If they can not think of anything way better then I say stick with the tradition. I don't know about daggerfall but in Arena, Oblivion, and Morrowind you start as a prisoner. You know why you are in prison in Arena though...

Boat, boat, boat! I loved Morrowind's beggining, leaving the boat and gazing that giant Sylt Strider!

They should have you fight alongside someone in a prison for a little bit, have a wall blown out letting you escape, then having you choose whether you want to keep helping the guy or cut the tutorial short and escape then and there.

The prisoner opening's changed in meaning somewhat across the series. In Arena and Daggerfall, you had to be particularly conscientious of your starting character build or you'd have a lot of difficulty in combat at lower levels. The dungeon was meant to serve as an open sandbox for you to test the viability of your character, as well as to play around with combat mechanics and what spells (if any) you possess. While that still was the case in Oblivion, it seemed like more of a gimmick to mobilize the plot than a genuinely necessary dungeon crawl. Regardless, it's just one trivial bit of the Elder Scrolls tradition that I'd hate to see go. It would be great, however, if it wasn't as forced upon you. My entire idea for the opening of Skyrim goes like:

You're a prisoner of war (that way you needn't worry about an ambiguous criminal backstory) being held in a fortress or something in the midst of an assumed civil war or at least a minor siege. The guards, falling back, release you with the opportunity to help repel the invaders to win your freedom. That, or they're outright killed in front of your cell and you just loot the key. From there, you can either familiarize yourself with the game by fighting through a tutorial area, or you can just make a mad dash for the exit and be done with it. Something along those lines.

Arena, Morrowind, and Oblivion all start with you being a prisoner in the Imperial City Prison.

Daggerfall is the only one where you start as a "prisoner," only in the sense that you are trapped in a dungeon and need to get out. This is the route I prefer as it leaves your character's background open for.. things that don't involve being a criminal.

Yeah, it's pretty much tradition by now. But there's plenty of room for creativity. Maybe you start as a prisoner of war and you have to escape with your fellow POWs Great Escape style.

TRADITION WILL PREVAIL! And tradition states we start as a prisoner. Simple and it's worked quite well for 4 games. Maybe 5. I dunno how the cellphone games worked

If I must be a prisoner to start the game, and I have a feeling I must as it is tradition, I am really liking the POW idea.

I'm sure we'll end up as another prisoner, no sense in breaking tradition.

A prisoner in a castle under siege would be good, it lets you use your imagination for why your char was captured:
- Captured in Battle
- Captured whilst your village was being looted
- Captured as a Bandit or another crime
- Enemy spy captured
- etc.

Starting off in prison seems to be a bit of an Elder Scrolls tradition. I mean, in Arena, as I understand it, you started in prison, in Morrowind, you didn't begin in prison, but that's because you begin when you're just getting off the boat that brought you to Morrowind to be released, and yes, you're being released from prison. In Oblivion, you start the game in prison and get the chance to escape when the Emperor is escorted by the Blades along an escape route that happens to pass through your cell. I'm seeing a clear trend here, the only game that really seems to break it is Daggerfall, which has you starting in a dungeon, and that's certainly closer to starting off as a prisoner than starting off on a farm or something, seeing as it still involves you being trapped in an unpleasant place and needing to get out. If anything, in terms of the actual impact on gameplay, Morrowind breaks the tradition more than Daggerfall because you never had to fight your way through a dungeon to reach freedom, you just needed to walk off the boat, talk to people, fill out forms, and then the game dropped you in the middle of a town. And I wouldn't be surprised if Skyrim keeps the tradition, but obviously, we can't be sure until Bethesda tells us how the game will start.

I'd say that aside from being a matter of tradition. I'd say beginning the game as a prisoner has a few advantages, first, it allows you to start off with nothing, as your possessions would have been taken away from you when you when you were arrested, and the fact that your skills are low might have been caused by your forgetting some things while in prison due to having gone for a long time without using them, kind of like the mechanic that's already in the games when you do time. Plus, as long as the game doesn't explain why you're in prison or what you did before getting arrested, it really doesn't force a specific background on the player. Some would argue, of course, that it indicates that your player must have been a criminal, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. Sure, maybe the player is in prison for something like theft or murder, but at least in Morrowind and Oblivion, it was really left up to your imagination. Maybe the whole thing was just a misunderstanding, maybe you got framed by someone, or maybe you got a little too drunk and did something you would later regret once you were sober again, assuming you remembered it, or maybe you were just trying to be polite and pick up the strawberry you knocked on the floor. It's really up to you to decide. Now if your character started off as say... a mercenary, it would raise the question as to why you don't at least have basic equipment, and would seem to force some at least minor background on your character. And the best introduction to an Elder Scrolls game, I would say, would succeed in forcing as little backstory upon the player as possible.



That might actually not be a bad idea, depending on where the story goes. Part of what I like about it is that it allows the player the oportunity to skip the tutortial, not like in Oblivion where you had no choice but to go through the prison and sewers.

It would really just be speculation. We have no idea what will happen in the game.

But, starting as a prisoner gives the developers a plausible excuse for the character starting as a full advlt with no skills, no friends, and no material possessions.

I think for the reasons above, they'll do it again.

i think it would be cool if it begins with the main char being born. Cause in the trailer it says dragon born so idk just a cool idea...it may have the chance to work

in video games you need to limit players in the beginning so they can take everything slowly, they do this by dumming down the player or taking away their stuff and I really prefer the latter, which is what Bethesda did in Oblivion and Morrowind

hate Double Post

I think it would be smart to have the PC start as a prisoner, but not in a way that involves you so heavily in the main quest, as oblivion did. Morrowind had the start right: let the player determine their role.

I agree, but there is a difference in that and automatically assigning a background to the player's character that the player may or may not approve of. Being a criminal most of the time breaks with my roleplay, as I'm sure it does with many others'.

In my opinion, Daggerfall handled it perfectly. You're on a boat, you crash your boat, you need to get your bearings and fight your way out of this nice starter dungeon (note: not prison) and then carry on with your business.

I think it's getting old too. If I had written "Skyrim", I would have made the player character a refugee. He or she could then be any race, and fleeing various ethnic conflicts in the former Empire.

Come to think of it, this is like "Dragon Age 2", but hopefully the player character will not be a future Emperor or something. I think that would be a little lame.

Maybe the game starts like you're in your cell and war is raging outside, for whatever reason you're set free to help fight the enemy.

If I lived in Tamriel, I'd purposefully get caught committing crimes to heighten my chances of becoming the next hero.

I don't know, but I have a great idea - Half-Life cutscene style, you are in a prison boat. Depressed prisoners etc. But then you hear about a storm, and the boat starts rocking. Lightning outside, and then, the roof of the boat comes off, revealing a giant dragon who tosses it aside. boat rolling, prisoners screaming, etc. - but then, you wake up.

Part of the boat is creaking, possibly the rudder. You are lying beside it, on an frost-shattered landscape, littered with corpses of the prisoners. You hear a dragon screeching, see it's shape above you, and the screen fades to black.

Then, you hear Nords speaking, and screen fades in. A gruff male Nord is standing above you. He turns to his friends, yells 'we've got a live one!' turns back to you and helps you up.

"There you go, stranger. What's your name?"

Then he takes you back to his town. It transpires that he's part of a hunting party that found your boat, then he asks you what happened, and then stat selection, etc.

This is what you want to do, Bethesda, and you know it. You can have this idea for free

This, it keeps your character more ambiguous.

I like it.

There should also be a Dunmer ranger who tells you "Wake up and smell the ashes, N'wah." (Just kidding about that last.)

This would be a better scenario than another prison, though I also like Stonefrog's ideas above.

I think that you will start off as a prisoner working in a deep mine in Skyrim. There the prisoner hacking at the rock face breaks through into a hidden cavern. He wanders in with just a torch for light, and there finds a sleeping dragon, which he foolishly awakens. The dragon escapes and starts to reap havoc in the surrounding lands, leaving you with a guilty conscience. :facepalm:

If you don't start as a prisoner, I will instantly make a thread here saying that TESV svcks and that I'm wondering when TESVI will be announced.

In all seriousness though, I hope and expect that you start as a prisoner. It's unofficially required in an Elder Scrolls game, the sole exception being Daggerfall.


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