starting off in prison is SYMBOLIC.

think about it...

you begin as the absolute lowest of the low, stuck in a rat infested, dank jail cell in the bowels of a castle.

by the end of the game you are revered across the land as a saviour-come prophet messiah.

a rags to riches if you will.

Even law abiding citizens can get arrested if they are mistaken for someone else, or someone has a grudge etc. There are lots of possibilities to RP a law abiding citizen in jail.

What I think would be pretty neat is if there were different options for escaping/being released from jail. Like let's say if you are a rich noble you can have a servant come and pay your bail, or you are a sneaky thief you can find a secret exit or something similar. Possibilities are endless.

Prison?!?! What did I do this time?

Probably because my Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather killed the Adoring fan and threw his body off High Rock. Family curse, family prison time

Thats not symbolic; that just defending to have a prison intro rather than having something else that would fit much better for all players. For example, an immigrant with nothing came to seek fortune in the new land or a peasant starting his/her day traveling in life but destiny have something else in store. It does not have to resort to just a prison cell.


Except I don't accept "Framing" for the fault or forcing myself to a crappy intro like a Prison intro. Hell, one who know how to roleplay or know their toon very well can avoid the prison even before it started (hiding, bribing, get contact with a Thief Guild, magic).

You seem to keep thinking that if your a prisoner, that your a "felon". People can be in prison for countless things that have nothing to do with breaking the law. I mean Galileo was imprisoned for his ideas, he didn't break any law.

@Qawsed What would be an acceptable beginning to you if not starting out as a dredge of society and ascending to be a hero? Skipping through a meadow of flowers hand in hand with Valen Dreth and stabbing Mehrunes Dagon?

Galileo was imprison to house arrest.

That said, in a Prison Cell and out, ya consider a felon, no matter what happen. This is what is stick to the PC and that the mentality. I don't want that kind of crap happening again and resort to modding the crap out of it like I did with Oblivion. That is why I would not consider both Morrowind and Arena as a non-Prison Cell intro. One is not a felon and/or too vague to even consider s/he was one.

For Oblivion:
Replace Prison Cell with the fact that the PC won the lottery and got a special room in the Inn. Waking up in the inn, the Emperor and his guard came in ya room and open the secret room that would happen to lead out of the Imperial City. Follow storyline here.

or

How they could have done this with Oblivion like the mod http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23757, where one can start anywhere but the Main Quest start when they go to Kvatch and have to "save" it, thus getting known as a hero and one get recommended worthy to help "finding" the heir to the throne. No Prison intro require.

or

The Mod http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11495 where the PC get a dream of the murder of Picard and one happen to find the amulet where the dream tell the PC is at. Afterward, get off the ship and find the amulet.

I get what you're saying, more options would be nice instead of prison every time (thank goodness for mods, Alternate Start is essential for the returning player).

But isn't the very nature of an RPG to 'frame'? No matter what you are going to start at level 1. Would a level 1 character necessarily have contacts in the Thieves Guild or a powerful Alteration spell to open the prison lock? No matter what the game will force you to play as an inexperienced person. Is it so much of a leap to assume that your inexperienced, level 1 character would get locked in jail for doing something stupid?

Any RPG starting point is an Inn with a whole bunch of other Adventurer and group together to go on an adventure.

Also, even at level one, I would consider running anyways to avoid being in jail. With the right stat in any game, I am already a member in Thief Guild at level one. As a mage, I would just make my self invisible, knowing the fact that I can fail on casting the spell. That how I would roleplay to avoid jail time if I can.

In all serious, I am saying that the Player can start somewhere else as a nobody and keep the dignity of not being in a stupid prison cell. Getting off the boat or waking up in a campfire or just plain traveling is what I would consider universal to all player's background with no mess. It does not have to start in jail.

I guess it just comes down to player preference. I don't mind the prisoner thing, but I see where your coming from.

But, like you said earlier, mods solve all problems.

Completely unrealistic for the PC to win the lottery and then decide to help the Emperor....Your rich, why would you. Also, why would a secret escape route be hidden in a popular hotel.
or
Doesn't allow you to move fluidly into the main story line, it is completely random that you decide to go on a journey to save the land at random.
or
The ship arrival doesn't seem realistic either. You have a dream and decide it must be real so you take a boat to Cyrodiil to find out? Also, how did the amulet of kings get lost? The emperor was assassinated. It will either be in the hands of the Blades or in the hands of the Mythic Dawn.

There is a reason being a prisoner allows for a better starting place. In arena, you get contacted and are shown the way out of the dungeon. In Morrowind, you are just released from a prison boat that ferried you to the land of Morrowind and you are given your freedom in return for working for the emperor and in Oblivion you follow the Emperor through the escape tunnel because he believes that you are destined to help and he allows you to tag along eventually culminated in you becoming free and having the choice to not take the Amulet to Jauffre and go about your business or help save Tamriel from the invasion from Oblivion.

Here, I can think of a nice story that is supported from you being a prisoner in Skyrim. You start out in a prison camp and you meet someone in the camp named Esbern and you talk. Then the prison camp is attacked by the opposing faction of the Skyrim and in the midst of the combat you get free and you and Esbern fight your way out of the camp and to freedom. After you get away, it Esbern might have noticed you use some ability unique to the dragonborn and then he explains to you what you are and then he begins you on your path into the main story line.

See I made a perfectly unique start to the game while still being a prisoner....

Why not be a slave that escapes?

Because the Dragonborn will never become slaves.

I think the fact that our background is up to use to come up with, and that it is completely open for interpretation. That and its tradition.

Lottery thing, its call luck, like getting food and they gave ya the lottery or one find a lottery ticket on the ground and ya pick it up or a thief pickpocket a noble and got a lottery. As for the secret room, why not? There one in a prison like that already, not to mention that Picard might have been a customer to that hotel and sleeping around like he always does. I would not be surprise the PC is sleeping in Picards' love nest.

The next one, its ya choice. It may be hard to believe for ya, but not everyone wanted to start the Main Quest right away. The way Oblivion handle it, its too urgent; one cannot just put "saving the world" on hold while joining the Fighter Guilds or do whatever one want. Kvatch might as well be the starting point of the invasion with Picard dieing in the background.

Last one, the dream happen in the boat, as to why ya going to Cyrodiil? The mod offer many things like job or religion for that reason.

It just seem ya don't like any alternate start and refuse to create a beginning without an Jail time.


Again, I pointed out already that Arena and Morrowind is not a "prison" intro as the PC is not a felon or start in a prison cell. Ya just not liking my logic into the explanation as to why I write and rewrite my answer. Ya better off reread the previous commits I made with both explanation.


Problem is, we don't really know the story and ya assume that it start out that way of the Jail, not to mention that ya is making an excuse to KEEP the Prison intro rather than thinking outside the box and think of some way of starting thing without anything that is a prison intro.

Good god Qawsed, what kind of intro do you even have in mind that would work better? No seriously, I'd really like to hear some of your ideas before I go to thinking that a prison intro is as ungodly crappy as you make it sound.

Simple. As I mention many, many time before, the PC is a nobody that:
a: Arrive from a traveling boat (like Morrowind or Redguard)
b: Waking up an Inn (practically any Table Top RPG)
c: Being Ship Wreak and getting out of there (Daggerfall)
d: Traveling with a Caravan
e: Waking up in the wilderness/cave

How the Main Quest can start is basically that the Main Quest comes to ya, either because ya did a lot of thing that make ya known for fame or ya resourcefulness of a particular party or being a top member of a Guild with recommendation.

maybe like your mind is a prisoner in its body...

Arena, prisoner (of a political nature). Daggerfall, prisoner (that storm wasn't a natural occurrence. You were taken out of the way by somebody else. True, you weren't supposed to survive, but it wasn't your decision to go there, so you ARE a prisoner, of a sort). Morrowind, prisoner. Oblivion, prisoner.

It's a tradition, one that works to help steer the player along on a good tutorial. As a student of game development, I can attest to the fact that in any open world game, you at least want a completely controlled experience for the player that doesn't detract from the experience, to cleverly hide your tutorial in and establish the setting for the game. One where the player can learn the mechanics without it feeling unnatural and contrived. And you want to feel like you're advancing the story. In Oblivion, advancing the story was the assassination of Uriel. In Morrowind, that wasn't what they were going for, and that's why there is a core group of players who never even completed the main quest.

OMG!!! Your the one that won't let go of the "prison intro". The tradition is being a PRISONER, that does not mean you have to be set to a prison. You don't seem to understand the implications of starting out in a different manner. I'll give you an example. Say that you start out as a villager. You know everyone in the village and so on and then your village is destroyed and everyone in it is killed but you. That very beginning defines your character instead of you defining your character. For the rest of the game your character is now bent on revenge instead of being set to their own designs. With the beginning I described above, you have no allegiances to anyone from the start and it also allows for you to move into the main quest and branch out.



The lottery thing is completely unrealistic, real life or fiction not to mention the point of the emperor not going through the hotel is because it doesn't make sense first of all why there would be a secret tunnel in a hotel and second of all when the emperor goes to go through the hotel through the passage way, everyone is going to see him and thus it's not much of a secret. Yes, the urgency made it a little unbelievable that you could go do something else with such urgent news but also they made it where the events didn't start happening until you got to certain points in the main quest line. The really only urgent part is saving Martin in Kvatch but you could also argue that they had been holding out for weeks in it to a point.

As for the last one with the dream on the boat, it still doesn't change the fact that it is improbable that you would just find the Amulet of Kings seeing as how either the blades would have it or the Mythic Dawn would have it.

The fact of the matter is that beginning as a prisoner is a great formula where you can make countless unique starts to the games and it still makes sense when trying to tie your character into the main quest line.

@skyshadowing Welcome to the family of game developing. Always nice to meet other people that are interested in making games as well.

a lot of the things you've suggested sound so random. When you read a story about a character, the story is about a significant point in someone's life, not the entire person's story.

this being said, with what you suggest it seems like a random place to jump into the story of the player. Why start the game when they wake up that morning in the inn? why not the morning before or the morning after?
it seems random

also for the love of god is it really that hard to type the extra letter and say "you" instead of "ya"
you sound like a 3 year old

I think it's great. The gods always choose a unassuming criminal as their divine instrument. Just goes to show you that rank and station have nothing to do with valor and courage.

So you complain that the starting out as a prisoner is not original and then all your examples are either beginnings from other TES games, completely random and have no reason to be that point in time or have any explanation or other games altogether.....

Pretty much the prisoner of the Main Quest is the "tradition" of the series and I have no problem with that, but usually the problem here is that people assume "prisoner" == Jail which lead to Jail == "Tradition". Also, I can argue that one does not start out as a prisoner in Morrowind. Copy and paste again:




The tradition is the prisoner of being part of the Main Quest. People usually think that the tradition is being stuck in jail, which only happen in Oblivion. The Village example is a horrible example seeing that one is already placing hardcoe background to the PC.


Ya and assuming that the prisoner did not KILL Picard or that the prisoner just so happens that he have the ammy and gave it to a Blade Member, believing every word the prisoner said. "Right". Too many plot hole in the beginning of Oblivion already.

That said, the lottery thing make perfect sense (like finding money on the ground in real life) that it all lead ya to the Main Quest if one wanted to started that way, like how the "realistic" the prison intro was. All luck and destiny crap if ya want to see it that way.


Or the Mythic Dawn svck at finding an ammy in a dungeon and the Player beat the Mythic Dawn to the race of finding it or it goes to either that one found a near dead Blade member and he handed the ammy to ya or we can go with Kvatch again with this intro and the Mystic Dawn already got the ammy.


Being a prisoner in jail already screw up a handful of build and background already, which lead to a whole lot of crap to build that make it a reason why one is there. It might work for ya, but not everyone like being a felon in the beginning of the game and I prefer an open that anyone can be whoever they are but at the same time, with dignity.


Problem is, the TES Series base on the Main Quest Story and the player is a nobody that just happen to be part of it. THe story is only known with the Main Quest and the nobody can be anyone.

Also, I could say that starting in a prison is random as well, but in a degraded state compare to the other intro.


Not a good idea to act like a grammer teacher here. Just saying.


I am not being about original. I am about having the idea of giving an intro that anyone can have without being consider a felon. If one can think hard enough, starting anywhere can start the MAin Quest.

In the end, it just sound like ya do not like the change of a Jail intro to something more open for everyone can have and using "tradition" thinking it would back ya up in ya favor.

I say we just wait and see how the 'prisoner' thing turns out before we keep on arguing. Besides, what people don't usually like about Bethesda's games, they just end up modding it. Hell, it's what I did when Fallout 3 churned up Operation Anchorage and I didn't like the superblue artmosphere; I simply got the CS and learned how to mod. Instead of making a big argument over how the sky there was horrendous (not to mention the green-tinted Uglyland in the main game), I acknowledged the fact that I could change it with the modding tools Bethesda released to the public - knowing that their original version of the game wasn't going to please everyone. And there I had it; blue skies in the Wasteland, and a sky in Anchorage that actually looked like a winter day.

As far as I know, a significant portion of the community seems fine with the prison intro (if I'm wrong, someone tell me otherwise.), and I'm going to assume that Bethesda knows much better than to not release any modding tools for Skyrim.

How is starting in a prison random?
the day someone breaks free out of prison and get's there life back sounds pretty significant to me. Waking up some day waking up in an Inn and then you're on your own? Pretty Random.



using incorrect grammar tends to give others a reason to not take your posts seriously. Just sayin'.