Oblivion:Gripes/PC Backstory

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This article provides PC Backstory gripes, as part of the Game Content section of the Gripes article.

There's no backstory for the player character — unlike Morrowind. Why did you end up in jail? Emperor Uriel Septim seems to imply that you were a normal person suddenly teleported into the jail by the gods (probably from another province, since you don't belong to any city in Cyrodiil), but that ain't enough — there should be a questline to discover your identity. In fact, I even thought, when I got my first Nirnroot and the quest update for "Finding Your Roots" appeared, that these "Roots" are actually "Your Roots", i.e. that you'll discover your identity by the means of Nirnroot, but nay.

So come up with your own background. Decide why your character was thrown into a cell. Perhaps they had a run-in with a corrupt town guard. Perhaps they were caught pickpocketing. Maybe they were framed for murder. The backstory is left open so you can play whatever character you want, instead of being forced into some role.

Exactly. Just because you're so unimaginative that you can't even BS a backstory for your character doesn't mean you have to gripe about it. Hell, you can make the Emperor a prophet, or a rambling lunatic simply by deciding on whether or not you decide to go through the main quest.

Morrowind explained no backstory either, all you know is that you were on a prison ship and later the only thing you find out is that you are the Nerevarine. Hardly a detailed backstory. The reason both TES III and IV are like this is to allow the player to role play and come up with their own backstory. this is a major element of TES and removing it would drastically change the series.

Morrowind didn't strongly imply that you were thrown in jail for no reason at all, That dialogue "option"(you had to pick it to advance the dialogue) that says "why am I in jail?" is just stupid.

You hardly expect the Emperor to know why every single person in all the provinces is in jail, especially since he has more pressing concerns, such as the assassination of his sons.

The Emperor seems to tell the future. Maybe he knew that you were important and had you arrested so that he could meet up with you later.

The emperor clearly states he has no clue why you're in the cell.

He also says that it does not matter.

This is intentional and done specifically so that your character is whoever you decide they are. In Morrowind, where there were multiple ways to approach many more of the quests and multiple dialog options to reflect different personalities, this intent was much more obvious. It's still there to some degree in Oblivion, though. For the sake of the story and TES tradition, they have to say you ended up in prison somehow at some point, but that's all. If you want to roleplay a character and make certain decisions based on what they've done and who they are, you can. If you don't care about their past, there's no problem. If you want to have a specific person presented to you and just be put in control of them, that's a linear RPG and Oblivion is a sandbox RPG.

You asked the emperor "why am I in jail?" which implies that you were having a nice cup of tea, and suddenly you were teleported into a jail cell for no reason.

You've lost your memory of the incident? It was only a petty crime and you don't know why you've been sent to jail for it? You were framed for something you didn't commit? While you slept? If it's none of those, silly question I agree. Probably just Bethesda's way of adding a way for the player to question their own role in the game.

As mentioned, it's your choice really, but if you want a definitive answer, you can all chalk it up to the gods. Considering the mysterious ways that they work, it's entirely possible that they transported you there so the Emperor could meet you, so you could fight the Mythic Dawn, and so you could kill Mehrunes Dagon, who they can't control. Otherwise, they could have influenced a guard to arrest you, knowing full well the Emperor would meet you in the prison.

About the "Why am I in jail question". Other possible solution would be if the Emperor asked YOU "Why are you in jail?", and you were given a list of different answers. ("I don't know either". "Because I murdered my wife" "For pickpocketing... mostly", etc.) Now that would be nice! Think about the roleplaying possibilities.

Yes, but that's less flexible than the game simply leaving the nature of your crime up to you.

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