UA-cam age-restricted and demonetized this video, so I'm going to shill my Patreon here: www.patreon.com/patricianTV You can get the Elder Scrolls games on GOG with my link as well: af.gog.com/partner/PatricianTV?as=1708616954 Will try to update this comment
Please find a way to remove the restriction or us bongers can't watch without handing over our licenses. I was 40% in when it dropped. Can I watch It elsewhere? I apologise, I am old.
My favorite line is "Oh man old man Patrick's got himself worked up again, who asked him about Skyrim this time? I told the nurses to not engage whenever he brings that shit up!"
TO BE FAIR, Harkon being the most divorced man on Tamriel and deliberately letting half his own castle fall into ruin purely because his ex-wife liked those parts is pretty realistic.
i used to think harkon was pretty unrealistic as far as characters go. then el*n m*sk showed me that he was the most grounded character in the entire series.
@@MrSpartan993 Yes. Emil is on record saying he doesn't read or watch critical analysis of his work. He completely insulates himself so he doesn't get his feelings hurt. The only reason a creative person would ever do that is if he already thinks he's an unparalleled genius.
I was so disappointed when I realized every jarl sat the exact same way. The first time I saw a jarl sitting on their chair in such a relaxed manner I thought it showed so much personality and got excited what the other jarls would have to show. But yeah, they went to Todd it up and all I got was bored jarl after bored jarl.
The tremendous irony of the Paarthurnax "dilemma" is that he is the only surviving dragon left alive in the wake of the Dragon War. Despite being Alduin's brother and one of his highest lieutenants, despite having the most to gain from the continued enslavement of mortals, he instead chose to teach them to wield the Voice after being contacted by Kyne and helped to fight against Alduin who was his own kin and the embodiment of the dragons' creator and god. These people he taught, the ancient Tongues, suffered unimaginable cruelties under Alduin and the dragon cult. They knew more than anyone, better than any living being alive, how cruel and evil the dragons and their cult were to their mortal slaves. And when the war ended they consciously chose to spare Paarthurnax despite hunting down and slaying most of the other dragons. They had all the cards on the table, all the powers required to slay him as they did the others. But they didn't. They chose NOT to kill him. The very mortals that he had once ruled over, who hated dragons more than anyone alive could even imagine such that they literally weaponized that hatred into a Shout against the dragons, chose to spare Paarthurnax after the war. And then in comes Delphine, smashing through all of that and declaring that Paarthurnax has to pay for these ancient crimes that she never endured and which he had not only already atoned for but was already forgiven for by the very people she claims to be avenging. In her sanctimonious LARP to reclaim some tiny sliver of relevance for the Blades she's trampling all over history itself and trivializing the suffering, struggles, and forgiveness of uncountable ancient people to try and make this a strictly black-and-white issue in order to stroke her unwarranted self-importance.
Exactly that. The worst part about Delphine is how she reflects that ignorance/disregard for history onto the rest of the Blades. Asides from Esbern (and *potentially* that one guy in Nightingale Inn), she is the last living Blade left in Tamriel; the sheer amount of responsibility placed onto her shoulders to not only restore the order to its former glory (i.e, through the Dragonborn + recruiting new members) but to also represent them in this new age is staggering. And what path does she choose to go about this? Pitting the Dragonborn (who they are meant to serve and protect) against his most powerful ally and even mentor. But my question is: what if the Dragonborn actually follows through with this? Let's think about it. Delphine tells the Dragonborn- who at this point has slaughtered dozens of Dragons, attaining great power and cementing themselves as a legend amongst the Nords and those found within the region- to now kill the Dragon who has gone against all the stereotypes of war-mongering and power-craving primordial beings he has now faced up to this point. He has discussed the issue of Kalpic cycle, the issue of Alduin and him going off his path, as well as general philosophy with Paarthurnax, revealing the ancient Dragon's wisdom and intellect, as well as his capability to think and discuss these topics with someone as 'low' of a being as the Dragonborn.. He also aided the Dragonborn by revealing the time tear as well as the means to discover the shout necessary to render Dragons immobile, chaining them to the earth and unable to fly. A Dragon did that. A Dragon told the Dovahkiin the means to defeat Alduin, as well as the means to replicate this unto himself. He took a gamble that the Dragonborn wouldn't kill him and go to defeat Alduin, his own brother, and aspect of his father, Akatosh. Now imagine if the Dragonborn did actually slay the fucker. In Paarthunarx's eyes, he lives with the guilt of succumbing to power-lust and following his brother, slaughtering and enslaving countless humans, but chose to aid Kyne in helping the Nords throw off their chackles and ascend with a new power. But despite this act of genuine repentance and his aim to assist those he once ruled over, he still feels the guilt- even after eons of time has passed. And now there's this mortal who sent the Dovahkiin- one with his own blood- to kill him. To me, this is an act of treachery and one which could cement Man as a species unable to think critically, as well as a species that cannot percieve another form of retribution, punishment, or redemption other than arbitrary execution. At this point, Paarthurnax and the Greybeards would be right: just let reality sunder once more, for a new and, hopefully, better world be born through the ashes and war of the old. I wrote this all poorly, but my main point is essentially that Delphine represents an Order of legend, and one with a task to aid and protect the Dragonborn and those that follow him against all threats- not to pit them up against an ancient and powerful ally and teacher; an ally that has repented for his rampant slaughter and enslavement, and one that can aid Man in the years to come.
Wasn't there a dragon other than him currently alive during Daggerfall? I literally only know of this based on a Daggerfall retrospective video so idk I could be wrong
@@imdurrtydann396 There are actually many many many dragons alive after the dragon war, but they're scattered, unorganised, and not attempting to rule humanity. Tiber Septim had a dragon working for him during his conquest. Paarthunax is just the only surviving dragon that seemed to stick around in Skyrim. The rest probably fled far away from the province, fearing dragonrend.
@@goblinfairy1032 I disagree, I've recently replayed the game and focused on guilds, especially thieves and the dark brotherhood. In the thieve guilds, you actually see as you progress through the quests the base gets better beds, more people, more gold, you get to fill the chests room with treasures, as you get more traders they fill what were useless area that are know used so your base feel more alive with a lot of light and sound, it's good
@@degayifyyeah, I think it was designed to feel like popular conceptions of Europe in the twilight years of the Eastern Roman Empire in a N. European colonial province.
Most of the guilds are mostly operating ok with just some issues. I think it's guilds like the dark brotherhood and thieves guild that perform illegal acts that are suffering but for reasons that make sense. Dark brotherhood would have eventually lost to the Thalmor ran Empire if even the Blades couldn't survive them in Cyrodiil. Tbh the reason for the thieves guild's downfall is not as interesting as the dark brotherhood's as it's not as connected to the rest of the world's lore but still the death of their leader and the war making people less afraid of them is still sensible enough.
@@ChipsGoutSmegmaexcept to get that I have to know I need to do 20 radiant quests and 5 from each city. They aren't good and its not worth the effort especially if you have survival mode on. So while it does have that progression it is also the only guild that does and its too tedious to get. Its bad.
Considering they probably created the entire companions thing in a few weeks and shoe horned the furries in just because bloodmoon had them is hilarious
@@zoroasper9759 the fact werewolves are called furries just goes to show how much some people can ruin things lol (Edit) I'm reffering to those who would give such terms to werewolves, they've been around since before degenerate furries, no correlation beyond the one you've drawn yourself
@@imonke5303 why are you taking the concept of joking about something fictional seriously? Sure werewolves pre-date furries but I think the concept of something beast-like being seen as attractive to some people definitely pre-date even that. Besides, don't look at somebody seriously in the face in the modern day and say werewolves can't be something related tl furries. They are literally dog people. The only thing differentiating them is all the magic shenaniganry that surround them.
You have to give Bethesda credit. They've managed to cultivate a mass following of fans, who care more about their games than they do, and who are actively expected to fix their mistakes and fill in their gaps. It's nothing short of impressive.
there is one massive criticism i have for the Blood on The Ice side quest. if you break into Calixto's house and find his journal that basically confirms he was the murderer and has been killing people for a while now, you can't use it as evidence. hell i found it in his house by sheer happenstance because i simply thought he'd have something expensive worth stealing. and it's something that taunts me to this very day.
I did the same. I was on my thieves guild grindset just burglarizing any house I could get into at night. Imagine being a petty night-time thief and while crouched in a house you're stealing from you start reading their journal about all the bodies they have cut up in the basement.
@@DangerSmoog That sounds like a banger of a novel premise; thief steals the insane murderer journal of a seemingly normal guy and has to figure out what the fuck is going on.
The thing about the Thalmor party that gets to me is that Skyrim could've included the "become leader of every faction" thing that way. Like, instead of Delphine faking you an invitation, she suggests that you try to get one naturally by making a name for yourself in Skyrim. Obviously it would mist likely not work with all guilds (like Thieves and DB), but it'd be some way to make it count. I got that idea when I was doing a run where I had already been Archmage by the time I did this quest, and would've LOVED to talk to Elenwen about how her "advisor" had caused the death of my predecessor...
You could find ways to work in the shady factions. The Thalmor after all are literally torturing people beneath the party. Thieves Guild could want an inside man for this meeting of wealthy socialites and has you stow away in someone's carriage who *has* an invitation or something then knock them out and enter the party in their stead, maybe you need to forge an invitation that will fool the Thalmor. Maybe for DB there's a contract to assassinate Elenwen at the party and Astrid secured an invitation and a concealable blade via the person who requested the contract. You don't even have to let the player actually kill her there, something could just go wrong and threaten to blow your cover or force everyone to flee and then in a follow-up quest after her presence at the negotiation meeting either Astrid or the Night Mother depending on how far you've progressed the quest line send you out to finally finish the job with intel on her location. There's SO MUCH potential just left on the table.
Even other major/minor factions could work. Bard's college? You get hired for entertainment and catering, perhaps have to make some speech checks to keep your cover. Finished the Civil War? Tullius or Ulfric send you in as part of a delegation to gauge the Thalmor's next move. Volkihar? Either Harkon or Serana (depending on where you are) suggests you track down a guest and dominate them so that they bring you in as their +1. Dawnguard? A bit iffy but I guess Isran can cash in a favor to sign you up as a personal bodyguard for a guest.
Thats what always happens to me in the end. I start a new game and nothing feels like how i "remembered" it and the especially the awful combat pulls me out quickly.
@@HeliodromusScorpio people age, games do not, I always find myself getting pulled into skyrim, not because of the combat, but because of the music, world design, characters, environments, its why I like skyrim, but I'd personally always go for oblivion, oblivion is my most favourite.
it's crazy they took away spell crafting then added in the three word shout system and didn't gives us a shout creator. literally wielding an ancient powerful language would have been sick
As soon as he brought up the way word walls work, or Esbern's dictionary, I instantly thought of that. Some way to pick and choose what words we learned. Even if it was just a "pick three" system. Learn the base word, then next time you learn 3 new words to "pick the class" for that word, then the final time you learn 3 more to specialize it. Instead of just Fire Breath and Ice Breath, give us Breath. It's useless for now. But then the second one, we can choose Fire, Ice, and some third option. Bonus damage to health, stamina, and some sort of "mechanical nerf" that makes them weaker overall. Then the third word gives us how the word is used - is it meant to be loud, dealing damage to a small AOE? Or is a whispered, dealing damage to only a single enemy but doesn't alert enemies? We'd learn them all, could visit High Hrothgar to customize them, and they'd all be available to us once we know them. Increased Dragon Soul requirements for using the same word in multiple shouts for "gameplay balance" because that's what BGS likes. Varying levels of cooldowns depending on the shout. Or maybe it's reworked, and souls are used for both learning AND using shouts, like a secondary mana bar? But that seems excessively complicated.
@@coleG112 That would've been so cool! That's what Tyranny did with spellcasting (spell components being words to describe the base, form and an extra effect of the spell) and I loved it there!
@@octav3k Tyranny had a lot going for it. I feel that it's kind of an anti Skyrim, it tried to allow too many decisions but the writers couldn't manage the load, and eventually they had to give up before they ran out of money. It's a shame because I found the game's world compelling.
I'm willing to bet that was an idea that got canned. Bethesda has a real problem of not trusting the intelligence of their players. Either that, or a lack of creativity figuring out what combining effects together would functionally do.
@@urabraskthedeplorable725 I would say the problem is more that they never finish anything. They aim for the stars, then set an unrealistic deadline, and then just cut everything that doesn't make it in time.
Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed; I thought I misheard and went back to listen again... Funny how even Bugthesda can't keep rack of all their deities and the various names each one has depending on which culture you're talking about. This is a pretty big fail tho, I wonder if the quests are sometimes so inconsistent with lore because they were written by their designers instead of someone with lore knowledge and they just messed up due to confusing things.
@@Edmitsu No, Kirkbride was a side angle on all of this, and not the most respectful of things that came before Had something of a bug up his butt about Ebonarm being blonde.. Though the people who set down the pre-kirkbride lore also mostly retired/quit.
I'm by no means an Elder Scrolls expert, but if Auriel's bow was fashioned before the Aedra/Daedra split could it be argued that it was a Daedric artificact?
It makes sense though; the elements of the game we interface with should be consequences of the most primal forces of the world. Magic is one of those and should have a more substantial explanation than any one narrative borne from that mechanic. That there are parts *longer* than the magic, combat, and stealth parts are problematic.
Perhaps the reason the Companions test new members against someone in the inner circle now is specifically because the 'pit two newbies against each other' method ended up with a body on their hands.
@@DSFARGEG00I was just replying to another comment where I made a similar observation about intentionality - it seems to be a common refrain that if something *does* work out with regards to worldbuilding/lore in this game, there's always a question or skepticism as to whether it was actually intentional lawl.
It's worth pointing out with Blood On Ice that you can break into Calixto's house, find the chest full of embalming equipment and the confessional journal, and there's no path to arrest him directly.
I mean, not directly, but you can report the crime early to Wuunferth and then get to Calixto, and as far as I remember, that chest is locked with a key that Calixto drops once dead, I haven't tried to check his inventory and look if the key is there though, and it would have been clearly more engaging to have the chance to prove he is the murderer and get him arrested instead of killed so we ask him directly instead of finding out in a journal
@@cefirodewinter9086 from the wiki "By pick-pocketing the key, it is possible to discover this journal before discovering that he is the killer, and before he blames the murders on Wuunferth the Unliving; however, doing this will not affect the quest in any way, and the Dragonborn will still have to discover who the killer is."
@@leahd4016 That is a dumb oversight of Bethesda like how the coc cannot notice the differences between the death drops even if the player has. Or how the game will not let you figure out the true traitor to the Dark Brotherhood not even when you drop the guy's mother's head and get him to gasp because of it.
@@GhostLink92 I don't know about console, sorry. I just know that there's an 'achievement enabler' mod on the Nexus for PC and that it works, because I've used it myself since I started playing Skyrim and I've got a ton of achievements.
Not as if you could just cheat the achievements when you know the triggers in the in-game console, which is hilarious. I found out when i didn't want to grind money, so i just wanted to cheat 10000 gold, and typed in one zero too much, endling up with 100470 gold, and steam still gave me the achievement for having 100000 gold.
@@Donnerbalken28 only like 10-15 commands disable achievements (i.e. tcl, coc, setstage, etc.) and for whatever reason they completely forgot that you can just player.additem pretty much anything lmao
I took me until the end of this video to realize, that the reason I always liked Skyrim (despite being aware of its flaws), was because of the quiet moments between fights with the music and scenery. Those moments were trancendant and gorgeous. It's sad that the rest of this game didn't live up to that standard. I thought of this post, months ago when I watched this video. I'm posting it now.
Unfortunately that's used as an excuse as to why the game is "good." Though when you ask someone "what do you remember about the main quest" you'll get something like "uhh...I remember Alduin and Paarthurnax" and further questions make them realize they remember almost nothing, and at best they remember bits and pieces of the side quests.
@@okagron That could make a good game if you built your experience around that. Creating buildup and payoff to those moments. Add some surrounding context to give them additional value. And go all-in on art design.
Fun thing to note: You can find a ton of regeneration and health potions in High Hrothgar, implying either that the voice is hell on the throat or that one if not more of them is in rapidly declining health
Kind of a chicken/egg situation - could be either the potions are staving off declining health, or they're responsible for the long lives they've lived... or one then the other.
Man, that "final" line really hit home. "This isn't bargaining, this is acceptance" might just be the best summation of my current feelings on the Elder Scrolls that I've ever heard.
@@planescaped you mean Skyrim-lite, as Skyrim was Oblivion-lite, and just as that was Morrowind-lite. Just watch, they'll celebrate removing alchemy to instead replace it with a flavored estus flask system. Gotta go back to your house and sleep to refill it. Maybe if you die you can run back to the dungeon, running past all the still dead enemies to pick up your dropped loot. ._.
@@FanDidlyTastic Nah, they aren't going to do any of that. What they WILL do, however, is lean even harder on their godawful base-building shit they shoved into Fallout 4. If you've seen the trailers for Starfield, you'll know that they are going all-in on the base building garbage. Its a straight developmental line from Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC, to Fallout 4, to Fallout 76, to Starfield in terms of the base building, because for some ungodly reason, they've gotten it into their heads that people actually like that stupid shit. I'm fully expecting TESVI to just be a completely barren field and they'll make you build the entire gameworld with their terrible base building system before you are allowed to go questing.
8:54:15 can we just talk about how Bruce Nesmith refers to Auri-El, literally Akatosh, principal god in the Imperial and most elven pantheons, the absolute definition of Aedra, as a Daedric lord
Also, how he talks about being excited to bring content in the game about Auri-El, cause he was a being they hadn't given much attention in the games, even tho with Akatosh and Auri-el being the same god, Martin literally became an avatar of Auri-el in Oblivion and used his powers to save Tamriel from Dagon lol
I suddenly got an idea on how they could have addressed the dragons not talking to you except for shouting. The Dragonborn, or at least a newly awakened one, may not be FLUENT in the Dragon tongue. But the very fact they are able to learn and use shouts means they understand certain words and the concept they signify. So, why not have subtitles with draconic runes appear when a dragon speaks, only to replace some of them with their human equivalent. Words like "challenge", "death", "danger", "fear", "rebirth". And as the Dragonborn absorbs more souls, learns more shouts and progressed through the main quest, more and more words would be translated until you can roughly understand the gist of their banter. Heck, you could even have Greybeards sidequests that reward you with more knowledge of Draconic. And who knows, perhaps if your grasp of dragon language is complete enough you unlock more dialogue options with prominent dragons like Durneviihr or Odahviing, persuading them to help you without having to fight them. In essence winning the "violent debate in the Dragon tongue" that shouts are supposed to be. Hell, maybe straight up add an option that requires the right dialogue choices and perfect completion of draconic knowledge to talk Alduin out of his plans of conquest à la Fallout.
Pity that shouts just ended up as awkward spoken spells that I'd rather not waste time getting any words for 60% of them and tediously fighting dragons to learn the full shout. Heck Unrelenting Force, the most marketed one, loses its novelty really quick because I'd rather end fights quicker by killing off enemies instead of rag-dolling them away from me. It's frankly incredible how Bethesda made being Dragonborn seem _so_ lame when they have Tiber Septum and Reman Cyrodill.
@@alecstewart2612 Yeah, not to mention if you want to ragdoll enemies and don't care about being a vampire you can just become a Vampire Lord and spam Vampiric Grasp to throw enemies around.
Patrician talked about Elder Scrolls for 40:04:11. While MauLer talked about Star Wars for 22:37:58 up until the day of the making of this comment. So, it's fair to say that Patrician has truly earned the title of Longman.
@@peaceprinceshaxi5978 I disagree, MauLer doesnt really come off as that ever imo, if anything hes very calm or steady. Theres a difference in using a tone than coming off as “butthurt”. More of a matter of fact, or maybe a smart ass voice, but it fits his brand, and honestly his videos are extremely well put together and further a good amount of evidence. Tbh if you swapped Patricians voice with his, you might even say Patrician comes off as “Butthurt”. Just a dif style of doin stuff
Dawnguard feels like a second attempt at the Companions questline. With most of the quests being radiant, a power to transform into a 'powerful' beastform and artefacts to augment the transformation. However this time they included the option to turn down the 'gift' by continuing along the dawnguard side.
I don't think it's Wes Johnson, there's a dude on fiver that does a pretty good impression of him tho, it's like his thing on fiver. One of the mods uses him for voice acting Sheogorath.
The Black-Briar Meadery actually seems to be just a few years old, maybe a decade at the absolute most. When asked about his involvement in the meadery Asgeir Snow-Shod says "Yes, actually. I'm partnered with Maven Black-Briar. I put up a chunk of the gold she needed to get the place off the ground. We've been staggeringly successful so far. In fact, I'm almost surprised how quickly she's generated business for us. My name may not be on the label, but some of my blood, sweat and tears are in every drop. Uh, figuratively of course." It just doesn't really give me the impression the business has been around for 70+ years.
TES 6 canon is that Black-Briar meadery was actually gifted to the Falmer by Auriel. That's why Maven is Imperial-aligned; she is an unwilling servant of the elvish super power.
I still can't believe he fell for the jzargo trap. Yeah, he levels to 81, due to an error in his coding... but due to another error hell (almost) never cast anything but sparks. He's literally the worst follower in the game for dealing damage, and his only value is in tanking. ...and yet he's also coded to take cover and retreat from melee combat, so he's completely useless at that as well.
9:32 In regards to the dragons getting themselves killed by random NPC, I had one encounter in Dawnstar where the miners killed the dragon without my help, including a finishing move done by a miner with a pickaxe. Not like I was taking them serious anymore at that point anyway.
Yeah limitation of the engine and AI is really not great. Eso dragons on the other hand...oohhh boy now THOSE are the ones from the lore! Both in size and strenght!
I find it exceedingly hilarious how literally everyone, including the homeless beggar in the street, will square up to a Dragon when it shows up, beating it back with everything they've got, all the while shouting various taunts and phrases of panic and help.
I always felt like the original draft of the Thalmor embassy infiltration was supposed to revolve around freeing Esbern. That's why the embassy's escape route is near a prison cell and we can free someone else instead. Instead Bethesda replaced "getting the guy who knows all the info about the dragons from the Thalmor" with "getting info about the dragons from the Thalmor" so they can show the player Riften and the thieves guild later without having to cut a quest they put a lot of work into. That's why the quest is so inconsequential and out of place. It really sucks because it makes Delphine seem like a complete idiot who's just irrationally paranoid about the Thalmor when the original draft probably had her be more competent.
I love Neloth’s voice actor. I was doing the water dungeon and I kept thinking about how familiar he sounded, only to realize it was Mung Dal from Chowder
I know right? Thing is it was based off the lore of the series connected into the sum of thier parts. It is was lore exists for but Bethesda doesn't think that way. Antagonists just have to be unambiguously evil just cause.
This has to be the, hands down, most critical two part review of Skyrim penned by an Ulfric apologist I’ve ever seen. Hands down. And it’s pretty damn good, my hats off to you sir. And that’s from the viewpoint of an Imperial dog. Edit: Man, I just realized how drastically different an experience I had by starting Skyrim with the special edition.. I had every DLC already downloaded so I had a few of these issues fixed right off the bat giving me a more positive experience then those who started on the normal version. Wild..
I really dislike the end of the main quest because it implies that, with enough ingenuity, the nordic afterlife can be reached physically and it has a big door Odahviing's spiel about "needing wings" doesn't make sense when the temple very clearly is IN the mountains (and if you open the map it's in the the bordermountains between Morrowind and Skyrim) Sure, there's a dragon priest protecting it and you have to use his staff as a key- but he's dead after the events of Skyrim And it's not limited by race, either, because the Dragonborn can be whatever race Come the equivalent of 20th century earth and there's a ski resort which has literal nordic heaven as one of its attractions
2:17:59 Tullius knows enough about "You Nords and your damned Honor" to realized that ambushing Ulfric under a flag of truce brokered by the *Greybeards* would instantly make the Legion a pariah even in the Holds that are currently on their side
I cannot describe how hog wild I went when hearthfire came out and I saw that all the soups got unique textures and that I could bake snowberry crostatas
I found spellbreaker to be the most useful Daedric item because I didn’t enjoy being hit by frost bolts and losing all my stamina instantly and it was handy for cracking magic user skulls in general.
Your alternative story/take on the nature of the Dragonborn to make them more interesting is immensely more intriguing and engrossing than how it is actually written. Great work and brilliant video.
I think a lot of the problems NPCs have is that they just talk at you, and it feels like they already have the thought of putting their problems on you. Only few quests ever feel natural like it would actually happen if two strangers met. People in Skyrim must be extremely desperate to be so trusting of the player for the responsibility they give you
I watched your Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim videos and loved them. I decided to try out Morrowind for the first time and I love it. Roughly 8 hours in and I have a feeling I haven't felt in 10 years when playing a game. Thank you, man.
Same here. Decided to give morrowind a better try because of this channel and man, makes me think of the wasted potential of "current" (10+ years old with sequel coming in maybe 4 lol) TES games..
Something I've never seen anyone bring up about Skyrim is how no one's face ever seems to emote. Oblivion had facial emoting, and while it was kind of silly, I prefer that over literally nothing.
Oooh, I didn't think of that. Is that why they made such a ridiculous amount of haughty characters that makes the world so hostile? To match the lack of emotes.
Wow. This made me feel how my childhood really is over in a special way. Incredible video. I appreciate the 11:11:11 runtime in an oddly emotional way too, that's a nice detail to add.
5:49:30 There are other people who are bothered by there being absolutely no followup on Jyggalag? And here I thought I was the only one who felt that an entirely new Daedric Prince is something that should have ramifications
just now thinking about how weird it is that you fight alduin at the throat of the world and he's like "ha, you fool, you can't kill me in the mortal realm" and then immediately goes to sovngarde, the place where he can be killed either he's got a death wish, he wasn't banking on you being able to follow him, or I'm missing something
also when he meets you in sovngarde he should really flee, the Dragonborn is already proven to be stronger than Alduin at this point so Alduin has to be stupid to fight you again here (especially considering you have backup from other people who have also already defeated him before). Skyrim really makes Alduin out to be a complete idiot
Sovngarde is where Alduin gets a lot of his power and safely recovers from danger. He's been getting strong feasting on the souls of the Nord dead. He also wasn't banking on you being able to follow him. After all the temple you can access Sovngarde from is in a place only someone with wings can reach, and the PC might have Dovah blood, but flying isn't something you can manage without a little help. I also feel like he'd somewhat need to stand his ground there, because losing that power source will likely diminish him significantly and cause significant trouble for him within the draognic power structure. Further, Alduin's great sin has been noted several times through out the game to be pride. Which makes sense, he's the first born of Akatosh, the greatest of the dragons. The mortals could not kill him previously, merely unanchored him in time. An annoyance... but something he can overcome. You have your little tricks, but in his place of greatest power, without the anchors of Nirn, he cannot possible be defeated! Is what he's thinking. Because no matter how well you do. What blood you have... you're still just a pathetic creature to be ruled over and controlled. Unruly livestock that must be taught your place. Then there's the whole killing him thing. Paarthunax notes, it's likely even then that you did not permanently defeat Alduin. You don't absorb his soul in the end. The World Eater will likely return eventually to play out the role that has been set for him. True immortals just see things differently in the end.
@@kalashnikovdevil I'd agree with you on most points but he really doesn't get stronger at all. In fact he doesn't change much at all because the boss fight may as well be a cutscene for how much freedom is involved as Todd probably thought he hyped Alduin a bit too much and needed the boss fight to be some cinematic sequence to make you feel super special as the epic reddit Dovahchad. Does he have higher lvl scales that make it impossible for him to be damaged by low grade weapons? Nope, you can kill him with bare fists. Well does he use a new thuum so you can't use your cheat shout like making himself ethereal? Nope, this lizard who's essentially a leader of his faction is dumb as bricks because Todd Howard thinks most players are also dumb as bricks and he's right lol there's no doubt that most of skyrim fans would crumble in the first few main quests if the game respected you enough to throw intelligent enemies at you.
I think its really second. To get there you need help from one of his underlings, which he didnt expect youd be able to get; and its the place where he can vore some nord souls to recover AND power up before the next fight to not be as much of a wet rag next time. He's basically going "Screw you guys, I'm going home".
Skyrim has a magic that other games fail to capture. When I first played it (and it was my first TES game), I would hear about different places and imagine them and the world felt so vast and interesting. No other game has ever quite captured me like that. But then I played it. I found everything there was to find, I did every quest, and then I realized how hollow it was. There was no giant college of mages I could go to, just a couple of small buildings. There was no epic civil war, just some small skirmishes. The Dark Brotherhood didn’t involve making and following special plots, it was just a quest line that needed a bit of stealth. So I, like everyone else that wanted more and played on PC, turned to mods to fix everything. And it mostly worked. Skyrim became fun again. Magic wasn’t broken and useless. Combat felt visceral and engaging. Half of the fun then became modding my game, and at points I spent more time sorting out mods than actually playing. But something about that initial play through succeeded on myself and others and inspired the largest modding community of any game yet. It’s a shame the base game itself is so flawed. Fallout 4 has almost all of the same problems and more but lacks the wonder and excitement of the initial playthrough (at least it did for me). I made it halfway through one Skyrim playthrough without mods. I modded Fallout 4 right out the gate because I couldn’t stand the voiced protagonist. And I love modded Fallout 4. It’s so great. But I couldn’t play the base game to save my life.
I feel the setting of Fallout never accomplish what Skyrim accomplished but I also think the setting of Fallout atleast how the Bethesda imagined it could never be world people want to live in. Skyrim looks like a beautiful vacation spot I want to hike in real life. Bethesda's Fallout is the dumps it reminds me of a literal trash dump and just like when I go to a literal trash dump myself to throw away my unwanted trash why I have to pay entrance into the dump when I'm bringing the trash to the dumpster myself instead of waiting for the professionals take it. Like I think the difference between obsidian Fallout and bethesda's Fallout is obsidian envisioned as a world where people are building upon the ruins of the apocalypse and Bethesda envisioned the world that is trapped in the ruins of humanity.
Man I think you were spot on for why it is such a loved game... it's many of our first RPG game that we played when we were younger. Now 12 years later we take off the rose tinted glasses and see the truth. I played when it first came out and loved it. Played until I got the book at the end of the Main questline, Oghmus infinium or whatever, and found a bug where I could get 100 in all skills because I could infinitely use the book. Played for like an hour with maxed skills and instantly got bored. Then 11 years later I thought it would be fun to play Skyrim again because it was such a good game back in the day. I got bored after a couple hours and left the game with a bitter feeling. You described that feeling perfectly well. I look back on my memories of playing and experiencing Skyrim fondly, but I don't actually remember the game or the story much at all. The game itself was unremarkable aside from looking fantastic. I also really agree that the whole dragonborn concept was just a tool to make Skyrim and look cool and flashy. Your concept of an alternate Skyrim where the dragonborn are actually the villains, killing and eating dragons to wantonly gain power and they are worshiped simply because the truth of the matter was lost over time would be a fantastic story to experience.
"The truth" It was as good as it could be with the incompetence of Bethesda. Morrowind was nearly perfect, yes. And Skyrim fixes everything broken about Morrowind while oversimplifying almost _everything_ else. So there's this hypothetical Better Than Morrowind that you benchmark Skyrim against. Not me. I benchmark Skyrim against *Fallout 4.*
My 12 year old stupidity caused the thalmor embassy mission to be one of my best experiences in gaming to this day I misunderstood the instructions “give malborn your gear because you CANNOT bring anything to party” as “you CANNOT bring anything to the party” so, my sword and board character, gave malborn a set of fine clothes and got in the wagon to the party. Fast forward to when i open the chest with my gear in it and I realize the mistake i had made. So after dying dozens of times trying to run past everyone i had to continue thru the thalmor embassy planning out every encounter in front of me with the tools i had at my disposal. This one mistake forced me to actually interact with multiple mechanics i had not touched up until that point (magic, sneaking, voice of the emperor power) and had me scavenging gear off the corpses of the thalmor until i finally got to the dungeon where i could get an actual sword and shield back and now the power dynamic of the quest had shifted back into my favor after all the hard work, right before having to fight the troll. I came out of it thinking this was the intended experience. This quest took me 3 real life days to complete but was some of the most enjoyable and memorable gaming ever. I really do wish bethesda was brave enough to lean into their mechanics and allow the players to experiment cause TES universe is the perfect playground for that.
I HAD THE SAME EXPERIENCE but I accidentally backed out of the "Give Item" menu and Malborn just ran off. That was one of the most frustrating, interesting, and fun gaming sessions I have ever had. When I finally got my hands on a good weapon, an Elven Mace, (after dying many times) it felt like sweet victory! It felt like a real infiltration mission the whole time - I was *actually* in danger and had to use all of my skills, spells, mechanics, and scavenged items to survive. See what happens when Bethesda actually uses their mechanics to restrict the player and compel them to make the game interesting for themself? See what happens when Bethesda stops focusing on ""player freedom"" so much and actually focuses on game design?
I love when stuff like this happens, bugs or misinterpretation creating better experiences, because it really goes to show how most of these issues are entirely from bad or lazy design and not technical or skill limitations.
Yeah, the same thing happened to 11 year old me, I also remember this quest fondly because of the same reason. The feeling of having to improvise with the game mechanics was so different.
4:33:37 The idea of Aela getting the Beacon of Meridia mixed up with the totem of Hircine and assuming its some moon relic and prays to it too brings be great joy, joy that is cruelly crushed under the weight of the fact that Nirn has two red and blue moons so there's almost no reason for the wolfgirl to associate something white and round with the moon in this setting
It also doesn't have a sun (as we know a sun to be in our world at least, I guess you could argue that it's still technically "A" sun, just not a sun like OUR sun) but you don't see that fact being held up as relevant anywhere in any single Elder Scrolls game past morrowind. Sorry but, despite your argument actually making sense, Skyrim doesn't make sense, so you're point is still invalid due to their shoddy development of the game. The sun and moons in Skyrim may as well just be earth's and our moons just globally affected by double vision. I swear the only people who cared about being lore accurate are the book writers, and even then that's only due to necessity. I doubt they'd know the lore if it wasn't a hard requirement to be able to write about history in this game. so, white+round=moon is probably the level of thinking you're going to get when it comes to skyrim quest lore, despite neither of their moons being white ever at any point in their universe. It's the same reason the Sun looks like a sun instead of a rip in space and time with the golden light of the fabric of reality pouring through upon Nirn.
@@moosecannibal8224 dude what are you talking about Masser is blue and secunda is red, there'd be no reason for white to be associated with the moon on nirn and the sun looks the same because it's a massive circular glowing hole into the infinite energy dimension, as compared to a massive glowing round ball of (practically) infinite energy And if anything Meridia would be more closely associated with the sun than the moon considering she is a Magna-Ge
@@markointhesky he's referring to the meta reason for the devs making that mistake. The people who wrote the dialogue aren't interested in catering to the built world but instead will fall to meta irl references
@@KazuyaKujo-Kun But they didn't? Meridia's beacon isn't the moon or associated with it, nor is it ever referred to as such Aela mistaking it as an additional relic of Hircine and howling at it was a hypothetical in the style of a mini comic some japanese artist might draw that I came up with It was a joke my guy
I was driving from Saratosa Florida to Brainerd Minnesota . . . And I got through the Fallout 76 and only two thirds of this retrospective. Top teir driving material
hey, i know there's little to no chance of you seeing this, but just wanted to add. bethesda dont seem to have devs combing through to fix bugs. it apopears they have people combing through nexus to steal bug fixes. i know this because i actually created the mod that fixed the mannequins in the exact manner that is implemented in the anniversary edition... and just a few months prior. its called "mannequins behave" and is a mod i made in about 30 minutes after being frustrated with mannequins and finding some tick boxes unchecked that when checked stop the mannequins from moving... 10 years and no one at bethesda thought to check the mannequins race file...
thank you for that mod btw, mannequins are a bit of a phobia of mine, and well reloading a save and having a mannequin standing right behind me kinda stopped me from playing for a few days
After watching all three long form videos for TES franchise, my conclusion is that this is the best content I've ever watched. The closing speech was one for the ages. I must point to the line "goodbye Skyrim". Tough to hear even though I just watched a 20 hour video I didn't want to end. Unless I missed something, it seems it's going to be a very long time before we are graced with another video similar to this. This is sad. These 3 series of videos will always hold a place in my heart and will be a reminder of how great these games are, even when they aren't. Thank you for everything you've done.
I am one of those people that just can't say goodbye to Skyrim for good. I always go back to it and play it for a few weeks before setting it down for a year or two but Morrowind is a permanent installation on my PC
Didn't expect to finish this whole full-fledged (yet still quick retrospective) review of Skyrim in total of seven months, that was surely a wild ride.
During your Sanguine section you mention that they don’t use wedding rings in Skyrim and instead use amulets of Mara, this is a misinterpretation, they use amulets of Mara to show availability and actually do have wedding rings once you get married, you yourself should’ve gotten one when you married Ysolda. Edit: I believe it’s called Band of Matrimony and I believe it’s a golden ring that gives a restoration cost reduction
Imagine being so desperate for love in your life that you resort to wearing what is equivalent to an Aphrodite shirt to see if anyone else is lonely 💀💀
Beekeeper here…. Timestamp relevance 5:24:00 It’s surprisingly easy to manipulate genetics of honey bees, instrumental insemination is tedious yes but possible. Also the use of isolated breeding yards is a common practice among breeders. Cheers everyone!
"Later in the future, when they need that blanket again, they reach for it. But it doesn't work as well twice." Without going into too much detail, I recently had a rather terrifying near-death experience. After it happened, I went home and talked to a couple friends on discord to calm my nerves. I went to bed later that day and figured that was that. I had a quick reminder of my own mortality, I moved on, and tomorrow would be a new day. Except, the 'new day' kinda felt off. I chocked it up to just some odd feeling that would subside after I woke up enough, and turned a couple videos on before I got out of bed. One of which being the first part to this review, which got me playing Skyrim again, completely unaware of why I found the game so alluring. Until that quote at the top of this comment kinda made me stop in my tracks. I realized that I had been using Skyrim to escape, just as I did as a child back in 2011. I'd been using the game as a blanket to protect me from the cold reality that I wasn't as okay as I thought I was. That my brush with death, however brief it was, had affected me. As I write this I'm taking steps to properly address the lasting effects that my experience left on me. With luck, support, and a little bit of time to process, I'll heal from this experience and maybe even come out just a bit stronger. But I have you to thank for helping me realize what was going on. so, Thanks, Patrician. Hopefully, (on the off chance you actually read this random comment on a 12 day old video,) I don't come off as weird.
Nah, that's not weird at all. Especially in that scenario it is more than just relatable to seek somewhere or something to that'll take your mind of things, make it feel at ease. You are most certainly not alone in that, rest assured, and hope you find a way to get through this.
I played the Dragon Age series after Skyrim & killing dragons in those games actually felt like an achievement. In Skyrim killing a dragon is either a quick boring chore or a frustrating drag mostly spent in menus.
Drqgon Hunting in Inquisition is always such a big thing. Sure, they're also repetetive, but they're hard and all dragons have unique designs. Even Origins's dragon fight (the actual dragon, not the Archdemon) was a giant bossbattle.
Plus being the quasi-divine "herald" or "inquisitor" feels like it really delivers on the promise Skyrim gave with the Dragonborn. In Skyrim you're blessed with power by Akatosh, the creature standing between the world and apocalypse. Arguably you are the legitimate emperor and heir of the Septim dynasty. But nobody cares. In Inquisition just about everyone you meet has a preconceived idea of you because you are the Herald or Inquisitor. The tutorial ends with a huge crowd of people bowing in front of you. By the end of it you are a significant figure in the politics and religion of the southern continent for good or ill. And the kicker is you aren't actually a chosen one. Everyone just assumes you are and it spirals from there.
20 hours long, and done in an instant. What an amazing piece on a game that has always meant so much to me. Thank you for the insights, perspective, and effort. It was such an enjoyment and I’ll be rewatching a second time real soon.
It is so impressive to make a 20 hour video this engaging. Having not watched long-form reviews before I feared rambling to the highest degree, but what I got was genuine and researched thoroughness. I also have to commend your consistent objectivity, and slices of humour that came at just the right frequency. Great video.
I have watched many long-form videos before and this is certainly rambling to the highest degree. There are SO many videos like this that slog through a series of repetitive complaints and run through the same tired analyses from similar creators. The only difference is the order the information is presented in. Objectivity? LOL, You can't make a set of videos this long and be objective; nearly every video like this is a bloated opinion piece. The sooner you realize that the better. If you still like it great but don't misunderstand the nature of these video essays.
@@notsyzagts7967 tl;dr. Could you give me a summary of your point? I am afraid these many lines are too complex for my black and white view of the world.
@@notsyzagts7967 Just because something is long does not mean it lacks objectivity. If the person doing them explains and shows why they have the opinions they have it shouldn't be a problem
Mechanic Timestamps 7:00 Dragons 1:06:09 Puzzles 1:08:03 Loot 1:15:35 Followers 2:59:20 Radiant Story 6:37:35 Survival 9:12:28 PlayerHomes Thank you pat for this wild journey
”People don’t like Skyrim like I like Morrowind, almost entirely vanilla” that’s where you’d be wrong Pat. Because I’m a depraved individual with a proud affinity for this game even in its basic form. I’ve logged almost 6000 hours into Skyrim now over the years and while I agree with 90% of what you say in this critique I still love Skyrim for its world and its little charms. I enjoyed Morrowind and I tolerated Oblivion but Skyrim has that something that has kept me coming back for over a decade since I first touched it.
@@ksar98I'm pretty sure 6000 hrs in Skyrim is the exception. Everyone who has played it has played it raw at least once; how would you make an intelligent modding decision elsewise? I have played vanilla a fair bit but I definitely have not played 6000 hrs unmodded... and I'm a TES fan. I have played Morrowind for at least 3000 hrs and that constitutes a phenomenal time investment for me (for video games).
These two videos are a full, highest rating that I can issue 10/10 and they easily earn the badass seal of approval. I cannot wait for the next videos to come, now if you'll excuse me I need to watch them again as evil.
It's good to see a character that is initially framed as "that cranky old guy who only exists to forbid you entrance to a place" act more, you know, like a person who has a life outside being a plot roadblock. Must be the reason Enderal writers made a similar quest in Duneville, though that one also involves a beach picnic and a ghost pig
@@KBXbandawful take, he's tearing down skyrim because it's not hard to tear down a temple made out bricked shit all settled on top of already broken toothpicks
@@dylanandrew7490 in my opinion it's better than Morrowind and Oblivion. But then again I am a console player and not as much a PC player. To its credit Morrowind on PC is fun but I stand by my comment.
The conclusion was pretty spot on. Upon release there's no denying how amazing Skyrim was at the time. The world was incredible to get lost in, and it was enough to shut your brain off and string you along to see what it has to offer. My problem with Skyrim and FO4 is after the roller coaster ride is over, with all its content and expansions, they're very hard games to go back to. There's very little replay wise, unless to see the world again, the gameplay gets stail the more you play, and problems with the writing and over simplicity it all is becomes more obvious. Skyrim is a game that will live on for a long time, for better or worse, I don't think it will be well visited by those of us that have played it several times to the point its weaknesses are too much to handle. But I see the game as one to pass down. When I eventually have kids and start to share my life long hobby of Legos and video games, Skyrim will be a game I'll be looking forward to sharing because of the feelings and sense of wonder you get on first play through.
I am surprised that the Forsworn is a faction written for Skyrim. Due to their cooperation with Hagravens and the dudes who's hearts you could can pickpoint I assumed that they came from earlier lore where Skyrim was weirder and more interesting. Which says something about the overall writing in Skyrim.
From everything that i can remember from my thousands of hours with the franchise Skyrim is more weird and esoteric than oblivion but less so than morrowind
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a Forsworn camp where you see a Briarheart rise up from a table after, allegedly, the whole ritual for that? Would've it have been cool if we could've witnessed the full ritual instead of being attacked on sight by the Forsworn...hmmm? What's that, Todd? We just need a slightly different flavor of bandits to put in the world? Oh...okay...
@@alecstewart2612 And as it turns out, "Bandits but they associate with witches" kinda loses its uniqueness when every regular bandit camp has a mage or two on retainer
1:12:40 Fun fact: there's a pretty common scripting bug that causes Delphine to not light the braziers. It prevents the main quest from progressing further.🙃
I literally just encountered it for the first time last week during my most recent modded playthru, assumed it was a mod thing with all the bug fix patches I have, guess not
I really love the idea that the Dwemer built a *scanner* for Elder Scrolls. It's such bullshit but exactly the kind of nonsense the Dwemer would actually try, and, half the time, succeed. While it's a retcon, declaring Blackreach the Dwemer capitol is something I think they've earned, with the spectacle and relative-for-Skyrim 'functional' style of the citadel and its surrounding farms. The Falmer were probably made into goblins to harvest their souls for White Souls. Why not use mammoths? It's cheaper and the Dwemer are sociopaths? No clear answer. But there is a direct, functional result of getting poisoned by the Dwemer: No longer producing black souls.
Huge respect for the dedication and passion you have for these games. Now when I have pedantic arguments with my friends about Skyrim I'll be able to articulate my feelings a thousand times more clearly. Oh and your cheeky little references and visual gags throughout were a real treat. 20 hours went by in a flash.
Just be sure not to parrot the arguments but consider their validity and decide for yourself what is true. We don't need more sycophants spewing regurgitants.
@@TheGreenKnight500 Same and it also made me realize that bethesda always was a sub-par game company... Morrowind is an awesome game in terms of setting and lore but frankly I've never had the urge to re-play it. The only reason I played Skyrim so much is because of mods obviously, I'd never play vanilla Skyrim again even if they paid me, but Morrowind was mostly a good starting point with plenty of issues that could have been fixed... instead it was a one hit thing never to be expanded upon
"Skyrim is a comfortable blanket" you nailed it. After suffering through Elden Ring recently, jumping back in to Skyrim (thanks to these two videos) is like slipping into an old (somewhat smelly) shoe. When Skyrim came out I was one who complained that the character and level up systems weren't like Oblivion. But now I realize there's space for both complexity and simplicity in the gaming world. I'm fortunate to have experienced both and look forward to seeing what comes next. Thank you for this. It's obviously a lot of work and I hope to see you tackle more games.
Stumbled onto these long form videos… love them lmao. Made me realize all the holes in the story I missed when playing these games and spinning my own conclusions
So this marks my second time watching your TES analysis series all the way through and I had to stop by this time and say the statement about Skyrim being a comfortable blanket that comes to you during low points in your life was so true I refused to admit it the first time around. I won't sadbrain out a life story but a lot of things went tits up for me in 2012 and yes, Skyrim was there to hide in days at a time. Same in 2015. It's nowhere near the best game I've played but half the fun is the ship of Theseus aspect of modding it to look and function just a bit better. Being able to plop down on a Friday night, relax and wander and not have too much asked of me for a few hours is really all I personally want out of it at this point and it does just fine. Thank you and Private Sessions for the longform content, it is an absolute blessing when you sit and solder small electronics 8+ hours a day.
Honestly Skyrim is the real world story of falling out of love. How sometimes when you step back and look at what you once loved you begin to see all the flaws in it and have to accept that you have gotten all the joy out of something that you’ll ever get and it’s time to say goodbye to it. A sad goodbye.
Still playing it. Will probably still be playing it even after VI comes out - much in the same way that Morrowind and Oblivion players are still playing even after so long. So might it possible for you to fall back in love with it after the next game comes out? Suppose only time will tell...
Yes time to move on Bethesda peaked Worldbuilding wise with Morrowind and combat/graphics wise with Oblivion for me. Now I just don't care about any of their games. Skyrim was the wake-up call. Just like CDProjekt Red peaked with the Witcher 3 and Bioware with Dragon Age Origins and Mass effect 2. It's time to move on to better things and not cling to studios past their prime. Most of the talent left or i retired.
I really love your point at 5:41:57 I felt like there was never any role playing motivation to join Castle Volkihar off the bat besides “well I’m currently a vampire so I guess I shouldn’t join the vampire hunters” Hell, the quest doesn’t even let you start with the vampires; you need to go to that old fort near Riften
Thank you! As a vampire we should be contacted by another vampire to tell us about Castle Volkihar. I also hate the vampire lord form. That was a unnecessary and ugly design.
Damn, what a project. Probably can't even imagine all the work gone into this, but definitely felt the emotion by the end of it. Big thanks for twenty hours of thoughtful quality content. The community surrounding these games says something in itself, and hopefully Bethesda picks up on it at some point and really turn it around. There is a certain magic in their games and they should do everything to build on it instead of slowly letting it die
changing the voice to be dragon language instead of nordic wind magic was one of the biggest missteps of the series. They could have had dragons and th'uum without combining the two and breaking previously established ideas.
@@Angels-Haven The form of the Thu'um that we see, the dragon cult and their use of the Thu'um, and the disappearance of the dragons are all an invention of Skyrim. 1. The Thu'um was originally a type of wind magic native to the Nords that let them use their voice/breath to enchant weapons and armor, directly attack, and even siege whole cities. The most powerful of these Nordic practitioners had to walk around gagged and communicate in sign language/written word (which is what pat said in the video as making more sense)[Lore book: Children of the Sky] 2. there is no reference to the Dragon cult before Skyrim and ESO or their use of the Thu'um 3. Dragons were in/mentioned previous Elderscrolls games. Skakmat who was the familliar of, Nulfaga, the Queen of daggerfall. Nafaalilargus who served as a soldier for the empire under Admiral Richton in the Battle of Stros M'kai. Dragons are mentioned numerous times in the 1st Edition of the Pocket guide to the Empire I mention the Second and Third thing because I think they go along with the concept of connecting the Nords and Dragons in ways they weren't before Skyrim, as well as Bethesda's general trend toward homogenizing their fantasy world and Skyrim just being an excuse to make an unlicensed Reign of Fire: The Game
Couldn't help but get emotional at the end alongside you. I know what it's like to finish a big art project and there's a hole in your life where that thing occupied your life.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the quest with the Alik'r warriors and the Redguard woman in Whiterun in the quest section. I don't know if it's a favorite but it definitely gets conversations going.
I actually forgot I had whirlwind sprint when I did this one for the first time, but I can say that the whirlwind sprint puzzle locks actually only respond to a physical actor on the objects; I had my companion wait on one and dragged skeletons over to the other two, which allowed me to pass. It wasn't until my third playthrough that I realized it was supposed to be whirlwind sprint.
I just finished the video. There's something bitter sweet and somber about the end of this whole journey. I remember watching (many) times your Oblivion and Morrowind videos. I cannot express how grateful I am for the marvelous content you've provided. "Wake up, we are here. Why are you shaking? Are you okay? Wakeup!" Almost brought me to tears. I'm sad to see it end - but really, I should be happy that it happened at all.
Plus the comment about TES 6 destroying the community, that was a hard line He didn't elaborate, but in my head, I think the idea is that TES 6 will lay bare just how little Bethesda deserves the die hard fans, the active and huge community that will mod their games to perfection and fill in the gaps of their lore That's pretty sad and scary to me. That we'll realize it's just not worth the effort
@@jsomeone9226 I mean, so far there's very little evidence that Bethesda would even try to placate their hard-core fans, because they're a guaranted sale. There's far more evidence of Bethesda watering down their systems, their lackluster writings, their Keep It Simple attitude can only water a game so much before there's nothing left. I sincerely think that it's possible that ES6 could remove a lot more, like potions (and instead have a Mass Effect 2/3 Medi-Gel system, but they'll be Health/Magika/Stamina coloured variety.) These removals are all there so they can have the largest audience possible... I think he said it best in the Oblivion video that Bethesda has essentially traded their RPG elements for financial security and you can't really blame Todd, who lived through the 90s Bethesda that was always a hair away from bankruptcy - and that's a hard decision to make, if it was indeed a dichotomy... which it really isn't. A return to RPGs mechanics would be seen as a novelty at this point lmao. A product with such a large mass appeal, will be to nobody's taste imo.
I played 80 hours of Skyrim when it came out on the og console release and the only thing I remeber of it is that I have little to no idea of the lore involving the world, I don't remember fondly of any quests neither any character. It always felt like such a dettached experience, one where I could do anything but have no rhyme or reason to it. Just endless straight line cave dungeons killing nord undead
That’s! I played Skyrim over 200hrs and I don’t remember anything. Well, Parthanuux but that’s it. Such a bland experience. It’s a shame because I really wanted to enjoy it.
There's something poignant about that ending. Almost stepping up to the dock on Raven Rock, coming full circle to where the beginning ended, only to walk on, to turn away. I don't know if that was serendipity or if you recorded the footage with that intent.
UA-cam age-restricted and demonetized this video, so I'm going to shill my Patreon here: www.patreon.com/patricianTV
You can get the Elder Scrolls games on GOG with my link as well: af.gog.com/partner/PatricianTV?as=1708616954
Will try to update this comment
Shame on UA-cam.
Why and how in god's name did this video get age restricted? Wow
what the fuck, so much for that, i guess.
Please find a way to remove the restriction or us bongers can't watch without handing over our licenses. I was 40% in when it dropped. Can I watch It elsewhere? I apologise, I am old.
Lame, I'd contest that if you can
"This is technically a new direction for the series.
Downhill is a direction" this is one of my favorite lines from this analysis lol
Somehow read this the exact moment it was said. Prophecy.
2:03:22 (for anyone looking for it)
Don’t think it’s a new direction though lol
My favorite line is "Oh man old man Patrick's got himself worked up again, who asked him about Skyrim this time? I told the nurses to not engage whenever he brings that shit up!"
@@MegaStromboli that's during one of his magic rants, right?
TO BE FAIR, Harkon being the most divorced man on Tamriel and deliberately letting half his own castle fall into ruin purely because his ex-wife liked those parts is pretty realistic.
"The most divorced man on Tamriel" is a line Molag Bal would laugh raucously about, _especially_ when it's about one of his lieutenants.
Hell, I'm laughing about it right now. Uncle Molag's got a good sense of humor
i used to think harkon was pretty unrealistic as far as characters go. then el*n m*sk showed me that he was the most grounded character in the entire series.
@@vm_duc Why are you censoring 'Elon Musk'?
@@baronvonbeandip why aren't you?
"it's symbolic, you wouldn't get it"
This is what Emil sees in his dialogue box whenever an another dev challenges him on a story idea
So arrogance and an unwillingness to even TRY to improve.
I believe history tends to label those people as “total hacks”.
@@MrSpartan993emil is a charlatan. Him and Todd Howard are two peas in a under 5 foot deformed pod
@@MrSpartan993 Yes. Emil is on record saying he doesn't read or watch critical analysis of his work. He completely insulates himself so he doesn't get his feelings hurt. The only reason a creative person would ever do that is if he already thinks he's an unparalleled genius.
@@matrix3509Or people who are too nuts to function as leads.
@@matrix3509 Which makes it hilarious that he actually responded to the criticism Starfield got. And he sounded so butthurt while doing it.
I was so disappointed when I realized every jarl sat the exact same way.
The first time I saw a jarl sitting on their chair in such a relaxed manner I thought it showed so much personality and got excited what the other jarls would have to show.
But yeah, they went to Todd it up and all I got was bored jarl after bored jarl.
Better than that, anybody who sits in the throne assumes the position, including the playable character.
Look at me. I'm the Jarl now.
@@Naxhus2 dude, I had no idea.
I guess at least they were consistent in their lack of inspiration
yeah, animations have never been bethesda's strong suit. and a lot of times like this, theyre just lazy.
Hey bebe jarl
Elisif doesnt. She sits straight up clenching her knees in her hands
The tremendous irony of the Paarthurnax "dilemma" is that he is the only surviving dragon left alive in the wake of the Dragon War. Despite being Alduin's brother and one of his highest lieutenants, despite having the most to gain from the continued enslavement of mortals, he instead chose to teach them to wield the Voice after being contacted by Kyne and helped to fight against Alduin who was his own kin and the embodiment of the dragons' creator and god. These people he taught, the ancient Tongues, suffered unimaginable cruelties under Alduin and the dragon cult. They knew more than anyone, better than any living being alive, how cruel and evil the dragons and their cult were to their mortal slaves. And when the war ended they consciously chose to spare Paarthurnax despite hunting down and slaying most of the other dragons. They had all the cards on the table, all the powers required to slay him as they did the others. But they didn't. They chose NOT to kill him. The very mortals that he had once ruled over, who hated dragons more than anyone alive could even imagine such that they literally weaponized that hatred into a Shout against the dragons, chose to spare Paarthurnax after the war.
And then in comes Delphine, smashing through all of that and declaring that Paarthurnax has to pay for these ancient crimes that she never endured and which he had not only already atoned for but was already forgiven for by the very people she claims to be avenging. In her sanctimonious LARP to reclaim some tiny sliver of relevance for the Blades she's trampling all over history itself and trivializing the suffering, struggles, and forgiveness of uncountable ancient people to try and make this a strictly black-and-white issue in order to stroke her unwarranted self-importance.
Exactly that. The worst part about Delphine is how she reflects that ignorance/disregard for history onto the rest of the Blades. Asides from Esbern (and *potentially* that one guy in Nightingale Inn), she is the last living Blade left in Tamriel; the sheer amount of responsibility placed onto her shoulders to not only restore the order to its former glory (i.e, through the Dragonborn + recruiting new members) but to also represent them in this new age is staggering. And what path does she choose to go about this? Pitting the Dragonborn (who they are meant to serve and protect) against his most powerful ally and even mentor.
But my question is: what if the Dragonborn actually follows through with this? Let's think about it. Delphine tells the Dragonborn- who at this point has slaughtered dozens of Dragons, attaining great power and cementing themselves as a legend amongst the Nords and those found within the region- to now kill the Dragon who has gone against all the stereotypes of war-mongering and power-craving primordial beings he has now faced up to this point. He has discussed the issue of Kalpic cycle, the issue of Alduin and him going off his path, as well as general philosophy with Paarthurnax, revealing the ancient Dragon's wisdom and intellect, as well as his capability to think and discuss these topics with someone as 'low' of a being as the Dragonborn.. He also aided the Dragonborn by revealing the time tear as well as the means to discover the shout necessary to render Dragons immobile, chaining them to the earth and unable to fly.
A Dragon did that. A Dragon told the Dovahkiin the means to defeat Alduin, as well as the means to replicate this unto himself. He took a gamble that the Dragonborn wouldn't kill him and go to defeat Alduin, his own brother, and aspect of his father, Akatosh. Now imagine if the Dragonborn did actually slay the fucker. In Paarthunarx's eyes, he lives with the guilt of succumbing to power-lust and following his brother, slaughtering and enslaving countless humans, but chose to aid Kyne in helping the Nords throw off their chackles and ascend with a new power. But despite this act of genuine repentance and his aim to assist those he once ruled over, he still feels the guilt- even after eons of time has passed. And now there's this mortal who sent the Dovahkiin- one with his own blood- to kill him.
To me, this is an act of treachery and one which could cement Man as a species unable to think critically, as well as a species that cannot percieve another form of retribution, punishment, or redemption other than arbitrary execution. At this point, Paarthurnax and the Greybeards would be right: just let reality sunder once more, for a new and, hopefully, better world be born through the ashes and war of the old.
I wrote this all poorly, but my main point is essentially that Delphine represents an Order of legend, and one with a task to aid and protect the Dragonborn and those that follow him against all threats- not to pit them up against an ancient and powerful ally and teacher; an ally that has repented for his rampant slaughter and enslavement, and one that can aid Man in the years to come.
reperashuns!!!!!!!
Wasn't there a dragon other than him currently alive during Daggerfall? I literally only know of this based on a Daggerfall retrospective video so idk I could be wrong
@@aedican9719 perfectly spoken actually
@@imdurrtydann396 There are actually many many many dragons alive after the dragon war, but they're scattered, unorganised, and not attempting to rule humanity. Tiber Septim had a dragon working for him during his conquest.
Paarthunax is just the only surviving dragon that seemed to stick around in Skyrim. The rest probably fled far away from the province, fearing dragonrend.
The most disappointing thing to me in even my first playthrough is that every guild seemed to be heavily depressed and on their last legs.
@@goblinfairy1032 I disagree, I've recently replayed the game and focused on guilds, especially thieves and the dark brotherhood. In the thieve guilds, you actually see as you progress through the quests the base gets better beds, more people, more gold, you get to fill the chests room with treasures, as you get more traders they fill what were useless area that are know used so your base feel more alive with a lot of light and sound, it's good
I know it's a bad excuse but it's kind of "the point". Mundus is decaying and the world is reaching the end of its Kalpa.
@@degayifyyeah, I think it was designed to feel like popular conceptions of Europe in the twilight years of the Eastern Roman Empire in a N. European colonial province.
Most of the guilds are mostly operating ok with just some issues. I think it's guilds like the dark brotherhood and thieves guild that perform illegal acts that are suffering but for reasons that make sense. Dark brotherhood would have eventually lost to the Thalmor ran Empire if even the Blades couldn't survive them in Cyrodiil. Tbh the reason for the thieves guild's downfall is not as interesting as the dark brotherhood's as it's not as connected to the rest of the world's lore but still the death of their leader and the war making people less afraid of them is still sensible enough.
@@ChipsGoutSmegmaexcept to get that I have to know I need to do 20 radiant quests and 5 from each city. They aren't good and its not worth the effort especially if you have survival mode on. So while it does have that progression it is also the only guild that does and its too tedious to get. Its bad.
Heard they're reforming the Dawnguard. Vampire hunters or something, in the old fort near Riften. Might consider joining up myself.
I know you want to smivan, but dont forget that you took an arrow in the knee!
GET OUT OF MY HEAD
GET OUT OF MY HEAD
GET OUT OF MY HEAD
Saw a mudcrab the other day.
@@GhostOfSnuffles
Horrible creatures
Let me guess...
the fact the Forsworn aren't the werewolf faction when one of their gods is literally hircine
Considering they probably created the entire companions thing in a few weeks and shoe horned the furries in just because bloodmoon had them is hilarious
@@zoroasper9759 the fact werewolves are called furries just goes to show how much some people can ruin things lol
(Edit) I'm reffering to those who would give such terms to werewolves, they've been around since before degenerate furries, no correlation beyond the one you've drawn yourself
@@zoroasper9759 >werewolves
>furries
Sir the werewolf enjoyers are monsterfuckers smh get it right
@@imonke5303 why are you taking the concept of joking about something fictional seriously? Sure werewolves pre-date furries but I think the concept of something beast-like being seen as attractive to some people definitely pre-date even that. Besides, don't look at somebody seriously in the face in the modern day and say werewolves can't be something related tl furries. They are literally dog people. The only thing differentiating them is all the magic shenaniganry that surround them.
@@uryenatienza4093 it ain't that deep
You have to give Bethesda credit. They've managed to cultivate a mass following of fans, who care more about their games than they do, and who are actively expected to fix their mistakes and fill in their gaps.
It's nothing short of impressive.
Also baffling. Then again, the gaming community rewards all kind of corrupt practices by throwing money at the studios and companies.
It's a testament to the early writers and world builders, they did great work.
I would say that is because the genre is so lacking now(and bethsada open world lite rpg at best)...it is either mmo or fps clone
let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee
@@TheMadTurtle Honestly, it doesn't shock me at all given how many games are labelled masterpieces for doing the bare minimum.
there is one massive criticism i have for the Blood on The Ice side quest. if you break into Calixto's house and find his journal that basically confirms he was the murderer and has been killing people for a while now, you can't use it as evidence. hell i found it in his house by sheer happenstance because i simply thought he'd have something expensive worth stealing. and it's something that taunts me to this very day.
I did the same. I was on my thieves guild grindset just burglarizing any house I could get into at night.
Imagine being a petty night-time thief and while crouched in a house you're stealing from you start reading their journal about all the bodies they have cut up in the basement.
The quest is TOO DEEP, that's why
@@ghostoflazloIt just works.
@@DangerSmoog That sounds like a banger of a novel premise; thief steals the insane murderer journal of a seemingly normal guy and has to figure out what the fuck is going on.
@@CrusadiaIXWhat I'd pay to read that novel...
The thing about the Thalmor party that gets to me is that Skyrim could've included the "become leader of every faction" thing that way. Like, instead of Delphine faking you an invitation, she suggests that you try to get one naturally by making a name for yourself in Skyrim. Obviously it would mist likely not work with all guilds (like Thieves and DB), but it'd be some way to make it count.
I got that idea when I was doing a run where I had already been Archmage by the time I did this quest, and would've LOVED to talk to Elenwen about how her "advisor" had caused the death of my predecessor...
You could find ways to work in the shady factions. The Thalmor after all are literally torturing people beneath the party. Thieves Guild could want an inside man for this meeting of wealthy socialites and has you stow away in someone's carriage who *has* an invitation or something then knock them out and enter the party in their stead, maybe you need to forge an invitation that will fool the Thalmor. Maybe for DB there's a contract to assassinate Elenwen at the party and Astrid secured an invitation and a concealable blade via the person who requested the contract. You don't even have to let the player actually kill her there, something could just go wrong and threaten to blow your cover or force everyone to flee and then in a follow-up quest after her presence at the negotiation meeting either Astrid or the Night Mother depending on how far you've progressed the quest line send you out to finally finish the job with intel on her location. There's SO MUCH potential just left on the table.
Even other major/minor factions could work.
Bard's college? You get hired for entertainment and catering, perhaps have to make some speech checks to keep your cover.
Finished the Civil War? Tullius or Ulfric send you in as part of a delegation to gauge the Thalmor's next move.
Volkihar? Either Harkon or Serana (depending on where you are) suggests you track down a guest and dominate them so that they bring you in as their +1.
Dawnguard? A bit iffy but I guess Isran can cash in a favor to sign you up as a personal bodyguard for a guest.
I always find that thinking about playing Skyrim always ends up more enjoyable than actually playing it.
Thats what always happens to me in the end. I start a new game and nothing feels like how i "remembered" it and the especially the awful combat pulls me out quickly.
@@HeliodromusScorpio people age, games do not, I always find myself getting pulled into skyrim, not because of the combat, but because of the music, world design, characters, environments, its why I like skyrim, but I'd personally always go for oblivion, oblivion is my most favourite.
Same I've started 2 new characters and abandoned them since I started the first video
@@jasperfox6821 Me too but the combat ruins the immersion for me.
@@HeliodromusScorpio lol
it's crazy they took away spell crafting then added in the three word shout system and didn't gives us a shout creator. literally wielding an ancient powerful language would have been sick
As soon as he brought up the way word walls work, or Esbern's dictionary, I instantly thought of that. Some way to pick and choose what words we learned. Even if it was just a "pick three" system. Learn the base word, then next time you learn 3 new words to "pick the class" for that word, then the final time you learn 3 more to specialize it. Instead of just Fire Breath and Ice Breath, give us Breath. It's useless for now. But then the second one, we can choose Fire, Ice, and some third option. Bonus damage to health, stamina, and some sort of "mechanical nerf" that makes them weaker overall. Then the third word gives us how the word is used - is it meant to be loud, dealing damage to a small AOE? Or is a whispered, dealing damage to only a single enemy but doesn't alert enemies?
We'd learn them all, could visit High Hrothgar to customize them, and they'd all be available to us once we know them. Increased Dragon Soul requirements for using the same word in multiple shouts for "gameplay balance" because that's what BGS likes. Varying levels of cooldowns depending on the shout. Or maybe it's reworked, and souls are used for both learning AND using shouts, like a secondary mana bar? But that seems excessively complicated.
@@coleG112 That would've been so cool! That's what Tyranny did with spellcasting (spell components being words to describe the base, form and an extra effect of the spell) and I loved it there!
@@octav3k Tyranny had a lot going for it. I feel that it's kind of an anti Skyrim, it tried to allow too many decisions but the writers couldn't manage the load, and eventually they had to give up before they ran out of money. It's a shame because I found the game's world compelling.
I'm willing to bet that was an idea that got canned. Bethesda has a real problem of not trusting the intelligence of their players.
Either that, or a lack of creativity figuring out what combining effects together would functionally do.
@@urabraskthedeplorable725 I would say the problem is more that they never finish anything. They aim for the stars, then set an unrealistic deadline, and then just cut everything that doesn't make it in time.
Bruce Nesmith referring to Auriel's Bow as a daedric artifact really shows how much stock Bethesda puts into internal consistency.
Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed; I thought I misheard and went back to listen again...
Funny how even Bugthesda can't keep rack of all their deities and the various names each one has depending on which culture you're talking about.
This is a pretty big fail tho, I wonder if the quests are sometimes so inconsistent with lore because they were written by their designers instead of someone with lore knowledge and they just messed up due to confusing things.
Fans just care more about those franchises than the actual people creating them and it is dream crushing.
It’s cause they fired the one person who cared. Micheal Kirkbride.
@@Edmitsu No, Kirkbride was a side angle on all of this, and not the most respectful of things that came before Had something of a bug up his butt about Ebonarm being blonde.. Though the people who set down the pre-kirkbride lore also mostly retired/quit.
I'm by no means an Elder Scrolls expert, but if Auriel's bow was fashioned before the Aedra/Daedra split could it be argued that it was a Daedric artificact?
i love that the magic system issues had 4x the length of the **main quest**
It makes sense though; the elements of the game we interface with should be consequences of the most primal forces of the world. Magic is one of those and should have a more substantial explanation than any one narrative borne from that mechanic. That there are parts *longer* than the magic, combat, and stealth parts are problematic.
Theta because they reeeeally fucked up the magic in the game.
The magic system in this game is the perfect representation of the game's quality: style over substance.
Perhaps the reason the Companions test new members against someone in the inner circle now is specifically because the 'pit two newbies against each other' method ended up with a body on their hands.
That would be interesting world building, if it were intentional
@@tylerslittlecafe1288 I'm skeptical it was, but it's there, so I gave it at least the benefit of consideration.
@@DSFARGEG00I was just replying to another comment where I made a similar observation about intentionality - it seems to be a common refrain that if something *does* work out with regards to worldbuilding/lore in this game, there's always a question or skepticism as to whether it was actually intentional lawl.
It's worth pointing out with Blood On Ice that you can break into Calixto's house, find the chest full of embalming equipment and the confessional journal, and there's no path to arrest him directly.
I mean, not directly, but you can report the crime early to Wuunferth and then get to Calixto, and as far as I remember, that chest is locked with a key that Calixto drops once dead, I haven't tried to check his inventory and look if the key is there though, and it would have been clearly more engaging to have the chance to prove he is the murderer and get him arrested instead of killed so we ask him directly instead of finding out in a journal
@@cefirodewinter9086 from the wiki "By pick-pocketing the key, it is possible to discover this journal before discovering that he is the killer, and before he blames the murders on Wuunferth the Unliving; however, doing this will not affect the quest in any way, and the Dragonborn will still have to discover who the killer is."
@@leahd4016 That is a dumb oversight of Bethesda like how the coc cannot notice the differences between the death drops even if the player has. Or how the game will not let you figure out the true traitor to the Dark Brotherhood not even when you drop the guy's mother's head and get him to gasp because of it.
And yet Patrician still acts like it's a really clever quest, despite stuff like this and it breaking at 20 different points...
@@trustytrest By Skyrim's level it is impressive.
6:42:48 - "Achievements are disabled whilst mods are active"
There is a mod for that. I love that so much about the modding scene of Skyrim.
Wait what? I assume it's on console then?
@@GhostLink92 I don't know about console, sorry.
I just know that there's an 'achievement enabler' mod on the Nexus for PC and that it works, because I've used it myself since I started playing Skyrim and I've got a ton of achievements.
Not as if you could just cheat the achievements when you know the triggers in the in-game console, which is hilarious. I found out when i didn't want to grind money, so i just wanted to cheat 10000 gold, and typed in one zero too much, endling up with 100470 gold, and steam still gave me the achievement for having 100000 gold.
@@Donnerbalken28 only like 10-15 commands disable achievements (i.e. tcl, coc, setstage, etc.) and for whatever reason they completely forgot that you can just player.additem pretty much anything lmao
"There is a mod for that."
Every time anyone says this sentence they should be rightfully executed by quartering.
I took me until the end of this video to realize, that the reason I always liked Skyrim (despite being aware of its flaws), was because of the quiet moments between fights with the music and scenery.
Those moments were trancendant and gorgeous. It's sad that the rest of this game didn't live up to that standard.
I thought of this post, months ago when I watched this video. I'm posting it now.
the vibe it creates when you look atr the gorgeous night sky while wandering around with the amazing music is just fantastic.
It´s borderline magical.
Landscape design in Skyrim was legit breathtaking and Soule's music makes it even better, shame that everything else stinks
Unfortunately that's used as an excuse as to why the game is "good."
Though when you ask someone "what do you remember about the main quest" you'll get something like "uhh...I remember Alduin and Paarthurnax" and further questions make them realize they remember almost nothing, and at best they remember bits and pieces of the side quests.
Shame that doesn't make a game good.
@@okagron That could make a good game if you built your experience around that. Creating buildup and payoff to those moments. Add some surrounding context to give them additional value. And go all-in on art design.
16:19 the fucking Evangelion “congratulations” montage with all of the Jarls will never not be the greatest thing ever.
Fun thing to note: You can find a ton of regeneration and health potions in High Hrothgar, implying either that the voice is hell on the throat or that one if not more of them is in rapidly declining health
Or they are so healthy they accrue a lot of health potions from supplies, due to their lack of use
This is why I watch these videos because all I think is yoink 🤣
They need them due to their daily troll beatings when going about their day.
Nah fam, it's just for the old man joints lmao
Kind of a chicken/egg situation - could be either the potions are staving off declining health, or they're responsible for the long lives they've lived... or one then the other.
Man, that "final" line really hit home. "This isn't bargaining, this is acceptance" might just be the best summation of my current feelings on the Elder Scrolls that I've ever heard.
With the way Bethesda has gone, I don't expect TES6 to be anything more than Skyrim 2.
@@planescaped you mean Skyrim-lite, as Skyrim was Oblivion-lite, and just as that was Morrowind-lite.
Just watch, they'll celebrate removing alchemy to instead replace it with a flavored estus flask system. Gotta go back to your house and sleep to refill it. Maybe if you die you can run back to the dungeon, running past all the still dead enemies to pick up your dropped loot. ._.
@@FanDidlyTastic Nah, they aren't going to do any of that. What they WILL do, however, is lean even harder on their godawful base-building shit they shoved into Fallout 4. If you've seen the trailers for Starfield, you'll know that they are going all-in on the base building garbage.
Its a straight developmental line from Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC, to Fallout 4, to Fallout 76, to Starfield in terms of the base building, because for some ungodly reason, they've gotten it into their heads that people actually like that stupid shit.
I'm fully expecting TESVI to just be a completely barren field and they'll make you build the entire gameworld with their terrible base building system before you are allowed to go questing.
"Good-bye Skyrim... " That also hits a certain way.
@@matrix3509 what is modding?
8:54:15 can we just talk about how Bruce Nesmith refers to Auri-El, literally Akatosh, principal god in the Imperial and most elven pantheons, the absolute definition of Aedra, as a Daedric lord
Wow.
Damn, it’s like calling God Satan in earnest.
just a usual mix-up at the watch
Also, how he talks about being excited to bring content in the game about Auri-El, cause he was a being they hadn't given much attention in the games, even tho with Akatosh and Auri-el being the same god, Martin literally became an avatar of Auri-el in Oblivion and used his powers to save Tamriel from Dagon lol
@@jockeellyBethesda sucks so much
I suddenly got an idea on how they could have addressed the dragons not talking to you except for shouting.
The Dragonborn, or at least a newly awakened one, may not be FLUENT in the Dragon tongue. But the very fact they are able to learn and use shouts means they understand certain words and the concept they signify.
So, why not have subtitles with draconic runes appear when a dragon speaks, only to replace some of them with their human equivalent. Words like "challenge", "death", "danger", "fear", "rebirth". And as the Dragonborn absorbs more souls, learns more shouts and progressed through the main quest, more and more words would be translated until you can roughly understand the gist of their banter. Heck, you could even have Greybeards sidequests that reward you with more knowledge of Draconic. And who knows, perhaps if your grasp of dragon language is complete enough you unlock more dialogue options with prominent dragons like Durneviihr or Odahviing, persuading them to help you without having to fight them. In essence winning the "violent debate in the Dragon tongue" that shouts are supposed to be. Hell, maybe straight up add an option that requires the right dialogue choices and perfect completion of draconic knowledge to talk Alduin out of his plans of conquest à la Fallout.
[Speech 45] "You're an abomination of dragonkind, you have to die"
Pity that shouts just ended up as awkward spoken spells that I'd rather not waste time getting any words for 60% of them and tediously fighting dragons to learn the full shout. Heck Unrelenting Force, the most marketed one, loses its novelty really quick because I'd rather end fights quicker by killing off enemies instead of rag-dolling them away from me. It's frankly incredible how Bethesda made being Dragonborn seem _so_ lame when they have Tiber Septum and Reman Cyrodill.
@@alecstewart2612 Yeah, not to mention if you want to ragdoll enemies and don't care about being a vampire you can just become a Vampire Lord and spam Vampiric Grasp to throw enemies around.
11 years later on 11/11, how poetic!
Eleventh day of eleventh month of eleventh year the greatest of Skyrim review shall be born
I think it was just happenstance that he started working on it with enough time to get it done for the 11th anniversary
Dreamcast 2 , Skyrim Ultimate Edition as a launch title kinda poetic
Started 11 hours ago for me
And 11 hours, 11 minutes & 11 seconds long
Patrician talked about Elder Scrolls for 40:04:11. While MauLer talked about Star Wars for 22:37:58 up until the day of the making of this comment.
So, it's fair to say that Patrician has truly earned the title of Longman.
Plus Patrician's content comes across as more engaging to me.
@@Raven_Frame id say the opposite for me, but I think it comes down to personal preference, love em both tho
@@RealBakuStar yeh. mauler tends to come off as a buturt nerd sometimes - screaming into the mike
@@peaceprinceshaxi5978 I disagree, MauLer doesnt really come off as that ever imo, if anything hes very calm or steady. Theres a difference in using a tone than coming off as “butthurt”. More of a matter of fact, or maybe a smart ass voice, but it fits his brand, and honestly his videos are extremely well put together and further a good amount of evidence. Tbh if you swapped Patricians voice with his, you might even say Patrician comes off as “Butthurt”. Just a dif style of doin stuff
@@RealBakuStar fair enough
Dawnguard feels like a second attempt at the Companions questline. With most of the quests being radiant, a power to transform into a 'powerful' beastform and artefacts to augment the transformation. However this time they included the option to turn down the 'gift' by continuing along the dawnguard side.
And on that side you have a pack of quirky people you get to recruit one at a time.
Bruh the Evangelion 'Congratulations' bit isn't just comedy gold, it's comedy platinum.
Burying a Wes Johnson feature unique to your channel 17ish hours into your review completely unexpectedly is an absolute GOATed move
I don't think it's Wes Johnson, there's a dude on fiver that does a pretty good impression of him tho, it's like his thing on fiver. One of the mods uses him for voice acting Sheogorath.
@@The_Yukki You see his face in the Dark Brotherhood section in part 1.
Well there was me thinking i might leave it at 8 hrs
Sheogorath demanding a two year long youtube video is so wonderfully on brand.
@@ThisIsNotMyRealSelf 5:52:01
Patrician, I award you the title of Big Longman for your efforts
We have really good roster for Longmans this days.
Not even Longdick Johnson can compete with Patrician, and he had a fucking long dick.
@@Hagashager Hence the name.
You mean Big the Longman or Big Long-man?
I didn't think I would see a twitter mutual from 4 years ago on an account I don't have anymore in the YT comments but hey there you go.
The orc talking over the cutscene dialogue and getting smacked at 7:25:20 was comedy gold
The Black-Briar Meadery actually seems to be just a few years old, maybe a decade at the absolute most.
When asked about his involvement in the meadery Asgeir Snow-Shod says "Yes, actually. I'm partnered with Maven Black-Briar. I put up a chunk of the gold she needed to get the place off the ground. We've been staggeringly successful so far. In fact, I'm almost surprised how quickly she's generated business for us. My name may not be on the label, but some of my blood, sweat and tears are in every drop. Uh, figuratively of course."
It just doesn't really give me the impression the business has been around for 70+ years.
TES 6 canon is that Black-Briar meadery was actually gifted to the Falmer by Auriel. That's why Maven is Imperial-aligned; she is an unwilling servant of the elvish super power.
@@baronvonbeandip words can’t describe how much contempt I have for ESO lore.
Lydia is only as popular as she is because almost everyone doesn't bother to change companions because they are functionally identical
I end up changing them pretty often because they die lmao Lydia never lasts very long
I still can't believe he fell for the jzargo trap. Yeah, he levels to 81, due to an error in his coding... but due to another error hell (almost) never cast anything but sparks.
He's literally the worst follower in the game for dealing damage, and his only value is in tanking.
...and yet he's also coded to take cover and retreat from melee combat, so he's completely useless at that as well.
@@jbear3478 Huh? My Followers are always essential, do you play with a mod that removes the essential tag?
@@shaynehughes6645 Then use Followers that are essential, like Mjoll the Lioness
@@shaynehughes6645 No I said nothing about Lydia. I said MY Followers are always essential. I absolutely hate Lydia, she is never my Follower.
9:32 In regards to the dragons getting themselves killed by random NPC, I had one encounter in Dawnstar where the miners killed the dragon without my help, including a finishing move done by a miner with a pickaxe.
Not like I was taking them serious anymore at that point anyway.
Yeah limitation of the engine and AI is really not great. Eso dragons on the other hand...oohhh boy now THOSE are the ones from the lore! Both in size and strenght!
I find it exceedingly hilarious how literally everyone, including the homeless beggar in the street, will square up to a Dragon when it shows up, beating it back with everything they've got, all the while shouting various taunts and phrases of panic and help.
@@zuser "HELP! HELP!" *casually suplexes attacker* "HELP ME PLEASE!"
bruce nesmith calling auriel a daedric lord and the bow an artifact explains a lot
Shows how much high level employees actually care about their golden goose.
Auriel's Bow was an artifact in Arena.
@@StolasXB but it was not a daedric artifact which is what nesmith implied and what i was referring to
I always felt like the original draft of the Thalmor embassy infiltration was supposed to revolve around freeing Esbern. That's why the embassy's escape route is near a prison cell and we can free someone else instead. Instead Bethesda replaced "getting the guy who knows all the info about the dragons from the Thalmor" with "getting info about the dragons from the Thalmor" so they can show the player Riften and the thieves guild later without having to cut a quest they put a lot of work into. That's why the quest is so inconsequential and out of place. It really sucks because it makes Delphine seem like a complete idiot who's just irrationally paranoid about the Thalmor when the original draft probably had her be more competent.
I love Neloth’s voice actor. I was doing the water dungeon and I kept thinking about how familiar he sounded, only to realize it was Mung Dal from Chowder
This information will never leave my brain now
Oh no
What have you done?
I knew he sounded familiar. Mother fucker I'll never unhear it
Oh my god.
...fuck.
My man, your plot re-writes for the Skyrim Main Quest are fantastic, straight up.
I know right? Thing is it was based off the lore of the series connected into the sum of thier parts. It is was lore exists for but Bethesda doesn't think that way. Antagonists just have to be unambiguously evil just cause.
Can we play _that_ game? 'Cause this one sucks.
@@AdblockWillWin7853It's too good for this sinful earth.
Would love to see mods that change the quests to what he suggested
The merunes dragon fanfiction stuff is just irritating and time wasting in the video
This has to be the, hands down, most critical two part review of Skyrim penned by an Ulfric apologist I’ve ever seen. Hands down. And it’s pretty damn good, my hats off to you sir. And that’s from the viewpoint of an Imperial dog.
Edit: Man, I just realized how drastically different an experience I had by starting Skyrim with the special edition.. I had every DLC already downloaded so I had a few of these issues fixed right off the bat giving me a more positive experience then those who started on the normal version. Wild..
Talos and Shor bless Chadcloaks, and has impcels seething 🥱
@@MoswenMediaTalos made permanently killing Umaril the Unfeathered possible, praise Talos
I really dislike the end of the main quest because it implies that, with enough ingenuity, the nordic afterlife can be reached physically and it has a big door
Odahviing's spiel about "needing wings" doesn't make sense when the temple very clearly is IN the mountains (and if you open the map it's in the the bordermountains between Morrowind and Skyrim)
Sure, there's a dragon priest protecting it and you have to use his staff as a key- but he's dead after the events of Skyrim
And it's not limited by race, either, because the Dragonborn can be whatever race
Come the equivalent of 20th century earth and there's a ski resort which has literal nordic heaven as one of its attractions
Tsun, moments after sending the Altmer dragonborn back to Nirn:
"...Fuckin tourists"
Pat randomly smacking the npcs or dragging them around in VR is fucking hilarious
2:17:59 Tullius knows enough about "You Nords and your damned Honor" to realized that ambushing Ulfric under a flag of truce brokered by the *Greybeards* would instantly make the Legion a pariah even in the Holds that are currently on their side
I cannot describe how hog wild I went when hearthfire came out and I saw that all the soups got unique textures and that I could bake snowberry crostatas
I found spellbreaker to be the most useful Daedric item because I didn’t enjoy being hit by frost bolts and losing all my stamina instantly and it was handy for cracking magic user skulls in general.
Yea, patrician's opinion on spell breaker is something I disagree with.
It also completely nulls any dragon shout, especially GAAN LA HAAS.
@@JoshSweetvale yeah, getting disarmed is really annoying.
@@theylivewesleep.5139 That's Life Drain from the big dragons, which usually cuts through resistances.
Love how you can tell how some parts were written or recorded in clearly different mental states where you go from reading an argument to "its 1am"
Your alternative story/take on the nature of the Dragonborn to make them more interesting is immensely more intriguing and engrossing than how it is actually written.
Great work and brilliant video.
Yea I love Skyrim but tbqh a lot of the writing is just terrible and is only good when it's relying on lore of the previous games
I think a lot of the problems NPCs have is that they just talk at you, and it feels like they already have the thought of putting their problems on you. Only few quests ever feel natural like it would actually happen if two strangers met. People in Skyrim must be extremely desperate to be so trusting of the player for the responsibility they give you
Nah, it’s just bad writing.
I watched your Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim videos and loved them. I decided to try out Morrowind for the first time and I love it. Roughly 8 hours in and I have a feeling I haven't felt in 10 years when playing a game. Thank you, man.
Was the graphics difference made it difficult for you to continue playing it?
@@dragonborn164 Running it with OpenMW made it run smoothly and upscaled it looks ok. The gameplay makes up for the old graphics imo.
Welcome brother
This honors the Sixth House and the tribe unmourned.
Same here. Decided to give morrowind a better try because of this channel and man, makes me think of the wasted potential of "current" (10+ years old with sequel coming in maybe 4 lol) TES games..
Something I've never seen anyone bring up about Skyrim is how no one's face ever seems to emote. Oblivion had facial emoting, and while it was kind of silly, I prefer that over literally nothing.
Oooh, I didn't think of that. Is that why they made such a ridiculous amount of haughty characters that makes the world so hostile? To match the lack of emotes.
Especially when drinking, or talking as they gulp a drink
They do though but barely visible. There's a mod that enhances and improves them. That mod plus Oblivion camera mod is great :)
They do actually, is just very hard to notice it, even the player character can become angry at certain points
@@bigcraudio3066 Yeah I think they can, but it's hard to notice and it seems quite rare.
Wow. This made me feel how my childhood really is over in a special way. Incredible video. I appreciate the 11:11:11 runtime in an oddly emotional way too, that's a nice detail to add.
9/11
@@jabrielmilner 🙄
i had notice the aesthetically pleasing video length, but I didn't put together the reference until I read this.
really clever, honestly
5:49:30 There are other people who are bothered by there being absolutely no followup on Jyggalag? And here I thought I was the only one who felt that an entirely new Daedric Prince is something that should have ramifications
The Evangelion music with "congratulations" got me totally)))))))
just now thinking about how weird it is that you fight alduin at the throat of the world and he's like "ha, you fool, you can't kill me in the mortal realm" and then immediately goes to sovngarde, the place where he can be killed
either he's got a death wish, he wasn't banking on you being able to follow him, or I'm missing something
also when he meets you in sovngarde he should really flee, the Dragonborn is already proven to be stronger than Alduin at this point so Alduin has to be stupid to fight you again here (especially considering you have backup from other people who have also already defeated him before). Skyrim really makes Alduin out to be a complete idiot
Sovngarde is where Alduin gets a lot of his power and safely recovers from danger. He's been getting strong feasting on the souls of the Nord dead. He also wasn't banking on you being able to follow him. After all the temple you can access Sovngarde from is in a place only someone with wings can reach, and the PC might have Dovah blood, but flying isn't something you can manage without a little help.
I also feel like he'd somewhat need to stand his ground there, because losing that power source will likely diminish him significantly and cause significant trouble for him within the draognic power structure. Further, Alduin's great sin has been noted several times through out the game to be pride. Which makes sense, he's the first born of Akatosh, the greatest of the dragons. The mortals could not kill him previously, merely unanchored him in time. An annoyance... but something he can overcome. You have your little tricks, but in his place of greatest power, without the anchors of Nirn, he cannot possible be defeated! Is what he's thinking. Because no matter how well you do. What blood you have... you're still just a pathetic creature to be ruled over and controlled. Unruly livestock that must be taught your place.
Then there's the whole killing him thing. Paarthunax notes, it's likely even then that you did not permanently defeat Alduin. You don't absorb his soul in the end. The World Eater will likely return eventually to play out the role that has been set for him. True immortals just see things differently in the end.
@@kalashnikovdevil I'd agree with you on most points but he really doesn't get stronger at all.
In fact he doesn't change much at all because the boss fight may as well be a cutscene for how much freedom is involved as Todd probably thought he hyped Alduin a bit too much and needed the boss fight to be some cinematic sequence to make you feel super special as the epic reddit Dovahchad.
Does he have higher lvl scales that make it impossible for him to be damaged by low grade weapons? Nope, you can kill him with bare fists.
Well does he use a new thuum so you can't use your cheat shout like making himself ethereal? Nope, this lizard who's essentially a leader of his faction is dumb as bricks because Todd Howard thinks most players are also dumb as bricks and he's right lol there's no doubt that most of skyrim fans would crumble in the first few main quests if the game respected you enough to throw intelligent enemies at you.
@@iluvmahname I wouldn't blame Alduin for a failure in boss design by Bethesda.
I think its really second. To get there you need help from one of his underlings, which he didnt expect youd be able to get; and its the place where he can vore some nord souls to recover AND power up before the next fight to not be as much of a wet rag next time. He's basically going "Screw you guys, I'm going home".
Skyrim has a magic that other games fail to capture. When I first played it (and it was my first TES game), I would hear about different places and imagine them and the world felt so vast and interesting. No other game has ever quite captured me like that. But then I played it. I found everything there was to find, I did every quest, and then I realized how hollow it was. There was no giant college of mages I could go to, just a couple of small buildings. There was no epic civil war, just some small skirmishes. The Dark Brotherhood didn’t involve making and following special plots, it was just a quest line that needed a bit of stealth.
So I, like everyone else that wanted more and played on PC, turned to mods to fix everything. And it mostly worked. Skyrim became fun again. Magic wasn’t broken and useless. Combat felt visceral and engaging. Half of the fun then became modding my game, and at points I spent more time sorting out mods than actually playing. But something about that initial play through succeeded on myself and others and inspired the largest modding community of any game yet. It’s a shame the base game itself is so flawed.
Fallout 4 has almost all of the same problems and more but lacks the wonder and excitement of the initial playthrough (at least it did for me). I made it halfway through one Skyrim playthrough without mods. I modded Fallout 4 right out the gate because I couldn’t stand the voiced protagonist. And I love modded Fallout 4. It’s so great. But I couldn’t play the base game to save my life.
I feel the setting of Fallout never accomplish what Skyrim accomplished but I also think the setting of Fallout atleast how the Bethesda imagined it could never be world people want to live in. Skyrim looks like a beautiful vacation spot I want to hike in real life. Bethesda's Fallout is the dumps it reminds me of a literal trash dump and just like when I go to a literal trash dump myself to throw away my unwanted trash why I have to pay entrance into the dump when I'm bringing the trash to the dumpster myself instead of waiting for the professionals take it. Like I think the difference between obsidian Fallout and bethesda's Fallout is obsidian envisioned as a world where people are building upon the ruins of the apocalypse and Bethesda envisioned the world that is trapped in the ruins of humanity.
Man I think you were spot on for why it is such a loved game... it's many of our first RPG game that we played when we were younger. Now 12 years later we take off the rose tinted glasses and see the truth. I played when it first came out and loved it. Played until I got the book at the end of the Main questline, Oghmus infinium or whatever, and found a bug where I could get 100 in all skills because I could infinitely use the book. Played for like an hour with maxed skills and instantly got bored. Then 11 years later I thought it would be fun to play Skyrim again because it was such a good game back in the day. I got bored after a couple hours and left the game with a bitter feeling. You described that feeling perfectly well. I look back on my memories of playing and experiencing Skyrim fondly, but I don't actually remember the game or the story much at all. The game itself was unremarkable aside from looking fantastic. I also really agree that the whole dragonborn concept was just a tool to make Skyrim and look cool and flashy. Your concept of an alternate Skyrim where the dragonborn are actually the villains, killing and eating dragons to wantonly gain power and they are worshiped simply because the truth of the matter was lost over time would be a fantastic story to experience.
"Our"
"The truth"
It was as good as it could be with the incompetence of Bethesda.
Morrowind was nearly perfect, yes. And Skyrim fixes everything broken about Morrowind while oversimplifying almost _everything_ else.
So there's this hypothetical Better Than Morrowind that you benchmark Skyrim against.
Not me.
I benchmark Skyrim against *Fallout 4.*
My 12 year old stupidity caused the thalmor embassy mission to be one of my best experiences in gaming to this day
I misunderstood the instructions “give malborn your gear because you CANNOT bring anything to party” as “you CANNOT bring anything to the party” so, my sword and board character, gave malborn a set of fine clothes and got in the wagon to the party. Fast forward to when i open the chest with my gear in it and I realize the mistake i had made. So after dying dozens of times trying to run past everyone i had to continue thru the thalmor embassy planning out every encounter in front of me with the tools i had at my disposal. This one mistake forced me to actually interact with multiple mechanics i had not touched up until that point (magic, sneaking, voice of the emperor power) and had me scavenging gear off the corpses of the thalmor until i finally got to the dungeon where i could get an actual sword and shield back and now the power dynamic of the quest had shifted back into my favor after all the hard work, right before having to fight the troll. I came out of it thinking this was the intended experience. This quest took me 3 real life days to complete but was some of the most enjoyable and memorable gaming ever.
I really do wish bethesda was brave enough to lean into their mechanics and allow the players to experiment cause TES universe is the perfect playground for that.
I HAD THE SAME EXPERIENCE but I accidentally backed out of the "Give Item" menu and Malborn just ran off. That was one of the most frustrating, interesting, and fun gaming sessions I have ever had. When I finally got my hands on a good weapon, an Elven Mace, (after dying many times) it felt like sweet victory! It felt like a real infiltration mission the whole time - I was *actually* in danger and had to use all of my skills, spells, mechanics, and scavenged items to survive.
See what happens when Bethesda actually uses their mechanics to restrict the player and compel them to make the game interesting for themself? See what happens when Bethesda stops focusing on ""player freedom"" so much and actually focuses on game design?
i had a similar experience during my first play through 😂
I love when stuff like this happens, bugs or misinterpretation creating better experiences, because it really goes to show how most of these issues are entirely from bad or lazy design and not technical or skill limitations.
Yeah, the same thing happened to 11 year old me, I also remember this quest fondly because of the same reason. The feeling of having to improvise with the game mechanics was so different.
Almost like getting the player out of his comfort makes the game interesting for the player.
4:33:37
The idea of Aela getting the Beacon of Meridia mixed up with the totem of Hircine and assuming its some moon relic and prays to it too brings be great joy, joy that is cruelly crushed under the weight of the fact that Nirn has two red and blue moons so there's almost no reason for the wolfgirl to associate something white and round with the moon in this setting
It also doesn't have a sun (as we know a sun to be in our world at least, I guess you could argue that it's still technically "A" sun, just not a sun like OUR sun) but you don't see that fact being held up as relevant anywhere in any single Elder Scrolls game past morrowind.
Sorry but, despite your argument actually making sense, Skyrim doesn't make sense, so you're point is still invalid due to their shoddy development of the game.
The sun and moons in Skyrim may as well just be earth's and our moons just globally affected by double vision. I swear the only people who cared about being lore accurate are the book writers, and even then that's only due to necessity. I doubt they'd know the lore if it wasn't a hard requirement to be able to write about history in this game.
so, white+round=moon is probably the level of thinking you're going to get when it comes to skyrim quest lore, despite neither of their moons being white ever at any point in their universe.
It's the same reason the Sun looks like a sun instead of a rip in space and time with the golden light of the fabric of reality pouring through upon Nirn.
@@moosecannibal8224 dude what are you talking about
Masser is blue and secunda is red, there'd be no reason for white to be associated with the moon on nirn
and the sun looks the same because it's a massive circular glowing hole into the infinite energy dimension, as compared to a massive glowing round ball of (practically) infinite energy
And if anything Meridia would be more closely associated with the sun than the moon considering she is a Magna-Ge
@@markointhesky he's referring to the meta reason for the devs making that mistake. The people who wrote the dialogue aren't interested in catering to the built world but instead will fall to meta irl references
@@KazuyaKujo-Kun But they didn't?
Meridia's beacon isn't the moon or associated with it, nor is it ever referred to as such
Aela mistaking it as an additional relic of Hircine and howling at it was a hypothetical in the style of a mini comic some japanese artist might draw that I came up with
It was a joke my guy
@@moosecannibal8224 bro it was a joke he came up with it 💀
I was driving from Saratosa Florida to Brainerd Minnesota . . . And I got through the Fallout 76 and only two thirds of this retrospective. Top teir driving material
Brainerd
hey, i know there's little to no chance of you seeing this, but just wanted to add. bethesda dont seem to have devs combing through to fix bugs. it apopears they have people combing through nexus to steal bug fixes.
i know this because i actually created the mod that fixed the mannequins in the exact manner that is implemented in the anniversary edition... and just a few months prior.
its called "mannequins behave" and is a mod i made in about 30 minutes after being frustrated with mannequins and finding some tick boxes unchecked that when checked stop the mannequins from moving... 10 years and no one at bethesda thought to check the mannequins race file...
That is honestly embarrassing for them. Bethesda literally sucks at almost every aspect of their jobs yet people gobble their content up like candy.
thank you for that mod btw, mannequins are a bit of a phobia of mine, and well reloading a save and having a mannequin standing right behind me kinda stopped me from playing for a few days
Pat may have included an entire section about Serana, but it was pretty clear from this entire two-parter that Delte Fyr was his one true waifu.
@@shaynehughes6645 Delte Fyr: waifu
Azura: MOMMY
@@JoeFF85 that’s Meridia
Delta Fyr married Ysolda...seemingly earlyish. I don't think Pat prefers just one true waifu. That's a whole genre.
After watching all three long form videos for TES franchise, my conclusion is that this is the best content I've ever watched. The closing speech was one for the ages. I must point to the line "goodbye Skyrim". Tough to hear even though I just watched a 20 hour video I didn't want to end. Unless I missed something, it seems it's going to be a very long time before we are graced with another video similar to this. This is sad. These 3 series of videos will always hold a place in my heart and will be a reminder of how great these games are, even when they aren't. Thank you for everything you've done.
I guess the 40 hour dagger fall video will be next
@@LezbionestHere TWO YEAR VIDEO UA-cam
@@LezbionestHere
There is a 4 hour analysis on it, I recommend it.
Big sad
I am one of those people that just can't say goodbye to Skyrim for good. I always go back to it and play it for a few weeks before setting it down for a year or two but Morrowind is a permanent installation on my PC
That Mt.Rushmore history lesson was great and a great companion to the video’s argument at that point!
Didn't expect to finish this whole full-fledged (yet still quick retrospective) review of Skyrim in total of seven months, that was surely a wild ride.
Incredible, during this 20 hour experience I didn't ever feel like you were babbling to fill time. Well done friend.
That’s because it’s well organized into chapters, which could be videos on their own
During your Sanguine section you mention that they don’t use wedding rings in Skyrim and instead use amulets of Mara, this is a misinterpretation, they use amulets of Mara to show availability and actually do have wedding rings once you get married, you yourself should’ve gotten one when you married Ysolda.
Edit: I believe it’s called Band of Matrimony and I believe it’s a golden ring that gives a restoration cost reduction
When he's taking about hearthstone and dumping stuff in one of his creation homes he even shows the band of matrimony in his inventory lol.
It's given to you at the tample after your marriage by the priest though. You don't need to buy an engagment ring
Imagine being so desperate for love in your life that you resort to wearing what is equivalent to an Aphrodite shirt to see if anyone else is lonely 💀💀
@@shaynehughes6645 Resto bonus is for "you're gonna need magic after I destroy your pussy" pick up line
He also calls ancient Tongues "Dragonborn" multiple times
A brief moment of silence for the 800,000 souls that we lost between Act 1 and now.
Beekeeper here…. Timestamp relevance 5:24:00
It’s surprisingly easy to manipulate genetics of honey bees, instrumental insemination is tedious yes but possible. Also the use of isolated breeding yards is a common practice among breeders. Cheers everyone!
Is torching beekeepers and hives with fireballs common or is that a dark elf clone daughter thing?
@@baronvonbeandipdefinitely an unhinged dark elf thing! They just hate us nords for our sweet meads, when all they have sujamma and flinn.
I survived this season of Patricians quick retrospective
New merch store item? One of those t shirts that say " I survived This season of Patricians quick retrospective and all I got was this tacky shirt"
"Later in the future, when they need that blanket again, they reach for it. But it doesn't work as well twice."
Without going into too much detail, I recently had a rather terrifying near-death experience. After it happened, I went home and talked to a couple friends on discord to calm my nerves. I went to bed later that day and figured that was that. I had a quick reminder of my own mortality, I moved on, and tomorrow would be a new day.
Except, the 'new day' kinda felt off. I chocked it up to just some odd feeling that would subside after I woke up enough, and turned a couple videos on before I got out of bed. One of which being the first part to this review, which got me playing Skyrim again, completely unaware of why I found the game so alluring.
Until that quote at the top of this comment kinda made me stop in my tracks.
I realized that I had been using Skyrim to escape, just as I did as a child back in 2011. I'd been using the game as a blanket to protect me from the cold reality that I wasn't as okay as I thought I was. That my brush with death, however brief it was, had affected me.
As I write this I'm taking steps to properly address the lasting effects that my experience left on me. With luck, support, and a little bit of time to process, I'll heal from this experience and maybe even come out just a bit stronger.
But I have you to thank for helping me realize what was going on. so, Thanks, Patrician.
Hopefully, (on the off chance you actually read this random comment on a 12 day old video,) I don't come off as weird.
Nah, that's not weird at all. Especially in that scenario it is more than just relatable to seek somewhere or something to that'll take your mind of things, make it feel at ease. You are most certainly not alone in that, rest assured, and hope you find a way to get through this.
Did you have a deadly run in with a pack of famished sausage dogs too?
it’s crazy the lasting effects traumatic experiences can have on us, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time and we only realize later (if ever)
I played the Dragon Age series after Skyrim & killing dragons in those games actually felt like an achievement. In Skyrim killing a dragon is either a quick boring chore or a frustrating drag mostly spent in menus.
Drqgon Hunting in Inquisition is always such a big thing. Sure, they're also repetetive, but they're hard and all dragons have unique designs. Even Origins's dragon fight (the actual dragon, not the Archdemon) was a giant bossbattle.
Plus being the quasi-divine "herald" or "inquisitor" feels like it really delivers on the promise Skyrim gave with the Dragonborn. In Skyrim you're blessed with power by Akatosh, the creature standing between the world and apocalypse. Arguably you are the legitimate emperor and heir of the Septim dynasty.
But nobody cares.
In Inquisition just about everyone you meet has a preconceived idea of you because you are the Herald or Inquisitor. The tutorial ends with a huge crowd of people bowing in front of you. By the end of it you are a significant figure in the politics and religion of the southern continent for good or ill.
And the kicker is you aren't actually a chosen one. Everyone just assumes you are and it spirals from there.
20 hours long, and done in an instant. What an amazing piece on a game that has always meant so much to me. Thank you for the insights, perspective, and effort. It was such an enjoyment and I’ll be rewatching a second time real soon.
It is so impressive to make a 20 hour video this engaging. Having not watched long-form reviews before I feared rambling to the highest degree, but what I got was genuine and researched thoroughness. I also have to commend your consistent objectivity, and slices of humour that came at just the right frequency. Great video.
I have watched many long-form videos before and this is certainly rambling to the highest degree. There are SO many videos like this that slog through a series of repetitive complaints and run through the same tired analyses from similar creators. The only difference is the order the information is presented in. Objectivity? LOL, You can't make a set of videos this long and be objective; nearly every video like this is a bloated opinion piece. The sooner you realize that the better. If you still like it great but don't misunderstand the nature of these video essays.
@@notsyzagts7967 tl;dr. Could you give me a summary of your point? I am afraid these many lines are too complex for my black and white view of the world.
@@notsyzagts7967 Just because something is long does not mean it lacks objectivity. If the person doing them explains and shows why they have the opinions they have it shouldn't be a problem
@@notsyzagts7967 watch his Morrowind video, lots of objectivity and criticism for a game Patrician loves
@@notsyzagts7967 Gatekeeping and contradiction in the same comment. Nice man!
Mechanic Timestamps
7:00 Dragons
1:06:09 Puzzles
1:08:03 Loot
1:15:35 Followers
2:59:20 Radiant Story
6:37:35 Survival
9:12:28 PlayerHomes
Thank you pat for this wild journey
Thank you for the service you just rendered. Thank you for helping to navigate this wild journey.
51:36
The leadership fetish line you mentioned really shines with recent interviews about Todd Howard's leadership style or lack there of.
”People don’t like Skyrim like I like Morrowind, almost entirely vanilla” that’s where you’d be wrong Pat. Because I’m a depraved individual with a proud affinity for this game even in its basic form. I’ve logged almost 6000 hours into Skyrim now over the years and while I agree with 90% of what you say in this critique I still love Skyrim for its world and its little charms. I enjoyed Morrowind and I tolerated Oblivion but Skyrim has that something that has kept me coming back for over a decade since I first touched it.
Are you the exception or the rule?
@@baronvonbeandipPretty a lot of us have played it vanilla so we're definitely not the exception
@@ksar98I'm pretty sure 6000 hrs in Skyrim is the exception. Everyone who has played it has played it raw at least once; how would you make an intelligent modding decision elsewise?
I have played vanilla a fair bit but I definitely have not played 6000 hrs unmodded... and I'm a TES fan. I have played Morrowind for at least 3000 hrs and that constitutes a phenomenal time investment for me (for video games).
These two videos are a full, highest rating that I can issue 10/10 and they easily earn the badass seal of approval. I cannot wait for the next videos to come, now if you'll excuse me I need to watch them again as evil.
Nice. This comment provides the exact memetic demonstration of approval that I was looking for.
"Now if you'll excuse me I have duties to do"
...proceeds to sleep
The reason it is Calcelmo is because the overarching theme of Mara's questline is love across time: Young love, old love, love beyond the grave.
It's good to see a character that is initially framed as "that cranky old guy who only exists to forbid you entrance to a place" act more, you know, like a person who has a life outside being a plot roadblock. Must be the reason Enderal writers made a similar quest in Duneville, though that one also involves a beach picnic and a ghost pig
Right? But Pat doesn't care because he's too busy tearing Skyrim down because he's burnt out on it.
@@KBXbandawful take, he's tearing down skyrim because it's not hard to tear down a temple made out bricked shit all settled on top of already broken toothpicks
@@dylanandrew7490 in my opinion it's better than Morrowind and Oblivion. But then again I am a console player and not as much a PC player. To its credit Morrowind on PC is fun but I stand by my comment.
This literally reminds me of 1984 but in real life
The conclusion was pretty spot on.
Upon release there's no denying how amazing Skyrim was at the time. The world was incredible to get lost in, and it was enough to shut your brain off and string you along to see what it has to offer.
My problem with Skyrim and FO4 is after the roller coaster ride is over, with all its content and expansions, they're very hard games to go back to.
There's very little replay wise, unless to see the world again, the gameplay gets stail the more you play, and problems with the writing and over simplicity it all is becomes more obvious.
Skyrim is a game that will live on for a long time, for better or worse, I don't think it will be well visited by those of us that have played it several times to the point its weaknesses are too much to handle.
But I see the game as one to pass down. When I eventually have kids and start to share my life long hobby of Legos and video games, Skyrim will be a game I'll be looking forward to sharing because of the feelings and sense of wonder you get on first play through.
That ending! I've rewatched both videos twice now. Enjoyed them both. You've inspired me to try making videos of my own. So thank you.
I am surprised that the Forsworn is a faction written for Skyrim. Due to their cooperation with Hagravens and the dudes who's hearts you could can pickpoint I assumed that they came from earlier lore where Skyrim was weirder and more interesting. Which says something about the overall writing in Skyrim.
From everything that i can remember from my thousands of hours with the franchise Skyrim is more weird and esoteric than oblivion but less so than morrowind
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a Forsworn camp where you see a Briarheart rise up from a table after, allegedly, the whole ritual for that? Would've it have been cool if we could've witnessed the full ritual instead of being attacked on sight by the Forsworn...hmmm? What's that, Todd? We just need a slightly different flavor of bandits to put in the world? Oh...okay...
@@alecstewart2612 And as it turns out, "Bandits but they associate with witches" kinda loses its uniqueness when every regular bandit camp has a mage or two on retainer
1:12:40 Fun fact: there's a pretty common scripting bug that causes Delphine to not light the braziers. It prevents the main quest from progressing further.🙃
I literally just encountered it for the first time last week during my most recent modded playthru, assumed it was a mod thing with all the bug fix patches I have, guess not
It took me like 5 reloads to get her to do it. Pretty annoying!
Fucking hated this
cultured pfp
That must be why they didn't do more scripting like that.
I really love the idea that the Dwemer built a *scanner* for Elder Scrolls. It's such bullshit but exactly the kind of nonsense the Dwemer would actually try, and, half the time, succeed.
While it's a retcon, declaring Blackreach the Dwemer capitol is something I think they've earned, with the spectacle and relative-for-Skyrim 'functional' style of the citadel and its surrounding farms.
The Falmer were probably made into goblins to harvest their souls for White Souls.
Why not use mammoths? It's cheaper and the Dwemer are sociopaths? No clear answer. But there is a direct, functional result of getting poisoned by the Dwemer: No longer producing black souls.
But aren't black souls more powerful than all but the strongest white souls?
@@kendrajade6688 Until recently, Black Soul Gems didn't exist! They were invented during Oblivion
@@JoshSweetvale Huh, neat!
Huge respect for the dedication and passion you have for these games. Now when I have pedantic arguments with my friends about Skyrim I'll be able to articulate my feelings a thousand times more clearly. Oh and your cheeky little references and visual gags throughout were a real treat. 20 hours went by in a flash.
Just be sure not to parrot the arguments but consider their validity and decide for yourself what is true. We don't need more sycophants spewing regurgitants.
Thank you for the Skyrim essay, because of it I finally downloaded Morrowind.
Well done. I wish you tons of fun; confusion that is slowly replaced by "aha"-moments, and many unique playthroughs 😁
Same here lol
Skyrim made me wonder why people liked the setting of The Elder Scrolls so much. Morrowind made me understand.
@@TheGreenKnight500 I mean...Skyrim is good and has good stuff in it so I understand why.
@@TheGreenKnight500 Same and it also made me realize that bethesda always was a sub-par game company... Morrowind is an awesome game in terms of setting and lore but frankly I've never had the urge to re-play it.
The only reason I played Skyrim so much is because of mods obviously, I'd never play vanilla Skyrim again even if they paid me, but Morrowind was mostly a good starting point with plenty of issues that could have been fixed... instead it was a one hit thing never to be expanded upon
"Skyrim is a comfortable blanket" you nailed it. After suffering through Elden Ring recently, jumping back in to Skyrim (thanks to these two videos) is like slipping into an old (somewhat smelly) shoe.
When Skyrim came out I was one who complained that the character and level up systems weren't like Oblivion. But now I realize there's space for both complexity and simplicity in the gaming world. I'm fortunate to have experienced both and look forward to seeing what comes next.
Thank you for this. It's obviously a lot of work and I hope to see you tackle more games.
Sniff the shoe
@@henrycrabs3497 Smell the glove
@@ulture *Takes a giant wiff*
How do you go from a comfortable blanket to a smelly shoe?
Suffering though Elden Ring. Lol, way to sound edgy.
Stumbled onto these long form videos… love them lmao. Made me realize all the holes in the story I missed when playing these games and spinning my own conclusions
So this marks my second time watching your TES analysis series all the way through and I had to stop by this time and say the statement about Skyrim being a comfortable blanket that comes to you during low points in your life was so true I refused to admit it the first time around. I won't sadbrain out a life story but a lot of things went tits up for me in 2012 and yes, Skyrim was there to hide in days at a time. Same in 2015. It's nowhere near the best game I've played but half the fun is the ship of Theseus aspect of modding it to look and function just a bit better. Being able to plop down on a Friday night, relax and wander and not have too much asked of me for a few hours is really all I personally want out of it at this point and it does just fine.
Thank you and Private Sessions for the longform content, it is an absolute blessing when you sit and solder small electronics 8+ hours a day.
Honestly Skyrim is the real world story of falling out of love. How sometimes when you step back and look at what you once loved you begin to see all the flaws in it and have to accept that you have gotten all the joy out of something that you’ll ever get and it’s time to say goodbye to it.
A sad goodbye.
Maybe for you. I'll probably play it again in a few months/ years like I have been doing off and on for years now. And that's okay.
won’t stop me from playing 1000s of more hours
Still playing it. Will probably still be playing it even after VI comes out - much in the same way that Morrowind and Oblivion players are still playing even after so long.
So might it possible for you to fall back in love with it after the next game comes out? Suppose only time will tell...
The game sucks but it’s addicting to play lol, at least in my experience
Yes time to move on Bethesda peaked Worldbuilding wise with Morrowind and combat/graphics wise with Oblivion for me. Now I just don't care about any of their games. Skyrim was the wake-up call. Just like CDProjekt Red peaked with the Witcher 3 and Bioware with Dragon Age Origins and Mass effect 2. It's time to move on to better things and not cling to studios past their prime. Most of the talent left or i retired.
I really love your point at 5:41:57
I felt like there was never any role playing motivation to join Castle Volkihar off the bat besides “well I’m currently a vampire so I guess I shouldn’t join the vampire hunters”
Hell, the quest doesn’t even let you start with the vampires; you need to go to that old fort near Riften
hehe
off the bat
Same issue of the Companions and the Circle except they force you to play the good guys first.
Thank you! As a vampire we should be contacted by another vampire to tell us about Castle Volkihar. I also hate the vampire lord form. That was a unnecessary and ugly design.
Damn, what a project.
Probably can't even imagine all the work gone into this, but definitely felt the emotion by the end of it.
Big thanks for twenty hours of thoughtful quality content.
The community surrounding these games says something in itself, and hopefully Bethesda picks up on it at some point and really turn it around.
There is a certain magic in their games and they should do everything to build on it instead of slowly letting it die
10:44:54 the Dovahkin trying to find the word dragon word for “dragon” is like trying to remember what Obama’s last name is.
changing the voice to be dragon language instead of nordic wind magic was one of the biggest missteps of the series. They could have had dragons and th'uum without combining the two and breaking previously established ideas.
what
@@nakanoyuko get lore'd on 🐸
Do you mean making "Nordic wind magic" a weaker but easier to use variation of the original Dragon-Speech based Thu-um
his source is that he made it up lol @@nakanoyuko
@@Angels-Haven The form of the Thu'um that we see, the dragon cult and their use of the Thu'um, and the disappearance of the dragons are all an invention of Skyrim.
1. The Thu'um was originally a type of wind magic native to the Nords that let them use their voice/breath to enchant weapons and armor, directly attack, and even siege whole cities. The most powerful of these Nordic practitioners had to walk around gagged and communicate in sign language/written word (which is what pat said in the video as making more sense)[Lore book: Children of the Sky]
2. there is no reference to the Dragon cult before Skyrim and ESO or their use of the Thu'um
3. Dragons were in/mentioned previous Elderscrolls games. Skakmat who was the familliar of, Nulfaga, the Queen of daggerfall. Nafaalilargus who served as a soldier for the empire under Admiral Richton in the Battle of Stros M'kai. Dragons are mentioned numerous times in the 1st Edition of the Pocket guide to the Empire
I mention the Second and Third thing because I think they go along with the concept of connecting the Nords and Dragons in ways they weren't before Skyrim, as well as Bethesda's general trend toward homogenizing their fantasy world and Skyrim just being an excuse to make an unlicensed Reign of Fire: The Game
Couldn't help but get emotional at the end alongside you. I know what it's like to finish a big art project and there's a hole in your life where that thing occupied your life.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the quest with the Alik'r warriors and the Redguard woman in Whiterun in the quest section. I don't know if it's a favorite but it definitely gets conversations going.
Can't believe Delphine looted the horn and ignored the boss chest.
How is she gonna live without the dopamine hit?
I actually forgot I had whirlwind sprint when I did this one for the first time, but I can say that the whirlwind sprint puzzle locks actually only respond to a physical actor on the objects; I had my companion wait on one and dragged skeletons over to the other two, which allowed me to pass. It wasn't until my third playthrough that I realized it was supposed to be whirlwind sprint.
bro that’s genius, my dumbass would never think of that
So you’re telling me she clapped 3 draugr, put their bodies on the sensors and then walked through?
@@truxima She could've used a rope and a couple of chickens. And a bunch of spiders to replace the webs.
I just finished the video. There's something bitter sweet and somber about the end of this whole journey.
I remember watching (many) times your Oblivion and Morrowind videos.
I cannot express how grateful I am for the marvelous content you've provided.
"Wake up, we are here. Why are you shaking? Are you okay? Wakeup!"
Almost brought me to tears.
I'm sad to see it end - but really, I should be happy that it happened at all.
Plus the comment about TES 6 destroying the community, that was a hard line
He didn't elaborate, but in my head, I think the idea is that TES 6 will lay bare just how little Bethesda deserves the die hard fans, the active and huge community that will mod their games to perfection and fill in the gaps of their lore
That's pretty sad and scary to me. That we'll realize it's just not worth the effort
@@jsomeone9226 I mean, so far there's very little evidence that Bethesda would even try to placate their hard-core fans, because they're a guaranted sale. There's far more evidence of Bethesda watering down their systems, their lackluster writings, their Keep It Simple attitude can only water a game so much before there's nothing left. I sincerely think that it's possible that ES6 could remove a lot more, like potions (and instead have a Mass Effect 2/3 Medi-Gel system, but they'll be Health/Magika/Stamina coloured variety.)
These removals are all there so they can have the largest audience possible...
I think he said it best in the Oblivion video that Bethesda has essentially traded their RPG elements for financial security and you can't really blame Todd, who lived through the 90s Bethesda that was always a hair away from bankruptcy - and that's a hard decision to make, if it was indeed a dichotomy... which it really isn't. A return to RPGs mechanics would be seen as a novelty at this point lmao.
A product with such a large mass appeal, will be to nobody's taste imo.
I played 80 hours of Skyrim when it came out on the og console release and the only thing I remeber of it is that I have little to no idea of the lore involving the world, I don't remember fondly of any quests neither any character. It always felt like such a dettached experience, one where I could do anything but have no rhyme or reason to it. Just endless straight line cave dungeons killing nord undead
That’s! I played Skyrim over 200hrs and I don’t remember anything. Well, Parthanuux but that’s it. Such a bland experience. It’s a shame because I really wanted to enjoy it.
There's something poignant about that ending. Almost stepping up to the dock on Raven Rock, coming full circle to where the beginning ended, only to walk on, to turn away. I don't know if that was serendipity or if you recorded the footage with that intent.