khajiit-up-a-tree

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

ok...昨天是maid day，所以我们需要一些......

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

Thinking a lot recently about the constant comparison of Oblivion to Skyrim, particularly claims that Oblivion is superior in every way strictly by virtue of quest length and the greater grandiosity of the organizations in Oblivion, and I think there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of what's actually going on with Tamriel during the time period of Skyrim. Even though it's like...one of the core concepts of the main storyline.

Putting most of this under a cut for length, but I just...I think people misunderstand what's going on here. This is not a "One Game Good Other Game Bad" post, it's an analysis of a major, key difference in story basis between the two that I think gets lost in the (frankly asinine) argument about which is superior.

See, everything in Skyrim sucks. Every organization you can align yourself with is falling apart. Literally every single one.

That's the point.

To summarize:

The Companions (equivalent to the Fighters' Guild) are about a dozen strong, literally cursed, and their most beloved leader gets murdered very early in the storyline.

The College of Winterhold (equivalent to the Mages' Guild, not to the Arcane University) has seemingly only been saved from collapsing into the sea because a master of Restoration fused himself with the structure itself when the Sea of Ghosts tried to tear it down a little under a century ago and his presence is constantly physically "healing" the foundation.

The Thieves' Guild has lost the favor of every possible patron deity, having been outright cursed by Nocturnal after one of her Nightingales murdered another and stole the gift she offers her champion, while the boon that the organization's founder claimed from her in ages past (the cowl) is missing.

The Dark Brotherhood has been all but completely dismantled, the Night Mother's tomb in Bravil having been raided and struggling to persist without a Listener for over a decade; the bodies of the Night Mother's children have been lost and she's essentially being smuggled from region to region in an attempt to find a safe place to continue operations.

The Empire itself has been kneecapped, forced into a traumatic treaty by a fascist regime determined to strike the beliefs and culture of anyone not Altmer off the face of the planet; the Thalmor have gone so far as to torture and radicalize the figurehead leader of the Nords in order to use their own nationalism and superiority against the Empire, sparking a civil war that will further weaken the Empire and allow the Aldmerri Dominion to destroy it wholecloth.

This extends out into the rest of the world, too! We have confirmed existence of Hist-deaf Argonians. The Dunmer are floundering to recover after the quadruple-whammy that is the fall of the Triumverate, the destruction of Vivec City when Baar Dau finally made impact, the Red Year, and the Argonian uprising. The Bosmer are literally endangered due to habitat loss following a super-isolationist cultural shift due to wars with the Khajiit and Altmer. The Void Nights were devastating to Khajiit culture and population in ways that have yet to be fully explained.

The world is falling apart. Everything is dying.

And then Alduin shows up.

We all kind of talk about Alduin carrying on as World-Eater through the course of the Skyrim storyline like it's him being a piece of shit, since he'd started it ages ago and was just displaced in time to land on the Last Dragonborn's head in the Fourth Era, but I don't think that's the case.

Based on the state of things, I think Alduin arrived right on time. I think it's the end of the world. The only reason he "should" be stopped is because the Last Dragonborn has the capacity to stop the world from ending in a more down-to-earth sense than just defeating Alduin: they can't save everyone, but they can "fix" every single organization that's holding "the world" together.

They can align with the Imperials and keep the civil war from further crippling them, keeping the Empire from being too weak to push back against the Aldmerri Dominion.

They can save the College of Winterhold, the only group in the right place at the right time to stop the Eye of Magnus from opening, and in doing so make sure that the Psijics are able to put it somewhere nobody else can find it.

They can lead the Companions, cure the curse for those members who don't want to run with Hircine after death, which bolsters their spirits enough to keep doing what they can even when everyone else is trying to kill each other. A single neutral martial force in the middle of a civil war.

They can regain Nocturnal's trust for the Thieves' Guild, restore the Nightingales, and in doing so they can return the luck that was stolen from them as punishment for Mercer Frey's transgression. They can even reclaim the Crown of Barenziah and award the guild with a paragon to increase their newly-regained luck.

They can hear the Night Mother, becoming Listener for the Dark Brotherhood to restore the balancing force of Sithis in the world, purify the most broken Sanctuary the Brotherhood has ever had, and finish a story set into motion way back in the Third Era—Emperor Titus Mede II is murdered under the order of a Motierre, a descendant of a mark the Brotherhood specifically kept from dying during the Oblivion Crisis.

The Last Dragonborn can't do anything outside Skyrim—there's nothing they can do for the Argonians or the Bosmer or the Khajiit, and they can only do very little for the Dunmer via work in Solstheim—but they can work with every single guild or guild-adjacent group, strengthening the Empire to stand against the biggest threat to Tamrielic culture since the First Era, and in doing so they can make it so the world isn't ready for Alduin to eat it.

The Hero of Kvatch exists when Tamriel, and presumably Nirn as a whole is in the prime of its life, that's what makes the Oblivion Crisis such a big deal. This is a world that isn't ready to give up, it still has the strength to fight, it just needs someone standing at the head to direct it. The Last Dragonborn comes into the story when everything is falling apart and nothing really feels worthwhile, when it's hard to see why the world is worth saving. They have the chance to prove that there's still some life left here, that the world isn't too far gone to save—Alduin arrived right on time, it's the Last Dragonborn's job to change that.

I can see how coming from Oblivion to Skyrim would feel disappointing and hollow, but I'm pretty sure that's literally the point of the story.

Oblivion tells you the world is worth saving because it's got so much left to live for, even with the odds stacked so high against it. Skyrim asks you whether a world that's dying is still a world worth saving, and it's up to you to prove that it is.

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

If there's one Elder Scrolls theory I'm 100% convinced is true, it is that Orc men must have the highest rate of homosexuality out of all the Elder Scrolls races. If the Orc Chieftains are the only ones who can have wives and kids, what do you think all the other Orc men in the clans do when they get lonely? That's right: each other.

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

Would you trust him with the Amulet of Kings?

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

Answer the question old man

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

Soup the Khajiit time !!

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

You know what they say. If you don't like the weather in Cyrodiil, wait 0.001 seconds and it'll change.

(warning video has super quick flashing lights from a weather glitch)

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Guys it's his first day at the arena 😳😱

Look at this beautiful upcoming champion and his deadly rusty dagger.

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

i never fully played thru the fighters guild questline in Oblivion all the way through, so im doing that with the remaster. let it be understood how much i hate that balding loser Oreyn from Chorrol. im so mad i could get naked and run thru the streets

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

Local woman has the worst week of her life, hometown invaded by hell

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

There's no permanent way to kill a dragon priest

You may kill their physical form but so long as their mask exists, they're never truly dead

Dragon priest masks are very dangerous to wear because of this

If a dragon priest mask is worn for too long, eventually the wearer will no longer exist and there will only be the dragon priest

Slowly, the wearer will begin to exhibit signs of inheriting the original dragon priest's personality, picking up their mannerism and such

The final stage of this is the wearer will no longer speak Cyrodiilic and only speak in Dovahzul

This special enchantment on the masks was created by Azhidal who created the enchantment by binding the souls of the dragon priests to their specific mask

This enchantment does not have any effects on Dragonborns which is why the player character never becomes effected

The only mask that doesn't have this enchantment is The Wooden Mask and that's because it's not meant to function like a regular dragon priest mask

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

Virtuos and Bethesda appear to have taken a lot of care with the new character models, and for Martin and Uriel in particular they've apparently gone as far as to have:

made Martin look noticeably like Uriel VII, enough that you could probably tell they were related if they ever stood side by side - the eyebrows and nose especially, which are pretty much 1:1

made the new faces with apparently some consideration for their voice actors' appearance despite no mocap, e.g. Uriel's nose looks a LOT like Patrick Stewart's

And both of these are while they (and seemingly the majority of the npcs) also look extremely on-model to the OG models, and not to later interpretations (e.g. the Legends cards)

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

The Lastborn of Alkosh

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

I had expected the NPCs to not be very close to their OG likenesses and am very surprised to see how on-model not only Martin, but also Lucien and Vincente look.

The main differences here appear to be:

Martin: his eyes are further apart closer to average. His eyebrows have the same overall shape despite the texture quality difference.

Lucien: slightly more obvious curve on the upper lip, and he has a more obvious beard now (similar to Martin, IMO this was the OG stubble texture being like 20px in resolution). Nose has an asymmetrical bump at the base.

Vicente: his head isn't as broad but keeps his overall silhouette, and his eyes are at less of an angle now - but they have changed colour, vampires appear to all have icy blue eyes in the remaster.

This close of a 1:1 match is likely so consistent across all the NPCs (see: the Adoring Fan and some of the wonkier ones) because Virtuos and Bethesda made new models for the character creation shape keys, and probably did not attempt to resculpt anyone to have unique faces. Most of the OG NPCs are made with the same CC that players use, and the same is true here.

LotRO is another game that recently got a character model update that worked the same way.

[khajiit-up-a-tree]

What if Meridia fuckin partied