How would you tell the difference between a "chosen one" and someone who simply happens to do be able to do it? The person wont be seen as the chosen one till after they've actually done it anyway

In Morrowind, you didn't need to wait until you finished the main quest to know you were the Nerevarine. I mean, you got told that you were released and sent to Caius because you appeared to be someone who might be the Nerevarine reletively early on, and while the initial answer to the question of whether or not you are the Nerevarine was kind of vague, presumably because many of the trials the Nerevarine must pass had not yet been fulfilled, I think genre savy players could probably safely assume that they would be the Nerevarine at that point. The story wouldn't go out of its way to call attention to a set of prophecies fortelling the rebirth of an ancient Dunmer hero, have you investigate them, and then send you on a mission to find out whether you are the Nerevarine or not only to tell you "Sorry to dissappoint you, but you're not the Nerevarine, so turn around, and go home." Fantasy just doesn't work like that, if there's a prophecy, it WILL come true, and you WILL have a part to play in it. If it doesn't come true, it's probably because you're quest is to attempt to avert the events of the prophecy, like say, if it predicts the end of the world or some other horrible event like that, as much as people praise Morrowind for being so original, even it did not avert that trope. This is a clear example of the player being the chosen one, the reason why you're the only one who can kill Dagoth Ur is not because you're the only one strong enough, it's because you're the only one who can fulfill all conditions of the prophecy, and while of course not everyone recognized you as the Nerevarine at first (In fact, a good portion of the main quest had you treking around Morrowind trying to get the Ashlander tribes to name you Nerevarine and the Great Houses to agree to call you Hortator. And for part of the main quest, members of the Temple and House Redoran hated you because they considered the Nerevarine Prophecies heretical, and thus you were a heretic for claiming to be the Nerevarine.) but the game did not wait until the end to tell you that you're the chosen one. Actually, I seem to recall in the opening cinematic, the narration from what sounds like Azura quite clearly says "You have been chosen".

And in Oblivion, I don't even recall anyone calling you the chosen one at the end, it was actually at the beginning where Uriel Septim suggested that you being in the prison at that time was part of some divine plan and that it was your destiny to put a stop to the Daedric invasion, if those lines weren't in there, I probably wouldn't have felt like a chosen one at all, except maybe chosen by chance, or fate, depending on how you prefer to see things. Really, take out those lines, and it seems like you're only involved because you werwe conveniently in the right place at the right time.

So really, I'd say the difference between whether you're a chosen one or just someone who happens to have the skill or determination to do something other people can't has a lot to do with how the story is written. If there's talk of prophecies or divine intervention everywhere, then you can probably assume that you're the chosen one. If you're not supposed to assume you're the chosen one, the story probably won't say you are. Unless the point is that you're really not the chosen one but people think you are, in which case, you can probably expect some sort of indication that you're not really supposed to see yourself as such.

I partially agree, the perfect balance is morrowind, many are choosen but only one remain the others FAILS!!!!!
I like the fact at the beginning you are nobody and don t freaking even know what you have to do. The plot come in small parts, through dreams missions that you don t even know if they are mainplot or subplots, gradually things happens that can lead you to the finale or not, but eventually you will end up there even if only for the sake of curiosity.
The Oblivion, Gothic, fable scheme is patethic you lvl 0 but you are already the one, you already know you will save the world.... come on stop this !!! I n not even fit to save myself from a giant rat pack but i will save the world, yeah right LOL!!!

Personally, I hope of having to bea hero won't be thrusted in your face,

i.e. "OMGZ! We're all goin' die, save ur empire nowz!!!11111"

I'd rather it was slow paced giving you time to develop your character (like in Morrowind), where everything is not so clear sided (good / evil), but a lot of grey areas.

Would be cool if we could have options how the main quests ends, as in Daggerfall, you can choose who ti give the totem too.

The Emperor dreamed of the player character specifically. You were always destined to save Tamriel in Oblivion, and this was thrust in your face from the beginning.

Sorry to sat but your wrong...
In Morrowind, the initial speach says many stand but only one remain clearly stating you may or may not be THE ONE. Your only the one IF you decide to fullfill the profecy, IF you don t you can go to the expansions WITHOUT being the neveranine. You re not the ZERo since lvl 0 where you can hardly kill rats like Oblivion or Gothic.
This is what the OP is against an i cannot agree more with him. In Oblivion they used the pathetic urgency to try to force you to be the one. But whats the point because the world won t end because you won t do it, oblivion portal will appear, they stay there and ... who cares ??! (not me, especially after visiting half a dozen).
Also in Morrowind many WERE called the NEVERANINE and FAILED, so you re only one more pretendent to the bride, nothing less, nothing more.
In Daggerfall your a mere shadow courrier and then you become IF YOU WISH the SAVIOR or a VILLAIN.
So if we compare things:
1) Morrowind has a degradation compared to Daggerfall;
2) Oblivion has a degradation compared to Morrowind (they lowered themselves to a Gothic like plot, nothing agaisnt the game)
3) Will Skyrim show a degradation toward Oblivion ? Will we end up with 2D grafics, no side quests etc. I sure hope they raise the bar again and LVL themselves at least to Morrowind.

Let us not forget New Vegas which, while it was not made by BGS, had a lot of interaction between gamesas and Obsidian so I'm sure a few lessons learnt in its development got passed on (varied voice actors, for instance). I am also sure that the fine folks at BGS played New Vegas's main quest and really appreciated the freedom to carve your own way through it.

I really hope your right, really.

Remember in the beginning of the Thieves Guild when you and those other two people had to steal that guy's journal and whoever got it and returned it was inducted into the Thieves Guild? Maybe we could have something like that. And the fact that you did steal something was why you were in the competition, because they knew that you were, to some extent. capable. And if you don't win the first time you get a second chance.

Like the Thieves Guild's questline, you start off as a regular person (except a thief) but you eventually are part of something very large, such as the last quest of the Thieves Guild.

Of course you can choose not to do the main quest, but regardless, IF you choose to pursue the main quest from the start to the end, you WILL be the Nerevarine, and that's the point I was trying to make. Sure, I could ignore the quest at any time and I'd never become the Nerevarine, but I never doubted that if I chose to complete the main quest, I'd be the one doing what mattered, you can go off and ignore the main quest and say you're not the one if you like And while the expansions can be played without doing the main quest, I'd argue that the story of Tribunal makes more sense if you do the main quest before doing it.

Although I wish Oblivion's main quest did away with the false sense of urgency too, but that has nothing to do with being the chosen one. It's because I sometimes feel like it's hard to justify, from a role-playing standpoint, my character going off to explore or do side quests when people are constanly telling me "Waste no time!" and "Hurry!" and such. But you don't need to be The One to get that, I mean, I've gotten people urging me to hurry in real life too, and it had nothing to do with being a chosen hero.



The fact that some people were said to be the Nerevarine and failed doesn't prove anything. They failed because they didn't meet all the conditions of the prophecy, or they failed while attempting to complete the tasks that were part of the prophecies. In fact, I seem to recall all the failed incarnates were native Dunmer, so really, they weren't qualified by default, since the prophecies say the Nerevarine will be an outlander, of course, they didn't know that when they tried, seeing as it's one of the lost prophecies. A chosen hero must obviously be able to succeed where others would fail, after all, that's sort of the point. If anyone who tried to be the Nerevarine could do so, there would be no point in all those prophecies telling us about how the Nerevarine would be born under a certain sign to uncertain parents and all that mysticism.



Since when did anyone mention Daggerfall?

But regardless of what choices you made in Daggerfall, you're choices would change the course of history, that's why the Warp in the West was needed, because Bethesda couldn't just keep it vague which of the possible endings you chose. So in a sense, you were still the hero. Sure, maybe you wouldn't choose the path that one would necessarily see as good, but I'm sure whoever's side you chose when it came time to do so would call you a hero.



That's a bit different as it's a guild questline, not the main quest, and of course the guild questlines will start out simple, because you're new to the guild, and obviously no one is going to trust the most difficult and most important jobs to the newest person in the group. Really, I'd argue that all the faction questlines are like this in Oblivion, except the Arena, since that was just kill progresssively harder opponents in the Arena until you go up against the grand champion, with an optional quest that makes him not fight back at all, if you complete it. Not much room for a story there, although I suppose it was somewhat more striking in the Thieves Guild than some of the other factions since I would have not expected to go from stealing someone's diary to stealing an Elder Scroll from the library in the Imperial Palace.



I wouldn't be at all surprised if Bethesda took a few ideas from New Vegas, in areas that it did well and that might work well in the Elder Scrolls too, but it waits to be seen if it's multi-path storyline will be one of those ideas.

Mind you, it would be interesting to see this level of choice in Skyrim's main quest, although I fear that if it lead to multiple endings, Bethesda might adress the issue of how to make it work in sequels using another Dragon Break, but I wouldn't bet on it. After all, this sort of story isn't that easy to do since you need to write a number of different questlines, instead of just one.

Lets think AVATAR here, this is what you say above!

An impostor to community - steals the girl, and takes the reigns of the biggest baddest dragon then chooses to fight for the "new" people in his life. This movie did an amazing job of letting you believe this "happend by chance" and was not a destiny that was to be fulfilled from the beginning.

While I agree with the general point of your post, the example from Lord of the Rings is totally wrong. Frodo (and Sam and the rest of the Hobbits) are very much "everyman" characters thrust into the middle of something larger than themselves. Frodo is in no way "the chosen one" to save Middle-earth: he's just an ordinary Hobbit from the quiet Shire. If Lord of the Rings was written to have a "chosen one," it likely would have been Aragorn who would have saved the day by destroying the One Ring.

Exactly. You didn't find out about your connection to the Neverarine prophesies until midway through the Main Quest. If you generally disregarded it to do Faction Quests and explore, you'd pretty much know nothing about it as relates to your character.

In contrast, Captain Picard straight up tells you that you are the "chose one from his dreams" a few minutes into the game, and given an "urgent" start of the MQ immediately after the tutorial.

A good point, but it ultimately fails because Captain Picard specifically gives you (a prisoner he just met) the Amulet of Kings because he had dreams about you, while Baurus, one of the Captains of the Blades is right there. In the context of the narrative, it would have made much more sense for Baurus to be given the Amulet to deliver to the secret head of the Blades. The reason he wasn't was to "shoe-horn" the player into the MQ as a "specially chosen" character of destiny.

I was saying that maybe the main quest could start with a simple task or something, but it becomes something much larger (but not from destiny)