Expanding the main questline.

[Bellmaethorion]

At the moment, this will mostly be a discussion, I hope to be able to really get to work on a mod to implement my visions, but it'll have to wait for the CK of course.

 

I finished the main quest line today and was surprised by how little there is of it. I'll be discussing spoilers, so don't read on if you're afraid of the story getting spoiled.

 

I arrived at parthunaax already in possession of the elder scroll, so there was no need for me to go and get that before I could travel back in time. I got dragonrend, fought Alduin, heard i should go to Whiterun, went there, heard I should talk to parthunaax or the blades, decided to go to parthunaax, so back up the 7000 steps... only to hear I should go to Whiterun again and shout for Odahviing. Did that, and suddenly, I'm on my way to Sovngarde to take down Alduin.

 

I'm aware of the fact that I could have done a load of sidequests, and certainly that's what I did in the part of the mainquest before what I just described, but I thought I'd sink my teeth into the main quest now, only to discover there wasn't that much for my teeth to sink in to.

 

So I got to thinking on how the main quest could be expanded , the following things occurred to me:

 

- There were too many shouts fully given as part of the main quest, as well as too many "gifts of knowledge."

Unrelenting Force, a part of Whirlwind Sprint, Clear Skies, Dragon Rend, Odahviing, Fire Breath, all freebies.

 

- At master difficulty, as melee the only challenge I had in dragon fights was dodging their breaths or stunning them with Unrelenting Force, until they landed and I could hack them into bits; Dragon Rend completely removes this and makes dragon fights trivial.

 

- Despite the Greybeards saying Dragon Rend is a great evil and should not be used, there is no way to fight Alduin the first time without using it; a bit of a bitter pill to swallow for my honourable Nord.

 

I'd love to make getting Clear Skies, Dragon Rend and Odahviing quests where you'd have to find the words of power hidden away somewhere (though preferably not a draugr infested dungeon, as we've got enough of those already.)

Furthermore, I'd like for Dragon Rend to really cost something. My current thought is that it would cost a Dragon Soul to use the power, I've got near 30 doing nothing.

Lastly, I'd like an alternative to using Dragon Rend at all, I'm not sure how this would work out, but being able to say, "No, I will not take the easy way if it means using something evil" would be great.

 

A big problem I already see with expanding on the already existing plot is that the conversations would have to be changed and I don't think a completely different voice for Parthunaax or another character suddenly will really aid immersion...