You know whats weird, if I read correctly. Some say if Bethesda put origin stories that it will not be sandbox but linear. I don't see how.

Maybe it wasn't said directly but thats what I am getting at.

And you would have to chose which house to join too. I really don't understand why that would be a bad thing. I don't really want to do everything in a single play-through, atleast not in Roleplaying games.



I agree. The tutorial in Oblivion was pretty linear too, dosn't make the game anyless a Sandbox RPG though.

I'd like some kind of background information, but like the twelve question asked at the end of character generation in Daggerfall, nothing like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Just stuff to add a little flavor and some changes(positive and negative) to your starting skill, stats and reputations.

No. What happens to your character before the game starts is irrelevant to what transpires after the game starts. If I want my character to have a backstory, I write it myself.

edit - although I'm no Lore expert by any stretch of the imagination, I'd like to think I at least have enough of a general understanding of the world to create a plausible history for my character. I don't need a couple of questions to flesh them out for me ala Mass Effect 1.

Didn't Daggerfall have you choose your character's background? It's been a while since I've played it, but I'm pretty sure. I think it sort of defined the starting relationships you had with various factions. That could work.

No I hate Bioware.they ripped off lots of good games like Neverwinter Nights.

The start of the game obviously has to be linear. You start the game. No other option. You could even say MW's starting out process was "linear".
"You couldn't escape the boat and run off!" :rolleyes:
Has nothing to do with the argument at hand, however. If you can't tell the difference between an origin based background process instead of something like MW/OBs, then I don't know what to tell you.

No... origin stories would mess with RPers.

BioWare is great and all, but origins sort of limits what you can think of your character as being. The great thing about being a prisoner is you could be innocent or guilty, you could be the son of a distant noble or a beggar, but your tossed into a world of turmoil left to find your own allies and glory.

P.S. The beginning of the next elder scrolls should start with you being conscripted into an army from prison and being forced into a battle, from which you can choose multiple paths (i.e. run away, stay and fight, change sides).

Yes, you could. Though it was much shorter.



Ofcause i can tell the difference but that was not the point. :rolleyes:

The point is that the game dosn't have to be linear, just because of origin stories, and that TES already has a linear tutorial.

The only difference between Oblivion and Dragon Age (Appart from the thing about coming up with a background story for your character yourself ofcause) is that you have six openings instead of one and that these six openings will sometimes have an impact later in the game. All it would require is that the pc, at some point visit the place the background story took place and experience something different from the pc's which didn't chose that particular origin, or a random encounter, which is only triggered by that origin. I cannot see why this should be impossible in a open-world RPG. But if you disagree, your more than welcome to explain.

Kinda. They were more like character enhancers. You could also adjust which groups like you (the underground, merchant, peasantry, nobility, etc). You could also make certain creatures less likely to attack you (language skill modifier), and so on.

And for the love of Nurgle! We don't need to start off as prisoners! Daggerfall started the game out with you in a cave because you ship hit really bad weather. Accomplished the same function as a tutorial and was RP friendly, because we're not some convict escaping or being shipped somewhere.

I say no to the origin starts, origins worked in Bioware because the way the game is set out is a lot like a linear RPG, everything is (to a certain extent) laid out for you, TES is all about your own choices and how you influence your character by choosing whatever you want, from the generic knight-in-shining-armor, to the alien that came from space and is planning to eat every elf on the planet! It's crazy, but that's the point, there are no limits.

On a side-note the whole prison thing was a terrible start, really took away from the possibilities of your character and you had to choose why your character went to prison every time you decide to give a story and background to the character. Daggerfall was much better, let you choose for yourself what you wanted to be and was really in-depth in terms of character generation. I like the whole nobody attitude that the game starts off with, which really maximizes role-playing opportunities, but i'd like to see the next TES game be slightly different, let me be a nobody for a chance, i want my life to be as odd and uneventful as the next NPC, but with the little additions that make it really special.

To better understand what i'm trying to say i'm going to give you an example, Fallout 3, before you start killing me hear me out. I detest how everything is planned out for you and there is very little character generation in the beginning besides a couple of karma related options, however i felt normal, i felt like every other vault dweller up-until you escape from the vault. That's the feeling i'm talking about, i don't want to be the mysterious prisoner who by a deus ex machina (did i spell it right) met with the emperor, i dont want to be the one the stars foretold of, i want to be Bob who lives down the street and had enough courage/luck to help the people of skyrim / blackmarsh / the wasteland / whatever.


PS

Love the new avatar hellmouth :rock:

Do it like Daggerfall. Have a little "quiz thing" that sets up some of your starting equipment and abilities, but that doesn't limit you to a particular background or story.

I wouldn't like to see it because there would be no originality. I like what they did in Oblivion being a prisoner and such. It didn't tell you how you got there or what you did or what happened. It was up to you to decide and allowed a ton of roleplaying to take place. If there were origin stories, there would be restrictions to roleplaying. I'd like to see what they'll come up with. That's what I like about the Elder Scrolls, they give you a situation and its up to you to decide.

This!

I actually disagree. The tone and focus of a BioWare RPG is totally different to those of Bethesda. Both have significant merits and drawbacks. For example, having a constant single character as the protagonist with deviation per save game like Shepard works wonders for Mass Effect, but wouldn't fit in TES. Having a totally free-roaming game is the only way to work a TES "Chapter" title, but making the entire galaxy free-roaming wouldn't work, too much time and processing power, a 10-year dev cycle and 100 disks, need a second PC or console dedicated solely to playing it.

As for Origin Stories, that was Dragon Age's thing. It works for them, but TES is fine letting the player use his or her imagination exclusively or near-exclusively to give the character background.

TES kind of already had origin stories in Daggerfall, but I don't know if they had consequences like dragon age.

If anything, they should just go back to daggerfalls, background stories.

Although I did somewhat like the idea of origins in Dragon Age, it's not something I want to see in the Elder Scrolls. Bioware's RPGs are different from the Elder Scrolls series, with a different focus, and this is fine with me, if all games are going to be the same, then there's no point in having so many games to choose from, after all. Just because something works well in Bioware's latest RPG doesn't mean Bethesda has to follow in their footsteps, at the same time, Bioware doesn't have to do everything the Elder Scrolls does effectively. The thing here is that Bioware's games tend to focus on telling a relatively linear story, while the player is granted some choices you could make at times, it overall still has a linear structure. Now in the Elder Scrolls, it's more about freedom. In the former, I can live with setting a few aspects of your character in stone if it benefits the story, but in the latter, I want as much about my character left up to me to decide as possible. Bethesda should keep the current approach of just dropping you into the world as a mysterious person with no known background, and let you decide who you were before the start of the game. Bethesda doesn't necessarily need to use the prison approach again, I'd be fine with something else if it accomplished the same function, but if Bethesda wants us to continue starting in prison in the future, that's perfectly fine with me too, as long as they don't tell me why I'm in prison.

I'd rather not have the game developers determine for me what backgrounds my character gets to take. Part of the reason I like TES so much is because I can make my characters literally anything I want.

Bioware is good at what they do, and Bethesda is good at what they do. Completely different styles of roleplaying. I like both their games, but I really don't see the need for Bethesda to take on origin stories when TES games are supposed to be a sandbox, open roleplaying game (the adventure games as exceptions).

The awesome thing about Bethesda games is that you start out, and bam, within an hour you're in a completely open world with whatever character you want and nothing but a little hint as to where you go. Except Oblivion. Only difference there is it wasn't a hint, rather a big pointer saying "GO HERE!!!!"

Prison or not, I'm not sure. It's kind of tradition. In Arena, you were a prisoner set free from a spirit to go on a long quest. In Daggerfall, it really wan't a prison, but in Morrowind you were freed from prison in the IC to go by boat to Vvardenfell. In Oblivion, you got out of prison on a quest from the Emperor and the Blades.

So I say no to origins. I don't need that to know who my character is, as I can do what I always did and make up my own reason. Make up my own background. I guess they're going to start us in a prison, but I wouldn't necessarily mind if it was in a different way.

I have to say, I love DA:O and the origin stories idea that came along with it, but the minute someone copies Bioware's style is the day they will not be unique. ES is a different kind of awesome. For one, it isn't exactly as tactical as DA.
NOTE: I have noticed you have been making a lot of DA based posts lately...

I think that it'd be a waste of developement time.

Playing oblivion, and never even gave the slightest though to a back story or even why I was in jail. That was where my story started, from that jail cell, and in the end I just accepted "Maybe the gods have put you here so that we may meet" and that was fine with me.

I'd maybe even like to be able to pick where I started. Which was another mod idea for oblivion.

As i wrote earlier, Origin stories dosn't neccery means the game couldn't still be sandbox. We are talking about the tutorial here. Oblivion had a linear tutorial too. If anything, Oblivions tutorial was actually the more linear one, since there where less options.



Iv'e made 2 BioWare related posts as far as i remember. This and the romance post. How is that a lot? :huh:

Well, what I'm thinking is that it wouldn't work entirely. I thought about it in the past, but the best you can do with an "Origin" story is one that a person creates.

Meaning that you couldn't have an origin "story", but an origin to your character that you create... which would be very complicated for the game developers to make. Since some people want to be Shadowscales, some people want to be the sons/daughters of Knights, some people want to have been born in the slums of the biggest city, and some people want to have been born, then given to and raised by an adoptive parent.

The possibilities that people can think of are endless, which is why Bethesda shouldn't necessarily limit us to having a loving father/mother, a perfect little village in the mountains, and the oh-so-common obviously bad child who will become a villain. However, I don't want everybody to treat me like I'm an outsider all the time, which is probably why I didn't like Morrowind as much.

This is one of those more personal questions, so I'll give a personal opinion. If I didn't start off as a prisoner, then I'd be happier, but all it takes is a bit of thinking as to why your character got thrown in jail.

that is 2 too much. This is a site to talk about Bethesda and their works, not Bioware's. I mean no offense