Petty's Skyrim Let's Play

{{{ I've decided to move this to its own thread. Partly because the other thread title is inaccurate- its no longer the tale of Canthiss and Lydia as some of you may have noticed. And partly it gives it a little more prominence.
But mainly because its now 6 episodes long, which is roughly a full hour of footage and there is more to come as its already in the can anyway so may as well.

For those not familiar with 'let's plays' they are simply videos in which you watch someone else play a game. With role-playing games like Skyrim it is also hopefully quite entertaining as the player also interacts with the world. I've been a fan of a few over the years for Skyrim.
But I had noticed they tend to follow a similar format. Episodes are usually about an hour long they are often either unedited or only long periods of travel where not much happens are edited out. And as they are lets plays there is all the other stuff that is part of gaming, going through your menus, saving games etc.

So in order to do something a bit different from that, and more me, I opted for bite-sized easy to digest episodes never more than a max of 15 minutes long (the longest so far is just over 12 mins). But if you prefer hour long episodes then there is now enough up to give you an hour if you binge them. And I decided to edit them, to remove all the menu faffing about and the like and down time travelling, resting, eating and the like so it focuses more on the adventure, the characters and the world than the 'gamey' house-keeping elements.
I appreciate this makes it less a lets play, as poking about in menus is part of the game, but it wasn't me, it broke the flow of the narrative too much for my tastes.

The other thing I chose to do was to just start where I happened to be in my game. With the main quest line completed and the Dragonborn dlc already completed. There's a few reasons for this, one is that even people who haven't played the game have probably seen the bloody carriage opening sequence somewhere, and those who watch lets plays and play the game will have sat through it and all the main missions so many times as to be bored rigid.
So instead I figured start famous and the hero and focus instead on some of the less commonly seen quests and modded quests just to be a bit fresher.

This does mean those who dont know may need a little background info to start. So if you know nothing going in and want some background on the world, here's all you need to get going. Its not at all essential but might be useful if your going in cold to all things Elder Scrolls and Skyrim.

Skyrim is the most northern land on the continent of Tamriel. There are various types of elves live there, humans are the indigenous race here called Nords, orcs (actually a form of elf), Kajhit (bipedal cat people) and Argonaians (bipedal lizard people), and its a world of swords and magic.

Its also in the middle of a civil war between the native Nords and the Imperials.
The Imperials rule the Empire from Cryodiil to the south and have conquered Skyrim long ago with a few round about countries too. But the Imperials took up with, and have been almost taken over by, an elven group called the Thalmor- bit like the Inquisition.

In Tamriel there are Nine Divines who are the main Gods, but one of them Talos, was a Nord human elevated to godhood and now worshipped as  a god. And the Thalmor have banned his worship on pain of death. Which did not go down well in Skyrim where he was the chief deity. Hence the civil war.

The Nords  fighting the war are known as Stromcloaks, led by Ulfric Stromcloak who is Thane of the city of Windhelm and very racist against elves and in fact any non-human species. Opposed to him are the Imperials whose general in Skyrim is General Tulius (my character has not yet intervened in the war or picked a side) the Imperials are headquartered in the capital of Skyrim, Solitude.

As if this wasn't enough at the same time the dragons who in the far, far past ruled the world and then disappeared have returned, which is when the player of the game steps into things in the role of the person destined to be Dragonborn- a person who can permanently kill a dragon by not only defeating its physical form but absorbing its soul afterwards.

The player also learns the ability to 'shout' a Nord speciality which grants magical powers in the form of a magical shout. The masters of this art are the Greybeards who live atop Skyrim's largest mountain. Shouts are also the language of the dragons.

When dragons ruled the world they did it through their human emissaries, the Dragon Priests. Whose tombs are still scattered about and are being re-awoken by the reappearance of the dragons. These priests also created 'word walls' in which the magic of shouts are trapped in engravings, which the Dragonborn can read and so learn a new word to shout.

As well as the aforementioned Nine Divines who are worshipped there are the evil side to that coin as it were, the Daedric Lords (though they are male and female in appearance they have no gender) and they reside in the planes of Oblivion (bit like hell), conjurors and the like can summoner lesser demons from there to fight for them. Daedra really like to screw about with peoples lives and history and often interfere in mortal affairs.
And that very briefly is the world of Skyrim in which all this is set.

Hope you enjoy my adventures in Skyrim! And dont forget to leave a like if you do and subscribe, and a big thanks to those who already have      }}}

{{ Just a gentle bump, as the new ep is ready to go up tomorrow - plenty time to catch up if you haven't yet. }}

I've caught up. What's with the dragon-soul-sucking? This is a feature of the game?

Anyway, these videos are a good advertisement for all the mods you use. The world is looking pretty good.

{{ Yeah- no matter what character you create or race you play as you are always the 'Dragonborn' the only person who can permanently kill off a dragon by consuming its soul when its physical remains are destroyed.
As a game mechanic you use the gathered souls to unlock new shouts, and you learn new shouts from 'word walls' which are from the near mythical era of when the dragons ruled (shouts are dragon language). There is a Word Wall somewhere in the barrow I am investigating for Ralis, as I could hear the distinct chanting it makes in the 2nd video when Sophia and I are in there (5.40 seconds in). But we haven't found it yet! }}

these videos are a good advertisement for all the mods you use. The world is looking pretty good.- Forest

{{There are currently about 300 mods running! The most remarkable thing of which is that officially the VR version does not in fact support mods (the wonderful plus side of this is whilst everyone else's mods keep breaking every time Bethseda update Skyrim with a new 'Creation Club' monetised mods, and they have to wait on the modders to fix it again, the VR version doesn't suffer from it as there is no creation club for it). And thanks to those same modders a work around to make the majority of mods work with VR was out within about a week of the games release!


Oh, and thanks for watching Forest }}

{{ In terms of how it looks the main factors there are-

Texture overhauls- I have a few of these working at same time the major ones being Noble Skyrim, Majestic Mountains, realistic water 2, CBBE (overhauls how the character models look), Verdant grass, 3d tress and plants (an essential in VR in my view), Blended roads and a host of minor retextures of everything from food and utensils to seats and benches and rugs. Id say about 90% of stuff in the game has been retextured, including clothing, armour and weapons.

To this I add ELFX (which overhauls the games lighting system) and an ENB (which adds post processing effects to the game the base engine cant do).

And the final touch is to overhaul the weather, I use Obsidian Weathers as I like its misty feel and that mist hides a multitude of sins with Skyrim's low quality flickery distant LOD (LOD for those who dont know are basically low polygon version of stuff to put in the distance to save the system having to render stuff in detail you can't see anyway. Trees for example, all the ones in your immediate vicinity (a game cell) are solid and 3d objects, but all the ones in the background, on the mountains etc are actually more like 2d cardboard cut outs that turn into 3d models when you get close enough to them, and that's true for all 3d objects in the game world as rendering the entire country at once in high detail would cripple any pc and reduce the frame-rate to a slide-show).

Oh and though not a change to look I think its essential to compliment the look and make it work, the Audio Overhaul and Immersive Sounds compendium to bring it all to life. }}

{{ New ep- hope you enjoy. }}

{{{ New episode- enjoy }}

You're deep in this Skyrim stuff! The only subjects I can talk about in that much detail are Tolkien, RPGs, and my work.

Edit: Can you play co-op Skyrim?

{{ Dunno about deep- if you play Skyrim, especially on pc, then you mod Skyrim. No one plays vanilla Skyrim its terrible! And once you start modding you quickly learn what are the major ones you need, and what needs major fixes or improvements (almost everything!).

Where you can get deep in Elder Scrolls games is the lore. Theres a ton of that, the game world is full of stories, history, books to read (there are about 180 books to read in Skyrim alone ranging from popular smut like 'The Lusty Argonian Maid' to history books like the 'Morning Star', which is the first in a series of books recounting the last days of the First Empire.) Its not Tolkien levels of depth, but it does a pretty good job of pretending to be.


All the Elder Scrolls games in the main line are single player (the only multiplayer being Elder Scrolls online). There are two mods which are working on offering full coop, but neither is stable or finished, and may never be. At their heart they have always been a solely playing experience- just you and a massive world to explore and people to meet.}}

{{ Episode 9. In which my pocket gets picked! }}

I'm confused, what are the miners digging up? I mean, a tomb, but for treasure or something?

{{ It's a tomb yes, a Nord barrow. There's loads of them dotted about, but this one appears to have an ancient word wall in it, from the Mythic Era at the dawn of Time, when the dragons ruled through their human puppets, the powerful mages known as the Dragon Priests.
As the Dragonborn I can read Word Walls and absorb their knowledge.
In this case though it just started as a scholar wanting to excavate an interesting tomb, as a rich, famous type I decided to fund his pet project. }}

Eight years, and numerous save files later and I'm still nowhere near completing Skyrim (never even finished the main storyline yet) I usually get distracted by the various side quests or just meandering round the landscape. Definitely one of my favourite games, though a bit of a grind and time sink if you want to progress at later levels/missions. I think my disc (PS3) is bugged as I've never got above level 54.

I see that a lot of PC users use mods, or follow character roleplays to liven the game up a bit, but I neither have the money nor inclination to do so myself, I'd only end up as a stealth archer again anyway lol.

I always make sure to complete this quest

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:No_Stone_Unturned

early on in a playthrough, must be sitting on 200k worth of gems on my current playthrough...

{{ The main quest line is spectacular in its mundanity. You are not missing anything.

I cant imagine playing it without mods, and I find it increasingly hard to conceive of playing it out of VR now too. I would personally say if you are a gamer its worth saving the pennies for (I know thats hard, took me two years saving doing 12 hours shifts in a care home just to get the pc alone).

On plus side Malick- if you give my lets play series a go (shameless plug - new episode up tomorrow or Monday time dependent) there will be plenty for you to see if you play mod free, even small incidental stuff, that will be all new to you. Not least of course, Sophia. }}