I'm more so tempted to buy that he is really the world-eater if indeed, as it seems to have been previously suggested, that it is metaphorical. The fact that Pathurnax or the Grey Beards discuss the prospect of the next kalpa alone just isn't good enough for me to make him the literal world eater if everything else in the game doesn't match up. Like I said earlier, for having such power, why the heck would he have to bring back his dead brothers? Why not get started on the whole world-eating deal right away? After all, he seemed pretty convinced that not a darn soul had a chance of harming him (and such was his past experiences as well).

So I've got to wonder if we should look at him from a more limited stand point. His role might be the "world-eater" or even a homologue of Akatosh, but he still might in practice just be a super ancient super powerful dragon. By this, I mean his literal and direct world/time-changing powers are somewhat limited, and so maybe his goal is to bring back enough dragons/servants to assail and finish off all the towers. And from this he might "end time" by whatever would happen. That at least seems the more intuitive suggestion to me given what we saw of him and the dragons in general in-game.

Of course though... it really could be Bethesda just not paying attention to itself....

(notes how nice it would be if someone from Beth could just have a quick little lore FAQ to set the record straight on this and a few things)

Something like this almost makes me believe Alduin actually just wanted to lose... or at least, was more interested in having an actual challenge, rather than going to dine out.

Where's the fun in that. When we're just given the answers the lore loses it's malleability, which is one of my favorite parts of TES.

Here it's the most interesting story that wins.

Certainly. There are some things however that are just blatant contradictions that don't seem to have any nice juicy details to sift through and think about. To me, this is one of them in the sense that "I'd rather just know," but that is of course subjective. On the other hand, there are some questions like "where/what is Sovngarde" where the ignorance is not so much because of contradiction, but just not things being quite so spelled out (again, subjective however).

Yes well, Morrowind presented at least three conflicting narratives of Red Mountain and we were happy then... Or maybe we whined for answers, I really don't remember.

Well I can't complain for everyone. I've gotta say though, I loved that aspect of Morrowind. The inconsistencies were so clearly coming from the biases of the different groups at hand and the "history is written by the winners" concept which really brought that lore alive to me. But anyways, I guess our opinions on whether we like it or not don't matter too much unless Beth polls us or sees sales drop. I would still like to try and figure out if we "know" anything on this issue or not.