Okay, so i'm gonna have another rant, this time about the lack of imagination used by the designers in relation to some of the quests. I've started my third character, a true thief (non-combat, non-MQ) and am really having trouble roleplaying him the way i think he should be played. I abandoned his "kill nothing" approach very early on when i realised that, like it or lump it, combat IS unavoidable in some parts of the game. But since then, i've been presented with numerous quests which, despite Beth's claims of total freedom etc, really have only two outcomes: Do the quest or don't do the quest.
Example 1. "Two Sides of the Coin". Probably the best example of a thief's quest outside the guild, i was looking forward to roleplaying this one after abandoning it with my first character (a goody two shoes). There's a fair bit of "back and forth" in this quest and at each turn, new opportunities are presented and, one would think, new outcomes as well. With the arrogant character i'm playing, i decided to screw both parties involved and keep the loot after discovering its whereabouts. To do this, i reasoned, all i had to do was steal Arnora's amulet (without updating her on current events), present it to her husband and both would be none the wiser. As it turns out, the amulet was locked in a chest and even though i pickpocketed the key, it wasn't activated until after i'd spoken to her! [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] A bit miffed, i continue on with the quest to discover that the hiding place is being watched by the corrupt guard. "No worries" i think, and sneak past him only to discover that the chest cannot be opened until he's dead. Why? Why can't i sneak past him, steal the stuff and disappear? If his crime is pinned on me, i just pay off the doyen. I'm trying to roleplay this the way a thief would and the quest design is restricting me to only one possible outcome!
Example 2: "Caught in the Hunt." I've completed this as a Blade (combat first, questions later. No problems there...) but was eager to test this out as a sneaky-bastard character. I had it all worked out before i'd started: Pickpocket the three keys required to activate Kurdan, pickpocket Kurdan's key and, using the Khajiiti "Eye of Fear" power, send him screaming down into his own dungeon, lock all five of them in there to starve, then head back to Bravil and give Aleron's wife a sob story. As it turns out, the second and third hunters do not even appear in the game until the first has been killed. I was forced to give the first two an easy demise (as opposed to starvation that is, there was nothing easy about killing them without any combat skills) and leave the third to comfort Kurdan after his scary experience. After closing the gate and throwing Kurdan's key into Niben Bay, i head back to Aleron's wife and discover that the quest cannot be advanced until Kurdan is dead. That may sound reasonable to most players, but consider that the player may not be the stereotypical rpg character and isn't supposed to know they're heading into a trap. In the case of my thief, the outcome i'd devised sounded perfectly reasonable to me and is not so far-fetched that i'd expect the designers not to include a similar type of ending. It's a decent sized quest with a few twists and turns and only ONE possible ending!
I don't know. Maybe i'm just being picky. Even if some of my playing styles are in the overwhelming minority, i'd still expect multiple quest endings to suit the three main playing styles (fighter, mage, thief) as well as the odd "talk my way out" option (besides "i don't want to take this quest", that is
) thrown in for good measure. For replay value, if no other reason. As it is now, it seems the quests have been designed for a player who's only going to play the game once using a stereotypical powerhouse character. In a game as big and (supposedly) as varied as Oblivion, this just isn't acceptable.