Been trying to find any usefull information regarding this but no luck so far.

Anyone know if you get to choose personality in this game? For example if you're doing a quest, you get to choose if you want to do the quest in a evil way or a good way? If there is like different endings depending if you want to be good or evil.

Also in conversations. Can you be really rude or be really nice? If someone comes up and talk to me I want to be able to pounch him in the face.

Well I guess what i am asking is, do we know if you have alot of choices in everything you do? (mass effect?)

I'm not really sure. It would great if they could get something like this up to a Mass Effect and Dragon Age level.

There's already the capacity for this in TES, though.

"My kitten is stuck in a tree, please help!"

Then you set both the quest giver and the kitten on fire, in whichever order you choose. I think a Bioware-style dialogue choice would actually make the game less freeform, particularly as TES has never seemed huge on making everything adhere to absolute morality.

Yeah I guess that's true. I would like more alternative endings to quests though, particually with Radiant Story coming in.
Off Topic- Does any one know exactly how much the game stores about how you play. I know it was mentioned in the GI mag.

So far the only talk of quests has been a short column about the Radiant Story addition, which is more about tailoring the quests to respond to certain conditions that may or may not be present in your game.

If they start talking about and emphasising choice and consequence in the previews soon then there is still a chance there will be a Fallout 3 level of choice (that is to say not that much, but still leagues better than Oblivion's one answer to all quests). If however they continue to focus upon things like graphics, new gameplay mechanics, etc, and make very few references to quest design other than to elaborate upon the Radiant Story feature then don't get your hopes up. Bethesda's quest designers have always been less adept at adding choices into their quests. It's sad, because when I mod I can't help myself from adding at least one choice into every quest I make, even if it is only a simple one (e.g deliver the item to a different person instead of the quest giver, let the person you were asked to kill go, pay off the bandits instead of killing them etc), while Bethesda seem to feel that everyone only wants to solve problems at the tip of a sword, and that 'roleplaying' consists of putting on guard armour and running around killing bandits to become a 'guard'.

You bring up plenty of good points. I have never understood why my thief character can't steal the painting he is meant to find and sell it. I know it's not the best example but it's midnight here in Australia

Okay, I will admit I'd like alternative resolutions to some quests, but if so I'd like at least a little ambiguity to it. TES is about open-ended gameplay, and I don't think that catering only to moral extremes ("save the orphan or help the necromancer!") in quest plotting would really gel with that ideal.

Being simply "good" or "evil" is both boring and unrealistic, and it oversiplifies the world and the characters within. Even in Mass Effect it wasn't exactly good/evil, and that's why it worked to a certain extent, especially in ME 2. Personaly I never felt confortable with a system tracking how "good" or "bad" my character's personality was, and that's one thing I absolutely loved about the TES series. Reputation/infamy, is, in my opinion, a much better option, because it represent's how the character's actions are viewed by the various groups inhabting the world, depending on their values, and their percetion of what is good and evil.

Another big problem that good/evil systems have is that they fail to handle evil characters properly. True villains are more often that not crafty, tricky individuals. Can you imagine Al Capone running around Chicago advertising what an evil guy and what a great gangster he was? What evil mastermind would intentionally allienate and mistreat people (like companions) that he intends to use for his own ends? Good / evil systems only allow you to play stupid, or psychotic evil characters.

So, to summarise, a traditional good / evil system would not work in TES because there is not one objective, generaly recognised moral system adopted by all races, cultures, religions, and groups in this world. I'd much rather have a reputation system with various groups, representing how my actions are percieved by that group, depending on their values and goals. And perhaps a fame / infamy system like previous TES games had.

I agree a good/evil system would be out of place. I feel having more alternitive endings to quests would be very benificial though

Yeah, this is pretty much what I meant, except this is eloquent and well thought-out.

@OP

You did mention Mass Effect and Dragon Age as examples, and though I thoroughly enjoyed both games I really don't find anything incredibly interesting about having a "good" or "evil" ways of ending a quest. You'd have to do much better than that if you go the "alternative endings" path. In my opinion there have been games that have handled that a lot better, both old and new games. New Vegas for example. But really both Oblivion (remember the vampire hunters quest for example) and Daggerfall had plenty of quests that could be resolved in various ways.An alternative ending is only worth it if it it actually adds something in terms of RP, if it is fun and innovative in some way. It doesn't have to follow a "good" or "evil" path just for the sake of it, just to offer a new, interesting resolution when needed.

Ya that is kinda what I meant...

Would be awesome, much more replaybility

This would be great. This is why I loved RPGs like the Baldur's Gate series, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc. Yes, In TES you CAN choose to be good/evil, but usually only one choice will actually "complete" a quest. I also agree that a reputation system would be better than a "good/evil" tracker. Maybe have it be like Daggerfall, where you had a reputation with different types of people (merchants, scholars, nobility, commoners, and underworld) and depending on your character's background and his in-game choices, the reputation would rise or lower with certain groups. That was cool. It would be nice if they could insert moral ambiguity into Skyrim, but TES games have never handled that aspect of roleplaying very well...so I'm not going to hold my breath.

In the context of how complex the world is and how far apart the moral values of various groups, cultures, races etc are, TES games have handled it wonderfully. In Mass Effect for example it's prety clear what is moral and what not because you play withing the moral confines of the human alliance, with their common human culture and moral values.

To give you an example, in Morrowind there were quests where you could free a slave or side with the slavers. Whether you considered that good or evil largely depended on your race, House, etc. In the games you mentioned freeing the slaves would always be the good thing to do, wich makes no sense if you consider how the Dumner (or at least some factions) feel about slavery. I just see no point in dumbing things down to good and evil, moral choices should be much more complex than that and I apreciate the subtle aproach of TES games in that matter. How about the Morag Tong, how do you judge if completing their quests is good or evil? Or, is letting an assasination target live good or evil?

By the way, I think Fallout 1&2 are much better examples of how to handle multiple quest endings and ambiguous moral choices compared to the games mentioned so far in this thread.