Before Skyrim changed Alduin lore, Alduin was Akatosh. The Time Dragon Akatosh ate the world at the end of each era/“kalpa”, with the world being reformed and reshaped. More about the natural cycles of the world and history. (Time is kind of a big thing in the series - the Dragon Breaks at the end of Daggerfall - time breaks in such a way that multiple contradictory things happen simultaneously. It is kinda cool that the most fascinating part of lore is a ass pull to make every ending of Daggerfall canon and not have to pick one)

Skyrim separated Akatosh and Alduin (and there are some in game books justifying this change in theology.) Akatosh is still good god, Alduin is now some sort of independent entity that is just purely evil.

It would have been much more interesting if Alduin was still Akatosh. If the point of the game were you saying - no, I don’t want the world to end even if it is “supposed to” - there could have been some interesting actual plot to break up the dungeon fetch quests. There could have been some tower lore even, that would have been fun.

It reminds me of the flattening of Mehrunes Dagon in Oblivion. Like yeah, he’s part of the House of Troubles and not great but I think he’d actually promise something of value to the Mythic Dawn? Also, maybe not fuck them over for lols? He wasn’t just The Devil with the serial numbers filed off.

Like, Morrowind and Daggerfall’s villains all had motivations that made sense. Dagoth Ur is responding to imperialism by trying to create an ethnostate under his direct rule, Daggerfall doesn’t even really have straight “villains” necessarily. Heck, even in Redguard the main antagonist is a Governor for the empire that is trying to shut down a gang of pirates. Jagar Tharn in Arena is just an evil wizard that wants to impersonate the Emperor.

Just to be totally clear, it was not real when I commented this 😂🤣