Do you think we will pushed into the whole dragonborn thing from the beginning of the game or do you think we can just ignore the whole main plot line and go off into the world and be whoever we want like in the last 2 ES games?

I liked how in morrowind if you didn't want to be the nerevarine you didn't have to, you could go off and do whatever you want and never touch the main quest. Do you think it will be like that in skyrim

You can go off and do what you want.

of course we will be dragon born its just whether or not you progress far enough into the main story to find out are are dragon born.

Supposedly we will be able to ignore the main quest.

I just hope it doesn't require something like ignoring an entire destroyed city to do that.

Just RP you're not dragon born. I can RP anything I want.

Yeah, that was a total [censored]. I always hated how they are essentially shoehorning us into the main quest with having Kvatch situated right between Anvil and Skingrad.

You find out in the intro...

^^ Those darn mudcrabs. The way everyone talks about them in Oblivion they must be hiding something.

To answer the question that is the title of this thread bluntly, yes you are the dragonborn. You can't decide whether or not you are the dragonborn anymore than you can decide whether or not the game takes place in Skyrim.
What you do as the dragonborn however, will be entirely up to you.

You are dragonborn, no way around that, you're the last one. But after being released into a full world, you can do whatever you wish. Just like in Morrowind, you were Indoril Nerevar incarnate who was destined to unite the Great Houses and defeat Dagoth Ur, but you could go an entire playthrough with the documents you were supposed to give Caius Cosades to start the Main Quest still in your inventory. I never did, but you could go as long as you want before even starting it, and you could avoid it all together.

Oblivion sort of forced you into it with the intro, but you could still go a full playthrough without handing the Amulet of Kings over.

Daggerfall, too. You could choose not to meet that one lady and forsake the MQ and just play the game if you wanted.

The Elder Scrolls: the video game title where the anointed hero can freely disregard his predetermined fate, and proclaims "Middlefinger up: my will is mine alone, for I am a Self-Made Man!" then off for some flowers picking and shopping for books.

Im just worried that in the first 10 min of the game it will be revealed that were dragonborn and we will have to play as dragonborn and npcs will call us the dragonborn. Id like to rp as not the dragonborn

Just RP that you're not.

You will be able to ignore the MQ, no doubt. When will it be revealed the PC is DB? IDK, hopefully it won't be after just 10-20mins.

I think you got it wrong. You're the Nerevarine no matter what. The main quest just makes you realize it.

Skyrim will be the same. The only difference is that it was a surprise in TES:III...

I'm sure that like in past games, you can choose to ignore the main quest, it's just the question of whether the main quest is written in such a way that makes it feel natural to do this or not, Oblivion's main quest, for example, was trying to imply as sense of urgency from the moment you were sent off to take the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre, and didn't stop telling you to hurry until it was over, whereas Morrowind's main quest acknowledged the fact that it lets you take as much time as you like, hopefully, Skyrim will at least be like Morrowind in this regard at the start, while it might tell you how to progress in it in the beginning, it shouldn't try to make you feel obligated to follow it immediately.

And it must be said that just because we know the player character is Dragonborn doesn't mean that the player character will know this from the start, while Brhesda has certainly kept that aspect of the story no secret, this could just be because the plot doesn't require it to be a surprise, or in fact to be able to talk about the plot at all in anything other than the vaguest terms you must first establish that fact, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be revealed at the beginning of the story.

Don't you find out after climbing the Throat of the World?

If you climb the mountain just ignore or kill the Greybeards. And kill Esbern. If you're playing on PC set them as non-essential or wait for a mod.

In the most technical sense... Not really. The player is always Dragon-Born. But In Morrowind, the player was always the Nerevarine.

Do you have to follow, or even acknowledge that path? Absolutely not. Like in past Elder Scrolls games, the main plotline is a very small part of the game. What I am concerned about, is how they are going to direct the player into the main quest.

In Morrowind, you're slightly "Nudged" into the main quest. Nudge might even be too strong a word. Compare that to Oblivion, where the main plot is thrust into you, on fire and screaming it's intent, it's a lot harder to actually "Ignore" that main plot. As gpstr point out, you pretty much have to ignore a burning city and portals to hell, in order to not be the "Champion of Cyrodiil".

Hopefully Skyrim strides the middle ground, like Fallout 3. You're given a reason to explore the main quest, but it's up to the player to fabricate the motivation for themselves. The prologue does a good job of thrusting you out of the vault, without weighing you down with arbitrary feelings. The game never says "You like dad, go find him", as a matter of fact, being antagonistic towards your father is very much a possibility, allowing players to ground themselves in a "Screw him, I don't care where he went, time to check out that giant black thing with a spike on it's tail, maybe it wants to be friends" mentality.

So hopefully, with that in mind, we'll be able to be rather nasty to Esbern "I didn't need your help to escape" or the like. Even the option to openly reject the destiny, something along the lines of-> (Esbern:I see something in you, perhaps if you're willing to submit to the Way of the Voice, we can discuss it further) (Player: Piss off, I'm gonna go climb a mountain).


Here's to hoping.

Well if there is a coming apocalypse that isn't too far fetched.


Also, lol of course it will be like that! That's what TES is. Build your own adventure.

I've really never understood this mentality. It's the damn premise of the game. It's "shoehorning" you into being an adventurer, too, because you can't make your money running the pro mammoth rodeo circuit and then get addicted to skooma and crash and burn, tearfully staring down at a bottle of poison while your friends bang on the door, saying they want you to get help at the Betlana Fjord clinic.

I shall fix a possible misconception above... *ahem*

You are not THE LAST DRAGONBORN, OH EMM JEEEE!!!! You are "possibly the last of your kind." Everyone thought Martin was the last of them as well, but it appears that he wasn't.

If someone wants their character to be ordinary, they should have that option. They could be a normal Imperial doing common work to make a living before becoming involved with the thieves guild. Why should they have to be a dragonborn hero who goes around using dragon shouts?

The way I see it, as far as the player-character goes there are three different types of RPG:

Ones where you play the role of a set character with a set name, appearance, personality and background story.
Ones where the player pretty much has complete control to make their character from scratch exactly as they want them to be.
And ones like Mass Effect which act as a middle-ground where you can adjust the character's appearance and influence their personality through in-game choices to some extent, but who you are and what you do in the game is still largely pre-determined.

TES games should always aim for the second of the three and never the middle-ground. And god forbid it should ever be like the first.

That's TES.