How about there being different starts not just for Race, but for what City you start in. That determins how people will initialy react to you.

Skyrim is in a war with its self over who should be king or something like that, and there are different factions or lords that think they should rule. Now lets say you start in One city or you pic a nationality and everyone is freindly towards you in that city, and may even come to depend on you to lead their armies. But as you are from that city, the other cities dont like you at all. And might attack you without mercry upon hearing where you are from. Which may mean certain quests or story lines are not availible to that character, which means your second character will have a slightly different reaction of he was born in another city compared to your first. He may have a different start to the game, get different gear, or run a different tutorial, based on where he starts the game or what city he picks as his home.

Of course everyone would eventually worship you as the Dragonborn and the game would end the same way.

What do you think?

I love the idea, the different begginings in DA:O were awesome.

That's actually a pretty interesting idea. Seeing as how this is a sandbox game, it shouldn't make that much of a difference in terms of gameplay where you start (that is, since certain areas aren't necessarily harder than others). And it could lead to some interesting interaction with NPCs.

I think having NPCs attacking you without mercy upon hearing where you are from might be taking things a little too far, though. That just doesn't happen unless you're dealing with mentally unstable individuals. Realism aside, I can see that becoming annoying quickly, and actually leading to less openness in the game. After all, the mantra of TES is "let the player do whatever they want," and limiting people to certain factions based on place of birth seems to go against that. But I think the basic idea of having more clout with some factions and less clout with others is interesting and has potential.

@Factorell: Wow. Really? Nothing useful to add to the thread?

as much as i like the idea, but i doubt it will happen

Far Cry 2 has an interesting different beginning system, it doesn't affect the game on a very large scale, but its still very interesting. The side you start on seems to be random at the start, as is the location. I would be interesting to see a similar thing implemented in TES:V.

It's not going to happen. It is already confirmed you are a prisoner about to be executed.

kinda like Dragon ages? I would not like the part where some npc's will attack you because of where you start off. I think if they put so much effort into making unique beginings they'll not give as much into the rest of the game like in DA where the only point of the game is do the begining but not bother with the rest because it is the same every time.