You know, I never laughed once in Skyrim. But in NV (made by Obsidian but still...), even though there was a war going on, I still found some humor in the game. Who can forget a robot who does everything you tell him to and takes your orders very literally!

I had expected some humor in Skyrim but I haven't found it yet in 50-60 hours of my current playthrough.

I have found one funny thing just recently. Check out the "white river watch" cave, a bandit lair off road before you get to the Whiterun Stormcloak camp. The "watcher" at the door, and the book he is reading, have a bit of humor in them. Also fun to sneak and listen to dialogue of the guards outside before engaging, for context.

But for the most part I agree -- waaaay too serious.

Skyrim does tend to take itself way too seriously, but given the context of the lore and what happened within the last 200 years it's understandable.

I dunno. There's lots of things to laugh at with in the game.

The theme song for example. Isn't it cute how they trained all those gorillas to sing?

Seriously, though, it's true. Skyrim takes itself way too seriously, IMO. To the point where all you can do is derive humor with how narmy some things can get.

Well, it is basically the dawn of the end of the kalpa or the world, with Alduin and the Thalmor and all that...

It's technically the apocalypse, both literally and politically, in Oblivion, but it doesn't keep that game from being so dreary that you wonder what the point is.

On TVTropes, there's a trope called http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy, where a work is so dark that the audience stops caring what happens. Skyrim isn't quite on that level, but it does make you wonder what the point in saving the world is sometimes, especially when the game itself insists on you going all Frank Miller just to finish a quest.

Great link! That pretty much sums it up. When it is more fun just riding around Skyrim on your horse looking for new paths through the mountains (and making up your own reasons for doing so) than it is playing the quest lines, yeah, that trope has it nailed.

To say the least. IMO, Bloodmoon was the highlight of MW and the werewolves part of what made that add on great. Forcing ww on a fighter isn't sensible. What has one to do with the other? If you had to have some sort of initiation, a tattoo requirement would have been within the theme of a fighter guild over becoming a demonic character.

I think the issue is also we can't find a side or faction we wish to support. The civil war is a great example of two sides, pick one and so what? It's not like you can feel justified in your choice as both sides are a draw in dark / good.

In quests such as DB or TG, if you join up, you wish to have your faction succeed but how many here really want the DB to succeed at anything but mass suicide? TG is just a bunch of low life thugs who even lack honor among themselves. Main quest? The Blades are still going for vengeance a thousand years after an act (Parthy).

In each faction, there is only the thought to end the dispute by exterminating the other faction. Nobody considers any sort of flexibility to end the conflicts.

Are you playing the game as yourself, or as a completely independent character with separate beliefs and motivations? The world takes all sorts, and there would be people who feel completely justified in siding with either the Empire or Stormcloaks, or in joining the DB or TG. It isn't about me when I play the game, but about the character I'm playing.

I agree with the OP in everything but #6. You can join the guild without becoming a werewolf, and even get access to the smithery which is one of the main reasons to join the guild. If you choose to go further in the questline to become a werewolf, well that's really your choice.

As for joining the TG or DB, yep it's true. You really have to have questionable ethics to join either organization.

Yeah, some of the questlines, especially the MQ and the Civil War quests leave you *very* empty and hollow. The former, you're told that all you did was stave off the inevitable for a few thousand years and no one in Skyrim seems to realizes your heroism. For the latter, you're left wondering what the point of all the fighting was. Now, I get that this was probably exactly what Bethesda was going for. Maybe they were trying to say that sometimes a hero doesn't get to have throngs of praise and extravagant parades in his/her honor. Sometimes there's only so much a hero could do. I get that. Thing is, too much negativity and darkness can make the audience stop giving a damned.

I suppose myself. I hadn't thought of it, but my behavior in a game and in life only varies in what I can do - not what I think is right to do.

I was trying to sum up some of my thoughts as well as those who have added to this thread. Of course, some are all right with any storyline but those aren't chipping in here either - why should they?

I find the comments of the bandits pretty amusing and lots of the flavor stuff makes me chuckle. Skyrim is no laugh riot and could use a few more moments of humor but I don't find it depressing. I do wish there were more choice and definately more good guy choice but that's not the same thing.

Just entering Riften with A new character and the dialogue makes it quite clear to me destroying the thieves guild was going to be part of the plan at some point. I guess it got scrapped

It might add to the experience if you separated your game character from you; there is so much to get out of games like Skyrim if we don't treat our characters as an extension of ourselves, but instead individuals with their own histories, motivations and beliefs. It's their story - where is it leading? What are they going to do? Some of it might make you cringe or reel with horror, some of it will entertain you and excite. My avatar - Alonzo - is an evil character who preys on the minds of others, he's cold and calculated and will not hesitate to exploit anyone he considers vulnerable; he also gets his comeuppence later on. His story is just one interweaved with a number of others.

Bugger, wish I'd stayed away from this post....spoilers!!

I find this an interesting idea, and I do enjoy to role play a bit in the game.

However, for me there is a limit. I find personally I only enjoy playing characters that I still find to be justifiably redeemable personalities. When it gets too creepy or evil, I find myself sqirming inside. I have at times gone on to see where the questlines go -- finishing the DB in Oblivion, for instance. But i would rather have the option to be more honorable and still get a lot out of the game. Playing the evil stuff leaves me feeling sullied inside; it lessens me. We all have the capacity to imagine both the good and evil, but I don't think I personally want to feed or nurture that evil imagination in myself too much.

It is an odd balance, doing role playing. Part of the enjoyment is in playing a character that I myself would never actually be or even really want to be -- for example, in real life, the thought of gutting someone or cutting their heads off is abhorrent. Yet in Skyrim as an embattled PC it works to do that. But part of the enjoyment is also playing a character that I can still identify with -- some aspect of who they are lives in me, at least imaginitvely, so there is a vicarious and cathartic engagement with my characters. But when the character strays too far from my core values, then it is not fun any more -- one part of the balancing act is gone, and I am just left with "yuck." So while I could finish the DB in Oblivion, even though it was undeniably creepy at times, it was still not as stark as the Skyrim DB. In Skyrim, I literally have never made it past the shack. Executing helpless and bound prisoners, regardless of how awful they may be, is just too big a yuck factor for me to enjoy.

For the most part, I just want to play good-leaning characters. I want a world where good wins out in my fantasy play. There is plenty of confusion and grey and ugly in real life. I usually come to a fantasy game, so that I can beat up on the evil and ugly, and have good win out. Sometimes it is interesting to explore the darker storylines; but for me that interest never lasts long, before the "yuck" comes in, and I think, "what the heck amI doing this for?" I didn't start playing a game so I could feel more 'yuck!' I play so I can get away from the yuck that is already abundant IRL.

This explains a lot.

Yeah, like I said, the Elder Scrolls probably isn't the series where you'll get to see every bit of content with a "good" or "evil" character. Aside from the fact that the series attempts to create a realistic world of its own, playing as different characters and exploring the games through different eyes is like the whole draw of it. You know, a roleplaying game. I would LOVE it if there were more options to complete quests and whatnot. (Maven's taken over Riften? Why not just kill her? She's right there! Thieves Guild, too.) But we gots to have essential characters and other dumb things.) It's unreasonable to ask for the Dark Brotherhood to be toned down a bit, though. They're an assassin's guild. They kill people regardless of what they've done. It's meant to be icky and I wouldn't expect most virtuous characters to join it.

I'd rather focus my attention on quest-locked areas that are locked for no apparent reason. Like finding all the Stones of Barenziah or the Dragon Priest Masks or shouts. They have no reason to be locked away aside from the fact that the locations are blocked off to you unless you do a certain questline.

Yes, and I recognize that the Elder Scrolls series is not ever going to be all rosy and goody-goody. Don't get me wrong here, though, I don't really want it to be all rosy and goody-goody, and I don't expect the evil groups like the DB to be really compatible with good characters. What I do want, though, is a world and options in that world that are well developed enough so that PCs have the option to take their characters in directions that they find interesting, and still have enough gameplay content to make that option worthwhile.

And honestly, Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game that has fallen short for me in that department.

Usually, I start off playing a good-ish guy and explore all the options for that. Then I ramble around at random finding stuff to do. Then I get bored with that, and character integrity goes all to pieces and I just explore every questline in the game to see where it goes. Then I start modding the game, and often as not make godlike characters (I played a lot as Sheogorath in Oblivion) with little regard for lore integrity. Then I move on to the next game in the series. And that process has been basically satisfying up until Skyrim. But Skyrim has just gone a bit too far dark, and the "good" options were exhausted very quickly.

Adding the element of different character builds and more explicit role-play does add another dimension to the games, which is not unlike developing a character for a story, regardless of whether that character has anything to do with me or not. It is interesting, it is kind of using the game to write variations on a work of fiction. So lately, I have been exploring that more. But as I said, I still can only take that so far, before the yuck factor kicks in and I think, what the heck am I doing? And then it is time for a new character.

This. The scope and ambition of the Elder Scrolls series has been getting smaller with each game Bethesda has made since Daggerfall. I suppose we'll never see Daggerfall's choices again.

I think this is where the divide comes from. As me and others have said, we can easily find things for a virtuous character to do. I'm the type of person that pretty much avoids the "big" questlines or limits one per character and still finds things to do. Misc quests, side quests, etc.

I think the biggest problem Skyrim has is that it tries too hard to make a BIG EPIC STORYLINE for every one of its major questlines and it ends up being slightly ridiculous and unsatisfying. The Thieves Guild is laughably bad, the College of Winterhold is "meh" and the Bards College barely exists. Not to mention rampant cases of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButThouMust , which is the main problem with the Companions. That just leaves you with the Main Quest and the Civil War (could go either way, but you may not necessarily like how they're both connected to one another) and Dragonborn by extension (which opens another can of worms--your actions actually affect the world, but only in one way and the world is downright annoying before any change is made).

That just leaves the miscellaneous quests of varying morality level and the repeatable misc quests which are nothing more than fetch/kill quests. But like...that's all of Skyrim. Even the big questlines hardly have more than that. It just kinda falls on that "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" bit people use to describe Skyrim. It's true. So awfully true. Some people can find ways to entertain themselves and extend their playtime, though.

(I also get the feeling the game tries to rectify it by throwing as many quests at you as it can--making it seem like there's depth when in reality only someone who's off-kilter would even do half of those quests. The game doesn't really do much for roleplay, unfortunately. Even the Main Quest tries to throw you at a lot of factions without the tact that Morrowind had.)

I'm with FlojoRojo on not enjoying playing characters who have no redeeming value whatsoever and who I just don't like. However, I have played an assassin character in every elder scrolls game to this date and I still have serious issues with Skyrim's dark brotherhood. It's not that I'd want them toned down per se, but to have some sort of justifiable purpose for what they do other than a love of killing people just for the fun of it. In previous TES games, they upheld certain values, even if questionable ones. In Skyrim, they tossed all of it away with the exception of Cicero. (Who unfortunately is too much of a lunatic to be taken too seriously.) I think the main issue I have with the guild in Skyrim is that they severely lack *professionalism* as well as discernment as far the contracts that they decide to take. I don't necessarily expect the high level of professionalism as the Morag Tong out of the Dark Brotherhood (yes, I'm very biased here!), but not the utter adolescent attitudes they display in Skyrim.

When I view Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood, I don't get a sense of awe, respect, and fear from them. I instead hear in my head Beavis and Butt-Head laughing and saying things like, "Huh huh yeah, we kill people. That's cool." "Yeah yeah cool! hehehehehe" This DB group makes it difficult to play a character that may participate in questionable acts *and* who is also mature.

They're not icky because they're an assassins guild. They're just icky all around.

Peruse the "Cheats, Hints, and Spoilers" section with care

Well again, the main problem with the Dark Brotherhood isn't that it's dark, it's that the start of the quest is hard to avoid and the alternative to doing the DB questline is a tiny vestigial quest that seemed to be thrown in as an afterthought. Though given the Companions and Thieves Guild, I suppose that's better than nothing :/

Well, it could, of course, but not what I'm after. I want a toon like me but in an exotic setting.

This thread implies there is enough interest in a good branch to quests for Beth to look into it. OTOH, you can't deny that Skyrim has been a breakout success so it's tough to justify fiddling with what's obviously a winning combo.