#skyrim criticism

[moodcrab]

The Skyrim Opening Makes No Sense!

YouTube has recently been recommending a lot of people playing Skyrim for the first time, mostly from channels by young people exploring very old games... BETHESDA! This means for the first time in a decade I've watched the Skyrim vanilla opening over and over and... Well I guess I never really thought about it in detail. Before I started modding it was just something tedious to get past... But watching it retrospectively along with commentary from a fresh point of view I've noticed that the Skyrim Intro Makes No Sense!

So we wake up on the cart next to Ulfric, a man who is gagged because he can literally murder people with his voice... But all our hands are bound in front of us... Just like, take the gag off dude. Like it sucks that apparently that bit of cloth is more powerful than the Thu'um, but you could just reach up and take it out of your mouth, fuck we'll help you if it's at an awkward angle or whatever, this is literally all our lives and your whole rebellion at stake, that's all.

General Tulius is here, meeting up with the Thalmor that he totally trusts, that's totally not sus that they knew to be here at all... Makes you wonder why he didn't just execute Ulfric on the spot as soon as he was caught doesn't it? It's not like he's giving Ulfric a trial or anything, as far as the Empire is concerned Ulfric is guilty. Tulius for some reason just decided to bring Ulfric to a town to execute him, not even the nearest town to where he was caught either. Did he want witnesses? Ok just leave a handful of Stormcloaks alive, they aren't going to lie about seeing Ulfric beheaded.

Nevermind we're here now, quickly, kill Ulfric and bring a swift end to this mess... After I make a little speech. And after this priestess makes a little speech. And after we execute this nobody Stormcloak. And after we execute the random in the rags who we aren't even sure is guilty of anything. Why are we here again?

Oh yeah, we were "caught crossing the border" right? Take a deep breath before we delve into this hole that Bethesda dug for itself for literally no reason; baring in mind that in all previous games where you begin as a prisoner they never explicitly say why you are a prisoner. What crime are you accused of, are you guilty or innocent, that was all your headcannon and Skyrim needn't have been any different. So... Exactly what border were we caught illegally crossing?

Well, there are numerous examples of the game implying or outright stating that the player character is not from Skyrim, even if you choose to play a Nord. Every race specific response from Hadvar, for example, or when Galmar asks why an outsider would want to join the Stormcloaks. So you definitely crossed a national border... The only problem is, as Ralof confirms, the Imperial ambush happened at Darkwater Crossing, a location that is nowhere near a national border. Helgan is in fact closer to the border than Darkwater Crossing, but that doesn't matter because, as Tulius and the Fort Nugart Note confirmes, the border to Cyrodiil is snowed in, hence his recruiting locally and not relying on Imperial reinforcements.

The only border that Ralof could possibly be talking about is the Eastmarch-Rift border, both Holds that are Stormcloak territory, so why the Imperial Legion would care about someone random crossing it I don't know. And even if they weren't Stormcloak Holds, as we all know from actually playing the rest of the game, crossing Hold borders isn't illegal. In fact it actually erases your wanted level.

Again, nobody forced Bethesda to make it cannon that The Last Dragonborn was caught crossing a border they physically couldn't have crossed, illegally, despite the fact it isn't illegal. It's literally one line of dialogue, this was entirely avoidable.

What's that bone chilling roar? IT'S NOTHING! Hurry up and kill this obviously not a rebel (before Ulfric, the actual terrorist). It's fair to say they couldn't have guessed that that noise was coming from a dragon, but to assert that it's nothing!? With those oh so trustworthy Thalmor just down the street? Yeah probably nothing, keep Ulfric at the bottom of the list. Gods I fucking love damn lists!

Well it turns out that the terrifying roar didn't just come from absolutely nothing. It in fact came from absolutely something. Nobody could have foreseen this. The something it absolutely was, is a dragon, and in the chaos Ulfric somehow got away. Again, nobody could have foreseen this, in fact it's pretty much the opposite of what Tulius was going for here.

In our desperate escape we run straight past two giant city gates because Tulius ordered us to use the unnecessarily labyrinthian, giant-spider infested escape route through the keep that's literally collapsing on us instead.

We get a choice, go with Ralof, a fellow prisoner who has risked his life to save ours, or Hadvar, someone who was perfectly willing to kill us knowing full well we were innocent, but he feews weelly bawd abowd id 🥺. Fuck off Hadvar, you "just following orders, I'll pay your corpse more respect than your life, torture is a necessary evil" bitch! And fuck this opening for not letting me skip anything! I may not be a big fancy "great American novel" writer like Emil Pagliarulo, but still I think this could have used a second draft.

[counterspelling]

Endless Bells Hells

[elderscrollsconfessions]

Confession: I genuinely don’t understand why so much of the fandom seems to be so thirsty for Cicero. Like he’s an interesting character, but he is also the absolute definition of crusty

[handsomeamoeba]

WRONG.

Try again.

Actually let's get into this. As someone who loves a great many fantasy RPGs including BG3, Skyrim, and Dragon Age, let me explain what BG3 gets that Skyrim misses, in my opinion.

And this is the big one: the characters in BG3 feel like real fucking people. They have backstories, demonstrable feelings about the events and the other characters, they react to the things you do and they develop as people as you further your relationships. Even minor NPCs often feel fleshed out with distinct personalities and opinions. Hell, going out of my way to cast Speak to Animals is usually rewarded with at least one charming remark. I have never given even a little bit of a shit about 99% of Bethesda NPCs. I usually choose to travel without a companion rather than with unless I need a pack mule to carry my stuff, because their primary function seems to be to get in my way, set off traps, or attract aggro. I can't remember most characters' names unless I'm actively playing. I'm more likely to casually murder people in Skyrim than I am in BG3 or DA because Bethesda hasn't really made any of their NPCs feel like real people, and consequentially I feel no guilt. By comparison I tried to do an evil run of DA:O and gave up the instant I had to kill Wynne (the grandmotherly spirit healer) when she refused to let me go through with my plans, because I hated doing it. Lydia will watch me gut an innocent man and do NOTHING because she has no life, existence, or personality outside of me, the player. This extends to romances, obviously. While optional in all the games, most people will pursue a romance path in BG3 or DA for the additional character arcs it brings to the characters, the emotional nuances they unlock. In Skyrim romance is a box you tick of tasks to complete. In fact, once you marry them, most marriage candidates personalities change *completely* because all spouses have the same few stock dialog lines. That is, if they had a personality to begin with (again, see Lydia). You know how everyone wants to romance unromanceable characters in Bethesda games? Like Brynjolf in Skyrim, or Nick Valentine in FO4? It's because Bethesda actually bothered to give them stories and opinions.

Honestly, this extends to the player character themselves. To a certain extent every player character is a blank slate, but in BG3 and DA it at least feels possible to develop a feeling about who that character is and what they would or would not say or do. I've tried to do that with the Dragonborn and rarely feel strong feelings about them or have strong opinions about what kind of person they are. The only one I've made who I have much of an idea about is my wood elf Parafina, who is Chaotic Evil. Which again is an option I only pick because no one in Skyrim feels real.

The stakes also feel more real in BG3, more personal. Obviously there's the central quest involving the tadpoles, but more than that, it is about a credible threat to your world and the people and communities in it and the people you love. There are tons of reasons to invest yourself emotionally in the narrative. I have never, ever completed the main storyline in Skyrim nor picked a side in Skyrim's civil war. Why would it? Basically nothing happens if I choose not to. Furthermore, if you're not playing as a Nord (which I usually don't), why would you care about Skyrim as a place? You are a faceless, voiceless (pun intended) outsider who gets microaggressed at every turn being asked to choose between two different flavors of fascist. Also dragons are back but like... listen, I don't care? They get pretty easy to pick off at a certain point, it's like swatting flies, they're just a nuisance on the way to my daily errands. And isn't that such a common story? Don't you know so many people who don't really bother with the main storylines of Skyrim? Yeah it's one of the bestselling games of all time but I feel like the fact that most people don't really care about its narrative should be a sign of failure. We all know it's mostly maintained its popularity due to the modding community.

Ultimately both games have rich worlds which reward exploration with little secrets and environmental storytelling. But BG3 feels more "meaningful" because they give me reasons to care about what happens. The writers worked hard to give the game emotional resonance. So I come to the two games for different experiences. I go to BG3 to engage with an interesting story. I go to Skyrim for the quick serotonin hit of completing tasks and hoarding items.

[the-twisted-tales-tavern]

New header and pfp by JakeArmorsmith over on Twitter! Absolutely love how he drew all these ladies for the Tavern~

[i-am-but-a-beta-fish]

does anyone know where the nerevarine teldryn sero hc came from? was it the mohawk

[teddybasmanov]

Since Hbomberguy's recent popularity surge I decided to watch some of his videos that I haven't yet (I mostly watched his political stuff, for some reason) and I while I did have a lot of fun with Pathologic (though while knowing about its origins and setting I was still jump-scared by him calling the in-game currency rubles), I still cannot bring myself to watch his Fallout 3 and Skyrim videos, because I feel like he'll come to my apartment and personally take away the CDs that have been there for fifteen and twelve years respectively...

[cuyima]

So a few years ago I stumbled across a really sexy Mollymauk cloak embroidery design and decided I had to make it.

More info and download link under the cut.

Contains the following (male only)

Cloak (physics)

Outfit

Boots

Horns (physics)

Requirements HDT-SMP or Faster HDT-SMP Recommendations HMBO Use AddItemMenu or similar to add to inventory. This is a light armor with I believe elven stats.

Download Link

Remark I messaged redelice about this and they allowed me to use the design, neat. Sadly this was way over my paygrade at the time and I never got it into a properly releasable state while also making some questionable choices in the cloak design itself... This was the very first time I did anything with SMP, and it shows. I may remake it some day but I don't know when my Skyrim fixation will kick back in so I am leaving this here for now.

Credits @redelicebeta for allowing me to use their supreme Mollymauk design when I asked them like 2 or 3 years ago

Feel free to edit for private use, but otherwise please contact me first. Screenshots are of course fine.

[ludinusdaleth]

imogen temult 🤝 serana volkihar

more-than-human laura bailey characters deemed as monsters due to the actions of their parents who are part of a larger plot controlled by an ancient traumatized pale long-white-haired elf who is the last of his kind who seeks vengeance against the gods with an ominous red astral body that requires said laura bailey character, or her mother, to unlock the potential of

[natelm2nd]

"I'm going to go to Whiterun" Emily Axeford, accidently getting Westruun AND Whitestone confused and sending her character to Nirn. New Recorder mod headcanon.

[felassanis]

OK um. Kaidan extended edition. Wtf did you do to my man. Who is this frat boy.

[rinwellisathing]

Cishet women in fandoms with character creation, every time. And yes, they're including gay characters in that, you saw what they did to Dorian Pavus. I know this is mean, but I'm just....y'all...I'm just so done with the oversaturation.

[thekimspoblog]

Is the video game really subverting its genre? Are you sure it's not just doing clever things within its genre, because otherwise the game would be boring and unchallenging and say nothing interesting? I'm just saying, it's cool and all that the internet allows horror game fandoms to overflow into eachother, but not EVERY 2 hour video essay needs to be spent breathlessly sucking off the devs. Sometimes a game is just REGULAR difficult and REGULAR high-quality.

Besides RPGs made over a decade ago, what is the thing supposedly subverting? Clearly not other contemporary indie horror games, because there is clearly a convergent ethos forming of cosmic horror and beginners' traps; that's just what the genre looks like nowadays.

[elderscrollsconfessions]

Confession: i wish that person who confessed about only knowing skyrim knows that theres still time to get out. dont keep looking into the lore it sucks here you dont wanna be the guy at the party like "oh this reminds me of tes" it CAN happen to you GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN RUN

[chemtrailactivist]

i know that a lot of people dread lily orchard liking the same things they do but for me its the complete opposite. i love it when lily talks about stuff im into because without fail her opinions on it are always some of the funniest shit ive ever heard

[diaphin93]

Okay, I randomly saw this one and I'm mega unsure whether I should be concerned or amused by the state of this person rambling and seemingly having an attack over the bones of fictional dragons being shaped into a weapon. Might be sounding a bit crass and people might get it the wrong way, so let me g ive context: I'm currently binging Skyrim again where I'm literally slaughtering so many dragons that I make Nemesis look like a little bitch, carve out their bones and either sell them to some merchant for a quick buck and inventory space or forge them into weapons which I empower by burning down the soul of a dragon, so seeing that person lose their absolute shit over Marianne wielding a heroes relic, like the majority of other characters do too and never ceise doing, just is kinda funny with the comparison in mind. I also have to add, because of some comments I made earlier, I'm now playing a Nord again, so I'm not racist against nords anymore, I'm instead now racist against elves.

But going back to the initial question on whether I should be concerned or amused by that person coming off as having an episode over seething about Marianne, I let the people of the internet decide.