I'd think the fact that the CoC was able to defeat one and a half Daedric princes (in their own realms as well, in a sense, and depending on how you interpret a quirk of Relighting the Dragonfires, [i]two and a half)) speaks a bit more than beating up a few posers who slipped their hands in a cosmic cookie jar.

Cyrus is more BA

I'mma real happy for you Champion of Cyrodiil, and imm'a let you finish; but the hero of Battlespire was the greatest hero to kill Dagon ever...

On Topic:

I have to go with Nervarine, the guy killed gods for a living.

They're mostly gods though.

Chim dude, they're all gods.

It's funny how your Oblivion paragraph is filled with overwhelming bias against the game. In my opinion, he/she halted the advance of one of the most powerful gods and became a Daedric prince in the process. And lack of character? I'd say that Cyrus is the only name on that list that truly has "character". So I say Champion of Cyrodiil, but of course, my opinions will get shot down as always for me liking Oblivion.

"Lack of character", in this case, meaning "nobody hamdjobs your ego with stories about how you were some awesome king betrayed by his companions and how you're prophesized to come back and regain your glory and make things all hunky-dorey again".

I was jabbing at the gameplay interpretation of the Oblivion player character, but really I think mechanics have a lot to do with how you envision the character's behavior in a "true world" situation. Maybe I shouldnt've done that after the more psychological anolyses of the others, but that's just my opinion.


"Lack of character", in this case, meaning there's no real burden on the character. The Arena/Daggerfall/Battlespire protagonists were effectively on their own in worlds where nobody believed them or knew of their mission, Cyrus and the Nerevarine were met with great political and factional turmoil. Outside of the Mythic Dawn and a very urgent plot line that feels as though it forces your allegiance to the Blades, the Champion of Cyrodiil's journey just seemed to be more of a literal adventure of action and achievement than one of personal improvement/development.

Yeah, being the one man who's the lynchpin of stopping a cult trying to bring about the invasion and overrunning of the world as most people know it by the closest approximation of HELL AS WE KNOW IT is no small burden.


And how's this any different from House Dagoth and the Nerevarine being shoved into the Blades on his release?


So your complaint is that the champion actually went out there to get things done and keep the spawn of Oblivion from completily destroying Nirn with a minimum of thumb-twiddling and listening to a bunch of useless gits wax on philosophically?

this might be part of your point, Sorenson, but I could not find much philosophy in the OB storyline at all. There was martin overcoming his former daedra obsession, but nothing asked of the Champion of Cyrodill. Your personal input was greatly just swinging a sword, gophering, and choosing which daedric artifact to give up. And that might be just because of cut mechanics.

Honestly, the guy from Battlespire was more powerful than the CoC if you are going to talk about guys defeating Dagon. The hero of battlespire, despite being a recruit in training for the battlemages, defeated the prince of destruction by himself, without any divine intervention from the aedra, staved off a invasion, played the daedra factions like a violin, and defeated hordes of daedra while they had home field advantage. The guy was more cunning than the CoC could ever hope to be, and maritally more powerful in my book.

Pretty much every game I played, but that's just my opinion. There's nothing that can really stop a level 50 Battlemage with a hyper enchanted Daedric sword, or the Nerevarine with disease immunity, Chrysamere and all the drill. I didn't play Oblivion or Battlespire so I don't have an input here.

I did like the "dark" undertone mentioned here about Daggerfall though. I like it more than Morrowind because you're not that blatantly part of the forces of good battling the forces of evil; in "Daggerfall", except for some really nasty characters like the Vampires or the royalty of Wayrest (lol), everyone has shades of gray on their personality, including the player. You're not really being a force of good but an amoral mercenary sent on a wild power gamble, with several competing factions and your own ambitions in the way - no "evil" to fight, no "good guys" to ally with, but more like reality, where you align with people of a perfectly morally dubious and flawed character and hope you can win. In the end this is what makes the game so special despite it being set in a pretty stereotypical Medieval scenario.

The Champion of Cyrodiil is perhaps the least cool of all the protagonist, but the poll is about the protagonists' strength, not how cool or badass they are. We also shouldn't bother too much with game mechanics, since these change to much from game to game.

I think that in terms of raw power the Nerevarine beats the Eternal Champion, Septim's Agent, and Cyrus. The "divine intervention" mentioned in the original post amounts to no more than Vivec teaching you how to operate Wraithguard. There was a prophecy, yes, but with the Failed Incarnate system in place you can have an infinite number of potential Nerevarines and then when one of them actually succeeds (and if you keep trying long enough odds are one eventually will succeed) you can say he's the one who was phrophecised (sp?) and all the others who failed were just making way for him. What especially hints that the whole Nerevarine prophecy was [censored] is that the Nerevarine was supposed to drive the n'wah from Morrowind, yet at the time of the Oblivion crisis Morrowind was more Imperial than ever before. So I don't see much in the way of divine intervention helping him out, but he did manage to kill two gods and best a Daedric Prince.

However, this wasn't quite as grand as it sounds. In order to kill Dagoth Ur the Nerevarine first had to sever his connection to the Heart of Lorkhan so by the time of the acctual killing Dagoth Ur was no longer a true god. The same applies even more to Almalexia (who canonically died after Dagoth Ur) since she had lost much of her power even before the events of TES 3. As for Hircine, the Nerevarine only got to fight one of his aspects (at most a third of his full power) because it wouldn't be sporting of a Daedric Prince to face a mortal with all his power.

Mehrunes Dagon however, is not the sporting type and didn't pull any punches.

I haven't played Battlespire, but beating a Daedric Prince on his own turf sounds very impressive to me. So does being decked in the magical equivalent of a planetary shield and Death Star lasers. This makes the Academy Initiate a serious contender for the title of most powerful TES protagonist.

The Champion of Cyrodiil doesn't get to personally beat Dagon, though he is vital for enabling Martin to do it instead. He or she later does get to beat Jyggalag though and becomes the new Sheogorath. The exact effect of becoming Sheogorath is uncertain, as is Jyggalag's actuall power at the time of the invasion, but I still think it's sufficent to place the new Sheogorath above the Nerevarine in terms of raw power. But you don't have to beat SI in order to be Champion of Cyrodiil so I'm not sure whether it really counts for the purpose of this poll. And that's why I voted for the Academy Initiate.

Changed it to the recruit of Battlespire. Who would have thought a greenie would eventually traverse the planes of Oblivion, defeat the daedra on their own turf, and end up defeating Mehrunes Dagon by himself. By all accounts, he should have been scamp fodder!

Good call. I hadn't thought about that. But now I am just going to have to side with the nerevarine because he (my guy) currently has incredible stats and countless artifacts, and he is really cool.

Making him the most powerful TES Squire, not the most powerful TES Protagonist since Martin is the protagonist of Oblivion.

Well don't know about Nerevarine's god-killings, but MY Champion of Cyrodiil beat the crap out of God Of Worms... with bare hands. So yeah it's gotta be him -.-

Picked eternal champion, sounds like an impressive dude.

My Nerevarine's god-killings were epic.

Defeating the King of Worms had a lot of its luster dampened considering that he was somehow rendered neutered simply because you were carrying a special rock in your inventory.

Wasn't the CoC technically a Shezzarine?

My vote goes to the COC. Why?

Nah, he just went crazy and thought that.

In your opinion...

Which is just as valid as anyone else's opinion... and considering the nature of Sheogorath, mine isn't a stretch while the whole "subject of creation becoming master of statis" kind of is.

I'd say Bethesda's portrayal of what occurred was a little more than an opinion.