Yeah, I agree. With impending doom rearing it's bitter head, saying "Eh, it can wait, just come back when your ready", wouldn't make too much sense, IMO

Which is why everyone is saying the doom shouldn't rear until you are well into the MQ

I'm sort of surprised that it took this long for this particular bit of diversionary scorn to make an appearance on this thread.

Yes - I certainly have, and have used, the ingenuity necessary to overcome Oblivion's terrible main quest design. I've made believe that the Emperor didn't entrust my character with the most valuable artifact in Cyrodiil (which is a bit tough, since it's a quest object and is thus stuck in your inventory forever). Far more often, I've delivered the Amulet, just to get it out of inventory, and then I've made believe that Jauffre didn't actually tell my character that s/he has to go find Martin or made believe that my character told Jauffre "No." Of course, that fairly simple (if ideally unnecessary) bit of metagaming runs into another problem, because then, far more often than not, I have to make believe that that enormous smoking hulk of a daedra-overrun city up on the hill between Skingrad and Anvil doesn't even exist. And there's pretty much no way around that. One way or another, at some point along the way, you have to start ignoring Kvatch, because if you finish all of the Kvatch quests, then there's no turning back - the main quest is going, whether you want it or not. So the only real "choice" in that regard is to just ignore Kvatch from the beginning (as I've done more often) or to go up there, talk to Savlian, then ignore Kvatch from that point on. There's no other choice - if you finish all the Kvatch quests, then you're stuck with Martin until you deliver him to Weynon Priory, and delivering him to Weynon Priory brings in the Mythic Dawn AND the Oblivion gates.

Yes - I certainly possess the ingenuity necessary to metagame my way into ignoring an enormous smoking hulk of a city. I really shouldn't have to though. I should be applying that ingenuity to playing the game - not to working out ways to get around the devs' lousy design decisions.

Same.

I LOVED the beginning of Morrowinds MQ.

"Hey man. So uh, you're a weak ass, here's some gold. Go buy an axe and kill some rats or something...you weak ass." (Obvious paraphrase)

I came back to the Main Quest after a good 40 hours of Morrowind. It just had so much to offer.

Although, it really wouldn't hurt the overall enjoyment of Skyrim if they had a "pushy" main quest. You can be pushy all you want, but I'm still gonna go goof off for ten hours. I mean, its an Elder Scrolls game

That's actually EXACTLY the problem. An Oblivion gate would open up right next to a town and I WOULD say to myself... "I really don't feel like doing another one of those right now. I just want to harvest a few alchemy ingredients." So here's my character off picking flowers while supposedly floods of daedra are preying on small children in the nearby town. It is an immersion breaker, an in-your-face reminder that its "just" a game and you don't have to actually worry because simply ignoring it .... WILL make it go away.

This never bothered me. Anyone with any self-control could resist the main quest for as long as you want.

The point of playing a role-playing game is not player-centric self-control, it's character-centric role-playing. Very different things.
I'm capable of metagaming with the best of them, but requiring it is a poor game-design choice (particularly in an RPG).

Why would that bug you? Children don't exist in Cyrodiil :teehee:

But seriously I see people's points. I'd prefer if I didn't feel immediately rushed into the main quest, but it won't really bother me that much if not.

I respectfully disagree. If you are in fact role playing, you can roleplay a character that doesn't give a hoot about the "end of Nirn" and is a greedy, self centered, bastage that wants the chaos and goes off doing whatever. So roleplaying isn't really an arguement for HAVING to do the MQ.

This is true, and one of the solutions I've used for the problem in the past. It's just nice to be able to play different personalities every now and then, without feeling rushed into the main story. Maybe I'm just too fond of the "do whatever you want, be whoever you want" aspect of the games.

The only way I can think of avoiding this inappropriately named "syndrome" (Oblivion was by far not the first game to have this), is to actually change the pace of a game. A time system already exists in Oblivion, so it wouldn't be difficult to add time to a select few quests. People go about more advanced daily routines, so what about villains going about advanced villain/quest routines. Example, as soon as you talk to the farmer whos wife was taken by goblins, the goblins start making their way to their hovel. You have to catch them before they do unspeakable things to her in their lair. If you decide to help the farmer's neighbor herd their filthy pigs, or children, or whatever, first, then the wife dies, and the farmer resents you for the rest of the game. How's that for urgency?

Jauffrey: Oh no problem man, it's not like the entire world will end if this is not dealt with or anything. I should just not care about the impending doom that looms over us all!

Are you serious man? So you're saying you want all the characters to just not care about the quests they are giving you? You realize how dumb that sounds, right? "oh man it's so annoying how realistically these characters are reacting to the situation! Don't they know they're characters in a game where I can do whatever I want?" The answer to that last question is no by the way. In the end, it's up to you what you do. The developers chose not to penalize you for not immediately progressing the storyline no matter how involving it may seem, and for that you give them this stupid criticism. It's not the "tone of the conversations" that you should be against, it's the constant pace of the main quests, where it engages you to immediately pursue it as opposed to "It appears that all we can do now is wait as the [insert magical item you have quested to create for destroying the evil] is prepared. I am unsure how long it will be...etc" gaps which would help ease players to explore with their new found free time. In the end, sacrificing the urgency and importance of the main quest, in my opinion, is not worth it just so that you can have an excuse to explore the world, which I never needed.

Try reading a thread before calling people dumb.

Im too lazy to dig out one of the (many) responses to this uneducated comment.

I think what everyone is saying is that it would have been better for Jauffre to say, "You should come back to me after you've practiced your skills, these are troubling times we are headed for" after you give him the Amulet of Kings.

After you do some exploring, you can come back to him, at which point he will understand the implications of the Emperor's death, and say something like, "You must go to Kvatch and bring Martin to me, I believe he is in danger!"

All this would work better, of course, if you didn't know that Martin was a Septim until the second time you see Jauffre, rather than have the Emperor trust a random prisoner to do this epic quest. The Emperors instructions to you should have been more vague, "Take the Amulet to Jauffre, he'll know what to do."

It could have been easily avoided in Oblivion.

It could have had you drop off the amulet, then Jauffre says "Thanks alot. We'll have to do some research on the heir. Stop by if you want to help in the future. Bye for now".


I hope that Skyrim doesn't force the Main Quest on you the way Oblivion did.

Mass Effect 2's format was pretty good in that it said "the final mission will be very hard and your squad will most likely die, so take your time preparing." That was good in establishing that, yes, the MQ is very important, but no, you shouldn't rush into it. That's much better than "Oh, you just crawled out of that prison? Go! Save the world! Hurry!"

The game telling you that you should prepare before facing the finale is a good way of excusing your sidetracking, or atleast giving you justification of doing side stuff instead of feeling like any sidetracking is working against the pace of the narrative.

it did seem that the pacing for Morrowind was far more mellow, with quest givers telling you to do things in your own time.

There were few such instances in Oblivion, which hurt my ability to do sidequests because I found it difficult to roleplay with everything being urgent.

Very well then, sorry for my "uneducated comment". Allow me to present a more "educated" one.

I understand what has been said here. You are expressing your want for a main storyline with a lighter touch in the beginning as opposed to immediately engaging you within it's importance, leaving you without a choice of free roam exploration that doesn't make you immersive role players feel like a [censored]. In the end, though you complete the main quest...the game doesn't end. That big ol' open world is still there! Though many of the quests may seem ridiculous to the hero of all of Cyrodil, that's just how it was since they hadn't thought to make the dialogue for quests or the quests themselves change depending on your fame or already completed activities, i.e. "Well...there is something I want you to do but I fear it's a bit below someone of such greatness" etc. Though I understand the want to explore the big ol' world, I enjoy a Main quest that is actually engaging. You know, it kind of feels like it's a bit more important than all the other ones. Also, a lot of the main quest bits have mechanics that help you see the various towns and mechanics of the games that new comers to the game might not know about.

I don't believe it should be called a "syndrome" just because you don't have the creativity to give your character's reasoning not to follow the main quest ["Man, our emperor was a nutcase! How can some silly amulet have such an importance?" and as you explore you find oblivion gates around, and though your character fought the impending truth, he slowly succumbs to the truth of the oblivion gates across the lands and perhaps a discovery of the fallen kvatch and eventually seeks out jauffrey.] and because you also lack the patience to just finish the MQ, as long as it may be. I'm certain though that since so many have expressed this concern the devs might address it since they do read and care what reviews and fans say about them as far as criticism(which is the one thing that will always help me to keep my faith in them). I do hope that they allow for more exploration throughout the MQ, but in the end, it's all part of the game and I have yet to not enjoy a MQ...so there's no loss if this "oblivion syndrome" you speak of arises.

Just because the actors in the game don't say "Hey! go explore! lolz" (not literally, but some cheesy dialogue mechanic forcefully put there as opposed to engaging realism, thought I know it can be tastefully done) doesn't mean that it isn't still open world. Get over it. (this concludes my uneducated comment)

PLease read this



as this is more what should have been said. It gave you some freedom as to what you wanted to do, and that was a fairly simple line that WORKS.

Thankyou, thats exactly the point I was trying to make, im sorry to some people if it was not clear

Well since Kvatch was under attack, it would hardly seem appropriate for Jaufrey to be like "yeah, when you get the chance go help them out. If you want to take a few months to train first don't worry, this is a pretty laid back battle."


You complain about the story not matching the pace you wanted to play at, which is pointless, because the alternative doesn't match the story. You're just going to have to do what you want knowing that it isn't REALLY as urgent as the story would be in real time. waste of post, dude.

just to clarify, I did not name it Oblivion Syndrome

A Games reviewer, ( who was reviewing Red Dead Redemption ) first used the phrase, i just happen to agree

I agree with this. By putting an extra step in between taking the amulet to Jauffre and going immediately to save Martin, it would make it seem more feasible that a moral character would put off doing the main quest for awhile. Sure, you can always role-play amoral characters that don't care about villages being destroyed, by I'd prefer to have just a little bit of breathing space in there.

It also seems wrong somehow that a level 1 character can be the "only one to save us" - surely there are more experienced people available in the entire Empire to deal with a major invasion. Any guard anywhere could kick your butt at level 1 because of your low hit points. If Jauffre at least hesitated to ask such huge tasks of you at level 1, it seems like it would make a better story. Something like, "I think the heir is safely hidden for at least a little while, but something must be done to increase his safety. The spies of Oblivion may discover his location at any time."

I guess we'll see what happens with the new game, though.

Actually, there was no reason they had to start the game with the Emperor dying. Just that he was in danger and his sons were killed. You could have helped him get thru the sewers with a "hook" to get you to start investigating who is out to kill the emperor and why. Then you could go out, investigate if you wanted to or do whatever you want. No one would be dying, you could take your time, and come back to it. Then when you decided to do the MQ the emperor would die early on and you go from there. Nothing really changes from a gameplay/storytelling standpoint.

The OP had it right that the urgency of the beginning in no way follows what you can decide to do as a player. It loses meaning if the game starts with urgency and you can then ignore it by the vary nature of the game itself.