Glitched out: Unwinnable by Mistake

[Jailbird408]

You know my current opinion of Skyrim? It's a vast, open-world masterpiece with limitless discoveries to be made. The scope is breathtaking and the gameplay hits the mark.
Is what I would be saying if I were able to complete the story-compulsory quest "The Fallen."
The quest objective asks me to talk to Argneir and get him to hold a truce meeting for the Imperials and Stormcloaks (I think) but when I went through literally every dialogue option possible (even the ones I'd already done) the game still kept telling me to talk to Argneir.
No, Skyrim. I do not need to. He says he will hold the meeting, and now you have to point me in the direction of the continue-plot button. Still asking me to talk to Argneir? Well how about I Whirlwind Sprint off a cliff edge?!
So Skyrim throws a brick wall in my face, and the only way to surpass it is to go back to a save that I created hours of playtime ago. The hell with that. Skyrim is good, but it's not that good.

 

[Hal10k]

You've experienced a quest related bug in Skyrim. Truly this must be a grand and novel occasion for all of us. I shall call for an investigator, for such an unusual occurrence as this must not go unexamined.

Why exactly is your only save hours behind you?

 

[crono738]

OP must not have much experience with Bethesda games. Common procedure is to have 50 billion saves in case the game shits the bed. That way you won't lose a whole lot of progress.

 

[Jailbird408]

You've experienced a quest related bug in Skyrim. Truly this must be a grand and novel occasion for all of us. I shall call for an investigator, for such an unusual occurrence as this must not go unexamined.

Why exactly is your only save hours behind you?

I went through the game for hours without realising that the quest didn't work. I talked to Argneir, the game told me to talk to Balgruff and General Tullius, and then I completely ignored all that and did a few other quests. More than 10 levels of gameplay later, I went back to the Fallen quest, and realised it was fucked.
This was a completely unpredictable glitch way out of my control, and I don't think I can look Skyrim in the eye until I can figure out how to fix it.

 

[evilneko]

Season Unending (the quest with the truce meeting, The Fallen is the one directly after and doesn't send you to talk to Tullius...) is well known to be buggy. There are some notes here about it: http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Season_Unending