it's annoying that video games disable achievements when you install mods. i DID kill alduin who cares if thomas the tank engine was there

This is UNCANNY.

@vurelly

This genre of re-enactment of video game logic/bugs/behaviour will never cease to be immensely funny

Not to mention everyone who does it is so insanely talented at portraying not only the vibes, but being dead on with the motion. I mean the courier in this alone has amazing core strength and rag dolls the EXACT way that bodies do in game. It’s honestly incredible.

how do you guys feel about my lock screen

OP do you take constructive criticism?

there is nothing to criticize here

Who the hell organize apps by color

Mind your business

what would happen if someone used the dragon resurrection shout (Slen Tiid Vo) on martin septim's statue/corpse? i mean... it resurrects dragons, as long as no-one's absorbed their soul. he was sort of a dragon and as far as i know nobody absorbed his soul. do you think it would work

(Reddit post)

ooh, i've never breached containment to reddit before. interesting answers! i should probably agree with their expertise (they definitely know more about tes lore than i do) but i feel like, at the very least, i should point out that the resurrection process does more than just put the flesh back on. sahloknir is walking and talking as a skeleton for a bit there

Meridia's beacon on clearance at the home goods if anyone wants to start a quest

A while ago, I believe I promised you a story about riddles. Well, it’s well into the holiday season, so here’s a little early present for you all: a story about a Skyrim moment that almost came to be.

I left Bethesda after working on Skyrim for a year and change, writing the first draft or so of a bunch of quests, and the last thing I wrote on my last day was a riddle from Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. It was a totally optional bit towards the end of his quest – more of an easter egg, really – and he would warn you several times that a high-stakes game with the Mad God is a bad idea, because of course it fucking is.

After all, who wouldn’t want to test wits with the semi-devine embodiment of madness, and hidden touches like that are what makes open-world games (and especially Bethesda games) so fun to explore. Plus, I absolutely adore writing for the character (who’s voiced by my family friend and absolute delight of a human, Wes Johnson) and the idea made me laugh like a fiend, which seemed like a good enough reason for Sheogorath to do anything.

If you finally convinced him you were determined to answer his riddle, his riddle was simply this: “What is the opposite of a chicken?”

The player had a bunch of plausible answers to choose from: an egg, a rooster, a fox, a brave man, etc. And, as you’d expect from him, good old Sheo had a different explanation for why each answer was woefully wrong.

“A brave man? No, actually this chicken is really quite courageous, in its way. / Pecked a troll right in the eye to protect its brood! What a heroic little nugget it made. / You two have a lot in common. I’d introduce you, but you’ll be busy falling to your death.”

Picking a wrong answer (which is to say, any of them) got you teleported a mile above the highest mountain in the game, giving you a lovely view of the world before falling to your death. I remember the biggest issue was that I didn’t want to make the player wait through a long loadtime just to die - especially since loading into a new space would end up replacing their autosave with a new one where they’re inescapably falling to their doom. 

I mean, Sheogorath may be a smartass, but he’s not about to ruin your playthrough. Although you really should be making separate backup saves, you know.

The best part was that I wanted to give an achievement when you had tried one (or all) of the answers unsuccessfully and realized none of them were right. That way, when you reloaded and tried again, the dialogue system could see that you had the achievement and then you’d mysteriously get a new dialogue option to complain that he was cheating. Naturally, Sheogorath’s response was to grin and remind you that he had said the whole thing was a bad idea in the first place.

But he’d take some sort of mercy on you and let you live with that answer. It’d just serve to be a reminder not to bet your life with a god that delights in breaking the rules. Sometimes, the way to overcome an obvious deathtrap is to not walk into its jaws.

The best and most devious part of my plan was that the only way to win the riddle contest was to go into the editor or debug menu and set a flag to turn on a hidden answer in the dialogue tree (“SheoRiddleAnswer = true”, I think? It’s been a while). 

At that point, Sheogorath would recognize that you had altered the fundamental rules of the universe just to win a riddling contest, applaud your trivial misuse of phenomenal cosmic power, and give you a sweet roll or something.

Nothing too great, because the real reward of a dumb little thing like that is having the story to tell your friends afterwards. If you wanted a more game-breaking reward, there were plenty of other options to choose from (may I suggest anything involving the Wabbajack?). Plus, you clearly have access to the editor/debug menu, so what more do you need?

When I left, I handed the quest to my friend and colleague (the excellent Nate Ellis), who went on to do wonderful things with it. But I’m pretty sure the riddle contest got cut before release, possibly because of limited dialogue budgets or because it was a hassle to implement. More likely, it got cut because it’s kind of a dick move for a designer to do to the player, and Nate is a much kinder DM than I am.

Knowing that engine, bits of the riddle contest may still be hidden in the quest’s code somewhere. I haven’t gone digging through the editor to check, because I’d rather let it live on in my memory untainted by cruel reality. As I often say, gamedevs never really get to play the game we made, we just play the game we *almost* made. Besides, I have other games to work on these days.

But that riddle contest will always be part of my personal lore about Sheogorath, Daedric Prince of Madness.  And now it can be part of yours, too!

who could have seen this coming

why did they use the iron helmet in all of the skyrim promo material it’s the ugliest and stats-wise one of the worst helmets in the game. fuck bethesdo

fus roh dah

back in early 2012 when i mastered smithing in skyrim for the very first time and went to craft me some awesome endgame heavy armor, excited about it being made from dragon bone, my reaction was, very understandably, "are you fucking kidding me man. i am not putting this on". it is 2024 and just reminding myself that this is what they made the second best armor in the game look like makes my head hurt. armor rating second to daedric but more lightweight, requiring 100 in smithing to craft, and this is what it looks like. the helmet doesn't even match the rest of the armor. it looks like the clam meat texture. it looks like actual literal garbage. it looks brittle, and like it smells bad, and i fail to see how you need to be a Master Blacksmith to make it, seeing how the actual craftsmanship on display just kind of looks like you were haphazardly hot gluing chunks to yourself. like, i thought it wouldve made sense for more advanced armors to be more elaborate, like how ebony armor is quite complex and ornate. i thought that was the process. this is dogshit. who designed this? who made the models? did the same person make the glass and elven armors in oblivion? good lord they had to invent a new bone in order to accentuate the female model's boob plate situation

redesigned that shit

If I left out your fav put ‘em in the tags! Went from off the top of my head the most talked about

You ever see a post that just looks like someone swinging an incredibly high resolution bat at an impossibly busty hornet’s nest?

❤️ URAG

Imagine a bunch of Nords using their battle cry ability in unison. I’m just imagining how epic that would be. Could enough Nords doing it together make the average dragon flee? Imagine Imperial soldiers straight from Cyrodiil being sent to fight Stormcloaks, and absolutely shitting themselves when the Nords all start magic yelling while charging at them with battleaxes. 

Like, it sucks ass that we only ever see the player use special race abilities in Skyrim. I wanna see General Tullius use Voice of the Emperor at the peace meeting so everyone shuts the fuck up. I wanna see Teldryn Sero set himself on fire with Ancestor’s Wrath while absolutely wrecking someone. I wanna see Veezara use Histskin to heal the wound from Cicero so he isn’t helpless during the sanctuary raid. I wanna see Faendal command every single chicken in Riverwood to gang up on Sven and peck his eyes out.