then people will want to complain about how the game doesnt give you any direction or a reason to play.

I think Skyrim does an excellent job of presenting you with a situation and leaving it up to you weather or not you buy into the mythology. It definitely does NOT throw you into the hero role. After meeting with the grey beards, i think they pretty much leave it up to you to either follow the calling or go do your own thing. Nothing is presented as absolute truths, only that you have a rare skill and that these old men think your special.

I will say that Oblivion was bad in this regard though, i had to completely break immersion to start side questing at first. The lull in that story doesnt happen until much later.

How did you get past http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Message_to_Whiterun_%28Stormcloaks%29

Yeah, and then Caius himself tells you to come back when you have more experience (ie. the game is doing the exact opposite of forcing you to start the main quest). :rolleyes:

This must be the most idiotic complaint of all the idiotic complaints on this forum.

It is not, if you never go to bleak falls barrow, you put the whole world on hold, you can't meet dragons, you won't be able to learn any words and basicly, the world stops, except OMG there is a treat that needs to be taken care of. So for the game to work, you need to do the Whiterun Jarls quests to progress in the matter of mechanics in the game.

Not really. You only miss out on Shouts and fighting dragons, which is a small percentage of the game anyway. You can still learn actual words though. Other than the Civil War, you miss nothing by not doing the main quest. And its far from shoved down your throat anyway.

Small percentage or not, the game should have had dragons and you should been able to learn words just out of Helgen imo. Whats stopping you from doing so is a quest, wich is totally gamebreaking.

Its not game breaking at all. Want to see dragons? Initiate that part of the MQ. Want shouts? Initiate that part of the MQ. Its like saying Oblivion is game breaking since I cant get sigil stones without starting the MQ.

"gamebreaking" hilarious.

So leveling to level 100 without seeing any dragon but 1 is logical to you even tho the world is threatened by dragons?

When it only takes less than an in game month to even do so, yes. Not to mention there's a Dragon outside of the MQ.

I think this one little aspect is what could've made Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim so much better.

Not only did it say simply meet a guy in Balmora, when you met him he specifically tells you, "you're not ready for this. Go out improve your skills/gear, join a guild or freelance and return when you're better prepared."

That's what's been missing. All the games since thrust the MQ on you from the start.

I don't think you understand what OP means. And how many real hours you spent shouldn't have any effect of how you progress or not.

The OP doesn't have a point, since it isn't forced on to you anyway. You don't have to do any of it. Its not forced down your throat. What real time spent? I'm talking in game months, not irl months.

I wish the game allowed me the option of joining forces with Alduin. I'm sure Alduin would be quite happy with the Dragonborn in his service, but Bethesda wouldn't allow us that bit of obvious.

He didn't talk about real hours.

I was level 53 before I killed my first dragon - I had ignored the MQ up until then and just went off and did my own thing.

Hardly felt pushed at all.

I rest my case, you talk beyond yourself there. I mean, if you spent lets say 12 months or 5 years ingame time, and no dragon yet to be seen, because you haven't done the MQ is not really good, hence gamebreaking. I would agree with you, if you didn't meet Anduin in the intro and you somehow unlock the dragons yourself with some steps of the quest, but you don't.

Not really. Some people mention Dragons are back, but that doesn't mean that they have to be everywhere, or even really back in force. You only see Alduin in the first part. Alduin, could always be biding his time after all. Dragons don't need to just start showing up for it to matter. The fact that the only dragon you see is Alduin, its more than logical to write off the "dragons are coming back soon" as nonsense that isn't really going to happen anytime soon, or as long as I don't start the MQ. I don't "talk beyond myself", in context to what I quoted from you, it made perfect since and is logical that you can get a skill to 100 and only see one dragon. So there's nothing broken about it. You don't know what game breaking means do you?

I won't discus this further, we have different opinions. Simple as that.

The main quests in Morrowind and Daggerfall speficially complemented an open-world experience and encouraged the player to explore and interact with the setting, while Oblivion and Skyrim's main quests set a much different tone that is thematically at odds with such a playstyle. This is not an issue of game mechanics, rather a dichotomy in design.

Its not an opinion. Not starting the main quest does not in any way break the game. Fact. It may break your "imurshunz", but it doesn't break the game, at all. Bugs and design oversight break games. Not options on whether or not to do, or not do something in a sandbox RPG.

I agree with the op.

It's no real choice when you really should be saving the world from being eaten by dragons not sitting by a campfire with your feet up counting your loot.

You are thrown into the main quest because this npc waits for you outside of Helgen. If you had a real conversation with him, and agreed to part ways or travel together and then he either ran off or waited for you depending on your response, that would have been more ideal. The whole escape from helgen thing should have been done so that the player could leave entirely on their own as well as either of those two npc's. There would always have been the option to reload and choose differently if escaping alone was too directionless for the player.

An re-introduction of player journals into the elder scrolls series would be nice, the player following up those entries turning it into a quest.

Yeah, i agree, a third option (leaving helgen alone) would help those who does not want to support any of the factions.

Hmm, I guess I must have a special copy of Skyrim then. Seeing as I'm 80 hours in and haven't sided with any of the factions.