User blog comment:DragonbornMAGE/In Order of Importance/@comment-68.9.20.90-20130707073738

It's entirely possible for the main quest to have been given a greater sense of urgency, and frankly, it really should have. Now, implementing a sense of urgency doesn't have to actually punish the player to push them along. If, for example, you delayed fighting Alduin for a certain amount of time, there are a variety of ways to compel continuation: 1. Having a dragon attack a place off-screen and have the dragonborn receive some letter about it, compelling them to assist; to avoid any punishment, the dragon doesn't actually kill or destroy anything important, but the place still has some battlescars. 2. Have random NPC dialogue mention the dragons more frequently, and add some more despair-filled statements the longer the delay. 3. Have the dragonborn recieve letters from concerned citizens of Skyrim, or maybe some random NPCs question the player's progress.

Rinse and Repeat until the player progresses. Of course, the above wouldn't be implemented unless the player has been doing quite a lot of side-quests or the other quests.

A similar thing could apply to the Civil War questline once you start it, maybe with increased random encounters between Imperials and Stormcloaks, skirmishes outside of the major cities.

Heck, a little irritation or resignation on the part of some quest-givers would help move things along if you've been putting off that fetch quest for a week.

The freedom of choice is important, but without a bit of urgency the story falls a bit flat; it's exactly the problem I have with Skyrim's main quest. But too much urgency can lead to frustration; the countdown for the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2 would have pissed me off if I hadn't read a guide about it beforehand.

In sum: Punishing to create a sense of urgency is bad, but creating little or no urgency for something that should be urgent is just as bad.