Skyrim EP30: Escape From The Temple of Boobs

By Shamus Posted Saturday May 10, 2014

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 65 comments


Link (YouTube)

For the record, the quest they started with the drinking game is actually pretty fun, and it’s too bad it got messed up here. Hopefully we can pick it up again next week. It’s basically: The Hangover: The Quest. I could swear you’re supposed to be naked when you wake up. The idea is that you retrace your steps and discover what happened to you while you were blackout drunk.

I’ve never done this quest for the priestess of Dibella. As far as I can tell they’re asking you to kidnap an innocent girl for no pay and turning you loose without any other motivation to do as they ask. By not doing the quest I always felt like I was putting one over on these loons, and the desire to shaft them was always greater than my curiosity about what actually happens in the quest.

 


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65 thoughts on “Skyrim EP30: Escape From The Temple of Boobs

  1. krellen says:

    So, the Sybil is actually being held hostage by – I think – a bunch of Forsworn or maybe some Mercenaries or something, so you have to save her before you can take her, but the family is happy to give her up because apparently not only does the Sybil of Dibella live in luxury, but the family of the Sybil is also well compensated.

    So it’s not kidnapping, it’s buying children.

    1. Artur CalDazar says:

      But the Forsworn have her, you are trying to kidnap what they have rightfully stolen.

      But seriously she was taken by the Forsworn, they were probably going to sacrifice her and eat her body or something else very Forsworn-ish, best to get her out of there.

      1. Tizzy says:

        The place where she is help has a blood-soaked statue of Dibella, and I could never figure out if this meant that the Forsworn had been desecrating it, or if they also worshipped Dibella, just, you know, Forsworn-like.

        Skyrim way overestimates what can be conveyed by environmental cues. Or maybe the devs just couldn’t be bothered to write dialogues to go with this discovery. Which, given the dialogue in Skyrim, is probably for the best.

        (Speaking of dialogue, anyone doing this quest should expect to hear “oh, a dead body!” a LOT after rescuing the sybill…)

      2. Flavius says:

        To be fair, she will not appear as a captive until you initiate the Temple quest. So, obviously, the Temple of Dibella is in cahoots with the forsworn, and bribed them to kidnap the girl, thereafter backstabbing them and having you “rescue” the girl, simultaneously removing all evidence of their misdeeds and getting the grateful parents to hand over their only child!

        Truly, the Thieves Guild is nothing compared to these ladies.

    2. Michael says:

      It’s been a long time since I did that quest, but my recollection is the Sybil isn’t that opposed to the whole deal… that said, I might have passed a ludicrous brainwa… er, persuade check, and am not remembering it.

      1. Tapkoh says:

        Nope, you were right. She’s all for it, but in a eerily calm / robotic sort of way. Sounded to me like the VA was almost done with the session and was bored or something.

        1. Grudgeal says:

          Like practically all the other voicework then.

        2. Hal says:

          Eh, all of the children in Skyrim sound like that. I get the feeling this is a common problem in voice acting. You can get real children to do the voices, but good actors are then few and far between. You can get adults to do the voices of children, but you run the risk of it sounding odd.

  2. Tizzy says:

    Very disappointed with the show this week: only two out of the three thumbnails for the videos involved inventory management shots. Can’t this be fixed? ;-)

    1. MichaelGC says:

      It’s probably for the best that they mix things up now and again, so as not to confuse and disappoint those who were visually browsing YouTube for longform middlebrow Let’s Plays of Plate-Seller Simulator 4E201.

  3. Vect says:

    Is it just me or is it kinda messed up that a little girl is chosen to be the High Priestess/Symbol/Whatever of the Sex Goddess of the setting?

    1. Michael says:

      Technically, Goddess of Beauty… which doesn’t make it any better.

      1. Disc says:

        Whose followers apparently go around dishing out sexual favours to the point where they need to keep a low profile to avoid getting lynched by angry significant others.

        Sounds legit.

        1. Some dev remembered once hearing about Vestal Virgins from an indie RPG book they thumbed through at a game store and never bought, and they ran with it.

        2. Veloxyll says:

          Dibellans are very conflicted.

  4. Tvtim says:

    The whole thing on fondling statues…that has never occurred to me that someone would ever do that. It was a funny topic of conversation, but now I’ll never see a statue the same way again.

    1. Lachlan the Mad says:

      When I was in Paris* with a tour group, we took photographs with the naked statues in compromising positions (e.g. holding coke bottles for us) — does that count?

      *It’s Paris. You can’t walk ten metres without seeing a naked statue.

    2. Tizzy says:

      Frankly, I am entirely confounded. People, what did y’all think sculptures were for?… It is the most tactile of art. There is a Rodin biopic out there that will *really* change the way you look at his stuff…

    3. TMTVL says:

      What, nobody ever saw Indiana Jones Temple of Doom?

    4. Hitch says:

      Apparently when I was too young to be self-conscious about such things, I was fascinated by the nipples on the statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. (Back when it was right on a bridge and you could go up and touch it.)

  5. I have to disagree with Chris. Shamus wouldn’t be Locke. Shamus would be Dr. Arzt. He complains that the main characters are behaving like they’re the center of the universe and other tropes about the island as if it was a TV show and then he gets blown up for comic relief.

    Not the best ending, but he’d get to meta-critique before he departs.

  6. Tobias says:

    I remember the first time I did the drinking game quest. I ran into that guy while I was looking for Ysolde to turn her quest in.
    So after I payed off the priests I fast traveled back to Whiterun and accidentally broke the quest’s sequence.

    1. Hal says:

      Probably happens to a lot of people. The second stage of the quest has you go to . . . Karthwasten? Some small town in the western part of Skyrim. It’s good odds that a player hasn’t been there when they get this quest. But they probably have bought Breezehome, and will end up running into Ysolde at some point or another.

      Heck, you don’t even have to go battle the Hagraven for her ring if you can pass a Persuade check. It’s as if the developers realized people would want a way to skip past the bulk of the quest.

      1. Tizzy says:

        I pretty much skipped the *whole* quest thanks to speech checks. As I recall, you can find yourself at the final dungeon provided you use the right combination of bribes and persuade checks. It’s only later that I found out that the stuff that I’d skipped was the fun stuff. Sigh!…

      2. It’s weird, and maybe it’s because Skyrim wasn’t as well-constructed as New Vegas, but I went pretty far off the reservation before getting back to the main quest, and I recall being REALLY annoyed at getting the “hey, you should really explore over HERE” quests, as I’d already explored most of the places the game was sending me to.

        NV had them as well, but either they were always close by to where I was or they were where I wanted to go.

  7. sdfq says:

    Sooo, I know this is the general playstyle for bethesda games, but … why is Josh trying to make money? As in what is the money to be used for? He has plenty to buy a ton of potions (and there’s alchemy), and item progression is usually by what you find, not what you buy, and houses while pretty are mostly eyecandy – especially considering Mr. Viel’s playstyle …

    So what are you saving up for, Josh? You usually have some goal in mind, even if said goal is to troll someone, but I seriously don’t see where you’re going with the gathering/selling of all the loots, not even in a “incinerator “joke” ” way…

    1. silver Harloe says:

      I do not KNOW Josh, so this is purely a guess, but:
      *) I think it’s RPG habit. Always collect every last millicoin of value just in case you get to the last village before the final boss and they have the Megasword for sale.
      OR
      *) he just really, really likes the “save, punch the vendor, and somehow mystically across saves, the vendor has full gold” bug

      1. It just occurred to me: IS there a money sink in Skyrim apart from Hearthstone? Fallout has its implants, but that’s about all I can think of.

        Maybe he’s saving up for a murder spree he’d like to go on, but beyond that, I can’t recall anything in the game I wanted to buy that was going to cost me a huge pile of cash.

        1. Michael says:

          Player houses. The one in Whiterun isn’t bad, and will only set you back around 8 grand to fully kit out. The ones elsewhere, like in Solitude will set you back ~60k.

          Hearthfire’s houses work like that as well. They may not look like it, but fully kitting out a house is a massive gold sink.

          There’s also a quest added in Dragonborn that requires, I think, 15k to complete.

      2. Hitch says:

        I’ve only been playing Elder Scrolls games since Oblivion, but I enjoy gathering ludicrous wealth. Before I get bored with a play through I will own every house in the game. Have all of them with chests overflowing with extremely rare and valuable weapons and armor and I’ll be carrying around a quarter to a half a million gold coins. (Which by game mechanics weigh nothing, but if you believe the fluff I would need a caravan of wagons just to carry the piles of gold coins I take from town to town.) It just amplifies the absurdity of continuing to risk my life day after day to obtain more.

        1. Michael says:

          Outside of cheesing the system, I remember it being really hard to gather wealth in Morrowind. Most merchants had under 500 gold, which was fine, but then you’d start seeing items that were worth 10k – 40k.

          There were… three? Hidden merchants that all had 10k and refreshed daily. There were ways to shuffle items around so you could sell them the higher cost stuff you weren’t using, but it was a pain, and took weeks (in game).

          Then Tribunal added a bunch of merchants with 10k or more.

          In Morrowind there were only three player houses, the strongholds, which were mutually exclusive and buried late in the Great Houses questlines.

          1. Tizzy says:

            I find the fixed cash limit really silly: as you go up in level, the vendors inventory goes up exponentially in worth, but they are still stuck with the same paltry amount in their cash drawers… This would be so easy to fix.

    2. Henson says:

      If it were me, I’d be spending cash on skill training. Josh doesn’t seem to care, though…

  8. IFS says:

    Man I love how pretty much everyone I know uses the Sanguine quest to effectively find Markarth the first time. Its just so convenient, and cheaper than hiring a cart.

    I also have an amusing story about Sam, I once ran into him up in Winterhold standing outside the inn when a dragon attacked. Sam promptly summoned a rather powerful daedra and kicked its ass before I could do hardly anything. Which certainly made me suspicious he was more than some guy you could get drunk with.

    As a side note, why is he the only person you can have a drinking contest with in the game? You’d think Nords would be all over that sort of thing, and it could even be used to lead to more brawls in the game (as is there are only a handful of them that I can think of, which is sad as I enjoyed being able to have barfights, especially since fists of steel + claws make such a thing ludicrously easy).

    1. Hal says:

      He’s likely the only one because alcohol doesn’t have any real effect on you. As things currently stand, you’d win any drinking contest because you can literally drink 100 bottles of wine in an instant and have nothing bad happen to you.

  9. Darren says:

    The sybil is actually one of the more interesting quests, in my opinion, as it’s one of the points in Skyrim when the game really sells the idea of this being a real place with a real culture. What seems like a horrible tale of kidnapping and brainwashing actually sounds awfully realistic. It reminds me a little of the worship of Ishtar in the ancient Middle East, and doesn’t seem outside the realm of believability for a medieval world.

    1. Hal says:

      It is sort of nice to see that the religion seems to have a bit more presence to it. Otherwise, all you really see out of it is that the priests are healers, undertakers, and otherwise generic do-gooders.

      It’s not like I expect each of the nine gods to have a fully fleshed out religious order and rites, but it’d be nice if they weren’t all so homogeneous.

      1. Microwaviblerabbit says:

        I agree. About a third of the gods have distinct religious orders but the problem seems to be that they all dress the same. Except for the vigilants of Stendar, who are distinct but generally annoying (more so with dawnguard). Mara does marriages and trains healers, and Arkay relates to undertakers, but they both wear the same robes so are less interesting despite having the largest presence in the game.

        The people of Skyrim are very non-religious, with most towns and cities lacking temples. Even then, the only ones used for common worship are in Solitude and Riften. For what is basically a medieval society, this is very strange.

        1. Michael says:

          All nine of the Divines have distinct religious orders, though they’re not present in Skyrim. Stendarr actually has two by the time Skyrim occurs. I think each one was independently joinable in Daggerfall (except for the Vigilants; they were founded in the fourth era).

          EDIT: Except for the temples themselves, I’m not sure any of the Divine cults are in game. (Again, not counting the Vigilants.)

          1. Tizzy says:

            Everything feels so generic, though. I know each god does different things because I get a different bonus when I wear their amulet. And the temple of the divines in Solitude is great for driving the Talos point, but apart from that, it really doesn’t help providing distinguishing features of a real sense of religion: “here is the temple where you can do religious stuff, helped by generic priests not specifically devoted to anyone.” Not really the hallmark of people who take their religion seriously.

            Which is really WEIRD, given that the Divines are provably real and at least mildly interested in the affairs of mortals…

      2. Michael says:

        I could be wrong, but I think there’s a quest associated with each temple. The Temple of Mara has a matchmaking mission. Kynereth (sp?) has one involving restoring a tree. Of course we just saw the Dibella one. The Talos quest’s also in Markarth (though, I suppose that one’s kinda debatable), and Josh almost started it accidentally in the episode. I don’t think I’ve done the others, though.

        1. Corpital says:

          I never understood the quest for the priestess of Kynareth. That one tree, sprout of this extremely sacred and legendary tree, is dying. So you have to aquire an evil weapon full of corrupted magic and defile the sacred tree with it to get some tree sap, then murder the designated servants of goddess and tree.

          That woman is a horrible priestess.

          1. Shamus says:

            That’s… that’s a really good point. I’ve done that quest a couple of times. Why did I never notice this before?

            1. Tizzy says:

              Actually, you’re supposed to stop before you commit the irreparable and say: “wait a second, there’s got to be a better way”. And NOT kill the tree.

              But it’s easy to miss because (1) so many quests are based on the “go in, kill everything” model; (2) there is a short window of time in which you can change your mind. Even though it’s *obviously* the wrong thing to do, you have to kill a few roots and then initiate dialog.

              1. Corpital says:

                I’ve just read through the quest and apparently after returning with Nettlebane a pilgrim visiting the temple ‘should’ overhear your conversation and actively approach and offer to join you in the temple and point towards the alternative directly before you cut the tree.
                One time, that guy had his scripted conversation before even starting the quest and on another playthrough to the correct time. He never offered any help or comment whatsoever. Buggier than a big bug bugging out on a dune buggy.

                1. It’s been a while, but I think that’s what I did. And I want to say it kind of happened by accident. I mean, I wasn’t being insightful or expecting another solution (all of the Daedric quests required me to be a jerkhole anyway, so why should this be different), it was how you said, the NPC whispered in my ear and I went with it.

                  Could this have been the quest Mumbles mentioned in the early part of this season and/or Fallout New Vegas? She said she was escorting a monk and he stupidly died by charging a giant, I believe. Maybe it’s a difficult quest to accomplish the “right” way because the NPC is borderline suicidal.

                2. Indy says:

                  My tree disappeared after I left Whiterun. I thought that might be due to the evil blade spoiling the sap or something. Then I realised NPCs were talking about how beautiful the tree was and decided it was just a bug. I’m so glad I did that quest.

          2. IFS says:

            If you take the pilgrim guy with you he suggests a more peaceful alternative, but even so its pretty stupid of the priestess (who is also the master restoration trainer) to send you after the sacred tree with the evil knife, especially since everyone in the place pretty much recoils the moment they see the knife.

          3. Hal says:

            What never made any sense to me about that quest is the scaling.

            Most people will roll into Whiterun at the start of the game, so you likely get that quest at level 5 or lower. The priestess sends you to fetch the knife (Nettlebane) from a place just a bit east of Helgen. It’s close enough to places you’ve been that a new player is likely to go after this quest.

            Which ends up being a mistake. The item is found in a naturally fortified valley, protected by witches. Assuming you can deal with them, the hagraven (a level 20 monster) will sit on her plateau and lob fireballs at you. You can get to her, but you have to run around her plateau to the back of the valley, then cross a narrow log to reach her. Unless you’re a super-stealthy character, she’ll be lobbing fireballs at you the entire time.

            In my first playthrough, this was the first quest that made me say, “Screw this, I’ll go do something else and come back to it later.”

  10. Nidokoenig says:

    Struggling from vendor to vendor while overencumbered reminds me of a time I got overencumbered with a huge amount of weapons and armour in Fallout 3. Luckily for me, an Outcast patrol(about 7 or 8 guys because mods) came along and I sauntered along beside them as they approached the Outcast base, where I could dump the stuff in a bin and fast travel it away in manageable chunks.

    The patrol took them directly through an Enclave checkpoint, which we wiped out, only losing half the Outcasts. I stashed some stuff in a crate and quickly looted the everything, then overencumbered myself again and set off walking behind the remaining Outcasts. Not fifty metres down the road a bandit outpost scattered the remaining Outcasts and I sauntered on past and into their base to begin the fast travel convoy process. The whole journey took about twenty minutes, and then there was a whole process of transporting, stashing and selling loot.

    I guess what I’m saying is that if you think Josh’s behaviour is infuriating you have no idea how unpleasant it would be to watch me play.

    Morrowind was much simpler, I’d just carry enough booze to increase my carry weight to whatever arbitrary amount I needed.

    1. Humanoid says:

      My clear favourite episode of Spoiler Warning EVER is “A Night on the Town”, so I know what I like.

      15:30: “Did you guys see that comment where the guy is like: Actually my favourite part is the part where Josh goes and sells stuff to the NPCs.”

    2. Bruce_R says:

      Gotta say, since watching the Skyrim season in particular I’ve noticed I’ve started leaving more stuff on the ground in my own games, at least if I don’t absolutely need the money anyway. If Josh if trying to make a point (here and previously in other SW’s) of forcing gamers to think how silly and unfun all our loot micromanagement really is, he’s really succeeding here.

      1. Michael says:

        Weirdly, Skyrim is actually more fun if you don’t loot at all, beyond the occasional high value item. Looting every bandit on the way through, even for their arrows and gold, really breaks the flow of the combat.

        Also, the economy doesn’t break as horrifically.

  11. Xanatos says:

    I much preferred the hangover quest in Witcher 2 in the first town. A nice little diversion to introduce you to some of the people around town and have some fun remembering your drunken antics.

    1. Gruhunchously says:

      It also helps that many of the characters in Witcher 2 aren’t mindless, exposition spouting automations.

  12. Paul Spooner says:

    The glowing blue ones in the bowl? They look like those Lego crystals that they introduced in the deep-sea sets.

    Also, yes Chris, you’re not alone. Not everyone has simulacraphilia.

    1. Humanoid says:

      Based on Slender, Chris probably has simulacraphobia though.

  13. LibertarianSDR says:

    The drinking game quest didn’t bug out, he missed a note on the floor near one of the side altars. And possibly a hagraven feather. He got the toe and the 2 bottles of alto wine.

    1. Zagzag says:

      I was thinking this too. It’s not actually bugged, and you’re allowed to leave(I think?), it’s just that you need to either pass a speech check, or clear up the mess to get the next stage of the quest. Josh spent a while doing neither, so nothing happened.

  14. Cybron says:

    Re:FATE Stunt: That’s terrible design Rutskarn!!!!!!!

    Nah, that’s actually pretty cool, though it does sound potentially a bit too powerful. I’d have to compare it to existing stunts and check, but either way the base idea is pretty solid.

  15. MadTinkerer says:

    Wait a minute, wait a minute, they will give you the quest even if you’re a guy? But if you’re female, they imply that the only reason they’re not going to kill you is because you’re a woman! I never even tried it as a male character, because it doesn’t make any sense!

    And it doesn’t! You’re a guy, breaking into a ladies-only area (something that could easily earn you death in real life by itself (or so I’ve heard)) and it’s the ladies-only area of a temple of the goddess of ladies! WHY WOULD THEY TRUST YOU WITH THIS QUEST

    Incidentally, I guess it does mean that the priestesses are bisexual like all the other marriage prospects. So my comment last time was 100% wrong. That’s what I get for using logic.

    EDIT: The guard was aggro’d by the break-in. If you avoid letting the priestess see you pick the lock, you’re fine. Otherwise, a guard will investigate even if you otherwise behave yourself and take the quest, and if he gets down into the temple (because he’s pathfinding to you), he will attack in the middle of dialogue because the priestess won’t let you surrender to him in the middle of her giving you the quest. I’m mildly disappointed this didn’t happen in the episode.

    1. Corpital says:

      So if you break in, are seen and accept the quest they should kill the guard, because he entered an area he isn’t allowed to and they have no more ‘meaningful’ errands to give. The perfect crime!

      1. Ilseroth says:

        The guard didn’t go into the inner sanctum (restricted area) he was in the outer area.

  16. hborrgg says:

    The way I see it Rutskarn and Chris die at pretty much the same time when Chris walks in and says “Rutskarn! That’s not how you build a water device!” and Rutskarn says “Is too! Watch this!” and it explodes. Then Josh is forced to try and make puns about their deaths since Rutskarn is gone and Mumbles murders him.

    And then a zombie apocalypse happens.

  17. Daniel says:

    For a moment there I thought they were talking about a Sybian

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