T w e n t y S i d e d

You know we’re on a roll when we stop complaining about a Bethesda game so we can complain about another, older Bethesda game. Next week we’re getting back on the main quest.

Also, you can tell I was getting tired when we recorded this. Almost everything out of my mouth was a reflexive movie quote, which is a sure sign that my higher functions have shut down and I’ve reverted to some sort of atavistic parrot-like behavior.

If my head had been fully operational, I might have pointed out that the cannibalism intro is about as clumsy as it can be: A random NPC runs up to you, makes a ridiculous assumption, blathers a bunch of exposition that they have no reason to reveal, and your dialog response boils down to a binary “I accept” / “maybe I’ll accept later”.

This is a really fun game, but calling it a role-playing game is like calling Serious Sam a stealth game. Skyrim will let you do anything BUT roleplay.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

That thing at the 9:50 mark? Where Josh slams face-first into Ysolda? I did that all the time, every chance I got, to a couple of very specific people in Whiterun. If I accidentally missed, I’d turn around and make sure I gave them the Flying Elbow of the Player Character.

For the record, my targets were Ulfred Battle-Born (because he’s a massive dick who gets on my nerves) and the guy who carries lumber around for Belethor. I’m always disappointed that slamming that guy doesn’t cause him to drop the lumber. I like to imagine I’m throwing his stuff on the ground like a bully shoving a kid so he drops his books. I’ve sort of built up this head canon where this guy is always getting picked on by the Dovakin and he never knows why.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This Molag Bal quest is a great example of the game depriving the player of obvious choices. The game designer just half-asses it and then shrugs, “Well nobody’s forcing you to complete the quest.” If nicest thing you can say in defense of a quest is that the player isn’t physically compelled to endure it, then what you have is still a terrible quest.

This isn’t even that hard to solve. When the player rescues the priest, right now your only choice is to either bring them back to be sacrificed to the dark lord, or just ditch them and leave the quest unfulfilled. But this latter choice isn’t really a choice at all. I mean, you can always come back later. You’re not rejecting Molag Bal, you’re putting him off. And he doesn’t even mind.

Instead of the player just abandoning the priest and ignoring the quest, just add a line of dialog or two. You tell the priest what Molag Bal asked you to do, he thanks you, and the quest is marked as complete. If we really need to reward the player, we can have the priest give the player a trinket before they leave.

There. Not a lot of work, only a couple more lines of dialog, and we offer the player the ability to take an obvious and reasonable course of action.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.