#both skyrim and oblivion has cool plots for their quest lines

[babyblueetbaemonster]

hello it is I the insane catboi from the stream site here to ask you a question of your OCs

for all of them

what is their favorite faction in their game?

what is their least favorite faction?

how often do they F--- around? and of those times how often do they end up finding out?

What is their favorite faction in their game? I have to say the classic four are really great :D

There's also a lot of cool minor factions, like:

Bards College (Jokir likes it), Vigil of Stendarr (Naythaa likes it), Volkihar Vampire Clan (Tar likes the vamps there), Knights of the White Stallion (we can hang with Sir Mazoga), Arena (Cay loves it), East Empire Company (Sunny was having a blast), House Telvanni (Vic learns to love them)... (don't tell Vehk but I really wanna join the Sixth House shh)

What is their least favorite faction? Not everyone played enough factions to have an opinion, but some of them do have a least favorite: Both Sunny and Vic thinks Camonna Tong is dumb. They also think the other's Great House is dumb. Acelta genuine loathes Mythic Dawn and Knights of the Thorn. Cay is not okay after the Dark Brotherhood purification. Pem doesn't like the Guard Faction XD All Dragonborn don't like the Blade.

I played Skyrim first and I was wary of the Blade when they asked me to join them in Morrowind and Oblivion. Apparently, Skyrim gave me the bad preconception about the Blade!!! They are legit good guys in previous games!!! They really help me throughout the Main Quest and they're all very polite and kind! AAAAAAAAHH what the heck Delphine?!

How often do they F--- around? and of those times how often do they end up finding out? We're talking about me, the dummy dumb, playing Bthsd games. Have to say everything I do is F*** around. Testing magics, physics, game mechanic and such. Most of my finding out was dying. Other times was off to jail or reload the save.

Parkour accidents include: "I can make that jump." "This is a short cut." "I thought I chose Feim but it's actually Wuld."

Magic accidents include: "I didn't know chain lighting can attack my allies!" "I got burned by my own fireball?" "I failed to cast Slow Fall and I'm out of magicka."

Crime accidents include: "By order of the Jarl, stop right there!" "You have committed crimes against Skyrim and her people. What say you in your defense?" "Stop right there, criminal scum!" "Stop! You violated the law." "It's all over, lawbreaker!" "We're watching you. Scum."

[rusticmune]

Despite the Nords in Skyrim (the game, not the provence,) being seemingly very connected to heritage and history, a lot of the history they try and connect to either feels very shallow, or is completely unrelated to plot threads from earlier games. Like... for the latter, it's like "My Grandpa was Gormly Snow-Tits and he had a magic sword that killed a thousand elves in five seconds. Its in this tomb, the only place it is ever referenced. Yeah you can keep it if you find it, I don't give a shit," and the first, the prime example to me is how, according to maybe three lines of dialog, Winterhold fell into the ocean because of the eruption of Red Mountain. It is never explained what that means, why that's important, or even, in the base game, what Red Mountain IS.

Oblivion has it's share of unrelated side plots, it's a game after all, but if something in a side quest is incredibly important, then usually it's got references or ramifications outside of the single dungeon or handful of characters it takes place around. In Skyrim I remember an entire quest about the final vestiges of the Dragon Cult, a mass ritualistic murder-suicide, servants made into eternal unwilling ghosts, and... once you step out of the dungeon it's in, no one mentions a thing about it. It's not tied into the lore of any other location, any other quest, no historian speaks of it, and yet in that quest it's said to be one of the most important sites of the end of the war against the dragons.

Skyrim is a bunch of cool locations and histories that don't effect each other in any meaningful way, and exist only to be experienced by the player in the singular moment, not to be experienced as a piece of a larger world. The previous two games before it both, to a degree, felt like locations and quests usually had a purpose in service of a larger whole- the Kwama mine is near the city, and people will talk about getting eggs there, or the tomb belongs to a family with still living members you can speak to elsewhere, or each individual oblivion gate connects fully to the climax of the main storyline, and that just doesn't happen in Skyrim.

i think the reason oblivion is bland but incredibly compelling while skyrim is bland and not super compelling (to me) is just that no matter how many plot threads it just fucking Drops oblivion still fits into its place in history and doesnt actually Retcon too heavily (notable exception being the environment lol). its not like much lore is actually changed its just not executed fully. while skyrim is kind of like. yeah the 200 year difference makes this somewhat inevitable but skyrim kind of just silently retcons like everything relevant to it and barely feels like a continuation of anything. nothing that happened previously seems to have any real effect, and things that were previously well established about skyrim and its culture are treated like they were never there. it doesnt really feel like it has a place in the history of the series. i mean i still like it but thats why it doesnt compel me like at all

[breegullbeakreviews]

Summary: As was foretold in the Elder Scrolls, as civil war breaks out in Skyrim over claim to the throne, the Dragons have returned to bring about the end of time. Only one can stand against this threat and wield the power of the Voice against the Dragons, and that is the Dovahkiin: Dragonborn.

The Ancient order of vampire fighters known as the Dawnguard have returned. Just in time too it seems as the family of powerful vampire lords, the Volkihar’s, seek to bring about another prophecy foretold in the Elder Scrolls, to end the sun itself. Fight to stop the family or join them and bring about eternal darkness.

As the Dragons return, it seems you are not the only Dragonborn. Journey to the southern coast of Morrowind to do battle with the original Dragonborn who seeks to bend all to his whim.

Overall: Skyrim Special Edition is worth $60 if you’ve never played it before or if you have an itch to play it again. It’s an RPG you can play casually or dive in deep into the world and all its lore. Outside falling into the chosen one trope at every turn, it’s a fantastic game that everyone should check out if they haven’t already.

Changes: Skyrim hasn’t been rebuilt from the ground up. This is the same game in terms of assets and the buggy unstable programing that holds this game together. So then what’s changed?

Well the biggest change is that the game has now been moved from being built on 32 bit PC architecture to 64 bit PC architecture. Basically the game has access more of the consoles memory than the previous version. Also it isn’t running on the PS3’s cell processor so it functions on a PlayStation console day one. This means the game can support more things on screen without dropping the framerate. A lot of the graphical improvements seen in Fallout 4 have also come to Skyrim like those Volumetric God Rays along with improved water and snow shaders along with plenty of improvements that go beyond my complete understanding. Basically the game looks prettier and runs smoother. Also console mods but I’ll hit on those later.

Sadly some of the little things didn’t make it over. On Xbox 360 there were Kinect voice commands for shouts, sorting, and quick swapping weapons. While I know Xbox has downplayed the Kinect as of late, the PlayStation Camera is still a big deal and I’d have loved to see these come over. At the very least add these sort functions into the item storage. While it seems they automatically sort alphabetically now, but I’d like some options.

Narrative: This isn’t my first trip to Skyrim. I was exploring the snowy mountains and grassy valleys from day one back in 2011. I was so hooked in fact that by the 31st of December I had wrapped up all the base game achievements on the Xbox 360 version of the game. That being said I was only 17 when I first played the game, and despite having played the game before I noticed some things I hadn’t my first go-round.

Firstly with the Civil War. Despite it being a side questline it’s the first thing thrusted into your path as you play the game. In the years preceding the game after the events of the Oblivion Crisis the Worship of the Nordic Divine Talos was banned as part of the White-Gold Concordat, a treaty to end the Great War between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion. Skyrim’s people became quite angered by this banning and the Stormcloak Rebellion began when strict enforcement of this law began.

Whether you avoid this side quest line or not the game makes it constantly apparent the divide the war has caused. From the major things like destroyed idols to the little things like locals saying “by the eight” instead of “by the nine” or vice versa depending on where they stand on the worship of Talos and the war. Even if you avoid it entirely there is a late quest in the main quest line where you need to get a temporary truce between the two. Even beyond this there is some political long game that isn’t too hard to follow if you just listen to the dialogue. The only downside to this questline is that there is no way to end things peacefully.

The Thieves Guild is probably the height of the base games narrative chops. It’s a tale of betrayal, secret orders, and deception. I don’t want to spoil things, but every major guild questline ends with you as the leader of the guild so I can say that there is some shaking up of the power structure within the guild.

The Companions Guild is unexpectedly about the supernatural. Spoilers, but the higher ups in the organization are Werewolves. While the younger members of the organization are fine with remaining beasts, the elder leader wants to cure himself of this curse so he can go to Sovngarde instead of Hircine’s Hunting Grounds. It’s not a particularly meaty story, but it is fun.

The Dark Brotherhood is another great story as it’s again about an organization down on its luck. This is the last remain group of the brotherhood in Skyrim and they’ve turned away from following the ways of the Night Mother. That is until the Night Mother’s coffin shows up with the keeper in search of the next Listener, and you’ll never guess who that is. While it’s sadly padded by lesser contracts, the story here is good.

The College of Winterhold is the last major Faction of Skyrim. Its questline is pretty lame. On your first lesson you stumble upon an ancient artifact of immense power and evil McEvil-face wants to use if for evil so you need to stop him. Its direction is always obvious so it’s a super boring story that drags on.

Gameplay Loop: Skyrim is an RPG, but like all games it’s got a loop of actions you’ll be doing. You do quests that eventually lead to dungeons where you’ll obtain a bunch of loot. The loot you’ll then either sell, store, or craft into better loot to sell or store. It’s a simple loop that sadly can go off the rails pretty hard. Once your speech skill gets high enough you’ll need to go from town to town to sell all of your junk because vendors don’t have enough gold to let you simply go to one vendor. And don’t think putting things off is a good idea either. As I type this I’m currently several thousand pounds over encumbered as I ride horses from town to town selling all of the gear I crafted with all of the material I had stored over the past two weeks. This affair can last hours and it really breaks up the action, but storing everything isn’t ideal either. Early on this isn’t much of a problem, but it will become one rather quickly.

RPG Elements: I’m not a super hardcore role playing guy. I turn the difficulty down to super easy and pick the perks I think are useful. If you use a skill it works toward leveling it up. You can’t just spam things without them being in a useful context, but it’s not hard to work the system to your advantage.

Certain skills level well with one another. Wear a mix of light and heavy armor to work on both at once. Conjure your weapons to get some work in both conjuring and the weapon you conjured. Plus you can use a perk to capture souls from people killed with conjured weapons to use for enchanting which you can perform on all of your crafted weapons which you can sell to buy more crafting materials and soul gems while boost your speech skill and oh god it’s an endless cycle.

Combat: As I said I play on easy. That being said due to not just dragons, but how broken stealth is, Archery is ridiculously over powered. Unless you play as certain races, magic in combat is really pointless, and I never found myself using potions. Now it’s true I should probably have the difficulty higher up if I want the challenge, but the thing is I really don’t I’m here to explore a cool world and could care less about the combat.

What’s here can get complicated if you let it, but it’s simple enough to grasp if you are just looking to get past it and explore. You have a lot of options, but as long as you focus on one you’ll be fine.

Dawnguard: Dawnguard is the best worst DLC of all time. Everything about it I should love, but its general lack of polish just kills it for me. Dawnguard triggers at level 10 so you can start it super early on, but once you get started you’ll be dealing with vampires attacking towns and possibly killing NPCs. There are two brand new areas that are super cool, but neither of these areas has an overworld map, meaning you’ll need to navigate them with the crummy local map. These areas also have just a single fast travel point to reach them and then you’ll need to wander from there.

You can become a werewolf again if you’ve cured yourself, but only once, which really sucks because being a werewolf was vastly improved with the DLC. Being a Vampire Lord just isn’t fun. You’re constantly too big to get through doors and changing back requires navigating through the favorites menu, which you’d only be told about if you initially sided with the Vampires as that’s the only way to get a tutorial on being one. Now a large chunk of these were fixed with mods, but the fact that they didn’t think to fix these outright for the Special Edition release is to some degree baffling.

Now let’s get to the positives. The story is great. The plot to end the sun so that vampires can rule is a great idea. The fact that not all vampires are on board with the idea is even cooler. It’s easily the best story in the game. Serana is the best companion in the game, and not just because she’ll constantly do other characters story related animations due to some bug. She’s just a generally cool character. As I said the new areas are super cool. The fact that one locks you out after you’re done unless you’re a vampire lord is incredibly aggravating, but while you’re there it’s awesome. The improvements to being a werewolf make it feel less like a curse and more like a blessing. There is also a new side quest that ties in in no way to the vampire plot line that ends with a choice of 3 unique artifacts.

I seem to be in the minority on the fact that I don’t like this add-on because of its faults, but with all of the polish seen in Dragonborn, it really feels like Dawnguard was rushed out the door way to quickly considering the price tag on the two was the same.

Hearthfire: Hearthfire is the house building expansion. 3 of the holds previously without homes to buy will now sell you plots of land in which to build your own home. While not as elaborate as Fallout 4’s settlement mode, the streamlined aspects work to the benefit of the game. For $5 this was probably the best DLC for Skyrim. As soon as the game starts you can experience the new content. Even if you haven’t built your own house, every house already in the game can now add a children’s room so you can adopt children.

Building houses is a mixed bag. You first build a small house, but after building that you can build a main hall and remodel the small house into an entryway. From here you can add a cellar and 3 wings. Each wing has 3 choices: a tower, a high roofed room, and a room with a rooftop patio. Due to the nature of how construction is handled, combinations are limited. Each wing’s 3 choices can only be one type of room. For instance the East wing will have a library tower, a high roofed kitchen, or a rooftop patio having armory. You can only build one on that east wing and you can’t build one of these in a different shape or on one of the other 3 wings. Now with 3 plots you can get all 3 wings built between your houses, but it’s not ideal.

Each plot has its unique items. For instance one home has the choice of a fish hatchery and another your own personal beehive. Slowly building up your own homestead as you play is fun, but it’s the internal furnishing that is the problem. You can choose to blindly build your way down the list, but the game doesn’t show where the item will be built and in some cases if it locks out another choice. You can’t delete things once built so when you build the wrong table or put a Dragon Skull where you wanted a Dwarven Centurion you need to either reload or you’re shit out of luck.

Dragonborn: Dragonborn brings the players to a small island off the coast of Morrowind where the original Dragonborn, Miraak, has plans to return to Tamriel. The plot involves a Daedric plain and of course dragons as you seek a way to stop Miraak.

The new area is massive. It’s roughly half the size of Skyrim, but I’m not actually doing any math. Problem is it has about as many interesting points as Fallout 4, which is very few. Quests are mostly concentrated in the main town you dock in with a handful of other quests originating in one other small town and a research area. It’s also a very barren map as it needs to keep the same feel as Morrowind which means a barren environment. There are trees and stuff, but it doesn’t feel as varied as Skyrim.

Dragonborn is a big add-on, and it’s certainly worth the $20 it cost at launch, but it being a separate continent really makes it feel separate from the rest of the world. It is both literally and figuratively a separate thing.

Mods: I have this game on PS4. Mod support is fine. You aren’t going to get certain things which sucks, but its fine. I spent about an hour playing as a Skeleton before I got bored. On PC I’m sure mods are great, but without the ability to go crazy with the size, mods are just mods. What I want is essentially unofficial DLC and I don’t think we will see that anytime soon.