I would be extremely disappointed if the series was to start having endings after the MQ.

Well it's a morally grey area you see, which might make for an actually intellectually interesting concept for once.

Is it evil? You're a hero, they're a punk. You would undoubtedly do the world more good if you were to survive. Isn't it utilitarian to allow the other person to die that you yourself may bring more good to the world?

It still seems kinda crap. If you want to continue to play, you can't be the hero, you just have to cause someone who is not a villain die. That's hardly heroic. If it was a choice between being the hero and living and being the hero and dying, fair enough, but I don't see how you could put that in the game without it having a screen pop up saying "do you want to die at the end of this heroic act? Yes/No".

Well then maybe you should adjust your world view to a more realistic one in which the hero doesn't always get a happy ending with that laid back job at the sawmill they had their eye on and the girl of their dreams (except I can't see you being for romance in TES either).

It is my belief that a story is more enjoyable if its ending is http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BittersweetEnding. Happily ever after endings feel distinctly patronising, as though I can't enjoy my storytelling unless it's done through a rose tinted glass. If you still want the rose tinted glass then I don't think we'll ever agree on this subject.

Of course, if you're a Hero? in a Heroic Story?, you don't do morally grey. Because that's not "heroic". :whistling:

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Probably true.

My actual preference is for a variety of story types and games. You can play one game that's Black And Grey Morality with a Bittersweet Ending, and then you can play another game that's got a Hero and a Happily Ever After ending. A nice bit of variety. It's annoying when it's all one way or the other. (Like when people get all post-modern and "traditional hero stories are boring" and try to make every single story/game/movie Darker And Edgier, because it's more "realistic". )

Well naturally. I'm just generalising here.

It just limits it. That's fine and dandy in a story, but this is a game, where you're supposed to be able to roleplay whoever you like and forcing the hero to be cowardly to continue to play the game is not a way to do it. You can imagine you died saving the world or actually get yourself to no health just as you defeat Alduin and even if the game doesn't recognise it as a victory, you're dead so you don't see that and can make the assumption, right? Or you CAN take the cowards way out and not defeat Alduin. Or you can do the main quest and be the hero. It's easy.

EDIT: How about you have the option to force someone else to save the day, or do it yourself, which is far, far harder, but not impossible? Good compromise?

It's irrelevant Sleign. That's all that needs to be said. Every human goes through death, as do mice and dogs, and science won't change that. Even living 1000 years isn't immortality. What you're discussing is not what reality will be. Let's just leave it at that.

What about if those that do want an ending could do some extra tasks to make absolutely sure that Alduin would not be able to cause harm to nirn.

Do I want the game to go to black-screen credits to main-menu like it did in FO3 before Broken Steel? Hell no. I want to complete the MQ and then be able to do more stuff.

That said, 9/10 of my characters complete all the faction questlines first, THEN go to the MQ. Once that's done, they retire. Unless Bethesda has some badass post-MQ content, I don't see that changing (it should be noted that my first character is usually the exception to the rule, because I want to finish it fast to diminish the chance of spoilers ruining it for me).

why wouldn't you?
i like to do all the quests (well, i suppose all the non-randomish ones now) then kill everyone.

there aren't as much happy endings anymore, nowadays it's all dark, gritty, edgy or "mature".


sometimes i just wish i can have the main character leave on a high note and get on more adventures.
sure it's not very melodramatic but it can give a warm fuzzy feeling if done right.

^ ... you want to distil a TES game - something that we'll only get about once every five years from now on - the ending of which is a culmination of over a decade of storytelling to a "warm fuzzy feeling"? I think our expectations differ rather drastically.


How is it that you can suggest to me that I flagrantly ignore what the end game is cinematic is telling me (and so Dovahkiin saved the world and walked off into the sunset... to that job at the sawmill etc etc), yet you don't yourself have the mental flexibility to convince yourself that somebody who's been a bit of a [censored] to you throughout the story deserved to take your character's place as a sacrifice?

I get that the game will never have enough possible endings to satisfy everyone, but I think that's it's hypocritical of you to suggest that I pull off some serious mental gymnastics and pretend that the game is something that it isn't when it would be far easier for you to find a way to justify your self preservation actions and so feel heroic anyway.

Tossing someone else in as a sacrifice is not a heroic thing to do, full stop. How is it easier to convince yourself that's heroic when it's not in any way than to just let yourself lose the fight as a sacrafice? If you die, there won't be an end game cinematic telling you anything, sacrificing another character is such an anticlimix that it would be moronic to put it into a game (for a less bad example of this (where another character sacrificed themselves for you, see Oblivion).

If it hadn't been done partly in Oblivion, maybe having a character try to sacrifice themselves and then you having the option to try and stop them by sacrificing yourself first would be okay, since if you don't die, it's still bittersweet but you're not a cowardly ass, you're just complying to what the character wanted (to sacrifice themselves for the greater good).

If my character dies, I also don't get an end game cinematic telling me that the world has been saved. I just go to the reload screen. I want my game to end. How have you not got that out of everything I've said so far?

And why are you making such assumptions about what my 'sacrificing another character' suggestion would involve? The sacrifice doesn't have to do all the heroic bits for you. Let's say (and this is just one example out of a myriad of possible ways the sacrifice story could play out) that the sacrifice has to undergo a specific ritual to prepare and highlight their soul to be the one used to banish Alduin. Now you can undergo that ritual, or you can force some other candidate to do it. Whatever you decide to do, you're still going to have to face Alduin in battle and do whatever climactic thing BGS has planned: the only difference being whether or not your soul gets svcks out of your body.

Hell, the alternative candidates don't even have to be innocent. Let's say that one of them is an evil necromancer. It's hardly evil to sacrifice them now, is it? You'd kill them anyway - this is just two birds with one stone. However, you have to track them down first, wasting valuable time while Alduin is closing in. Do you track them down and force them through the ritual to insure your own life at the risk of Alduin arriving before you're prepared, or do you undergo the ritual yourself to eliminate that risk?

Do you see yet why I'm getting frustrated with these dichotomies? It's hardly a straightforward situation. This possibility would be weaved thoroughly into the MQ so as not to be bland.

If the character was evil, that would be fine to have sacrificing yourself as an option (though Iwouldn't expect many people to take it) over going to get them.

Or like I suggested before, having a character wish to sacrifice themself and have the option to take their place could work well, since it doesn't necessarily condemn your character to being a coward or an ass (but still lets you have that as your motives if you want).

I am open to the option if it could work well, but the way you were presenting the idea would have been pretty limiting. But either of these possibilities could work.

Well then it seems we've reached an agreement on that it can be done.

If I presented it poorly then I apologise, but [censored] me you were unwilling to expand on my suggestions yourself to make it agreeable to you.

Lol "most logical." Your logic, apparently, fails to understand that TES do not end until you want them to. Logically (or rather rationally), if there is no designed end to a game, then there is no end, even after the main quest. There is no "This is the end." You can play as much and as long as yo want, even if it is just getting on and pretending to interact with the environment or killing things. Heck, after the main quest in OBV and MW, I spent 100x the hours (Sadly, I spent near a thousand hours in them...) doing other quests or just walking around doing nothing at all, or exploring. Even if you do, literally, all the quests and explore everything, you can still play and do things. Besides, life is not over just because your "main quest" ends. I study for a test in a class. I finish it. Is the class over? No, I prepare for another test. Or equate it to life, being full of tests. And I wouldn't like to conjecture about life after death, because this isn't the place.

But on-topic, I always do. I play many characters and roleplay a lot. Heck, I sometimes design characters around roleplay and go into game and make my own little "stories", lol. I basically just take my daydreaming and play it out in TES games, lol.

I did eventually think of ways it could be done, but both were unfortunately thought of after you began replying, so they were missed. Anyway, glad we came to an agreement.

a warm fuzzy feeling can mean many things, like i somehow got a warm fuzzy feeling by killing a band of bretons, dunmers and redguards :flamethrower:

Most endings in TES games haven't really seemed happy to me.

I wouldn't mind some alternate endings, including some where the player could die, but like I said last time on this topic, the "sacrifice yourself or someone else" choice was done recently in Dragon Age and in Bethesda's own previous game so I think doing it again would be repetitive. They could come up with other scenarios.

For example they could have an ending that's like in Fallout where you convince the villain that their plan is wrong and they should give up, but have the opposite; where Alduin tries to convince you that him destroying the world is necessary for some reason.

There was also that one in Daggerfall (I'm not sure if it was actually in the game or if it was just planned) where you had to choose someone to accept a powerful artifact, and you could choose to keep it for yourself, but you wouldn't be able to control its power and you'd die from it.

Yes, I want to continue. I understand why they couldn't do that for Fallout New Vegas but I would have had it differently there too if it had been written differently. They were very ambitious in how they wrote the story and so it was too complicated to allow for all endings. I don't think Skyrim will be that way.

The mods should find out who the 6 people are who voted no, and ban them.

And i think i clearly stated my answer in my last post, so in case you didnt read the last half of it ill post it again.

So to say this it wont end you can continue after the main quest. The only game bethesda made recently was New Vegas and they admit they made a mistake doing that.

Of course I want to carry on,all that work I'll be putting in,just for it to end at the M.Q?

No thanks...