Evil Character ONLY Quests?

[StayFrosty05]

This is probably the main thing I hate about Skyrim.. You're forced to do "The Greater Good" all the time, or that would be the ultimate motive. So much for "Immersion and multiple ways to complete the story"

 

 

With any luck, the next expansion or DLC content for the game will possess that.

 

'Greater Good'?.....When?...I don't think we are playing the same game.... :blink:

[tetradite]

If you RP to the hilt in this game you'll run into a lot of little things that the devs failed to take into consideration and will find some otherwise innocent tasks to be un-doable. Do you ever wonder why the proprietor of the Drunken Huntsman NEVER sleeps? Think about that and then ask yourself, as a rabid roleplayer of a goody-two-shoes character, whether or not you really want to deal with him. See what I mean? Sometimes you, as the player of your character, must make decisions that are not in-character because the game simply forces you to do so. In this particular case, the developer who created this quest should have thought to unlock that door once you're friends with the Battle-Borns. He didn't, so we have to live with the fact that Bethesda doesn't expect you to play a "good person" in this game, that Skyrim is clearly aimed at the neutral to evil side of the Good-Evil alignment range, and do the best you can role-playing in spite of it.

 

In this case I don't think the game forces you to do anything. I hate the railroading in Skyrim but in this case you really can just ignore the quest, it doesn't even get forced into your journal unless you ask about it.

 

In some situations (the Vigilant of Stendarr in Markarth is one exception, sure there are more) you are literally FORCED to make a decision against character. But in most cases you're only forced to choose between RP and having an empty quest journal.

 

Much as I hate having uncompleted quests in my journal (and I really, really do especially the f'in Thieves Guild), I choose RP at that point.

Edited August 27, 2012 by tetradite

[StayFrosty05]

If you RP to the hilt in this game you'll run into a lot of little things that the devs failed to take into consideration and will find some otherwise innocent tasks to be un-doable. Do you ever wonder why the proprietor of the Drunken Huntsman NEVER sleeps? Think about that and then ask yourself, as a rabid roleplayer of a goody-two-shoes character, whether or not you really want to deal with him. See what I mean? Sometimes you, as the player of your character, must make decisions that are not in-character because the game simply forces you to do so. In this particular case, the developer who created this quest should have thought to unlock that door once you're friends with the Battle-Borns. He didn't, so we have to live with the fact that Bethesda doesn't expect you to play a "good person" in this game, that Skyrim is clearly aimed at the neutral to evil side of the Good-Evil alignment range, and do the best you can role-playing in spite of it.

 

In this case I don't think the game forces you to do anything. I hate the railroading in Skyrim but in this case you really can just ignore the quest, it doesn't even get forced into your journal unless you ask about it.

 

In some situations (the Vigilant of Stendarr in Markarth is one exception, sure there are more) you are literally FORCED to make a decision against character. But in most cases you're only forced to choose between RP and having an empty quest journal.

 

Much as I hate having uncompleted quests in my journal (and I really, really do especially the f'in Thieves Guild), I choose RP at that point.

Tetradite you may have missed this post in regards to the Battle-Borns quest: 'If your speech is high enough, you don't have to break in and steal anything from the Battle-Born home....With high Speech if you speak with the Battle-Born brother in the Imperial uniform you can persuade him to give you the information you need.....I usually leave this mission until fairly late in the game because of this and just persuade him.'

 

In regards to the doors being locked too, you will generally find if one of the doors is locked, the other will be open.

 

Yes, the Vigilant in Markarth and Brynjolf I feel very pushed myself....Brynjolf would be okay...just a minor irritation....if he stopped once you tell him 'No', but for ever after you have to make sure you don't wander too close to him or you get the eternal comment "Have you come to your senses?"....grrrr..... :down:

[Moraevik]

I understand where you're coming from, tetradite, and you can certainly ignore a journal entry, but put yourself into RP mode for a moment.

 

I hear from a guard that the Arentino boy is trying to contact the Dark Brotherhood and my journal automatically updates to go talk to him. Now, I'm playing someone who has no interest in this AT ALL. Why would I put that in my journal?

 

I pass an Imperial patrol on the road and they tell me to go to Solitude and join the Imperial Legion. I'm a Stormcloak sympathizer. Why would I put an entry in my journal to join the Legion?

 

Brynjolf grabs my attention, even though I'd just like to kick him in the family jewels and go on and talk with the real merchants, and suddenly I write in my journal to listen to his scheme?

 

What nonsense is this? I AM roleplaying, here. My journal is a private diary in which I'm supposed to be putting my thoughts and organizing my schedule. It's mostly even written in first person perspective to enforce this notion. It shouldn't be a place for the game to queue up every single quest-line that I'm not interested in ever doing. In this sense, then, yes the game is most certainly forcing me to do something, because I would never put all this junk in my private journal. I'm not the only one who has expressed this notion on Nexus, either. I've read about it elsewhere, but I suspect I'm in the vast minority on my opinion that the player's journal should be under complete control of the player.

 

It wouldn't be so bad if we could just tear the offending pages out of our journals and throw them away, never looking back on those quest-lines, but we can't. Instead, my journal gets clogged with comments that, as a good person, I would never, ever, have written there in the first place. The problem is with the game, itself. There's no way to delete a quest once you have it. The best you can do is to reset it to Stage 0, but you can never get rid of a quest once it's been logged, so I doubt that it's even possible to mod the game in any way to enable deleting of quests. All we can hope for is that modders will eventually fix all the "railroading" instances and give us some choices that we don't have right now.

 

Skyrim is still a good game. I am, after all, still playing it. It just has a really irritating foundation based upon the idea that every player is going to be a "completionist" as far as all the big quest-lines are concerned, so the developers have created sneaky ways to get us involved in all of them. That's not catering to the role-playing segment of their customer base. On the other hand, it could be that we role-players are such a minority that we don't count. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few ... or the one." (Spock)

[tetradite]

FWIW Moraevik, I agree with you.

 

I'm just saying that personally if it comes down to a choice between keeping an unfinished quest in my journal or breaking character to complete it, then I'll suffer the quest being stuck in my journal as the lesser of two evils.

 

They shouldn't get forcibly added in the first place, but once they're there I'll put up with it in spite of how much it irritates me, rather than do something I don't want to just to get rid of them.

[Ganit]

@Moraevik Don't think of it as a journal in the "diary" sense. I like to think of the journal as an Elder Scroll if sorts. The reason things you'd never do are in there isn't because you're putting them in but because the journal is a reflection of all possible outcomes.

[Moraevik]

That's kind of stretching things a bit, Ganit. The journal is actually written in the form a diary. Pay strict attention to the wording. In most cases it's exactly as though you're writing this stuff into the journal, yourself. It's a big leap out of what little reality can be present in a fantasy game to think of this in Elder Scroll terms. As implemented, the journal is actually a kludge by the developers to insure that the player doesn't forget about quests. That's probably a good thing, in and of itself, but if that's what it is, then the wording should be crisp, official, and not presented as though the player wrote it there. It would be no more artificial than is the HUD or inventories with potentially hundreds of objects and nowhere obvious to put them.

 

Actually, I'd prefer the journal to be a real journal, where the player can actually write the things he wants to write into them and to indicate those quests he wants to accept and those he declines never show up in it. Oh well, it's an irritation, but it's something I'll put up with because I really enjoy playing Skyrim in spite of all its little bugaboos

[Lachdonin]

That's kind of stretching things a bit, Ganit. The journal is actually written in the form a diary. Pay strict attention to the wording. In most cases it's exactly as though you're writing this stuff into the journal, yourself. It's a big leap out of what little reality can be present in a fantasy game to think of this in Elder Scroll terms. As implemented, the journal is actually a kludge by the developers to insure that the player doesn't forget about quests. That's probably a good thing, in and of itself, but if that's what it is, then the wording should be crisp, official, and not presented as though the player wrote it there. It would be no more artificial than is the HUD or inventories with potentially hundreds of objects and nowhere obvious to put them.

 

Actually, I'd prefer the journal to be a real journal, where the player can actually write the things he wants to write into them and to indicate those quests he wants to accept and those he declines never show up in it. Oh well, it's an irritation, but it's something I'll put up with because I really enjoy playing Skyrim in spite of all its little bugaboos

 

The Journal system in Skyrim is in an uncomfortable transitional phase from earlier editions. In Daggerfall, for instance, you could actually make notations in your Journal. In both Morrowind and Oblivion, it actually looked like a journal, to the point where you actually had to flip through pages as you progress through quests, read the damn thing and figure out what you're supposed to do.

 

The Journal in Skyrim, on the other hand, is more of a functionay tool than an atmospheric ones. The writing is a throwback to what it was once, but it really bears no more resemblance to that anymore. As such, i don't even consider it a journal, regardless of the wording. It's a quest tracker, plain and simple.

 

There is some annoying railroading in Skyrim. The Theives Guild and the Vigilant in Markarth being the most prominant of that (though, if you want 'evil' you'll probably do the Theives guild anyway, their less savory this time around). The main quest, however, isn't part of the problem. The main story in TES games is supposed to be railroaded, because it's about saving the world. If you don't want to save the world, don't do it, plain and simple. We're not talking Fable or Mass Effect here, where at the end of a railroaded questline you get to make a totally arbitrary choice between good, evil and evil-ish.

 

Don't want to save the world? Fine, let Alduin eat it, just ignore the quest line. Even as an evil character, though, you can fight Alduin and save the world, just do it for selfish reasons. If he eats the world, you have nothing left to loot. RP problem solved.

[StayFrosty05]

That's kind of stretching things a bit, Ganit. The journal is actually written in the form a diary. Pay strict attention to the wording. In most cases it's exactly as though you're writing this stuff into the journal, yourself. It's a big leap out of what little reality can be present in a fantasy game to think of this in Elder Scroll terms. As implemented, the journal is actually a kludge by the developers to insure that the player doesn't forget about quests. That's probably a good thing, in and of itself, but if that's what it is, then the wording should be crisp, official, and not presented as though the player wrote it there. It would be no more artificial than is the HUD or inventories with potentially hundreds of objects and nowhere obvious to put them.

 

Actually, I'd prefer the journal to be a real journal, where the player can actually write the things he wants to write into them and to indicate those quests he wants to accept and those he declines never show up in it. Oh well, it's an irritation, but it's something I'll put up with because I really enjoy playing Skyrim in spite of all its little bugaboos

 

The Journal system in Skyrim is in an uncomfortable transitional phase from earlier editions. In Daggerfall, for instance, you could actually make notations in your Journal. In both Morrowind and Oblivion, it actually looked like a journal, to the point where you actually had to flip through pages as you progress through quests, read the damn thing and figure out what you're supposed to do.

 

The Journal in Skyrim, on the other hand, is more of a functionay tool than an atmospheric ones. The writing is a throwback to what it was once, but it really bears no more resemblance to that anymore. As such, i don't even consider it a journal, regardless of the wording. It's a quest tracker, plain and simple.

 

There is some annoying railroading in Skyrim. The Theives Guild and the Vigilant in Markarth being the most prominant of that (though, if you want 'evil' you'll probably do the Theives guild anyway, their less savory this time around). The main quest, however, isn't part of the problem. The main story in TES games is supposed to be railroaded, because it's about saving the world. If you don't want to save the world, don't do it, plain and simple. We're not talking Fable or Mass Effect here, where at the end of a railroaded questline you get to make a totally arbitrary choice between good, evil and evil-ish.

 

Don't want to save the world? Fine, let Alduin eat it, just ignore the quest line. Even as an evil character, though, you can fight Alduin and save the world, just do it for selfish reasons. If he eats the world, you have nothing left to loot. RP problem solved.

 

The Main Quest does try to rail road you into joining the Mages College...I probably find that the most irritating of all due to the fact that it is the Main Quest....Brynjolf, the Vigilant, etc...are very annoying, but the fact that there is an attempt to rail road Guilds joined in the main Quest is what peeves me the most.....Once you have the Official Guide or have played through at least once, you can then find out that you can avoid the college altogether by going straight to the "Discerning the Transmundane' location instead....though it would be much nicer to RP it, instead of just using outside game knowledge....Would also be nice to be able to hand the scroll over to the librarian without having to join.....It would have been best if one of the dialog choices at the college gates had been something along the lines of..."I am no Mage, I am the Dragonborn and am just here to speak with the Librarian in regards to Alduins return"...and be able to enter on those conditions without having to join.

[Lachdonin]

Ah! But that would require a whole other line of dialogue, which means scrip, recording time, paying voice actors etc...

 

I still tend to view most of the choice restrictions on voice acting...