I was playing Fallout 3 the other day and after you get out of the vault in the beginning, if you did your job right, you will end up with the armored vault uniform which adds like +5 to small guns and something else.. i forget.. but the armor on it was pretty dang high. I hated the look of the vault armor or any vault uniform with a passion. It looked horrible but it was the best thing I had for a long time which upset me. I notice that Bethesda sometimes awards "Too good" of gear to begin with and it makes many of the already too few items worthless when you are allowed to venture off in the world. Like, I didn't see a point to buying or wearing the first leather armor I came across at Crater-Side Supply. I don't want to see this happen in Skyrim. I don't want items that are too good when I leave the "Tutorial". If I find gear that is too useful that early on it feels as empty as if I were to use console command cheats.

Understandable, I can agree with that.

In Oblivion, you didn't start out with extremely powerful armor, I'm pretty sure it was bottom of the barrel. This allowed for a build-up depending on how you played. I hope that this stays the same.

It could be worse, it could be like Arena. I found an Ebony Longsword after 10 seconds of gameplay.(literally)

I remember in Morrowind you had nothing. Sure you could buy or steal some good stuff right away but it really didn't make that big of a difference, you could still get owned by creatures.

Yeah, Morrowind and Oblivion did this pretty well.. Maybe this is just an issue with the Fallout series more than anything. I should have specified that not all of their games start this way. Though Oblivion did give you some iron armor at the beginning and the item database was pretty lame in Oblivion IMO. When your item database is that small and you hand out so much it makes it feel even smaller.

I thought that the vault armour looked quite good... especially with a hunting rifle on my back, and in my opinion it wasn't that overpowered a) because it wasn't very good protection and secondly because it wasn't that easy to repair.

Hopefully the new levelling system with dungeons will prevent getting high level armour early on though... Hopefully dungeons that have ebony or daedric armour or weaponsloose around the place will only be accessible to higher levelled characters due to the dungeons set high difficulty.

in OB we started with rough leather curaiss..don't know how to spell that...which is the worst in the game. and an iron short sword. also the worst in the game. Starting off to strong won't happen i promise

OB had a pretty good balance, but damn the spells were OP for way too long in that game, I mean we'd have to be level 8 or more to have our blade deal as much damage as the starting ice touch spell (if you picked destruction as a major)

Funny, I remember in Morrowind everybody threw their money and rare magical item at you like they didn't needed it...

Amongst the first things you get from the beginning of the main quest is 1000 gold, a magical flaming shortsword, a full plate armor, a magical healing ring, several healing potions and teleportation scrolls...

People say how easy it was to get money in Oblivion, but compared to that I was bathing in money in Morrowind...

Morrowind had it perfect. You get nothing!

In Oblivion I left the sewers with a shield, some Iron armor and I think an Iron Sword and Alchemy equipment. I prefer to dump all the stuff I pick up in the sewers and pretend I left with nothing but my prisoners clothes.

Actually the part about Morrowind that was goofy and game breaking to me was that it was too easy to get gold because you kept getting attacked by the Dark Brotherhood and their gear sold for a LOAD of gold. I once got attacked by two and I had two sets of DB gear to pawn for gold not to mention the gear itself was good for stealth characters. Too accessible. I know that Oblivion made this better and I hope that it is even better in Skyrim. I just hope the item database is a LOT bigger in Skyrim this time around. Oblivion disappointed me there.

If the Oblivion team is on Skyrim then it will be you get 2-3 pieces of armor that are slightly lower quality than the lowest tier material that you can get (Rusty Iron or Rough Leather), a weapon that is made out of Steel (or a blunt weapon made out of Rusty Iron), a couple dozen potions to restore your health, magicka and stamina, about 50 lockpicks, some torches, and a small amount of gold and some basic loot.

That was nothing too big, better than Morrowind where you were given a dagger and a lockpick and a few gold pieces (more if you are willing to steel some items and pawn them off).

The Fallout series really doesnt have that many items of note in it, as far as armor is concerned. I was pretty disappointed when a set of Reinforced Leather Armor lasted me through more than 2/3 of the game.

Oblivion was pretty good giving us partial sets of the lowest or second lowest tiers of armour in the start. Morrowind didn't give you anything but I had a pretty much full set of chitin armour when I left Seyda Neen, meaning I had the second best light armour after about half an hour of playtime.

That is more or less what I meant. Not only that but after sleeping you eventually get attacked by the Dark Brotherhood assassin and that gear was nice for having that early as well. I think maybe the bigger issue is the amount of armor and weapons in their games.

The only problem with Morrowind's start, is it didn't teach you anything. Overall though, I loved that you were given a stipend of gold, and directed to the shop. It gives a better pretense for opening a ton of options to the player, both in quality and quanitity. You can squander all your gold on one, higher-quality item, or, you can buy a whole mess of lower-quality items.

Yeah i agree with this, you should start in your pants only!

My concern is how the story starts.. sure, you are about to be executed and you start with nothing. The thing is.. Esbern helps you escape somehow and rescues you? So.. there might be fighting which means dead guards.. which means possible early guard loot. I think as long as they handle it like Oblivion did with Renault's sword and whatnot it should be okay. I know that I could not loot the armor off of Renault so hopefully that is how it will be.

I'd like it the Morrowind way. Whatever pitiful clothing you had in you, a sorry piece of knife and whatever useless junk you can steal from that census and excise office and now you're good to go you worthless scum! Oh— don't forget to check the barrel.

This may sound ridiculous, but Todd said in an interview that dragons could pick people up... We don't know how Esbern saves us exactly, do we? Whilst that is unlikely, I kinda doubt we'll get good armour at the very start.

No, I know that what I say is somewhat speculative. At the same time Dragonborn are Dragon Hunters so I don't see a dragon saving you . If dragons pick npc's up and nom on them I would be happy to see that. I could find myself laughing at that.

Yeah, I remember when me and my cousin played Morrowind, we would be afraid of every creature we came across, especially the dreaded...mudcrab. Yes that was the most scariest thing for us, for the pure fact that you could NEVER hit it.

I know I just posted but I just had to reply to yours because that was too awesome. The mudcrabs were my first enemy encounter in any elder scrolls game EVER. I didn't play before Morrowind and they scared the crap out of me. The first mob that I had trouble with were those damn scribs! They paralyzed you while attacking and would just nibble at your shins while you sit there like a statue. They were annoying. Cliff Racers were annoying too.

Well that was only if you had the expansions loaded for Morrowind. I usually waited to load the DLC's until later because quite a few times when I started a new character (which I did a lot of) I might rest after fighting a few things (like the mudcrabs and those evil slaughterfish) and get attacked with less than half health by those damned guys. Was kind of annoying, but you are right, the armor they had sold for quite a bit.

I figure Skyrim will handle it just fine. OB did it pretty well though early on you can get a good magic mace from the "unfriendly competition" quest at 1st level.

Well, they don't even have to be saving you. P: They could just be looking for a snack or trying to wipe out their enemy, and then Esbern saves you from the dragon.. P: