There's nothing inherently wrong with having these, but they should serve a purpose. Witcher 1's 'romance' cards are a great example of how not to include this kind of thing. Mass Effect's romances are much better, though I would like something more complex. It shouldn't simply be, "say the nice things in each conversation and you get a girlfriend/boyfriend." I feel like your overall behavior should factor into it, for one, and I don't like how the six scene is like a reward. A Dance with Rogues is also heavy on the six, like Witcher, but most of it does serve a purpose as one of several means to an end. Still not anywhere near perfect, and a lot of it is clearly there just to be sixy, but more justifiable than the cards.

Oblivion was rated M too. It was originally rated T, but it was re-rated after the ESRB became aware of certain things in the game that they didn't original know (it wasn't because of nvde mods, as many people like to believe; it was some of the scenes later in the DB questline that actually caused it to get re-rated, Lucien's torture and death, I think).

How is it any more childish in video games than in other forms of media? There are literary and film classics that have six and nudity, and there's nothing childish about them. It's part of human existence. It can be handled childishly or maturely, but isn't inherently one or the other.

Yeah I'm going to agree here, it feels like Skyrim desperately tried to show how dark and edgy it was, even the NPCs acted like they had a stick up their arses. I always found that childish and could never take any game that did that serious (dark and gritty over saturate the market too). And then there's games like Divinity: Original Sin, tons of tongue and cheek humor and I actually found the story to be interesting and could take it seriously.

I always found this strange, but it's true. I saw most shows that are aimed at advlts to be nothing but shock humor, tons of six and gore everywhere. It's why a lot of advlts watch cartoons like Steven Universe, it's far more mature and does not talk down on us, I'll take character development, talk on individuality and all that good stuff over six and gore any day.

Part of the 'gritty' reputation Skyrim has comes from its main NPCs and guilds being very grey, but in a different way than Morrowind or Oblivion.

Morrowind had a legitimately 'moral' way to handle most quests. The guilds and NPCs were a mix; some were cynically trying to get ahead, some were aloof, some were trying to behave as morally as possible while recognizing that they would have to break the law, and some were trying to be moral and legal. One could minimize violence, fight corruption and slavery (even in House Telvanni!), bring people together, yada yada yada. In Oblivion, things were black and white enough that your character could do unmitigated good if they chose. You could save people's lives and fix their problems without second-guessing your actions.

In Skyrim, though, it seems very hard to play an 'objectively*' good character. Every action has some unforeseen dark consequence. Both sides of the Civil War are tainted in some way, you have to choose between the Blades and the Greybeards during the main quest, etc...

I don't think that makes Skyrim more mature. It makes things a little less believable when every choice is grey; there should be times when you must choose between a [censored] and a turd sandwich, yes, but there should also be times when you can have a lasting positive effect on the world.

P.S. Breaking Bad was mature as balls. The grittiness and swearing didn't make it that way; the portrayal of a good man's slow descent into reckless evil did. The idea that life can twist us into stranger shapes than we can predict, and that we are simultaneously at the mercy of and responsible for our situations is a tough pill to swallow.

Let's be real, Adventure Time is very mature (and very amazing), but the things that make it mature cannot in any way be considered escapist. Emotional maturity doesn't mean everybody is enraged or depressed all of the time, but it does mean that both the good and the bad parts of human existence are reckoned with and put into a context that better helps us to live fuller lives.

There is a way for art to immaturely engage in mature themes, which is why most video game six is godawful. Killing without consequence is not mature. Boob plate armour is not mature. It's been mentioned before that angsty clown assassins are not mature. Real killers would probably become emotionally detached from their work (or, more realistically, they would start out that way).

*I think everybody can guess what I mean when I use that word

I think Skyrim had the opposite problem Oblivion had... Oblivion other than the Dark Brotherhood forces you to be a Goodie-Two shoes-unless you somehow never quest in it. I think the devs perhaps overreacted to how you had to be a goodie-two shoes in Oblivion, and went overboard, forcing you to be more well, immoral than in Oblivion. Yet in Morrowind, it imo wasn't as Goodie-Two shoes as Oblivion, yet you had more freedom to do good in quests than you did in Skyrim.

One thing Morrowind had going for it I think was more complicated morality.

Yeah. In Morrowind you could be good if you tried. Or you could be amoral, or evil.

In Oblivion you were often made to be good. The Thieves Guild was 'good', which seems a little ridiculous to me.

In Skyrim it seems like they tried to counteract that by making everything grey, which is just as simplistic as making everything bad or everything good.

Exactly. Take Ranis Athris's Mages Guild quests. If you do everything she tells you to do, you're going to rack up a pretty high body count--but every single one of those quests have an alternative where no one (or at least no one innocent) dies. The Fighter's Guild, as I understand it, has a complete alternate pathway to bypass all the corruption. I've played a number of character's who did their best to fight the corruption in House Hlaalu--or you can go along with it and still advance.

I think Skyrim was shooting for moral complexity, but by making everything grey they just succeeded in inspiring apathy. With the civil war, in particular, I would have really liked a "feed both sides to dragons" option.

I felt exactly the same way... In Morrowind you could... Keep a morally clean faction clean, or make a corrupt faction progress past it's current corrupt state... But then Oblivion just seems to be goodie-two shows factions with the exception of the DB, and Skyrim factions seem to be leaning closer to corrupt than good, and there's nothing you can do about it. I do wish I could've experienced the Stormcloaks vs Imperial Legion quest line as like, an individual renegade, or a renegade with a few followers. Two roughly equally corrupt factions that you can't redeem, are just as boring and as two goodie two shoes factions, or two totally evil factions, or a TES game with one evil faction and the rest being good (Oblivion).

I might've liked the Stormcloaks a lot more if I could throughout the quest, make the Stormcloaks treat non-Nords who aren't in the Imperial Legion as well and as respectfully as they treat their fellow Nords, or I might've liked the Imperial Legion a lot more if you could convince the Imperial Legion to only go after Stormcloaks and to not punish all Talos worshipers. Either way they were corrupt factions that couldn't be improved. Oblivion had a similar problem, where in the Mages guild the GAME DECIDED FOR ME that I was gonna be against necromancy no matter what. Or the Thieves guild decided for me, in Oblivion I was gonna be the type of compassionate thief with morals, as being the greedy heartless type of thief wasn't an option.

I guess a lot of people liked it, but for me the Oblivion Thieves Guild questline went downhill fast from the moment the Gray Fox showed up. I think the Thieves Guild should have been kept non-violent, but I would have preferred that the Robin Hood stuff be left to the Bal Molagmer--which I liked, it just shouldn't have been the whole Guild.

The entire Oblivion Thieves Guild was horribly thought out and poorly written. It was ridiculous that they put such a big emphasis on how killing people would get you kicked out of the guild and then when you start taking orders from the Grey Fox he just lets you kill everyone, allowing you to run his quests like Fighters Guild quests. That he lets you do that also makes him come across as self-centered and self-serving since he's fine with innocents getting slaughtered if it provides personal gain for him, but we're supposed to root for him since he's been cursed and misses his wife. He does not care if you slaughter a monastery full of blind priests because he considers the job important enough, but he's the only one who benefits from it. The Thieves Guild also runs an entire district of the capital and is routinely hired by clients across the entire province, but only one member of the government believes they might exist while everyone else mocks him. That was particularly jarring after the guards in Morrowind would give you directions to the local guild hangout. Sure, there's not a turf war where the guild is the least worst option, but the entire province knows about the guild; that nobody in the next province over believes they exist despite being just as open is absurd.

I actually found the Thieves Guild in Oblivion to be among the worst factions in the series... I've never liked the whole "Thieves don't kill people" thing, and always thought it was a horribly one dimensional look at what is, at its core, a criminal organization. The only quest-line i can think of that was worse was the Dark Brotherhood, which was by fat the silliest, most poorly written bit of nonsense populated by boring characters in all of TES.

That said... I like how Skyrim handled it. Sure, everything grey, but the world is grey. Having very clear good and evil options is somewhat shallow to me. Even the most righteous crusader for justice ends up screwing up, or getting forced into a situation where the is no perfect, shining outcome. Good and Evil aren't objective things, nor are right or wrong, and i personally have a hard time getting into games which address it that way, even if they offer middle options.

Which, to tie things back into the general point... Is something that is problematic with most so called 'advlt' media. They tend to have clear, black and white stories. Heroes and Villains, good vs evil, black versus white. Good guys do good things, and bad guys do bad things, and even when they try to give some depth of motivation to the bad guys it's centred around outdated or unrelateable ideologies that very, very few can sympathise with.

A perfect example of this latter problem is the Wild Hunt in The Witcher 3. They're racial supremacists, mass murderers with a genocidal streak, hedonists, rapists... Everything about them smacks of 'Evil'. But then they drop the 'oh, they're just trying to save their civilization' ball like it suddenly excuses all that. That's not adding moral depth or character to it, that's a cop-out. Compare that to the Empire vs Stormcloak discussion.

I LIKE the grey. It is, after all, the Grey Maybe. And that type of moral ambiguity, subjectivity and humanity IS a very advlt way of doing things.

Agreed. In my head, I just sort of believe that all of those guards know exactly where the Guild is located and who they are; they just pretend otherwise. Otherwise, I have to say that the heart of the Empire has the most incompetent police force in Tamriel. Of course, these are also the people who allowed their emperor and the entire royal family to be assassinated, an illegitimate heir get by without notice, and a full-force Daedra invasion happen--so that might be true.

Of course there should be grey--along with black and white, all of which exist in the real world. Skyrim's problem is that there is only grey. For comparison, Morrowind is also a pretty morally grey situation: you have a well-intentioned mad god who wants to turn everyone into monsters to share his divinity on the one side, and on the other you have selfish gods who may very well have murdered their compatriot in order to attain power but who have done a lot of good for the people they claimed godhood over. It's hard to say anyone is good in that situation, but it's also hard to say who is the lesser evil--after all, one side is evil by deed but the other evil by intent. However, I think we can all agree that regardless of his intentions it's pretty black and white that Dagoth Ur is evil; it's a little bit greyer as to whether the Tribunal is evil. Conversely, it is difficult to say that the Tribunal Temple as a whole is evil--not in the face of counter evidence like Mehra Milo and Tuls Valen.

My point is that there should be a spectrum of black and white and grey. Oblivion was all white except for the Dark Brotherhood; Skyrim was all grey. Morrowind was mostly grey but there was also black and there was also white--which, in my experience, is the way the real world works as well.

I can agree with that. Particularly since TES functions more on a 'Choose your own adventure' dynamic, rather than a set story, having a spectrum across various story-lines gives something for everyone.

Morrowind had this pretty well explained. As long as the guild didn't kill people, the guards were generally willing to let them be since the alternative was to open the door for the Camonna Tong to take over local crime, and the Camonna Tong are very murderous and even more xenophobic than the rest of the Dunmer. The no killing policy also made them look better to potential clients who would be more willing to hire them than if they could wind up as an accessory to murder. Basically, it was good PR.

For all people raved (and continue to rave, judging by the posts on the TES6 threads) about Oblivion's guilds, I thought they were all pretty bad. For the things that haven't been talked about: The Mages Guild ignored necromancy's grey areas in the lore and turned all necromancers into the kind of stupidly evil people who would eat a puppy alive to prove they were worse than their friends to justify Hannibal Traven outlawing necromancy (a clear overstep of his authority under Imperial law that should have had him immediately removed from his position). Traven himself was an idiot who seemed to rely on circular logic for any decision regarding necromancers and necromancy while the entire guild talked about how great he was. Not to mention what they did to the King of Worms.

Furthermore, the Fighters Guild story line requires that the Imperial government be completely oblivious to the Blackwood Company's operations, which include massacring Imperial citizens and wiping entire settlements off the map in the heart of the Empire. Vilena Donton, like Traven, is not a particularly good leader; Maglir should have been fired long before he could quit and any decision remotely related to her son is extremely boneheaded. She had some moments of competence and even good and sound judgment, but not enough to justify her continued leadership.

Lastly, while I understand complaints about New Vegas's NCR-Legion conflict being too omnipresent, Oblivion went in the complete opposite direction and had absolutely nobody outside of the main quest pay the slightest attention to the apocalyptic Daedric invasion happening just outside of town. As bad as the Blackwood Company is, how are they the Fighters Guild's priority? For that matter, why are the Blackwood Company taking these contracts at all when they could be improving their reputation and keeping their leadership alive by fighting the Daedra? Why doesn't the Empire hire either of them for help? Why is anyone fighting each other, starting a wine collection, or wondering where their potatoes went when portals to the Deadlands are opening up in their yards? Oblivion's quest lines are like several different games that have nothing to do with each other. By contrast, Morrowind's quest lines were all intertwined in some way and Skyrim's Thieves Guild had some interaction with the College and the Dark Brotherhood had some interaction with the Thieves Guild.

...

Anyway, another example of a "children's" show that handles mature topics better than the average advlt's show is Avatar. The creators don't seem to have originally anticipated such a large advlt fanbase at first, but the mature themes picked up more in the second season and continued through the end of the sequel series, always being handled in ways that both children and advlts can enjoy despite going to some rather dark places.

My main issue with "gray morality" is that it tends to be treated as "dark gray". Even within the spectrum of gray, there can be patches of bright lightness or deep darkness, which tends to be forgotten.


The problem with games and media that tries to be "gray" is that it tends to encourage a bait-and-switch design mentality, where the quest/story has to portray an option as "good" or "bad", and then flip it around on you by making the apparently "good" option cause unforeseeable "bad" things to happen, and vice versa. Alternatively, it causes designers to make every option svcky, so no matter what you choose, it'll do something you don't want (even though you can think of alternative options to get around it, but the game simply doesn't give you the option because "gray morality"). For sure there should be the occasional instance where there simply is no good option and you just need to make the best of a bad situation, but more often than not there should options that, while not necessary holistically "good", you can still stand behind as being "correct for you". Like in Skyrim, the choice to spare Paarthurnax is one that I can make easily, even though you can make a valid case that he should be punished for his past crimes. Sparing him is not necessarily "good", but it's an option that I can pick in confidence and stand behind. Conversely there are a number of conversations that fall into the bait-and-switch trap, where you try to say something nice or positive, and you get chided for it even though there's no reason for a negative reaction, while saying something rude or harsh will unexpectedly illicit a more cordial response.

Well said and a point that bugs me to no end. Dragonborn was the worst offender for me. Scooting along the quest and suddenly, the choice. Kill someone or stop the questline. Too many quests have this choice towards the end (looking at you Blades vs Graybeards).

Gray is fine and dandy. So is black and even white. But the best is when all of them are available for contrast and separate ways to play. By this I mean in the game, not in the same questline. Dark Brotherhood should be black. Thieves Guild should be gray.

I'd also like the world to be different shades of black-grey-white-purple. It would also be great if you were able to influence the factions more.

That's one complaint people had about Thief (2014). Basically there's a lot more swearing and the word "taffer" from previous games is rare.



Fun fact: while I was googling about that, I found out that "tafiir" means thief in TES's dragon language That's a nice reference.

I liked the rivalry between the more sophisticated Tamriel-wide professional organization and the local criminal organization, that was more thug-like. It would require a lot more work, but having more joinable factions that were in the same sphere of business, but with different "approaches" to situations would help with the world being more black-grey-white.

That's a problem when the main quest is too prevalent or end-of-the-world-y. For example, Fallout 3's MQ was too urgent. "I'd love to help, but I need to find my father! *After finding your father* I'd love to help, but I need to stop the main villain!" *After stopping the main villain* "Now I can turn my attention to those less urgent que- what do you mean, game over?" Morrowind handled it pretty well. Sure, Dagoth Ur is up to something big, but you don't know it in the beginning.

The worst offender for me was Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2. In that game, once we reach the city of Neverwinter we cannot leave until we choose one of two options: become a "Good Guy" or become a "Bad Guy." If you don't join either the stereotypical forces of "Good" or the stereotypical forces of "Evil" you cannot progress any farther in the game.

Twice I tried tried to play that game and twice I could get no farther into the game than the City of Neverwinter. I just could not force my gals to act out of character simply in order to conform to Obsidian's shallow notions of "good" and "evil." To this day I still don't know what happens in the rest of the game, and I don't want to know.

They did catch a pretty good amount of flak for forcing you to choose between a Chaotic Evil faction and a Lawful Good faction, particularly since Obsidian is usually more complex when it comes to morality. KOTOR 2 is an example of Obsidian having plenty of various shades of grey, but also clear heroes villains. In NWN2, you can be kind of corrupt if you join the watch, but there's not many options to be good for the thieves. Make a character that fits one of the factions well, like a paladin for the watch, then try running through the game. It stops being important after you get into Blacklake, though, and is a relatively small portion of the game. Mask of the Betrayer had a wide spectrum of morality and was great fun, but the original campaign does provide some background that helps to understand what's going on.

I was extremely disappointed with how Oblivion went so hardcoe anti-necromancy. Not because I have any particular interest in necromancy, but in Morrowind we're told the Dunmer are regarded as backwards and superstitious for their hardline stance on necromancy, which is considered a legitimate art in the rest of the Empire. I would have thought that would make it natural to have openly practicing necromancers going about legitimate business in Cyrodiil, if for no other reason than to underscore that the Dunmer are regarded as weird for their hatred of it.

That sounds so out of character for any other Obsidian game I've played. You're not the first person I've heard decry NWN2, though.

Kreia is single-handedly the reason why KotOR2 is one of my favorite games in existence. Even though I don't agree with her most of the time, she's so morally and philosophically complex that I find her absolutely fascinating. And Sarah Kestelman played the role magnificently.

Well, I can't stand KotOR 2 either (can you tell I'm not an Obsidian fan?). But I do admit they did a phenomenal job of writing her character and, as you say, Kestelman did a wonderful job voicing the character. I think I'd place Kreia in my list of top five RPG characters of all time.

I would as well. For me, I'd say she tops that list unless unofficial characters are allowed, in which case she's beat out by Julan Kaushibael.

This time, when I read the thread title, I suddenly heard the beauty of Morrowind's theme transformed into a 70's porm flick "whuck-a whuck-a Bhow Bhow" kind of theme

I need more coffee in me...

I think somewhere between Morrowind and Daggerfall would be best. Just ensure that these themes are there for a reason. One thing I like about Morrowind in this respect is that it presents well defined values as opposed to either sticking with the modern consensus or going for generically conservative olde worlde ones. These HBO dramas have a similar strength in this way. They show peoples who accept slavery, brutality, racism, sacrifice and so forth. I've never seen The Sopranos, but it sounds interesting to see how a such family deals with the things they do and it's probably a bit more nuanced than what we've seen of the Dark Brotherhood.

Nords are more comfortable with violence and Dunmer are less comfortable with necromancy (unless it's done their way). Some races would be more comfortable with open sixual expression than others. And that necessitates presenting advlt themes here and there. But as with necromancy, not all such themes need be the ones that raise the game's age rating beyond Teen.

One thing that holds Skyrim back is simply how stingy the game is with choices. In Oblivion, you had hero questlines and villain questline. Skyrim tends push the two together. That being said, I definitely think that NPC's should try to trick the player character sometimes and it shouldn't be obvious every time. Early on, I saw players complain about how they ended up on Daedric quests by accident rather than seeking them out at shrines, but I like sneaky, proactive daedra.

And personally, what I consider "dark" is Dishonored. Certainly not Skyrim. The Witcher basically starts off in a plague ridden village with a load of homicidal religious fanatics, then it moves on to the seedy part of Vizima. But there's a lot of hope and cheer in the franchise when you get into it. From what I've seen of it and TES so far, The Witcher presents the more vivid image of High Rock. For example, I love the Ladies of the Wood and that's pretty much an up close and personal look at the likes of hagravens. And the courtiers know intrigue as well as they do in Wayrest.

it wasn't quite that straightforward.. if you chose the city watch, you had plenty of options to play as a corrupt cop, and if you chose the thieves guild you had plenty of options to be a "robinhood"..



as for further in the game.. Act II wasn't bad, but once you get to act III the plot is completely identical to Dragon Age: Origins, only with all the names swapped..