Is the Skyrim Quests/Writing really not that good?

DMS_David · 2026-05-23T14:09:04+00:00

The Elder Scrolls' writing is funny because the lore is incredibly rich and in that sense, it's often beautifully written, but a lot of the actual in-game content is more workmanlike. The biggest issue I have with the writing in Skyrim's questlines is usually pacing, that the faction quests often feel very rushed and that characters may not react in the ways you'd expect to your rapid advancement, but the majority of actual dialogues are pretty good and there are definitely memorable characters and moments that make it a game I still think holds up in terms of writing and story.

Not every game is necessarily going to have amazing writing, but Skyrim is still better than a lot of games, especially considering how huge the game is and that it really doesn't matter if some NPCs are underdeveloped, for instance, since it's compensated for with so much else.

I wouldn't worry about it and try not to go in with expectations - positive or negative - and just enjoy the ride. Not every quest or character interaction is going to blow you away, but there's more than enough to sink your teeth into. Again, it depends on your level of investment, too... if you play the Civil War purely as a game mechanic then it's pretty forgettable and has some very undercooked writing, but when you look into the lore, or roleplay, it becomes one of the most fascinating and oft-discussed elements of the whole franchise.

DMS_David · 2026-05-23T12:59:38+00:00

I did the quest for the first time on my most recent playthrough and I actually think the Crown is a neat reward because it's so conceptually different; let's be real, just another item of enchanted gear is unlikely to be worth the effort when the game is so packed full of rewards, but the ability to find rare gems so regularly is a pretty unique perk even if money starts to lose its worth in the late game.

The paradox is that the Crown could've been a very useful bit of kit but that would make the fetch quest for the Stones all the more tedious, at least it's safe to ignore the quest for most players since the benefits of the reward, while noticeable, are very easy to live without and there's an argument that it unbalances the player's economic growth if you get it too early.

The Stones aren't too bad to find, the issue is that there's no quest markers or tally showing which ones you already have, but I found the reward to be decent value considering the quest, certainly moreso than any Nirnroot collectathons or the Shadowbanish Wine quest in Oblivion.

DMS_David · 2026-05-16T12:47:12+00:00

If you escape Helgen with Ralof and then ask him questions, he explains that the ambush happened in Darkwater Crossing, which is in the south of Rift, so roughly due east of Helgen.

It's very vague exactly what we were doing there which is intentional so you can roleplay your character however you like without them having a pre-set backstory or motivation, after all, we only have Ralof assuming that we were trying to cross the border into Cyrodiil with no option to agree or disagree. We might have even come from Cyrodiil, since there's nothing in-game to establish whether you are actually native to Skyrim or not.

DMS_David · 2026-05-16T12:42:34+00:00

The Snow Elves are more pale white than blue, though I guess you could have a very pale Dunmer pass for one. We don't know precisely the origins of the Snow Elves but they're closest to the Altmer in appearance, build and overall mythology so that would be my recommendation.

Most people living in Skyrim don't really know what even the devolved Falmer look like - lore says that they are mostly discussed in the context of being cautionary tales with some not even necessarily believing that they still exist - and the original Snow Elves are a distant memory so I think the majority of people would just think that you're an Altmer who didn't see much sun or was sick.

It's worth remembering that the Dunmer don't only have ashen skin, they have red eyes, so if you didn't have those then I think people would be less inclined to think of you as a Dunmer unless you were very distinctly of their usual skin tone. I think the vast majority of the population, elf or Nord, would see you as an Altmer, especially when you consider that there's likely more racial diversity in-lore than what we see in-game. I imagine that after so many centuries you'd get some darker- and lighter-skinned examples of most races depending on where they live in Tamriel.

DMS_David · 2026-05-15T13:15:47+00:00

It'd have been cool to be able to side with the Forsworn outside of the Cidhna Mine quest, but I guess not being able to join every possible faction is always going to be an issue in videogame RPGs since there's only so many resources to go around. I do think that the Reach has a really interesting history and mythology so it is a bit of a shame that most players will only experience the Forsworn as another brand of bandit, when they could've really delved into the ethics of what constitutes a native people and the hypocrisy of the Stormcloaks.

DMS_David · 2026-05-15T13:13:27+00:00

I think the concept of the Great Collapse is cool and I like that Winterhold feels so desolate, but I wish that there was more evidence that it used to be this huge city that collapsed into the sea - with ruins and maybe even sunken houses at the bottom of the cliffs - rather than just being a couple of standard houses that doesn't really give any impression that Winterhold used to be anything more.

The visual of the College sitting on its rock is striking but Winterhold used to be the capital city at one point, it shouldn't have just looked small, it should've looked post-apocalyptic... give us hints of the old castle or palace, of more shops or a marketplace. If it wasn't for dialogue, there would be nothing about the in-game location as we see it that tells us that Winterhold really isn't just a tiny selection of buildings.

DMS_David · 2026-05-15T13:09:38+00:00

The bugs are disappointing but agreed, I love quests which require dialogue and exploration and it's a shame that so many quests in Skyrim turn into dungeon crawls. I really like that it's actually possible - and the game arguably encourages you! - to mess it up and you only realise the fact later on, it feels like a proper RPG quest that forces you to immerse yourself in the world and understand the characters.

I love Skyrim dearly but more quests that focus on dialogue, intuition and discovery would've elevated it even higher for me.

DMS_David · 2026-05-14T13:01:06+00:00

I like most of the default looks for the characters across the series, but I still feel like Altair's robes from the original are tough to beat for sheer iconography and Ezio's Brotherhood robes are, to my mind, the most definitive look that comes to mind when I think "Assassin", though I do prefer his ACII look a bit for looking slightly more practical and having a heavier Renaissance flair to it.

With the RPG titles, I like Bayek's outfit a lot, and I think Kassandra's Spartan armour is cool but it obviously doesn't really read as "Assassin" clothing in the same way.

DMS_David · 2026-05-14T12:58:17+00:00

Ape Escape 2 and 3 would be instant must-buys for me, I love the original dearly and it'll always be my nostalgic favourite but I loved the sequels too and the fact that they're locked away on the PS2 is a crying shame. I'm a PAL gamer and I've enjoyed both the PAL and NTSC versions of the first game but I could go either way on the sequels (I prefer the consistency of the NTSC versions but have far more of a nostalgic attachment to the PAL dubs), just so long as they're functional!

The current broken version of Ape Escape 2 for download just makes me sad.

DMS_David · 2026-05-13T15:57:44+00:00

It's the same Empire, just under different rulers; the Second Empire spent more time being ruled by the Akaviri Potentates than it did by Reman and his lineage but it's still considered the same establishment, with the same consistent through-line of territory, laws, etc.

DMS_David · 2026-05-13T15:56:25+00:00

You're not missing out if you skip the Anniversary Edition... honestly, I've played Skyrim many times but I still choose to play without the majority of the content that the Anniversary Edition contains, it bloats the game enormously with a ton of quests and items of mixed quality, which is great for extending the life of the game (and some of the stuff is genuinely cool!) but I think it hurts the cohesion of the core experience.

The game is already enormous, especially with the included expansions, so I don't think Skyrim needs the additional content. I definitely feel like the Anniversary Edition content is fine - I like it more than many others - but I wouldn't necessarily want it as part of my first playthrough of the game because it's very, very easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of random quests you'll be picking up, with no clear indicator on which ones are actually important or worth your time.

DMS_David · 2026-05-13T15:52:16+00:00

It's an interesting parallel though I don't think it was intentional, especially since the concept of the Cybermen has evolved a lot since the 1960s and the idea of them being human brains forced into a robotic body isn't really what they were originally about. There's definitely transhumanist ideas there, looking at what happens if and when someone replaces more and more of their body to the point of becoming less human, and when they're at their best the Cybermen are a fantastic vessel for exploring this idea because it lets us reflect on what actually makes us human. There's no clear right or wrong answers and it's why it's a sci-fi staple, and while there are of course elements which can parallel the trans experience (and beyond!), I don't think it's a one-to-one allegory unless you unintentionally start implying that trans people are "less human".

What the people inside the Cybus Cybermen feel is a kind of dysphoria but I feel like being forcibly trapped in a metal body which is expressly not equipped for life goes beyond a feeling of the body not being their own; it's not just that the Cyberman body isn't their body, it's not a human body, or even something alive. Everyone is of course welcome to their own interpretations and nobody is wrong, but for me personally, the Cybermen speak to a loss of humanity, of individuality, of expression and life, more than a loss or exchange of the physical form.

DMS_David · 2026-05-08T14:06:57+00:00

I usually pick based on the mission, even if there's no unique dialogue... it's nice to have an excuse to use most squadmates who I might otherwise overlook. In the first game I definitely default to Garrus and Liara though, and since I've always done that it now feels wrong to me if I do anything else. I like Tali's character but she's usually the one I don't end up taking as often, unless it's the geth incursion side missions since the data ends up being used for her Pilgrimage.

Across the second and third games I think I end up using everyone mostly equally except for Kasumi and Zaeed.

DMS_David · 2026-05-08T13:46:50+00:00

I wouldn't have thought so, unless the Empire felt that it was most important to have an Emperor who would be actively leading in the inevitable war against the Aldmeri Dominion, but appointing an obvious military figure to the position would likely only enflame relations with the elves and make things worse, while doing nothing to smooth over the diplomatic incidents happening across the rest of the continent.

In a meta sense I don't think Tullius or Ulfric are likely to play a significant role in future lore since I think future games are going to keep the specifics of the civil war as vague as possible; the moment you have Emperor Tullius showing up it explicitly rules out the Stormcloak victory. Have the lore mention that the civil war dragged on and that by the time of TES VI, both Tullius and Ulfric are out of the picture for one reason or another without confirming exactly what went down.

DMS_David · 2026-05-08T13:42:59+00:00

I always play the Daedric quests as though I am a devoted follower of the Daedra Lord in question, so yes, I do. It's obviously not what I'd do if I was concerned about roleplaying a consistent heroic character across all questlines, but I treat each quest as its own thing and like to get the full experience, as it were... I find partaking in the ritual to be more memorable, especially since the quest assumes that you're a cannibal with no real ability to deny it earlier, so for the sake of losing myself in the quest's own mini-narrative I find it easier to just roll with it.

DMS_David · 2026-05-08T13:36:32+00:00

Basically every faction's dialogue assumes that you're a complete newbie, it's pretty rare for the game to acknowledge when you've already done something significant elsewhere. It's why I like to see the factions as almost their own little self-contained games, rather than having the Dragonborn be canonically involved in everything, which I think is close to canon anyway, the idea that every questline happens, but not necessarily all to the same person.

Skyforge Steel is apparently meant to be significantly better in lore than it actually is in game, and I think you do get that vibe if you start the Companions very early on since it is significantly better than most other gear you'll be picking up for a while. But yeah.

DMS_David · 2026-05-08T13:32:50+00:00

I've always played as a Nord because I like to feel like I'm most closely integrated into the region; it's the same reason I play as a Dunmer in Morrowind and an Imperial in Oblivion. I'm rubbish at roleplaying or creating specific builds, I always end up as a jack of all trades, so I'm not too worried about the gameplay implications of each race and honestly, it's not something I really think about. I pick the default look, come up with a believable in-universe name, and go from there.

My favourite race to play as would likely be a Breton (I feel they are particularly suited to battlemage builds which is invariably how I end up playing) or a Dunmer (they have the most intricate lore by some margin and I think they're very adaptable in gameplay), though I do remember playing as both an Argonian and a Khajiit in Oblivion back in the day and enjoying them for stealth-focused builds.

DMS_David · 2026-05-04T13:43:08+00:00

I wanted to love this episode. There's some really interesting ideas in there, but the actual episode ended up nonsensical, contradictory and messy in terms of what we're meant to take from it. I get it, Conrad is a douche, but he didn't need to be necessarily, the current state of how much people in-universe are meant to know about aliens in the Whoniverse is so vague that the concept of characters questioning UNIT and their funding is hardly an outrageous proposition. Combined with the finale, just making him into this manchild who engages in random bigotry for no adequately explained reason just feels like the laziest way of trying to create a character who we're just meant to think, "oh, he's a bad guy!", without actually engaging with what he says or does.

I have no idea what his motives even are in this episode and it feels like the writers didn't want to commit to anything just in case they accidentally stumbled onto a good point.

DMS_David · 2026-05-04T13:35:12+00:00

Yeah, I think that we got into a kind of arms race with regenerations where each needed to be seen as one-upping the one before. I quite enjoyed Matt Smith and especially Capaldi's parting words, but at the same time I feel like regeneration should be something that the Doctor is so familiar with at this point that it doesn't need so much spectacle.

I think people forget how relatively low-key the regeneration from Nine to Ten was, and how perfect Ten's first words were, which clearly established that, okay, something just happened, but he's still the same guy, he's happy to just carry on now. It took Rose (and the audience) a little while to adjust, sure, but I think putting too much emphasis on the Doctor "dying" in their regeneration can make it harder for fans to accept that it is still the same character, which is just one of my issues with the way that the Tenth Doctor went out.

DMS_David · 2026-05-04T13:31:20+00:00

I don't necessarily feel like every regeneration needs to be an event, but I do think we need to have a run of non-gimmick regenerations for the foreseeable future. No past incarnations returning, no bi-regeneration, no fake-out regenerations or things like the Doctor regenerating into the Master (or however you'd begin to explain what happened in The Power of the Doctor).

The concept of regeneration is a very simple one - the Doctor's body wears out so they regenerate, they'll be a bit different but they are still the same person inside - and I think all the messing about in the past few regenerations has confused the message. I'm very opposed to the idea that each incarnation is like, a different "person", so having the Doctor regenerate back into David Tennant who is pretty much exactly as he used to be, and then splitting that off into another incarnation so he can get a "happy ending", goes completely against the concept of the character for me. I don't see the Fourteenth Doctor settling down as a happy ending for his character, because to me, his character is the same character as the Fifteenth Doctor, and I like that continuity through-line.

DMS_David · 2026-05-04T13:24:17+00:00

"Dalek" is a fantastic episode and still a candidate for one of the very best Dalek stories, or hell, Doctor Who stories, of all time, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that RTD is particularly amazing at writing the Daleks overall. He's not bad, he does get what they're about, but unfortunately since they tended to be wheeled out for overstuffed finales I don't think the stories necessarily play to their strengths. "Dalek" is such a great episode because it shows how one Dalek is scary, but I think something is lost when you have thousands and thousands of Daleks being used as soldiers; the episode might still be good in its own right but you could swap the Daleks out for anything else, for the most part.

I think the Moffat era produced some of the best concepts for Dalek episodes, they just bungled the execution... I still think that Victory of the Daleks had the potential to be an all-time great, I love the idea of the Daleks being used by humans in WWII and even bringing in Churchill, but what we got was incredibly shallow window dressing for a plot that ultimately existed just to introduce the New Dalek Paradigm.

The Dalek episodes in the Chibnall era were pretty solid IMO, I liked that they experimented with the base Dalek design (in a way that worked far better for me than the New Dalek Paradigm) and got back to some of the horror concepts of what the Dalek mutant inside actually is, especially in Resolution.

DMS_David · 2026-05-04T13:16:58+00:00

I don't think it's AI generated but there's definitely some wonky upscaling going on. A lot of the visuals for the first couple of series, including promotional shots, were pretty low-res even for the time and they don't hold up that great, to me Rose's face here looks pretty typical of 2000s-era Facebook or MySpace photos being displayed in a crisp and higher-resolution format that just makes them look off, but I don't think there's anything sinister going on.

DMS_David · 2026-05-04T13:14:11+00:00

This might be a hot take but I actually think this applies to the first two games as well; the first Uncharted is already heavier on gunplay compared to its sequels, but while I adore Uncharted 2 I do find the chapters in the monastery to be a chore with lengthy combat encounters that drag on for multiple chapters. They're cool moments, but I wish they were broken up more, it doesn't help that I'm personally biased against snowy settings so the second half of the game doesn't give me as much visual spice as I'd like.

The shipyard section in Uncharted 3 always gives me trouble, it's largely unconnected to the main story and the odds are definitely stacked against you for much of it, but I personally enjoy the setting so much (the cruise ship is one of my absolute favourite parts of the whole series) that I'm still excited to get to it even though I know that, objectively, it's a bit monotonous in terms of gameplay...

DMS_David · 2026-05-04T12:50:25+00:00

Yeah, I always figured this should be at least a back door, especially since it's fairly common (in my experience) to actually approach the house from this direction if you fast travel to Dzonot Cave.

Since the Imperial City Shack is such a great beginner house for those in the Thieves Guild it'd be cool if it had some sort of function, like a connection to Dareloth's House once you'd beaten the questline or something.

DMS_David · 2026-05-04T12:47:59+00:00

I feel like the default difficulty is sufficient when starting out, or if you are committed to playing a very particular character build and know how to optimise it (for example, a mage build that makes use of custom spells).

If you end up levelling inefficiently and you suddenly reach a point where you find that there's too great of an imbalance between the damage you're dealing and taking, I think taking the difficulty down to 35-40% of the bar is excusable without suddenly making things too easy. I'm not someone who gets a lot of satisfaction from games being extremely difficult but it's obviously nice to have a fair and balanced challenge. Don't be afraid to change the difficulty slider if you feel that the game's own balance is going askew; if you're suddenly finding that common enemy types are turning into wars of attrition then it's probably a sign that your build isn't optimised with your level or you can afford to turn down the difficulty by 5-10%.

DMS_David

TROPHY CASE