Thanks to everyone tuning in. ANCIENT DRAGONBORN: I learned they weren't Dragonborn at pretty much the last possible minute (while listing out all the Dragonborn near the end of Act 2) and made the decision to just leave the mistakes in out of laziness, but also the realization that the mistake says more about the characters than anything I could have written. If they had been utilized better, I doubt an error like that would have survived in my script long.
I love how the Riften Thieves' Guild discuss all their plans directly under the open well in the middle of the town market and they wonder why they have bad luck. Then they hire a mute and things suddenly turn around.
Farkas murders the main character in cold blood and walks away slowly while saying: “You look strong. Come to Jorrvaskr and be a companion” Ah yes, the peak Skyrim experience.
To be fair, if you can get back up to get to jorrvaskr and join the companions after being bludgeoned to death, you're probably reasonably cut out for a warrior faction
I think my peak skyrim moment was when I killed a bunch of thugs, pull the note to see who I pissed off, and see the name "Drayden" or some shit. I have no idea who that is, so I google it. Whatever the name is nothing comes up. So I'm sitting there confused as to who the fuck I need to murder to prove a point, until I go to level up. I was "Drayden" it was me. I hired the hitmen to kill myself. I literally have no idea what I did to trigger this, I'm assuming it was a Mod issue, but that's the most Skyrim thing I've had happen.
The part about the dark brotherhood and Nazir's "less important" contracts didn't even need to be so self-damaging with it's presentation and insistence on being less important. Just establish that Nazir is efficient and Astrid is creative, so the contracts that have weird requirements (Baenlin and the mounted head, Francois Motierre, to draw from oblivion examples) go through Astrid as she pieces together how to satisfy the client's unique requests, while the simple "Just kill him I don't care how it gets done" go through Nazir. His line should be something more like "I'll admit, my contracts aren't as glamorous or as exciting as Astrid's. I handle the simpler jobs that come through. There's plenty of work to be had here, but don't expect a grand elaborate heist." His established attitude even works with the idea that he handles simple and efficient contracts, while his teasing jabs and jokes can be how he copes with how boring the jobs tend to be.
I think we're misunderstanding what becoming a champion of a deity is supposed to be. Obviously the Dragonborn can't go to the afterlife of any of the Daedra, because their soul is, by default, part of Akatosh, and as such, would return to Akatosh no matter what. Way I understand it, one has to actually dedicate themselves to a particular deity, whereas the protags of the games just contact the Daedric Princes for some immediate profit.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 what about the thieves guild quest line? You clearly pledge yourself to nocturnal also sithis if you join the dark brotherhood then there’s Mora at the end of Dragonborn
it's crazy how urag is like one of the most memorable characters from skyrim simply because "the arcaneum might as well be my own little plane of oblivion" is just such a character establishing line
@@pquonbbx the line isnt even that insanely good but the fact that most of skyrim's dialogue is extremely boring makes the times where it's kind of good stick out so much more
I find it weird that Emil had that speech where he talks about people "Ripping the pages out of your great novel and making paper airplanes with them" When it was the acknowledgement from the audience on his Dark Brotherhood storyline in Oblivion that made him so important in Bethesda
Shamus Young had a great point about The Companions. Imagine you are walking down a sidewalk, maybe heading to the bank or something, and there is a road crew doing work on the road. You pass just as they finish and one of the workers runs up to you and says, "some help you were." It's the exact same thing with Aela and the giant fight at the beginning of the game. It's so ridiculous. Bethesda was so terrified of the player missing the Companions in tiny Whiterun that they shoved the faction into the player's face in the dumbest way possible. Then they did it again with the Thieves Guild.
My favorite thing about that is how I got lost the first time I played and ended up in a dungeon before I made it to whiterun. I completely missed the encounter with the companions and the giant. As much as they tried to make it unavoidable, I missed it without even knowing it was a thing until my next character.
Yet this never happens for the College of Winterhold. Sure, every court mage will tell you to check it out, but it is in no way forced on the character like the other 2 main factions. Thanks Todd
I agree but it’s waaaaayyyyy dumber in the case of the thieves guild. Like… dude… it’s the THIEVES guild. Doesn’t it seem like the worst conceivable idea to literally walk up to random strangers and invite them to join your clandestine, secret, underground criminal organization? Like imagine walking into a pizza parlor in New York and some dude is like “ayy you look like you would be really good at intimidations rackets”
Right imagine going into the sewers finding a bar with the bartender that asked you to get an item that was "stolen" and after that gets introduced to a friend that needs help without much detail thrown in just to meet him at a place at a time and you have to get back an item that was stolen from him after which you are told to go to a 3rd place where you are then formerly introduced to the thieves guild with the first two being tests about willingness to break into buildings and second that you can follow orders and instructions and show skill. Rather being walked up on in the town market announcing that I'm here to steal
Best part of this is I don’t even know which game you’re talking about. My best guess is Morrowind but honestly Oblivion AND Skyrim are both also valid lmfao
it all depends on which is your first. oldheads love 2 and 3 while newf..s love 4 and 5. idk anyone who actually played 1 when it came out so uhh that i just wont count. its not like soulsborne where it just becomes preference to which iteration of the same formula you like the most. its like asking a new yorker which style of pizza is their favorite, of course theyre gonna pick new york style.
Picture this: The year is 2060. TES6 finally came out in 2043, and now the time has come to look back at it. You and your adult children get together - the whole extended family does, in fact. PatricianTV’s 70 hour analysis is about to release, and the government has decreed that the winter holidays will be extended an extra two weeks (mandatory). You tell the grandkids stories of how you were there at the Oblivion and Skyrim analysis premieres. Maybe you watched the Morrowind videos the moment they first released. It’s gonna be a good 70 hours, you think to yourself.
@@admiraltonydawning3847 Picture this: Todd Howard in his old age has decided, after the contentious relationship with Morrowind fans and their 6 (soon to be 7) fan-ports into other engines (including TES6 and DaggerfallUnity3), to hire PatricianTV as his loremaster and lead supervisor to balance out retaining the old guard-- now several generations deep of Morrowind fans-- with pulling in new audiences with modernized action RPG mechanics and plots. You learn this fact from a cameo by old man Todd in the last 30 seconds of this 70 hours epic.
The hired thugs trying to kill you can lead to some unintentional silliness. My first encounter with them was leaving Solitude. I was very surprised and it was a tough fight because I was on the highest difficulty (before a patch added a newer highest difficulty). I then read the contract and learned it was the innkeeper I had stayed with. I stole some small consumable (I think a potion?) from my room. I had basically done the equivalent of not paying for those overpriced snacks that some hotels offer, and the innkeep responded with attempted murder.
I vaguely remember doing something similar, I think I misclicked on something and accidentally stole a flower or whatever from a shelf, I dropped it hoping to not get a bounty and the thugs showed up as soon as I left the building. Word gets around fast for a place with no internet.
Killing Astrid was the first thing I tried, and seeing the quest failed text only to be immediately followed by "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood" was the most satisfying thing in the game.
I'd say it's a shame there wasn't more of that kind of stuff, but that quest was rather lackluster, I don't know if they'd have made anything else you could "fail" and start a differing questline for would be any better.
@@Alpine1996 Yup. Totally agree! I hate how they basically force you to be bad guy, or at the very least "The Antihero". And worst part is that it doesnt even matter what you choose in the game, its the cannon lore that states that you end up being connected to daedra. In oblivion you end up taking over Sheogorath's realm, and Dragonborn just becomes Hermeus Mora's new collectable. I hate that!
1:13:20 It reminds me of a Tumblr post that someone made a while ago, where they pointed out that Bethesda's "environmental storytelling" is usually just placing a dead body somewhere and placing a note on it that's like, "Oh, no, I've been murdered!"
Reminds me of the one cave that drained the life energy of anyone who was in it, and some guy kept a journal with entries spanning several days right up to the point of death about he was starving, thirsty and so weak he couldn't lift his arm... yet he was writing that in perfect handwriting at the same time, instead of just crawling his dumbass out of the cave to fucking survive and escape it's draining touch.
A better example would be the Wooden Mask you can find at the Dragon Priest summit, its subtlely implied that the Thalmor were after the Khonarik Golden Dragon Priest Mask and made a time-travelling mask to find it, but his bodyguards killed him in suspicion.
It feels good to know that my anger and rage about the magic "system" isn't just me. Calling it now that TES6 will have 3 spells per school, and 3 schools total. I see restoration getting phased out and made available to all.
I felt your rage on the magic system man, Bethesda is like a pizza place that sells the best pizza dough of all time, but they are to lazy to make the other ingredients good since the dough sells so well, so the rest of the ingredients are literally human feces, so you go buy dough and make the rest of the pizza by yourself in your house with mods.
They need someone like Obsidian to handle the story and dialog for them for the elder scrolls games like Obsidian did for Fallout New Vegas. Just focus on the world design
@@belhariry Obsidian is a terrible company now, and they will not help in any way shape or form. I would rather play Fallout 4, again, then have to sit through the slog fest that is Outerworlds. "We get it, you're a communist"
same i don't care about the game and won't even pirate it but i'm waiting to see if it comes out at all so patrician tv can make a 30 hour any % speedrun analysis
Got to the bit about the werewolfs-THANK YOU! It was always so irritating to have a nord warrior character having to abandon the nord warrior afterlife to play the nord warrior questline
yeah it's kind of weird how shallow the warrior questline is for the game that is rather warrior oriented. I mean heck the primary antagonists are just reskinned bandits but with silver swords and alchemy ingredients. there *might* have been cut content that would have made the silver hand more interesting. But nothing came of it.
@Victoria Thorson Based. Too many redditoids polluting everything with their repugnant jargon. They're already coping and seething after being found out.
I feel my bones trying to escape my skin every time I hear Emil Pagliarulo say “great American novel” which is often because I constantly watch this video
The Way We Look at Things You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. -2 Timothy 3:1 Someone said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. A Christian worldview will affect the way that we see everything. And why is this important? Because we are living in the last days. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And if ever there was a time when we need to know our Bibles and have a close walk with Christ, the time is now. Describing the end times, the apostle Paul said, “In the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control” (2 Timothy 3:1-3) Paul went on to say, “They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly” (verses 3-5) Is that not an accurate assessment of the times in which we are living? The United States has never been more spiritual yet more immoral. We throw the word spiritual around a lot. But do we know what it means? We live in an age when we can write our own apps and customize our home screens. We can keep the stuff we like and throw out the things we don’t. And we carry that thinking into other aspects of our lives. The result is something called moral relativism. Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process and not made by a Creator God. There is no devil. There is no good or evil. And there is no plan or purpose for our lives. Moral relativism also teaches that we are all basically good, and if we happen to go bad, then it’s because we’re simply products of our environment. It teaches that we make our own truth. For instance, if you believe in a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy, you can keep that. But if you’re offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, you can delete that. It works out perfectly. Or so it seems. Moral relativism may sound fine in theory. But what if we were to put it into practice? Will a god of our own making be able to save us in the final day? Of course not. A biblical worldview says there is a God as revealed in the Bible, and the Bible alone is the authority and source of that belief. It is not what we feel or what is popular, acceptable, or perceived as cool. It is what the Bible says.
Ever since the first time I listened to this video I come back to hear your magic rant again, it feels liberating to hear someone else understand my pain about magic in skyrim.
@@austinbevis4266 it’s a random drop, I’ve found it in every odd nook and cranny from random chests in the wild to inside dungeon chests. It’s like a clingy ex who won’t get over the fact you dumped them.
I found Riften so funny during my playthrough. I'll be honest, my initial reaction was pretty positive. I thought that having a crooked guard try to swindle you as you enter was a nice touch and a good first impression for the "Thieves Guild City." Then all that goodwill was instantly lost when I actually entered and five separate NPC's approached me to announce how much they *love* crime It's a great example of media undermining itself by lacking all restraint. They couldn't just drop a big hint that this town had crime and corruption, they had to go so over the top with it that it swings back into absurdity
Genuinely so much of Riften's intrigue could have been saved by just having the talk about the thieves guild be prompted by the player talking to someone saying "hey i almost got mugged by the guards" and then the thieves guild gets introduced. After the player starts asking around Brynolf comes up to them and starts asking them if they're interested in actually joining the guild or if they're going to have a problem
The Way We Look at Things. You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. -2 Timothy 3:1 Someone said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. A Christian worldview will affect the way that we see everything. And why is this important? Because we are living in the last days. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And if ever there was a time when we need to know our Bibles and have a close walk with Christ, the time is now. Describing the end times, the apostle Paul said, “In the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control” (2 Timothy 3:1-3) Paul went on to say, “They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly” (verses 3-5) Is that not an accurate assessment of the times in which we are living? The United States has never been more spiritual yet more immoral. We throw the word spiritual around a lot. But do we know what it means? We live in an age when we can write our own apps and customize our home screens. We can keep the stuff we like and throw out the things we don’t. And we carry that thinking into other aspects of our lives. The result is something called moral relativism. Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process and not made by a Creator God. There is no devil. There is no good or evil. And there is no plan or purpose for our lives. Moral relativism also teaches that we are all basically good, and if we happen to go bad, then it’s because we’re simply products of our environment. It teaches that we make our own truth. For instance, if you believe in a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy, you can keep that. But if you’re offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, you can delete that. It works out perfectly. Or so it seems. Moral relativism may sound fine in theory. But what if we were to put it into practice? Will a god of our own making be able to save us in the final day? Of course not. A biblical worldview says there is a God as revealed in the Bible, and the Bible alone is the authority and source of that belief. It is not what we feel or what is popular, acceptable, or perceived as cool. It is what the Bible says.
My first contact with the companions: 1.Get yelled at for not helping 2.Enter Building with 2 people fighting 3.Use my heal spell which seemed to bug them out, they draw their weapon and go on a rampage 4.About 5 people are now dead
The whole series should be mandatory viewing for *the whole* staff. They should watch it as a group and argue over the points he makes for a week or two straight.
@@baronvonbeandip I think it’s mostly important the senior designers and leads watch the videos. I’d say emil in particular needs to watch these but we all know how he deals with criticism, so i’m not holding my breath that any of this will get through to the person who needs to hear it most lmao. Really it just makes me sad that a series with as much untapped potential as the goddamn elder scrolls has to languish as a result of devs who decided long ago that dumbing down the game’s systems to the point where character role play wasn’t even really viable anymore was the best way to sell more copies. The worst thing is that it did, and went on to bolster their highly flawed ideas about about what players wanted from their games. They kept taking meaningful stuff out under the pretense of keeping things simple. Now we have starfield, a game with so few meaningful mechanics to engage with that it’s not really anything special to anyone. It just exists in this lame state of being kind of alright at everything. Idk, hopefully some senior Bethesda devs played baldur’s gate or something and had a come to Jesus moment about how shallow their modern “RPG” games are by comparison. The future of elder scrolls is looking grim quite honestly.
@@Gamernutritionfacts Honestly none of that matters if they insist on using a game engine that's one of, if not the worst, in the industry. I have never played games that feel worse to play than Bethesda games. Your character feels like a floating camera with zero feedback. The gunplay in starfield is just.. wow. They should teach college game development classes about how not to make a video game feel good to play and use Bethesda games as an example.
@@beeman4266At least the older titles were RPGs where you could kinda get away with it. The closer it comes to action adventure, the more obvious the engine flaws are.
The whole series (Morrowind, Oblivion, both Skyrim and Starfield videos) should be mandatory viewing for Todd and Emil especially. A lot of the problems with the later games come down to their direction and writing respectively.
Best part about the Companions quest line is that you can tell off Aela when you first meet her after the giant fight and she'll still invite you to join them anyways. She's the original Preston Garvey, no matter what you say she still adds the quest to your journal.
The problem with this game is you hardly ever go to the sky. Not even the rim of it. So the game already lies to you on that alone. At least Morrowind had a lot of wind storms and other wind related things.
Not only was the wind today, but it was also on the morrow. Also with fatigue if you ran and jumped very far and were attacked you would go 'Far, then fell'.
The frightening thought is there will be at least one person who reads the comment above & nods along without irony, rather than dismissing it as the equivalent of someone scratching "For a good time, call" on a bathroom stall.
The fact that it works like that bothers the hell out of me. Luckily the alternate start mod Skyrim Unbound has an option so dragons spawn x in-game days after the beginning of the game regardless of what you do. Even cooler, you start the main quest by killing one of them on your own and dynamically finding out you're the dragonborn when you absorb its soul. It's such a cool change.
05:21:48 God, this section about the nonexistence of Bethesda-like open world RPGs with actually good magic systems from other devs just absolutely broke my heart. Been feeling that pain since 2008. We need other devs to pick up the torch Bethsoft threw in the trash, just like with PDX interactive.
Dragon's Dogma came out 7 months after Skyrim and being a Sorcerer in that us awesome. Meteors, tornado, lightning whip, ice tendrils, ect. Can't wait for DD2.
@@Rannos22 Yeah it is. Actually I really like Skyrim's graphics even now. It has a very consistent art style, and everything is modeled quite well. It is a huge step up from Morrowind, and especially Oblivion. Might not be bleeding edge anymore, but Its a far cry of being butt ugly, like many games of its generation.
I never realized the potential of Skyrim VR until I saw the footage of you waking up Mirabelle Ervine, groveling at the statue of Meridia, and slapping the orc who was talking in the middle of Malacath's speech. I've watched your Morrowind and Oblivion retrospectives multiple times start to finish, thanks for another 20 hours of entertainment.
Tbh with certain mods like Spellsiphon, magic feels so good in SkyrimVR and the melee combat works well enough that you can still be a little campy. Absolutely my favorite way to play Skyrim
What I've learned from this video is that typical RPG progression mechanics are fundamentally incompatible with "flexible playstyle" mentality. You can't have enemies get harder over time and give players more damage on their main abilities and then expect them to be successful starting over with something new
You should probably unlearn that because its untrue. Just because Bethesda sucks at conveying the idea doesn't make it a bad one. As an example, if the RPG skills were agglutinative as opposed to exclusionary, avatar strength would scale linearly with player level. If the pool that strength drew from was shared to all skills, strengthening that pool would simply scale everything uniformly (more or less).
@@baronvonbeandipif levelling up your strength also increased your arrow and magic damage than it's already not a *traditional RPG mechanic*, bc the entire point of role playing is making choices about your character progression, and homogenizing it like this would make the choices irrelevant. That's also why flexible playstyles are incompatible with a traditional RPG experience, bc a traditional role play involves you picking a role and playing as it. How often do you see in fiction mages deciding to trade their staff for a bow or warriors deciding to battle with pure magic for a couple fights; not often right, because people don't abandon the skills they've learned for years. The best way you can achieve flexibility is just allowing people to refund their levelling/perks in RPGs that use the traditional system like Fallout, so that you can just take back all the upgrade points and perks you put into and place them into new categories. Though I don't see how this could work with Elder Scrolls levelling system where the skills level up by usage
I think the way STALKER did level scaling was good. Basically an open world FPS, mostly killing humies but also mutant monsters. In the begining areas you're mostly fighting dudes in tracksuits, cuz russian game, and cheap, simple guns. then later one you're fighting experienced fighters with advanced body armour and weapons, and the monsters get more dangerous and numerous too, as well as environmental hazards. So the baseline humans basically don't change, just their gear and tactics, which you can get as well, and the monsters and environment hazards kind of scale up too as you get more experienced with dealing with them, and as an add on there's a story reason for all this too. Felt very natural, and you can always go back and curb stomp the early areas. Heck u can even "downgrade" yourself by changing back your gear to the lower level stuff and see how well you fare with only your new experience on how the game works. Not much reason to actually do this but I loved the games so I just did for fun, which I think is a good sign of a good game
I think a way to allow that flexibility while still being a "typical" rpg mechanics wise is not scale most enemies to the player, instead allowing that you can go back a notch and grind for levels/exp/points, as well as allowing refund of perks and stuff like that. Or maybe a multiclass system, where you can unlock classes and they level separately but that has a lot of stuff to consider too. I think re-speccing could be fine in tes in a limited sense, like think of a 360° circle as the playstyles and maybe you can remake your playstyle in like, 120° slice or something. Not that i think anyways that tes should do this because again, role playing + just start a new playthrough. If you couldn't do every single faction, daedric quest and other multi choice questlines inbthe same character you would be more incentivized to try to rellay the game with other characters.
"there are no priests of nocturnal" "what if the other priests find out we're not really priests?" accidentally setting up a hilarious situation where every priest of nocturnal is afraid that the other priests will find out they're not really a priest of nocturnal
Thanks to some finicky looseness on the definition of what "casting a spell" means, you can become Archmage without having ever cast a spell yourself. The least educated Dragonborn can just pick up a couple staves or scrolls and be hailed as the new Archmage.
@@731freeman I wouldn't call the Oblivion Mage's Guild questline "good" exactly, but it at the very least actually tries to replicate what being a student of magic would be like. In fact that's what most of the questlines in Oblivion are: lacking in objective quality, but you can at least tell there was real effort put in and there ARE good ideas there. Unlike Skyrim's quests.
One idea that I've seen to make the companions questline much better deals with the silver hand being a group that split off from the companions after the circle became werewolves. That the silver hand stayed true to Ysgramor and their nordic heritage by rebelling against lycanthropy and trying to find the pieces of wuthraad to honor Ysgramor. This would've added so much depth and maybe you could've even joined the silver hand to return the companions guild to their former glory, rather than being forced to become a werewolf.
I really like this idea. Such a simple concept that might not have taken much time to incorporate into the factions quest line. And as you said it would add so much depth to the companions, along with providing an interesting way to have a meaningful interaction with the silver hand.
@@himynameis3664 I wouldn't say that would be a quick or easy add. You would need to make new quests (even if they are just radiant quests featuring wolfs and maybe a werewolf), a comparable number of voice lines, unless Bethesda wanted to be super lazy they would need the town to have opinions on the Silver Hand killing and replacing the local guild. Add this to Patrician's theory that the werewolf stuff was added late and they were already ignorant enough about denying becoming a werewolf. Some fans could probably do a barebones version of it. Or a really good version depending on voice acting and the ability to avoid breaking the game by killing the Companions.
@@himynameis3664 It most likely would have taken a LOT of time to implement. Knowing Bethesda’s writing process, they would not only add more depth to the Silver Hand (in this case completely reworking who they are, creating more characters and needing more voice lines) but would also dehumanize and strip depth from the Companions. As cool as it would be for the Dragonborn to have to choose between a no-nonsense guild of werewolf hunters or a community-bound guild of werewolf warriors, The Elder Scrolls isn’t really known for their ability to create dynamic, impactful, and difficult choices. I may be wrong but I believe this idea came from Fudge Muppet and is honestly a very good idea. However the fact that the Silver Hand in game is just a bandit faction with silver weapons proves Bethesda either did not have time or simply didnt care
And you know what? Kodlack DOES NOT like being a ware wolf in the end. He actively wants to un-lycanthrope himself, and silver hand respect him for this. Maybe silver hand and circle were at peace because both respect Kodlack. Then mid point in quest Kodlack dies because and this causes Sliver hand and Companions to go war. The war is about who gets to do what to body. Circle wants to burn him in Skyforge so his body strengthens their weapons while Silver hand want to un-lycanthrope Kodlack and show everyone in Skyrim that Circle are ware wolfs.
11:17 I just wanna highlight that during the cart sequence, you still haven't made your character, so it would be either very immersion breaking to have the player see them as another character, only to have to morph into whatever character you wish minutes later.
It's because Ralof is actually talking to the player. That's why you can't respond except with gestures. That's why Doki Doki Literature wholesale copied Skyrim's formula with the character Monika.
The craziest thing about the Companions isn’t just that they force you to become a werewolf. But when you first turn, the game *expects* you to go kill random Whiterun civilians to test out your powers. Like, these guys are supposed to be mercenaries that defend the city. And they just let you loose to go kill innocent people? Why not have the player character go on a werewolf rampage in the silver hand base? Or better yet, have the silver hand attack on Jorvaskyr happen much earlier in the questline minus the slaying of Kodlak that way the newbie player character Companion can prove himself further by testing his werewolf skills on people who actually deserve it and thus protecting the home of the Companions while doing so. Skyrim is the only game where the heroic warrior factions make you feel more like a scumbag rather than a hero
I remember way back on release when I first did that quest, I did go on a rampage not thinking much of it. Only during that killing spree, Belethor happened to be leaving his shop and aggroed, and I killed him during the scene, which meant he was dead for good after the transformation ended. Which meant that, until Ysolda decided to take up the mantel, I just didn't have access to the Whiterun general store for a non-insignificant amount of time. Hell, instead of rampaging in the city, they could have had an underground training area that they used for the new Werewolfs to get the hang of their powers while also not potentially harming innocent people during it.
You don't need to go on The rampage, you just need to wait for like 5min. With you do that they will Say "Many of Us don't have the luck to not go on a bloodbath on your first night as a werewolf"
@@samfire3067 yeah so basically, the game still expects you to go kill random npcs because the Companions will have special dialogue just in case you decide not to 😭
@@samfire3067 I think the point still stands that they know a newly turned werewolf is generally inclined toward a blood rage and left you in the middle of a town to go through it. Even if you can just stand in place, the Companions are impressed that you didn't slaughter the people they put you in a position to slaughter.
Are you guys dumb? Did you not read the 3 lines of dialogue before the blood ritual? The whole point of the night of the transformation is to RP how you would act as a werewolf (either rampage or just leave the city) and you get a dialogue acording to your choice. We know thanks to Aela that some werewolves can control themselves and others just go feral. Just because you're smoothbrained and need to click every red dot on map for a dopamine release doesn't mean the game is badly designed. If this sort of roleplaying option was on morrowind you guys would praise it 😂.
Ya know what would've been an interesting climax of the college of winterhold questline? Using magic to raise the collapsed parts of winterhold from the sea, which opens up another side quest (or side questline) where you help rebuild winterhold.
Honestly, that's a cool idea, imagine if it gave you boons like a farm where what alchemy resources you cultivate give you like x4 the normal amount, so plucking a 1 nirnroot gives you 4, and so on.
I have thought about that too. Well rebuilding Winter hold and gaining the respect of the people that live there. It would make sense to have a quest like that, considering the damage the College did to the village.
I recall a post about Todd Howard being in chess club, model UN, debate club, and Tennis or something. With a caption along the lines of: "No wonder he thinks it's acceptable to be master of all guilds and factions". Just something rewatching this series has made me remember
Your Elder Scrolls retrospectives helped me get through three months of hospital last November. Now, a year later, I get to look back at that time and enjoy a new instalment of your wonderful series. Thank you very much Pat!
I went through the entire transformation arc of starting off as a proud and upright mage, to becoming a stealth mage, to using a conjured bow to be technically still a mage while acting as a full blown stealth archer. It was harrowing.
Nobody's going to see this, but I just wanted to point out that Jyrik's staff is not ONLY a lightning staff with a restoration staff's model, but also casts a unique version of the lightning spell that no other weapon in the game can cast. Usually lightning weapons deal X damage to health and half as much to magicka; Jyrik's staff deals X damage to health and TWICE as much to magicka, making it surprisingly strong against other magic users - including dragons.
Hey you thought no one would see this, but I, another magic player, did! I also wanted to point this out. Jyrik's staff is like a baby staff of magnus depending on when you get it, and it remains somewhat useful throughout the questline and definitely helps with morokei whenever you happen to fight him at a point where dragon priests are actually a threat.
My first Skyrim playthrough was a magic playthrough and it also put me into the Skyrim Limbo that I don't think ive ever woken up from... Very cool, wish it was told to the player. Wish I had some resource that could tell me all the unique unlisted weapon effects... maybe some kind of sheet that I could spread out and look at...
I remember being confused by the charcoal/paper thing in the Thieves Guild quest because it was so out of character for the rest of the game. Skyrim had never asked me to solve a puzzle, so I was absolutely stuck when it suddenly dropped a vague hint instead of a clear quest marker. (and of course I couldn't be completely sure it wasn't just a bug)
I bet someone at Bethesda genuinely forgot to put that quest marker in, or a bug prevented it appearing in the game and nobody at Bethesda has fixed it since. There are so few examples of a puzzle like this one (albeit extremely simple) in this entire game! It's bizarre. It's a shame the puzzles in these games are withering away.
@@Guitar-Dog patrician wasn’t kidding when he said that despite collaborating closely with Private sessions and holding a similar philosophy/style, they take very different approaches to their videos on the game. I can confidently second the recommendation
What gets me most about the companions is that when you transform for the first time, you're supposed to go on a rampage of Whiterun and kill a bunch of people before the companions manage to stop you. And when you return to Whiterun afterwards? There's not a single fucking thing in the entire 'city', not even a line from an NPC or a fucking notice on a wall somewhere, that even suggests a werewolf went rampaging through the cloud district and murdering a bunch of people. Not a SINGLE THING. The game reacted to this so poorly that for like 5 years I literally thought it was a dream sequence and didn't actually happen. But no. It did happen. Not only this, but it's suggested to have happened before with Farkas and probably others, and yet no-one in Whiterun seems to remember the fact that on multiple instances Werewolves have suddenly come out of Jorvaskr and started tearing people apart. Lmao.
There’s also the exit to the countryside outside the walls of Whiterun too. There should’ve been dialogue acknowledging how the player handled the immediate influx of a ton of power in the form of your werewolf form. One line would be about a werewolf tearing through Whiterun and, hopefully add some extra NPC’s and guards set to a low level to sell the power the player just gained, then have a separate line you can hear radiantly off a werewolf roaming the countryside.
On a sidenote, can we talk about how Whiterun is home to several daedric artifacts by the time we arrive and after we're done? You've already got the Ebony Blade up in Dragons reach, just collecting dust in the basement. And then the Companions are hoarding a small shrine basically dedicated to Hircine under the Skyforge. And then we proceed to collect more relics of Hircine near the altar. How is Whiterun not more cursed?
@@puppykitten4779 You can literally just stand there behind the hall and nobody comes after you, nobody can see you. I just sit there and wait till the transformation ends, every time.
Regarding the conversation about Ulfric as a "Stormcloak asset": my interpretation upon discovering this dossier wasn't that Ulfric was a ally, former or otherwise, of the Thalmor. Rather, his existence is useful to the Thalmor, and while Ulfric's goals are separate from whatever the Aldmeri Dominion might be pursuing, the manner in which he is attempting to achieve those goals is very convenient for Thalmor purposes. Not a direct agent, but still a pawn.
But in the same times it is saying that they don't want a Stormcloak victory, so I think they are really just for a prolonged conflict and nothing else. Basicly Ulfric is usefull if he couldn't win or too strong to lose, if the balance broken the Thalmor is in a bad situation.
@@reactiondavant-garde3391 Right, but as long as that balance isn't broken (and before the Last Dragonborn shows up, there's no sign that it will be), Ulfric simply being alive helps the Thalmor out.
I am actually surprised Pat never guessed that out. That's the first thing that comes up in mind when you read "an asset". Because that takes like three seconds of logical conclusions to get to the point you've made. Pat sometimes is so bad it's just not even funny.
@@kommandantwunder6785 I mean Patrician made this point just doesn't made in this form, when he say that the unresolved Civil War is good for the Thalmor he makeing this exact point.
I've never even played any Elder Scrolls games, I'm just using this to try to get through my shifts stocking shelves so I don't go crazy from the monotony. It's a lot easier when you have a huge piece of content like this.
The mod "Serana Dialog Add-on" gives her dialog after the Companions werewolf bit where she calls them all terrible people for hazing you into a daedric ritual with Hircine and then angrily refuses to take part in some of the other quests and waits outside. Of course makes sense for her character to be angry seeing because of how she became a vampire. Unfortunately the mod still has to work within the confines of Skyrim's vanilla quests so she doesn't get to the point where she gets so mad she leaves, but I thought it was nice seeing that some mod authors agree with you about that moment being nonsensical in-story.
@@lillycline1414 I enjoyed her character from what I remember, but I really don't like how the mod devolves into full on fan fiction where she gets way too obsessed with the player character. Also her not marrying the player character was a choice by the writers that I feel was a correct one to fit her character.
The companions are not the fighters guild, they are the werewolf guild. You don't start the companions questline unless you want to be a werewolf. It's just that the game never actual tells you that beforehand. It's entirely meta-knowledge. Oh, but accepting and completing a contract-killing doesn't necessarily mean you're okay with the contract-killer guild, so we'll include the option to destroy that guild after you complete your first contract-killing. But just this once.
The rant about how garbage pure magic builds are in Skyrim was nice to hear. They're not just badly balanced, they're very poorly designed. It was so obvious they didn't expect people to not use a melee weapon of some kind even as a mage.
The only exception is using a cloak spell then using invisibility so you slowwwwwwwly damage everything but they can't see you so they just stand there slowly dying.
@@UsingGorillaLogic It i not about being fast, the problem that you have to chees it, if it was fast it would be bad. As Patricion said, the magic too weak or too strong nothing in between.
The only time i had fun with a pure mage build was when i installed mods that -increased the number of equippable rings - added spells that enabled me to turn full soulstones into empty ones of the next higher tier - changed charging spell animations - had fully functional dragon wings. - added time dilation spells. And changed that wards worked like shields in addition to reducing magic damage.
Listening to this a second (or third) time I'm actually writing down notes about game and magic system design. I want to make my own game at some point, and these videos are invaluable research and feedback
2:40:00 This part of my recent playthrough of Skyrim was something. When Karlia drank the invisibility potion, she had fire arrows (from the Anniversary edition) on her back. Karlia became invisible as usual, but you could clearly see her exact location because the arrows emitted a particle effect. Truly a Skyrim moment.
I also bought the anniversary edition. It was a $20 upgrade and I both don't regret it and also feel bad as I've not been into Skyrim enough to really make use of that purchase. But what I did play was fun and absolutely busted when enemies would spawn with the enchanted arrows and different variations of armors/weapons. They would absolutely fuck me up with those arrows, and they made me understand the utility of being a "bow boi" even as a heavy mage main. Great purchase if you love games that make you mad af with unfairness. Just play legendary through to adept, whatever is comfiest for having a fun time and being able to progress. That's what I do, I give myself 5 lives and then I go down a difficulty *per big fight* so dragons ain't shit as long as I don't get cutscene one shot and same with fucken bandits. That's another thing that pissed me off playing Skyrim anytime, cinematic kills shouldn't be allowed by enemies bc they are goofed and don't really consider armor values leading to you being one shot.
@@isumkitchens5329 yeeeaaah, the creation club crap genuinely makes the game worse, your quest log will be a mess, probably permanently since a lot of the quests have a tendency to break.
The Silver Hand is a group of people who lost family an loved ones to Werewolves. So, they joined together for revenge. See Bethesda, wasn’t hard to make a simple back story
And they would go on to do it again with the _Gunners_ Just slightly better eqquiped raiders in the same way the Silverhand are just slightly different Bandits.
They could have also been lead by people who were originally Companions until they found out about the whole werewolf thing. Hell maybe they were railroaded into joining the circle or leaving like the player is lol. Just like that there is an extra layer to a non-faction.
I'd have joined them, given the option. The Companions are a bunch of preening, arrogant, self-serving, entitled assholes who talk a good game about honour, and glory, but are really just a bunch of lazy thugs and literal bloodthirsty monsters. I've never so intensely disliked a faction in an Elder Scrolls game...except maybe the Stormcloaks. Not even the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood, who are like, supposed to be immoral. But the Companions are presented as 'good'.
@@MediumRareOpinionsGoes even further back than that. Remember Talon company from Fallout 3? A group that is insanely organized and has more locations under their grip than any single faction in the game and you’re never given any backstory to them beyond “Yeah they’re mercenaries that will take literally any contract”. Who formed it? Where are they based out of? How do they recruit new people? Where do they get the resources to provide all of their men with decent armor and weapons that are comparable to the BoS? These mfrs even had artillery set up in multiple areas, something the BoS never managed
Loving this video so far, but I did wanna say at around 7:16:00 that there is actually evidence of Hert and Hern killing travelers, they have a small butchery shed where if I can remember correctly, there's normal animal corpses, a troll skull, and also a human skull. I wanna say it was bloody too but I'd have to go back to look honestly. Nitpick aside I really do love this video, and as someone who's favorite run of the game was a pure mage I feel incredibly validated by your rant on magick in Skyrim lol. I had fun in vanilla with it but kinda like you I had more fun as a mage once I started exploiting. I did the jail armor exploit to equip multiple sets of armor and enchanted gear to decrease all my magicka costs to 0, which was incredibly fun once I got the master level lightning spell since I could down dragons so quickly with it. Love your video though ! Can't wait to watch the second part once I finish this behemoth of a video.
Man, his rant about the companions really resonated. I had the exact same experience as someone who played these games on release and felt massively insulted by the fact that the game just locked out if we refused. The companions, the group of honourable warrior tradition following the original companions that paved the northern blood of men to forever more stay in Tamriel - that in order to progress you have to damn yourself forevermore to Hircine and away from Sovngarde - the fact that the only way to become a member of the circle you have to take it is... I'm glad Patrician even called out the general community reaction because yes, Bethesda was right. Its only recently when people began being critical about this questline across the many discussions and videos about Skyrim. Feels like a weight lifted. Glad I put notifications for this video.
God damn. @PatricianTV my man, I know you're unlikely to see this with how popular these videos are becoming but I have to still say.. your take on magic in Skyrim and the general reviewer take on it is.. as a guy who started on daggerfall precisely because I loved the idea of a game where I can use magic to do anything from opening locks to teleporting - and the general take of how the most terrifying enemies of the elder Scrolls universe are literally just powerful mages (Jagar fucking THARN WAS JUST A STRONG MAGE AND HES A GOD DAMN FINAL BOSS). You saying all this about the utter bullshit of balancing and the grindiness of possibilities on what magic is in Skyrim is so.. just so liberating. I and probably many others watching resonate with this.
Entirly agree, I really don't like how they made so little amount quest for the different guilds and they didn't even made alternatives for them. I mean why not make a werewolf "guild" who are in war with the companion? I know because for some reasen you have to be able complite any questline in one character.
Its almost eerie how pat described something so similar to what happened to me in Skyrim. I was so excited for the game after I played so much oblivion as a child in like 2009 (I played the ps3 goty version), and I finished the companions quest line and literally stopped playing the game 11 hours in.
52:09 "Morrowind and Oblivion may have both started their fighter's factions with a rat quest, but Skyrim finishes its fighter's faction with infinite rat quests." This really sums up Skyrim's quantity-over-quality ethos.
When discussing magic it's a real shame they decided to remove silence as a spell. Not only for the reason you mentioned but also because they could make silence prevent use of the thuum or even dragon shouts, making it both a powerful tool as well as another thing to watch out for.
@@LoftOfTheUniversewell they took the easy way. They could have made different tiers of Silence and make it so dragons require the Master Level Silence to spell to silence. But no, Bethesda is lazy
The problem with fast travel vs no fast travel is that it assumes you'll have things to do in between locations. Not always the case. I'll use Ulfric's axe and Whiterun as an example. Assuming you don't use the carriage (fast travel) you will walk from Helgen to Windhelm, go to the Serpent Stone, walk back to Windhelm, then walk from Windhelm to Whiterun (essentially the same route as Helgen - Windhelm), walk from Whiterun to Windhelm, then Windhelm back to Whiterun. You backtrack on the Serpent Stone walk once, and the Whiterun to Windhelm route 3 times. 4 times if you count the fact that you have to walk back to Ulfric after you win. Here's the fundamental problem. There's nothing to do in between point A and B in this game if you've already walked between point A and B. If I kill 4 bandits on the road to WIndhelm, I won't come back and find trolls or wolves devouring their bodies 10 minutes later. I won't find other bandits investigating where their friends went. There won't be guards investigating the scene. Instead, I'll find the same 4 dead bandits, unmoved, the same loot still on them.
@@Korijenkins1414 Then thats a problem. Basing your design around the fact that fast travel will always be available once you discover a location. That's actually the point he's trying to make.
The Aventus Aretino problem could have been solved by just having the rumor be "Hey, did you hear about that kid who ran away from that otphanage? Wonder where he went", making it possible that by the time you find him he had just begun performing the Black Sacrament. But I guess they had to dangle that Dark Brotherhood story right in front of the players' face to slap them with it.
And they got way worse at doing that in Fallout 4, start you in the corner of the map with only 1 direction then make it impossible to miss dogmeat, you felt like you earned him in FO3, bethesda are getting worse at rewarding the player for simply buying a game from them.
The Way We Look at Things You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. -2 Timothy 3:1 Someone said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. A Christian worldview will affect the way that we see everything. And why is this important? Because we are living in the last days. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And if ever there was a time when we need to know our Bibles and have a close walk with Christ, the time is now. Describing the end times, the apostle Paul said, “In the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control” (2 Timothy 3:1-3) Paul went on to say, “They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly” (verses 3-5) Is that not an accurate assessment of the times in which we are living? The United States has never been more spiritual yet more immoral. We throw the word spiritual around a lot. But do we know what it means? We live in an age when we can write our own apps and customize our home screens. We can keep the stuff we like and throw out the things we don’t. And we carry that thinking into other aspects of our lives. The result is something called moral relativism. Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process and not made by a Creator God. There is no devil. There is no good or evil. And there is no plan or purpose for our lives. Moral relativism also teaches that we are all basically good, and if we happen to go bad, then it’s because we’re simply products of our environment. It teaches that we make our own truth. For instance, if you believe in a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy, you can keep that. But if you’re offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, you can delete that. It works out perfectly. Or so it seems. Moral relativism may sound fine in theory. But what if we were to put it into practice? Will a god of our own making be able to save us in the final day? Of course not. A biblical worldview says there is a God as revealed in the Bible, and the Bible alone is the authority and source of that belief. It is not what we feel or what is popular, acceptable, or perceived as cool. It is what the Bible says.
6:00:00 Fun fact: there's a _single_ loot cave in Mulzitz in which a key is lying just out of reach of the open window, that you can grab with telekinesis. Or you can just lock pick it, because we wouldn't want to lock anyone out of something.
@@MazrimTaim you know it’s the damndest thing, those letters went into my brain and my brain instantly translated it into mzulft without even noticing he fucked up. I’ve been playing this game too long🤦🏻♂️
Apparently the Silver Hand is actually a splinter group of the Companions, who left the guild after the Companions started becoming werewolfs, in protest of this practice. I honestly find it such a missed opportunity to not give the player the chance to join them instead if they didn't want to become a werewolf.
3:25:00 "Does [Bethesda] realize that you don't generally be enrolled in a college to visit its library?" Well, they consulted the University of Maryland when it came to the topography of Oblivion (i.e. soil, erosion) without enrolling, so someone must have had an inkling...
And no, BTW they really didn't. All that crap about soil topography, was shown right before they showed the guy randomly placing rocks and hills wherever they felt they looked nice. It's just corporate marketing bullshit you people keep falling for.
I'd never heard that interview where the guy says "I knew players would mod stealth in like a week after release." I always thought leaning on modders was an open secret, not something they talk about openly. Really hope they don't think that for Starfield, considering how new everything is.
7:06:32. Actually, in my 800 hours of Skyrim, I have run into Babette in the wild a single time after completing the whole quest line. She told me she had completed her contract and was out recruiting new members for the Dawnstar sanctuary. Only a single example but still
Man, your comment having a timestamp from 7:06:32 makes me want to watch the whole thing. If you got there I can do too. Ps. Who is Babette? Probably will find out
I remember having that encounter on my first play through while escorting Serana to Castle Volkihar. For a long while, I thought that particular encounter was added as part of the Dawnguard dlc.
"Yeah i know i swore my undying soul to nocturnal. But this dragon soul is mine and thats the onr you get" Nevermind the fact that the dragonborn has a fragment of akatosh or lorkhan as a soul and that isnt really his to bargain with
@@gewuerzwanze5627plus for a lot of Daedra you never directly promise your soul to them. It's just "Mortal, I need ya to do me a favor. In exchange I'll give you an artifact of mine". No worship attached.
One thing I found interesting is that if you equip the "marry me" amulet after completing the companions story, Aela will express interest, but if you cure your lycanthropy first, she won't be and also makes no comment about you having cured it, as far as I know. However, if you initiate the marriage quest with her and then go back and cure lycanthropy, she is fine with it (but makes no comment about it, of course).
Well you wouldnt be so glad to know that Aela actually wants to go into Hircine's plane because her true love is supposedly there. She will never trully love you if mary her.
I've always hated when people say "it doesn't have to be realistic, its a fantasy game!". The ideas that skill increase leads to leveling increase makes logical sense. You get better at something, you get stronger. You work out at the gym and your stamina goes up. But the argument that "oh there's dragons and cat people, it doesn't have to be realistic" is very flawed. This world may not be realistic to our world, but it abides by the same basic rules of life. Like you said, people need to eat breathe and have shelter. Even with fantastical elements, there are still logical rules to how this universe works. I know this is basically the point you made in the video, but I am so glad to see someone else has this view as well. Thought I was going crazy with all of the people telling me that this game didn't have to be realistic. Also amazing video :)
It's about communication. If you share absolutely nothing with your audience, there is no way you can convey anything. Having more 'realism' piggybacks off our common language as humans. Having a certain button-layout uses the langauge gamers have formed. But you don't strictly need this (see Egoraptor's description of Megaman X) as long as you set stakes and make clear your intention as the designer. That allows you to do something like, say, tetris, katamari damacy, or many ludonarratively dissonant puzzle games.
What's ironic is that we even have "fantasy" as a genre is BECAUSE of realism. The whole point of literaly fantasy is to write about things that cannot exists, just like they could exists. To apply literaly realism (to some degree at least) to something that is impossible to happen in real world. This is the reason why we aren't talking much about fantasy genre before 19th and 20th century, only about fairy tales or legends or... just normal stories that has stuff that we today would think of as impossible, but people there did not consider them as such. Fantasy can only exists if you know something is impossible and you try to treat it in fiction as possible anyways, with all the consequences of that. Fantasy without a realism is (in worst case scenario) a description of a fever dream where everything can happen randomly without any logic, or (in best case scenario) a modern fairy tale in which things are happening, but consequences of them are not explored and events are either completly taken at the face value or a symbolizing of something outside the story.
I think the reason so few people mention how you're not given the option to not become a werewolf, is because they knew the game had crappy stories, and just being railroaded into the decision was just something they were already prepared to go along with. It's not that people were too stupid to notice. It's that people were too jaded to care. "This plot line makes me become a werewolf? Well, alright I guess. I'm sure I'll have the option to cure it down the line because Skyrim never makes you commit to your choices."
7:16:28 The vampires at Half-Moon Mill actually do have a shed full of butchered bodies behind the mill, implying they are eating travelers. If you don't kill them with the DB questline you can also use them as a source of timber when building your house in Falkreath.
It's a convenient place to gather wood when working on the Falkreach estate, as your other option is back in Riverwood and about the same distance on foot either way. I think they're also flagged as a Dawnguard target for their radiant questlines too.
I think Skyrim is a testament to the potential of Elder Scrolls. It offers just enough of an idea, whether that be lore, environment, or mechanics, to draw you in but not enough once you try it to keep you hooked. That's probably why the modding community is pretty consistent with output to this day; the idea proposed by the systems and environments is just appealing enough for people to change it and the lore and story execution is just barely enticing enough to warrant people talking about it and cataloguing it.
@@Dufffaaa93Only thousands? Only hours? Millions of people own Skyrim. That's an awful retention rate. Good games that hook you are played by hundreds of thousands, for days' worth of time, not just hours. And guess what? Most people who do that with Skyrim are playing it modded.
It's ungodly impressive how a 9 hour video can get a million views in a month, I'm already 1 hour in and it feels like only 10 minutes have passed. I mean all of this as a compliment.
It's not often though of but people tend to go to longer vids cause they can return and rewatch parts and put more faith in longer vids cause well they gotta have it that long for a reason right?
I prefer long videos that have something to say, as you can listen for ages with little imput until you feel the need to comment and interact; over short videos that throw out little content and require you to search for something else, or that you have to watch 3 times before finishing your comment.
That’s because his arguments are so meandering and without narrative consequences. It’s like a 10th grader who hasn’t read the book: his report is kinda pointless, full of repetitions and dead ends.
It's funny, no matter the video if it's praising Skyrim or detailing it's weaknesses it still makes me want to go play it again for the 100th time. It just a comfy old blanket that holds so much nostalgia for me I can't help but still love it.
Same here! I agree with a lot of PatricianTV's points and the game has a lot of flaws, but watching this video... I can't help but want to go play Skyrim anyways.
Honestly the only reason I decided to finally watch this was because I was gonna play skyrim but all the mod packs are down. I agree with all these criticisms 100% aware I'll be crawling back to this mess of a game some day 😂
Guilty as charged, I’m playing it as we speak. I’m working through all the side quests after blasting through the main, for the millionth time. I’m already planning my next play through.
@@henrycrabs3497 They probably can have fun. Just not absent-minded fun for a specific game. I am intensely uninterested and even mildly disgusted by CoD. It currently and historically represents just about everything bad about gaming imo. But I get some of the biggest smiles of my life from games like The Cosmic Wheel of Sisterhood.
It's so hard for players to agree on skyrims intentions, themes, history, and thought process, because it was so hard for the developers to do the same
1:31:52 the difference between kicking in dark messiah, and shield bashing in Skyrim is that dark messiah does the most damage with environmental hazards. They're not just kicking to stunlock, they're kicking them into spikes, drops, traps, or other enemies. In Skyrim, the environment is rarely a factor at all, other than line of sight.
I disagree, my brothers and I were using the unrelenting force shout to throw people off cliffs or down a slope to do a lot of damage to them. Obviously this is mostly outdoors fighting, and with enemies that can get ragdolled. I think that the environment is a factor in skyrim.
@@davidreeding9176 except when they just happen to bounce down the terrain mesh in such a way that they never actually fall enough to trigger the fall damage, because the velocity based damage never works properly. It was fun for about five minutes the first time I tried though.
@@davidreeding9176 How can the environment can be a factor in Skyrim's combat if it can be utilized with only a single dragon shout and a select number of preset dungeon traps? You're unlikely to be fighting next to cliffs for roughly at least 80% of the game as well, so whatever factor all of this brings is so insignificant that it might as well just not exist.
@@superplayerex2431 shouting an archer off of a tower, for example, or shoving a person down a cliff. These are things you can do. I should've said that the environment CAN be a factor instead of saying it is a factor. However, my point still stands. If there is an enemy next to a cliff, you can shout them off of it, and maybe the game decides if that does damage to them or not.
@@davidreeding9176 Yeah, but just because these are things you can do does not mean they even remotely suffice as a factor in combat significant enough to make it a good point towards the game. Just look at Dark Messiah's kick and how it is a nearly essential tool in your arsenal with various practical uses in combat that has significant impact not only because of those uses, but also because the environment is actively shaped to give it use. This is not the same for Skyrim whatsoever. Vast majority of your combat encounters will be on flat ground with pretty much zero environmental hazards to use against your enemies. So, once again, whatever depth environmental hazards have in Skyrim is incredibly shallow to the point that they might as well have not existed in the first place. I've done whole playthroughs of the game where I never shouted or used any hazards to my advantage because there's just no incentive for it and the combat itself is so simple, there's no reason to bother. Like another commenter mentioned before, the whole "shouting crowds of enemies off a cliff" thing is only funny for about five minutes before you entirely forget it even exists in the game.
On that note about spellcrafting, you can absolutely have magical moments that arise from being able to create your own "less mysterious" spells. My example is more to do with enchantments, because I only ever messed around with that, but spellcrafting has enough similarities that it's basically relevant enough: In Oblivion, I wanted to make the best two-handed mace I could possibly muster up, having specced into magic and two-handing respectively. In my head, I wanted the weapon itself to passively improve my capabilities, so as to let me upgrade my armour separately for different purposes. I spent ages tracking down materials (this was before I used the internet a whole bunch, my Xbox copy got a lot of love), and put a Fortify Strength attribute on my weapon. I thought it was a weapon-specific quirk that it said "Apply X for Y seconds", like "hit the enemy to activate your weapon", similar to elemental enchantments. After hours of inefficient, exciting work to make this Strong Glass Warhammer, I eagerly hit the next enemy I could find with it, and my damage output seemed to be lacking. I only realised a few moments later that I had just created a weapon that made the enemies I was bludgeoning to death, incredibly strong, enough to start one-shotting me as regular enemies. I was so peeved, at the time, but I look at that moment with complete fondness. If the game didn't have custom enchantments, I couldn't have had such a strong impression of weapon development. It's the worst, and best thing I've done in Oblivion. I can't believe that no-one had a similarly interesting experience with spellcrafting.
Oh I have one, I made a fire spell that paralysed and burnt an npc but also healed them more than the damage it dealt. So they'd be laying there in burning agony, unable to move yet unable to die, forced to experience this torture for the maximum time spellcrafting allowed. I also added a bit of light as a way of making an example out of them for the other npcs. Look upon my horrifying light, see as your friend can do nothing but lay there in torment.
4:49:58 If you do this quest before talking to Jarl Baalgruuf about the dragon, you obtain the dagger only for the Alteration guy to go: “Oh, we need a live dragon for this quest but they went extinct so...” And that ladies and gents is why I never got the highest alteration spell.
I'm blown away you went 6:41:49 without mentioning how spell absorption soaks your own conjuration spells. It happened so many times in this video and as a magic enjoyer this, mechanic? bug? pissed me off and actually caused my death a once or twice.
Patrician, I have watched your Morrowind analysis just about ~ 10 times in full. There was a time of my life where I was sick for a prolonged period of time, and your explanations and reviews partially helped me coast through a hard time, because it transported me back to a much better time. Thanks for all of your work and passion. Wealth beyond measure, Outlander.
I hated the werewolf thing too. Especially after old kodlack told me how much he regretted it. I didn't think my wood elf wanted to be a part of such a weird ritual lol
I remember when I first played Skyrim I didn't want to do it. I left and did a bunch of other stuff, assuming something would happen to progress the storyline without me becoming a werewolf, only to swing by much later confused that everyone was still standing around like dead-eyed dolls waiting for me to continue the quest. I still didn't and remember with the "Elder Scrolls Awe" having worn off now being quite annoyed that the fighters guild in Skyrim was such railroaded shite... It's my first playthrough, I would like to go natural the first time, but they throw werewolves in your face so brazenly and early that it was really off putting. I finally did do the Companions questline in my second playthrough, but I do remember my initial first reaction was that of annoyance and disappointment.
@@Naxhus2silly lore thing here, but wood elves actually have a specific cultural/religious taboo against becoming werewolves/changing their form! It’s a remnant from the wild hunt (I think that’s what it was called, where wood elves forms’ changed constantly), with the taboo being established after Y’ffre stabilized them into what we know as bosmer.
As a Patron, I’ve seen the full video(s). I just wanted to comment to say that I really appreciate the hard work Pat has put into making these videos for his audience. Videogame subjectivists will say that these are unnecessary, but deep-dive analyses like this one are an important part of the gaming sphere.
don't get me wrong i love absurdly long deep dives but when you have 3 hours of video on the College of Winterhold you should probably consider cutting your script way down. more is not always more
@@AmbrosiusIII In the College section, he does talk about many other points outside of the College, like the magic system itself, which is why the section is over two hours long. Many of the sections are like this.
My first run of the game, I got to the companions early on and went through the quest line until they wanted to turn me into a werewolf. I had caught vampirism before and thought the lycanthropy might have serious debuffs, so I decided to do other stuff while I considered the offer. Forgot about them for a long time. But then I heard about the marriage mechanic, so I wanted to see how that worked. I went through the list of eligible NPCs, and, being 16, I picked Aela. So then I realized that the lycanthropy was mandatory for the questline. I hadn't even realized it was a bottleneck before, since it is presented as being something a secretive, behind Kodlak's back. Like, why do I have to join one particular school clique just to graduate? Whatever. So I blew through the quest, got hitched, and never looked back at them. I enjoy Skyrim as a sort of carnival or theme park, I do the rides I like and grab the souvenirs I want, and when this or that is out of order or not worth the bother, I just move on to the next interesting thing.
Throughout this video I kept thinking ”I have a mod for that!” And honestly it made me evaluate why we often decide to mod skyrim into oblivion (figuratively speaking of course) instead of just playing a different and arguably better game. Personally I think I cling onto the nostalgia and comfort a lot, its also just an iconic game with all the memes made of it
Cuz it’s honestly a really good game in theory. There’s a reason people still play it. It truly can be a fun experience, nothing compares to your first playthrough. I think having the freedom to essentially craft your own rpg using Skyrim as a base is fun too. That being said, I would prob never willingly play vanilla Skyrim again. It’s hard to go back to once you start modding
The Way We Look at Things You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. -2 Timothy 3:1 Someone said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. A Christian worldview will affect the way that we see everything. And why is this important? Because we are living in the last days. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And if ever there was a time when we need to know our Bibles and have a close walk with Christ, the time is now. Describing the end times, the apostle Paul said, “In the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control” (2 Timothy 3:1-3) Paul went on to say, “They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly” (verses 3-5) Is that not an accurate assessment of the times in which we are living? The United States has never been more spiritual yet more immoral. We throw the word spiritual around a lot. But do we know what it means? We live in an age when we can write our own apps and customize our home screens. We can keep the stuff we like and throw out the things we don’t. And we carry that thinking into other aspects of our lives. The result is something called moral relativism. Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process and not made by a Creator God. There is no devil. There is no good or evil. And there is no plan or purpose for our lives. Moral relativism also teaches that we are all basically good, and if we happen to go bad, then it’s because we’re simply products of our environment. It teaches that we make our own truth. For instance, if you believe in a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy, you can keep that. But if you’re offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, you can delete that. It works out perfectly. Or so it seems. Moral relativism may sound fine in theory. But what if we were to put it into practice? Will a god of our own making be able to save us in the final day? Of course not. A biblical worldview says there is a God as revealed in the Bible, and the Bible alone is the authority and source of that belief. It is not what we feel or what is popular, acceptable, or perceived as cool. It is what the Bible says.
Because it's ultimately still a very good game with some flaws that can be corrected with modding. The freedom granted to do such also really helped the game's relevance since it's release.
I stoped playing Fallout 4 and Skyrim because each new playthough i began to losse that magic. Reason being: Shit quest, realy big lack of good character, and same quest each time ( when i say same quest i say that i never can do a quest from lvl 20 on lvl 5, because it will only show up when the game wants to) like the the dlc's quest only show up for me like lvl 15 ( i don't remember execly the lvl) Thats why i stay with fallout new vegas.
Just making a comment to bookmark quips and minor sections 3:11:18 Lol 3:29:30 Perks 3:45:45 Faction Ranks 3:46:40 Magic 4:56:35 Leveling 5:23:30 College continues 5:30:30 Books 6:24:35 Alchemy and Enchanting 6:43:40 Dark Brotherhood 7:04:59 7:07:50
With Kodlak's attitude towards the Silver Hands and the fact that they're more likely than any other faction to be carrying copies of the song of Yssgramor (which I probably misspelled), I lean more to the idea that they were originally meant to be a break away faction from the Companions that disagreed with the lycanthropy.
6:30:50 - Skyrim already has a bunch of notes and books giving you Alchemy recipes to try. You could just have those actually reveal specific effects from ingredients without having to taste them, use perks, or make potions. It baffles me that none of the TES games seem to have books specifically about teaching you ingredient effects, and instead out the onus on knowing them squarely on the Alchemy skill. Does no one in Tamriel take notes? Well, yes they do. In Skyrim. Just let us learn ingredient effects by reading these notes.
Or an apprenticeship program under established alchemists. If we are being real, all of the skills have very little place in the diegesis other than their obvious, intended use. The systems are not rooted or organic to the world they inhabit.
![เจ็บที่ยังฮัก - ม่อน วรวิทย์ [ Official Mv ] จอนนี่มิวสิค](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KALIGSRSjFs/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks to everyone tuning in.
ANCIENT DRAGONBORN: I learned they weren't Dragonborn at pretty much the last possible minute (while listing out all the Dragonborn near the end of Act 2) and made the decision to just leave the mistakes in out of laziness, but also the realization that the mistake says more about the characters than anything I could have written. If they had been utilized better, I doubt an error like that would have survived in my script long.
Is there going to be some sort of way to navigate this magnificent behemoth, like timestamps?
@@anonnymousperson timestamps are in the description
its the least I could do.
You're making my weekend my man, these videos of yours are my absolute favorite online content in years.
Thank you so much for all your countless hours of work. We all greatly appreciate the lengths you take to entertain us.
I love how the Riften Thieves' Guild discuss all their plans directly under the open well in the middle of the town market and they wonder why they have bad luck. Then they hire a mute and things suddenly turn around.
🤣
Thats... enlightening 😄
I never thought of it like that 😂
lol, great way of putting it.
_cut to clever girl scene_
I can't tell if 'mute' is a joke or not tbh
I liked the part where he complained about magic for 2 hours, very relatable
Seriously. Every time I try to do a mage play through I get bored like halfway through and switch to something else.
@@gabelachenman408 Stealth archer 60% of the time every time.
@@gabelachenman408 i recommend a pure mage playthrough with the Vokrii + Odin mod combo. First time i actually felt like a proper mage in Skyrim
@@MrClubfoot90 i start out a conjurer and somehow end up a stealth archer with a bound bow..every time
As a mage player in every fantasy game, I second all that rant.
Farkas murders the main character in cold blood and walks away slowly while saying: “You look strong. Come to Jorrvaskr and be a companion”
Ah yes, the peak Skyrim experience.
To be fair, if you can get back up to get to jorrvaskr and join the companions after being bludgeoned to death, you're probably reasonably cut out for a warrior faction
@@voratheexplorer6442 They should hire more necromancers
No sign of em
I think my peak skyrim moment was when I killed a bunch of thugs, pull the note to see who I pissed off, and see the name "Drayden" or some shit.
I have no idea who that is, so I google it. Whatever the name is nothing comes up. So I'm sitting there confused as to who the fuck I need to murder to prove a point, until I go to level up.
I was "Drayden" it was me. I hired the hitmen to kill myself. I literally have no idea what I did to trigger this, I'm assuming it was a Mod issue, but that's the most Skyrim thing I've had happen.
@@getthegoons So your Tyler Durden did it, just so someone could come kick the shit out of him?
The part about the dark brotherhood and Nazir's "less important" contracts didn't even need to be so self-damaging with it's presentation and insistence on being less important. Just establish that Nazir is efficient and Astrid is creative, so the contracts that have weird requirements (Baenlin and the mounted head, Francois Motierre, to draw from oblivion examples) go through Astrid as she pieces together how to satisfy the client's unique requests, while the simple "Just kill him I don't care how it gets done" go through Nazir.
His line should be something more like "I'll admit, my contracts aren't as glamorous or as exciting as Astrid's. I handle the simpler jobs that come through. There's plenty of work to be had here, but don't expect a grand elaborate heist." His established attitude even works with the idea that he handles simple and efficient contracts, while his teasing jabs and jokes can be how he copes with how boring the jobs tend to be.
It always bothered me that my character's soul was promised to like 8 different afterlives by the end of the game.
It’s going to be a battle royal to see who gets the Dragonborn’s soul
ah yes, the elder scrolls equivalent to john Constantine
John Constantine is immortal for the very same reason. After he dies various deitys will fight over what happens to him
I think we're misunderstanding what becoming a champion of a deity is supposed to be. Obviously the Dragonborn can't go to the afterlife of any of the Daedra, because their soul is, by default, part of Akatosh, and as such, would return to Akatosh no matter what. Way I understand it, one has to actually dedicate themselves to a particular deity, whereas the protags of the games just contact the Daedric Princes for some immediate profit.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 what about the thieves guild quest line? You clearly pledge yourself to nocturnal also sithis if you join the dark brotherhood then there’s Mora at the end of Dragonborn
*Ahhh yes this finally gets recommended 5 hours into a premiere...*
*there he is*
The timezones confused TH-cam.
The TH-cam algorithm, it just works.
Thats what you get for breaking everything you touch
Ahh yes, perfectly balanced review that can't be broken even by the power of being perfectly balanced Brit
it's crazy how urag is like one of the most memorable characters from skyrim simply because "the arcaneum might as well be my own little plane of oblivion" is just such a character establishing line
It's a line I stole while working as school librarian in high school XD
It's amazing how effective just a sliver of good writing can be
Dont remember him
The fact is I haven't played skyrim in months, and I know urag instantly lol
@@pquonbbx the line isnt even that insanely good but the fact that most of skyrim's dialogue is extremely boring makes the times where it's kind of good stick out so much more
I find it weird that Emil had that speech where he talks about people "Ripping the pages out of your great novel and making paper airplanes with them" When it was the acknowledgement from the audience on his Dark Brotherhood storyline in Oblivion that made him so important in Bethesda
Also, he knows what an airplane is 😮
Shamus Young had a great point about The Companions. Imagine you are walking down a sidewalk, maybe heading to the bank or something, and there is a road crew doing work on the road. You pass just as they finish and one of the workers runs up to you and says, "some help you were." It's the exact same thing with Aela and the giant fight at the beginning of the game. It's so ridiculous. Bethesda was so terrified of the player missing the Companions in tiny Whiterun that they shoved the faction into the player's face in the dumbest way possible. Then they did it again with the Thieves Guild.
My favorite thing about that is how I got lost the first time I played and ended up in a dungeon before I made it to whiterun. I completely missed the encounter with the companions and the giant. As much as they tried to make it unavoidable, I missed it without even knowing it was a thing until my next character.
Yet this never happens for the College of Winterhold. Sure, every court mage will tell you to check it out, but it is in no way forced on the character like the other 2 main factions. Thanks Todd
I agree but it’s waaaaayyyyy dumber in the case of the thieves guild. Like… dude… it’s the THIEVES guild. Doesn’t it seem like the worst conceivable idea to literally walk up to random strangers and invite them to join your clandestine, secret, underground criminal organization? Like imagine walking into a pizza parlor in New York and some dude is like “ayy you look like you would be really good at intimidations rackets”
Right imagine going into the sewers finding a bar with the bartender that asked you to get an item that was "stolen" and after that gets introduced to a friend that needs help without much detail thrown in just to meet him at a place at a time and you have to get back an item that was stolen from him after which you are told to go to a 3rd place where you are then formerly introduced to the thieves guild with the first two being tests about willingness to break into buildings and second that you can follow orders and instructions and show skill.
Rather being walked up on in the town market announcing that I'm here to steal
Happy to see that Shamus Young is still getting some love. He was such a great writer.
I love how most elder scrolls fans are really passionate about the series while only really liking 1 game outta all of them
Welcome to being a fan of literally any series
Best part of this is I don’t even know which game you’re talking about. My best guess is Morrowind but honestly Oblivion AND Skyrim are both also valid lmfao
@@songbird6414 Don't forget Daggerfall and Arena, though of the two Daggerfall is definitely better.
and that game is ESO
it all depends on which is your first. oldheads love 2 and 3 while newf..s love 4 and 5. idk anyone who actually played 1 when it came out so uhh that i just wont count. its not like soulsborne where it just becomes preference to which iteration of the same formula you like the most. its like asking a new yorker which style of pizza is their favorite, of course theyre gonna pick new york style.
Picture this: The year is 2060. TES6 finally came out in 2043, and now the time has come to look back at it. You and your adult children get together - the whole extended family does, in fact. PatricianTV’s 70 hour analysis is about to release, and the government has decreed that the winter holidays will be extended an extra two weeks (mandatory). You tell the grandkids stories of how you were there at the Oblivion and Skyrim analysis premieres. Maybe you watched the Morrowind videos the moment they first released.
It’s gonna be a good 70 hours, you think to yourself.
Picture this: The year is 2060. Will still hasn't come back to TH-cam after what he considered a harsh review of his content by Patrician.
@@admiraltonydawning3847 Picture this: Todd Howard in his old age has decided, after the contentious relationship with Morrowind fans and their 6 (soon to be 7) fan-ports into other engines (including TES6 and DaggerfallUnity3), to hire PatricianTV as his loremaster and lead supervisor to balance out retaining the old guard-- now several generations deep of Morrowind fans-- with pulling in new audiences with modernized action RPG mechanics and plots.
You learn this fact from a cameo by old man Todd in the last 30 seconds of this 70 hours epic.
Vaporwave
only 70 hours?
I was here! I WAS HERE!!!
Advising people to comment a timestamp to save their spot is genius for engagement.
Lmao you’re probably right
HE PLAYED US LIKE A DAMN FIDDLE!
Only works for ultra-long form vids like this though
NAH CHIEF, MAMA RAISE NO QUITTER! I RAW DOG THE WHOLE VIDEO
@baronvonbeandip Guys, I found Robin Atkin Downes 👆
The hired thugs trying to kill you can lead to some unintentional silliness. My first encounter with them was leaving Solitude. I was very surprised and it was a tough fight because I was on the highest difficulty (before a patch added a newer highest difficulty).
I then read the contract and learned it was the innkeeper I had stayed with. I stole some small consumable (I think a potion?) from my room. I had basically done the equivalent of not paying for those overpriced snacks that some hotels offer, and the innkeep responded with attempted murder.
You stole the really special hotel soap.
I thought Pat said that they don't sell thuggs for stealing, only for killing the people they know??
I vaguely remember doing something similar, I think I misclicked on something and accidentally stole a flower or whatever from a shelf, I dropped it hoping to not get a bounty and the thugs showed up as soon as I left the building. Word gets around fast for a place with no internet.
I've had thugs hired to come after me multiple times by children, which is just silly.
No it's actually worse because the letter no matter who hires the thugs States that they don't have to kill you but they don't care either way
Killing Astrid was the first thing I tried, and seeing the quest failed text only to be immediately followed by "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood" was the most satisfying thing in the game.
.Too bad that quest really sucked...
The best thing about it is that, if you don't decapitate her with your killcam, she actually whispers "well done" as she dies.
I'd say it's a shame there wasn't more of that kind of stuff, but that quest was rather lackluster, I don't know if they'd have made anything else you could "fail" and start a differing questline for would be any better.
@@Alpine1996 i wish they actually made a quest to destroy thiefs guild.
@@Alpine1996 Yup. Totally agree! I hate how they basically force you to be bad guy, or at the very least "The Antihero". And worst part is that it doesnt even matter what you choose in the game, its the cannon lore that states that you end up being connected to daedra. In oblivion you end up taking over Sheogorath's realm, and Dragonborn just becomes Hermeus Mora's new collectable. I hate that!
1:13:20 It reminds me of a Tumblr post that someone made a while ago, where they pointed out that Bethesda's "environmental storytelling" is usually just placing a dead body somewhere and placing a note on it that's like, "Oh, no, I've been murdered!"
LMAOOOOOOOO
"i sure hope i don't become a skeleton :("
Reminds me of the one cave that drained the life energy of anyone who was in it, and some guy kept a journal with entries spanning several days right up to the point of death about he was starving, thirsty and so weak he couldn't lift his arm... yet he was writing that in perfect handwriting at the same time, instead of just crawling his dumbass out of the cave to fucking survive and escape it's draining touch.
A better example would be the Wooden Mask you can find at the Dragon Priest summit, its subtlely implied that the Thalmor were after the Khonarik Golden Dragon Priest Mask and made a time-travelling mask to find it, but his bodyguards killed him in suspicion.
@@lightningkitten that made me laugh harder than it should have
It feels good to know that my anger and rage about the magic "system" isn't just me. Calling it now that TES6 will have 3 spells per school, and 3 schools total. I see restoration getting phased out and made available to all.
Mysticism rest in Peace
Restorarion is already pretty much avaliable to all. I bet on alteration being cut and turned into unlockable boons or something
I felt your rage on the magic system man, Bethesda is like a pizza place that sells the best pizza dough of all time, but they are to lazy to make the other ingredients good since the dough sells so well, so the rest of the ingredients are literally human feces, so you go buy dough and make the rest of the pizza by yourself in your house with mods.
They need someone like Obsidian to handle the story and dialog for them for the elder scrolls games like Obsidian did for Fallout New Vegas. Just focus on the world design
@@belhariry why pay someone when you have an entire mod community to monkeys-with-typewriters a better game?
@@belhariry Obsidian is a terrible company now, and they will not help in any way shape or form.
I would rather play Fallout 4, again, then have to sit through the slog fest that is Outerworlds. "We get it, you're a communist"
@@johnny1599 Sadly true, the Obsidian that made New Vegas simply does not exist anymore.
I can't agree more.
Honestly, after all these years, I'm waiting for TES VI only because i hope patritian will make that 40-hour sprint review
same
i don't care about the game and won't even pirate it
but i'm waiting to see if it comes out at all so patrician tv can make a 30 hour any % speedrun analysis
It will be his magnum opus
That review will come out 6 years after the game launches tho
me want Oblivion remaster
@@AChunkyDog skyblivion is releasing next year
Got to the bit about the werewolfs-THANK YOU! It was always so irritating to have a nord warrior character having to abandon the nord warrior afterlife to play the nord warrior questline
yeah it's kind of weird how shallow the warrior questline is for the game that is rather warrior oriented. I mean heck the primary antagonists are just reskinned bandits but with silver swords and alchemy ingredients. there *might* have been cut content that would have made the silver hand more interesting. But nothing came of it.
@@privatepessleneck heckin heckerino, here ave a updoot friendo, omg i love doggos and reddit sooo much lol im so rndom lolooll
@@sigrdrifa0 Heck is more than a Reddit word, no need to have PTSD over a euphemism for hell.
@@sigrdrifa0 Are you having a stroke?
@Victoria Thorson
Based. Too many redditoids polluting everything with their repugnant jargon. They're already coping and seething after being found out.
I feel my bones trying to escape my skin every time I hear Emil Pagliarulo say “great American novel”
which is often because I constantly watch this video
Omg same. I started double tapping the video to skip it whenever he talks during that part
Mechanics Timestamps
43:35 - Radiant Quests
1:21:40 - Combat
2:17:59 - Stealth
3:46:35 - Magic
4:56:40 - Levelling
5:46:43 - Dungeons
6:24:36 - Alchemy & Enchanting
8:46:01 - UI
8:54:39 - Music
Thank you very very much for this
someone fell asleep to this!
Holy fuck, he just rages about magic for 5 hours solid? Fuck this game lmao
The magic gap… jesus
5 hour magic gap...
Love the fact that the Auger of Dunlane is just a huge scaled up Magelight
magelighthouse
I hate the fact that you can't skip his useless dialogue. He really just says a bunch of nothingness.
@@azuragoddess"But duuuude the lore!1!"
I like to think that casting magelight is casting a mini auger
@@nagger8216"Mmmm yes, a bounty of soul energy from the greaaaat collaaaapppse."
I love these very quick video's. Im surprised more short style videos like this aren't more popular
I think it’s because most just don’t know how to explain things so expediently
The Way We Look at Things
You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times.
-2 Timothy 3:1
Someone said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
A Christian worldview will affect the way that we see everything. And why is this important? Because we are living in the last days. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And if ever there was a time when we need to know our Bibles and have a close walk with Christ, the time is now.
Describing the end times, the apostle Paul said, “In the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control”
(2 Timothy 3:1-3)
Paul went on to say, “They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly”
(verses 3-5)
Is that not an accurate assessment of the times in which we are living? The United States has never been more spiritual yet more immoral. We throw the word spiritual around a lot. But do we know what it means?
We live in an age when we can write our own apps and customize our home screens. We can keep the stuff we like and throw out the things we don’t. And we carry that thinking into other aspects of our lives. The result is something called moral relativism.
Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process and not made by a Creator God. There is no devil. There is no good or evil. And there is no plan or purpose for our lives.
Moral relativism also teaches that we are all basically good, and if we happen to go bad, then it’s because we’re simply products of our environment. It teaches that we make our own truth.
For instance, if you believe in a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy, you can keep that. But if you’re offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, you can delete that. It works out perfectly. Or so it seems.
Moral relativism may sound fine in theory. But what if we were to put it into practice? Will a god of our own making be able to save us in the final day? Of course not.
A biblical worldview says there is a God as revealed in the Bible, and the Bible alone is the authority and source of that belief. It is not what we feel or what is popular, acceptable, or perceived as cool. It is what the Bible says.
Average attention span is 30 seconds, if we’re lucky. Good thing this is the shortest vid yet.
Idk what you’re talking about?!? It’s literally 9 hours!!!
@@Justausername10 r/woosh
Ever since the first time I listened to this video I come back to hear your magic rant again, it feels liberating to hear someone else understand my pain about magic in skyrim.
I've listened to his magic rant 4 times, fills my smooth brain with feel good juice listening to it.
Time stamp?
@@wandersagrobasically the whole college of winterhold section lol
same but for the companions and civil war.
3:47:00
Seeing Meridia's Beacon in that Egg Sac had me crying of laughter for a solid 2 minutes
Seeing "Meridia's Beacon" in the loot window made me physically cringe in anticipation of the dialogue
Can’t believe I caught that as well in this 9 hour video. Is that where you’d normally find that?
@@austinbevis4266 it’s a random drop, I’ve found it in every odd nook and cranny from random chests in the wild to inside dungeon chests. It’s like a clingy ex who won’t get over the fact you dumped them.
*a nEw hAnD tOuChEs tHe bEaCon!*
@@pablocruz5613 oh lol, I always remember finding it on a pedestal. Maybe that’s where you end up placing it
I found Riften so funny during my playthrough. I'll be honest, my initial reaction was pretty positive. I thought that having a crooked guard try to swindle you as you enter was a nice touch and a good first impression for the "Thieves Guild City."
Then all that goodwill was instantly lost when I actually entered and five separate NPC's approached me to announce how much they *love* crime
It's a great example of media undermining itself by lacking all restraint. They couldn't just drop a big hint that this town had crime and corruption, they had to go so over the top with it that it swings back into absurdity
This is why I kill the thieves guild every playthrough.
Genuinely so much of Riften's intrigue could have been saved by just having the talk about the thieves guild be prompted by the player talking to someone saying "hey i almost got mugged by the guards" and then the thieves guild gets introduced. After the player starts asking around Brynolf comes up to them and starts asking them if they're interested in actually joining the guild or if they're going to have a problem
I would have settled for literally any player choice whatsoever
The Way We Look at Things.
You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times.
-2 Timothy 3:1
Someone said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
A Christian worldview will affect the way that we see everything. And why is this important? Because we are living in the last days. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And if ever there was a time when we need to know our Bibles and have a close walk with Christ, the time is now.
Describing the end times, the apostle Paul said, “In the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control”
(2 Timothy 3:1-3)
Paul went on to say, “They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly”
(verses 3-5)
Is that not an accurate assessment of the times in which we are living? The United States has never been more spiritual yet more immoral. We throw the word spiritual around a lot. But do we know what it means?
We live in an age when we can write our own apps and customize our home screens. We can keep the stuff we like and throw out the things we don’t. And we carry that thinking into other aspects of our lives. The result is something called moral relativism.
Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process and not made by a Creator God. There is no devil. There is no good or evil. And there is no plan or purpose for our lives.
Moral relativism also teaches that we are all basically good, and if we happen to go bad, then it’s because we’re simply products of our environment. It teaches that we make our own truth.
For instance, if you believe in a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy, you can keep that. But if you’re offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, you can delete that. It works out perfectly. Or so it seems.
Moral relativism may sound fine in theory. But what if we were to put it into practice? Will a god of our own making be able to save us in the final day? Of course not.
A biblical worldview says there is a God as revealed in the Bible, and the Bible alone is the authority and source of that belief. It is not what we feel or what is popular, acceptable, or perceived as cool. It is what the Bible says.
Oh boy I sure do love crime.
Wait why are you taking out your weapon and quick saving?
My first contact with the companions:
1.Get yelled at for not helping
2.Enter Building with 2 people fighting
3.Use my heal spell which seemed to bug them out, they draw their weapon and go on a rampage
4.About 5 people are now dead
It just works.
worst questline imo. Just kinda bland and doesn't introduce anything. CoW atleast had a good couple mechanics that were special.
Sounds about right, same if you try to stop rogvirs execution
@@Elitaria Not true, you get the werewolf ability which you will use as rarely as possible
Certified Companion moment.
These two videos should be mandatory viewing for at least some TES 6 staff
The whole series should be mandatory viewing for *the whole* staff. They should watch it as a group and argue over the points he makes for a week or two straight.
@@baronvonbeandip I think it’s mostly important the senior designers and leads watch the videos. I’d say emil in particular needs to watch these but we all know how he deals with criticism, so i’m not holding my breath that any of this will get through to the person who needs to hear it most lmao.
Really it just makes me sad that a series with as much untapped potential as the goddamn elder scrolls has to languish as a result of devs who decided long ago that dumbing down the game’s systems to the point where character role play wasn’t even really viable anymore was the best way to sell more copies. The worst thing is that it did, and went on to bolster their highly flawed ideas about about what players wanted from their games. They kept taking meaningful stuff out under the pretense of keeping things simple. Now we have starfield, a game with so few meaningful mechanics to engage with that it’s not really anything special to anyone. It just exists in this lame state of being kind of alright at everything.
Idk, hopefully some senior Bethesda devs played baldur’s gate or something and had a come to Jesus moment about how shallow their modern “RPG” games are by comparison. The future of elder scrolls is looking grim quite honestly.
@@Gamernutritionfacts Honestly none of that matters if they insist on using a game engine that's one of, if not the worst, in the industry. I have never played games that feel worse to play than Bethesda games.
Your character feels like a floating camera with zero feedback. The gunplay in starfield is just.. wow. They should teach college game development classes about how not to make a video game feel good to play and use Bethesda games as an example.
@@beeman4266At least the older titles were RPGs where you could kinda get away with it. The closer it comes to action adventure, the more obvious the engine flaws are.
The whole series (Morrowind, Oblivion, both Skyrim and Starfield videos) should be mandatory viewing for Todd and Emil especially. A lot of the problems with the later games come down to their direction and writing respectively.
Best part about the Companions quest line is that you can tell off Aela when you first meet her after the giant fight and she'll still invite you to join them anyways.
She's the original Preston Garvey, no matter what you say she still adds the quest to your journal.
I stole the gate key for whiterun off her so i could get in after telling the guard to go to hell.
The problem with this game is you hardly ever go to the sky. Not even the rim of it. So the game already lies to you on that alone. At least Morrowind had a lot of wind storms and other wind related things.
Not only was the wind today, but it was also on the morrow. Also with fatigue if you ran and jumped very far and were attacked you would go 'Far, then fell'.
It's funny because part of the game has you go through the valley of the wind at dawn or dusk to find the moon-and-star.
The frightening thought is there will be at least one person who reads the comment above & nods along without irony, rather than dismissing it as the equivalent of someone scratching "For a good time, call" on a bathroom stall.
Also nerevarine always sets things off to tomorrow to make time for his power nap
@@richardlionerheart1945 Nerevarine "We start later every tims you interupt my sleep."
The funniest thing I remember from my most recent playthrough is never going to whiterun and never letting dragons exist. Truly liberating
The fact that it works like that bothers the hell out of me. Luckily the alternate start mod Skyrim Unbound has an option so dragons spawn x in-game days after the beginning of the game regardless of what you do. Even cooler, you start the main quest by killing one of them on your own and dynamically finding out you're the dragonborn when you absorb its soul. It's such a cool change.
@@steel5897 lol I just love not having to deal with dragons tbh
@@helter1234 Better have good sneak or your fucked lol.
The Dragonborn? Ive never heard of him.
it's literally been 3 years since I've seen a dragon
05:21:48
God, this section about the nonexistence of Bethesda-like open world RPGs with actually good magic systems from other devs just absolutely broke my heart. Been feeling that pain since 2008. We need other devs to pick up the torch Bethsoft threw in the trash, just like with PDX interactive.
Dragon's Dogma came out 7 months after Skyrim and being a Sorcerer in that us awesome. Meteors, tornado, lightning whip, ice tendrils, ect. Can't wait for DD2.
@@joevile240 Did you see that there was new info about DD2? The new vocation looks fun.
@@halcionjoy7 Trickster looked neat. But I'm probably going back to Magick Archer.
@@joevile240 I wasn't talking about the Trickster. They revealed a new one called the Warfarer. Can use every weapon, but has poor stat growths.
@@halcionjoy7 Oooo, need to check that out.
The dedication of actually dropping everything and heading to Windhelm only to be out of lock picks is the peak of comedy
Directed by Larry David
One thing about Skyrim I will unquestionably praise is the OST. Its absolutely fantastic across the board.
True, but don’t forget how amazing Oblivions sound track was. Jermey Soule is a genius.
I still listen to it all the time
And to think Jeremy Soule started by recording things like the leaky office sink as sound effects for Secret of Evermore. :)
The world map is very pretty too
@@Rannos22 Yeah it is. Actually I really like Skyrim's graphics even now. It has a very consistent art style, and everything is modeled quite well. It is a huge step up from Morrowind, and especially Oblivion. Might not be bleeding edge anymore, but Its a far cry of being butt ugly, like many games of its generation.
I never realized the potential of Skyrim VR until I saw the footage of you waking up Mirabelle Ervine, groveling at the statue of Meridia, and slapping the orc who was talking in the middle of Malacath's speech. I've watched your Morrowind and Oblivion retrospectives multiple times start to finish, thanks for another 20 hours of entertainment.
It was shoving the Dawnstar guard for me
Tbh with certain mods like Spellsiphon, magic feels so good in SkyrimVR and the melee combat works well enough that you can still be a little campy.
Absolutely my favorite way to play Skyrim
Oh my gosh, when he pushed on her face repeatedly, then her bed becomes occupied while chatting.... simply priceless!
Witnessed the orc slapping today as finished Part II. That slap was carried out with pure authority.
i need timestamp
What I've learned from this video is that typical RPG progression mechanics are fundamentally incompatible with "flexible playstyle" mentality. You can't have enemies get harder over time and give players more damage on their main abilities and then expect them to be successful starting over with something new
You should probably unlearn that because its untrue. Just because Bethesda sucks at conveying the idea doesn't make it a bad one.
As an example, if the RPG skills were agglutinative as opposed to exclusionary, avatar strength would scale linearly with player level. If the pool that strength drew from was shared to all skills, strengthening that pool would simply scale everything uniformly (more or less).
@@baronvonbeandipif levelling up your strength also increased your arrow and magic damage than it's already not a *traditional RPG mechanic*, bc the entire point of role playing is making choices about your character progression, and homogenizing it like this would make the choices irrelevant. That's also why flexible playstyles are incompatible with a traditional RPG experience, bc a traditional role play involves you picking a role and playing as it. How often do you see in fiction mages deciding to trade their staff for a bow or warriors deciding to battle with pure magic for a couple fights; not often right, because people don't abandon the skills they've learned for years. The best way you can achieve flexibility is just allowing people to refund their levelling/perks in RPGs that use the traditional system like Fallout, so that you can just take back all the upgrade points and perks you put into and place them into new categories. Though I don't see how this could work with Elder Scrolls levelling system where the skills level up by usage
I think the way STALKER did level scaling was good. Basically an open world FPS, mostly killing humies but also mutant monsters. In the begining areas you're mostly fighting dudes in tracksuits, cuz russian game, and cheap, simple guns. then later one you're fighting experienced fighters with advanced body armour and weapons, and the monsters get more dangerous and numerous too, as well as environmental hazards.
So the baseline humans basically don't change, just their gear and tactics, which you can get as well, and the monsters and environment hazards kind of scale up too as you get more experienced with dealing with them, and as an add on there's a story reason for all this too. Felt very natural, and you can always go back and curb stomp the early areas. Heck u can even "downgrade" yourself by changing back your gear to the lower level stuff and see how well you fare with only your new experience on how the game works. Not much reason to actually do this but I loved the games so I just did for fun, which I think is a good sign of a good game
I think a way to allow that flexibility while still being a "typical" rpg mechanics wise is not scale most enemies to the player, instead allowing that you can go back a notch and grind for levels/exp/points, as well as allowing refund of perks and stuff like that. Or maybe a multiclass system, where you can unlock classes and they level separately but that has a lot of stuff to consider too.
I think re-speccing could be fine in tes in a limited sense, like think of a 360° circle as the playstyles and maybe you can remake your playstyle in like, 120° slice or something.
Not that i think anyways that tes should do this because again, role playing + just start a new playthrough. If you couldn't do every single faction, daedric quest and other multi choice questlines inbthe same character you would be more incentivized to try to rellay the game with other characters.
"there are no priests of nocturnal"
"what if the other priests find out we're not really priests?"
accidentally setting up a hilarious situation where every priest of nocturnal is afraid that the other priests will find out they're not really a priest of nocturnal
That's got to be a Family Guy skit somewhere
That's the plot of the man who was Thursday
The state of the Winterhold College really bugs me. I wanted so bad to roleplay a magic student and not two lessons in I was archmage.
Play Oblivion.
Thanks to some finicky looseness on the definition of what "casting a spell" means, you can become Archmage without having ever cast a spell yourself.
The least educated Dragonborn can just pick up a couple staves or scrolls and be hailed as the new Archmage.
Despite how fun to play Skyrim is this game never deserved 10/10
@@TheFloodFourm is Oblivion that much better?
@@731freeman I wouldn't call the Oblivion Mage's Guild questline "good" exactly, but it at the very least actually tries to replicate what being a student of magic would be like. In fact that's what most of the questlines in Oblivion are: lacking in objective quality, but you can at least tell there was real effort put in and there ARE good ideas there. Unlike Skyrim's quests.
One idea that I've seen to make the companions questline much better deals with the silver hand being a group that split off from the companions after the circle became werewolves. That the silver hand stayed true to Ysgramor and their nordic heritage by rebelling against lycanthropy and trying to find the pieces of wuthraad to honor Ysgramor. This would've added so much depth and maybe you could've even joined the silver hand to return the companions guild to their former glory, rather than being forced to become a werewolf.
I really like this idea. Such a simple concept that might not have taken much time to incorporate into the factions quest line. And as you said it would add so much depth to the companions, along with providing an interesting way to have a meaningful interaction with the silver hand.
@@himynameis3664 I wouldn't say that would be a quick or easy add. You would need to make new quests (even if they are just radiant quests featuring wolfs and maybe a werewolf), a comparable number of voice lines, unless Bethesda wanted to be super lazy they would need the town to have opinions on the Silver Hand killing and replacing the local guild. Add this to Patrician's theory that the werewolf stuff was added late and they were already ignorant enough about denying becoming a werewolf.
Some fans could probably do a barebones version of it. Or a really good version depending on voice acting and the ability to avoid breaking the game by killing the Companions.
@@himynameis3664 It most likely would have taken a LOT of time to implement. Knowing Bethesda’s writing process, they would not only add more depth to the Silver Hand (in this case completely reworking who they are, creating more characters and needing more voice lines) but would also dehumanize and strip depth from the Companions. As cool as it would be for the Dragonborn to have to choose between a no-nonsense guild of werewolf hunters or a community-bound guild of werewolf warriors, The Elder Scrolls isn’t really known for their ability to create dynamic, impactful, and difficult choices. I may be wrong but I believe this idea came from Fudge Muppet and is honestly a very good idea. However the fact that the Silver Hand in game is just a bandit faction with silver weapons proves Bethesda either did not have time or simply didnt care
And you know what? Kodlack DOES NOT like being a ware wolf in the end. He actively wants to un-lycanthrope himself, and silver hand respect him for this. Maybe silver hand and circle were at peace because both respect Kodlack. Then mid point in quest Kodlack dies because and this causes Sliver hand and Companions to go war. The war is about who gets to do what to body. Circle wants to burn him in Skyforge so his body strengthens their weapons while Silver hand want to un-lycanthrope Kodlack and show everyone in Skyrim that Circle are ware wolfs.
11:17
I just wanna highlight that during the cart sequence, you still haven't made your character, so it would be either very immersion breaking to have the player see them as another character, only to have to morph into whatever character you wish minutes later.
It's because Ralof is actually talking to the player. That's why you can't respond except with gestures. That's why Doki Doki Literature wholesale copied Skyrim's formula with the character Monika.
The craziest thing about the Companions isn’t just that they force you to become a werewolf. But when you first turn, the game *expects* you to go kill random Whiterun civilians to test out your powers. Like, these guys are supposed to be mercenaries that defend the city. And they just let you loose to go kill innocent people? Why not have the player character go on a werewolf rampage in the silver hand base? Or better yet, have the silver hand attack on Jorvaskyr happen much earlier in the questline minus the slaying of Kodlak that way the newbie player character Companion can prove himself further by testing his werewolf skills on people who actually deserve it and thus protecting the home of the Companions while doing so. Skyrim is the only game where the heroic warrior factions make you feel more like a scumbag rather than a hero
I remember way back on release when I first did that quest, I did go on a rampage not thinking much of it. Only during that killing spree, Belethor happened to be leaving his shop and aggroed, and I killed him during the scene, which meant he was dead for good after the transformation ended. Which meant that, until Ysolda decided to take up the mantel, I just didn't have access to the Whiterun general store for a non-insignificant amount of time.
Hell, instead of rampaging in the city, they could have had an underground training area that they used for the new Werewolfs to get the hang of their powers while also not potentially harming innocent people during it.
You don't need to go on The rampage, you just need to wait for like 5min. With you do that they will Say "Many of Us don't have the luck to not go on a bloodbath on your first night as a werewolf"
@@samfire3067 yeah so basically, the game still expects you to go kill random npcs because the Companions will have special dialogue just in case you decide not to 😭
@@samfire3067 I think the point still stands that they know a newly turned werewolf is generally inclined toward a blood rage and left you in the middle of a town to go through it. Even if you can just stand in place, the Companions are impressed that you didn't slaughter the people they put you in a position to slaughter.
Are you guys dumb? Did you not read the 3 lines of dialogue before the blood ritual? The whole point of the night of the transformation is to RP how you would act as a werewolf (either rampage or just leave the city) and you get a dialogue acording to your choice. We know thanks to Aela that some werewolves can control themselves and others just go feral. Just because you're smoothbrained and need to click every red dot on map for a dopamine release doesn't mean the game is badly designed. If this sort of roleplaying option was on morrowind you guys would praise it 😂.
Ya know what would've been an interesting climax of the college of winterhold questline? Using magic to raise the collapsed parts of winterhold from the sea, which opens up another side quest (or side questline) where you help rebuild winterhold.
Honestly, that's a cool idea, imagine if it gave you boons like a farm where what alchemy resources you cultivate give you like x4 the normal amount, so plucking a 1 nirnroot gives you 4, and so on.
I have thought about that too. Well rebuilding Winter hold and gaining the respect of the people that live there. It would make sense to have a quest like that, considering the damage the College did to the village.
One word: consoles
@@_zigger_ At the very mention, several aristocratic types guffaw in disgust and one lady faints.
Considering they even had to cut content from Rorikstead, I don't think this would've made the cut lmao
I recall a post about Todd Howard being in chess club, model UN, debate club, and Tennis or something. With a caption along the lines of: "No wonder he thinks it's acceptable to be master of all guilds and factions". Just something rewatching this series has made me remember
1:52:38 This video was the first time I saw that post
Tyler Mcvicker exposed those as lies though. Looking at the yearbooks of the school he went to he was never in the chess club
@@wile123456He was in the chess club in middle school
Howard to me comes off as someone who has blundered into success. Someone who has won the lottery.
He never lies
This kind of short-form content is ruining this generation’s attention span
Ok boomer
@@DeepCFisher shuddup nerd ☝️🤓
ikr
Your Elder Scrolls retrospectives helped me get through three months of hospital last November. Now, a year later, I get to look back at that time and enjoy a new instalment of your wonderful series. Thank you very much Pat!
As a mage who morphed into a sneak mage, I feel heard.
I wanted to keep using magic, but it's not like mages were given a lot of choices.
I went through the entire transformation arc of starting off as a proud and upright mage, to becoming a stealth mage, to using a conjured bow to be technically still a mage while acting as a full blown stealth archer. It was harrowing.
@@notsae66 The most fun way to play mage, is to become a stealth archer. Ladies and Gentlemen, Skyrim.
All roads lead to stealth archery.
Jesus i played morrowing recently and the vast difference in magic is absolutely embarrassing for skyrim
@@heszedjim9699 oh man, the spellmaking in Morrowind had me hooked for so long
Nobody's going to see this, but I just wanted to point out that Jyrik's staff is not ONLY a lightning staff with a restoration staff's model, but also casts a unique version of the lightning spell that no other weapon in the game can cast. Usually lightning weapons deal X damage to health and half as much to magicka; Jyrik's staff deals X damage to health and TWICE as much to magicka, making it surprisingly strong against other magic users - including dragons.
Hey you thought no one would see this, but I, another magic player, did!
I also wanted to point this out. Jyrik's staff is like a baby staff of magnus depending on when you get it, and it remains somewhat useful throughout the questline and definitely helps with morokei whenever you happen to fight him at a point where dragon priests are actually a threat.
My first Skyrim playthrough was a magic playthrough and it also put me into the Skyrim Limbo that I don't think ive ever woken up from... Very cool, wish it was told to the player. Wish I had some resource that could tell me all the unique unlisted weapon effects... maybe some kind of sheet that I could spread out and look at...
I saw dis
Ackschually
@@salmon_wine it is in the item description
*Looks at video length - 9 hours*
"Holy shit"
*Looks at title - Act 1*
"HOLY SHIT"
I know right
"Act 1"
I remember being confused by the charcoal/paper thing in the Thieves Guild quest because it was so out of character for the rest of the game. Skyrim had never asked me to solve a puzzle, so I was absolutely stuck when it suddenly dropped a vague hint instead of a clear quest marker. (and of course I couldn't be completely sure it wasn't just a bug)
Same, I legit considered that skyrim design was slowly rotting my brain. I usually pretty fast on picking those things up
Well that "puzzle" in particular is very in line with thieves in general, getting information when you can't take the book or slab itself.
What about that bigger Dwemer sphere to charge the lexicon or whatever. That thing was kinda confusing, at least it was 11 years ago as a young kid
I bet someone at Bethesda genuinely forgot to put that quest marker in, or a bug prevented it appearing in the game and nobody at Bethesda has fixed it since.
There are so few examples of a puzzle like this one (albeit extremely simple) in this entire game! It's bizarre. It's a shame the puzzles in these games are withering away.
@@ghastlyanarchy1720 Yeah, but it was out of character for the GAME maybe not the guild. It's completely random and out of place imo
At this point you and Private Sessions are just competing to see who can monopolize more of my free time and I'm loving it.
Thanks for the recommendation, I love long form stuff.
Point and click adventure breakdowns by oneshorteye have been my binge recently
@@Guitar-Dog patrician wasn’t kidding when he said that despite collaborating closely with Private sessions and holding a similar philosophy/style, they take very different approaches to their videos on the game. I can confidently second the recommendation
@@Guitar-Dog Oh do you now? May I introduce...Mauler and EFAP
@@ChiefCrewin are they still beating the SW and Marvel horse? I can only hear disney bad so many times
@@ChiefCrewin mauler just gives pedantic long ass plot recaps lol
What gets me most about the companions is that when you transform for the first time, you're supposed to go on a rampage of Whiterun and kill a bunch of people before the companions manage to stop you. And when you return to Whiterun afterwards? There's not a single fucking thing in the entire 'city', not even a line from an NPC or a fucking notice on a wall somewhere, that even suggests a werewolf went rampaging through the cloud district and murdering a bunch of people. Not a SINGLE THING. The game reacted to this so poorly that for like 5 years I literally thought it was a dream sequence and didn't actually happen. But no. It did happen. Not only this, but it's suggested to have happened before with Farkas and probably others, and yet no-one in Whiterun seems to remember the fact that on multiple instances Werewolves have suddenly come out of Jorvaskr and started tearing people apart. Lmao.
There’s also the exit to the countryside outside the walls of Whiterun too. There should’ve been dialogue acknowledging how the player handled the immediate influx of a ton of power in the form of your werewolf form. One line would be about a werewolf tearing through Whiterun and, hopefully add some extra NPC’s and guards set to a low level to sell the power the player just gained, then have a separate line you can hear radiantly off a werewolf roaming the countryside.
I imagine that we were more stealthy and people just disappeared
Lmao, you could have just left whitrun by getting back into the underforge and leav through the cliff there without ever leaving any eye witnesses
On a sidenote, can we talk about how Whiterun is home to several daedric artifacts by the time we arrive and after we're done?
You've already got the Ebony Blade up in Dragons reach, just collecting dust in the basement. And then the Companions are hoarding a small shrine basically dedicated to Hircine under the Skyforge. And then we proceed to collect more relics of Hircine near the altar.
How is Whiterun not more cursed?
@@puppykitten4779 You can literally just stand there behind the hall and nobody comes after you, nobody can see you. I just sit there and wait till the transformation ends, every time.
You blew my expectations out of the water with this video even including why your Dunmer character joined the Stormcloaks.
Regarding the conversation about Ulfric as a "Stormcloak asset": my interpretation upon discovering this dossier wasn't that Ulfric was a ally, former or otherwise, of the Thalmor. Rather, his existence is useful to the Thalmor, and while Ulfric's goals are separate from whatever the Aldmeri Dominion might be pursuing, the manner in which he is attempting to achieve those goals is very convenient for Thalmor purposes. Not a direct agent, but still a pawn.
But in the same times it is saying that they don't want a Stormcloak victory, so I think they are really just for a prolonged conflict and nothing else. Basicly Ulfric is usefull if he couldn't win or too strong to lose, if the balance broken the Thalmor is in a bad situation.
@@reactiondavant-garde3391 Right, but as long as that balance isn't broken (and before the Last Dragonborn shows up, there's no sign that it will be), Ulfric simply being alive helps the Thalmor out.
@@ArchasTL Yes, I agree.
I am actually surprised Pat never guessed that out. That's the first thing that comes up in mind when you read "an asset". Because that takes like three seconds of logical conclusions to get to the point you've made. Pat sometimes is so bad it's just not even funny.
@@kommandantwunder6785 I mean Patrician made this point just doesn't made in this form, when he say that the unresolved Civil War is good for the Thalmor he makeing this exact point.
I've never even played any Elder Scrolls games, I'm just using this to try to get through my shifts stocking shelves so I don't go crazy from the monotony. It's a lot easier when you have a huge piece of content like this.
That’s fucking amazing lmao
Yo! Another one like me! I do the same thing lol. Joseph Anderson has also been a godsend
There’s literally one million podcasts in the world
You should play them, they are awesome but buggy
Play Skyrim!!
The mod "Serana Dialog Add-on" gives her dialog after the Companions werewolf bit where she calls them all terrible people for hazing you into a daedric ritual with Hircine and then angrily refuses to take part in some of the other quests and waits outside. Of course makes sense for her character to be angry seeing because of how she became a vampire.
Unfortunately the mod still has to work within the confines of Skyrim's vanilla quests so she doesn't get to the point where she gets so mad she leaves, but I thought it was nice seeing that some mod authors agree with you about that moment being nonsensical in-story.
Is it voiced?
@@satanamogila9251yes
Honestly serana dialogue addon actively makes her character worse and that's saying something as she's an awful character to begin with
@@lillycline1414 based
@@lillycline1414 I enjoyed her character from what I remember, but I really don't like how the mod devolves into full on fan fiction where she gets way too obsessed with the player character. Also her not marrying the player character was a choice by the writers that I feel was a correct one to fit her character.
Companions: "Its so fucked up how Kodlak can't go to Sovengarde because of his beast blood"
Also Companions: "Become a werewolf or leave"
The companions are not the fighters guild, they are the werewolf guild. You don't start the companions questline unless you want to be a werewolf. It's just that the game never actual tells you that beforehand. It's entirely meta-knowledge. Oh, but accepting and completing a contract-killing doesn't necessarily mean you're okay with the contract-killer guild, so we'll include the option to destroy that guild after you complete your first contract-killing. But just this once.
The problem then (apart from the whole meta-knowledge thing) is that there's otherwise no fighters guild.
@@L3monsta They're being mostly facetious with this comment. They know this.
The rant about how garbage pure magic builds are in Skyrim was nice to hear.
They're not just badly balanced, they're very poorly designed. It was so obvious they didn't expect people to not use a melee weapon of some kind even as a mage.
The only exception is using a cloak spell then using invisibility so you slowwwwwwwly damage everything but they can't see you so they just stand there slowly dying.
@@UsingGorillaLogic The problem that you have to chees the game with magic to not be too weak.
@@reactiondavant-garde3391 which is why I said slowwwwwwwly because it was me agreeing magic sucks.
@@UsingGorillaLogic It i not about being fast, the problem that you have to chees it, if it was fast it would be bad. As Patricion said, the magic too weak or too strong nothing in between.
The only time i had fun with a pure mage build was when i installed mods that
-increased the number of equippable rings
- added spells that enabled me to turn full soulstones into empty ones of the next higher tier
- changed charging spell animations
- had fully functional dragon wings.
- added time dilation spells.
And changed that wards worked like shields in addition to reducing magic damage.
Listening to this a second (or third) time
I'm actually writing down notes about game and magic system design.
I want to make my own game at some point, and these videos are invaluable research and feedback
Same.
@baronvonbeandip YO, put aliens in your game! Aliens are *DOPE!* or like, GIANT scorpions! 😮 lol idk.
Good luck on the game, though, really
2:40:00 This part of my recent playthrough of Skyrim was something. When Karlia drank the invisibility potion, she had fire arrows (from the Anniversary edition) on her back. Karlia became invisible as usual, but you could clearly see her exact location because the arrows emitted a particle effect. Truly a Skyrim moment.
I also bought the anniversary edition. It was a $20 upgrade and I both don't regret it and also feel bad as I've not been into Skyrim enough to really make use of that purchase.
But what I did play was fun and absolutely busted when enemies would spawn with the enchanted arrows and different variations of armors/weapons. They would absolutely fuck me up with those arrows, and they made me understand the utility of being a "bow boi" even as a heavy mage main. Great purchase if you love games that make you mad af with unfairness. Just play legendary through to adept, whatever is comfiest for having a fun time and being able to progress. That's what I do, I give myself 5 lives and then I go down a difficulty *per big fight* so dragons ain't shit as long as I don't get cutscene one shot and same with fucken bandits.
That's another thing that pissed me off playing Skyrim anytime, cinematic kills shouldn't be allowed by enemies bc they are goofed and don't really consider armor values leading to you being one shot.
@@isumkitchens5329 yeeeaaah, the creation club crap genuinely makes the game worse, your quest log will be a mess, probably permanently since a lot of the quests have a tendency to break.
The Silver Hand is a group of people who lost family an loved ones to Werewolves. So, they joined together for revenge. See Bethesda, wasn’t hard to make a simple back story
And they would go on to do it again with the _Gunners_
Just slightly better eqquiped raiders in the same way the Silverhand are just slightly different Bandits.
They could have also been lead by people who were originally Companions until they found out about the whole werewolf thing. Hell maybe they were railroaded into joining the circle or leaving like the player is lol. Just like that there is an extra layer to a non-faction.
I'd have joined them, given the option. The Companions are a bunch of preening, arrogant, self-serving, entitled assholes who talk a good game about honour, and glory, but are really just a bunch of lazy thugs and literal bloodthirsty monsters. I've never so intensely disliked a faction in an Elder Scrolls game...except maybe the Stormcloaks. Not even the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood, who are like, supposed to be immoral. But the Companions are presented as 'good'.
@@MediumRareOpinionsGoes even further back than that. Remember Talon company from Fallout 3? A group that is insanely organized and has more locations under their grip than any single faction in the game and you’re never given any backstory to them beyond “Yeah they’re mercenaries that will take literally any contract”. Who formed it? Where are they based out of? How do they recruit new people? Where do they get the resources to provide all of their men with decent armor and weapons that are comparable to the BoS? These mfrs even had artillery set up in multiple areas, something the BoS never managed
@@VoIacious good points
Not all heroes wear Colovian Fur Helms. Congrats on getting it done, Patrician.
Loving this video so far, but I did wanna say at around 7:16:00 that there is actually evidence of Hert and Hern killing travelers, they have a small butchery shed where if I can remember correctly, there's normal animal corpses, a troll skull, and also a human skull. I wanna say it was bloody too but I'd have to go back to look honestly. Nitpick aside I really do love this video, and as someone who's favorite run of the game was a pure mage I feel incredibly validated by your rant on magick in Skyrim lol. I had fun in vanilla with it but kinda like you I had more fun as a mage once I started exploiting. I did the jail armor exploit to equip multiple sets of armor and enchanted gear to decrease all my magicka costs to 0, which was incredibly fun once I got the master level lightning spell since I could down dragons so quickly with it. Love your video though ! Can't wait to watch the second part once I finish this behemoth of a video.
Man, his rant about the companions really resonated. I had the exact same experience as someone who played these games on release and felt massively insulted by the fact that the game just locked out if we refused. The companions, the group of honourable warrior tradition following the original companions that paved the northern blood of men to forever more stay in Tamriel - that in order to progress you have to damn yourself forevermore to Hircine and away from Sovngarde - the fact that the only way to become a member of the circle you have to take it is...
I'm glad Patrician even called out the general community reaction because yes, Bethesda was right. Its only recently when people began being critical about this questline across the many discussions and videos about Skyrim.
Feels like a weight lifted. Glad I put notifications for this video.
God damn. @PatricianTV my man, I know you're unlikely to see this with how popular these videos are becoming but I have to still say.. your take on magic in Skyrim and the general reviewer take on it is.. as a guy who started on daggerfall precisely because I loved the idea of a game where I can use magic to do anything from opening locks to teleporting - and the general take of how the most terrifying enemies of the elder Scrolls universe are literally just powerful mages (Jagar fucking THARN WAS JUST A STRONG MAGE AND HES A GOD DAMN FINAL BOSS).
You saying all this about the utter bullshit of balancing and the grindiness of possibilities on what magic is in Skyrim is so.. just so liberating. I and probably many others watching resonate with this.
Entirly agree, I really don't like how they made so little amount quest for the different guilds and they didn't even made alternatives for them. I mean why not make a werewolf "guild" who are in war with the companion? I know because for some reasen you have to be able complite any questline in one character.
I agree with this.
I have my own head cannon which is that my character is young and dumb if i start with companions 🤣 then get cured asap
Its almost eerie how pat described something so similar to what happened to me in Skyrim. I was so excited for the game after I played so much oblivion as a child in like 2009 (I played the ps3 goty version), and I finished the companions quest line and literally stopped playing the game 11 hours in.
Same it was baffling.
I still seriously don't understand what the intention was.
52:09 "Morrowind and Oblivion may have both started their fighter's factions with a rat quest, but Skyrim finishes its fighter's faction with infinite rat quests."
This really sums up Skyrim's quantity-over-quality ethos.
What's a rat quest?
@@nightcrwler1973 Have you seen Ratatouille? It's like that, but you're playing as Skinner
@@duanenaude5657 You get kidnapped by Rats and thrown in a Food Cellar?
@@nightcrwler1973 a quest where you're sent to deal with a rat problem
In Morrowind it's killing them
In oblivion it's saving them
@@nightcrwler1973 It's part of Skyrim's Radiant Quests System.
When discussing magic it's a real shame they decided to remove silence as a spell. Not only for the reason you mentioned but also because they could make silence prevent use of the thuum or even dragon shouts, making it both a powerful tool as well as another thing to watch out for.
They probably realized that and removed it because they didn't want anything to get in the way of DRAGON.
@@LoftOfTheUniversewell they took the easy way. They could have made different tiers of Silence and make it so dragons require the Master Level Silence to spell to silence. But no, Bethesda is lazy
@@Nathan-zw7nq"well they took the easy way"
Skyrim summarized.
@@baronvonbeandip Bethesda summarized.
The problem with fast travel vs no fast travel is that it assumes you'll have things to do in between locations.
Not always the case. I'll use Ulfric's axe and Whiterun as an example. Assuming you don't use the carriage (fast travel) you will walk from Helgen to Windhelm, go to the Serpent Stone, walk back to Windhelm, then walk from Windhelm to Whiterun (essentially the same route as Helgen - Windhelm), walk from Whiterun to Windhelm, then Windhelm back to Whiterun.
You backtrack on the Serpent Stone walk once, and the Whiterun to Windhelm route 3 times. 4 times if you count the fact that you have to walk back to Ulfric after you win.
Here's the fundamental problem. There's nothing to do in between point A and B in this game if you've already walked between point A and B. If I kill 4 bandits on the road to WIndhelm, I won't come back and find trolls or wolves devouring their bodies 10 minutes later. I won't find other bandits investigating where their friends went. There won't be guards investigating the scene. Instead, I'll find the same 4 dead bandits, unmoved, the same loot still on them.
@@Korijenkins1414 Then thats a problem. Basing your design around the fact that fast travel will always be available once you discover a location. That's actually the point he's trying to make.
The Aventus Aretino problem could have been solved by just having the rumor be "Hey, did you hear about that kid who ran away from that otphanage? Wonder where he went", making it possible that by the time you find him he had just begun performing the Black Sacrament. But I guess they had to dangle that Dark Brotherhood story right in front of the players' face to slap them with it.
And they got way worse at doing that in Fallout 4, start you in the corner of the map with only 1 direction then make it impossible to miss dogmeat, you felt like you earned him in FO3, bethesda are getting worse at rewarding the player for simply buying a game from them.
The Way We Look at Things
You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times.
-2 Timothy 3:1
Someone said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
A Christian worldview will affect the way that we see everything. And why is this important? Because we are living in the last days. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And if ever there was a time when we need to know our Bibles and have a close walk with Christ, the time is now.
Describing the end times, the apostle Paul said, “In the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control”
(2 Timothy 3:1-3)
Paul went on to say, “They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly”
(verses 3-5)
Is that not an accurate assessment of the times in which we are living? The United States has never been more spiritual yet more immoral. We throw the word spiritual around a lot. But do we know what it means?
We live in an age when we can write our own apps and customize our home screens. We can keep the stuff we like and throw out the things we don’t. And we carry that thinking into other aspects of our lives. The result is something called moral relativism.
Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process and not made by a Creator God. There is no devil. There is no good or evil. And there is no plan or purpose for our lives.
Moral relativism also teaches that we are all basically good, and if we happen to go bad, then it’s because we’re simply products of our environment. It teaches that we make our own truth.
For instance, if you believe in a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy, you can keep that. But if you’re offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, you can delete that. It works out perfectly. Or so it seems.
Moral relativism may sound fine in theory. But what if we were to put it into practice? Will a god of our own making be able to save us in the final day? Of course not.
A biblical worldview says there is a God as revealed in the Bible, and the Bible alone is the authority and source of that belief. It is not what we feel or what is popular, acceptable, or perceived as cool. It is what the Bible says.
@@tw0crows74That’s wild because I never found him in either games
@@faith9505And Christians wonder why they are hated. Stop spamming your bullshit on videos that have nothing to do with your religion.
@imtoogoodatpvp1252 you missed the dog in fallout 4 that is in red rocket truck stop the second place you visit after the leaving the vault.
6:00:00 Fun fact: there's a _single_ loot cave in Mulzitz in which a key is lying just out of reach of the open window, that you can grab with telekinesis.
Or you can just lock pick it, because we wouldn't want to lock anyone out of something.
The hell is Mulzitz?
@@calebbonney4193 He's speaking of Mzulft
@@MazrimTaim you know it’s the damndest thing, those letters went into my brain and my brain instantly translated it into mzulft without even noticing he fucked up. I’ve been playing this game too long🤦🏻♂️
Apparently the Silver Hand is actually a splinter group of the Companions, who left the guild after the Companions started becoming werewolfs, in protest of this practice.
I honestly find it such a missed opportunity to not give the player the chance to join them instead if they didn't want to become a werewolf.
That would have required more work.
Thats just a fan theory
These are the same people who made fallout 3 and fallout 4, basic competence is asking too much
This is my 3rd time listening to this little retrospective. You have a really good style, I wish you would make long form content though
3:25:00 "Does [Bethesda] realize that you don't generally be enrolled in a college to visit its library?" Well, they consulted the University of Maryland when it came to the topography of Oblivion (i.e. soil, erosion) without enrolling, so someone must have had an inkling...
lol gottem
Well, do the institutions in a made up world need to comply with the rules of our institutions in real life? What a stupid point to make.....
And no, BTW they really didn't. All that crap about soil topography, was shown right before they showed the guy randomly placing rocks and hills wherever they felt they looked nice. It's just corporate marketing bullshit you people keep falling for.
I'd never heard that interview where the guy says "I knew players would mod stealth in like a week after release." I always thought leaning on modders was an open secret, not something they talk about openly. Really hope they don't think that for Starfield, considering how new everything is.
They do think that for starfield but there is a reason they don't do these interviews and podcasts anymore. Everything needs Todd's PR blessing
They've already said that the reason there's hundreds of empty worlds in Starfield is so modders can use them
This comment aged well hahaha
@@xtanagaming1017 well that's _one_ way to avoid everyone complaining about the settlement builder. "Here's the Starfield CK, build it yourself."
Ah this comment aged well I see
7:06:32. Actually, in my 800 hours of Skyrim, I have run into Babette in the wild a single time after completing the whole quest line. She told me she had completed her contract and was out recruiting new members for the Dawnstar sanctuary. Only a single example but still
First Ive heard of it… cool!
Man, your comment having a timestamp from 7:06:32 makes me want to watch the whole thing. If you got there I can do too.
Ps. Who is Babette? Probably will find out
@@Mr.Dinosalt child vampire from the dark brotherhood
I remember having that encounter on my first play through while escorting Serana to Castle Volkihar. For a long while, I thought that particular encounter was added as part of the Dawnguard dlc.
I am fond of the theory that the Dragonborn can dump dragon souls. on all of the entities he pledges his soul to.
"Yeah i know i swore my undying soul to nocturnal. But this dragon soul is mine and thats the onr you get"
Nevermind the fact that the dragonborn has a fragment of akatosh or lorkhan as a soul and that isnt really his to bargain with
@@gewuerzwanze5627plus for a lot of Daedra you never directly promise your soul to them. It's just "Mortal, I need ya to do me a favor. In exchange I'll give you an artifact of mine". No worship attached.
@@azathoththe3rd yeah thats why i mentioned nocturnal specifically
One thing I found interesting is that if you equip the "marry me" amulet after completing the companions story, Aela will express interest, but if you cure your lycanthropy first, she won't be and also makes no comment about you having cured it, as far as I know. However, if you initiate the marriage quest with her and then go back and cure lycanthropy, she is fine with it (but makes no comment about it, of course).
You just know
@@Hobobatman1000 lmao
Well you wouldnt be so glad to know that Aela actually wants to go into Hircine's plane because her true love is supposedly there. She will never trully love you if mary her.
Can't wait for this 36-hour-long epic to fall asleep while listening to for the next month!
I go to sleep to a random chapter and continue watching whatever chapter is on when i wake up, its a pretty weird but awesome experience.
This, I love going to bed, putting on a video like this and relaxing while listening!
Another person with great taste I see haha.
I often put one of Patrician's elder scrolls videos on to go to sleep.
good stuff 👍
@@dportillo1 this is exactly what I do dude
@@dportillo1 I just go back to the chapter I last remember listening to before I fell asleep.
I've always hated when people say "it doesn't have to be realistic, its a fantasy game!". The ideas that skill increase leads to leveling increase makes logical sense. You get better at something, you get stronger. You work out at the gym and your stamina goes up. But the argument that "oh there's dragons and cat people, it doesn't have to be realistic" is very flawed. This world may not be realistic to our world, but it abides by the same basic rules of life. Like you said, people need to eat breathe and have shelter. Even with fantastical elements, there are still logical rules to how this universe works. I know this is basically the point you made in the video, but I am so glad to see someone else has this view as well. Thought I was going crazy with all of the people telling me that this game didn't have to be realistic. Also amazing video :)
so no bat man and robin lol,,its make believe like gta,,just enjoy,,
It's about communication. If you share absolutely nothing with your audience, there is no way you can convey anything. Having more 'realism' piggybacks off our common language as humans. Having a certain button-layout uses the langauge gamers have formed.
But you don't strictly need this (see Egoraptor's description of Megaman X) as long as you set stakes and make clear your intention as the designer. That allows you to do something like, say, tetris, katamari damacy, or many ludonarratively dissonant puzzle games.
This! Suspension of disbelief is a big thing, and if you break that then people won't care about your story since it stops making sense.
What's ironic is that we even have "fantasy" as a genre is BECAUSE of realism.
The whole point of literaly fantasy is to write about things that cannot exists, just like they could exists. To apply literaly realism (to some degree at least) to something that is impossible to happen in real world. This is the reason why we aren't talking much about fantasy genre before 19th and 20th century, only about fairy tales or legends or... just normal stories that has stuff that we today would think of as impossible, but people there did not consider them as such.
Fantasy can only exists if you know something is impossible and you try to treat it in fiction as possible anyways, with all the consequences of that.
Fantasy without a realism is (in worst case scenario) a description of a fever dream where everything can happen randomly without any logic, or (in best case scenario) a modern fairy tale in which things are happening, but consequences of them are not explored and events are either completly taken at the face value or a symbolizing of something outside the story.
It's been over a decade and people will stay claw for anything that makes Skyrim look bad. Old game good and quirky, new game bad and not realistic
That quote at an hour and thirteen is so funny XD
“This rock sitting in the countryside tells a whole story. How did it get here??”
I think the reason so few people mention how you're not given the option to not become a werewolf, is because they knew the game had crappy stories, and just being railroaded into the decision was just something they were already prepared to go along with.
It's not that people were too stupid to notice. It's that people were too jaded to care. "This plot line makes me become a werewolf? Well, alright I guess. I'm sure I'll have the option to cure it down the line because Skyrim never makes you commit to your choices."
Too true. It's like knowing the GM won't actually kill off your character so you lose all investment in the diegesis.
This!👆
5:34:39 You getting scared by Ancano appearing behind you and you slowly backing off was a strangely cute piece of storytelling.
Some of the gameplay clips are downright hilarious and just pass by silently
Or when he tries to slap Mirabelle awake
7:16:28 The vampires at Half-Moon Mill actually do have a shed full of butchered bodies behind the mill, implying they are eating travelers. If you don't kill them with the DB questline you can also use them as a source of timber when building your house in Falkreath.
It's a convenient place to gather wood when working on the Falkreach estate, as your other option is back in Riverwood and about the same distance on foot either way. I think they're also flagged as a Dawnguard target for their radiant questlines too.
@@gratuitouslurking8610 yeah they are took them out my last playthrough of Dawnguard.
Just dispose of them after you have bought wood
I know it's been a year but listening to these have been helpful getting through the night shift. THANKS FOR YOUR WORK
I think Skyrim is a testament to the potential of Elder Scrolls. It offers just enough of an idea, whether that be lore, environment, or mechanics, to draw you in but not enough once you try it to keep you hooked.
That's probably why the modding community is pretty consistent with output to this day; the idea proposed by the systems and environments is just appealing enough for people to change it and the lore and story execution is just barely enticing enough to warrant people talking about it and cataloguing it.
I want to say thats the same with Bethesdas Fallout games.
Speak in your name.
"It kept me hooked" for hours as well as thousands of different players
@@Dufffaaa93Only thousands? Only hours? Millions of people own Skyrim. That's an awful retention rate. Good games that hook you are played by hundreds of thousands, for days' worth of time, not just hours. And guess what? Most people who do that with Skyrim are playing it modded.
It's ungodly impressive how a 9 hour video can get a million views in a month, I'm already 1 hour in and it feels like only 10 minutes have passed. I mean all of this as a compliment.
It's not often though of but people tend to go to longer vids cause they can return and rewatch parts and put more faith in longer vids cause well they gotta have it that long for a reason right?
@@TheReZisTLust True, it's also less work to let one play while you're doing work and you don't have to worry for what's coming next.
I prefer long videos that have something to say, as you can listen for ages with little imput until you feel the need to comment and interact; over short videos that throw out little content and require you to search for something else, or that you have to watch 3 times before finishing your comment.
Я люблю Максимум полчаса , ну может один час , 9 часов это смотреть в несколько заходов , и потом уже забываешь что было и забрасываешь
That’s because his arguments are so meandering and without narrative consequences. It’s like a 10th grader who hasn’t read the book: his report is kinda pointless, full of repetitions and dead ends.
It's funny, no matter the video if it's praising Skyrim or detailing it's weaknesses it still makes me want to go play it again for the 100th time. It just a comfy old blanket that holds so much nostalgia for me I can't help but still love it.
Same here! I agree with a lot of PatricianTV's points and the game has a lot of flaws, but watching this video... I can't help but want to go play Skyrim anyways.
Honestly the only reason I decided to finally watch this was because I was gonna play skyrim but all the mod packs are down. I agree with all these criticisms 100% aware I'll be crawling back to this mess of a game some day 😂
Guilty as charged, I’m playing it as we speak. I’m working through all the side quests after blasting through the main, for the millionth time. I’m already planning my next play through.
It does the opposite to me, makes my resolve stronger on hating this piece of crap videogame. Because Skyrim represents everything wrong with RPGs.
@@henrycrabs3497 They probably can have fun. Just not absent-minded fun for a specific game.
I am intensely uninterested and even mildly disgusted by CoD. It currently and historically represents just about everything bad about gaming imo. But I get some of the biggest smiles of my life from games like The Cosmic Wheel of Sisterhood.
It's so hard for players to agree on skyrims intentions, themes, history, and thought process, because it was so hard for the developers to do the same
That's because it's just a video game.
@@frauleinhohenzollern That makes no sense, since other games do it.
1:31:52 the difference between kicking in dark messiah, and shield bashing in Skyrim is that dark messiah does the most damage with environmental hazards. They're not just kicking to stunlock, they're kicking them into spikes, drops, traps, or other enemies. In Skyrim, the environment is rarely a factor at all, other than line of sight.
I disagree, my brothers and I were using the unrelenting force shout to throw people off cliffs or down a slope to do a lot of damage to them. Obviously this is mostly outdoors fighting, and with enemies that can get ragdolled. I think that the environment is a factor in skyrim.
@@davidreeding9176 except when they just happen to bounce down the terrain mesh in such a way that they never actually fall enough to trigger the fall damage, because the velocity based damage never works properly. It was fun for about five minutes the first time I tried though.
@@davidreeding9176 How can the environment can be a factor in Skyrim's combat if it can be utilized with only a single dragon shout and a select number of preset dungeon traps? You're unlikely to be fighting next to cliffs for roughly at least 80% of the game as well, so whatever factor all of this brings is so insignificant that it might as well just not exist.
@@superplayerex2431 shouting an archer off of a tower, for example, or shoving a person down a cliff. These are things you can do. I should've said that the environment CAN be a factor instead of saying it is a factor. However, my point still stands. If there is an enemy next to a cliff, you can shout them off of it, and maybe the game decides if that does damage to them or not.
@@davidreeding9176 Yeah, but just because these are things you can do does not mean they even remotely suffice as a factor in combat significant enough to make it a good point towards the game.
Just look at Dark Messiah's kick and how it is a nearly essential tool in your arsenal with various practical uses in combat that has significant impact not only because of those uses, but also because the environment is actively shaped to give it use. This is not the same for Skyrim whatsoever. Vast majority of your combat encounters will be on flat ground with pretty much zero environmental hazards to use against your enemies.
So, once again, whatever depth environmental hazards have in Skyrim is incredibly shallow to the point that they might as well have not existed in the first place. I've done whole playthroughs of the game where I never shouted or used any hazards to my advantage because there's just no incentive for it and the combat itself is so simple, there's no reason to bother. Like another commenter mentioned before, the whole "shouting crowds of enemies off a cliff" thing is only funny for about five minutes before you entirely forget it even exists in the game.
On that note about spellcrafting, you can absolutely have magical moments that arise from being able to create your own "less mysterious" spells. My example is more to do with enchantments, because I only ever messed around with that, but spellcrafting has enough similarities that it's basically relevant enough:
In Oblivion, I wanted to make the best two-handed mace I could possibly muster up, having specced into magic and two-handing respectively. In my head, I wanted the weapon itself to passively improve my capabilities, so as to let me upgrade my armour separately for different purposes. I spent ages tracking down materials (this was before I used the internet a whole bunch, my Xbox copy got a lot of love), and put a Fortify Strength attribute on my weapon. I thought it was a weapon-specific quirk that it said "Apply X for Y seconds", like "hit the enemy to activate your weapon", similar to elemental enchantments. After hours of inefficient, exciting work to make this Strong Glass Warhammer, I eagerly hit the next enemy I could find with it, and my damage output seemed to be lacking.
I only realised a few moments later that I had just created a weapon that made the enemies I was bludgeoning to death, incredibly strong, enough to start one-shotting me as regular enemies. I was so peeved, at the time, but I look at that moment with complete fondness. If the game didn't have custom enchantments, I couldn't have had such a strong impression of weapon development. It's the worst, and best thing I've done in Oblivion. I can't believe that no-one had a similarly interesting experience with spellcrafting.
I made a paralysis spell that was set to self and not on touch... I imagine the bandits laughed before stabbing me through
Fuck I need to play Oblivion don't I
Oh I have one, I made a fire spell that paralysed and burnt an npc but also healed them more than the damage it dealt. So they'd be laying there in burning agony, unable to move yet unable to die, forced to experience this torture for the maximum time spellcrafting allowed. I also added a bit of light as a way of making an example out of them for the other npcs. Look upon my horrifying light, see as your friend can do nothing but lay there in torment.
4:49:58 If you do this quest before talking to Jarl Baalgruuf about the dragon, you obtain the dagger only for the Alteration guy to go: “Oh, we need a live dragon for this quest but they went extinct so...”
And that ladies and gents is why I never got the highest alteration spell.
I'm blown away you went 6:41:49 without mentioning how spell absorption soaks your own conjuration spells. It happened so many times in this video and as a magic enjoyer this, mechanic? bug? pissed me off and actually caused my death a once or twice.
I honestly think the magic section would be 2 hours linger if he got into all the specific greivances
Patrician, I have watched your Morrowind analysis just about ~ 10 times in full. There was a time of my life where I was sick for a prolonged period of time, and your explanations and reviews partially helped me coast through a hard time, because it transported me back to a much better time. Thanks for all of your work and passion. Wealth beyond measure, Outlander.
I hated the werewolf thing too. Especially after old kodlack told me how much he regretted it. I didn't think my wood elf wanted to be a part of such a weird ritual lol
I remember when I first played Skyrim I didn't want to do it. I left and did a bunch of other stuff, assuming something would happen to progress the storyline without me becoming a werewolf, only to swing by much later confused that everyone was still standing around like dead-eyed dolls waiting for me to continue the quest. I still didn't and remember with the "Elder Scrolls Awe" having worn off now being quite annoyed that the fighters guild in Skyrim was such railroaded shite... It's my first playthrough, I would like to go natural the first time, but they throw werewolves in your face so brazenly and early that it was really off putting.
I finally did do the Companions questline in my second playthrough, but I do remember my initial first reaction was that of annoyance and disappointment.
A wood elf does seem to be the most apt race to tie themselves to Hircine though. In hindsight, I'm surprised that none of the Circle were wood elves.
@@Naxhus2silly lore thing here, but wood elves actually have a specific cultural/religious taboo against becoming werewolves/changing their form! It’s a remnant from the wild hunt (I think that’s what it was called, where wood elves forms’ changed constantly), with the taboo being established after Y’ffre stabilized them into what we know as bosmer.
Yeah, wood elves don't need to turn into giant wolves to eat people.
As a Patron, I’ve seen the full video(s). I just wanted to comment to say that I really appreciate the hard work Pat has put into making these videos for his audience. Videogame subjectivists will say that these are unnecessary, but deep-dive analyses like this one are an important part of the gaming sphere.
don't get me wrong i love absurdly long deep dives but when you have 3 hours of video on the College of Winterhold you should probably consider cutting your script way down. more is not always more
@@AmbrosiusIII In the College section, he does talk about many other points outside of the College, like the magic system itself, which is why the section is over two hours long. Many of the sections are like this.
Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, just keep sending money
My first run of the game, I got to the companions early on and went through the quest line until they wanted to turn me into a werewolf. I had caught vampirism before and thought the lycanthropy might have serious debuffs, so I decided to do other stuff while I considered the offer.
Forgot about them for a long time. But then I heard about the marriage mechanic, so I wanted to see how that worked. I went through the list of eligible NPCs, and, being 16, I picked Aela.
So then I realized that the lycanthropy was mandatory for the questline. I hadn't even realized it was a bottleneck before, since it is presented as being something a secretive, behind Kodlak's back. Like, why do I have to join one particular school clique just to graduate? Whatever.
So I blew through the quest, got hitched, and never looked back at them. I enjoy Skyrim as a sort of carnival or theme park, I do the rides I like and grab the souvenirs I want, and when this or that is out of order or not worth the bother, I just move on to the next interesting thing.
Throughout this video I kept thinking ”I have a mod for that!” And honestly it made me evaluate why we often decide to mod skyrim into oblivion (figuratively speaking of course) instead of just playing a different and arguably better game. Personally I think I cling onto the nostalgia and comfort a lot, its also just an iconic game with all the memes made of it
Cuz it’s honestly a really good game in theory. There’s a reason people still play it. It truly can be a fun experience, nothing compares to your first playthrough. I think having the freedom to essentially craft your own rpg using Skyrim as a base is fun too.
That being said, I would prob never willingly play vanilla Skyrim again. It’s hard to go back to once you start modding
The Way We Look at Things
You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times.
-2 Timothy 3:1
Someone said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
A Christian worldview will affect the way that we see everything. And why is this important? Because we are living in the last days. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And if ever there was a time when we need to know our Bibles and have a close walk with Christ, the time is now.
Describing the end times, the apostle Paul said, “In the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control”
(2 Timothy 3:1-3)
Paul went on to say, “They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly”
(verses 3-5)
Is that not an accurate assessment of the times in which we are living? The United States has never been more spiritual yet more immoral. We throw the word spiritual around a lot. But do we know what it means?
We live in an age when we can write our own apps and customize our home screens. We can keep the stuff we like and throw out the things we don’t. And we carry that thinking into other aspects of our lives. The result is something called moral relativism.
Moral relativism is the belief that there are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process and not made by a Creator God. There is no devil. There is no good or evil. And there is no plan or purpose for our lives.
Moral relativism also teaches that we are all basically good, and if we happen to go bad, then it’s because we’re simply products of our environment. It teaches that we make our own truth.
For instance, if you believe in a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy, you can keep that. But if you’re offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, you can delete that. It works out perfectly. Or so it seems.
Moral relativism may sound fine in theory. But what if we were to put it into practice? Will a god of our own making be able to save us in the final day? Of course not.
A biblical worldview says there is a God as revealed in the Bible, and the Bible alone is the authority and source of that belief. It is not what we feel or what is popular, acceptable, or perceived as cool. It is what the Bible says.
@@faith9505 sir, this is a Skyrim video
Because it's ultimately still a very good game with some flaws that can be corrected with modding.
The freedom granted to do such also really helped the game's relevance since it's release.
I stoped playing Fallout 4 and Skyrim because each new playthough i began to losse that magic. Reason being: Shit quest, realy big lack of good character, and same quest each time ( when i say same quest i say that i never can do a quest from lvl 20 on lvl 5, because it will only show up when the game wants to) like the the dlc's quest only show up for me like lvl 15 ( i don't remember execly the lvl)
Thats why i stay with fallout new vegas.
Just making a comment to bookmark quips and minor sections
3:11:18 Lol
3:29:30 Perks
3:45:45 Faction Ranks
3:46:40 Magic
4:56:35 Leveling
5:23:30 College continues
5:30:30 Books
6:24:35 Alchemy and Enchanting
6:43:40 Dark Brotherhood
7:04:59
7:07:50
5:45:45 best moment in the video
With Kodlak's attitude towards the Silver Hands and the fact that they're more likely than any other faction to be carrying copies of the song of Yssgramor (which I probably misspelled), I lean more to the idea that they were originally meant to be a break away faction from the Companions that disagreed with the lycanthropy.
6:30:50 - Skyrim already has a bunch of notes and books giving you Alchemy recipes to try. You could just have those actually reveal specific effects from ingredients without having to taste them, use perks, or make potions.
It baffles me that none of the TES games seem to have books specifically about teaching you ingredient effects, and instead out the onus on knowing them squarely on the Alchemy skill. Does no one in Tamriel take notes? Well, yes they do. In Skyrim. Just let us learn ingredient effects by reading these notes.
Or an apprenticeship program under established alchemists.
If we are being real, all of the skills have very little place in the diegesis other than their obvious, intended use. The systems are not rooted or organic to the world they inhabit.