Any thoughts on what that "next great RPG" might be?
Upcoming RPGs:
SHADOWRUN RETURNS (June 2013)
LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII (late 2013)
WASTELAND 2 (end of 2013)
LEGEND OF GRIMROCK 2 (2014)
DRAGON AGE 3: INQUISTION (2014)
PROJECT: ETERNITY (2014)
THE WITCHER 3: THE WILD HUNT (2014)
TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA (2015)
CYBERPUNK 2077 (2015)
MASS EFFECT 4 (2015 at the earliest)
FALLOUT 4 (probably, also likely to be 2015 at the earliest)
METRO: LAST LIGHT, out next month, isn't technically an RPG, although it's predecessor (METRO 2077) was a FPS with some RPG elements. That might be worth a look.
I'm hoping for Black Marsh, but it'll probably be Hammerfell, High Rock, or Valenwood.
Well, the Elder Scrolls Online is going after the whole continent. Most of the regions are leveling/questing zones, and Cyrodil is a common PvP zone in their upcoming MMO.
But if you're referring to the next single-player Elder Scrolls game, I'd love to get a game-specific look at Akavir to see the designers stretch their limits with a somewhat alien environment (Skyrim was really similar to Oblivion, in terms of design). Or maybe the remains of Yokuda, where the Redguards initially hail from, for much the same reason.
I haven't tried Dragonborn yet, but I thought that Dawnguard was pretty good overall. The Soul Cairn was simply amazing. The whole story with Serena was actually pretty well done, all things considered, in my opinion; there were spots that could have been better, but one thing you have to remember about taking Serena to her father first is that Isran isn't in much of a position to do anything when you first meet her, and the intelligence gained from that whole process pays off in the long run, which ever way you end up choosing. Overall, I thought they did a really good job of developing Serena and the whole storyline, given how overused vampires tend to be in most rpgs and fantasy games; yes, there were stretches that forced you to suspend disbelief, but I have yet to see a vampire story that doesn't force disbelief at some point in time, especially if you try to make the vampires anything other than pure evil.
The whole "unkillable" NPC thing is a necessary evil unfortunately, especially if you plan on playing a melee character and having followers. The battles can get quite frantic, and it's very easy to hit the wrong individual on accident if your mouse/computer can't keep up. Morrowind didn't have that mode, but it also didn't have followers, so the need for it was a lot less pressing. Killing quest givers/critical NPCs, or having them try to kill themselves, is bad enough, but the addition of followers makes it absolutely problematic to not have such a system in place.
EDIT: I actually thought having the hiding place right under his nose was quite clever. It's amazing how often that is the best possible hiding place because very few people can or will look that close to home for what they are certain could not possibly be that easy, especially if it requires reminding one self of past pain or difficulties to do so. It's also makes sense from the point of view that she would have the best access to the materials and research needed to pull off entering the Soul Cairn in her own lab, and would not be very eager to have to take such complex research on the road.
I would love it if some day Howard could answer some questions for the next TES game and the current game such as
1.After Dawnguard was released Did NPC behavior like Seranas become easier to implement and therefore with the next game could that be more common?
2. The Vampire lord and werewolves would come with the new TES standard game?
3. With the itroduction of the Dragonborn is it almost a requirement that the player have "super abilities" going forward. Would it be a letdown for people who only had played SKyrim not to have those shout type powers
4. The next game would have to be bigger/better and introduce even more new powers/enemies such as werebear, spears, mounted combat etc.
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The whole story with Serena was actually pretty well done, all things considered, in my opinion; there were spots that could have been better, but one thing you have to remember about taking Serena to her father first is that Isran isn't in much of a position to do anything when you first meet her, and the intelligence gained from that whole process pays off in the long run, which ever way you end up choosing.
You are a vampire killer. You are sent to find out what the Vampires are looking for. You found the Daughter of the Main BBEG Vampire, and she has an Elder Scroll.
Your plan is to escort her and the scroll to the BBEG.
FACE. PALM.
It could have been very, very easily fixed. You could have had the option be to take Serena to the Dawnguard or her father. You could have had the choice of joining the Dawnguard or the Vampires come before you started that quest and have Serena act differently depending on what side you were on.
Incredibly lazy storytelling.
EDIT: Also, as to under your nose, if you are searching far and wide for where someone hid an elder scroll, and you can fly, one would think at some point you would look in the lab they had in a tower (Not hidden underground...IN A TOWER) in the castle you were living in.
Because literally, it was in the Tower. You can go in and out of it by a door.
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Well, the Elder Scrolls Online is going after the whole continent. Most of the regions are leveling/questing zones, and Cyrodil is a common PvP zone in their upcoming MMO.
But if you're referring to the next single-player Elder Scrolls game, I'd love to get a game-specific look at Akavir to see the designers stretch their limits with a somewhat alien environment (Skyrim was really similar to Oblivion, in terms of design). Or maybe the remains of Yokuda, where the Redguards initially hail from, for much the same reason.
I view that as kind of a money grab that they are outsourcing in the same way as...well I hate to say it but it's true...the goblinworks project here at Paizo. It doesn't effect Canon, it's just there.
Akavir would be interesting. I liked Morrowind because it was so different, but I think you could get that from Elswhr as well.
The whole story with Serena was actually pretty well done, all things considered, in my opinion; there were spots that could have been better, but one thing you have to remember about taking Serena to her father first is that Isran isn't in much of a position to do anything when you first meet her, and the intelligence gained from that whole process pays off in the long run, which ever way you end up choosing.You are a vampire killer. You are sent to find out what the Vampires are looking for. You found the Daughter of the Main BBEG Vampire, and she has an Elder Scroll.
Your plan is to escort her and the scroll to the BBEG.
FACE. PALM.
It could have been very, very easily fixed. You could have had the option be to take Serena to the Dawnguard or her father. You could have had the choice of joining the Dawnguard or the Vampires come before you started that quest and have Serena act differently depending on what side you were on.
While I agree that the presentation could have been handled slightly better in how the option was presented, you are essentially given that choice. You are sent by the vampire hunter (note, the singular is mostly accurate at this point, as Isran is still largely doing this on his own; you haven't recruited any of the other NPCs yet) to find out what is in the crypt. You are not really a vampire hunter yourself yet, still effectively being on probation and not yet really being trusted by Isran; you are at the merc hired as a scout stage with potential for more stage so the initial actions with Serena are still in the exploratory stage of your own views and position. You find a locked up vampire and the elder scroll who is unclear about certain things herself, but willing to work with you and count you as an ally of sorts, and through some slight contortions, given the choice of which faction you really want to be in. Turning Serena and the elder scroll over to Isran is not really an option at this point, because aside from the metaplot of the DLC being completely destroyed, Isran has nothing he can do about it at the time, as he is still trying to build the Dawnguard up from scratch, and has no one to really help him do so just yet.
I don't really know how else they could have done it; it's not like the vampires were actively recruiting, making it very difficult to present the scenario as a forked path from the very start; they would have had to force the initial situation on you somehow, and however they did it, they would not have pleased everyone. The way they chose to drive the initial encounters is as good as any other option available to them and better than most, given the lack of good introductions to the vampire side. For those who are already into the vampires and/or vampire hunters, yes, the story is a bit stretched at times, but so in the introduction to most of the factions if you aren't already interested in them to begin with and are only treating them like a check mark on the to do list. I have to say that from the perspective of someone who could really have cared less about the whole vampire angle (I picked it up to in the first place to check out the werewolf and crossbow developments), the DLC does a good job of developing an interesting story that provides a distinctly Elder Scroll twist to the whole vampire cliche. It's not perfect by any means, but to compare it to Dragonborn, where the introduction is already built into the main quest line of the game is a bit unfair; the lore for each of them starts in completely different places, and thus the challenges of expanding upon the lore is different for each.
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1. Isran has quite a few members already. You recruit more later if you join, but he isn't "Acting on his own" at all.
2. You "are" actually a vampire hunter at this point, you have joined the "We hate the Vampires" camp by joining the Dawnguard.
3. She has an Elder Scroll and she is a vampire. There is zero logical reason you would take her or the scroll to the BBEG. None. Elder Scrolls are amoung the most powerful artifacts in existance, why would you even remotely consider giving one to the BBEG?
4. Turning her over to Isran isn't an option because the game literally does not allow you to do it. If you had to choose sides before this mission, you could justify helping Serena by her saying "My father is evil, I have a scroll, take me to your leader so we can stop my father" if you are Dawnguard and "Find and Rescue my Daughter" if you went vampire. Plot could have worked (well...as well as it already worked) from that point forward with no real changes.
5. The Vampires weren't actively recruiting because that was how they wrote the story. It could just have easily been the player is approached with an offer of great power in exchange for helping find his daughter.
The introductory story was horrible and lazy. Worst, it could easily have not been. The focus was on the shiny toys and not the story, and it painfully showed.
To put the whole conundrum from Isran's perspective, is it really better to immediately kill the one vampire and loose out on the potential scouting info? You have to remember that at this point of the story, he has virtually no notable help, and even less functional intel on his enemy. Turning Serena into him when she already is well aware of what she is walking into and could shred the nascent group apart then and there just on her own just isn't an option he can take advantage of, however much he might want to.
You also seem to assume that the elder scrolls are really that useful to a majority of people when they aren't; it's not that big of an assumption on Isran's part that even if he allows the elder scroll to get out of his hands that it will be at best very difficult for whoever ends up with it to actually utilize it in a meaningful way, and the story bears this out to a large degree. Yes, Harkon knows bits of the prophecy, but it's actually his wife, Serena's mother, who fully understands the implications of it, not him, and I would hesitate considering someone capable of opening up the soul cairn to use as a hiding place as even remotely close to representing normal. Even the moth priest loses his eye sight after not properly preparing himself for the ordeal of reading the scroll.
In the end, I think you're focusing too much on how we as players and our character understand the elder scrolls, forgetting how they would be seen in game by most of the world. For most of the NPCs, the elder scrolls fall into the same category as the dragons, which is to say that they are mostly legend, and even those who know they aren't have a great deal of difficulty fully utilizing them. The story makes sense enough given that fact and the difficult position Isran is starting from. It's not perfect, but they would have been hard pressed to craft it any other way that would be demonstrably better, all things considered; all the other options have just as many, if not more, difficulties in implementation.
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It is an Elder Scroll.
Literally one of the most powerful artifacts that exists.
And you give it to the BBEG to "Scout" what he wants?
HELLO HE WANTS THE ELDER SCROLL! The name of the series is "The Elder Scroll" series. They are "the" artifacts. You spend the majority of the main quest of the game trying to find one, and frankly half of Dawnguard is finding someone to read the Elder Scrolls you found and then finding more Elder Scrolls.
And then Serena just randomly pops back up in the Dawnguard fortress (literally right after you are screened to see if you are a vampire) with the same elder scroll on her back?
Really?
Isran has a fortress, he has all of the Dawnguard except the three people you recruit, he has the dragonborn and now he would have an Elder Scroll.
There is no logical reason to give the Elder Scroll to the BBEG. None. Zero. Zilch. It is incredibly stupid. The only thing more ridiculous is the BBEG letting his daughter take it to the Dawnguard.
I think you are just desparately trying to find a way your suspended disbelief was rational.
It wasn't. If you enjoyed it, fine. But it made absolutely no sense.
Which is why Dragonborn was so much better.
You as the player know what an Elder Scroll is and how valuable it is, if you did pretty much any of the main quest. Isran knows, because he is the one who tells you to go find a moth priest. Half of the questline is finding the Elder Scrolls so you can read them all.
Question Ciretose? Has there ever been a really good video game RPG that has given you the choice in a similiar way that Dawnguard did but better. I understand you feel it was lazy and doesnt make sense but to get the quest from a-z that are probably only a few limited options especially for a DLC that blends itself into the main game? How many games have addon DLC that do this. They then added on even more DLC that blended into the vanilla game. I feel they broke so much new ground that i can handle the flaws of Dawnguard.
1. Isran has quite a few members already. You recruit more later if you join, but he isn't "Acting on his own" at all.
2. You "are" actually a vampire hunter at this point, you have joined the "We hate the Vampires" camp by joining the Dawnguard.
3. She has an Elder Scroll and she is a vampire. There is zero logical reason you would take her or the scroll to the BBEG. None. Elder Scrolls are amoung the most powerful artifacts in existance, why would you even remotely consider giving one to the BBEG?
4. Turning her over to Isran isn't an option because the game literally does not allow you to do it. If you had to choose sides before this mission, you could justify helping Serena by her saying "My father is evil, I have a scroll, take me to your leader so we can stop my father" if you are Dawnguard and "Find and Rescue my Daughter" if you went vampire. Plot could have worked (well...as well as it already worked) from that point forward with no real changes.
5. The Vampires weren't actively recruiting because that was how they wrote the story. It could just have easily been the player is approached with an offer of great power in exchange for helping find his daughter.
The introductory story was horrible and lazy. Worst, it could easily have not been. The focus was on the shiny toys and not the story, and it painfully showed.
You are too focused on what you know as a player rather than what any of the in game characters would know. You also assume that the majority of players would care about an offer coming from a vampire, which is not a safe assumption.
1)Yes, he does have some help, but not of the caliber needed to really deal with the threat, and certainly not enough to do so while protecting and rebuilding the castle.
2)You are as much a member of the faction as you are a member of the mage faction right after first entering the college. The scouting mission is as much to prove your trustworthiness as it is anything else, so "being part of the faction" can be overstated, however much the limits of computer programming force the status to be in or out.
3)Neither Isran, nor you, know Harkon to be the BBEG. Nor does Serena for that matter, when it comes down to it. It could even be argued, though with a bit more of a stretch, that Harkon doesn't really know, as he doesn't fully understand the prophecy or how to bring it about. And Elder Scrolls, while powerful, are not as useful as you seem to imply; they are difficult to use, and even harder to understand properly. Overall, I think you overestimate how much the characters actually know about the situation. Only one person fully understands the full scenario, and she's in the soul cairn; not even Harkon really knows that much.
4 & 5)That assumes that Harkon knew his daughter was down there. From the initial encounter with him, I got the impression he was caught by surprise as much as everyone else was, which fits the overall attitude of his parental position quite well. To have him offer the quest requires that a)he knows Serena is there and that she has the elder scroll, b)he can fake caring about his daughter long enough to fool those around him so they don't give away his true position to you, and c)advertising the presence of himself and his clan in an environment that is much, much, much more likely to be pro vampire hunter than pro vampire. And again, you are assuming that Isran could do anything even if you turned her over to him. Killing Serena would be no easy feat and, while he may not like giving the elder scroll away, he equally has little use of it himself. You are also overlooking a big part of Isran's personality, the fact that he has more than a touch of arrogance and enough of an understanding of the long view to back it up; he doesn't have to win every single battle, just the war, and he has the balls to let a battle with an unclear ending play out if it means that he learns more about the war as a whole.
There is no logical reason to give the Elder Scroll to the BBEG. None. Zero. Zilch. It is incredibly stupid. The only thing more ridiculous is the BBEG letting his daughter take it to the Dawnguard.You as the player know what an Elder Scroll is and how valuable it is, if you did pretty much any of the main quest. Isran knows, because he is the one who tells you to go find a moth priest. Half of the questline is finding the Elder Scrolls so you can read them all.
These statements seem to be the major disconnect between us. You are right in that we as players, and our characters, and a few notable NPCs would understand the full value of the elder scrolls, but even with that, knowing their value and tapping into that value is not the same thing. They had to add a traveling priest of a group that doesn't exist in Skyrim, or indeed, the vast majority of Tamriel, into the DLC just so you could read it. For all that they have played a big part in the overall metaplot of every TES story, they are still not all that useful on the practical level and it amazed me when they let you get one in the first place in the original game. Even after all is said and done at the end of Dawnguard, there are a grand total of 3 individuals with the capability of reading the elder scrolls in Skyrim; one is a dragon, one is made blind the effort after not properly preparing for it, and one is the already demi-god status dragonborn PC.
And actually, it is Serena, not Isran, that mentions the moth priest; Isran is actually rather dismissive of the whole thing when it is first brought up. And it's the other recruitable NPCs that understand the full value of the elder scroll more than Isran, so no, it's not nearly as dumb as you make it sound to have him ignore that aspect.
As for having the castle, there are a few important points to consider. One, he is in the process of rebuilding it, meaning that many of his people are busy doing that. Two, he has to defend it, meaning that the rest of his people are doing that. He has no meaningful lieutenants to take the fight to the vampires, nor the people available to follow such a lieutenant. He doesn't fully trust you yet, and even if he did, he still doesn't have the army. He's not entirely alone, but in terms of leadership, he is by himself, and his existing band of followers is both small and busy trying to secure their home base. Add in no functional intel on the enemy, and Isran really couldn't do anything even if he wanted to. Keeping the elder scroll would simply open himself up for an attack the castle isn't ready for, but he still wouldn't be able to use it (at that point in the story, the dragonborn can't either, and is not likely to bother Parthamux with it, assuming they even know about Parthumax), and killing a single vampire when you could potentially find out about a whole den of them is equally short sighted.
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Question Ciretose? Has there ever been a really good video game RPG that has given you the choice in a similiar way that Dawnguard did but better. I understand you feel it was lazy and doesnt make sense but to get the quest from a-z that are probably only a few limited options especially for a DLC that blends itself into the main game? How many games have addon DLC that do this. They then added on even more DLC that blended into the vanilla game. I feel they broke so much new ground that i can handle the flaws of Dawnguard.
Yes. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Baldurs Gate...
Here are the very simply fixes they could have plugged in to make the story work and not significantly alter programming.
1. Before you start the first quest, you choose sides. Now Serena can be programmed to either be pro-vampire or anti-evil father. Would not alter the story line at all.
2. Don't start her out with an Elder Scroll. Make it just about finding the elder scroll. You find her, she says she is the only one who knows her mothers secret...the elder scroll! You need her to find the Elder Scroll which is why Isran will work with her and why her father is looking for her.
The rest basically plays out the same, and the story 1) Actually makes sense 2) Doesn't cheapen the Elder Scrolls down to more or less Pokemon (gotta get 'em all!)
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1. The Moth Priests are a sect that travels around looking for Elder Scrolls. One being in Skyrim isn't a reach at all. It isn't like only one moth priest exists, anywhere.
2. The Fact that Serena is even in the Dawnguard fortress chatting with Isran is ridiculous, considering he litterally just made you go through an elaborate "No Vampires Allowed!" Screening process 30 seconds before you run into her in his room. His being dismissive only makes it more ridiculous he let her in at all. For your reasoning to work, we have assume Isran is a complete idiot.
3. You argue Isran doesn't trust you, but he lets a vampire in to wait for you, lets you take an Elder Scroll to the BBEG...your logic swallows itself.
4. Isran's intel on the enemy was you telling him "They were looking for this person who has an Elder Scroll" His solutions "Cool, give it to them"
What?
And back to the vampires, they have been in the castle for centuries. Not weeks, not months, centuries. Over the centuries, he never wondered what was in that tower?
You plug my simple fixes in and now Serena is needed to open the Soul Cairn and is the only one who even knows it exists.
Plot hole closed.
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1)Yes, he does have some help, but not of the caliber needed to really deal with the threat, and certainly not enough to do so while protecting and rebuilding the castle.
2)You are as much a member of the faction as you are a member of the mage faction right after first entering the college. The scouting mission is as much to prove your trustworthiness as it is anything else, so "being part of the faction" can be overstated, however much the limits of computer programming force the status to be in or out.
3)Neither Isran, nor you, know Harkon to be the BBEG. Nor does Serena for that matter, when it comes down to it. It could even be argued, though with a bit more of a stretch, that Harkon doesn't really know, as he doesn't fully understand the prophecy or how to bring it about. And Elder Scrolls, while powerful, are not as useful as you seem to imply; they are difficult to use, and even harder to understand properly. Overall, I think you overestimate how much the characters actually know about the situation. Only one person fully understands the full scenario, and she's in the soul cairn; not even Harkon really knows that much.
4 & 5)That assumes that Harkon knew his daughter was down there. From the initial encounter with him, I got the impression he was caught by surprise as much as everyone else was, which fits the overall attitude of his parental position quite well. To have him offer the quest requires that a)he knows Serena is there and that she has the elder scroll, b)he can fake caring about his daughter long enough to fool those around him so they don't give away his true position to you, and c)advertising the presence of himself and his clan in an environment that is much, much, much more likely to be pro vampire hunter than pro vampire. And again, you are assuming that Isran could do anything even if you turned her over to him. Killing Serena would be no easy feat and, while he may not like giving the elder scroll away, he equally has little use of it himself. You are also overlooking a big part of Isran's personality, the fact that he has more than a touch of arrogance and enough of an understanding of the long view to back it up; he doesn't have to win every single battle, just the war, and he has the balls to let a battle with an unclear ending play out if it means that he learns more about the war as a whole.
1. What does he need to do other than "Don't give the uber powerful artifact to the BBEG. Keep it here instead."
2. The Dawnguard exist to end the vampire threat. You joined them. You are a vampire killer in training at absolute minimum.
3. He is a Vampire. The main Vampire. The Dawnguard exist for the sole purpose of eliminating vampires. Even if you don't know he is "the" BBEG, you know he is at least "a" EG. Why would you give the bad guy one of the most powerful artifacts known to man, which you know he is looking for. Probably looking for it not to make candy and ice cream.
4. We know Harkon was looking for something there. Whatever it was, there is no reason to give it to him. Particularly since at minimum IT IS AN ELDER SCROLL!
I give up. It's obvious that you simply don't like that aspect of the story, and never will. I would dispute not only the fact that a few simple fixes would have dealt with the issues you raise, but also the idea that other games have done it better. Of the three examples you gave, I haven't tried Mass Effect, but neither Dragon Age nor Baldur's Gate allowed the main plot to be altered; you could choose your own path, but the end destination was still predetermined; neither is worse than Dawnguard, but neither is better, either.
I don't think Dawnguard is the best thing ever created, but given the lore they had to work with, I can say with a large degree of comfort that they would have been hard pressed to make any changes to the story and still have as good a product as what they ended up with. The story fits with the existing lore as well as any story could, and, for the most part, accomplishes it's goals.
The only real qualm I have with it is the introduction of the Elder Scrolls as quantifiable, usable items; to me, a lot of the coolness about them in the past was the mystery and lack of any kind of definition to them; I don't think that introducing them as readable items makes them cheap, but it does cast away a lot of the mystique surrounding them, and raises the power bar for the next game to a potentially dangerous level that will be problematic to deal with.
I haven't tried Dragonborn yet, but I see one big advantage it has from the very start. Rather than trying to pull an obscure bit of lore that many people never cared about to begin with, they are simply extending the primary story line, so the buy in is automatically going to be much easier to both write and accept.
Dragon Age does not have the same choice that Dawnguard has and in fact the DLC are isolated areas. Shale and other characters you control will stay with you but not in further DLC. Same with Dragon Age 2
You cant side with the enemy ( i consider the dwarf king/werewolves choice to be a distant second), most NPCS dont react to you and Blood magic is underwhelming. Dlc monsters only appear in the select area and its only traveling from point a-b. Your choices do somewhat matter at the end of the game but had minimal impact on DLC and the sequel. But thats a separate argument.
Baldurs gate really simple graphics and how many choices do you really have? Could you ally yourself with the enemy? become a powerful undead?
Mass Effect. Choices on who lives or dies but really just a glorified shooter. 3 had the worst ending in any game and did that games DLC add into the general world as well as Skyrim did. Where there NPCS that reacted to decisions you made in the game other than companions?
I would argue that Fallout is the closest and that DLC didnt do as good a job as Dawnguard. Even Dragonborn has little impact on vanilla skyrim. Sure it advances your character but it adds very little to the vanilla world. As far as i know even the Greybeards dont acknowledge Miraak. Do the guards even say anything? I would still argue that the DLC is one of the two best ever created for a video game.
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FALLOUT NEW VEGAS did indeed allow you to ally with the enemy, ally with the good guys or say screw it to both of them and allowed you to take over the world (well, the game world anyway) yourself. It also allowed you to waltz into the enemy HQ camp halfway through the game and kill the main bad guy if you really wanted to (and had enough firepower). In terms of recent RPGs, NEW VEGAS has by far the most malleable storyline. I've heard that ALPHA PROTOCOL (made by the same people) is also quite variable, but I haven't played that yet.
Did New Vegas have any DLC that did this? Could u side with the main bad guy and finish his quest without fighting him and are there differnet rewards for doing so. You cant side with Miraak at all and cant kill him until you get to a-z of the quest. Same with all of the main faction quests except the Dark Brotherhood and even with that you have to complete a, Skip b-y to get a different Z which in the end is far less rewarding. Maybe they should have done that with this but it would have been a short DLC. You need Serana and her mom to get to Z. Would have been great to have another way but for a DLc probably would have required a lot more work and probably too cost prohibitive.
With Dawnguard there are vast and different rewards for choosing either side in the radiant quests ( i include minor roleplaying rewards such as spouse turning)
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I give up. It's obvious that you simply don't like that aspect of the story, and never will. I would dispute not only the fact that a few simple fixes would have dealt with the issues you raise, but also the idea that other games have done it better. Of the three examples you gave, I haven't tried Mass Effect, but neither Dragon Age nor Baldur's Gate allowed the main plot to be altered; you could choose your own path, but the end destination was still predetermined; neither is worse than Dawnguard, but neither is better, either.
That "aspect of the story" was the entire premise, and it made no sense.
1. What would not have been dealt with by the simple fixes I offered.
2. Dragons Age actually had 30 minutes of different starting options based on the race you chose and the outcome was drastically altered based on choices you made, so you are just wrong on that. And the choices made sense if you were good or evil.
3. Baldurs gate choices actually made sense.
4. No one is arguing the destination is the problem. It is the fact that following the path makes no logical sense for the character. If you wanted to be a Vampire, why join the Dawnguard? If you wanted to fight the Vampires, why deliver the pentultimate item to the Vampires in the very first mission you are sent on.
You won't admit the premise made no sense. I am not sure why.
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Dragon Age does not have the same choice that Dawnguard has and in fact the DLC are isolated areas. Shale and other characters you control will stay with you but not in further DLC. Same with Dragon Age 2
You cant side with the enemy ( i consider the dwarf king/werewolves choice to be a distant second), most NPCS dont react to you and Blood magic is underwhelming. Dlc monsters only appear in the select area and its only traveling from point a-b. Your choices do somewhat matter at the end of the game but had minimal impact on DLC and the sequel. But thats a separate argument.
Baldurs gate really simple graphics and how many choices do you really have? Could you ally yourself with the enemy? become a powerful undead?
Mass Effect. Choices on who lives or dies but really just a glorified shooter. 3 had the worst ending in any game and did that games DLC add into the general world as well as Skyrim did. Where there NPCS that reacted to decisions you made in the game other than companions?
I would argue that Fallout is the closest and that DLC didnt do as good a job as Dawnguard. Even Dragonborn has little impact on vanilla skyrim. Sure it advances your character but it adds very little to the vanilla world. As far as i know even the Greybeards dont acknowledge Miraak. Do the guards even say anything? I would still argue that the DLC is one of the two best ever created for a video game.
And all of the ones you mentioned actually had plots and premises that made sense.
The starting premise of Dawnguard made absolutely no sense. It could have, it should have, it didn't.
It was very pretty, but lazy and dumb.
Style over Substance. Which was my point. If you don't care if it makes sense or not, Dawnguard is better.
If making sense matters, Dragonborn is better.
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FALLOUT NEW VEGAS did indeed allow you to ally with the enemy, ally with the good guys or say screw it to both of them and allowed you to take over the world (well, the game world anyway) yourself. It also allowed you to waltz into the enemy HQ camp halfway through the game and kill the main bad guy if you really wanted to (and had enough firepower). In terms of recent RPGs, NEW VEGAS has by far the most malleable storyline. I've heard that ALPHA PROTOCOL (made by the same people) is also quite variable, but I haven't played that yet.
Also KOTOR (Both 1 and 2)
The issue wasn't that it had a "Good" or "Evil" choice. The issue was how lazy the writers were implementing it.
Tons of things in Skyrim have multiple options. The entire Civil War Quest is an example of selection opposite sides in a conflict.
The problem was that the story forced you to do something that made no sense, regardless of which side you picked.
If you wanted to be a Vampire, why join the Dawnguard?
If you wanted to be Dawnguard, why give the BBEG an Elder Scroll?
They got focused on making new shiny things and forgot to attach them to a story that made sense.
The premise of Dawnguard worked fine; there are some difficulties with it in places, but overall, it did what it set out to do. It's premise, and for the most part, it's execution, was very well done. I've already detailed why many would have no problem with the way it was presented; you obviously dislike the one point of the story, and will never be persuaded otherwise. Still, there is no way to present the story otherwise that doesn't create just as many problems somewhere else. The vampires are not going to advertise their presence to a non-vampire by asking for help, no matter how powerful that non-vampire is, and like wise for Isran and the vampire hunters. In short, the only way you would logically be there in the first place is if you already have some kind of allegiance to one side or the other, and unless you're already a vampire for other reasons, you ain't going to be hired by the vampires for anything, let alone something like that.
As for the next part, I will try one last time; what do you honestly think Isran would have gained by killing Serena and taking the scroll? He had no use for it, and had no reason to believe that Harkon would be able to make immediate use of it, and by having it in his castle, would give Harkon an excuse for a full out assualt, something the castle would not be able to withstand. You are putting far more value in the mere ownership of the scroll than the actual in game knowledge warrants. Harkon didn't know enough to make use of the situation any more than Isran, and Isran gained valuable intel from the whole thing; I would say that Isran got the better end of the deal by far. Besides which, Harkon never had the scroll, his daughter did, and there is a tremendous difference in there. As for never searching the tower, he probably never knew how to get in; it took intimate knowledge of her mother from Serena that allowed your character to put the puzzle together; someone without knowledge of the garden like that would never have put the puzzle together, and Harkon had no reason to have that information, because his wife certainly wouldn't have shared it, and his daughter, even when she returned, obviously didn't either. Heck, even Serena, who provided the clue, didn't have any idea what the PC would find inside.
The story works; it takes a distinct sense of strategy and looking at things from a very particular point of view, but it works, and it works as well as any other scenario would have. The idea of being recruited by the vampires sounds nice, but would never work with the established lore, and simply stumbling upon it as a neutral would not have had the same effect. In short, they had to start with the Dawnguard; there was simply no other place to start that made any sense at all, and they did quite well given that starting place. It wasn't perfect, but it was still the best option available to them.
The only point of concern I have that they might have been able to find a better solution to if they had avoided the use of the elder scrolls and prophesy entirely. Some plot devices are better off left vague, shadowy, and in the distance; the elder scrolls and prophesy in general is very much in that category. The use of those things in the main quest line was as far as I would have gone with them, making them tangible to a degree, but still very much beyond the realm of understanding of all but the most powerful and long lived individuals. As discrete objects, the elder scrolls just aren't that powerful or useful; likewise, prophesy sounds cool, but in actual practice and execution, it turns out to be rather mundane. The last thing I have to say is that Harkon wasn't as much of a BBEG as you make him out to be; sure, he's the leader of an ancient clan, but it's not like he's the king of vampires everywhere. Trying to make it out like Isran was giving away a hyper powerful relic that his massively powerful sworn enemy would immediately use to crush him is definitely an overstatement.
I think to fully enjoy this particular story, one's focus needs to be less on any single action, individual, or item, and more on the overall development of the story and those within it.
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You are starting from the assumption of only one possible outcome, when the entire premise was an add-on. As to why the Vampires would need people...
- They are vampires. They turn people into vampires. It is kind of what they do. You are the most powerful person in the known world. Of course they would want to recruit you.
- Harkon or the Dawnguard could have needed the Dragonborn to open the soul cairn.
- You are part of a prophesy (like everything else in the game)
You keep saying "Isran was..."
They wrote him to be that way. He didn't exist until they thought him up, and while I completely disagree with you about the limitations he had, all of those limitations were ones they wrote into the story.
Instead you have "Oh hey, you brought my daughter and an elder scroll, I know you swore to kill all of us, and I have no idea why you didn't kill my daughter...but do you want awesome power? No, well then I will just let you go stand outside my door so you can come back and foil my master plan later and possibly tell my enemies where we are. Cool?"
And the whole "She has it, he doesn't"...dude, it is strapped across her back and he mentions it when she comes through the door. It was in his possession.
Isran doesn't need to kill Serena to not give the Elder Scroll to Harkon, you could just have it set up so that if you join the Dawnguard, Serena wants to stop her father and if you don't join the Vampires, everything plays out the exact same.
There is zero reason why Isran would give the vampires an Elder Scroll.
None.
That is the problem.
The problem is that you have to join the Dawnguard to start the first quest. If you could choose to join either (or even neither) side prior to the first quest, it would (generally) work fine. You are sent by one side or the other to investigate this place, you find Serena who says she is the key to getting "x" macguffin, quest continues to find "X" Macguffin.
But they didn't, and there is no reason why they didn't. They still made some stuff exclusive based on the choice, they could have had the quest not require joining the Dawnguard. They could have had you investigate the rumors of vampires at the creepy castle and had them tell you that you could come in if you recover something from the place.
And then it would have actually made sense (for the most part)
But they didn't.
They are writting the story. All of the things included in the story, they put there.
If the story fails at making sense, pointing to things they "had" to do because of the story is just silly.
They wrote the "problems" you keep pointing out into the story.
They wrote that.
They failed at creating a story that makes sense, when it would have been painfully easy to do so.
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The last thing I have to say is that Harkon wasn't as much of a BBEG as you make him out to be; sure, he's the leader of an ancient clan, but it's not like he's the king of vampires everywhere. Trying to make it out like Isran was giving away a hyper powerful relic that his massively powerful sworn enemy would immediately use to crush him is definitely an overstatement.
You mean the artifact that leads him to an item THAT BLOCKS OUT THE SUN AND WHICH HE INTENDS TO USE TO BRING DARKNESS UPON THE EARTH SO VAMPIRES CAN RULE FOREVER.
That silly little artifact...
Here is my suggestion. Write out what happened, step by step, and tell me how you can do what was asked of or the player for a rational reason, as a player.
Step by step, mission by mission, starting with why you choose to join the Dawnguard.
I get that the plot hook bothers you. For me it is typical of most movie/tv show plots and is far less annoying.
I'm far more annoyed that is no more DLC/patchs and that they dont care that the game still has tons of bugs. I'm far more annoyed it will take several years for a game that does all this game does to come along again. Dragon Age 3 and witcher will have less race customization (only human for both). Skyrim/TES is probably the closest/best we will come to Pathfinder/D&D in a non MMO until the next TES.
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If they weren't going to expand out to the whole continent, I was ready for them to start working on the next one for the next Gen. I love Skyrim, it was a huge step forward from Oblivion, which was a hugh step forward (technologically at least) from Morrowind, etc, etc...
I'm excited at what will come next.
Basically, all I can say is that if that particular introduction bothers you, avoid tv, books, and movies, because for all if it's holes, it's no worse than any other contrivance used to introduce a new plot hook that doesn't automatically make sense. I agree that if they had written it completely differently, they could have avoided those issues, and different complaints arise from those decisions, but they could not have simply slapped a different intro onto the existing story. The story works well enough for most people, and better than most they could have come up with. You can say that they could have made Isran differently or done this or that differently, but they didn't, and given the greater context of what they did do, any other introduction would have made even less sense than this one. You obviously will disagree, but I doubt very many people will. Trying to compare it to Dragonborn where the story starts from a completely different place and deals with completely different material is really unfair to Dawnguard. For what it is and what it set out to be, Dawnguard is better than what I had feared it could have been, despite it's flaws; that is enough for me.
You mean the artifact that leads him to an item THAT BLOCKS OUT THE SUN AND WHICH HE INTENDS TO USE TO BRING DARKNESS UPON THE EARTH SO VAMPIRES CAN RULE FOREVER.
Except that not even Harkon knows the full details at first; only his wife in the soul cairn does. At the time you are making the choice, Harkon knows more than anyone else save his wife and he doesn't know more than that there is a potential way to expand his rule, not how, no specifics, just that such a thing exists, and that a single clue, not even the full answer, lies somewhere in the elder scroll.
You keep trying to apply full player knowledge to a decision made when the characters themselves, even the key NPCs, don't know the full details; from their point of view, it makes as much sense as any other possible outcome, and is more of a win than most outcomes. Nobody really wins from it, but nobody really loses, either. Isran buys time to build up a force that he wishes he had, but doesn't; Harkon would have had a chance to learn more if his daughter had cooperated (the fact that he fails to do so, and probably will, is foreshadowed quite strongly from the start, and a separate conversation; the fact is that he is given a chance that he wasn't expecting to have); your character is in a position to choose which side to take, but has litle advance knowledge of how it will play out.
The only other realistic way I could have seen them approach is ala the way they handled the civil war; dump you into the middle of an actual battle between the two sides and force you to work everything out for yourself.
Did New Vegas have any DLC that did this? Could u side with the main bad guy and finish his quest without fighting him and are there differnet rewards for doing so.
Yes. Of the four DLCs, two (OLD WORLD BLUES and DESERT HEARTS) allowed you to side with different factions and do different things.
Also KOTOR (Both 1 and 2)
To a much lesser extent. KotOR allowed you to choose between good and evil dialogue, which altered a few things, but both games still had more or less the same ending. You also couldn't half-and-half, or pick a few 'good' options and a few 'bad' ones. Both games - though still awesome - had a set and fairly small number of 'states' you could reach. NEW VEGAS by itself has something like a dozen, and that goes up with the DLCs which also have fairly malleable states as well.
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Did New Vegas have any DLC that did this? Could u side with the main bad guy and finish his quest without fighting him and are there differnet rewards for doing so.Yes. Of the four DLCs, two (OLD WORLD BLUES and DESERT HEARTS) allowed you to side with different factions and do different things.
All four New Vegas DLCs actually let you have a great deal of control over the outcome of their stories. Dead Money doesn't let you side with Elijah because he's a maniac who wants murder or control everyone with poison gas and hologram assassins, but you are given a lot of leeway where your loyalty to the other captives is concerned. Honest Hearts doesn't let you join the White Legs, but you do have the option to wipe out the leaders of the friendly tribes and then just leave with the map out of the valley, allowing the White Legs to take over. Old World Blues gives you the same options as the main game to side with one faction over another or take the whole of Big MT for yourself. Even Lonesome Road gives you the option to talk the BBEG out of nuking the NCR or taking control of the nukes yourself and bombing the crap out of everyone.
What's funny is vanilla Skyrim actually already has a couple quests built in that gives you some early control over their outcomes. The Civil War quest lets you not only pick who you're fighting for, but then gives you the option to switch sides after retrieving the Jagged Crown by taking it to the leader of the opposing side. You can also wrap up the Dark Brotherhood quest real quick by just killing Astrid when you first meet her and then going into the "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood" quest.
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Any thoughts on what that "next great RPG" might be?Upcoming RPGs:
SHADOWRUN RETURNS (June 2013)
LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII (late 2013)
WASTELAND 2 (end of 2013)
LEGEND OF GRIMROCK 2 (2014)
DRAGON AGE 3: INQUISTION (2014)
PROJECT: ETERNITY (2014)
THE WITCHER 3: THE WILD HUNT (2014)
TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA (2015)
CYBERPUNK 2077 (2015)
MASS EFFECT 4 (2015 at the earliest)
FALLOUT 4 (probably, also likely to be 2015 at the earliest)METRO: LAST LIGHT, out next month, isn't technically an RPG, although it's predecessor (METRO 2077) was a FPS with some RPG elements. That might be worth a look.
CHAOS CHRONICLES a true 3.5 style RPG.
Skyrim to me is still the best console game I have ever played. The world makes up for almost everything. Sure Dragon Age 1 had a better plot. Dragon Age 2 had the best interaction between NPCs I have ever seen. And running around with Selena, no matter how kick butt she is, is more than contrived. But no other game for me matches Skyrim for consuming up free time.
Legendary Edition coming out next month. Anyone else excited?
Not excited for legendary edition. If legendary editin had fixed more bugs or even had 1 small bit of DLC such as new swords etc then i would otherwise i have no use for it.
If the next TES has better npc interaction (like Dragon age) and a better sotryline it in my opinion could go down as the greatest computerized rpg.