In Oblivion I had about 5 or 6 characters, and only played the main quest once. The problem wasn't the gameplay, it was that I had no idea what was going on. I mean, unless you already know all about the dragonfires and why Dagon is attacking in the first place, then you get lost in the story pretty quick. All I knew was "big baddy is coming to destroy the world cause he's eeeeevil, and the Emporor forsaw me stopping him". There were some books that explained it alright, but it's a videogame. I'm not going to go out of my way to read about why the bad guy is attacking, because it's a VIDEOGAME. We all just got turned into The Blades' [censored] while we ran around an entire province and they sat on their asses. If I'm basically gonna do all the work for them, I'd like to know what the cause for this whole battle is.

The story was basically everytime Akatosh destroyed the world and rebuilt it, Dagon would sort of "hide" pieces of the world and then place them back when Akatosh rebuilt it. Akatosh didn't take kindly to this so he sentenced him to an eternity in Oblivion, with redemption only possible if he goes back and destroys all that he had added to the world. That's basically what I could find on the story, but it would have helped to know that in the game so the story didn't seem so shallow.

So all I want in Skyrim is just a short cinematic, where the old walls like the one in the teaser trailer show scenes between Akatosh and Alduin, and what their relationship is, why he wants to eat the world, and all that jazz. That way I can actually get excited about the main quest

i felt about the same way. but i didnt mind it because i didnt like the main quest anyway. i hope skyrim's main quest will be different: first off i hope youre not forced into it at the very beginning of the game.
secondly i hope its less epic to begin with. more like morrowinds, where your first mission was to . thirdly i hope its something you feel is important and interesting to you: it might sound a bit weird, but i just couldnt find rescuing cyrodiil from the forces of oblivion very interesting or important. after the first few gates i was like duh cant someone else do this stuff...

buuut as long as theres plenty of other quests and guilds im sure ill be happy no matter how the MQ turns out

Arguably the toughest freaking mission on the whole game on my first play through! LOL :teehee:

Having played Morrowind to death, and really enjoyed the lore, I had the opposite reaction in Oblivion -- like, "Oh god, I get it, just please stop talking."

While yes, I had a lot more background than you apparently did, I really don't see how it could've been explained better. Maybe if you pay attention this time, it'll all be cool.

I just beat the MQ for the 1st time a few nights ago. I was level 44 and have played the game since it was released... needless to say it was less than enjoyable

The gates were annoying as hell (Im glad I held off on beginning the MQ just so I could walk around without the constant red sky), the enemies were like damage sponges and the overall theme had zero mystery or excitement. I will say Paradise was slightly interesting.

I paid plenty of attention. I've played up until certain points (about when you can close a gate at each city), and still it's just "he's evil and wants to destroy stuff". I mean, that's good and all to drive the gameplay but it really made the story boring and not worth following. Morrowind had an amazing story, but something went wrong in Oblivion. It at least needed a short historic cutscene instead of the Emporor standing there in the middle of a whole lot of nothing [censored]ing on about the same crap you hear 5 minutes later.

I've played morrowing, but back then i really didn't care about the lore. I was too young to be entertained by stories, so all i did was plow through the missions and then just wakl around the world killing cliff racers.

When i began oblivion i fell in love with the storyline. It still wasn't explained perfectly, but if you read everything the main characters had to say to you then you had a very good idea of what was going on. Dagon used to own Tamriel or something and he just wanted it back.

In any case, Skyrim has based the main quest about an entirely new piece of history. Never before have they mentioned anything about dragons (apart of them being dead), so i'm sure it'll be explained very thoroughly. Also, i really hope Skyrim will be able to meet my expectations. Especially graphic and combat wise.

Yeah that's true. They'll need to explain it pretty well. I just hated that in Oblivion you had to go out of your way to learn all this. I hope that in Skyrim it's sort of pieced together slowly, maybe after each major dragonshout you learn it sort of tells a story. You learn bit by bit about Akatosh and Alduin, and what exactly they share in common.

Well the problem wasn't that one didn't understand what was going on. The problem in Oblivion was: so what! The mainquest wasn't intriguing. Both because the story was bad, and because the quests telling the story was bad.

The really good thing with Morrowind was that the antagonist was complex. Was he evil, or was he right about more or less being betrayed by the other "gods"? And the fact that you where a reborn hero of old, destined to fight and old friend, made it more personal than with Oblivion. It felt a bit like The wheel of time actually.

And the fact that you didn't understand the meaning with some of the quests until later in the game, made it more mystical.

Actually. If you see Dagoth Ur as one of the chosen/fallen, the ashlanders as the aiel, the main character hero reborn as Rand al Thor Dragon reborn and the prophecies that has to be fullfilled one by one through the game, Morrowind actually has a lot of similarities with The Wheel of Time.

Oblivion had the chance to play with a complex antagonist. In the lore Dagon was exiled to Oblivion, and it's unclear whether he was trying to destroy what he added to the world so he may be redeemed, or whether he was adding to the world so he could take it all over in the first place. Nirn is a constant battleground between the Daedra to take control of the mortal plane, but perhaps Dagon wasn't all "evily smashy" just for the sake of it, and he actually had a reason and a plan.

Good poiint. My point then is that in Oblivion that wasn't clear enough when you played the game. While in Morrowind, through the dream when Dagoth Ur told you of your history as friends and asked you to join him once again, this became very clear, and made me have doubts about killing Dagoth Ur. It actually went so far that I decided he was mad so I had to kill him, but he was initially in my mind back then, betrayed by the other "gods", so I killed them to.

In Oblivion I didn't care if Dagon lived or died. The background story might have been good, but in that case Oblivion told it poorly.

:facepalm:


Are you really, really sure RPGs are the kind of games for you?

I was personally disappointed that Camoran wasn't fleshed out more. Dagon is a godlike figure, effectively kept captive by Nirn's existence and does not actually "show up" until the final act, which makes it pretty hard to take this actions personally or see him as a fleshed-out adversary. Mankar Camoran, however, is a mortal mer. If he had been more fleshed out, had more of a presence and so forth, he would have made an awesome adversary.

If you listen to what the quest NPC's say to you, and not skip through it, then you can understand everything about the Main Quest. It really isn't some incredibly deep storyline that is very hard to understand, it's just all in listening to the NPC's.

Because I like to play them, and not have to go out of my way and read books within them in order to actually enjoy the story?

Dude, you're such a hardcoe RPG fan because you prefer to read in-game books rather than living the story itself. Oh wait, sorry. That's just called autism.

I myself enjoy creating and developing a character, AND having an exciting experience. I read fantasy books (among other genres) when I can in my spare time. I don't want to have to read up on the basic lore in a video game, when I can see it all unfold in front of me, story AND action.

You say that like autism is a bad thing.

Many of the greatest minds in the history of the world would be considered autistic.

Fair enough, you have a point.

But this thread is about making the story more accessible and actually giving it a sense of history within the universe.

I believe you're thinking of Aspergers. Autism comes with a delay in cognitive development and language while Aspergers does not. Although the other person may have been thinking of Aspergers as well.

Nope. Aspergers are usually not geniuses (more like normal IQ, except for their individual mental disabilities). Autists are sometimes "savants", meaning that one part ofg the IQ, for instance mathematical, are overly developed, making them mathematical, musical, lingual and so forth geniuses.

Aspergers is one of the many flavours of the autism spectrum, learn to psychology.

I think the story should start of slower, like in Morrowind (from what I've heard). I had nothing against the style that Oblivion used when starting the game, pushing the invasion of the deadra right in our faces, but when there was only a very small part more to the hole story, it became somewhat disappointing, to the point where I only played it twice through, on a total of 15 characters. :/

TES books are a really great read though, especially the skill increase books have some fantastic stories.

On topic, I thought Oblivion had a predictable and not very interesting story, and the antagonists where bland and unintriguing. Part of the problem was that unlike Morrowind, everything was explained to exhaustion, and there was only one version, set in stone. That really took away the mystery of it all - I loved how in Morrowind everyone had their own outlook on the various events, and there were more versions of what actually happened. I also loved the fact that some parts of the story were intentionally left ambiguous (what really happened with the Dwemer, how Nerevar died etc)

Autism is one of the flavours of the poorly named Autism spectrum.

EDIT: I think we're getting confused on pedantics here, actually. Autism is a specific disorder, and for some reason, also the banner that covers it.

So, you want to understand the plot on a level more complex than "Big Bad wants to eat world" - a level which requires at least a basic understanding of TES lore, cosmology and history, all of which is deliberately and deliciously subjective - but hey, you don't want to read no stinkin' books. Um. Yeah, but. The great thing about TES is that the lore rewards effort. You can take it at face value and just learn enough to keep playing, or you can explore it and gain a lot of enjoyment from that. You don't read the lore, you don't get the nuances, simple as that. That, believe it or not, is part of what makes the world so immersive. A guy who only reads the newspaper in real life won't understand international conflicts as well as someone who read up on it. That's how complex worlds work. And I'm not keen to surrender that to save you five minutes of your precious game time.

One of the TES series' great strengths - in my opinion - is in the richness, arguable subjectiveness, and intricacy of its lore. If what you got from Oblivion was "Mehrunes Dagon is evil and wants to destroy the world," then you only heard one side of the story. That's because that's all the game overtly presents to you. But if you explore the world and read the many books found throughout it, you'll discover different interpretations of the lore from the universe's various cultures, counterarguments against the official Imperial version of history, etc.

The games have to force feed you a very basic form of the narrative in order for it to be accessible to as broad an array of players as possible. But there is a much greater depth beneath the surface. The game intentionally avoids overtly putting all those cards on the table. It creates verisimilitude and texture when you have to go and discover it for yourself.

Also, just on a personal note: I would respectfully ask that everyone talking about Asperger's and Autism spectrum disorders put down their armchair psychology degrees refrain from making broad generalizations about conditions and people. I intend no offense by that statement.

They are called Autism spectrum disorders because there exists an autistic spectrum. This is usually conceptualized, described, and diagnosed based on very specific diagnostic criteria in terms of high, median, or low function. (Function meaning how well or poorly the subject can function in their daily life, society, specific situations and tasks, etc.) Asperger's is a high functioning disorder of the Autism spectrum. Not everyone with a given disorder of the autistic spectrum has all of the symptoms or signs of that disorder. Moreover, the severity of those signs and symptoms can vary greatly from patient to patient.

Most pertinently to this discussion though, one can enjoy becoming immersed in the literature and lore of a fictional universe perfectly well without suffering from any of the aforementioned disorders, and/or without that being a sign or symptom of a disorder if they do have one. (Example: I have a mild form of Asperger's. And now that I've shared that fact about my personal life on a TES message board, I'd greatly appreciate it if people would refrain from making sweeping assumptions about people like me. Thanks.)