What are your predictions for the plot lines and quests in Skyrim?

Here are my thoughts:

I was really expecting the plot to be about an Akaviri invasion now that the empire is collapsing. But I still think the dragon plotline is compelling, especially because the civil war, secession, and lack of a king is a pretty compelling human backdrop. I am expecting more than one main plot thread as a result, because the dragons basically represent a common threat just as the Oblivion gates, but the capability to tell this story and the difficulties of developing a political situation that allows Skyrim to present a unified front against them make it sound cool to me.

The plot threads that would not surprise me:
-Training as a Blade and dragon hunter under the last Blade
-Dragonborn plotline achieving dragon voices
-Reforming the blades, training them as true dragon hunters, constructing your own hold/fortress to base them
-The usual guide questlines: Mage's Guild, Fighter's Guild, Thieves Guild, Morag Tong/Dark Brotherhood/Assassins
-Investigating whether Akavir is responsible for the dragons and if the Akaviri are preparing to invade (setting up next game)
-Picking either the secession side or the imperial side, going on a quest line for that, and unifying Skyrim (which would involve dealing with Whiterun cult, Morrowind refugees, etc)
-Becoming king of Skryim (before or after...)
-Defeating Alduin

Since TES main characters need to start out from essentially nothing, the only way to keep a previous game's main character is some sort of reset like this. If they want to do it, that's a plausible way.

Either way, resolving the political situation and uniting the competing factions against the dragons seems to be the only way to humanize the plot since the dragons seem more creature-like than a sentient, coordinated enemy. There would be space for plenty of gray ethical situations you could go different directions on but, clearly, to defeat the dragons you'd probably have to unite the factions some way or another. And essentially a dragonborn leader that could potentially be the emperor would be the best figure to accomplish that as the main hero. If the king's job is open, and you are clearly the natural destined leader of Skyrim, wouldn't it make a ton of sense that you'd become king? I really, really don't see it turning out any other way, at least by the final cutscene.

LMAO @ the poll choices

EDIT: Sorry, i though you were trying to be funny by including these cool choices and then just Fighter's Guild

my keyboard is messed up beyond belief... m key doesnt work so i have it on clipboard.

working on them!

EDIT: Haha it's cool, the early post was accidental. It would have been amusing though! Fighter's guild is always the most exciting... :cryvaultboy:

Also if you vote do post something to keep this up top. :poke:

Oh, also:

In the DLC I could maybe see Roscrea, visiting the Imperial City only to claim the throne, or going to the Summerset Isles to deal with elven opposition.

This would set up a situation in the sequel where another Akavir invasion seems plausible, or even better, that idea of invading Akavir to preempt them. Or, even more interestingly, your character from V becomes the King of Skyrim and you are traveling to Summerset Isles (I know they are to the West, bear with me) or some other location to muster more opposition against the Empire and get them to join Skyrim, but your ship gets caught by a storm and you wash up, alone, on a beach in Akavir. Then you need to go on a quest to get word back to Tamriel and stop the pending invasion force being gathered in Akavir. Instead, due to your natural leadership, you manage to unite the various peoples of Akavir against the snake people and dismantle their empire as well. But that could still inadvertently start a war in Tamriel so the world would still be ripe for conflict.

I really hope the choice of whether to support the secessionists or the Empire is a difficult one (i.e., neither side is "good" and you massively miss out on cool artifacts/quests that you would get from going with the other side)

Random Quests w/ Radiant AI

I hope they have so many random parameters, so many different scenarios with different roles and reward types, that no one could complain that they are repetitive.

agreed! if they really pull it off well, they could completely screw up all the wikis and walkthroughs people like to post online. I suspect, however, that it will be limited to smaller side quests.

Yeah, I have to say that I don't expect too much from these randomized quests, unless the content is pretty interesting and it only varies the setting to make it so you aren't returning to somewhere you've been. But it would mess up the wikis, which would be interesting. Unless it's like 20-30 random quests and they can tell you exactly what to expect other than the location.

I am probably more excited for the possibilities the Radiant offers when it comes to feeling like the world organically responds to your actions, like the kid picking up the sword, guys fighting over the sword and trying to break that up, or being challenged to duels and such.

It's odd, but I wonder how late they put this in? You can make a lot of comparisons between this game and Red Dead. And if it's that similar to Red Dead's randomized quests I am afraid I'll be a little disappointed. They got boring and predictable fairly quickly.

That's what I am expecting and hoping for. Also, you might even need to do something bad to resolve the questline. Like maybe one side is led by that cult from Whiterun and they ask you to attack another town with them, or you need to destroy a lot of Whiterun to help the other side defeat the magical threat the cult is posing.

what would be awesome is a plotline in every city and when they're all complete there's one to become king

That's what I am hoping for too... in Oblivion you could pretty much do a quest for the ruler of the city and that was it (unless the main quest overlapped with the city at some point), and you didn't even get a place to stay there in return or anything. I feel like a few quests dealing with the major problems in that city would be much more immersive and help you understand the world and feel like it's alive.

And I definitely think becoming King is part of the plot.

Nice poll....

Missing the :

Quests that are Lore inbraid
Quest that mix in with the main plot line in some way.

Quests related to lore are usually self-contained, but I certainly think there could be a longer lore-related quest beyond Dragon Shouts, Daedra, and Nordic artifacts. But often those questlines are part of the faction questlines, like spells and alchemy for mage's guild.

I'd consider the main plotline to all fall under Defeating Alduin or becoming Dragonborn, but I also think that choosing sides between seceding or remaining with the Empire, reconstituting the blades, and becoming king will all be part of or mix in with the main questline. Possibly there will even be other factions involved, or other major questlines like dealing with the cult in Whiterun that might have impact on the main quest.

Also, more choices might be cool. my guess is that since morrowind got destroyed the morag tong might be around, but I doubt the dark brotherhood would want them on their turf. maybe you'll get to pick between them.

I want a quest to pull a sword out of a stone to become king and to learn how to do it, I must visit a wise old wizard.

Or collect a bunch of knights to go after a cup while proving coconuts migrate.

I want to fight a knight that says ni.
I want to go to the shire and drink some mead.
I want to lick a hobbit's feet.
I want to find a knife in the barrowdowns.
I want to fly a kite and wear ben franklin's crown.

Achieving a mercantile monopoly - probably the most important one to me as unlike most of the others, it sounded really fresh And I happen to like fresh. That's why I enjoy the side quests so much, for the most part they are very original. Unfortunately, only on the first playthrough. Other than that it's mostly good random generated quests, with the usual crap in return, but with the very odd chance of something really awesome.

As a beaver selling traveling huntress , I want to create my own destiny in the game, rather than being driven by quests. At least so far, it has been way too focused on fighting and magic, that so much else that should have been in there, simply cannot exist. I'm hoping Skyrim will attempt to address that.

I hope so too... from the jobs they mentioned I'm actually getting pretty excited that there will be a lot to do. I hope you can not only hunt but set traps for animals that you can return to. That could make your dream of selling beavers (or beaver skins, lol) a reality. Cool idea. I want to collect and sell Nordic artifacts, let's hope we can have a store. I put mercantile in because it seemed like it actually had a good chance of happening, but I didn't want to put too many guesses based on little information. I certainly hope for a lot of quests and tasks that are different from and more extensive than what we had to choose from in Oblivion and impossible to predict until they show them to us.

Does anyone think they are still in basic planning stages for some questlines in the game?

Whether they are still open to it or not, if there's a time to suggest a quest or demonstrate our preferences for questlines we want to see, it's now.