The team ought to find inspiration in some of the best selling rpg titles out there. Like Mass Effect 3.
Just think about it. You have saved the king from the clutches of his evil brother. You follow the light out of the dungeons to the castle courtyard. There, three dukes await you, each offering a different ending. Kill the king, become the king, marry the king. Above them, three banners and coat of arms symbolizing this deeply profound choice:
Red, green and blue.
When you put it that way…
Without reading foregoing posts to avoid spoilers (that Skyrim-Thingy almost knocked me down in unawareness… But I somehow managed to evade that nubbles…)
According to the fred-title:
What exactly IS a “good ending” at all? All happy dengling their dongs? Well, however, that definition might differ in extremely wide range…
An ending which leaves behind a warm and nice feeling with an eventual happy but also little sad smile (due to the actual end of a good game) is a neat call. Though, not always appropiate.
For example:
(a) I liked the story of Warcraft 3 depsite the fact the night elves (which I liked the most back then) went down the sh’t spirale pretty fast.
(b) I liked “my” storyline of Mass Effect even so, especially the ending… (and yeah, I did all three with the very first savegame… 
) 'twas stunning as well as touchy somehow, for I did some kind of martyric decision, after starting serious romance with (I think it was) the female teammate from part 1… This romance I pulled through all three parts of Mass Effect… *sniff*
© Starcraft even so, beautiful (sometimes tragic) story in the first game.
(d) Mafia II… Darn, that was a story monster… I almost stopped playing at one specific point, because I didn’t what it that way… Well, I pushed and barely made it through… Though it was stunningly beautiful… at least to me.
Poof, why i told you that in first place… erm… yeah… even sad stories can be good (I guess the fred-starter knew that as well^^) and with knowing some of the “Mafia”-folks are working with (and at) Warhorse’s I am pretty excited 'bout the ongoing… 
I believe in thems tirring up a tasty potpourri for us bumblers. 
PS - Nah, I don’t want to build up more pressure…
PPS - With that three dukes mmh… that would’ve been kind of expectable here… I do hope they won’t do…
I agree, the worlds reaction to the player and his/her choices was skyrims problem. They give you all these customization options just to ignore them. Thalmore never notice if the player is a high elf and the separate guild storylines seem to have no effect on the world or each other.
I know everyone was disappointing, but I honestly didn’t expect anything more than that from how the story build up an my experiences from oblivion. I liked skyrims story much better than oblivions ‘only the true heir can save the world from evil’ stuff.
Good endings don’t have to be good in a the positive sense in my opinion. Also they don’t necessarily need a really unaccepted twist to be good. I’d even go so far as to say closure isn’t necessary for good ending because the characters lives go one and they might still be troubled or might not know how exactly everything happened.
I do hope they won’t do cliff hangers between acts though.
@Radek The game is going on three years old this year… The boundaries for spoilers went out the window a LONG time ago…
Playing video games later when there prices and those of hardwere go down is completely sensible. But yeah it’s skyrim most people have played it bye now i really don’t blame you.
There is an older RPG out there that limits you to having at most two main quests and three side quests open at any given time. If you already have five quests on you and want to get a next quest, you must complete (or fail) one of the five.
I think we are pretty clear by now what the ending is going to look like. As I understand it, it is going to work a lot like first Mafia. I sort of like that. Letting the player play an RPG, solving small scale issues in a 3x3 km sandbox and combine it with telling an overreaching tale from history that concerns the future of the whole kingdom. Mixing that together too much would only serve to make each of those aspects of the game worse.
We have plans that the player can influence the ending somewhat, but we do not want to allow for the history to be changed, so there certainly won’t be total freedom. Rather, the variability comes from the fact that during the gameplay a player can deal with different things in many different ways, which then has some effect on … It may not change the final outcome, but it will change the reactions from the characters and such. Until it is all written down, which it still is not, it’s impossible to say anything more. Our intention is to allow different ways of playing towards the same goals.
Am I the only one picturing Warhorse people sitting around with liquor in hand, chuckling over the idea of making the worst possible ending they can think of?
exept none of this matters because in the end there are still dragons on the wild, and imperials are not gone either …
I believe what was being said that nothing changed post-ending. The game, environment, and atmosphere are virtually identical.
MASSIVE END-GAME SPOILERS****
Dragons still fly around, no-one seems to ever acknowledge what you did, no new mechanics are introduced to celebrate, no one really talks about the aftermath of the civil war (or any quest-line for that matter beyond owning a house and one or two lines of random dialog. I believe I killed 5,000 Thalmor agents and 20,000 Stormcloaks, so why are they still around?). Apart from guard comments and dragons I’d scarcely say the beginning of the game is indistinguishable from the end of a 100% completion run.
To change that a few things could have been done.
1: Give the player a quest-line to reunify former Stormcloak and Imperial supporters, rebuild cities, and new random and unique encounters.
2: Make all four quest-lines similar to the end-rewards of the Dark Brotherhood. In that you got a player-home that could be fully furnished, quests, and a ton of atmosphere. Compare that to a new axe, armor and a choice of three spells, or the staff of Mangus and they just seem underwhelming. Let the player make his own spells at the end of the college quest-line, recall him to defend the shrine and buy-out and run businesses and luxury estates at the end of the thieves quest-line, and something cool at the end of the companion quest-line. Give the end something to them.
****MASSIVE END-GAME SPOILERS
It was beer, not liquor.
Dude, you’re not going to dramatically change the world. This game is about what it is to be a little brick in a large puzzle. Being a real soldier. The story decides your destiny in this, not you. Of cause you can always free roam, but it is questionable how much you can change the world while doing that, maybe not dramatically but significantly or smaller, but noticeable.
I think that dramatic change of the world is not necessary. Just acknowledgement proportional to your achievements. Something that leaves you with feeling you have done something and it had results.
The problem with Skyrim questline endings is that the quests have you do things that feel like they should have some impact on the world, that there are people that should know what you are doing and you aren’t getting acknowledgement from anyone. Yes there is some scripted dialogue from few selected NPCs but you are left with feeling that more people should know and acknowledge. The guards in Whiterun for example. They should ask you if you managed to slay Alduin, thank you… Instead you are getting snide remarks about sweetrolls.
What the guards choose to comment on is very random if i remember correctly, there is a mod out there that made at least the comments on skills more appropriate.
It will have three endings: Blue, green and Red.
Read some hisotry books. That end you will get. You will not be able to change much, just a small pieces here and there, but nothing major. So, let’s not compare that with Skyrim.
history books don’t really focus there narrative on our fictional main character. Sure there won’t be many bioware like ‘epic decitions’ whether to kill or save the king but that doesn’t mean that the ending can’t reflect the play style. I am thinking about the ending of the first Witcher where the final boss is more or less quoting a dialog option the player choose for Gerald at a earlier point in the game.
Devs already stated that there will be just some minor consequences of your actions/options how to affect the story and events. Story is set by history, so as overall ending.
“Always leave them wanting more.”
I’m ok with wanting more, just make the ending worthwhile, I don’t want to be standing on a damn mountain for 10 mins wondering WTF is going on like Skyrim.
