The main story of that game is fucking awful. I get they wanted to introduce some choice, and wanted that choice to somewhat kinda feel justified but JESUS did they do a shitty job.

Instead of giving us a messy political situation, where either party may have some legitimate claim to the land, they gave us Southern nationalists versus Northern racists who were here first and you're meant to pick which one you like more.

Gee would I rather kill for the guys that literally don't want me here, or kill for the guys that literally tried to kill me for being here? HARD FUCKING QUESTION.

I think I played through the main storyline once to completion, and every time before and after that I just skipped it once I got the rewards I wanted.

Who is downvoting this? The forsworn are native.

well it's not like Ysgramor left a lot of the native elves in a state to complain.

Fus-Ro-Baaah

also the empire started in Skyrim the original Emperor was a Nord, so... Skyrim IS the Empire, as much as anywhere else or more.

Not like it'd be an option to not choose sides, there's a storyline roadblock forcing you to finish the entire plot IIRC

How? When I tried to dodge that conflict, Todd was right-click-unzipping packs of fighting soldiers onto me. It felt like a meme interpretation of "If you aren't interested in politics, politics are gonna start to be interested in you".

It's so incredibly shallow, from a series already suffering from such.

yeah, the magic system was gone and magic wasn't viable, then they downgraded every form of alchemy enchanting and so on. smithing was a nice feature, but it's kinda badly designed as you just end up crafting an excess of arrows, bolts, or daggers until you max it out. it's just a much more hollow game in the end. they didn't need to simply any system that far, it's not like people who aren't interested in custom spells are gonna be mad spellmaking exists. they just won't do it.

I never understood the hype for Skyrim, the world and story is so stale and incohesive

The Nords' early experience with elves was being the victims of genocide so it's not like it comes from nowhere.

The Aldmeri Dominion - Ulfric things always seems like something to repeat. It's not like he was paying tithe to them or anything. Just because they want him in power doesn't mean he shouldn't be, and paying to that line of though only leads to more trouble. You see Skyrim mostly liberate itself, if the elves had helped or offered assistance, I think this claim would have been made to be more intentional rather than the oft-repeated reddit-spteak it is.

the dominions goals are the subjugation of the empire, and the removal of man from the pantheon. it was an embarrassment in their whole identity of temporary impoverished gods. they did not want either the empire or the storm cloaks to win ultimately as forcing a war between two allies prevents them from joining forces or recuperating to fight back. it’s one of the reasons they didn’t really commit any of THEIR forces to the war.

the correct answer is either should win, even if skyrim didn’t officially recognize the man god, nothing much would change. they are lousey with deadric worshippers already and they are not sanctioned.

ultimately the aldmari dominion would seek a dragon break to force the man god to be non cannon.

Skip all vanilla quest lines, go do Dawnguard, get sexy vampire wife, grab the plantation from the creation club and live rest of my Skyrim days recreating the anime Farming Life in Another World while power leveling my alchemy.