starting in the center (or near-center) of a map the way the last two games have done it. To me, that makes the game world feel small. Seyda Neen being in one corner of the map meant that the entire game world was in front of us. It was a long, long way from Seyda Neen to Dagon Fel. To me that made Vvardenfell feel larger than Cyrodiil, though it wasn't. When we are a short distance from all the invisible walls surrounding the game world it just feels psychologically smaller to me than if we start in a corner.

What Morrowind did absolutely right was the gradual build up of urgency as the Main Quest progressed. You start off a released prisoner turned courier. All you know is that you've got to deliver a message to Caius Cosades. No end of the world scenario, no dead emperors, or falling skies. Just A to B delivery with no pressure or strings attached. But after you meet with the Urshilaku the urgency steadily increases until you're Public Enemy number one, a couple of gods start requesting your presence, and the world is about to get engulfed in diseased ash storms. That is how a Main Quest should be done.

Bethesda are a creative bunch. I'm sure they could of made the "cities" of Morthal, Winterhold, Falkreath and Dawnstar larger with more NPC if they had more horse power to work with so to speak. They pushed the 360/ps3 to its limit. All cities the size of Solitude wouldn't be possible on this tech imo.

Well, cities like Skingrad, Leyawiin and the Imperial city were all bigger than Solitude and all in one game. Anyhow, hopefully the next gen consoles can help Beth create even bigger and better games.

You do have a valid point with Oblivion with it's cities. Even bruma felt like a decently sized city even though it was the smallest city I think.