One thing that annoyed me greatly about Oblivion was how the conversations in the main quest were constantly pushing you to the next part of the main quest with the upmost urgency, which in an open world with hundreds of side quests was really annoying.

for instance you would go and see Brother Jauffrey with the ammulate and he would tell you about Martin Septim and made it clear you had to go to Kvatch NOW !!!. But i did'nt want to go to Kvatch, i wanted to explore the world, joins some guilds, bulid up my charachters skills.

in other words the tone of the conversations did not match at all the pace of the game. One game reviewer years later coined the phrase Oblivion Syndrome.

I really dont want Skyrim to suffer from this,

can it be avoided ?

will Skyrim suffer form Oblivion Syndrome ?

i dont see this to be a massive problem, definately one to have it's own name 'Oblivion Syndrome', i would of found it more annoying if they didn't make the fact that oblivion was going to invade a urgent matter!

You could. Nothing was stoping you from go around and have fun, you whould have all time in the world even if he said NOW!!!.

I liked in Morrowind how Caius said "chillax man, go bufff up some more"
And Daggerfall also had the kind of sandbox feel, your first quest being.... INVESTIGATE

Arena took ten years according to lore, so i'm guessing it wasn't THAT urgent

To my understanding, you want to Start Skyrim without being told you Are Dragon Born and you Must do this or that Now without the feeling of im gonna do my Own thing now so you can just Wait.

That is Exactly what Todd said, you Start the Game without knowing who or what you are and the further you progress, you start to notice some Diffrent things about you and then People or Scriptures on Walls will start to tell you that you are the Last Dragon Born.

So let me get this straight. Kvatch is burning, people are dying, the daedra are invading and you want Jauffrey to say "Well, dozens are dying and you can stop that OR you can go help that lady over there gather some flowers for her bouquet. The choice is yours."

Add to that the fact that if Martin dies everything will go to hell, literally, and you want things to be like "No biggy man, take your time, sure, the only person that can save our world from hellspawn is in a church surrounded by hellspawn, but you just take your time, perhaps go for a drink or sell some veal, go swimming or repair your armor."

That is completely nonsensical. In neverwinter nights you also had the quest giver say something like "You must hurry to that inn and save our agent. Quickly, GO!" but you didn't have to hurry at all and you could do 10 quests before continuing to do that one. Same thing for Morrowind and I'm sure many other open world games, if not all.

I mean really, out of all the flaws Oblivion had, you picked this one, which isn't a flaw to begin with...

No, he said that you are rescued from execution by Esbern and taken to the Blades training camp to train as Dragonborn

What you described is Morrowinds MQ



Elder Scrolls amin hook has always beeen that you are chucked in the deep end, with no urgency, just a sandbox world to play in.

Oblivion destroyed the formula, (not necesasarliy a bad thing)

Another thing, Todd said in an interview dragons don't start spawning untill after you activate the main quest.

I was very pleased about this.

It was definitely a sort of immersion breaker for those who preferred to skip or do the main quest later.

I agree that there should be a few periods in which you're pretty much free lancing until you choose to move the main quest along.

Great, I had not heard that. I think it would be better giving you a chance to explore the world in a more casual maner before the main quest steps in and hits you in the face, then the game can move up a gear, with all " The end is nigh ", and " Death approaches on leathery wings and burny indegestion "

Well that would svck, either tell me to Join the Blades Now aka MQ or have me Decide to Explore the World.

The fake urgency might be bad for us on forums like this, but if you are playing your first rpg, it can be a bit daunting, all this freedom. One thing playing DA:O, but Oblivion is totally freeform, and some like to be told what to do.
Personally I could do without a main quest altogether, but to the rest of the world that's just weird. BGS give you a main quest, and sometimes a bit of pushing, it's a selling point, wouldn't have quite so many enjoying the other 270 hours worth otherwise.

Wow. Never heard this. This makes me happy in a way. Opportunities to play the game as an Ordinarily-born.

Exactly, Kvatch was burning and all that Daedra stuff, but i wasnt interested in jumping straight to the main quest , i wanted to explore the amazing lanscape thap Bethesda had created, but because of the imediate urgency of the main quest, you can either start doing it straight away or completely break the mood of the game and story and start doing your own thing. I want Skyrim to give you the chance to do your own thing before it starts hitting you with any urgent storylines and quests.

and i think its a perfectly legitimate point

First Time i Played Oblivion, i Assumed to take the Necklace NOW to Jauffre, little did i know i was Starting the MQ :shakehead:

Theres a Diffrence between finding out what is going on and telling me what to do, but Dont Force me on what i must do Next in Assuming i Must do this NOW. :cryvaultboy:

It could be avoided. I sincerely doubt it will be.

Look - this is a game in which not having to plan ahead or mess with any far-reaching decisions is being promoted as a virtue. They're not only deliberately designing it so that all you have to do is pick a skin color and ear pointiness and go, but so that all you CAN do is pick a skin color and ear pointiness and go. I simply don't see any way at all, even without the grotesque example of Oblivion, that they're going to do anything other than funnel us into the main quest like cattle at a slaughterhouse. I have no doubt that there will be some way to get around it, just so that they can continue to make the ever-more ludicrous claim that it's an "open world" game, but since their primary goal is obviously to appeal to action/adventure fans and newcomers to the series, and long-time fans be damned, I expect that not following the painfully obvious steps of the main quest is going to be about as comfortable as driving the wrong way on the freeway.

It can be avoided very easily, just make sure the writers for the main quest realize they're writing for an open world game, like they did in Morrowind, have the dialog acknowledge that you don't have to do the main quest immediately, it's just that hard to do, now, admitably, I don't expect the game to tell me to take my time when Alduin is looming overhead waiting to eat the world, but it doesn't have to, because usually stories have multiple stages and the pacing in each stage is not necessarily the same. They can still have a sense of urgency later on in the main quest, when the gravity of the situation becomes apparent, but it doesn't need to be there from the very beginning, they can start by telling you to take your time, but as the stakes start to get higher, they can make things seem more urgent, then you can still have your sense of urgency rather than it's needed but don't make it feel like you need to get to the main quest immediately right from the start.



Indeed, if anything, if you want to appeal to people who have never played a game like this, you should acknowledge that they don't need to hurry, or at least not tell them to hurry when they should, because while I knew that the world wasn't going to end on me if I didn't hurry to my next objective immediately, that's because I played Morrowind before it and new the fact that you can choose to play the main quest or ignore it at any time still held true, but someone knew to the series may not know this, if you want to draw in more new fans, you should explain how things work so there's no confusion, assuming they don't need to know is counter productive.

:intergalactic:

I wonder how many People who played Oblivion for the First Time fell for the Trap in Assuming you Must start the MQ NOW. :blush2:

How was it in Previous TES Games, did it guide you to Explore and do what you want, or is Oblivion the Only Game that Push you in That Direction.

Admittedly, the main quest in Oblivion only sounded like it was urgent because the actual things happening during the main quest were something to cause urgency. Kvatch burning to the ground? The last of the Septim Line about to be murdered, and if he is there will be no way to stop the Oblivion Gates and Mehrunes Dagon from destroying Tamriel? Yeah, that's pretty urgent alright! Luckily you weren't forced into the urgency, but for RP purposes it was bad designing for the main quest. It was interesting for sure, but overall it was just bad design to start you off in that state of urgency.

In Morrowind there was no urgency because nothing was really known. The first few quests of the main quest were basically "Go get information from these people. Do whatever it takes to get this information." You could take your time because that wasn't a huge task. It wasn't like in Oblivion where tons of people would die if you didn't help out right that second (or it felt like that, anyway). And it's not like those quests were bad either, since most of the informants wanted something from you first. It was a much better design for the main quest, but I honestly don't see how they could have made it better in Oblivion with the storyline it had. It's not like you were an agent of the Emperor trying to find out information, like in Daggerfall and Morrowind, you were just some prison rat who got tossed into a huge mess.

Daggerfall on the other hand had a true sense of urgency for the main quest, because some of the people required you to be in a certain place or do a certain thing in a certain amount of days, as nearly every quest in the game did. I remember right after getting that note in the beginning I was like, "Wait...I only have about a week to go see her? So what happens if I don't?! Not to mention this conflicts with my Fighter's Guild quest!" Boy am I glad that was removed...

Well, in Morrowind you were asked to send a letter to Caius Cosades, who said "your not ready, go join some guilds and train up" And even when you went back to him it was all subtle fact finding missions and couriering. It wasn't until the last half of the MQ you got the gravity of the situation, and even then it wasn't URGENT

In Daggerfall it was actually impossible to continue the MQ until you go up a few levels

And Arena was made before the ES hit it's stride (despite having the best villain)

Do you have source? Im pleased about this too actually.

And I agree, I dont like the game urging me to rush through the MQ. I liked in MW I was told to do some side stuff and explore before I started taking on the MQ.

Im def not going to start the MQ in skyrim right away, I learned my lesson in OB.

I think in a different situation, the Beginning shouldve started Differently.

The Emporer and his Men come into the Jail Cell, then you have a Conversation and you start to Follow.

Later they leave you behind and then by the time you catch up to them, Everyone is Dead including the Emperor. (Escaping the Sewer will make you Decide your Character Status)

You take the Amulet and Escape the Prison, but you cant wear it or Drop it and you cant even sell it till someone comes to you and tells you about Jauffre.

By that time, you would have played the Game and done Many Things and be at a Certain Level to Allow the MQ to be Started.

Yes you're right. And another thing I didn't like is how it was much better to do the whole Kvatch bit at very early levels because then the soldiers had a chance to survive. I would like to save the main quest until later to give me something to look forward to but if you do that the soldiers get slaughtered by the high end daedra because they didn't scale with the player.

You seem to have completely missed the point.

Let me see if I can explain this with a visual anology:

Morrowind's main quest was like a meadow with a bunch of rough paths wandering through it. Some of them were relatively clear, others were very faint. And at any point, it was easy enough to leave a path and wander around a bit, then pick it back up again somewhere else, or follow another path for a while, or double back and pick a new path entirely, or whatever. But if you followed one or another of the paths far enough across the meadow, it would eventually join back up with the other paths and it would all come together at one final point on the far side.

Oblivion's main quest was like a meadow with an enormous sidewalk slammed down in the middle of it - a straight shot from one side to the other. Sure - you could leave the sidewalk if you wanted to, but it was still there, and there were no other paths at all. All you could do was wander around a bit out in the meadow and try not to notice this gigantic hunk of concrete that ran right through the middle of everything.

Nobody's saying that Jauffre should've said, "Oh... just ignore that huge freaking slab of concrete running through the middle of the meadow." We're saying that it shouldn't have been there in the first place.

The art of creating a main quest in an open world game is laying it out so that there are any number of side paths and open spots and directions one can go, but each path sooner or later ends up joining up with another path and they all, sooner or later, end up at the destination. That's a thing that Morrowind (and Neverwinter Nights, and Baldur's Gate, for that matter) managed to do. That's a thing that Oblivion failed utterly to do. The only choices in Oblivion were to follow the straight-arrow shot along the sidewalk or try to make believe that it wasn't there.