There is no point in having heroes without evil. Hence there would be no point in the elder scrolls.

I agree, I think Morrowind probably had one of the best and most believable senses of morality out of all the games I've played in my lifetime. Oblivion went in the complete opposite direction and made the game into a rather childish sense of good and evil. The thieves guild members were all robin hoods. Even the Dark Brotherhood wasn't so much evil as it was just insane. No entire organization should be on either end of the spectrum; all the people within the organizations should have their own moralities. Just because these people share a common goal or profession doesn't mean they're a hive-mind. Like the mages guild all hunting down necromancers, or even all necromancers being evil. Obviously necromancy tends to be an easily corruptible profession, but not all of them are going to be downright evil, nor are all regular mages going to outright hate necromancers just for being necromancers. Hell, most of both of those organizations are just scholars, basically what would now be called scientists.

The oddly unrealistic (for Bethesda, anyway) portrayal of morals was probably my biggest problem with Oblivion, and I sincerely hope the writers and designers have made it more like past TES games; honestly I even thought both of the Fallout games did better at this than Oblivion, so I'm really hoping they fix that issue in Skyrim.

I wouldn't mind the DB's cultishness if they dropped the sithis crap and just focused on the Night Mother(Mephala). Sithis isn't even a sentient being, its a force of nature. They should change sithis to Lorkhan, or just drop it and stick with the night mother.

I agree with you but I would like the choice to be semi-corrupt or good when I am Master of the Fighter's Guild. Which means I hope we continue on with quests and duties when we are the leader.

There should be things that make you question your actions instead of just following orders. Things that reward you for investigating further.

A guild for example doesn't have to be corrupt or otherwise unjust in perpetrating a mix of morality. The leader could very well be a good, and noble person, but those just below or in similar positions of power could be corrupt or dishonest...with recruits and other lower ranked individuals divided or completely ignorant of the issue.

There could be a quest chain where the highest ranking guard of a city tasks you with killing or arresting guards in the city who are suspected of being corrupt, blindly following orders will reveal that the ranking commander was the one that was truly corrupt, and you just gave them a massive jump in power and influence by removing their presence.

Check out witcher 2; they have the paladin knight and shining armor characters, but it is only a facade.

But the thing is DEEP DOWN they believe themselves to be good

and depending on YOUR POV they are good or evil and you may or may not decide to side with them

Same thing applies for the resistance/terrorist/rebel group.

why be evil?

You obviously haven't read any lore... especially not when related to the DB or TG... and especially not the MG, founded by Vanus Galerion, sworn enemy of Mannimarco, the founder of the Order of Worms...

I don't agree with that. Yes, they could be considered morally dark, however they answered violence with violence. Karma. Do bad things, bad things will happen to you, by bad people. Perfect example is Rufio.

I like black and white, it makes me feel like a BADASS killing a evil Argonian. THUNDER THUNDER THUNDER THUNDERCATS HOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

This ** is well said. Remember, the Dark Brotherhood is in fact an offshoot of the Morag Tong, who themselves are for the most part also a cult dedicated to Mephala (which some lore suggests is also actually the Night Mother). My own assassins never gave a crap about the Night Mother or Sithis, just the money.

A "new" and "professional" assassins guild would be awesome, but barring that I would love to have both the DB and Morag Tong in the game, to compete/war against one another, and allow the PC to only join one....and/or join one and then ultimately be able to take over both or eradicate one of them.

For the majority of the world no one believes themselves to be evil; even hitler thought he was doing good, so did stalin, but from OUR point of view they are evil, BUT from there POINT OF VIEW they are good. But that itself is a little extreme.

I love to site games like the witcher 2 for getting morality done correctly.

Because it's freaking awesome? Who doesn't love cracking orphan skulls in Fallout 2? Who doesn't love sacking caravans in Fallout, or committing mass genocide? With their experience from F3, I bet evil will be 10x more fun than it was in Oblivion. Although Whodunit? is still epic despite its not exactly evil. Being the White Knight gets boring, misery and fear is where it's at! Good should be about rejecting said evil pleasures, and being evil is embracing it! All I want to do in Skyrim is commit genocide and ethnic cleansing. Why? Because it's fun. I love being a racist [censored].

Me?

Like I said earlier, in a dozen or two characters in Oblivion, I've only even seen Lucien spawn twice. And never took his offer. Fallout 3..... certainly never blew up Megaton. It's a bit darker game, so I have killed a few questionable targets (like the "vampires"). Fallout NV.... tried to start a second playthrough to try a different path, but couldn't bring myself to side with the Powder Gangers over the Goodsprings residents. My Mass Effect & KotoR characters are generally 100% paragon/lightside. Etc, etc, etc.

Just can't bring myself to play the badguy.


So, yeah..... not a big fan of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackAndGrayMorality :shrug:

Grey doesn't mean good and evil acts both. Have the guilds be out for their own motives, and you have to do whatever it takes to complete those objectives.

*heroic brofist*

I don't think the argument is, "You shouldn't be able to be good", but rather, "I should be able to be bad, if I want to be bad." Gray morality makes things more interesting in a roleplaying game -- and it's very hard to pull off. Quite honestly, I think we way quite enough black and white games out there on the market as it is. I would like Bethesda to make me a die-hard fan again by throwing me a bone.

When you get a game like Oblivion where everything is scripted so that you have be this knight in shining armor on a proverbial white horse, it gets old really fast. I almost always play GOOD characters because I personally cannot do atrocious things to video game characters, but even I would like there to be options.

And what you do with this, is add a few "grey" areas in the middle of the chain, such as doing a "good" quest, having a grey area in the middle and whatever choice you make can spiral that into a more Evil outcome.

Edit: To go a little more in depth, it would allow you to actually "fall from grace" or "redeem one's self" in game. Gradually. You can either make subtle grey area choices that over time weigh up to redeeming yourself for sins, or it can slowly become your character's descent into madness.

Some games do this, but usually when you're trying to join a good only or evil only faction when your morality is... unsavory to them. I'm thinking more along the lines of a quest chain where you're doing tasks for a supervisor of some sort, and along the road you find out that he may or may not be who or what he says he is. You can choose to ignore it, confront him, or take it to another officer, and the outcome can end up as anything from being attacked by your former mentor for being a traitor(going along with it for a while, then turning him in after getting your due) to becoming the head honcho of a new organization after plotting the demise of some.. competition. And then backstab and kill your own mentor. Or do his deeds till you notice something's not right and turn him in immediately... only to find out your lead was wrong(or bribed) and you have to make it right.. or do you?

Things like this make it interesting. Every organization has it's corrupt fools and overzealous preachers... why no play both sides from the inside?

The dark brotherhood wasn't all that bad the first guy they get you to kill killed a young girl. There sould be good, evil quests as well as everything imbetween.

I think that, to have a true sandbox game, some grey decisions have to be in play.
- Forces the player to think. The lesser of two evils? Is evil good in some cases?
- Mindlessly choosing evil for the sake of being evil is lame. Always being the good guy and having a perfect world is unrealistic.
- More variety in quests. Mix in black/white with some grey quests to cover all your bases.
- Multiple NPC's can assign a quest. You have two feuding NPC's. Both can assign a quest to the player, instead of just the "good" guy or "bad" guy.

Some of TES's greatest characters were morally grey figures. The Tribunal is a perfect example. They betrayed and murdered their good friend Nerevar and stole the power of the Heart. After accomplishing this, Sotha Sil used his powers to teach the Psijic Order and make pacts with the Daedra. Vivec and Almalexia used their powers to inspire the Dunmer and protect the Dunmer people. They also played instrumental roles in protecting Tamriel from Dagoth Ur's attempt to conquer the continent with the second Numidium. To this end, they consistently lied about the events at Red Mountain and persecuted those who sought the truth about Nerevar. Was the hundreds (thousands?) of years of good the Tribunal accomplished worth the murder of Nerevar and hunting down his believers?

I see what you mean.. This is wilderness and is facing Civil War.. The last thing i would expect is to have everyone dandy to see you... But we have seen some evil actions already... The guy running away from Dragonborn after freeing him from spider webs... But people should purposely take advantage of your strength and knowledge for self gain...

People in the Elder Scrolls Universe are probably really motivated to choose between good and evil because at least every century some godly being is descending upon them bring doom/salvation, so its kind of understandable why things are black and white.

I'm a big fan of having to make morally grey decisions, so naturally I like having grey. With the civil war, I wouldn't even mind if either side was distinctly better than the other. After all, Aduin is the real baddy (in a sort of good, bad things will happen if he doesn't eat the world sort of way).

Personally, I don't care, at least as far as my character's actions, whether or not someone thinks they are doing good. It's interesting from a story point of view, of course, to have morally ambiguous antagonists, but when it comes to acting on something, murdered peasants count for a whole lot more than the killer's tortured soul or belief that they are doing good in the long run. So you want to the world a favour by bringing order? And to do that you have to kill a load of innocents? Tough. Your order comes at too high a price. I want black, grey, and white, but I also want the option to have my my character behave 'white' or whatever on her own terms.