A french youtuber that I really like and has a 300+ episode series on skyrim said something that really stuck with me. He said that he doesn't "let the game entertain him", but rather he entertains himself using the game as a support and I think that's what a lot of people don't get about skyrim
For the longest time I never really played games the way they were meant to be played, I just used them as sandboxes or canvases to make adventures or stories in my head. Now it's kinda coming full circle as I try to do that now with some of these retrospectives. Bethesda games really enable that sort of playstyle unlike any other game out there between the mods and how they are fundamentally designed and built. It's really one of the reasons I enjoy them as much as I do: they hearken back to what I used to do with games as a kid.
no, skyrim is objectively a badly designed game. thats why there thousands of mods to try to fix it and even then you still go "not as fun" and thats because of how it was designed. skyrim does what bethesda does best and thats environments and environmental storytelling. combat took a backseat and the rpg mechanics were being tossed out.
@@kay_keik7842 I love when a random person on the internet uses the term "objectively" in their opinionated statement like it's a fact. By your own argument, I can claim that Oblivion is objectively a badly designed game because the combat is very floaty and off-putting, 3rd person is practically unusable, the main story is extremely short, the world leveling ruins the aspect of you becoming more powerful, the character models are really bad, the dungeons are mediocre and tedious... That is my opinion but I won't say it's an objectively bad designed game because thats my opinion. People may enjoy that and actually I do like Oblivion quite a bit but for different reasons.
The algorithm has thrown me into a hole of multi-hour video analyses of the elder scrolls games and I couldn’t be happier. Especially with this as I’ve been wanting to start a modded play through for a while and your perspective is really interesting and well-explained. Gg my man
Honestly my issues with Skyrim is that we are the chosen one too many times. I want to be an assassin not the leader, I want to be a companion and not the leader, I want to be a powerful mage not the arch mage. I wanna be a master thief not the leader. Stop killing off all the guild leaders and just have different endings, it’s all the same skeleton and that pretty much all. I love the game and the quests, but it’s nothing like other games. Even with oblivion we kill all the brotherhood members and it ends in the area we are known by higher ups and that’s it.
Agree with you re: “Stop making the player character the leader of every faction”, disagree with “stop making them the chosen one.” Main series Elder Scrolls are set during a crisis where an individual comes forward to resolve it, and that’s the player character. You don’t have to engage with the main story, but the main story is always of that magnitude. If they want to make smaller games where you’re just some guy then sure, but main series should be grand in scope. I’d prefer Morrowind’s approach taken more extreme. If you’re going to make me a high rank in a faction, it should exclude me from a few of the others and being a high rank should actually require input from the player. You should be running the fighter’s guild, not hands off and sitting on a title.
@@deifiedtitan the chosen one for every single quest line, like the dragon born, and the listener, and a special visitor seen in a dream. Our character is too chosen one.
The real reason why the Thieves Guild suck is simple: they plan all their activities from their secret hideout in a well where anybody standing in the town above can hear them. The Dragonborn doesn't speak, so quickly revives them.
just by adding alternate start mods, I replayed skyrim atleast once every faction, i just find it stupid that after saving the world 3 times, vilkas still thinks his sword is more valuable than me.
You can be decked out in all gear earned through Daedric quests (Ebony Mail, Masque of Clavicus Vile, Ring of Hircine, Dawnbreaker, Spellbreaker, and even Auriel's Bow [not Daedric but Aedric, so close enough]), and he still says that about his crappy Skyforge Steel sword that does little more damage than a butter knife. It really does break the immersion.
@@HickoryDickory86 I mean that line was never supposed to indicate your actual worth. It's him saying that he doesn't value you as a person. And in that case the kinda shitty blade works better imo. Whatever you have and did, to this guy you're worth less than 70 septims
Writing mature stories requires a certain level of commitment Bethesda really struggles to maintain and I'm not sure whether it's just inexperienced writers, lack of care, or just the process they make their games and quests in general. They excel at making really short and sweet adventures and silly diversions, especially in Oblivion.
@@PrivateSessions Their main writer is allegedly pretty close friends with Todd Howard, which could explain the huge difference in quality between some side quests and the main quest. Don't remember my source for it though, so take that with a mountain of salt.
@@monkeman5895 its a pretty bad storyline, tbh. The first half is a collection of (sometimes quite silly) standalone ideas followed by a bad traitor/revenge story where you are treated like an complete idiot that fell for a pretty obvious ruse.
You made a great choice limiting fast travel. It really helps you to discover all the unique trinkets and locations the develpers created that most players using fast travel at every opportunity will never see. Legacy of the Dragonborn is the single greatest mod ever created for Skyrim because of this, Legacy doubles down on the exploration elements and guides you towards every location and collectible in the game so that you can see all the small details and short stories bethesda crafted to fill their amazing world, and as a reward for experiencing what bethesda created, you get to experience and entirely new story created for the mod as you collect more and more things. I could honestly play Skyrim with nothing but Legacy and no fast traveling and still have a lot of fun.
I really want to do a run with legacy. Ordinarily I'm not big on collecting but elder Scrolls games lends themselves to that sort of thing. Collecting weapons and armors especially.
Megacy of the dragonborn is a very cumbersome mod to run in SSE it requires like 20+ patches wich is annoying to deal with love the mod but i find it’s more trouble then it’s worth.
How does this not have more views? This was the most unique and interesting retrospective I’ve seen of a game ever and has changed how I look at Skyrim from now on. Thank you for this
Long-form videos usually don't get high view counts unless the channel carries a lot of clout. Even then, short and snappier videos are the ones that usually get the big counts and interactions. Part of it is the YT algorithm and part is the average person's shorter attention span. Quality alone is not enough to beat the odds.
I like the way you tell the story with your views basically like a story book in a way. I’m so use to watching retrospectives on the vanilla game, it’s nice to see a slight modded one. Good video.
Cool! I don't use fast travel, either. It changes the game and forces you to engage the world. Camping and food become necessities. Frostfall makes them mandatory.
Hey, Private! I am currently in the works of a retrospective myself and have really fallen in love with your way of storytelling. Giving the character of the retrospect a personality makes for a incredibly fun watch/ listen. I just wanted to ask you for your blessing in adopting that style in my next vid.
Absolutely. I hope you can do it better than I have been able to thus far, it's a tricky thing to balance. Good luck and keep me posted when you got something to show :)
@@PrivateSessions Thank you so much! I will :D Edit: i misread your comment lol. I will do my best but I've never done any commentsry before so me being better than you is a stretch. I will however do my best to make a great video!
It's interesting that I found this video because I'm actually playing Skyrim again for the first time in about six years. Back in the day I got burnt out on Skyrim feeling like the charm was only skin deep, but after playing through Morrowind it got me thinking how much I was missing by fast traveling everywhere. I installed a lot of mods for immersion, npc ai, perks and magic related ones and vowed not to fast travel. And honestly I'm loving it. By just warping from place to place and mindlessly following quest markers I was depriving myself of most of the game and I didn't even realize it. The game is certainly flawed, but the world it's set in is gorgeous and a lot of work obviously went into it. I'm glad I gave it another chance.
Deeply meditative and philosophical about game design and purpose. I think you're a very good critic. The ideas you're getting at when you talk about expectations and frame-of-reference shift are, I think, super important. Aristotle talks of an object's 'end' or its purpose, its 'telos' and I think it paramount to good media criticism that we look at a thing for what it is trying to be, not always impose on it what we go into it expecting it to be. Ignoring this fact leads to a lot of really bad media criticism where people essentially talk past a game, story or movie, disparaging it for not doing something it isn't trying to do anyways. For whoever reads on, (I wrote a lot/too much) there're some dualisms you've established in both your Oblivion long-cut and this video that I'd like to play around with. You've talked about a game world's agnosticism to the player vs. making the player the center of everything. You've also talked about the degree to which a game is structured, tells the player what to think, gives them a clear experience VS giving a player a blank canvas, a stage. You put it in the video something like stage-building vs. directing/directors. Oblivion is inconsistently sometimes agnostic to the player--they are one person in a large world, other times the player is the center. Sometimes the game systems' illusions breaking down alone is enough to make it obvious the player is the center. I take these to be arguments you make about Oblivion, and I agree. I would also agree that a really fine 'stage' can sometimes be enough for the player to make of the canvas what they will. Some use mods in Skyrim to skip the introduction entirely and start in a random dungeon. What I would say--and this isn't necessarily disagreeing with anything you've said in either video--is that there are probably better and worse stages/canvases, and there's probably a broad spectrum among players in terms of their willingness to 'fill in the gaps' or 'tell their own story'. For the most creative, they might need very little at all to begin telling their own stories, to get lost and immersed in the world. For others, they might need to be railroaded to the nth degree before a story makes their synapses light up. For others like me, they're very much in the middle. I'm willing to do a great deal of roleplaying, suspension of disbelief, even filling in the gaps, but I think a game, story or experience needs to give me good jumping off points, good contextualization, sympathetic and/or interesting characters and compelling conflicts. Or, failing that, at least adequate helpings of these things, or an attempt at them. Skyrim has some things really going for it compared to Oblivion in higher production values, polish and probably an overall greater wealth in mods that, on paper, can offer a greater promise of immersion and chance for telling your own story. Some critics might point out that, when you strip Oblivion's mechanics down, they're pretty shallow--and all Skyrim did was finish the streamlining and make everything more presentable. Mods can make up for, in either game, some gameplay deficits and certainly a lot of graphical deficits. Some modders do try their hand at writing their own stories, but voice acting is expensive and writing is hard, so past voiceless or text-based quests, adding additional quest content in any substantial sense is hard to do. So in some sense, then, the core of Oblivion and Skyrim's writing, quests and characters are pretty fixed. For me, this makes it possible to enjoy Oblivion but at this point impossible to enjoy Skyrim. Why? I want to return to that 'agnostic to the player' vs. 'player is center of universe' paradigm. To add my own claim in, I just generally think making the player the center of the universe just kinda sucks, it ruins immersion, makes the world smaller, everything revolving around you. It's harder to roleplay as your own character with their own individual choices to make in a big world if the script makes you out as a demigod. One way of alleviating this really is Bethesda's efforts to create big AI systems to make the world alive. To make it seem like the world around the player still moves and acts when the player isn't. Like you, I do applaud this and hope they take it further--it'd be cool to see what they could make with an updated engine and a lot of money, time. Maybe that will end up producing a fantasy simulator so complete that writing, quests and story will hardly matter anymore. --I take this to be what you'd like to see. Barring that, though, the most surefire way to invest a player into a game's world is through a story. Story is a broad term. The constituent parts matter more--conflicts and characters. At its best, Oblivion is goofy and open ended in its quest design with entertaining if silly characters. The main villain isn't interesting, is rushed, as you say. Martin gets a bit of character development though--and that's cool to see. Lucien Lachance is an interesting personality, the Dark Brotherhood in general makes for a good story. The Thieves Guild makes for a good story on the whole. Sheogorath too. A lot of Oblivion's stories are mediocre or even bad, ridiculous but there are some entertaining characters and memorable stories, at its best. For me, that is the core upon which everything else rests. If it really seems like there are no other interesting people with their own goals or desires, or genuine conflicts--physical or philosophical--then the world is just dead past what I make up for myself. Skyrim and Oblivion are similar in that, at least in my view, both their mages and fighters guilds are the weaker points, and their thieves guilds and dark brotherhoods are the stronger ones. But man, Oblivion's highs are so much higher, the lows lower. Skyrim is just smoothed out, there's just nothing substantial there at all. To me, the characters, conflicts color the world, give it life, and give me a starting point for imagining my own character in relation to them. Skingrad IS the vampire count with all the secrets of his castle, it IS Glarthir's paranoia. Chorrol IS the detective quest about the stolen painting--when I think of Chorrol, I think of that experience. When I think of Whiterun in Skyrim, I feel nothing, it's a set of aesthetics and architecture to me, nothing more. A good, layered, multifaceted story with good characters and a decent conflict gives me an excuse to return to the game/world, to come back with another character and revisit it, perhaps rethink it or approach it differently. In Skyrim, this just doesn't feel like an option, ever--so I'm just going through the motions, over and over. Which is why the natural next step is to ignore all of that and focus on the story you create for yourself. And honestly, as far as you just follow random odd jobs this could work okay--but then it feels like the player lacks for larger goals. As soon as you begin to touch those larger goals, the game starts to take you out of the experience and tell you how you're the chosen one, gotta decide the civil war, stop the end of the world, lead every guild, be the dragonborn savior--AND DO IT NOW, QUICK, BEFORE ITS TOO LATE. --Oblivion does this too, as you point out, but the fact that Oblivion does really have characters/stories of its own worth telling every once in a while makes it possible for me, at least for some little glimpses and moments, to get lost in the world. For Skyrim, if I want to entirely just roleplay as my own little character, then I feel like I'm constantly fighting against the game world trying to make me something else. And mods can't *really* fix that, because this is pretty much the core of Skyrim's content. Unless some modder has overhauled it such that they've replaced 90% of the quest content with something else entirely, given the player a different endgame for things to do, goals to pursue. --but if you can get past that, don't let me stop you, just watching the video takes me back to a moment so long ago while modding Skyrim that I could see the glimpses you talk about, and just trying your best to see those glimpses is worth it, however flawed the game is. (It's been over 5 years since I really tried to touch Oblivion, don't know if there are any big modpacks I should try. Have dabbled in Morrowind, but similarly think there'd need to be a really good modpack to streamline the visuals, mechanics a bit for me to return. Morrowind is probably the most pure in philosophy when it comes to slowing down, enjoying exploration and feeling like a small part of a big world.) I think you give good advice for Bethesda, as there's really just the two routes--or both, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. They've gotta make the story, world tonally appropriate to that roleplaying. Maybe a bit more comic, a bit less serious, and less grating to a roleplay experience where the player is just one person in a big world. Or they've just gotta tell much better stories with more interesting characters and writing. Or both. Honestly I don't have much hope for either, but if they can pull off just 1 of those 2 really well for Elder Scrolls VI, they'll have a great game on their hands. For my part, the more interesting, fleshed-out characters and conflicts there are in a game's world and/or story, the more I can get lost in it and feel like part of a larger world. But it could also be that by working hard enough at AI systems to create a more living, breathing fantasy world, that the stories will just write themselves in the player's head, and that'd be really cool too.
There are some decent mods for Morrowind which essentially “modernise” it. I believe the main mod I used is called “Morrowind Rebirth” which overhauls a lot of the games mechanics, adds a bunch of new features. All I did after was download mods to fix the combat and graphics and I was good to go. I actually think there was a UA-cam guide for it that was fairly straightforward. I still find it harder to get into than Oblivion and Skyrim because of the lack of quest markers and infrequent fast travel but I’ve found it a much more rewarding and immersive gaming experience. The world building is excellent for a game originally made in 2002.
I loved and really enjoyed this video. You've done some great work. However I disagree entirely with the thinking that Bethesda needs to be less serious in the next Elder Scrolls. The point about the Shivering Isles dlc being more comedic and working is great, however I think the fact that it was just a smaller dlc part of a larger game is what made it work so well. A full length game with that kind of narrative would get very old very quickly. With Shivering Isles, you could experience the funny bits and then leave and go back to the rest of the game's more serious tone. If you were stuck in a world that was just slapstick comedy and absurdity all the time, for hours, it would get very tedious. It worked with Oblivion because it was short and sweet. I don't want to see this series turned into a joke. The game taking itself seriously isn't a bad thing, the quality of the writing just needs to raise up to meet it at that level.
Agreed, one hundred percent. I want them to keep the serious tone, but I also want them to bring on talented enough writers who can rise to the challenge. Additionally, I desperately want them to stop watering down and retconning so much of their incredibly unique lore and instead actually delve deeper into it, make far more use of it in their main quest, the guild quests, the games' world design (including the races, flora and fauna, regional architecture, locals dress and customs, etc.). For example: If TES VI _is_ set in Hammerfell and they have Temples to Akatosh and the Eight/Nine Divines instead of to Tall Papa and the Yokudan pantheon, I will lose my freakin' mind with rage!
I wouldn't mind if it was just a tad more wacky, but not too much. However after seeing recent games trying so hard to be funny with the likes of Borderlands 3, Watch Dogs Legions, Forespoken and Saints Row I get why everyone is extremely cautious about adjusting the tone. I can't believe I'm saying this but there's not enough serious games anymore are there. Complete 180° from the gritty 2010s huh
Well Sir, you have convinced me to play Skyrim once again after all these years... after I finish breaking it with all the mods on your list! LOL! Just a few more conflicts to resolve, and I should be able to start playing! I very much enjoy your takes ( and style) on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. I look forward to future works from you. o7
I have a bittersweet feeling about this game, i love it but i cant really play it any more simply because the magic of discovering every hidden detail isnt available to me simply because of how much I've played. I love the game but it just feels... empty to me right now. Maybe a mod will come along and re ignite that flame(hopefully the beyond skyrim project) and i want it to, but unfortunately im not holding my breath.
Makes me think if bethesda might take a page out of what devs are doing now with the whole "games as a service" business and keep adding content to tes6 after it launches to keep us coming back to explore.
@@PrivateSessions I kind of sincerely hope not, if only because I prefer my games to be complete packages. I've never once observed a "games as a service" model that worked.
I hear ya. Been playing vanilla skyrim for 10 years nearly, now I just play on legendary and visit my favourite dungeons. Nowadays for me the game is like a relaxation thing, nostalgic and replaying old dungeons as if they were self contained levels like mario or something.
This video is great and really hit the nail on the head for me. I just started a new playthrough with some new lands mods to help give some new content to explore, but just testing my load order I found myself playing normally through the vanilla game. My friend and I have had this talk about what makes Bethesda games different from our other favorite RPGs hundreds of times and we always mention the world and world building. The tiny details, whether that's notes or the position of a skeleton or a Talos shrine in the mountains that spawn an aggressive Thalmor group, in small, unnecessary places that some or most players will never see are what bring me into the world and make the game worth playing. I love that quote from Rebelzize that you shared, I can't wait to get sucked into his world when the time comes.
I only just recently discovered the reason I've always loved this game is for the world, not the story or gameplay, then I find this video. It's been brutally beaten over the last few years, but it's honestly a pretty great game, even if the whole RPG label is a bit of an unfulfilled promise.
I know the feeling. Before I discovered mods, I had got into the habit off carrying around things to roleplay a cold climate. Fur Armor (overcoat), two bear pelts (fur cloak and bedroll), and a load of firewood. I ate twice a day, waited thru every night, and never fast-travellled. Survival Mode, Frostfall and Campfire were exactly what I'd been waiting for!
if you love skyrim wanna watch some good quality rp then gopher probably has the most enjoyable lets plays of skyrim ive seen. its funny as hell at times, the story telling is top notch and his game is beautiful. HIGHLY reccomend
The effort put in these videos alone deserves way more views. I just love long deep analysis of video games and all the different perspectives people have.
I think the game is fantastic with survival mode on and some self imposed rules. My favorite character by leaps and bounds was that kind of playthrough. I also played a Khajiit girl. She was raised in Elsweyr with her father and traveling caravan who were practically family. Growing up she learned archery and had developed excellent communication skills being part of a caravan and all. She always has a sunny disposition and is always ready to help those in need without any expectation of a reward. On her 17th birthday her father surprised her with a beautifully crafted elven bow she had been eyeing up since she was a little girl in one of the towns the caravan frequented. He had secretly been saving money for it for years. That same night the caravan was razed by marauders and she was left the only survivor. Grief stricken, she buried her family and decided she couldn't stay in Elsweyr any longer. She was hurt and felt like running away. For two years she journeyed far north through Cyrodiil to the Jerall Mountains. Skyrim, as she read in books, was a vast sub arctic tundra. A far cry from the warm savannas and jungles of her home. While crossing the border she is unfortunately taken prisoner in an Imperial ambush being mistaken for rebel in a conflict she had no knowledge about. In my playthrough Alduin does destroy Helgen but my character isn't the Dragonborn. She not a chosen one type of character. She's just a 19 year old Khajiit girl who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. After the attack she continues her quest. Which is buy a house and make Skyrim her new home. She adventures all over the province making as much money as she can using the skills she learned back home. Here are the self imposed rules. She cannot carry any more than she realistically hold. Regardless of her in game carrying capacity. She carries her beloved bow, a quiver with a bundle of arrows, a dagger and a satchel of provisions. Any more than that I have to think about how she's carrying it. She has to dress warm. She has to eat and sleep every day. She cannot fast travel. She cannot take down an entire bandit camp or monster filled dungeon by herself. She's not a one person army, she needs help for dungeon diving. She does not loot corpses unless necessary as she finds it disrespectful. This mostly applies to draugr specifically. Bandits not so much. If she can talk her way out she'll try. She doesn't enjoy fighting but at the same time she is prideful of her skills. No save scumming. If she fails she lives with the consequences. She helps everyone in need because she wildly empathicle and cares. She doesn't like alcohol but always checks out the local tavern cus she's a social butterfly. Skyrim the game isn't much interested in letting you roleplay so I had to make up my own rules. Bethesda seems more interested in making a power fantasy. You're an untouchable demigod who's bad at nothing. But I think that's boring. I like being a regular inhabitant of this fantasy world. That playthrough was fun as hell. Very rememberable.
I'm not big on RP, but I do feel like adding a bit more of a challenge to Skyrim makes it much better to play. I recently started playing Skyrim with my own self-imposed rules and restrictions, and it was honestly surprisingly fun. I took a bit of inspiration from from the Ironman mode in RuneScape, and the Survival mode in Fallout 4.
This is by FAR the best and most eloquently made Skyrim analysis video I've ever seeen. (trust me I've seen a lot) Not only is the script writing and story tellling expertly done, but the analysis is very non-biased. Far too many of these videos are rooted in a new generation of game design hate, but many also tend to tell outright lies for sake of the argument the video is trying to make. I wrote an entire college essay deconstructing the blatant misleading information in one such video. Seeing the true effort and love put into this video has inspired me to work on one of my own. This video deserves far more views than it has and needs to be pushed to more people that wish to see this type of content. I wish you the best in life and thank you for providing me some of the best inspiration I have received in years.
1:46:49 to 1:47:16 had me in complete hysterics, i couldn't pay attention to anything that was being said because i was laughing too hard over paarthurnax spinning his way up to the heavens
This was a great video and review. You had a character to roleplay as and took us through the quests you did while taking breaks to give your thoughts on the gameplay. It was well paced and I really enjoyed it. I'm glad you weren't light footed about mods and talked about how they gave you a better experience. This game can be played any way you'd like. It's important to say when and where the mods come into play and you told us what ones made it a more immersive and enjoyable playthrough for you. This was a great vid to watch and I'm subscribed to your channel because of it
Enai's mods are basically "more vanilla than vanilla" at this point. Ignoring other mods that add content for a second, I can't even imagine anymore what it's like to be 'forced' to play as a Stealth Archer. *Ordinator* and *Apocalypse* are by far the most important, because they actually allow me to play other viable RPG archetypes. If I want to be a _heavy-armor-wearin,' mace tottin,' restoration flingin,' cast-per-day'in,'_ orsimer vigilant, I can. If I want to make a _dagger-back-stabbin,' no-bow'in,' illusionist'in,'_ assassin, I can. Heck, I can even specs into making a thu'um-centered caster (especially with *Thunderchild,* another of Enai's hypervanilla mods). Vampirism? Sacrosanct. Priest? Daedric Cleric? *Wintersun.* Pure vampire bloodmancer? *Sacrosanct.* *Wildcat, Andromeda, Imperious,* and *Summermyst* add to the world in subtler, but nonetheless critical ways. This playthrough runs the Big Two, and many of their lesser companions for a good reason. Back to other minor mods, here we can truly see how much people try to make Skyrim more complex. Deeper. More... of a fantasy RPG world, really. Consider how long the average modlist is (including Pvt. Session's) and you can see how many small details will come together to be greater than the sum of their parts. Knowing bethesda, they *aren't* taking notes and the next TES will still be a broken, shallow mess at release. Enai, or people like him, will have to bail us out yet again.
I had very similar as experience as you. I was hyped and played roughly 100 hours of Skyrim on launch in 2011 but was never very compelled to return. I tried a couple of times in 2017 but I always got bored. However recently I reinstalled it again with couple of mods (Ordinator and Morrowloot) and having a blast again!
I was a day one purchaser of Skyrim and always come back to it and this is how I've always played it. I've never used any mods and have always had a great time with. I don't particularly agree with mods, but if that's what it took for you to see the wonders in the game that people like me have always seen, I'm so happy that you finally got to truelly experience it. ❤
@@JudasRose It may seem complicated, but it's hard to agree with it when so many ppl say how much they love Skyrim, but all of them are using mods. That's like saying I love my wife but demanding she gets plastic surgery to look exactly how I want her to look. When you love something, really love it, you accept it for how it is. Flaws and all. Just my opinion.
@@JudasRose I understand exactly what I said. It was a point of comparison about accepting things as they, not a literal equivalent. If ppl want to mod that's fine for them. All that I'm say is that I myself don't, don't really understand why ppl do and all of of that. I gave my opinion and attempted to explain. It's a bit of purist. It's how I play, it's how I enjoy it. Just because a person disagrees with something doesn't mean there's any hate. I don't like mods, other ppl do. I don't agree with it, other ppl do. It's just an opinion and a preferance.
@@JudasRose Just trying to explain my opinion. Wether it's about a game, a loved one or whatever. It's just about acceptance. It's only an example to show that. There's an old story about a shipwreck and if having to fix the ship means replacing the ships parts with new ones, is it even the same ship? If the mods make the game look different, or add stuff not intended or change the functionality, is it really still Skyrim or the players 'idealized version of it? Same with a car. If you replace every part of a Ford with Chevy parts save the engine, is it still a Ford? I've watched plenty of Skyrim and almost everyone mods. I've gotten used to it. It was just nice to see someone play Skyrim vanilla, the way I play. It's not often to see something like that. It's always nice to see something happen the way you (general not personal) do something is always nice.
A key element of writing complaints is that if a game makes you listen to it then the dialogue should be worth listening to. The story doesn't need to be more niche rpg or this or that. It needs to be finished, polished, and touch the potential it brings up. It needs to do what its aiming to do but falling short of. Skyrim has a lot of ideas but the game was rushed on a lot of elements and the writing is one of them.
I was in the same boat as you. I played skyrim the first time on a ps3 at my friends house. I was immediately hooked and installed a cracked version on my super crappy laptop at home before i had my own ps3 to play the game with. My laptop barely managed to run the game at all but it was a wonderous time. I had no idea what everything is, no meta or glitches or even knew how smithing worked, but i played the game and explored everything. After i got Skyrim firat on Ps3 then on my new proper Gaming PC i never really could recapture the wonder of the first time playing, even if i played a bunch and beat the game so many times i literally am on rails when i start the game. Get out of helgen, off to the site to the house with an adept lock, clear it and get the silver form at the end and a bunch of early loot, then off to embershard mine for some early iron, then to Riverru....wood, clearing bleak falls barrow and get the stone, get money and then off to Whiterun. Now after years of reflection and a healthy amount of Fallout 4 played on survival i currated my own modlist to make the game more immersive while keeping the vanilla feel of the game intact and i found myself in skyrims grasps yet again. Now, no fast travel on Master Difficulty with a healthy amounts of lore friendly race mods and fixes for things that are broken in the basegame i am playing this game really slow and enjoying it more than i have ever. It really makes a difference
I mean, of course if you have to add mods to the game to make it good and restrict yourself in how you play to have fun, it means that the game has flaws and those flaws should be criticized. But I wouldn't call that irredeemable. It's a flaw, and you can fix that flaw, and of course you are doing the designers' job for them, but that's only relevant if we examine the process of making games and absolutely irrelevant if we examine which games to play and how to do that.
35:03 It's not just the Psijic Order/Order of PSJJJJ that's absent for long periods of time, their entire island, the Isle of Artaeum, tends to vanish from Nirn for centuries at a time.
19:18 As soon as I saw the thumbnail, I guessed it, but it's good to hear that I'm not the only one who went from hating Skyrim to liking it when it's loaded down with mods. I've completed the vanilla storyline exactly twice, and both required a heavily modded playthrough that relied on Legacy of the Dragonborn to tie it all together. That said, I've gotta disagree on the whole "immersion" bit. In my opinion, you want immersive, you play Morrowind. Sure, it's older and the mechanics are dated, but just walking through Vvardenfell is an experience no other game has captured for me. Despite how alien the world is, it's so easy to immerse yourself in it, even without survival mods designed to help with immersion.
Morrowind is coming... eventually. I've never played it for more than a bit but I suspect I'll enjoy it once I get over the combat. With that said, I only get one shot at playing it "for the first time" and I want to get my ducks in a row before tackling a video on it: I want to make sure I got the skills and plan in place to do it right.
I previously started this video, then paused to watch the 6 hr Oblivion (over time) and now i can't even remember if i watched this already or am having simple deja vu
I'm a ps4 player formerly ps3. I played the game on ps3 with a single character until it was unplayable, and then I did the same thing with two other characters. It was my return to console gaming after years of just not owning a system. Now the meager amount of mods I can play with make me very happy to return to Skyrim on PS4. Stuff like Morningstar races and Better Vanilla Perks definitely scratch some itches.
I made the same experience, by slowing the game down the immersion arises tremendously. And it's true: Skyrim is not about a story to tell (like Enderal for example, that's all about the story.) It's about your individual journey.
When I was a kid, I would lock myself in a little back bedroom at my grandparents with a copy of skyrim. I turned the air on the coldest setting even though it was the summer and made the room freezing cold. I play and pretend the air was the cold mountain air brushing on my face
great video. i definitely remember being upset at the removed character customization from oblivion when skyrim came out, but i still couldn't put it down. while oblivion will always be my favorite game for getting me into games in the first place (also i love forests) i cannot deny that skyrim is, as a whole, is much more fully realized, despite not having as many interesting quests. but the daedric quests are actually pretty great.
This wasn't a very good modded retrospective. The cart at the beginning wasn't flipping out. Not realistic at all. But I loved the video, definitely one of my favorite formats I've seen for these. I wish they would've made TES6 instead of Fallout 76. It's way overdue now. 10 years between games is too long.
10 years and counting. Here's hoping Starfield is a good stopgap because tes6 is barely in development still. The new engine will hopefully be worth it.
ive gone back and forth on the Empire and Stormcloaks for years. i have no idea how ive never seen or heard of Ulfrics connection the the Thalmor . after all these years im still learning new things in this game
Beside the tiny lore mistakes (like calling Tiber Septim a dragon slaying emperor), this is an amazing video. I enjoyed it a lot, thanks for that. I’ll definetly be checking out the rest of your channel.
My first play through in Riften I broke Bersis' vase and i felt terrible about it, on my next play through I made sure to visit him last and used the info Brynolf gave me to investigate how I could coerce everyone without coming off as a prick. it was only skin deep in terms of decision making, but I liked that I could in some way maintain my own honor, not like it matters to the game. The more i played the more Invested i go in how i played. it wasn't about the games limitations it was about placing some on my own will.
I always think it's funny how Paratus (the Synod mage in Mzulft) always devolves into petty threats, that he's gonna get you and the College of Winterhold in trouble with the Synod Council by tattling on you, that you're hoarding powerful artifacts. And I'm just like, "... Okay? The College of Winterhold is older than the Synod by millennia and has always been and still is an autonomous organization that isn't under the Synod's jurisdiction. Go and tattle, you useless dweeb. What do you honestly think the Synod could do about it?" And then I proceed to soul trap and kill him. Every time. The fewer loose ends in the College of Winterhold's busted, janky as questline, the better.
What I find funny is that a twat that couldn't defend himself against the falmer that killed his whole team, to the point that he had to lock himself up in a room and risk dead by starvation, decides to antagonize the powerhouse that just slaughtered said falmer with ease; while they are both in the middle of nowhere, in a world with no forensic sciences. Comes to show that, just because you are a scholar, that doesn't mean you are particularly smart.
I think Elder Scrolls games need to let you play as multiple characters in one save game. I want to play as an Argonian who becomes head of the Thieves Guild and then start a new character who is pursuing the main quest, at some point running into the head of the Thieves Guild - my Argonian character.
I love elder scrolls games for their lore and enviromental story telling and when they are allowed to characters. This is why while an mmo ESO is my favorute along with morrowind. Amazing stories , characters , lore and other provinences. Skyrim is great with modding community. Many actual lore relevant and very lore friendly mods helps with the game.
Great video. I think I'm kinda doing the same thing you were talking about. I don't play Skyrim for it's quests and stories - I create my own story in this amazing world full of countless details.
This spurred me to have another playthrough, attempting a similar style as you plus writing a journal as I go. I then saw your mod list and it blew my mind. How do you even get it to run. I have so many errors and stuff happen with just 10 or so mods. Going to try pulling out the camping and frostfire and I'll see how I go.
I never liked oblivion to be honest. I think its the worst elder scrolls game I have ever played. Morrowind is the best and skyrim is a close second with daggerfall being 3rd.
Seeing this video makes me think you'd really like Kenshi. Look into it if you've never heard of it, the entire game is designed around you creating your own stories. Open world, sandbox, rpg-lite. It's a really good time
I've been playing through again in survival mode and using a camping mod. Adds a new dynamic to the game and the removal of fast travel makes horses very useful.
My perfect game would be as follows: Morrowind's story telling, magic system and world building Oblivion's quest design, weapon durability and repair (yes I like item health, don't @ me) BOTW's chemistry mechanics Skyrim's crafting and resource gathering
A french youtuber that I really like and has a 300+ episode series on skyrim said something that really stuck with me. He said that he doesn't "let the game entertain him", but rather he entertains himself using the game as a support and I think that's what a lot of people don't get about skyrim
For the longest time I never really played games the way they were meant to be played, I just used them as sandboxes or canvases to make adventures or stories in my head. Now it's kinda coming full circle as I try to do that now with some of these retrospectives. Bethesda games really enable that sort of playstyle unlike any other game out there between the mods and how they are fundamentally designed and built. It's really one of the reasons I enjoy them as much as I do: they hearken back to what I used to do with games as a kid.
Who is the French UA-camr?
Exactly. This is how I always played skyrim and how it has stayed fresh to me for so long.
no, skyrim is objectively a badly designed game. thats why there thousands of mods to try to fix it and even then you still go "not as fun" and thats because of how it was designed. skyrim does what bethesda does best and thats environments and environmental storytelling. combat took a backseat and the rpg mechanics were being tossed out.
@@kay_keik7842 I love when a random person on the internet uses the term "objectively" in their opinionated statement like it's a fact. By your own argument, I can claim that Oblivion is objectively a badly designed game because the combat is very floaty and off-putting, 3rd person is practically unusable, the main story is extremely short, the world leveling ruins the aspect of you becoming more powerful, the character models are really bad, the dungeons are mediocre and tedious...
That is my opinion but I won't say it's an objectively bad designed game because thats my opinion. People may enjoy that and actually I do like Oblivion quite a bit but for different reasons.
The algorithm has thrown me into a hole of multi-hour video analyses of the elder scrolls games and I couldn’t be happier. Especially with this as I’ve been wanting to start a modded play through for a while and your perspective is really interesting and well-explained. Gg my man
Check out the playlist Long-Form Analysis; it’ll keep you busy for the rest of the year
SAME
Any that youd recommend checking out?
@@ConnorRunda PatricianTV morrowind retrospective
Yes wtf with the algorithm
Honestly my issues with Skyrim is that we are the chosen one too many times. I want to be an assassin not the leader, I want to be a companion and not the leader, I want to be a powerful mage not the arch mage. I wanna be a master thief not the leader. Stop killing off all the guild leaders and just have different endings, it’s all the same skeleton and that pretty much all. I love the game and the quests, but it’s nothing like other games. Even with oblivion we kill all the brotherhood members and it ends in the area we are known by higher ups and that’s it.
True. That trope does get tired.
I honestly like in ESO how you are relied upon and respected, but they sont hand you the reins of the guilds because you showed up a week or two ago.
There's a mad for that...
Agree with you re: “Stop making the player character the leader of every faction”, disagree with “stop making them the chosen one.”
Main series Elder Scrolls are set during a crisis where an individual comes forward to resolve it, and that’s the player character. You don’t have to engage with the main story, but the main story is always of that magnitude. If they want to make smaller games where you’re just some guy then sure, but main series should be grand in scope.
I’d prefer Morrowind’s approach taken more extreme. If you’re going to make me a high rank in a faction, it should exclude me from a few of the others and being a high rank should actually require input from the player. You should be running the fighter’s guild, not hands off and sitting on a title.
@@deifiedtitan the chosen one for every single quest line, like the dragon born, and the listener, and a special visitor seen in a dream. Our character is too chosen one.
The real reason why the Thieves Guild suck is simple: they plan all their activities from their secret hideout in a well where anybody standing in the town above can hear them. The Dragonborn doesn't speak, so quickly revives them.
Lmao true
Love how you structured this video half role play half review
just by adding alternate start mods, I replayed skyrim atleast once every faction, i just find it stupid that after saving the world 3 times, vilkas still thinks his sword is more valuable than me.
You can be decked out in all gear earned through Daedric quests (Ebony Mail, Masque of Clavicus Vile, Ring of Hircine, Dawnbreaker, Spellbreaker, and even Auriel's Bow [not Daedric but Aedric, so close enough]), and he still says that about his crappy Skyforge Steel sword that does little more damage than a butter knife. It really does break the immersion.
@@HickoryDickory86 I mean that line was never supposed to indicate your actual worth. It's him saying that he doesn't value you as a person. And in that case the kinda shitty blade works better imo. Whatever you have and did, to this guy you're worth less than 70 septims
Oh no another long video on Skyrim, time to consume all my food before the 10 minute mark.
This hit home so hard 😂
its cool they were trying to write a more mature/gritty story, but the quality of the writing in those quests simply didn't support that very well.
Writing mature stories requires a certain level of commitment Bethesda really struggles to maintain and I'm not sure whether it's just inexperienced writers, lack of care, or just the process they make their games and quests in general. They excel at making really short and sweet adventures and silly diversions, especially in Oblivion.
@@PrivateSessions Their main writer is allegedly pretty close friends with Todd Howard, which could explain the huge difference in quality between some side quests and the main quest. Don't remember my source for it though, so take that with a mountain of salt.
@@PrivateSessions Would you say the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion is an example of a good long yet serious/edgy storyline?
@@monkeman5895 its a pretty bad storyline, tbh. The first half is a collection of (sometimes quite silly) standalone ideas followed by a bad traitor/revenge story where you are treated like an complete idiot that fell for a pretty obvious ruse.
@@monkeman5895 there are some fun quests in the first half, but that doesnt make a good storyline on its own
You made a great choice limiting fast travel. It really helps you to discover all the unique trinkets and locations the develpers created that most players using fast travel at every opportunity will never see. Legacy of the Dragonborn is the single greatest mod ever created for Skyrim because of this, Legacy doubles down on the exploration elements and guides you towards every location and collectible in the game so that you can see all the small details and short stories bethesda crafted to fill their amazing world, and as a reward for experiencing what bethesda created, you get to experience and entirely new story created for the mod as you collect more and more things. I could honestly play Skyrim with nothing but Legacy and no fast traveling and still have a lot of fun.
I really want to do a run with legacy. Ordinarily I'm not big on collecting but elder Scrolls games lends themselves to that sort of thing. Collecting weapons and armors especially.
Megacy of the dragonborn is a very cumbersome mod to run in SSE it requires like 20+ patches wich is annoying to deal with love the mod but i find it’s more trouble then it’s worth.
How does this not have more views? This was the most unique and interesting retrospective I’ve seen of a game ever and has changed how I look at Skyrim from now on. Thank you for this
Long-form videos usually don't get high view counts unless the channel carries a lot of clout. Even then, short and snappier videos are the ones that usually get the big counts and interactions. Part of it is the YT algorithm and part is the average person's shorter attention span. Quality alone is not enough to beat the odds.
You deserve way more views! Came here after your fnv retrospective
I like the way you tell the story with your views basically like a story book in a way. I’m so use to watching retrospectives on the vanilla game, it’s nice to see a slight modded one. Good video.
Cool! I don't use fast travel, either. It changes the game and forces you to engage the world. Camping and food become necessities. Frostfall makes them mandatory.
Hey, Private! I am currently in the works of a retrospective myself and have really fallen in love with your way of storytelling. Giving the character of the retrospect a personality makes for a incredibly fun watch/ listen. I just wanted to ask you for your blessing in adopting that style in my next vid.
Absolutely. I hope you can do it better than I have been able to thus far, it's a tricky thing to balance. Good luck and keep me posted when you got something to show :)
@@PrivateSessions Thank you so much! I will :D
Edit: i misread your comment lol. I will do my best but I've never done any commentsry before so me being better than you is a stretch. I will however do my best to make a great video!
It's interesting that I found this video because I'm actually playing Skyrim again for the first time in about six years. Back in the day I got burnt out on Skyrim feeling like the charm was only skin deep, but after playing through Morrowind it got me thinking how much I was missing by fast traveling everywhere. I installed a lot of mods for immersion, npc ai, perks and magic related ones and vowed not to fast travel. And honestly I'm loving it. By just warping from place to place and mindlessly following quest markers I was depriving myself of most of the game and I didn't even realize it. The game is certainly flawed, but the world it's set in is gorgeous and a lot of work obviously went into it. I'm glad I gave it another chance.
fast traveling, poor quest design leveling and essential npc's are the curse of Bethesda games from TESIV to current games.
Binging on your content. Would really love to hear your take on the Dishonoured series.
Hell yes!
oh yeah
Deeply meditative and philosophical about game design and purpose. I think you're a very good critic. The ideas you're getting at when you talk about expectations and frame-of-reference shift are, I think, super important. Aristotle talks of an object's 'end' or its purpose, its 'telos' and I think it paramount to good media criticism that we look at a thing for what it is trying to be, not always impose on it what we go into it expecting it to be. Ignoring this fact leads to a lot of really bad media criticism where people essentially talk past a game, story or movie, disparaging it for not doing something it isn't trying to do anyways. For whoever reads on, (I wrote a lot/too much) there're some dualisms you've established in both your Oblivion long-cut and this video that I'd like to play around with.
You've talked about a game world's agnosticism to the player vs. making the player the center of everything. You've also talked about the degree to which a game is structured, tells the player what to think, gives them a clear experience VS giving a player a blank canvas, a stage. You put it in the video something like stage-building vs. directing/directors.
Oblivion is inconsistently sometimes agnostic to the player--they are one person in a large world, other times the player is the center. Sometimes the game systems' illusions breaking down alone is enough to make it obvious the player is the center. I take these to be arguments you make about Oblivion, and I agree.
I would also agree that a really fine 'stage' can sometimes be enough for the player to make of the canvas what they will. Some use mods in Skyrim to skip the introduction entirely and start in a random dungeon. What I would say--and this isn't necessarily disagreeing with anything you've said in either video--is that there are probably better and worse stages/canvases, and there's probably a broad spectrum among players in terms of their willingness to 'fill in the gaps' or 'tell their own story'.
For the most creative, they might need very little at all to begin telling their own stories, to get lost and immersed in the world. For others, they might need to be railroaded to the nth degree before a story makes their synapses light up. For others like me, they're very much in the middle. I'm willing to do a great deal of roleplaying, suspension of disbelief, even filling in the gaps, but I think a game, story or experience needs to give me good jumping off points, good contextualization, sympathetic and/or interesting characters and compelling conflicts. Or, failing that, at least adequate helpings of these things, or an attempt at them.
Skyrim has some things really going for it compared to Oblivion in higher production values, polish and probably an overall greater wealth in mods that, on paper, can offer a greater promise of immersion and chance for telling your own story. Some critics might point out that, when you strip Oblivion's mechanics down, they're pretty shallow--and all Skyrim did was finish the streamlining and make everything more presentable. Mods can make up for, in either game, some gameplay deficits and certainly a lot of graphical deficits. Some modders do try their hand at writing their own stories, but voice acting is expensive and writing is hard, so past voiceless or text-based quests, adding additional quest content in any substantial sense is hard to do.
So in some sense, then, the core of Oblivion and Skyrim's writing, quests and characters are pretty fixed. For me, this makes it possible to enjoy Oblivion but at this point impossible to enjoy Skyrim. Why?
I want to return to that 'agnostic to the player' vs. 'player is center of universe' paradigm. To add my own claim in, I just generally think making the player the center of the universe just kinda sucks, it ruins immersion, makes the world smaller, everything revolving around you. It's harder to roleplay as your own character with their own individual choices to make in a big world if the script makes you out as a demigod. One way of alleviating this really is Bethesda's efforts to create big AI systems to make the world alive. To make it seem like the world around the player still moves and acts when the player isn't. Like you, I do applaud this and hope they take it further--it'd be cool to see what they could make with an updated engine and a lot of money, time. Maybe that will end up producing a fantasy simulator so complete that writing, quests and story will hardly matter anymore. --I take this to be what you'd like to see.
Barring that, though, the most surefire way to invest a player into a game's world is through a story. Story is a broad term. The constituent parts matter more--conflicts and characters. At its best, Oblivion is goofy and open ended in its quest design with entertaining if silly characters. The main villain isn't interesting, is rushed, as you say. Martin gets a bit of character development though--and that's cool to see. Lucien Lachance is an interesting personality, the Dark Brotherhood in general makes for a good story. The Thieves Guild makes for a good story on the whole. Sheogorath too.
A lot of Oblivion's stories are mediocre or even bad, ridiculous but there are some entertaining characters and memorable stories, at its best. For me, that is the core upon which everything else rests. If it really seems like there are no other interesting people with their own goals or desires, or genuine conflicts--physical or philosophical--then the world is just dead past what I make up for myself. Skyrim and Oblivion are similar in that, at least in my view, both their mages and fighters guilds are the weaker points, and their thieves guilds and dark brotherhoods are the stronger ones. But man, Oblivion's highs are so much higher, the lows lower. Skyrim is just smoothed out, there's just nothing substantial there at all.
To me, the characters, conflicts color the world, give it life, and give me a starting point for imagining my own character in relation to them. Skingrad IS the vampire count with all the secrets of his castle, it IS Glarthir's paranoia. Chorrol IS the detective quest about the stolen painting--when I think of Chorrol, I think of that experience. When I think of Whiterun in Skyrim, I feel nothing, it's a set of aesthetics and architecture to me, nothing more. A good, layered, multifaceted story with good characters and a decent conflict gives me an excuse to return to the game/world, to come back with another character and revisit it, perhaps rethink it or approach it differently. In Skyrim, this just doesn't feel like an option, ever--so I'm just going through the motions, over and over.
Which is why the natural next step is to ignore all of that and focus on the story you create for yourself. And honestly, as far as you just follow random odd jobs this could work okay--but then it feels like the player lacks for larger goals. As soon as you begin to touch those larger goals, the game starts to take you out of the experience and tell you how you're the chosen one, gotta decide the civil war, stop the end of the world, lead every guild, be the dragonborn savior--AND DO IT NOW, QUICK, BEFORE ITS TOO LATE. --Oblivion does this too, as you point out, but the fact that Oblivion does really have characters/stories of its own worth telling every once in a while makes it possible for me, at least for some little glimpses and moments, to get lost in the world. For Skyrim, if I want to entirely just roleplay as my own little character, then I feel like I'm constantly fighting against the game world trying to make me something else. And mods can't *really* fix that, because this is pretty much the core of Skyrim's content. Unless some modder has overhauled it such that they've replaced 90% of the quest content with something else entirely, given the player a different endgame for things to do, goals to pursue.
--but if you can get past that, don't let me stop you, just watching the video takes me back to a moment so long ago while modding Skyrim that I could see the glimpses you talk about, and just trying your best to see those glimpses is worth it, however flawed the game is.
(It's been over 5 years since I really tried to touch Oblivion, don't know if there are any big modpacks I should try. Have dabbled in Morrowind, but similarly think there'd need to be a really good modpack to streamline the visuals, mechanics a bit for me to return. Morrowind is probably the most pure in philosophy when it comes to slowing down, enjoying exploration and feeling like a small part of a big world.)
I think you give good advice for Bethesda, as there's really just the two routes--or both, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. They've gotta make the story, world tonally appropriate to that roleplaying. Maybe a bit more comic, a bit less serious, and less grating to a roleplay experience where the player is just one person in a big world. Or they've just gotta tell much better stories with more interesting characters and writing. Or both. Honestly I don't have much hope for either, but if they can pull off just 1 of those 2 really well for Elder Scrolls VI, they'll have a great game on their hands.
For my part, the more interesting, fleshed-out characters and conflicts there are in a game's world and/or story, the more I can get lost in it and feel like part of a larger world. But it could also be that by working hard enough at AI systems to create a more living, breathing fantasy world, that the stories will just write themselves in the player's head, and that'd be really cool too.
homie writing an essay for a youtube comment :0
@@portalfan0438 an essay within a comment on a video essay.
There are some decent mods for Morrowind which essentially “modernise” it. I believe the main mod I used is called “Morrowind Rebirth” which overhauls a lot of the games mechanics, adds a bunch of new features. All I did after was download mods to fix the combat and graphics and I was good to go. I actually think there was a UA-cam guide for it that was fairly straightforward.
I still find it harder to get into than Oblivion and Skyrim because of the lack of quest markers and infrequent fast travel but I’ve found it a much more rewarding and immersive gaming experience. The world building is excellent for a game originally made in 2002.
This comment is longer than my term paper
I love how you write!!!!
I loved and really enjoyed this video. You've done some great work.
However I disagree entirely with the thinking that Bethesda needs to be less serious in the next Elder Scrolls. The point about the Shivering Isles dlc being more comedic and working is great, however I think the fact that it was just a smaller dlc part of a larger game is what made it work so well. A full length game with that kind of narrative would get very old very quickly. With Shivering Isles, you could experience the funny bits and then leave and go back to the rest of the game's more serious tone. If you were stuck in a world that was just slapstick comedy and absurdity all the time, for hours, it would get very tedious. It worked with Oblivion because it was short and sweet. I don't want to see this series turned into a joke. The game taking itself seriously isn't a bad thing, the quality of the writing just needs to raise up to meet it at that level.
Totally agree, other game series have been made worse by attempting to change to a ~sillier~ tone
Agreed, one hundred percent. I want them to keep the serious tone, but I also want them to bring on talented enough writers who can rise to the challenge.
Additionally, I desperately want them to stop watering down and retconning so much of their incredibly unique lore and instead actually delve deeper into it, make far more use of it in their main quest, the guild quests, the games' world design (including the races, flora and fauna, regional architecture, locals dress and customs, etc.). For example: If TES VI _is_ set in Hammerfell and they have Temples to Akatosh and the Eight/Nine Divines instead of to Tall Papa and the Yokudan pantheon, I will lose my freakin' mind with rage!
I wouldn't mind if it was just a tad more wacky, but not too much. However after seeing recent games trying so hard to be funny with the likes of Borderlands 3, Watch Dogs Legions, Forespoken and Saints Row I get why everyone is extremely cautious about adjusting the tone. I can't believe I'm saying this but there's not enough serious games anymore are there. Complete 180° from the gritty 2010s huh
Late but this is why alot of people felt The Outer Worlds didn't work.
The work you people do is invaluable. Idk how i would get through work days without these type of vidoes.
Well Sir, you have convinced me to play Skyrim once again after all these years... after I finish breaking it with all the mods on your list! LOL! Just a few more conflicts to resolve, and I should be able to start playing!
I very much enjoy your takes ( and style) on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. I look forward to future works from you. o7
I have a bittersweet feeling about this game, i love it but i cant really play it any more simply because the magic of discovering every hidden detail isnt available to me simply because of how much I've played. I love the game but it just feels... empty to me right now. Maybe a mod will come along and re ignite that flame(hopefully the beyond skyrim project) and i want it to, but unfortunately im not holding my breath.
Makes me think if bethesda might take a page out of what devs are doing now with the whole "games as a service" business and keep adding content to tes6 after it launches to keep us coming back to explore.
@@PrivateSessions I kind of sincerely hope not, if only because I prefer my games to be complete packages. I've never once observed a "games as a service" model that worked.
I hear ya. Been playing vanilla skyrim for 10 years nearly, now I just play on legendary and visit my favourite dungeons. Nowadays for me the game is like a relaxation thing, nostalgic and replaying old dungeons as if they were self contained levels like mario or something.
I felt this way until the DLCs came out, but then I finished the DLCs a few months later and I felt that way again :(
@@PrivateSessions I doubt it, there's already ESO.
This video is great and really hit the nail on the head for me. I just started a new playthrough with some new lands mods to help give some new content to explore, but just testing my load order I found myself playing normally through the vanilla game. My friend and I have had this talk about what makes Bethesda games different from our other favorite RPGs hundreds of times and we always mention the world and world building. The tiny details, whether that's notes or the position of a skeleton or a Talos shrine in the mountains that spawn an aggressive Thalmor group, in small, unnecessary places that some or most players will never see are what bring me into the world and make the game worth playing. I love that quote from Rebelzize that you shared, I can't wait to get sucked into his world when the time comes.
I only just recently discovered the reason I've always loved this game is for the world, not the story or gameplay, then I find this video. It's been brutally beaten over the last few years, but it's honestly a pretty great game, even if the whole RPG label is a bit of an unfulfilled promise.
I know the feeling. Before I discovered mods, I had got into the habit off carrying around things to roleplay a cold climate. Fur Armor (overcoat), two bear pelts (fur cloak and bedroll), and a load of firewood. I ate twice a day, waited thru every night, and never fast-travellled. Survival Mode, Frostfall and Campfire were exactly what I'd been waiting for!
if you love skyrim wanna watch some good quality rp then gopher probably has the most enjoyable lets plays of skyrim ive seen. its funny as hell at times, the story telling is top notch and his game is beautiful. HIGHLY reccomend
Why the fuck would anyone want to watch another person play Skyrim?
@@jamesbrincefield9879 why would someone wanna watch someone play anything?
1:46:41 I admire not stopping to gawk at the insanity unfolding.
Awesome work. Aweseome video. Makes me want to play skyrim again and explore. Thank you.
The effort put in these videos alone deserves way more views. I just love long deep analysis of video games and all the different perspectives people have.
Quite the audiobook. Love this different type of approach.
I think the game is fantastic with survival mode on and some self imposed rules. My favorite character by leaps and bounds was that kind of playthrough. I also played a Khajiit girl. She was raised in Elsweyr with her father and traveling caravan who were practically family. Growing up she learned archery and had developed excellent communication skills being part of a caravan and all. She always has a sunny disposition and is always ready to help those in need without any expectation of a reward. On her 17th birthday her father surprised her with a beautifully crafted elven bow she had been eyeing up since she was a little girl in one of the towns the caravan frequented. He had secretly been saving money for it for years. That same night the caravan was razed by marauders and she was left the only survivor. Grief stricken, she buried her family and decided she couldn't stay in Elsweyr any longer. She was hurt and felt like running away. For two years she journeyed far north through Cyrodiil to the Jerall Mountains. Skyrim, as she read in books, was a vast sub arctic tundra. A far cry from the warm savannas and jungles of her home. While crossing the border she is unfortunately taken prisoner in an Imperial ambush being mistaken for rebel in a conflict she had no knowledge about.
In my playthrough Alduin does destroy Helgen but my character isn't the Dragonborn. She not a chosen one type of character. She's just a 19 year old Khajiit girl who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. After the attack she continues her quest. Which is buy a house and make Skyrim her new home. She adventures all over the province making as much money as she can using the skills she learned back home.
Here are the self imposed rules. She cannot carry any more than she realistically hold. Regardless of her in game carrying capacity. She carries her beloved bow, a quiver with a bundle of arrows, a dagger and a satchel of provisions. Any more than that I have to think about how she's carrying it. She has to dress warm. She has to eat and sleep every day. She cannot fast travel. She cannot take down an entire bandit camp or monster filled dungeon by herself. She's not a one person army, she needs help for dungeon diving. She does not loot corpses unless necessary as she finds it disrespectful. This mostly applies to draugr specifically. Bandits not so much. If she can talk her way out she'll try. She doesn't enjoy fighting but at the same time she is prideful of her skills. No save scumming. If she fails she lives with the consequences. She helps everyone in need because she wildly empathicle and cares. She doesn't like alcohol but always checks out the local tavern cus she's a social butterfly. Skyrim the game isn't much interested in letting you roleplay so I had to make up my own rules. Bethesda seems more interested in making a power fantasy. You're an untouchable demigod who's bad at nothing. But I think that's boring. I like being a regular inhabitant of this fantasy world. That playthrough was fun as hell. Very rememberable.
I'm not big on RP, but I do feel like adding a bit more of a challenge to Skyrim makes it much better to play.
I recently started playing Skyrim with my own self-imposed rules and restrictions, and it was honestly surprisingly fun.
I took a bit of inspiration from from the Ironman mode in RuneScape, and the Survival mode in Fallout 4.
Massive respect for talking about the Riverwood thing that gave me a good chuckle!
This is by FAR the best and most eloquently made Skyrim analysis video I've ever seeen. (trust me I've seen a lot) Not only is the script writing and story tellling expertly done, but the analysis is very non-biased. Far too many of these videos are rooted in a new generation of game design hate, but many also tend to tell outright lies for sake of the argument the video is trying to make. I wrote an entire college essay deconstructing the blatant misleading information in one such video. Seeing the true effort and love put into this video has inspired me to work on one of my own. This video deserves far more views than it has and needs to be pushed to more people that wish to see this type of content. I wish you the best in life and thank you for providing me some of the best inspiration I have received in years.
1:46:49 to 1:47:16 had me in complete hysterics, i couldn't pay attention to anything that was being said because i was laughing too hard over paarthurnax spinning his way up to the heavens
Only 7K subs. Mate you're punching well above your weight and I like it. I love this kind of long form review. I'll happily await your next one.
Its been so long using alternate start that the intro was kind of nice to see.
Impressive for a two hour video deconstructing the tenets of Skyrim and its world and nary a mention of the Dark Brotherhood.
how does this not have more views? great video, dude
This was a great video and review. You had a character to roleplay as and took us through the quests you did while taking breaks to give your thoughts on the gameplay. It was well paced and I really enjoyed it. I'm glad you weren't light footed about mods and talked about how they gave you a better experience. This game can be played any way you'd like. It's important to say when and where the mods come into play and you told us what ones made it a more immersive and enjoyable playthrough for you. This was a great vid to watch and I'm subscribed to your channel because of it
X
Xg,x
I think you just fixed Skyrim for me. Thank you. I've missed being able to enjoy it
I deeply enjoyed your use of the Factorio music in this.
Fantastic job. Subbed.
You have some excellent videos, I have really enjoyed watching these stories that you have put together!
here after the mass effect videos your work is great bro
Skyrim was my first ever game so it has a lot of nostalgic memories behind it
Riverrun is my favorite place
Enai's mods are basically "more vanilla than vanilla" at this point. Ignoring other mods that add content for a second, I can't even imagine anymore what it's like to be 'forced' to play as a Stealth Archer. *Ordinator* and *Apocalypse* are by far the most important, because they actually allow me to play other viable RPG archetypes. If I want to be a _heavy-armor-wearin,' mace tottin,' restoration flingin,' cast-per-day'in,'_ orsimer vigilant, I can. If I want to make a _dagger-back-stabbin,' no-bow'in,' illusionist'in,'_ assassin, I can. Heck, I can even specs into making a thu'um-centered caster (especially with *Thunderchild,* another of Enai's hypervanilla mods). Vampirism? Sacrosanct. Priest? Daedric Cleric? *Wintersun.* Pure vampire bloodmancer? *Sacrosanct.* *Wildcat, Andromeda, Imperious,* and *Summermyst* add to the world in subtler, but nonetheless critical ways. This playthrough runs the Big Two, and many of their lesser companions for a good reason.
Back to other minor mods, here we can truly see how much people try to make Skyrim more complex. Deeper. More... of a fantasy RPG world, really. Consider how long the average modlist is (including Pvt. Session's) and you can see how many small details will come together to be greater than the sum of their parts.
Knowing bethesda, they *aren't* taking notes and the next TES will still be a broken, shallow mess at release. Enai, or people like him, will have to bail us out yet again.
I had very similar as experience as you. I was hyped and played roughly 100 hours of Skyrim on launch in 2011 but was never very compelled to return. I tried a couple of times in 2017 but I always got bored. However recently I reinstalled it again with couple of mods (Ordinator and Morrowloot) and having a blast again!
I was a day one purchaser of Skyrim and always come back to it and this is how I've always played it. I've never used any mods and have always had a great time with. I don't particularly agree with mods, but if that's what it took for you to see the wonders in the game that people like me have always seen, I'm so happy that you finally got to truelly experience it. ❤
@@JudasRose
It may seem complicated, but it's hard to agree with it when so many ppl say how much they love Skyrim, but all of them are using mods. That's like saying I love my wife but demanding she gets plastic surgery to look exactly how I want her to look. When you love something, really love it, you accept it for how it is. Flaws and all. Just my opinion.
@@JudasRose
I understand exactly what I said. It was a point of comparison about accepting things as they, not a literal equivalent. If ppl want to mod that's fine for them. All that I'm say is that I myself don't, don't really understand why ppl do and all of of that. I gave my opinion and attempted to explain. It's a bit of purist. It's how I play, it's how I enjoy it. Just because a person disagrees with something doesn't mean there's any hate. I don't like mods, other ppl do. I don't agree with it, other ppl do. It's just an opinion and a preferance.
@@JudasRose
Just trying to explain my opinion. Wether it's about a game, a loved one or whatever. It's just about acceptance. It's only an example to show that.
There's an old story about a shipwreck and if having to fix the ship means replacing the ships parts with new ones, is it even the same ship? If the mods make the game look different, or add stuff not intended or change the functionality, is it really still Skyrim or the players 'idealized version of it? Same with a car. If you replace every part of a Ford with Chevy parts save the engine, is it still a Ford?
I've watched plenty of Skyrim and almost everyone mods. I've gotten used to it. It was just nice to see someone play Skyrim vanilla, the way I play. It's not often to see something like that. It's always nice to see something happen the way you (general not personal) do something is always nice.
Riverrun is my favorite town in Whitewood.
Man I love these long form reviews.
A key element of writing complaints is that if a game makes you listen to it then the dialogue should be worth listening to. The story doesn't need to be more niche rpg or this or that. It needs to be finished, polished, and touch the potential it brings up. It needs to do what its aiming to do but falling short of. Skyrim has a lot of ideas but the game was rushed on a lot of elements and the writing is one of them.
I was in the same boat as you. I played skyrim the first time on a ps3 at my friends house. I was immediately hooked and installed a cracked version on my super crappy laptop at home before i had my own ps3 to play the game with. My laptop barely managed to run the game at all but it was a wonderous time. I had no idea what everything is, no meta or glitches or even knew how smithing worked, but i played the game and explored everything. After i got Skyrim firat on Ps3 then on my new proper Gaming PC i never really could recapture the wonder of the first time playing, even if i played a bunch and beat the game so many times i literally am on rails when i start the game. Get out of helgen, off to the site to the house with an adept lock, clear it and get the silver form at the end and a bunch of early loot, then off to embershard mine for some early iron, then to Riverru....wood, clearing bleak falls barrow and get the stone, get money and then off to Whiterun.
Now after years of reflection and a healthy amount of Fallout 4 played on survival i currated my own modlist to make the game more immersive while keeping the vanilla feel of the game intact and i found myself in skyrims grasps yet again. Now, no fast travel on Master Difficulty with a healthy amounts of lore friendly race mods and fixes for things that are broken in the basegame i am playing this game really slow and enjoying it more than i have ever. It really makes a difference
I adore this video!
Hope a sequel is coming :)
*Me, who hasn't played in 4 years and just realised I can't remember what barrel I left my horde in:*
c r i p p l i n g a n x i e t y
i was in tears when paarthurnax just started ascending into the heavens
21:37 Now that you mention it... I'm in fact really downloading and playing Skyrim in around mid december/mid january, downloaded it again 3 days ago
I mean, of course if you have to add mods to the game to make it good and restrict yourself in how you play to have fun, it means that the game has flaws and those flaws should be criticized. But I wouldn't call that irredeemable. It's a flaw, and you can fix that flaw, and of course you are doing the designers' job for them, but that's only relevant if we examine the process of making games and absolutely irrelevant if we examine which games to play and how to do that.
Nice eu4 music. Great video!
Hahaha playing rimworld tracks in the Skyrim review, love it.
This was a great video, thanks so much for making it
35:03 It's not just the Psijic Order/Order of PSJJJJ that's absent for long periods of time, their entire island, the Isle of Artaeum, tends to vanish from Nirn for centuries at a time.
19:18 As soon as I saw the thumbnail, I guessed it, but it's good to hear that I'm not the only one who went from hating Skyrim to liking it when it's loaded down with mods. I've completed the vanilla storyline exactly twice, and both required a heavily modded playthrough that relied on Legacy of the Dragonborn to tie it all together.
That said, I've gotta disagree on the whole "immersion" bit. In my opinion, you want immersive, you play Morrowind. Sure, it's older and the mechanics are dated, but just walking through Vvardenfell is an experience no other game has captured for me. Despite how alien the world is, it's so easy to immerse yourself in it, even without survival mods designed to help with immersion.
Morrowind is coming... eventually. I've never played it for more than a bit but I suspect I'll enjoy it once I get over the combat. With that said, I only get one shot at playing it "for the first time" and I want to get my ducks in a row before tackling a video on it: I want to make sure I got the skills and plan in place to do it right.
I love the LotD mod. Absolutely my favourite, right above Inigo.
Glad I found this video. Skyrim is like comfort food for me.
The part where he’s talking to parthanux and he’s flying in circles 😂😂
It’s an Ancient Ambience Simulator with rpg elements and a lot of lore.
I’m having the same experience right now with immersion and RP’ing mods. Feels like Skyrim is coming into its own at last.
Love your stuff but keep coming back to listen to this like a podcast, I almost know it word for word by now.
In your own words "it's just... comfy."
I previously started this video, then paused to watch the 6 hr Oblivion (over time) and now i can't even remember if i watched this already or am having simple deja vu
I'm a ps4 player formerly ps3. I played the game on ps3 with a single character until it was unplayable, and then I did the same thing with two other characters. It was my return to console gaming after years of just not owning a system. Now the meager amount of mods I can play with make me very happy to return to Skyrim on PS4. Stuff like Morningstar races and Better Vanilla Perks definitely scratch some itches.
Feel like I'm a sleeper agent being activated with every repeat of the word "time"
I made the same experience, by slowing the game down the immersion arises tremendously. And it's true: Skyrim is not about a story to tell (like Enderal for example, that's all about the story.) It's about your individual journey.
Man, I love this style of Elder Scrolls content. Can't wait for Patrician to give his impressions.
When I was a kid, I would lock myself in a little back bedroom at my grandparents with a copy of skyrim. I turned the air on the coldest setting even though it was the summer and made the room freezing cold. I play and pretend the air was the cold mountain air brushing on my face
Love this can listen to and not really have to watch video is great ! 🤘🤘🔥🔥
great video. i definitely remember being upset at the removed character customization from oblivion when skyrim came out, but i still couldn't put it down. while oblivion will always be my favorite game for getting me into games in the first place (also i love forests) i cannot deny that skyrim is, as a whole, is much more fully realized, despite not having as many interesting quests. but the daedric quests are actually pretty great.
This wasn't a very good modded retrospective. The cart at the beginning wasn't flipping out. Not realistic at all.
But I loved the video, definitely one of my favorite formats I've seen for these. I wish they would've made TES6 instead of Fallout 76. It's way overdue now. 10 years between games is too long.
10 years and counting. Here's hoping Starfield is a good stopgap because tes6 is barely in development still. The new engine will hopefully be worth it.
21:37 I played Skyrim for two weeks during my 8th grade summer because I had 2nd degree sunburns and it made me feel cold. It 100% works then too
ive gone back and forth on the Empire and Stormcloaks for years. i have no idea how ive never seen or heard of Ulfrics connection the the Thalmor . after all these years im still learning new things in this game
I love how you just tore the college of winterhold apart.
One of the greatest games ever created.
Beside the tiny lore mistakes (like calling Tiber Septim a dragon slaying emperor), this is an amazing video. I enjoyed it a lot, thanks for that. I’ll definetly be checking out the rest of your channel.
This is a gem of a channel 👍🏻
Your work is fantastic
My first play through in Riften I broke Bersis' vase and i felt terrible about it, on my next play through I made sure to visit him last and used the info Brynolf gave me to investigate how I could coerce everyone without coming off as a prick. it was only skin deep in terms of decision making, but I liked that I could in some way maintain my own honor, not like it matters to the game. The more i played the more Invested i go in how i played. it wasn't about the games limitations it was about placing some on my own will.
Private Sessions: I'm finally enjoying Skyrim.
**WHAT THEY DID TO YOU!?** Who they are holding hostage? Your cat?
Whenever i see that pfp ik its aboutta be a good video, love your fallout videos bro you should do a fo4 video
Or a f03 dlc
I always think it's funny how Paratus (the Synod mage in Mzulft) always devolves into petty threats, that he's gonna get you and the College of Winterhold in trouble with the Synod Council by tattling on you, that you're hoarding powerful artifacts. And I'm just like, "... Okay? The College of Winterhold is older than the Synod by millennia and has always been and still is an autonomous organization that isn't under the Synod's jurisdiction. Go and tattle, you useless dweeb. What do you honestly think the Synod could do about it?"
And then I proceed to soul trap and kill him. Every time. The fewer loose ends in the College of Winterhold's busted, janky as questline, the better.
What I find funny is that a twat that couldn't defend himself against the falmer that killed his whole team, to the point that he had to lock himself up in a room and risk dead by starvation, decides to antagonize the powerhouse that just slaughtered said falmer with ease; while they are both in the middle of nowhere, in a world with no forensic sciences.
Comes to show that, just because you are a scholar, that doesn't mean you are particularly smart.
I think Elder Scrolls games need to let you play as multiple characters in one save game. I want to play as an Argonian who becomes head of the Thieves Guild and then start a new character who is pursuing the main quest, at some point running into the head of the Thieves Guild - my Argonian character.
Every time you said riverrun instead of river wood I had to remember i wasn’t watching a game of thrones video
I love elder scrolls games for their lore and enviromental story telling and when they are allowed to characters. This is why while an mmo ESO is my favorute along with morrowind. Amazing stories , characters , lore and other provinences. Skyrim is great with modding community. Many actual lore relevant and very lore friendly mods helps with the game.
This video is brilliant man
Great video. I think I'm kinda doing the same thing you were talking about. I don't play Skyrim for it's quests and stories - I create my own story in this amazing world full of countless details.
26:25 if this was Morrowind you could turn on the Black-briars, while still staying in the guild.
realy fun chanel hope ypu make more in retrospective videos
Well, I guess SOMEONE knew how to train a dragon. Lol.
This spurred me to have another playthrough, attempting a similar style as you plus writing a journal as I go. I then saw your mod list and it blew my mind. How do you even get it to run. I have so many errors and stuff happen with just 10 or so mods. Going to try pulling out the camping and frostfire and I'll see how I go.
My fav has been skyrim forever.
I never liked oblivion to be honest. I think its the worst elder scrolls game I have ever played. Morrowind is the best and skyrim is a close second with daggerfall being 3rd.
Seeing this video makes me think you'd really like Kenshi. Look into it if you've never heard of it, the entire game is designed around you creating your own stories. Open world, sandbox, rpg-lite. It's a really good time
Love your vids! Heres a comment for mr. Algorithm.
I've been playing through again in survival mode and using a camping mod. Adds a new dynamic to the game and the removal of fast travel makes horses very useful.
My perfect game would be as follows:
Morrowind's story telling, magic system and world building
Oblivion's quest design, weapon durability and repair (yes I like item health, don't @ me)
BOTW's chemistry mechanics
Skyrim's crafting and resource gathering