User blog comment:Draevan13/Thoughts on TES IV: Oblivion./@comment-5046408-20130307130614/@comment-5046408-20130307185519

@IGotsAName/GarouxBloodline

Let me be a little more specific.

In Oblivion, it's more logical IF you choose to avoid the main quest. Lore-wise, yes of course Uriel had a vision from the Divines about the "Hero of Kvatch". However, what I mentioned in the previous post can be how the event is misinterpreted by the player, and thus shore up consistencies if they decide to become a murderous, Daedra-loving madman instead of a noble, divine-worshipping hero trying to get to the bottom of the crisis and end it.

In Skyrim, on the other hand, it's kinda hard to ignore the fact that you were about to be BEHEADED and only made it out alive because ALDUIN, a freaking DRAGON, swooped from the sky and destroyed Helgen. Logically, any normal person would want to report the news to the Jarl of Whiterun as suggested in the main quest, which would trigger the quest for the dragon burial map, which would trigger the Greybeards shouting for you to climb to their monastery so they teach you how to defeat Alduin as the Dragonborn and how you're supposed to save the world, etc. etc. etc.

If that doesn't do it for you, then there's also the awkward fact that every time you kill a dragon its corpse burns up when you walk by and its soul magically swirls around you and gets sucked inside you, or the fact that whenever you approach a word from the Dragon Language carved on a stone wall then the word magically glows and its knowledge flows into your eye sockets and gives you the power to shout that word to use its powers. I don't know about you, but I think that would make one's identity as Dragonborn relatively hard to ignore...

Either way of course doesn't leave much room to become the previously-mentioned example of a murderous Daedra-loving madman without looking stupid by pointlessly killing any narrative aspect to the story (or pulling the "ass-hat, doesn't give a damn, and/or only in it for the money" personality card, an equally awkward move as far as narration goes). Elder-Scroll-defying abilities or not.

To piggy-back on that last sentence, sure being a "hero" makes the player character not the same as every other being in the world, and yes player characters can definitely get more powerful than the NPCs, but in most cases the players are supposed to earn their titles, they have to work to get renown, even more-so in entries like Oblivion. The point is, unlike in Skyrim and (in the end) Morrowind, in Oblivion you don't have a prophecy backing your actions or appearance.