with the exception of some games like evil genius (which is an awesome game) and overlord and the upcoming dungeons.......enemies are always portrayed as evil. how do we know that the king of nords isnt a [censored] and a complete tool. in china dragons are considered good luck but we always end up picking on the little fellas all the time. what if alduin is more like the sean connery dragon?

Morality, and not every place has the same morals.

Alduin isn't necessarily evil.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1152130-the-story-behind-skyrim-v20/

If this theory is right -which it sounds it minus a few details-, then Akatosh just wants the power that was deceptively robbed from him by Lorkhan/Shor.

Because without a bad-guy, there is no story. Without a story, there is no game. And without a game, then we are just a bunch of lazy bums.

ok good. glad its a singleplayer game cause then i dont have to actually kill him then.


@echonite.........what i meant was is that the adversary is almost always a tool. it would be nice to have to fight some pompous, smugfaced, goodie goodie, help old ladies across the street enemies for a change. fighting ninja nuns would be original and refreshing.

Well, you wouldn't kill a guy you agreed with. I mean. It's all subjective.

I mean. I agree that I wish the story line was less linear. Like maybe we should be able to help the dragons. Even if someone else ends up taking the place of the "hero" and defeating them eventually, we should have the option of encouraging destruction.

Because it's easier to create an antagonist who is evil for the sake of being evil than it is to create an antagonist who is a morally ambiguous and complex character.

Like Dagoth Ur, from his perspective the Empire was evil and he thought he would be liberating Morrowind, even if deep down inside it was for his own selfish reasons. Also, Mankar Camoran truely believed he was doing the world good.

i don't see them as evil ever, just simply exp/gold/weapons.
just manifested in a form that will hurt my character
my precious character

Fixed, people with good intentions can have a negative impact on the world.

Antagonists with a good reason for what they are doing are the best because you can get torn between the main character and the antagonist and you can kind of see their side of things.

I don't like the whole evil thing, it gets tired and makes the antagonist 1 dimensional and kind of boring.

im hoping that we get to at least choose to help either the pro imperial nords or the rebel nords. would be nice to be able to help at least some evil people. in oblivion the only really evil people that you helped were the dark brotherhood and with the exception of vicente and the lucariau SP? leader all the rest of them were complete morons. i actually couldnt wait to kill them when i got the mission for the first time. i even had a mod once that let me warn the sanctuary members and they came back a few days later but then i uninstalled it cause i couldnt stand how unprofessional they were. i really really miss the morag tong. now those are evil people that you can respect and leave your kids around knowing they would learn some values.

The dark brotherhood in Oblivion weren't very good were they and you could play as 'em.

Enemies are usually, not always, but usually portrayed as evil because usually, audiences are meant to sympethize with the protagonists and want them to succeed, and generally speaking, audiences are more likely to sympethize with people whose ideals they agree with, and since most works of fiction aren't designed to appeal to mass murderers, this generally means that the protagonists are on the side of good, and by extension, their enemies are on the side of evil. If you make it so it isn't necessarily obvious that your antagonists are the bad guys, then you risk making your audiences root for them instead of the heroes, and usually when your antagonists become more sympathetic than your protagonists, it is not a good sign.

Now, this doesn't mean ALL protagonists must be good, or that ALL antagonists must be evil. There have certainly been exceptions, but you really shouldn't need to ask why many authors prefer to keep things like that. It's much harder to make sure that audiences are rooting for the right side when it's clear who that side is.



That is quite true, although the people you had to kill for the Dark Brotherhood were often not nice people either, but that kind of makes sense, because you're an assassin, and when people want someone assassinated, there's generally a reason for that. And criminals and the like tend to make a lot of enemies. But in any case, the Dark Brotherhood wasn't part of the main storyline, and that questline likely exists to give characters of a less noble sort some oportunities too, because the main quest was really more knight in shining armor type material.

o7

yeah but only two of them, vincente and lucian were "good" evil people......if that makes sense. the whole rest of the bunch were morons. that last group of evil people, in a TES game anyways, that i enjoyed helping were the morag tong. one of the reasons i like games such as overlord and evil genius is that you get to see their struggles and how they overcome them. evil people can be hurt too you know.

Since a civil war will be prominent in Skyrim I'm hoping for some moral ambiguity and shades of grey. Politics aren't simple and I'm hoping Bethesda doesn't take the easy and boring path.

Jagar Tharn was the only antagonist that seemed generally "evil". In Daggerfall you could bide for any side of the conflict, no one was evil, everyone had there own agenda. Dagoth Ur's mind was twisted by the heart, but he still wasn't evil. He had a legitimate grudge against the tribunal and dummers that forsook him and the Nerevar. Mankar Camoran was certainly not evil, many high elves would have agreed with him. Mehrunes Dagon is a god, why should he care for mortals and their plane that restricts his power.

Dragons had their agenda. Their not evil, but their agenda interferes with man and the Nords. This makes you enemies, no evil involved.

Vincente and Lucien Lachance were in no way good people,..

there was a DLC released for fallout 3 called The Pitt. for alot of people in fact i would say most people that DLC had a very ambigious choice at the end. neither of the choices was clear cut and they both had moral downsides. the forum was lit up for along time about discussions on which decision was better and for what reasons.....morality, number of lives saved, how people lived afterwards, what happened to the baby etc. i really hope they put something like that in skyrim in the main quest because its nice to have to face tough unclear choices that you might regret later on down the road. im sick of saving good people all the time and not having to question myself later on.

@quentillas........its hard to describe when i say good i mean competent....hence the quotations. outside of those two everyone else in the DB just seemed juvenile and completely unprofessional unlike the morag tang assassins who seemed to treat their jobs more seriously.

Not necessarily true. Look at The Pitt. There is no one "bad guy", it was up to you to decide who was morally right and then help that group.

Though I guess the side you didn't pick would constitute as the bad guy.

I don't think the dragons are being portrayed as evil at all.

Alduin is both the creator and destroyer of the world. Shor and Dagon(/Magnus?) messed up the natural cycle with the forming of Mundus and now he's just going to try to finish what he started ages ago.

Also, I get a creeping feeling the dragons are the Jills; Didn't they say there was some sort of time-slowing effect from killing one?

EDIT: One more thing, from a Merish perspective, Alduin and the dragons are the good guys.

It's just down to perception really. Just because a group perceives a threat as evil, doesn't mean they are inherently so.

They must be portrayed as the protagonist's view of evil or the protagonist wouldn't feel motivated to stop them. If two factions were completely indistinguishable in morals, why would you be concerned with or for either one?

well i dont want to be fighting unicorns that fart pixie dust as they flee in terror from me at level 1.
besides, having "evil" creatures gives a clear definition on whether it is ok to kill them or not.