I don't think post-ending gameplay or not is so important, actually. Personally, whether the game ends or not, I save the final battle for last. That's why it's called the final battle. So yes, The Courier of New Vegas has walked off into the sunset forever and that's that; I can't play him anymore, while the Champion of Cyrodiil is still dikeing around in the Imperial City and I can play him anytime I like. But do I? No wtf there's nothing left to do.

But what I like about Fallout's endings? They have them. Stories come to an end, civilization advances, there IS a canon ending. What the Chosen One did in Fallout 2 has an effect on the setting the Courier finds himself in. Whatever the Courier did will effect the setting of the next protagonist: the story actually moves FORWARD. But Elder Scrolls? We have no clue what happened to the Nerevarine, and it made absolutely zero difference for the Champion of Cyrodiil. We dunno what decisions the Nerevarine made or what became of Morrowind. I fear it will be the same here; we'll know some, since apparently the Imperial Legion is collapsing, but the setting is hundreds of years later, so we won't know what happened beyond very basic details that are essential for us to know.

I like how when I play FO:NV, I found out the Chosen One was a crazy bastard that plowed the daughter of a mafia boss, and accidently stumbled into a kitchen with a deathclaw mother and ended up killing it. It's just funny to hear the little details of the canon Chosen One. I also like how the story is dynamic. The Brotherhood of Steel is powerful one minute, the next they're on the brink of destruction. The Elder Scrolls by comparison seems so phobic of making any concrete decisions at all out of fear of breaking the roleplay experience, when in my opinion, it'll just get old if they do that. We'll eventually get bored of this static, never-changing world...


I feel like, in The Elder Scroll's desire to provide us with post-ending gameplay, they end up sacrificing the ability to provide us with any major changes or consequences. We don't see Hlaalu, Redoran and Televanii react to the defeat of Dagoth Ur because that's too much work to program, so instead their reaction is to carry on with their usual business. We don't see any actions taken by Chancellor Ocato or the Counts because that'd be too much to program, so instead everyone just says "oh well, no emperor, who cares" and carries on with their business for another couple decades. A wonderful example of this is Broken Steel. The ending slides for Fallout 3 imply that you either allow civilization to rebuild OR you literally exterminate all life in the communities there; pretty dramatic. Once you get Broken Steel though, you see....well very minor differences. Either people like the "purified" water or they don't.

It just feels like they're cheaping a REAL ending all for the sake of post-end gameplay, a feature which, while I'd initially say "of course I want that," I never find myself actually using. The alternative is to end the game then and there, and then they're free to write whatever dramatic ending they so please. And honestly, I think I might prefer that.

Do you even read TES lore.

I think the idea of having an proper END is stupid and if ever done in a TES game it may stop me buying it.
Open ended games are just so cool.

OP:
Why can't you just end it after the MQ? I don't see the need to take the option away from others so you can end the game.
Polls ftw. Second topic was justified.

OOOH we're so close to 99% of people wanting open ended gameplay.
All those made up speculation statistics will be true. :celebration:

Edit: double post, crap.

Bethesda made it clear: they're never doing that again. Ever. The main quest won't be the definitive end of the game.

Unlike Bioware, Bethesda learns from severe fan backlash over something.

I still can't understand why anyone wants the game to end after the MQ finishes.

It's the MAIN Quest. "Main" is the key word here.

Maybe to stop the feeling of rushing through the MQ if you know you can't go back? Idk. Seems dumb to me.

I understand in other games but not TES, there is just so much to do.

Wrong :whisper:

You choose to do nothing else. Are you master of the fighter's guild? Are you the Champion of the Arena? Archmage of the Mage's guild? Are you the Grey Fox? Have you done the Vampirism Quest? Have you completed Shivering Isles or Knights of the Nine? have you found every nirnroot? etc etc etc etc

Your gameplay style is from the old TV westerns- hero cleans up the town and walks away. But that's because the game lets you do it, not forces you to do it

Huge difference

Looks like everyone wants to play after the end.

I don't understand. How does knowing you can't go back make you rush the MQ? If you knew you can't go back and the game ends after the MQ, you wouldn't be rushing, you'd be doing all the other questlines, holding off the MQ until there's nothing left to do, then doing the MQ

One problem, and the reason I ask why this is needed and such:

What does this have to do with playing after the ending?
Isn't this the thing with multiple endings? It is.

What if you ruined the Bortherhood of Steel in the firs Fallout, and generally being am [censored], yet in Fallout 2 you were knew as a noble person.
Heck you talk about the action of the second game, how the Chosen one had a son from one of the Bishop girls... What if you played a woman?!

If anything, Fallout does it wrong by creating a canon ending, making your choices you might have taken before void, while in TES they tend to make things vague enough for you to interpret. The only thing forced on you is that you have to finish the main quest.

And there are after ending sequences, there are many speeches that appear after you've finished the game, there are extra things and Tribunal is kinda like Broken Steel in Morrowind, as the story there makes the most sense after you've finished the main quest.

But my point is most of the lore changes have NOTHING to do with the games themselves.
For example, if I remember correct, Talos may not be considered a Divine anymore in Skyrim, correct? This has nothing to do with any events in Oblivion at all. It just feels cheap in a way when all of the lore is just written at will and doesn't tie into the gameplay in the slightest. I think it's a rather cool little feature when gameplay possibilities imply actions of the canon hero. For example, the rumor that Vivec has "been taken" by the Daedra. I think this would be a cool little rumor if instead they simply said he's gone missing, or if they mention morrowind and said "Morrowind has been unstable ever since Vivec disappeared." That implies a Nerevarine that killed Vivec.
I just want to see gameplay and lore between titles actually tie in with each other a bit, but as it is now, it's like they just write it as they go. Oblivion ends and there's no real ending, so they just go home, think on it for a year and then write whatever they'd like. I'd prefer an ending that gets me curious about the next chapter. While I don't think post-end gameplay prevents this, I do think it hinders it a bit.

It's hard to explain what I mean exactly, but basically I'd just like to see the lore changes and the gameplay tie into each other a bit more. The only example I can think of where they do this is obviously something's happened to Sheogorath, and it'll be interesting to see how he's handled (if at all) in Skyrim.

Then your complaint is with the storyline, not the open-ended game. The open ended game concept did not make the plot holes

I'm not saying post-end gameplay DIRECTLY causes a lackluster ending, but I do believe that, if they feel they can give a game a dramatic ending but can't program in effects and consequences of said ending (because it'd just be an unrealistic amount of work) then they shouldn't make post-end gameplay. I don't think we should demand post-end gameplay or a lack thereof, but rather the decision should be made solely on if they feel post-game ruins the impact of their intended ending or not. FO3 is an excellent example of this. The ending with Broken Steel involved is VERY pathetic, and yet they did it because people demanded it. I just hope Bethesda doesn't feel obligated to tweak the end-game reactions, lore changes and consequences just to allow for post-end gameplay; I feel that'd be a mistake. THAT'S my point. The lore shouldn't have to cater to gameplay by downplaying the drama and changes for the sake of post-end gameplay.

As for how Fallout does it, they do it quite well. Everything is implied. No one ever explicitly states that the Chosen One knocked up Mr. Bishop's wife; we're just told SOMEONE did. And seeing as how the player was capable of doing exactly that in FO2, it's implied the canon Chosen One did it. An RPer, however, is free to discount it, ignore it, and simply imagine that someone else did it; not their own FO2 character. It IS vague, but also provides substance. The way Elder Scrolls does it is SOOOO vague to the point where they practically don't address the events of the former game. We know there was a Nerevarine, but we know nothing beyond that. We know there was a Champion of Cyrodiil, but we know nothing beyond that.




Yeah, again, it's not a direct correlation. I'm just saying we shouldn't be SOOOO die-hard about post-end gameplay, because as FO3 has shown, they may be able to produce a satisfying ending, but they might ruin it just for the sake of post-end gameplay.

No, no, no, no way! One of the greatest things of the Elder Scrolls games were, that they were practically never ending!

I'm glad that Todd stated with the release of Broken Steel that the ending of Fallout 3 was a bad idea and they won't do that ever again (Note: FNV is not from Bethesda itself, it's from Obsidian).

Just like the others said: Shut off the game after you finished the mainquest.

But that's MY point. You've probably done everything by the time you finish the main quest and have little to no desire to keep playing, and in making Broken Steel they basically broke FO3's ending.
I just hope Bethesda doesn't feel obligated to provide us with a continuous game, and that they end up ruining their own storyline and lore in the process. Let them make the call themselves and don't stress them to provide post-end gameplay or not.

Guess what, Fallout is an RPG, Role Playing Game! Guess what it has no multplayer!! When you beat the game you can't play anymore and if I started new game everythng I worked for is gone! Elder Scrolls has a much better story and you still being able to walk around and do what you want makes more since because your guy just doesn't disapear! Fallout NV svcked, Fallout 3 was great you know why? Because I could still play it and do what I want! RAGE ended with an ending and it's vehicle multiplayer s unfun and wasteland legends is boring so RAGE's ending makes buying the game hardly worth it. The endings for Fallout 3 and New Vegas both svcked hahaha, boring, boring, boring. Fallout 3, Fallout NV, Oblivion, Skyrim are video games and are meant to be played but the ending makes it hardly a game, want an ending? Read a book, because Fallouts ending is way more boring than reading a book (even though I enjoy reading books) but Fallouts endings are boooring!

What lore change you're talking about?

Most of the consequences that would've happened after the main quest are ones that would happen much later on, probably in the next game.
Just because you just saved the world, it won't instantly become better, towns won't be rebuilt the moment you defeat the one who destroyed it, the empire won't suddenly proper because the big bad is gone. This is a slow process, a process that takes beyond the timescale of a single game.

The only one that voted No is the OP. There, this is what the true TES Fanbase says.

See, you miss the point

The Main Questline and other questlines are not dependent on each other. they can happen in any order. The other questlines are not triggered by the end of the MQ

The idea is not to make a main quest and then provide filler for play after the MQ is done. You can't seem to really wrap your head around non-linear play

In Oblivion and Morrowind, as examples, you don't even have to PLAY the MQ

Not at all. To finish everything, it would have taken me hundreds of hours and I wanted to see the ending before I do all the other stuff. I was awefully dissappointed that I needed to re-load an earlier savegame in Fallout 3 to continue.



Good, cause it was awefull. Won't say that broken steel's ending was epic, but ways better than the original.


Oh, and just for completition:

But who does this? Who completed the Main questline before completing their Dark Brotherhood storyline? Personally I always save the main quest for last. It just feels right.
Again, all I'm saying is it seems odd to DEMAND post-end gameplay when we're perfectly capable of saving the main quest for last, post-end gameplay provides us with little more than a "thank you" line from a select few NPCs and breaks immersion with the fact that they really don't seem to give a damn that Oblivion has been stopped (as an example), and as FO3/Broken Steel has shown, they may end up killing the story in the process of giving us post-end gameplay.

Let it be, let them decide what's best, but let's not pressure them into catering the story to the post-end gameplay.

According to the poll your the only one.

Because the Dark Brotherhood have nothing to do with the main quest?

That's the problem, if you have saved the world, why can't you go out and actually help the person who asked you to get his stolen property or something?

The only ending it would ruin is the one where the main character dies, which can be done good, but not in Fallout 3... especially if there's an alternative.