Hand-holding or initiative?, The style of a your quests Options

[Lena Wolf]

Now that I've released a large quest mod (TWMP Skyrim Alive) with several quest lines, I am getting questions from users who get stuck, and not because of bugs. This got me thinking back to all the various games that I played and how they handle quests and quest lines, how much hand-holding they provided and what I found fun and what not so much. Given that most people on this forum have already played a game or two I thought we could discuss this.

I'll start with a comparison of Morrowind TES3 and Oblivion TES4. In Morrowind you start on a ship, arrive in a strange land, get a package to deliver fully expecting to be thrust into the thick of things... and what does Caius tell you? "You're no good to me at level 1, go off, do stuff, come back when you're stronger." Huh? In Oblivion on the other hand, you do get thrust into the thick of things straight away, and with great urgency - just like in most other games I played.

The first time when I played Morrowind, I got discouraged and confused. What do you mean - go off and do stuff? What am I supposed to do..? But now, so many years, games and playthroughs later, I absolutely love this approach. And it continues like this throughout - Caius never puts any urgency onto his requests, he's a typical fellow who speaks softly and carries a large stick. And with that we arrive at the topic of quest markers, etc.

But it's over to you now. What approach to quests do you like or dislike? Do you like it structured or do you prefer to be told to go off and do stuff?

[SubRosa]

I personally love Morrowind's hands-off approach. I think it truly embraces the nature of an open-world game and its... openness.

However, I know people who are the exact opposite. They kind of liked Skyrim, but never got far in it precisely because the game was too open and hands off for them. They were overwhelmed by the number of choices, and had no idea what to do. Instead they preferred games like the Mass Effects series, or the old Kotor games.

It really is just a matter of different people are going to have different tastes.