But why the hell would a noble be in prison? You were corrupt? Not to mention things will be worse when you break out, because a noble being imprisoned is HUGE! It'll be the word of the town, possibly other towns, and people will know your face. If you bust out, the guards, hell, even a peasant would know, and your ass would go back right to the slammers.

Yes, you ARE a felon, and that does define you, as you are NOW. NOT your backstory, it says nothing about how you got there. It says nothing about the type of person you are. It says nothing of your life before. But hey, if you started ANYwhere it would define you NOW. You start in an inn? Your a person who could afford an Inn, you start in a castle, you have something to do with a castle. To start the game at ALL defines your circumstances NOW, but they don't have to determine who you were, if its open ended enough.

I'm not saying prison is the best, i tend to think it means i was criminal too, which i don't like, but i haven't seen anything better.

Who say anything that a PC is a Noble? My PC a wanderer. If anything, a Noble might like camping, or need a room from all the traveling to teh city to meet with someone ya want to meet. Traveling leave room to why the player move around for any business, whether its magic, thief, traveling, shopping, anything. The prison would only degrade ya toon to a convect. This, to me, is bad for any toon. Hell, why would a Noble be in a Prison to begin with anyway? They are influential and rich. They would not be in the prison at all.

Better question is WHY ya defending the Prison Intro to begin with.


Problem is, there is no amnesia. The Elder Scroll let ya create ya own story. Use ya imagniation with ya childhood and all. Having no given background does not mean the toon is automatically have amnesia (unless ya roleplay it to be). The big reason is because there is so much mix and match with creating a character from race to stat to gender, the Dev cannot just assume one might be a Orc Thief or a Khajiit Knight. Its all open to ya liking.

we will all be prisoners in less than 10 months! :foodndrink:

You fail to make the connection that by being in prison, we have to define HOW we got to prison, and thus, it is part of the backstory, no matter how you twist this. In the THEN, you were caught/framed/[censored] into going into prison. In the now, we are in prison and instantly a felon.

First off, assuming tamriel, like any normal continent, has a population at least in the tens of millions, since the imperial city is supposed to mimic Rome before the fall, which had over 10 million people in it, even if the nobility only made up 1% of the population, probable if their society follows any normal order, and their lore suggests it does, then their are still 100,000 nobles in tamriel. One getting arrested probably wouldn't HAVE to get noticed, not ALL nobles are famous or well known. And Tamriel is EASILY a place corrupt enough to see good, famous people in jail. (Did you NOT see what happened to Uriel Septim in Arena?)

So no one has to know you, and you didn't have to be corrupt, in fact, more nobles in history have died or ended up in jail for POLITICAL reasons that moral ones.

bah... they could do something diffrent... but w/e

Eh, debatable. Depends on how long you were actually in the prison. It's not unfeasible to think that you were simply in the cell long enough for everyone to simply forget about you and what you did (or didn't do but were falsely accused of, depending on how you look at it). In fact, that's probably the best explanation for why the random townspeople you talk to don't recognize you and call the guards on you.

As has already been stated, the whole point of the prison opening is to erase any prior story your character may have had, giving your character a fresh start in the world.

In The Elder Scrolls universe, people should always be on the lookout for prisoners!

TO PLAY A GAME PERIOD DEFINES YOUR CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES. And yes, you have to come up with a reason to be in prison, your right, i'm not saying prison is a background clean slate, but the point is it leaves WHO you are up to interpretation. Thats what your "HOW" means, interpretation.

Your circumstances don't define you, your upbringing and choices determine who you are, and prison doesn't define either social upbringing or moral character. Even in our world I don't necessarily believe all the people in jail deserve or need to be there.

Or you are simply being held, awaiting trial, but not yet convicted. Or you were hunting on someone's property unknowingly, and the landowner demanded you be charged for theft of livestock. Or you encountered a group of thugs harassing someone, came to their defense, and was later accused of instigating a fight. Or you were walking down an alley when someone smashed a bottle of booze over your head, knocking you unconscious, and were picked up for apparent vagrancy. Or tax evasion. Or insulting a guard. Or you're a reporter looking to get the real, true-to-life scoop on prison life.

And that's all assuming you are a prisoner of the state, not a slave or hostage or whatever.

And if I want to play a Skyrim native? Someone who's never left their homeland? Someone who has a terrible fear of the water? How is this beginning any more or less open than one in which you are a prisoner?

I mean, obviously the ideal situation is you start however you want to. Period. But that's impossible. Even multiple selections for your beginning are going to put certain limitations on your character, or will require certain mental gymnastics to explain. And while multiple starting choices is, I think, a good idea, there is nothing inherently less open in a prisoner intro.

Yes but what if i don't want to be a wonderer? What if i want to have always been in the same town all my life.

And yes there's no amnesia. I'm trying to say why Beth SHOULDN'T use amnesia as the reason your background isn't explained.

You could be someone elses prisoner like a hostage. Doesn't mean you broke the law.

I relly like the idea of being a war prisoner. It would fit considering there is a civil war going on.

That is not really supporting the Prison Intro at. Better off that rather than just using the prison intro with such a big intro, ANYTHING that isn't a prison intro can fit quite well with a huge amount of people living in the place. Ya don;t have to have a Prison Intro to start out of nothing.


Which could be done with the player simply be a immigrant to a traveler and still offer the same result. As a comment I say earlier, ya nobody in a huge population and start anywhere can that still can serve a better intro than being place in a Prison Cell.


But the prison intro automatically made anyone a convect, which is bad in status and tangle with the toon's background if ya ask me.


That really all bull crapping of having a prison intro in the first place. The game does not have to start that way and an open intro that does not involve using a prison intro can help make a backstory much more lax to however the player wanted to, form being a native to just being a traveler.


And I don't want to be a Noble and maybe my toon live for a hundreds of years of traveling and did all the Main Quest in the past.

And again, there is no amnesia simply because there no background given from Beth at all. There is alot of customization that Beth cannot assume the Hero is this or that without stepping on someone's toe. It isn't that hard to create a childhood with the toon one create

Ok ok ok. Whatever, forget the prison thing for a second, i don't care THAT much, but i'll be damned if Bethesda starts you ANYwhere that dares define my character even a little bit more.

So tell give me suggestions as to what would leave your background more open.
Remember, where your start shouldn't define:
Social status
Moral Character
Skills
Age
Race
Political stances
Or otherwise suggest any story-like elements about who you were. And really, i'm not gonna just shoot down ideas to defend the prison idea, i WISH there was something better, and there might be, but i WILL point out flaws in your plan if it has any

Okay, but what if I wasn't a noble? A noble could be in an inn to stay in for the night, as riding a coach can get dull and uncomfortable (not to mention hard to sleep in), or a boat. What about those who do not wish to be nobles? Are we to continue to use the framed/caught/[censored] line again and again?

And the deal with Uriel, his battlemage disguised himself exactly like Uriel, and threw him into a realm of Oblivion. Uriel wasn't thrown in prison for being a dike (though he used his a lot), but was removed without anyone knowing, because a guy who looks just like him is still around, smiling, and sitting on the throne. No one knew it was Jagar Tharn, because he was so well disguised. If JT happened to one day sit on the throne and make demands, there would have been plenty of people going "wtf is he doing?"


I gave 2 starts off the bat that, i find, are not only less intrusive, but accomplish what the beginning needs in a satisfactory manner, and maybe even better.

So let me ask all of you this question, why are you so adamant about starting in prison? Both Qawsed Asap and I have been arguing our positions of why we do not like it, and even offered some on the spot alternatives. I want to know exactly why you guys really, really like the idea of starting off in prison. -5 points for saying it's tradition.


I threw two examples down off the top of my head on the spot already in this thread. There are plenty of different kinds of people who travel on boats, so that clears all of the above you have there. Hell, you could just be sailing from Dawnstar to Winterhold or some place else, so where we came from isn't that affected. Being captured by bandits. You may have been ambushed, asleep, knocked on the back on your head, whatever.

Don't really have a problem with this, it's fine but I hope it's changed around this time.

By Boat, by Inn, by Campfire, or by Caravan. Anyone and anyone have a reason to travel.

Fits with my characters bio I suppose

I prefer the prisoner approach it makes a bold statement about the world. The whole point of it is to set up exposition for the story and introduce characters. Which boils down to you,your quest and the massive world to explore. The real tradition is confinement folding into freedom and how simplicity evolves into something much more complex. The only thing they ask you to do is get out of prison the rest is up to you. Oblivion was the first elder scrolls I played and the game in which I fell in love with this series. The prison approach compliments the new "classless" system so well that I would be stunned if skyrim did not use it. All I ask is an intro that shows the theme that matters the most. Simplicity building into immense complexity. So If the only thing I have to conform to is a prison cell for what will be tens of seconds of the thousand plus hours I spend playing that is more then ok with me.

Hehe, nice.

I have no idea what your are even saying here. Were not engaging in creative writing (and the last person I would listen to in that regard is an English professor). My statement about originality was a response to a your statement about originality not an ontological or hermeneutic stance.

This played out start for the game is telling me that once again law and crime in the game will be dealt with as unrealistically as all previous games. Anyone who has ever been to real jail (served real time) knows that it is never a beginning but the result of a long series of choices and decisions already made. A life already lived.

This does not bode well. My bet is there is not backstory not reason for being there. As if prison somehow makes one a tabla rasa with nothing but infinite potential ahead. The only way that it might gain interest is after the final cinematic of the game and all quests done we wake up back in the cell and the game was nothing but a diversion from the grim reality we face when looking at the bars of our cell.

How can you guys while away the time on this forum with these discussions - beyond me. Much ado about nothing really.

Personally I think it's good that they keep something as it should be

Personally I think it's good that they keep something as it should be