It is kind of wonky that you gain "infamy" for things people supposedly shouldn't know that you've done because you've been super sneaky.



What? Sheds-His-Tail isn't an anti-hero, he's just a coward.
Still gets the job done and has heroic intentions, he's just kind of a wuss.

Exactly. They might as well be the morality police.

Plus, not so much evil options since I think they are more of a given in TESV (I'm sure they will integrate them into TESV because of what they did in Fallout 3), but neutral and morally grey options.

One example of a possible premise:

Cliche Fantasy premise: Save kid and take to mommy or kill kid or ignore.

Morally Ambiguous premise: Kid runs away from home because abusive parents, ect. Parents are very poor and need kid to work. You can save the kid and the parents will get desperate and maybe steal/kill people and get arrested or starve. You can return the kid and keep the parents from desperation but kid will be in bad household. You can give the kid/parents money, but the parents maybe abandon the kid or spend money on skooma or moon sugar. You can save the kid and give the parents money, but the parents might waste the money or maybe try to find you and get back their kid or both. Or maybe the kid leads you into an ambush by bandits on purpose either by you following him or him telling you where his "parents" are. Or you can ignore the problem and maybe more bad stuff happens. Or kill the kid or the parents or both. What should you do? Nobody knows!

I love moral ambiguity in games!

your right mages shoud have a normal/low Strength and Endurance.
By low i mean still good for real armor and weapons just thay get Fatique a bit qicker.


a constent attack spell that drains Magicka and is cast for as long as you hold the button down.

and crossbows and throwing weapons

Good call.

Hell you could even have that for the "big bad" of the game. I mean what's more interesting, "defend the land against the army of evil" OR "DECIDE which side you think has the better reason for all this". A "Good vs Evil" story is easy, one that actually makes you think about your decision is hard, but it's WORTH it.

how cool would this be?
ok so it would have to be like a triggered questline or something...and only have probly a handful of quests...
so you run into this talking skeleton, whos name is Ash or something similar. and hes either missing his right hand, or its replaced by a bound, or mechanical dwemer guantet or something like that. he has a bunch of cheezy dialog.u know lame but funny one liners. any way he sends u on these quest to find a secret book. once u get the book u have to find perform a ritual of some sort. to send him back to his own time/world/dimension, or whatever. and for a reward u get this really cool artifact. its a magic wand, or small/short staff. it shoots fireballs, its in the shape of, or resembles a sawed off shotgun, keyword "resembles". and its called boomstick.

haha yes. i did just watch army of darkness. and i do think this would be interesting and fun to throw into TES5, as sort of an easter egg quest or something like that.
anybody else agree?

I want the rally spell to be useful for once, I'd like to be involved in several battles throughout the game and when morale gets low and my people start deserting me I'd cast rally and they'd start fighting again at full capacity for a while without the rally spell affecting the enemy.

Same goes for the opposite version of that spell (forgot the name), when I cast that the enemy should start to lose morale and some of them desert.

Stephen.

Demoralize?

And either way, I think there should be an addition of really big battles in the game. I mean, when too many people targeted you or a NPC, new people would stop attacking and just stand there.

That way, we can effectively use Demoralize and Rally!

After playing a lot of Dawn of War I think we totaly need a faction with extreme followers of the nine.

The kind that thinks 99% of the world is tainted and wants to purge it all.

You mean like an anti-hero, right?





EXACTLY. Or even have the option to play each side against each other for your own personal benefit. Or just not take sides but be forced to do something for your own sake. That's what more RPGs need!

I'm not sure you understand the concept of "anti-hero." Nor is your definition quite accurate.

The anti-hero isn't simply a character who lack heroic qualities, but rather the anti-hero is a character which rejects heroic values/morality/ethics but is still a character we the reader/player can empathize/sympathize with. He is the protagonist of the story, though if the point of view were flipped, he could just as easily be the antagonist.

He isn't the "flawed hero" (like Sheds-His-Tail) he is the opposite of the hero. He will lie and steal to get what he wants, he will maim and kill the achieve his ends. If these desires and ends happen to benefit those around him, it's by no fault of his own because he's only looking out for himself. He's the character who only fights the villain in the story because said villain stands as possible competition to his own bid for world take over.

Sheds-His-Tail is the "flawed hero." He's a good character who simply isn't all that brave. He wants to do what is right, he wants to be a hero, and he's constantly at war with himself over whether or not any one cause is worth risking his life for, because he's afraid of pain/loss/death.

Some popular examples:
Gollum
Han Solo (pre-edit; when he shot first)
Arthas Menthil
Lucifer (yup, the devil)
etc.

I think it works best when you made the decisions in a way that no outcome feels "wrong" just because the game TELLS you it was wrong but only because YOU think it wasn't the best way to chose. Killing a insane mass murderer, really no question, killing somebody who only robs people because it's the only way he can feed his family... not so easy anymore.
That's another reason why NPCs simply need more personality, if I'd sneak up on a bandit camp at night while they sit around the fire, sing song to pass the time or tell stories about their lives or how they hope to make it yet another day or, hell, even if they feel bad about what they do but see no other alternative. That would add a LOT more depth instead of having them walking sign posts.

I agree. Reminds me of Mass Effect where I didn't intend for that to happen, but it did. I got half paragon and renegade points, but I felt that part couldn't really be defined as good or evil.



Ah, reminds me of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. But yeah, that would be a lot better. They should go beyond good and evil.



Can be either.



That is an antihero.



All antiheros.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihero

A flawed hero might be like a diet antihero.

"Antiheroes differ from Tragic heroes because a tragic hero is still primarily heroic but with a major tragic flaw, while an antihero's flaws are more prominent than their heroic qualities."

From the same link. They use the word "Tragic" I use "Flawed." Regardless, there is a distinct difference between the "tragic/flawed hero" and the "anti-hero."

That said, I think this would go better in the "Do you like playing the hero" thread.

Usually a tragic hero dies because of their flaw.

Tragedies usually end in something really bad happening. (obviously)

Brutus from William Shakespeare's play "Julius Caesar" for example, believed in everything that everybody told him about himself. He was very gullible, and very vulnerable to flattery, in the end, it was his downfall, or what caused his downfall, anyway.

Anyway!

I like the idea of being able to choose at key points in the main quest, so it branches off into different possibilities.

Sheds-His-Tails story isn't over.

Which is why "Anti-Hero" might be a better description for him. It doesn't mean he's evil, just means he's not your typical hero, nothing wrong with that. I have a particular character who should logically be spending more times in the Shivering Isles (if you catch my drift) she's pretty much a kleptomaniac. She'll steal spoons, bowls, forks, coins, books, weapons, armor, anything she can get her hands on, but she'll only take 1 thing from a house. If there's something shiny that sparks her interest the owner can be sure they won't have it for very long.

But she's also very kind when it all comes down to it, she just lacks the honor of a typical hero. She's also very apathetic at times, and she doesn't help everybody that comes running to her. An anti-hero just means your character is a bit more human, a bit easier to sympathize with.

I've also got a villainous character who's the exact opposite of a hero, but he isn't an anti-hero, he's a villain. :]

But anyway, I think we should get back on topic. Anybody else have some innovative ideas?

I was thinking caravan travel (real-time), acrobatic skills, and more alchemical ingredient affects. As well as more artifacts placed around the in-game world, and more noticeable seasons.

True. Paradise Falls is also a good example, and the whole Megaton-Tenpenny Tower quest (being vague in case not everyone has played it). Fallout 3 had a lot of decent stuff which they'll hopefully integrate into TESV like more voice actors and the possibility of making your own weapons, i know it's not the same as forging a sword or whatever but i might lead to something cool. Character customization was a lot better in Fallout for like numerous hairstyles and real beards not just shading.

You could also get a few followers which was nice. even though he didn't talk i got quite attached to Dogmeat, but i'd like to have some background quests for any possible followers
(though not if they're anything like the Adoring fan lol) like in Dragon Age for example, you got to interact a fair bit with your party members and you got the feeling they were actually there for something rather than just following you blindly.
you also got interesting background quests which if you completed would give your followers bonuses to their attributes

See, and that definition just doesn't work for me; it's far too broad. It essentially turns every character who isn't Hercules or John Galt into an anti-hero.

"Anti" essentially means opposite, not "almost." An anti-hero is the opposite of a hero, not an "almost-hero." Additionally, I don't see the "tragic-hero" as necessarily ending in his own demise. Sheds-His-Tail is tragic because a number of people whom he cared about have suffered because of his inability to act, because he takes on responsibility and then loses his nerve. . . He saw the Oblivion Gate outside Kvatch, and he went the other way until he was feeling a bit more confident; realisticly, that would have been bad for alot of people.

I guess in this respect we simply agree to disagree. I prefer my definitions to be a little more definitive than that, you don't; and that's okay by me.

I'm just vague by heart, and I was just trying to make a compromise. :shrug:

But I was going to add that a tragic hero can also hurt those around them, but that moment's sort-of flown away now.

So, what if you get the option to act like that in TES:V? If you don't do something within a time limit, bad things happen. I don't mean "5 minutes or the world explodes!" I mean, like if it was in Oblivion, if you waited too long to close a gate, daedra poured out.

That would be great, I would like to see a game in which the story progressed in some direction even if you didn't act.
The kicker here is that the plot would probably have to involve something a little less threatening than the end of the world as we know it; that way after 25 hours of not doing anything your screen doesn't just go white and GAME OVER (cause the bad guys nuked the world).

But certain time-sensitive points in the story which could go in a number of directions depending on how you reacted to them would be great. Maybe you don't get Martin out of the city, maybe after some time the soldiers of Kvatch give it a shot, lose dozens of men trying to rescue those in the chapel and Martin is horribly wounded (but alive), then you end up on a quest to find him a cure, or you have to heal him somehow, or find someone who can, or whatever.

And they actually give the soldiers unique personalities and maybe they had loved ones that mourn their loss, like you walk back into the encampment and that's the day of the scheduled burial and you're like:

So then you have incentive to do the things on time, or else.

The tricky part would be balancing this with the idea that you don't want the MQ to be too pushy.
You don't want to be forced into doing things constantly, which is why you'd have triggered events which are time-sensitive and someone would let you know. "We need to find a healer, a good one. Without attention this man will die in a day, maybe two at the most. Try Cyrodiil, there's a famous cleric there named _________ seek him out. Hurry!"

But then other portions of the game could be more relaxed.

:nod:

"We need you to get this scroll interpreted, we'll be awaiting your return."

And if you don't come back for a while "Where have you been?!"

That sounds good. It can't be a save-the-world-from-imminent-destruction quest though (like in Oblivion).

Also, it should at first be motivated by self-interest by the player, then evolve into something bigger in which the player may choose to take part, pick sides, work only for self-interest, or not participate. Either way, that stage should move forward with or without the player (but the outcome will depend on the player actions or inaction).

I would like to see your character have a Reputation. And I don't mean Fame or Infamy. I think it would be cool when your character gets to be a certain level and/or have a high skill level for people to surrender to you. Using my character from Oblivion as an example; when my dude walks into a cave, some no-named NPC bandit should know that he won't beat him in a fight. When your character becomes a "Master" Swordsman, it should mean something. I always envision my character being the Miyamoto Musashi of Tamriel when he gains a skill level of 100 in Blades. When someone like that enters a bar, you don't pick a fight with them. Of course, you should then have the option of accepting their surrender or not.