Ravena wrote: »

If they're REALLY ambitious about player choices

Stop right there. They're not. Should be obvious by now.

"Play as you want", but don't play a stealthy Bosmer, stealth is for Khajiits only. Don't play a sniper, either, it's bad, so we'll nerf that for you. Don't play a damage dealer Nightblade, it's bad, so we'll remove some buffs for you.

Even leaving aside race and skills "adjustments", there are many quests where your choices do not matter whatsoever.

Finding who is the traior in that public dungeon quest ? Spend as much time reading and interrogating the prisoners, you'll never find a satisfying answer. My guess is there was no traitor to start with.

That quest in Alik'r where you can NEVER try to kill the spider daedra that has taken 2 people hostage. You can bargain to free one or the other, but you can't just stick it with the pointy end. You've killed legions of those before, but for some reason you can't kill this one. Which is, of course, never explained.

Then you've got the sheer stupidity of your character, oblivious ot the most obvious clues, because they need to be to advance the story. Ever got into a situation where you have to chose an answer in a quest, but every single one of them makes you feel like it's not YOUR character that is playing the quest, because you'd never chose any of that because it's stupid ? Yeah, well, then you know what I mean.

Long story short, player choices have always been inconsequential in this game. They just didn't make it that obvious.

I always just assumed that while you had a choice that the 'canon' choice was The Prophet.

Katahdin wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

KMarble wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Season of the Dragon is terrible for anyone who wants a coherent storyline for the entire game.

Elsweyr does not really have a definite spot in the timeline. It can come before the events of the main quest. I don't think any reference is made to Molag Bal or the resolution of the Soulburst. There might be an offhand reference to what happened to Varen, indicating that the events of the main quest have already started.

I am thinking that Firor is right. Elsweyr could be a perfect starting place for new characters. If they retcon future interactions with certain characters that will be met later so that the character is recognized, then I think the best place for Elsweyr is prior to the main story.

The only outlier in that is Sai Sahan. He cannot be in Elsweyr in all cases: before, during, and after the main quest. They should have left him out of this one.

The problem with having Elsweyr happen before the main story is that all of the companions were stuck in Coldharbour. Sai, Lyris and the Prophet were prisoners and Tharn had very little freedom and was closely watched.

That isn't a problem if Elsweyr takes place before the Soulburst, by some scheme.

However, I agree with you. Things fall apart because Sai Sahan shows up. Abner, well, he was a cohort, not a prisoner, at least at the start.

ZOS thinks they have some clever reason that Sai can be there, but the real reason he is there is because they are dredging up characters from other stories and reusing them in an increasing number of cases.

There is mention of the planemeld in the Elswyer story line and Tharn is clearly older so the events in Elsweyr can't have happened before the soulburst

Not only that be we know for sure when Elsweyrs events take place. Everything we see in the game has been set in stone as happening in the year 2E 582. And the Soulburst took place in 2E 578-2E 579. There is no way that Elsweyr occurs before the Soulburst.

heaven13 wrote: »

PrinceShroob wrote: »

Considering that the anniversary event hyped up the major players of the main quest, perhaps Sai is replaced by Lyris if you sacrificed Sai.

Lyris doesn't have a celebrity voice actor and isn't canonically dead like the Prophet, so it's possible she could return.

Lol what? Lyris's voice actress is Jennifer Hale.

Right? Like .. you mean there are people who didn't immediately scream COMMANDER SHEPARD and melt down like a fangirl when Lyris first opened her mouth?

The beard just chose another host body.

Bit off topic but yes he has new beaut armour, luckily I didn't waste my tickets to get Abnur Tharn outfit which no longer is Abnur Tharn's armour at present.

Vizikul wrote: »

In the main quest Abnur used to be one egoistic prick, in Elsweyr he has suddenly turned into an altruistic hero who wants to stop all the pointless killing. And let's not forget his new shiny armor. All of this suggests that he had some character development since the events of the main quest.

Druid40 wrote: »

OK, real talk, why would ANYONE sacrifice ANY companion other than Varen? I would understand if Abnur was a choice, but he was not.

Lyris annoyed the living eff out of me. Bossy, loud, constantly interrupting me, underfoot, talks to herself, and one gets tired of seeing what's up someone else's nose all the time. I've sacrificed her more than once. Every time I click on her and get some variation on "why are we talking instead of questing" instead of looting an urn, she's gotta die again.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Everyone is talking about the hype for the DLC and the new trailer and I am just thinking about how and why Sai Sahan is returning. At the end of the main quest of the base game

You get to choose either Lyris, Varen or Sai as a sacrifice - as Abnur conveniently needs to perform the ritual. It makes sense for Abnur to be in Elsweyr, but all the other characters are not certain to still be alive.

Of course if you don't play those quests in order of release, then everything works fine, but ZOS usually took the stance that you can play in whatever order you like and it would supposedly still make sense. So how will your player choice be addressed and will we potentially not see Sai Sahan again if we chose differently in the past?

I think what most likely happened is either having too many different characters spawn if player chose X when doing Y caused too many problems for them or they just gave players the illusion of choice and made it so that sacrificing varen was cannon for the story outcome.

This happens in a lot of games tbh unsurprising, I might of cared if this happened immediately after the main quest but not all these years later now I am just like "meh".