By intentional, I mean intentional in-game. Obviously the Middle Dawn is intentionally written about as a break and the Battle of Red Mountain is very heavily implied to be one.

I know a lot of people dislike the dragon break concept as a "get out of player choice free card," but I think Skyrim's storyline both has evidence to support that explanation and gameplay that would actually benefit the future narrative with that explanation.

Let's look at the big points and the non-dragon break explanations:

• Stormcloaks vs Imperials - Supposedly the civil war ends when Ulfric or Tullius dies. That doesn't really make any sense, especially taking Solitude and killing Tullius ending Imperial ambition in Skyrim. The Fort Neugrad letters reference reinforcements coming from Cyrodiil. The defeated side still has unclearable camps out in the wilderness. The Nords remain deeply divided. Eventually the LDB leaves and the war ramps up again so they can do whatever they want in the future.
• Killing the Emperor - Even if you destroy the Brotherhood, Babette and Cicero are unaccounted for. Amaund Motierre is also still out there looking for an assassin, and there's nothing stopping some other paid killer from doing the job.
• Becoming a Vampire - It's ultimately pretty inconsequential, given that you do all the same things, but still pretty noteworthy in the Dragonborn's story.
• Killing Paarthurnax - This is the one with the least clear resolution or long-term consequences. On one hand, there's theoretically 5 blades to rebuild the order no matter what and Greybeards weren't going to do anything anyway. On the other hand, Paarthurnax's continued survival (or not) could potentially have major consequences for the future of dragons in Tamriel and whether the LDB stays with the Blades should impact their ability to rebuild.

All of this works just fine, but one thing still sticks out to me here: We, the player, quite literally break the dragon. A tower, a fundamental anchor of structured creation, is "sundered and bleeding." The whole thing is premised on damage to linear time.

Alduin is a powerful piece, or full aspect, of Time itself. Sending him through a time wound, discorporating him, and permanently slaying at least 44 minor extensions of the same god (the number of dragons required to unlock all shouts), should have some kind of consequence. We obviously don't know much about the towers and time wounds, but both are powerful and consequential. Other meddling with gods, especially Time, and towers has seemingly spawned dragon breaks in the past. It's just hard for me to imagine that literally breaking a dragon god of time doesn't cause a dragon break.

In terms of storytelling, I think this actually creates very interesting possibilities in future games. If, instead of most of the major decisions either not mattering or getting resolved by someone else off screen, having a post-Skyrim reality where all options happened simultaneously creates a more interesting setting. It would leave the politics of the Empire in even more disarray than any one version of the timeline and open the door to a second sort of Miracle of Peace. Maybe Ulfric reconciles with the Empire after being killed by Tullius, Titus Mede fights a civil war with his sons over succeeding himself. Paarthurnax becomes a dragon evangelist and the Blades expand their operations into Hammerfell on the strength of their new dragonborn war hero.