There is no such thing as a video game in which you are literally allowed to do anything you want to do. As such, the phrase has really become more of a PR expression than a literal claim.

I'd prefer a middle ground.

You can join conflicting guilds, but you have to walk a straight and narrow path. Being in the thieves' guild AND the Legion should be possible, but NOT easy at all, of course. You would be constantly tested simply by the fact that, if you are caught by the guards at any point and identified, then you will be tossed out of the Legion. On the flip side, the Thieves' guild welcomes a potential informant, providing you prove yourself now and again that you are truly loyal to the Thieves and not to the Legion.

You can join both, but that doesn't mean the game won't make you work for it.

id actually like a system like that. i just wonder if its possible for them to make a system that complicated without royally bugging it up. the only guild that i figure you could lead or be a high ranking member of and not have another guild know about it is probably the DB since they are uber secretive. if your a member fo the fighters guild or mages guild or even the thieves guild and you rise high enough in rank you will be publicly known to the other guilds if for no other reason than they like to keep tabs on the power players and rising stars in their competition. i would love to see a double agen questline in skyrim though.

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. I doubt it will be in Skyrim, but I suppose there's always hope.

Well for the theives guild, why wouldn't they want you if your the head of the mages or Fighter's guild? That's penetration of a potential target's command structure at the highest level. They could do incredible amounts of robbing without worry. And for the reverse, how would the fighter's guild or mage's guild know your a member of the Theives guild?

As for the Dark Brotherhood, why would membership in a secretive assassin's cult keep you out of the Mage's or Fighter's guild? These guys don't exactly give out their membership rolls. How would they know you are Dark Brother? Are the dark whispers of Mephala compromising your identity to them?

The only ones you possibly have an arguement for is mages/fighters guild exclusion, but, get this, there is no mage's guild as of skyrim. We also don't know what the policies of the College of Whispers and the Synod are. So any arguments about them are bound to be flawed.

The "You can do anything you want to do" is the best part about this game and the reason why the Elder Scrolls is the best gaming series out there right now. I do agree with the OP and I wished we had more choices but the problem is if we were to add more choices to the main quest we would need to do a Warp In The West Situation with Skyrim for future games. I don't mind multiple regular quest decisions like should I give the Golden Claw to person A who I originally was hired to get the item or do I give it to Person B who will give me a better reward and possibly the opportunity in the future to get more gold but adding more choices to the main quest makes it harder to have a future game. For example I can't imagine how if there was a Fallout 4 on the west coast, how they would explain the events of New Vegas without doing a Warp In The West Situation. It's just too many variables and that's why I only see one choice in the main quest but with Side quests that's a different story who knows what Beth's going to do with that.

wait... real gamers dont play sports games hmy:

Fable series are not good games, I would tell you how bad they are but its pretty boring

Don't forget the Battlemages. The fact that you have mage guild members fight with full plate armour means there is really no hostility between the two schools of combat. Magic and physical combat co-exist in TES, there is no mythical rule that directly forbids one to be associated with the other.

A very good point indeed. The two "schools" of combat as it were are quite easily joined together.

If your in TDB you most likely aren shouting it around so why could you not join The Fighters Guild

You guys are missing the disclaimer at the bottom of the statement

"Go anywhere, Do anything"
but not everywhere and everything

as i posted later on the only guild that could be uber secret is the DB, even that is tenious. the first time you go into a chapel and the nine divine wont bless you from the altars will instantly let everyone know that your are not a very nice person. thats going to raise questions and eventually a bunch of mages will find out about why their dear leader isnt being blessed.

even if your a member of the thieves guild, you are going to be known. local constables would know that you hang out with known members of the guild. the only secret parts of the thieves guild are the vendors and the head honchos. in oblivion, Pontius Assius or whatever his hame was got one of the thieves guild women to turn on the guild so obviously the local law enforcement knows about who is who. people are going to know if your hanging around the seedy part of town and walking around rich peopls houses at night. the problem the soldiers had was actually catching people in the act.

they might not have a problem with you being a low level member of the mages guild for the reason you stated but they are going to have an issue when you get to the higher ups cause of conflict of interest. its like having the same guy in charge of the DNC and the RNC. would anyone from either side trust that guy to run their campaigns?

the mages guild would NEVER accept someone in who was even a low level member of the thieves guild. they might give you a mission to infiltrate and find out something but after that you are expected to drop them like a rock.

the split in the mages guild will make it even more pronounced. there is a reason for that split and they wont tolerate someone from the other side trying to get in their organization.

that being said i still would love to see a double agent questline of some sort and i dont mind if the guilds allow you to be "foot soldiers" for them especially since your useful for killing dragons (who would turn that down?) but as far as getting to high ranks. no way it doesnt make sense for competing guilds.

as for the combat styles...........its not about the battlemages and combat styles. follow the money. the guilds compete for contracts and for the favor of the local lords and of course for prestige.

Well ... can you in REAL LIFE do anything you want? I can move a cup from the table to the bar. I can grab my gun and shoot my neighbor, though this leads to bad things out of my control. I can't sleep with 'X' movie star hottie. I can't jump over my house.

Thing is, there are rules I have to abide by in RL and I really have no problem having rules in game worlds. For example, in OB I can move a cup from table to bar. I can not, no matter how hard I try, break that cup. It's a limit, a game world limit, but I can live with that (cause why would I want broken cups all over the place?).

The real question is, can I do what I want to do? If 90-95% of things I really want to do in the game world I can actually do, I would call that a fully interactive immersive game. You are just not going to get much closer than that.

Read the fine print people!

How would the fighters guild know I'm in the Dark Brotherhood if I always get the kill silently and have never been caught before?

I agree, I really hope Beth played New Vegas, they could learn a lot from it. And also, I don't see how people could say "Its just more Fallout 3". Thats like saying "Oh, Oblivion is just more Morrowind". But anyways, Beth should study the improvements made in New Vegas, I'm a bit worried that they wont sense they didn't develop it, so I figure they resent it a bit.

This man speaks the truth.

What this has always meant is a twist int he RPG formula. You are not thrown into a role...you create your own role. That maxim is a description of the skill system in TES, which works differently than in other RPGs. You took it a bit too seriously, and in the direction it was not intended, if you understand where TES comes from in terms of a particular RPG tradition (the first person slasher genre).

TES does not say anything about consequences,like say, in Bioware games. They say "live another life", and "do whatever you want to do". So your judgment is unfair, because you are charging them for saying something they DONT say.

Actually, there are ways to get anything you want if you are willing to do anything to get it.

In TES, things you are able to do include theft, blackmail, bribery, and cold-blooded murder. That's pretty much more than enough options to get whatever you want if you are willing to go that far.

In real life, you can't have everything you want as a law-abiding citizen. But in TES there is nothing stopping you. You CAN pull out a sword and decapitate your neighbour. And as long as no one saw you or you bribe the right people to clear the bounty, you are free to go. This is how powerful people in real life do things.

And being a hero of TES means you become the most powerful mortal that currently lives. Powerful people can do anything they want. And if you don't think this applies in real life, think again.

If the Archmage requested to join the Fighter's Guild, who is going to say no to him? You are lucky he doesn't get preferential treatment as it is.

Name one other game (series) that has an open world the size of the TES ones, where you can go into any building, or esablishment and there are hundreds of items laying around that you can pick up. No other game of this scale has anywhere near as much detail.

Even as such ... I still can't break a cup in OB. The point is there are game restricted limits in OB and other games that I can live with and still get fully immersed into the game.

The classic "ending the life of a not fully grown person" seems to come up a lot. Well, I don't want to do that, so that is a game limitation I can live with.

You can't break a cup in Oblivion because of hardware limitations (they can't make every item destructible, it's too much for the processor) and because it would be too easy to break things you don't intend to due to bad item physics. I assure if if Bethesda found a way to make it work in a future game, they would give it to you.

As for not killing children, that's not Bethesda's problem. That's the problem of politics out of their control. They need to stay within the laws of the land, unlike the protagonist of TES.

So you could say Bethesda is not free to do anything THEY want to do.

I feel the need to reply as it's something I've thought about a lot recently.
Oblivion is open to the extent that even the main quest is, in itself, optional. I am a huge fan of Oblivion and I have played it many times. I've had at least three characters reach level 30+. In all that play time I have never once completed the main story quest. I've only ever met Martin once in a play through and stopped progressing that quest chain soon afterwards. That's how free we are in TES games. We can progress in any way we see fit. And, it's a rare thing in games. Infact, I feel you have mentioned the only company apart from Bethesda who do open world games well. Rockstar. And, even then, you tend to have to follow the missions in order to progress.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 have levels of freedom and choice that I have yet to encounter in any other game I've picked up. I am currently looking for a game to plug the gap between now and 11.11.11 and I am becoming increasingly frustrated with just how linear 90% of the games on the market are. We have been spoiled by Bethesda (and to a lesser extent, Rockstar and it's GTA clones). Do not take what they do for granted.

I love how people start off saying they can't do every thing they want to do, and that the way to make the game more free is to imposes restrictions like being excluded from other guilds when joining another.

and your right. I do hate it when NV gets compared to any TES game. SK will have a open ending you can play through, NV did not.

@nikodante this is off topic but have you tried minecraft yet. its open and definitly not linear. it doesn't have good graphics of course (depending on texture pack) and its not quite an rpg like TES but it is really awesome.