This may be my first post but i've been around since vanilla Morrowind, lost my old login info and have since changed emails so making a new account was the easiest route. With all the talk and excitement over Skyrim i couldn't help but rejoin the forums :thumbsup:

I have seen a few threads talking about being able to skip the tutorial and agree that it should be an option, but it should be done in a way which does not upset the flow of the introduction to the plot. A friend and i were talking the other day and came up with what could be a cool way to start the game while sticking to the tradition of starting as a prisoner, while having two options to start, one which resembles the Morrowind start (dropping you into an unknown world with little direction and letting you experience the new world in awe) and the Oblivion start (having you learn the new mechanics of the game through some sort of tutorial).



The game would start with you being a prisoner in enchanted handcuffs (prevent magic as well as freedom of movement) in an enclosed wagon or laying over the back of a horse (think red dead redemption) or something similar. This is where you choose your race and birth sign. From what you can overhear from the four guards that are transporting you, you are being moved from the imperial prison and have just entered Skyrim, because the crimes you committed were in this province and you escaped to Cyrodiil in the south only to be captured. You also hear them speak of things that are happening in Skyrim (cue plot intro). Suddenly you are ambushed by a group of nords from a village near by, they (because of previous altercations with imperial authority) despise the imperial guard, and attack the small caravan. Lets say if you were on the back of the horse, you fall off and are knocked unconscious. Or if your in a wagon, you get hit in the head with a large blunt weapon which crashes through the small window you were looking out of trying to see what is going on. Either way, your unconscious, and the nords having killed the guards are discussing whether or not to bring you back to the village.

This is where you choose which path to take.

Village "tutorial" - They decide to bring you back to their village. After all, the enemy of thine enemy is thy friend, and they have little care for whatever crimes you have committed in the past. This village will be the area in which the "tutorial" will take place. In other words, a small safe starting area which you can do a few small deeds for the villagers to gain some basic light fur armor and an iron weapon or staff, all the while learning the controls and taking in the game world. One of the villagers gives you a letter that the main guard had on him (hint to the start of the main quest) and before you leave, one of the village nords guesses your class judging by choices you made while in the village, and you can change it to whatever you want by correcting him. Then you are on your way with a little comfort in your abilities and the supplies given to you by the villagers. (you can decide to leave the tutorial at any time by simply leaving the area, but will miss out on whatever small quests, rewards, experience, and info such quests reveal to you. and you pick your class once your a certain distance from the village)

Alternate beginning - The events of the previous beginning unfold until the moment the nords are discussing whether to take you back to the village, they decide not to because why should they help a prisoner, of the imperial guard or anyone. You then black out and pick your class. When you awake, you find that the nords took the horses, along with most of the belongings of the guards except a letter which was left on the main guard (hint to main quest). You can manage to find some light fur armor in a compartment on the back of the wagon if that was the transportation, or off of one of the guards that happened to be carrying it if you were simply shackled and thrown over a horse. However, all the guards weapons and armor was taken by the nords along with the horses. This is it, you are left alone in the wilderness on the side of a road in the awe inspiring landscapes that Skyrim will surely provide.


Some people want Skyrim to be made this way or that way, but the important thing in reaching the large audience that this series now caters to is choices.



What do you guys think?

(apologies in advance for any grammatical or spelling errors)

This is really good, but I'm sure they have already done all of this and are way past this point of development.

Oh I'm sure of it as well haha I just think it would be a cool way of doing it that would satisfy the people who need/want a tutorial, and the people who want a more hardcoe dropped into a world feeling. I hope the devs have came up with an even better way of doing it of course. Also on a side note, I like the speculative lyrics in your sig, they fit with the tone of the chant well.

This sounds great and would be a good way to start.
an alternative could be that the Nords ask you the questions forming your class while they determine wether to help you or not
then you are given the option to go to the village (tutorial) and have the option of changing all your choices at the end before you leave or just leave the Nords and strike out right a way.
if you choose this they grab what they want off the bodies and leave the rest (basis light and heavy armor and a sword and staff) for you and then they leave.

That would be cool, rather than picking your class after you black out, or at the village, do it Morrowind style with questions by the nords, then you can go to the village or stay behind. Good stuff haha.

I also thought about really having the alternate option be like Morrowind's in that there wouldn't be anything on the guards bodies or wagon or whatever, something like this could be affected by difficulty, the higher the difficulty the less supplies are there for you when you start.



Even better, when you black out, you have a dream where your in a room with a strange looking old breton man that looks familiar but you just can't put your finger on it, then "AHHH Yes. We've been expecting you..." and then the nords wake you up and start their interrogation. lmao





fixed

He was Breton

The old "Ah yes...we've been expecting you"! Nostalgia grows.

Possibly not. The intro experience is something that introduces you to elements of the game that might still be coming online late in the game. Several games that I've worked on didn't really nail the into until late in the dev cycle.

Good job to the OP on the ideas. Make it a mod if the intro isn't to your liking

Some good ideas there, I like the Oblivion tutorial at first, but it gets tedious after you've played it many times (and it's not always possible to keep saves from exiting the dungeon, I've had so many PC problems over the last few years and lost those saves through HDD failures etc!)

I like the idea and I'd be fine with it being similar to this.

Only thing I would be concerned with is the possiblity of missing out on the beginner quests that you might do at the village.

I'd prefer a tutorial option that just takes you through basics but doesn't offer anything in the way of quests and items etc so those who choose to skip it, don't don't miss out on anything.

The way I thought of it, the quests you would do would just be small favors which reward only the things you would be able to find on the guards if you chose to skip the village. So there would be no advantage other than if you needed to do the tutorial

Actually the village tutorial is similar to the Oblivion tutorial, the only difference being that Oblivion's tutorial didn't have missions just you escaping.

I liked the Oblivion tutoriral and wouldn't mind something similar. The village tutorial is a good improvement as well.

This just isn't something that really matters too much to me, as I'll only be doing it once or twice before saving it just before I pick my class.

That's the point of having the second option, so you don't have to keep a save file at the end of the tutorial and you still get an interesting start to the game

This is pretty awesome, but I would prefer it if the Nords never interact with the PC unless they choose. I would prefer:

The player is actually being transported as a prisoner in a convoy. The Nords attack the convoy because they are separatists who want to undermine the already ailing Empire to help Skyrim's secession. The horse the player is being transported on is one of the first to be hit. Horse and rider and captive go down. The player character lapses in and out of consciousness, and every lucid period shows the attack on the convoy to be further along. The player is then presented with the two choices labelled as follow. Who will win?

The Nord separatists (easy)
The Cyrodiilic loyalists (hard)

The first option has the Nords decisively defeating the convoy. They untie the player character, allow them to take weapons and armour of the fallen and then take them back to their camp. This is the tutorial route.

The second option has the loyalists just managing to fend off their attackers. They call to each other about what to do with you, but decide to simply run hard and fast for Cyrodiil, safety and reinforcements. You are left of the side of the road. Your character crawls over to the body of the rider who was transporting you and uses their key to break the bonds. Now you are in the same position as if the Nords had won (bodies everywhere) but you have no other aid.

Obviously I think option two should give the same amount of direction as MW did (perhaps a town on the horizon that is the overwhelmingly most logical place to go to much like Balmora in MW) but it circumvents the whole tutorial issue that Oblivion had and boy does it toss you out on your butt a lot more.

But I am arguing semantics of the plot itself. Your idea is good. Shame that the odds of either of our ideas being the actual route that BGS has chosen are tiny.

The thing I find wrong with both the Morrowind and Oblivion chargen/tutorials is that specific part of the game is also used as the vehicle for forcing the MQ upon you.
Forcing the MQ on the brand new unskilled unknown PC is something that really needs to be retired from gamedev, before Skyrim is released.

Jenifur Charne

That is also why I chose to only have a letter which hints towards to main quest lines beginning, it would be difficult to not have anything related to the main quest be present at all or it may be difficult to find. As cool as it would be to simply be dropped in with zero clues into a functioning world, it would be too much for a chunk of gamer who would just complain about it

For instense, a letter found on one of the guards could be addressed to someone related to the main quest, so the first quest could be finding this person to question them about the letter or to simply deliver it to them, but the npcs would suggest you go to (insert closest city here) to find work or a guild

Understandable, since the Casual Gamer expects to be given the MQ from the outset, and games are increasingly developed for the Casual Gamer, and it would be the Casual Gamers who would whine the loudest about not being able to find the MQ if the MQ was not forcibly given to them.


Something to pique the curiosity, make the player WANT to investigate further, and in investigating, is drawn into the MQ.

Jenifur Charne

Precisely.

Something like that would be awesome. You could even have a thing as you are slipping in and out of consciousness where you look up at the sky and see
(or think you see) a constellation. That being your birth sign.

I would like to see some form of in-game player histories - profession, race, social class, etc. And have those taken into account for what happens in the tutorial. Also, an option to make the PC a vampire from the start would be nice.

Cool idea OP. I like the idea of being able to skip the intro. I found that having to repeat the Oblivion dungeon for new characters was annoying. I know you can make a save before you exit, but still. I really liked the start to Morrowind, answer some questions, finish your processing and you're out the door and on your own. I think your idea of going the the Nord Village is cool, but I would maybe tweak it a little bit. I'd have your character develop some of his/her class information before the Nords even attack the caravan. The guards, for instance, can be discussing the prisoner, "I hate doing these prisoner transfers" "Right you are, all the paper work it so tedious, what was there birthsign again?" Or something like that. And then after the Nords sack the caravan, you wake up as they are looting the guards, and they say to you, "Are you alright? You took quite a bump to the head? What's your name?" "Well friend you are welcome to come with us to our village, it would be ill-advised to stay out here in the woods with night coming on" And then your character can follow them to their village or just watch them leave.

I know that's not a lot different from what you said, but that's how I would go. All in all and great idaa OP

thanks for the positive feedback everybody. Hopefully they will have an even better way of doing it. can't wait for november haha

I would highly encourage you to writw this idea down as it would make a great ulternate start Mod if the planned one is less than amazing

Some people even thought the Morrowind intro was too long.

And frankly, after going through either the Oblivion or the Morrowind intro a few times, they did get old. You already know the flow of the plot through the intro and the tutorial because you've seen them plenty of times, after which they add little to the various directions you can take afterwards.



It would defeat the whole purpose if the whole thing you describe can't be skipped.

What you are describing is just another intro. You let players skip the tutorial that follows, but still present an intro that's quite long, longer than any we've had before.



Though I like the idea, the starting options are intriguing, what you describe doesn't negate the need for some to just get into the game with a new char asap.

For both MW and Obl there were loads of people who just used a mod that teleports you to the exit into the game world from the starting position, with a script attached to make all relevant char-build choices when activating that exit. Thereby interely skipping both intro and tutorial.