Did you ever go to Windhelm? The first thing you see when you walk in is a bunch of Nords being racist to a Dark Elf. The game practically hits you over the head with a warhammer that says "nationalism and racism come from the same place."
But the game does not tell you that either of those things is bad. In fact, games need to do more than just tell or show you moral truths, they need to actually create gameplay around those concepts, nothing a Bethesda dev is even remotely capable of.
They are a legitimate option. There are two sides to the civil war and you can join both of them, with all their pros and cons. The game lets you choose whether you want to pick a side in the war, or just ignore it entirely which is entirely possible to do.
And yeah, they'll let you join them if you show yourself to be willing to follow and accept their customs. They're not a genocidal racist faction, they're just an incredibly nationalistic one. One that believes the Empire has been slowly erasing Nordic culture and that their ban on Talos worship was the final straw.
If you asked everyone you can in the game why they support either side then you'll probably get several different answers. Since you can't really sit and debate a video game character in any meaningful sense this mostly gets pushed into the real world where to this day, where we're nearly at the 10 year anniversary of the game, people are still discussing the Skyrim Civil War within lore spaces.
Do you side with the brave freedom fighters, pushing out an empire that doesn't care about their customs? Or are you bringing stability and order to fight against a larger foe, while putting down a nationalistic insurrection?
Hell, my last character simply joined the Stormcloaks because he's an anti-Empire Dunmer and no more thought went into it than that. He saw the way the Empire treated Morrowind during the Oblivion Crisis and everything after and wants its power reduced.
New Vegas has a trite "anarchist" option that involves no say with the people who actually live in the area. You only win because there happens to be a big robot army that can allow you to do so. There's no real public support from anyone you can actually get except a few comments here or there where people say "I'd like to be independent" but then are offered no say in how that occurs. You basically just slide yourself into a coup that was already happening.
No such option in Skyrim exists. You'd literally have to make an entire questline based on building up support for your new regime. You'd need soldiers, a place to quarter them, money to outfit them, people willing to take over from Jarls etc. What kind of new faction are you? Do you also decide that? At that point, you're making a whole new game.
The reality of that moment in time is that there are two warring factions, pick one or pick none. Anything else is wish fulfillment not based on the realities of game development, nor the created reality of the world. Even mods that try and do this are basically just gimmicks that don't really do anything politically heavy at all. They just let you execute random people and let you access anyone's inventory.
Why does the game have to have a perfect amazing "good side" in order to be good politically? Why can't things like this just be telling a story, a story that has people who do unsavoury things for what they believe is a righteous cause? Isn't that literally all of history anyway?
Morrowind is a story about defeating an ancient evil that will eventually take over and destroy the Empire. But, the only reason you're sent to fulfill the prophecy is that it will topple the Tribunal and give the Empire stronger leverage over the province because their leadership is no longer divine. Does that mean the game supports subterfuge in the name of Imperialism?
I don't know what you want from the game. Like, I'm sorry Bethesda didn't make a Communist revolution simulator. I'm sorry you can't have a one-hour debate with your in-game scholarly pals about the civil war. I'm sorry your Rorikstead commune didn't work out.
Religious freedom which was been shut down by the Imperials, hence the hostility. And by which mechanism are you expelling the two most powerful military factions in Skyrim at once?
Why can't both be bad? That's why you can ignore the war, and not pick a side.
Even at the end of the Stormcloak questline it's shown that Ulfric seems to enjoy the prospect of being a High King a lot more than Nordic freedom, in private anyway. At the end of the Imperial questline several of the Talos worshipping characters you can find in the game are disappeared and presumably imprisoned, tortured, and killed. If the Stormcloaks win then several shrines to Talos are added to the game when they were missing before, the opposite is true of the Imperial questline.
A LOT of stuff involving the civil war and postgame was cut. Much of your criticism seems to be about moments or choices that didn't exist, but should have. Which is fair and does fall upon the final product, however it was not for lack of trying or interest that much of it was cut or unfulfilling. And the idea of being able to just push out the extremes of both factions feels to easy. You are stuck with incredible powers, but none the less being a single person, in a medieval civil war. It's like being placed in the hundred years war and expecting them to let you get rid of the most obsessive French and English warmongers. No you are gonna have to choose, if nothing else for the sake of beating Alduin. The flaws of both sides cannot be dealt with because they are to fundamental and to entrenched in the fervor of civil war by the time the game starts.
Except its not just a matter of might. The Dragonborn has to deal with Dragonborn stuff, and needs the help of an established power. A political and social conflict is not going to just be resolved like that. We saw how much they needed allies in the story, to the point of having to pull of a truce in the civil war itself.
And every other threat? The Thalmor? If the dragonborn is going to be the big damn hero, they need to have a coherent government existing around them, but are not exactly gonna form a new kingdom or organize a new form of governance.
And I am saying this as someone who would much rather play a Dragonborn who supports the Forsworn. I think the conflict not wrapping up neatly is fine, both endings leave you with cases of "yeah these guys are bastards to", and there doesn't have to be a resolution to that. You have all this martial strength, but that does not equate to political power
Did you ever go to Windhelm? The first thing you see when you walk in is a bunch of Nords being racist to a Dark Elf. The game practically hits you over the head with a warhammer that says "nationalism and racism come from the same place."
But the game does not tell you that either of those things is bad. In fact, games need to do more than just tell or show you moral truths, they need to actually create gameplay around those concepts, nothing a Bethesda dev is even remotely capable of.
Why does the media have to tell you that it's bad? Can't you just work it out for yourself like an adult? lol
I mean... have you met g*mers?
Even explicitly pro-X things have been consistently misinterpreted by idiot g*mers. Literally, any themes at all are wasted on them.
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They are a legitimate option. There are two sides to the civil war and you can join both of them, with all their pros and cons. The game lets you choose whether you want to pick a side in the war, or just ignore it entirely which is entirely possible to do.
And yeah, they'll let you join them if you show yourself to be willing to follow and accept their customs. They're not a genocidal racist faction, they're just an incredibly nationalistic one. One that believes the Empire has been slowly erasing Nordic culture and that their ban on Talos worship was the final straw.
If you asked everyone you can in the game why they support either side then you'll probably get several different answers. Since you can't really sit and debate a video game character in any meaningful sense this mostly gets pushed into the real world where to this day, where we're nearly at the 10 year anniversary of the game, people are still discussing the Skyrim Civil War within lore spaces.
Do you side with the brave freedom fighters, pushing out an empire that doesn't care about their customs? Or are you bringing stability and order to fight against a larger foe, while putting down a nationalistic insurrection?
Hell, my last character simply joined the Stormcloaks because he's an anti-Empire Dunmer and no more thought went into it than that. He saw the way the Empire treated Morrowind during the Oblivion Crisis and everything after and wants its power reduced.
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New Vegas has a trite "anarchist" option that involves no say with the people who actually live in the area. You only win because there happens to be a big robot army that can allow you to do so. There's no real public support from anyone you can actually get except a few comments here or there where people say "I'd like to be independent" but then are offered no say in how that occurs. You basically just slide yourself into a coup that was already happening.
No such option in Skyrim exists. You'd literally have to make an entire questline based on building up support for your new regime. You'd need soldiers, a place to quarter them, money to outfit them, people willing to take over from Jarls etc. What kind of new faction are you? Do you also decide that? At that point, you're making a whole new game.
The reality of that moment in time is that there are two warring factions, pick one or pick none. Anything else is wish fulfillment not based on the realities of game development, nor the created reality of the world. Even mods that try and do this are basically just gimmicks that don't really do anything politically heavy at all. They just let you execute random people and let you access anyone's inventory.
Why does the game have to have a perfect amazing "good side" in order to be good politically? Why can't things like this just be telling a story, a story that has people who do unsavoury things for what they believe is a righteous cause? Isn't that literally all of history anyway?
Morrowind is a story about defeating an ancient evil that will eventually take over and destroy the Empire. But, the only reason you're sent to fulfill the prophecy is that it will topple the Tribunal and give the Empire stronger leverage over the province because their leadership is no longer divine. Does that mean the game supports subterfuge in the name of Imperialism?
I don't know what you want from the game. Like, I'm sorry Bethesda didn't make a Communist revolution simulator. I'm sorry you can't have a one-hour debate with your in-game scholarly pals about the civil war. I'm sorry your Rorikstead commune didn't work out.
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Religious freedom which was been shut down by the Imperials, hence the hostility. And by which mechanism are you expelling the two most powerful military factions in Skyrim at once?
Why can't both be bad? That's why you can ignore the war, and not pick a side.
Even at the end of the Stormcloak questline it's shown that Ulfric seems to enjoy the prospect of being a High King a lot more than Nordic freedom, in private anyway. At the end of the Imperial questline several of the Talos worshipping characters you can find in the game are disappeared and presumably imprisoned, tortured, and killed. If the Stormcloaks win then several shrines to Talos are added to the game when they were missing before, the opposite is true of the Imperial questline.
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A LOT of stuff involving the civil war and postgame was cut. Much of your criticism seems to be about moments or choices that didn't exist, but should have. Which is fair and does fall upon the final product, however it was not for lack of trying or interest that much of it was cut or unfulfilling. And the idea of being able to just push out the extremes of both factions feels to easy. You are stuck with incredible powers, but none the less being a single person, in a medieval civil war. It's like being placed in the hundred years war and expecting them to let you get rid of the most obsessive French and English warmongers. No you are gonna have to choose, if nothing else for the sake of beating Alduin. The flaws of both sides cannot be dealt with because they are to fundamental and to entrenched in the fervor of civil war by the time the game starts.
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Except its not just a matter of might. The Dragonborn has to deal with Dragonborn stuff, and needs the help of an established power. A political and social conflict is not going to just be resolved like that. We saw how much they needed allies in the story, to the point of having to pull of a truce in the civil war itself.
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And every other threat? The Thalmor? If the dragonborn is going to be the big damn hero, they need to have a coherent government existing around them, but are not exactly gonna form a new kingdom or organize a new form of governance.
And I am saying this as someone who would much rather play a Dragonborn who supports the Forsworn. I think the conflict not wrapping up neatly is fine, both endings leave you with cases of "yeah these guys are bastards to", and there doesn't have to be a resolution to that. You have all this martial strength, but that does not equate to political power