While your 'someone hellbent on wiping the people off of the face of Cyrodiil' is a point, keep in mind that MOST 'evil' characters would have no reason to want Mehrunes Dagon to win, and very good reasons to want him not to.

Voted yes on multiple endings, but only if they can do it well. I don't want any 'excuse' endings.

What's an ending??

Open world games should not HAVE such things.

*glares at Obsidian*

+1

Let us carve our own path, fulfil our own goals (though a few helpful pointers to what they might be would be nice) and have no ending.

Let's say that I do not like the sound of "Ending" in open world games like the ones here.

I just hope these game have a lot of chinks of stories and events that know how to stick to each other, and change shape to make the joints smooth, and also have a lot of interchangeable parameters, that would differ in each occurrence of any chunk that make them non-similar enough to pass as different.

Thus you start a chunk of story, and develop it toward an ending of that chunk, i.e. branch it toward a specific, after you reach that ending, depending on the situation, and conditions of the story and your characters, and other roles played through the story, some other chunks can be available to start after that particular ending as a new chapter after the last one, and one of the new chapters is selected, and changes the shape of it's beginning, and some conditions, roles and other factors through out the chunk of story to adapt to the current situation and starts right away.

You can go through the next chapter and branch the story as you like, and it would reach another ending in that chapter, and depending on the new situation, some other chunk of story might become eligible as a new chapter for that story and so on...

I hope the whole main quest line can be thus made of a semi-random selection of chunks of story, that are adapted to each other and flow as a smooth passage of events, but each play-through would be a lot different, depending on the choices of path by the players, and some random selection between a few eligible new chunks of stories that become available after each ending of a chapter.

So each chunk of story has some beginning conditions, and some branching to different endings with new conditions, and some role templates that could be filled by any characters, items, and scenes that have passed through the last chapter to the new one.

Some definite parts of the quest lines could be manually designed by designers and shaped as other chunks of story, but could be specifically played in specific situations, and some character roles, items, and scenes could be specifically defined, but others could be selected from any eligible ones currently available.

Thus by the help of these logo quests, designers can make lots and lots of quest-lines, semi-random, or manually shaped, and as any available resource could fill the available parts, no play-through would be the same.

And we can have no definite ending for our game, but endless branching of our story.

I would prefer multiple paths to the same ending personally. The most important thing about Elder Scrolls for me is the story and the world and I don't want that getting all jumbled up with cannon non-cannon pocket dimensions.

Even if they pull a BioWare and let me have my own dimension where my shepherd is trying to unite the galaxy I'll just refuse their cannon as cannon. Sure, that adds replay value. But Elder Scrolls isn't some 10-20 hour linear game. It's a 200+ Hour epic most of the time. Multiple endings are not necessary.

And open world games in general should not have endings. Why bother putting 200 hours into a game only to have it be like
"Sorry, you won! You can go ahead and restart now" No, I'm not for open world games forcing things on you. Especially in Elder Scrolls.
Though I did respect and enjoy the ending of Red Dead Redemption. It felt right.
:thumbsup:

The ending over all, as Shades said before, should effect the game world more if the game lets you continue playing after beating the final main quest.

Different endings, duuurrrr...

Multiple paths to same ending is what we've been getting. Or "to same non-ending," as the case may be since calling it an "ending" might be giving it more than it deserves- "EoMQ" (Ending of Main Quest) perhaps? :shrug:

But anyway...why even bother with multiple paths if they all end the same way? :confused:

These are good points (and have been debated over the years), but I'm okay with a continual play option for those that choose to enjoy the game as long as they like. Myself, I usually just start a new character.

The best way to handle it, in my opinion, would be to have a basic ending "fact", but multiple ways of getting there, and varied details as to how and why it went the way it did. Regardless of whether the good guy kills the bad guy, the one bad guy brings the other bad guy under his heel or crushes him as an insubordinate underling, whether the good, bad, or indifferent guy manages to talk the bad guy out of it and focus his attention on something else, whether the one bad guy lets the other bad guy go ahead with the plan and it simply fails, or whether the player character decides to defer the matter to the local authorities to handle and goes off to do something totally unrelated, it doesn't matter, as long as the issue is resolved or the threat is removed. The next game can be vague on the details, but the "fact" would be consistent. The ending can be played out in several different ways by totally opposite types of character, for totally opposite motives, or not at all, and still make sense.

After that, there should be some "repercussions" and rewards, and there should be a few dialog changes, as well as the possibility of skipping a few "trivial" quests and starting requirements, as you've shown yourself capable of doing far better. A dialog option along the lines of ".....and that's ALL you want?" could lead to "Well, that would be a waste of your talents. I'll get another apprentice to take care of that.", and would grant you credit for completion. You COULD do it yourself, rather than question the order, so it wouldn't force you to skip those basic quests if you wanted to try them.

I would like no endings, just different conclusions to the main quest with different noticeable consequences. Because in my opinion, the main quest is just a quest among many. The game must never decide for me that I played enough with a character. Where my character's story ends is my decision.

Yes, this is a good formula.

Main quest line is just another quest line that has the potential to alter the life of a lot of people, or has more serious or bigger consequences than most other quest lines, and the conclusion should result in one of those consequences, and then it should end.

And maybe some time later another big event might start and a new quest line with big consequences begins, maybe a little less intense than the last one or a bit more serious.

The difference between the main quest lines and the rest can be that players can not ignore them indefinitely, and some time they have to attend them, because of their importance.

Sure, I'm just saying I think the ending should be an ending.

This, The overall ending should be the same, but the the way you get there could be different, or lesser elements could be determined by your actions. Like if a game ends witha king being crowned, but you end up deciding how that happens, and who that is gonna be.

Quoted for truth. I really enjoy loading my old save from Oblivion where I have already done everything and just go bananas or do anything really. While in New Vegas I had to stay out of the main quest (at least the last parts of it) just to be able to play.
I just hope that Tes V won't have a game-ending ending.

I would also prefer different beginnings, like in Dragon Age: Origins.

yeah. As long as the different endings don't screw up the lore in the next games too badly. Morrowind is a good example of what could have been done:

1. Standard quest, help Vivec. Morrowind goes boom. Y'all know the story.

2. Help Ur. Takes over Morrowind, prepares to take over Tamriel, but the heart somehow gets severed (in book lore), and Morrowind ends up going boom, once again.

Pretty simple to implement a later workaround. Just conure up a couple of books, create a basic neutral storyline, omit stuff, and add in some drama. You'll have yourself a perfect cover up. Just as long as the main antagonist isn't another "fiery demon from hell".

Yes, you select a background for yourself and depending on that background, you start on a different place than other backgrounds, and different initial quests are available for you to tackle with, but you could eventually go to places that other backgrounds would start and as a traveler start some of those quests from a different perspective.

I would rather have multiple paths on the Main Quest, the whole background stuff doesn't fit to the way Elder Scrolls games are done. We usually start as someone completely unknown without any background and then we shape our history through the gameplay.

Multiple endings would be nice, I just wonder how they would be implemented... different cutscenes, ending sliders, different finales with gameplay, whether it ends the game or allows us to continue?
Multiple paths with multiple endings is an awesome concept, if they can make something like 4 paths each one with 5 different endings based on things you did during the mainquest would be really nice. I don't want endings to each faction and side quests like FNV.

This might be interesting, if it was done well. In my opinion Bioware did not do it well in Dragon Age. It is my opinion that the origins in Dragon Age were little more than a gimmick. The various origins offered thirty minutes of unique story, after which the experience for every origin was nearly identical. A few different dialog options here and there throughout the game. Slightly different text summations at the end. It was all underwhelming, to say the least.

But I think there's great potential in the idea. I thinks its possible that some developer could take up this idea in the future and do something more extensive with the idea than Bioware managed to do in Dragon Age, something deeper and more meaningful. Perhaps Bethesda could be that developer.

multiple paths to multiple endings
of course bad endings are well accepted

I loved the origin stories in DA. After all, DA is the story of the Grey Warden who goes on a very specific quest to save the world - I wasn't expecting that game world (already huge) to be radically altered depending on whether I came into it a city elf or a Dalish elf.

As for origin stories in TES... I have my doubts. TES games traditionally offer more choice to the player in how they go about their actions. I think the game start needs some improvement over Oblivion (hopefully with more of a chucked-out-on-your-[censored] feel (Fallout 3 was promising in this regard)) and perhaps a couple of different game openings should be offered. However, I believe Bethesda should strive to give us a blank slate for each character. In DA I was very much playing my character. In TES I am able to feel as though I am in the world myself.

Lol what? If you don't want to play after the main quest is finished turn off the pc. For the vast majority of players we like to play past the main story.

Also what about the majority of people who are new to TES games. They play the 8 hour main quest and the game finishes. They then think thats all TES had to offer when in fact there is 100s of hours of side quests.

To clarify: I thought the origins themselves were very well done. I thought the female City Elf origin was one of the best beginnings to a video game I've ever experienced. The Dwarf Noble origin was hilarious. Each origin was unique and entertaining. The problem was, all this stopped the second the player entered Ostagar. From that point on the origins meant nothing. Because of that I was left asking, 'Why even have them if they don't add to the story after they're finished?'

Bioware pride themselves on storytelling. One of the fundamentals of good storytelling is that one does not include material that is not relevant to the story. The 'story' of Dragon Age properly begins at Ostagar. The origins are a form of prologue to the main story. In this case the prologue(s) to Bioware's story had little to do with the story itself. And that is poor storytelling.

I'd love to see something of that sort implemented in TES V. Daggerfall was on the right track with different characters starting off with unique equipment and even different faction bonuses, but they've since been abandoned.

I agree with Shades. Multiple ways to get to the one ending. I dont like the idea of a dragon break. Its bad enough that they did it in Daggerfall, but it is sort of interesting.