Just because I like saying his name...

Rada al-Saran...
Raaaada al-Saaraan...
Ràda-al-Sáran...

Rolls nice off the tongue.

I haven't completed any of the year long adventures so I won't vote but I personally couldn't care less about the redguard vampire. He was so unforgettable as another mustache twirling evil doer from what I saw of him(I completed greymoor but nothing after)

Baconator was such a disappointment, the ascendant order in the lore/trailer has some good points to be made and sounded pretty cool. They also truly believed in this cause. But then they go side and say we want to conquer the world! Instead of having a man to man fight with a skilled knight vs the Vestige he becomes the new firelord. His fight was the most interesting from what I've seen.

I've seen nothing about Dagon or the Dragon so no comment there

i guess the daedric war arc (morrowind/clockwork city/summerset) was technically more than a year long story to be included in the list lol

i dont know if i would say if many of those i would consider interesting at all

• dont really remember rada al-saran cause you never fight him
• kaalgrontid was overshadowed to me by the whole arc involving cadwell
• mehrunes dagon was ok, but the surrounding story was abyssmal (i hate eveli now because of it)
• lord bacaro from the high isle one i think was a little bit of a surprise twist to me, not entirely what i was expecting (if looking mostly at the high isle content, the galen content kind of made it blatantly obvious pretty fast that something was up)

i think i still feel that the original game story (harborage quests ending with molag bal) was one of the most memorable stories, just felt like iconic elder scrolls, where the other ones either felt they dragged on way too long (made more of a problem by splitting the story between 2 zones), or just had poor writing

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Oh, this is a good thread topic. Thanks for bringing this up, @Aliyavana! Interested to see how others vote for this.

Maybe, but... SPOILERS!!!

I mean, who on earth would have guessed that could possibly have been a baddie?

metheglyn wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i guess the daedric war arc (morrowind/clockwork city/summerset) was technically more than a year long story to be included in the list lol

i dont know if i would say if many of those i would consider interesting at all

• dont really remember rada al-saran cause you never fight him
• kaalgrontid was overshadowed to me by the whole arc involving cadwell
• mehrunes dagon was ok, but the surrounding story was abyssmal (i hate eveli now because of it)
• lord bacaro from the high isle one i think was a little bit of a surprise twist to me, not entirely what i was expecting (if looking mostly at the high isle content, the galen content kind of made it blatantly obvious pretty fast that something was up)

i think i still feel that the original game story (harborage quests ending with molag bal) was one of the most memorable stories, just felt like iconic elder scrolls, where the other ones either felt they dragged on way too long (made more of a problem by splitting the story between 2 zones), or just had poor writing

There was a Rada al Saran fight, if I recall correctly. It came after you completed both Skyrim and the Reach, and got the wrapper quest for both zones.

As to the villains, I vote for Kaalgrontid because dragons are better than vampires any day.

it must have been so unmemorable that i completely forgot it then lol

i still remember taking down molag bal though, ~1 month after the launch of the game lol

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Oh, this is a good thread topic. Thanks for bringing this up, @Aliyavana! Interested to see how others vote for this.

Maybe, but... SPOILERS!!!

I mean, who on earth would have guessed that

Lord Bacon

could possibly have been a baddie?

I'm struggling through the High Isle main story quest currently and I figured this out the first time I met him (and had it confirmed in the voice actor stream).

The ascendant lord made sense, the enemies were almost always a step ahead of you. That's why it became more and more obvious of who it was.

A plausible way to hide who the villain is would have been to use "fate" or the idea that the enemy is divining everything, but instead they attempted a realistic approach while at the same time giving us a target who not only issues quests, but helps you on these quests. Just because someone is helpful early on doesn't mean they won't betray you later. When it's revealed that the enemy is this NPC you've been helping the whole time it does come across as convenient.

Adding in a fortune telling quest npc or a priest npc to keep reminding about fate might help, as the player is clearly fate's puppet and the player literally has the backstory and a title "the Vestige" to back up the idea of being fate's puppet. This has been used in the past already, especially when dealing with powerful entities, so I don't see much reason to deviate from this.

for The Reach they did a reveal earlier on amd that too made sense, however they are unwilling to let main story characters go, which was evident at least twice in that story. I thought that the "twist" in skyrim was shallow as well.

Elseweyr was forgettable tbh, big dragons are big bad guys.

Mehrunes was aight, when the main antagonist is a daedric prince you pretty much have what you expect from the game.

In all of these chapters the villains had unrealistic goals/fantasies, which makes it easy to rule out certain characters.

Again I had little to no issue with the Mehrunes Dagon plot (it played with the idea of fate and prophecy), but the most recent chapter had the main antagonist being a npc you help/save in the main quest, and it started out as the A plot but became the B plot. There was no "becoming" the ascendant lord through the difficulties faced or through possession, he simply was and played the other parts/led a double life. This is a missed opportunity with the choice the writers made, though implementing the choice to have the main antagonist be possessed or be dramatic enough to become the antagonist would have been met with criticism as well.

For good examples of antagonists from the content just look at a chapter like Summerset. You had villains you can really empathize with. One of the first one we encounter wasn't just Aldarch Tilcalar/Duke of Clavicus Vile, it was actually Kinlady Avinisse as well, but she doesn't obstruct your path to justice- she is a victim of it. She was also racist in the script so the writers had a natural reason to make her into a fallguy that the player would not be sympathetic with, but that's the brilliance of that early situation in that chapter. She was made into a bigger villain than she was, her intentions got twisted by a person working with a Daedric Prince who operated in her blindsight. By having her be racist, the player also doesn't have to revisit this part of Altmer society. The writers could have also given her a path to redemption to complete the story, but it fine if left open like this (as if her's is the fate of racists).

---

but overall there's a lack of introduction to certain aspects of character development.

For example, if I wanted to work some supporting character as an expert interrogator, I would have them be a person who loves their job- extracting information from captured people, then have that interrogator complain that the people gave up too early over a couple of interactions with them over a period of a few quests. I would sprinkle in tidbits of this character deriving enjoyment out of torturing others, and brief explanations of their torture methods. After this has been teased a few times, I would then put the player in a situation where they either are being interrogated, or watch some of the interrogation happening. After this, I would then put that interrogator in a position where the player has to make a choice over whether to help the interrogator or not, and that this choice has consequences (i.e. whether to save the interrogator or one of their victims, whether to send another victim or not, whether to threaten to send someone to the interrogator to get info out of them faster, etc)

There can be far reaching implications of these choices- it starts off with character introduction, then it becomes something who the person who employed the interrogator is willing to deal with, then it becomes something that the player has control over. In this respect, they can work on character building to advance the story and world these characters live in. Sadly we don't see much of this. Instead, we get development as seen with Siravaen, which wasn't bad, but she was separate from the realm of the story which could have been done without her (I'm torn on this, but clearly she introduces a different aspect of sea elves that we never see, and it is done very well).

Another example- Archdruid Rahval- why is half his face scarred? why is he blind in one eye? is he blind in that eye? What happened to him and why couldn't the events of Galen be where he got maimed? Clearly a lot of work went into creating him, but nothing went in to making him into more than a living waypoint.

I really didn't care about the story or the chapter (Greymoor). The world didn't capture the Skyrim feeling at all for me, and I find Werewolves vs Vampires very boring and un-original.
Markarth was way better, with two major flaws - the Totally New Evil Thing Out Of Nowhere as the main antagonist / focus, and that forced happy ending.

But as a character, Rada al-Saran was good enough to overshadow these shortcomings. He is not an evil caricature of evil for the eevil lulz (at least not in Markarth), like so many other villains. He has a rather personal motivation that, for once, doesn't include World Domination (TM), the destruction of the world in general and Tamriel in particular, or any of that nonsense. And while he's clearly marked as a villain, you can understand why he's doing the things he does, you almost feel compelled to acknowledge that he does, in fact, have a point, and some may be tempted to try finding some middle ground or compromise.
He also comes across as rather classy and with a decent sense of fashion (unlike that oaf from High Isle).

The Baconnattore was just a big disappointment all around. He was so clearly set up to be a villain during High Isle that I was very tempted to congratulate ZOS for baiting me into expecting his betrayal only to not follow through with it. (Though that made High Isle's story even more boring.) But then, Firesong killed any semblance of trope subversion and played it as straight as possible. Ah well, hopes dashed against the shores.

Barocco is also a prime example of how to ruin a perfectly good villain. The basic idea of someone wanting to end the War was really great, and could have made so much sense. But then, it was wrapped into that tired cliché of him playing the good guy while leading the bad guys. That can work if done right, but that is exceedingly hard, and esp. so because we have read, watched, and played dozens or hundreds of stories and have become rather sensitive to tropes like that.
Rada al-Saran didn't try to be the good guy. He was doing something perfectly understandable, and the story still managed to make clear that he shouldn't be allowed to do it.
And then, the end of Firesong. Again, striving for world domination and tyrannical doom. Yawn. The less said about Firesong's ending, the better.

Radish Al-Saran Wrap wins for me because of how much you get to see of his backstory, especially during Markarth's preview quest (or however those are called). He's the sort of villain who must be stopped, but you can still kind of see things from his point of view.

I feel like the devs tried to pull a Palpatine on Lord Bacillus (soft-spoken good gentleman who turns out to be a dark lord). Although we always knew who the former truly was, the interesting thing was to see how he'd go from chancellor to Sith Lord; there was never a lot of mystery surrounding who the Buckethead Lord was, but that's because of predictable writing. Furthermore, the transition from good guy to evil master was rather dull. Whereas Darth Sidious was absolutely kickposterior while fighting Mace Windu and Yoda, Lord Bacchus just put on his iron atronach skin he got from the crown crates.

Kelvinsteed looked really cool, like a radioactive dragon with uranium horns, and fighting him was an epic endeavor. It's just a pity we didn't get to see more of him.

Meh-runes Bacon was always the year's baddie, but he acted mostly through his underlings, so as a villain he wasn't all that memorable.

Rada Al-Saran was always interesting to me.

Mehrunes Dagon was kind of meh but, part of that was the story was retreading Oblivion which did a rather good job of Dagon which leaves future Dagon content with a high bar to match.

I had to look up Kaalgrontiid to remember him as I never really got his name down. I prefer threats that are more human in behavior than bestial and Dragons tend to act more like beasts.

Lord Bacaro Volorus was awesome in the trailers but, an absolutely massive and predictable disappointment in-game.

Rada Al-Saran was an interesting character, but I thought Greymoor+Reach's story, dialogue, and quests were terrible. Too much "holding the idiot ball" and treating the Vestige like a no body.


So I put my vote on Kalgrontiid. Also interesting and Elsweyr's main story was better done, therefore making its villain better.

I haven't finished the Deadlands for Dagon yet, and I haven't even started High Isle, but it's pretty hard to beat the dragon that basically became a god.

Side note, is it just me, or were the Q4 DLC stories better than the chapter stories for the year-long format?

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

Rada Al-Saran was an interesting character, but I thought Greymoor+Reach's story, dialogue, and quests were terrible. Too much "holding the idiot ball" and treating the Vestige like a no body.


So I put my vote on Kalgrontiid. Also interesting and Elsweyr's main story was better done, therefore making its villain better.

This was one big issue with Greymoor in that the villain never recognizes the fact the player might be a Vampire and not just a Vampire but a *** Blood Scion, your the vampire equivalent of a Prince/Princess in the Vampire Royal Family, not only are you are turned by the original vampire but the ritual replaces all of your blood with hers.

Going with Rada as well, for the same reasons you mention.
I remember feeling a bit conflicted near the end of the story, kinda holding on to hope that he would have a change of heart.
He was a very well thought-out and well written main antagonist.

I did enjoy Season of the Dragon but I think you nailed it when you said Kalgrontiid gets sort of lost amongst SO many other characters. Including his second-in-command, who ends up feeling more like the big bad than Kal does
One moment really stood out for me in that story: