It would have been so easy in Morrowind, but since Oblivion and especially Skyrim they decided they need a big intro setpiece for the trailers.
Fallout 4's 2nd mission is a horrendous overdramatized carnival ride that sets you up with a crew of utterly shallow characters, and it was was clearly tacked onto the game specifically for their early gameplay feature demo. It's designed to make you think most of the game has a lot of scripted scenes and multiple NPCs and interesting missions, and when you're done with this one mission everyone turns into extremely bland NPCs with 5 super simple chore quests each.
The Skyrim Alternate Start mod is so cool because in most of them they give you the main story mission but it's to travel to Helgen, and the dragon is just leaving as you get there. In at least one of the alternate starts, you are camping in the woods just a couple hundred yards past Helgen and wake up to the roars of the dragon. They changed a bunch of characters and made them say only their generic stuff if you haven't been to Helgen yet. So you can visit whiterun, meet people, go to Helgen, then go back to Whiterun and they've locked the city because of the dragon.
Very cool.
Oblivion also has an alternate start mod, and it gives you a vision of the emperor, begging you to find Jauffre. He's then killed in the sewer unbeknownst to you, and the Amulet of Kings is stolen off his corpse by a rat that then dies by the entrance to the sewer.
![[CW: enbyphobia ] This is either bait or made by a tourist.](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/ab4638a4-095b-479a-ab01-9bc27b03a2fa.webp){kind=link}
It's baffling that alternate starts aren't a standard expectation of open world RPGs. If I'm gonna create a character let me create a character!
But it is le tradition for le Elder Scrolls games to start you as a le prisoner
As an old timer that played and beat every mainline Elder Scrolls game including ES1 Arena when it came out, it's about time that stopped happening.
It would have been so easy in Morrowind, but since Oblivion and especially Skyrim they decided they need a big intro setpiece for the trailers.
Fallout 4's 2nd mission is a horrendous overdramatized carnival ride that sets you up with a crew of utterly shallow characters, and it was was clearly tacked onto the game specifically for their early gameplay feature demo. It's designed to make you think most of the game has a lot of scripted scenes and multiple NPCs and interesting missions, and when you're done with this one mission everyone turns into extremely bland NPCs with 5 super simple chore quests each.
The Skyrim Alternate Start mod is so cool because in most of them they give you the main story mission but it's to travel to Helgen, and the dragon is just leaving as you get there. In at least one of the alternate starts, you are camping in the woods just a couple hundred yards past Helgen and wake up to the roars of the dragon. They changed a bunch of characters and made them say only their generic stuff if you haven't been to Helgen yet. So you can visit whiterun, meet people, go to Helgen, then go back to Whiterun and they've locked the city because of the dragon.
Very cool.
Oblivion also has an alternate start mod, and it gives you a vision of the emperor, begging you to find Jauffre. He's then killed in the sewer unbeknownst to you, and the Amulet of Kings is stolen off his corpse by a rat that then dies by the entrance to the sewer.