Agreed. It is not that it is dark, but that the beginning of it is hard to avoid, and the alternative to it actually starts the same way that the DB starts -- with a traumatized kid who has gone cukoo and the killing of another cukoo sadistic child-abusing old lady.

Actually, for both questlines, the good and the evil, this is a completely implausible starting point. I mean, really, who would actually go kill a person because an obviously crazy kid is doing crazy rituals?

What my characters would actually do, is get the kid help, talk to the Jarls of Windhelm and Riften, investigate the old lady and have her sent to prison, so a better orphanage keeper could be found. It does not make for good gameplay, perhaps, but that is a much more likely course of events.

The Oblivion DB start was much more plausible, and also made the choice to seek out the DB an actual choice -- after the DB spotted you and gave the invite, if you wanted to go there, you had to actually go there. You did not get railroaded into it by a highly preposterous yet difficult to avoid jump-off point. In Skyrim, I really have to be meta-gaming to even pursue the quest further -- I would only go forward with the storyline because I want to get more quests and storyline. My actual characters, good or evil, would not see this crazy kid as having any real way to move toward the DB, either to join them or to destroy them.

Just be glad the Fable devs/Bioware didn't make that quest. They would've given you evil points for merely stepping into the orphanage and not doing anything...without giving you a choice to fix the problem that didn't involve murder.

The day Bethesda stops fiddling with their franchises is the day Bethesda shuts it doors

Exactly! I am murdering this old lady from just a kid's viewpoint. I have no way to check the facts. Well, I guess I could sneak about and look for "things", but really, nothing is obvious and everything is circumstantial at best. Is telling kids, "You'll never be adopted!" a cause for murder?

Seems a bit extreme, if you ask me

I concur. You'd have to be stupidly chaotic evil just to kill a nasty old lady your character doesn't even know on a kid's say-so. Even my evil characters would much rather leave Grelod alone, only killing her for reasons that they themselves have. I can only justify them killing Grelod via the 'they know what it's like to live under her boot' excuse so many times.

Look, Grelod is horrid, but you'd think Bethesda would've given us a chance to resolve the conflict in another way that didn't involve either leaving the children to their fates, or murdering Grelod.

Ditto. I haven't done the Dark Brotherhood more than once. Even destroying it is extremely convoluted because, as I mentioned before, you have no idea that murdering some old woman would lead to its destruction. It's poorly written no matter how you look at it.

It just kills roleplay from either side.

You could say that about a lot of quests, tbh. I guess the 11-11-11 date screwed quite a few things over.

The non-darkness of oblivion is one of the main reasons I couldn't play it. I came to oblivion from fallout 3 all amped up for some dark gritty filthy medieval fun only to wind up in a Shrek movie like "pfff wat, lol". Skyrim was a big step in the right direction, though could stand to be a lot nastier. Real life history certainly is, I'd prefer closer to that, which would indeed be quite confronting.

Not going to lie, Oblivion did come off as too 'cute and fluffy' at times. Hope the next game is a fair balance between Oblivion and Skyrim.

I dunno, in some ways I felt Oblivion was a bit darker.

Maybe it was how casual the racism was whereas in Skyrim it was presented as this nasty, spiteful thing (i.e. ridiculously over-the-top like most other things). I guess I miss an actual reputation/disposition system.

The crazy guy talking to his mothers head, the other guy who's skinned alive, the Argonian/Khajiit torture chamber just to name a few things. Yea, Oblivion is clearly all sunshine and rainbows.

Skyrim just took itself to seriously that I found it hard to take it seriously.

That is the thing. "Dark" appeals to certain players, or characters. "Light" appeals to other players or characters. A good mix gives multiple ways to play a vanilla TES game

[EDIT]

Forgot that a good mix "Gray" is appealing, too

Yes, for me, personally, Oblivion NPCs were much too friendly and nurturing and solicitous. It created a kind of cognitive dissonance in guilds like Dark Brotherhood. The caring and friendliness felt wrong to me. I much prefer the atmosphere in Morrowind and Skyrim myself. I'm kind of expecting the next TES to be light again, as in Oblivion.

And although I generally feel more comortable with Skyrim's grittier atmosphere I have to admit there are times when a bit of Oblivion's niceness would really be appreciated. Couples in Skyrim seem to do nothing but fight. Spouse argues with spouse, brother argues with sister, child argues with parent. Sometimes I get the feeling that nobody in Skyrim gets along with anybody else.

Personally I think they should blend light and dark in the future. Some NPCs can be nasty, some can be kind and sharing. One does not need to exclude the other.

Yup, it's probably the art direction, then you had that drug ring, the racism actually feels like racism instead of some kids pouting at you.

That Orc in the arena begs you to kill him. Frankly if that's light-hearted to someone they scare me now.

These days if a fantasy game is not completely dark and gritty it's a bad game! And forgive it if it has a light-hearted moments! No "good" fantasy game should have light moments!

The NPCs in Skyrim while trying to be serious, felt like I was talking to some kids over Xbox live.

Oh I hate the jerkiness of npcs in skyrim, that to me is a seperate issue to the darkness of the game. Which to me could stand to be darker, AND have less jerky npcs.

I would hate to even imagine a darker Skyrim. I suppose you could set tables up with razor blades for people to just slit their wrists. But seriously, as it is, this game is barely playable by anyone who wants to do good. Darker than this would be a complete and utter waste.

What is needed is balance, so people who like dark and gritty can have quest lines that lead that way, and people who like good and justice can have quest lines leading that way. As it is, it is not balanced -- folks who complained about Oblivion being "light" had too much sway in the making of Skyrim, so there is more dark than light content now. I personally loved the previous TES games. Skyrim is great on feeling immersive and real, but the good-sided content is lacking, and it went too far in taking itself seriously. It is, after all, a game.

Not to mention Oblivion gates opening everywhere, skies turning red, the Apocalypse coming, burning flayed bodies hanging all over the place -- sure, Oblivion was ever so happy!

I never play as myself, but each of my characters is a "myself" who is living in the game world. There are good characters, bad characters, "gray" characters, and each of them makes decisions based on their own "myself."

But there's a limit to my own comfort in playing a character who is really nasty. I simply don't find the "dark" side of Skyrim to be all that much fun; I tend to lose interest in characters who are nasty people that I wouldn't want to associate with in real life. So I might play through an "evil" quest once, just to see how it plays out, but I don't seek that kind of experience.

And therein lies the problem. Between the interlocking quest lines, the "forced" daedric and evil quest starts, and the relative shortage of "good" quest lines, I feel short-changed. Skyrim is a wonderful open world, but every time you turn around there's a great big billboard advertising "This Way to the Evil Stuff!!!" My characters get battered over the head with this constant effort by the game world to force them down some kind of Completionist Playthrough. And such a full-playthrough character is always implausible.

I simply don't like what my characters are forced to "become" by a game that leads them around by the nose.

By the nose? Glargg the game hogties you, chains you up and drags you where it wants too.