T w e n t y S i d e d

I love how Eltrys decides that the best place for a clandestine meeting is the most illegal building in town. It’s always a little strange trying to figure out how this “Talos is outlawed” stuff works. You can find Talos shrines in the wilderness where the Thalmor have slaughtered everyone. But here we have an obvious temple and nobody seems inclined to do anything about it. We’re always having discussions about what stuff like this “means”. See? The Empire aren’t really enforcing the Talos ban! Or maybe this shows that the Thalmor are actually incompetent spies. But it’s possible this doesn’t mean anything. This setup could easily be the result of different teams of designers who weren’t all on the same page.

We mentioned the Oblivion Paranoia quest. You can read my write-up on it here. (Warning: This is a post from 2006.)

I agree with Rutskarn: Some of the accents here sound kind of Austrian to me. Actually, I guess it’s just one particular guard voice. (Also the voice of Balgruuf’s brother, if you remember him.) I’m not saying that’s wrong or anything. Skyrim can have whatever accents Bethesda wants. If the inhabitants of their quasi-Norse fantasy world speak faux-Italian, then fine. We already have iron Norwegian katana, so this is obviously a cultural free-for-all. But is this deliberate on the part of the game designer? Or is this a case of a voice actor who couldn’t nail down the requested accent and drifted off into something else? Or am I just not parsing this accent properly? I honestly have no idea.

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.

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.

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.

Why did Malborne have an iron mace? Do the Thalmor really let their bootlick bar-tending servants bring conspicuous heavy weapons to their fancy dress parties?

The dragon attacks in this game make me thing of the old Mitch Hedberg joke, “On fishing shows they always throw the fish back. They don’t want to eat them. They just want to make them late for something.” The dragons in this game don’t want to kill the dragonborn. They just want to waste your time.

Has there ever been an occasion where Josh shouted someone across the room and it wasn’t the Best Thing Ever? I think I’m finally done with Skyrim, but if the fever comes back my next character is going to be named Fus Ro Dah. And I’m going to introduce myself to everyone.

Also: The riddle this week is apparently: WHY DOES JOSH HAVE ALL THESE FLOWERS?

I assume we’re looking for out-of-character justification. Like, why did Josh spend time stealing deathbell?

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.