I'm finding it increasingly difficult to pick a side in the civil war.
On the one hand, seeing Imperials march a Nord off to be executed for worshiping Talos is unnerving.
On the other hand, walking through the Grey Quarter of Windhelm doesn't make rebellion look like the right choice.
I haven't been to Windhelm yet, but I am struggling myself to choose a side.
All I know is I just woke up in Markarth after a big night and everyone in this city is a scumbag. I want to use my Archmage of Winterhold powers to kill them all, but self control is getting the better of me.
I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering the grimdark theme (which, is it me, or is Bethesda getting better at all the time? >>)
The sides of the war are basically divided into scumbags who went various directions selfishly, the slightly misled leaders heading the operations, and then there's a good 15% slice of folks who are genuinely helping, trying to help, or think they're helping, so at least their hearts are in the right place.
Not to mention, as RPers, I can't help but think we're prone to getting ourselves heavily invested in these matters. I know I am, at least. First time I saw a Nord being marched off for execution I was like >:C
I too am struggling to make up my mind really on the big question of Ulfric vs Empire - I do kinda like the idealistic jarl of Solitude but I'm having a lot of problems getting over the fact the empire really did try to have me executed. That said last night I had the biggest actual roleplay decision of the game so far (I'm level 34 or something)
[spoiler]
End of the dark brotherhood plotline and I kill the emperor and he asks as his last request that I kill the person who set him up. I told the emperor "no" and he took it fairly stoically and I left him dead with a single dagger cut laying amongst the corpses of his elite guard.
So I go to collect the money from the contact (a sleezy ambitious imperial upstart plotter) and he's all bouncy gloating and sickeningly magnamimous to my greed. I look at the responses and I really want to kill him (thinking of the contrast between this guys attitude and the dignified exit of the emperor) but I choose a comment "this is the luckiest day of your life" and he clues me in on the location of the blood money for the kill. I get up and walk away back into the bar-room and listen to a bard striking up that "days of oppression" song and I turn round. Just stand there indecisive, thinking, genuinely thinking in character - then I turn around, go back into the chamber with the plotter and gut him like a fish thinking of the emperor's spirit looking down from the otherworld and maybe feeling a bit of justice has been done.
But I've broken my compact with the night mother I think, and my time with the dark brotherhood has come to an end because I'm not the sort of person to honour contracts with scumbags - of course I'm also the sort of person who murders old grannies, bludgeons orc bards, shoots brides on the wedding day and pledges my afterlife to noctural for power over shadows.
Fuck.
Maybe its time to get back to being an honest hero who shouts fire at frost dragons for a living.
[/spoiler]