The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Alduin, you’re going down!

THE WORLD-EATER’S EYRIE

Have you done everything you wanted? Geared up for the final quests? Good, let’s go! The Dragonborn climbs onto Odahviing and is carried away to the distant temple of Skuldafn, located so far off-map that players can’t get there except by riding a dragon. The place feels like a final dungeon; it’s meant to put all of your skills to the test, and by all the Gods of Tamriel, it does!

It IS a pretty big dungeon.

This isn't even a Death Overlord, just a Deathlord.

The place is swarmed with the most powerful draugr you can fight at your level. I was Level 51, so I faced mostly Draugr Scourges and Deathlords, all of which are as powerful as bosses and can use Unrelenting Force. Hordes of them. Picking them off one by one with arrows didn’t work too well. Beat them up with swords? That’s all good, but they ganged up on me pretty quick. Although, I’ll say, it was the first time in a while that I felt truly challenged! It was really hard, but felt very rewarding as well! It’s not like draugr carry a lot of stuff I’d need later anyway, so I guess I didn’t need to carry as little as possible into battle. The exterior area alone had a dozen of those damn monsters, that’s not even counting the northern and southern towers. Oh, did I mention the two dragons circling over Skuldafn too? Yeah, those can attack too.

To reach the roof of the dungeon, we need to walk inside and make our way up. There are more draugr in there, as well as several puzzles (some of which are actually quite tricky!). Again: A test of all your skills, as any well-developed final dungeon ought to be. Just before leaving the dungeon, what was waiting for Nikhaolaas? A draugr death overlord, in case deathlords weren’t overkill already. And what’s outside? Well, more of these undead, of course!

Have I mentioned that they can Fus-Ro-Dah you too?

I did try to keep as few items with me as possible, but I had a hunch I would be fighting these. I had three weapons with me: A sword that can capture souls into gems (since those are necessary to power up a weapon whose enchantment has run out of power and I was afraid I’d run out of filled gems); my trusted ebony sword that sets everything it hits on fire; and Dawnbreaker, obtained in a side-quest (I’ll discuss those later), which has nifty bonus effects when used to kill undead monsters. For armor, my dragonplate set did the trick.

Your mask is the only one I've yet to collect!

At the top of the ruins, a portal to Sovngarde awaited. It was, however, guarded by a Dragon Priest. Those are particularly powerful draugr who led dragon cultists; they excel in magic. Many are nameless, but there’s a handful scattered around Skyrim, in precise dragon ruins, who have names. Those are pretty impressive bosses, and upon defeat you can pick up their dragon mask, which bears their name. Such masks offer decent armor protection, but they’re sought for the very powerful effects they contain. I came across some of them when I was trying to clear every dungeon. The one in Skuldafn, named Nahkriin, must be defeated. Its staff must be picked up to open the portal, and its mask must be collected as you can’t come back to Skuldafn once you leave it. Better not forget anything important. Anyhow, the Dragonborn opens the portal into…

SOVNGARDE

That's when it's not foggy.

Man, for the Nord afterlife, this place is really misty. According to the few souls we meet, it’s unusual for this place – Alduin seems to be causing this mist. Thankfully, we can clear it with the Clear Skies shout. Sovngarde is actually quite a nice place. I hope I won’t get to see it again anytime soon once this is over. What’s interesting is that while you walk around this area, you can actually meet some of the NPCs that died over the course of your playthrough. That’s clever!

Too bad I can't stick around, those look yummy.

Nikhaolaas eventually gets to a bridge made of a dragon carcass. In order to pass and access the Hall of Valor, we must prove our worth by battling Tsun, a legendary warrior. Boom, done, can I pass now? K-Thanks. Inside the Hall of Valor, we can speak to several heroes the Dragonborn may have heard about throughout his journey. The most important ones are Gormlaith, Hakon and Felldir, the three Nord heroes who sent Alduin forward in time and from whom you learned the Dragonrend shout, by reading the Elder Scroll at the Throat of the World. After Nikhaolaas presents himself, the three rally behind him to put an end to Alduin for good. So all four walk outside, to the big field before the dragon skeleton bridge…

DRAGONSLAYER

It's time to end the World-Eater!

Before the fight proper can start, all four heroes dispel the mist by using Clear Skies at the same time. It has to be done thrice, because Alduin brings the mist back. After the third time, the dragon gets pissed and attacks.

Chances are that the Dragonborn is even mightier than he was during the fight on the Throat of the World. To top it off, the old Nord heroes are there to help as well. The result? A final boss fight that’s easier than the previous battle against the same opponent. I’ll admit I struggled, but not nearly as much. I also quickly realized that the cooldown for the Dragonnrend shout was short enough that I could simply do it again before the dragon could escape from it, leaving Alduin incapable of flying away, and chip away at his health until the World-Eater was defeated.

Alduin might return someday. This day isn't anytime soon.

Well, that was… almost anticlimactic. Alduin dies and decays, and this time he has nowhere to run. The Dovahkiin doesn’t absorb his soul, though – but at least that enemy is as dead as he can be. And with this, one of the old Nord heroes teaches a shout that carries the player back to Skyrim; the Throat of the World, in fact. Dragons fly around, claiming their allegiance to the Dragonborn, while Paarthurnax congratulates Nikhaolaas for this victory. Odahviing also reiterates his role as the Dragonborn’s willing mount, as long as you choose to call for him to carry you around. With this, we can go down to High Hrothgar to speak to Arngeir, or to Sky Haven Temple to speak to Esbern. Guards around the various holds will acknowledge your victory, but good luck getting the various Jarls to say the same!

It's a dragon party celebrating the... killer of dragons...

And thus ends the main quest, roll credits. Or not. You can watch the end credits from the main menu anyway.

However, Nikhaolaas can’t go and rest on his laurels just yet. There are so many other quests to do here!

QUESTING FOR FUN AND PROFIT

I felt bad helping the Forsworn in Markarth that one
time, so I went to their lair where they thought they
were safe and I murdered them all.

Sure, one can try and complete only the main quest, but chances are that a player will complete several side-quests alongside the seventeen missions of the central plot. I already touched upon the Civil War questline taking part of the stage as you negotiate a truce between the involved parties. I also brought up a few examples of quests that can pop up from time to time.

Or a player could just go into every dungeon and clear every area that can be cleared. As I mentioned already, that’s what I started with – after becoming Thane of Whiterun, I travelled far and wide across Skyrim to find all of the areas one could find.

There’s just a couple details about this project that ought to be mentioned.

Some dungeons are bigger on the inside. Kagrenzel, as
an example, is small, but leads to a gigantic underground
cave (one of several around Skyrim).

Some quests open when you enter a dungeon. Surprise! There’s an NPC here asking for help. It might even turn out to be an important quest with several steps, if you’re lucky. Usually you’re gonna walk into a dungeon and nothing special will happen, and you can just go through, beat the boss of that area, and leave with some decent loot. On the opposite end, there are dungeons that you cannot enter unless you have a particular quest lined up. The door will be locked with a key and you can’t pick it. Some places are also closed unless you’ve reached a particular player level, but it’s usually fairly low so there isn’t much of a worry there.

Back in Part 2, I mentioned owning a home in a hold and upgrading it. The reason is pretty simple; if you go questing around, you very quickly collect a lot of items, and will need some place to store all of it. Early on, you don’t make a ton of money selling back items, so you might often want to hold off on selling some of your better stuff. You eventually collect a lot of soul gems, precious stones, crafting materials, weapons and armor that you might never wear, and your carrying capacity soon feels incredibly limited. Even if you use your follower as a pack mule, they may have sworn to carry your burdens, there’s only so much they can take. (On the other hand, equip a battle-capable follower with the second best gear you find and the weapons you don’t use, and they become a better fighter than you.)

Also, you end up with so many goddamn potions.

Even with a map, good luck keeping up with what you’ve gone through and what you haven’t. The map will show everything of interest: Standing Stones, towns, solitary cabins, ruins, caves, sepulchers, dragon peaks… Only some of those can be marked cleared, and even then not always. On top of not every dungeon being available until you reach the associated quest, some dungeons just… straight-up don’t have a marked boss! For the record, that’s how a dungeon gets marked cleared – you killed the monster marked as a boss within its walls once. You can come back many in-game months later, the dungeon’s boss will be back (or different), you can kill it again, but the dungeon has been cleared already. Yet some places cannot be cleared, no matter how often you go through them. I used a map on Microsoft Paint, crossing off every area I had cleared, and yet I was still confused at times!

Not even halfway through with those, Christ.

Lastly, like I mentioned, you may go through random places for the Heck of it, and gather all sorts of items. You might run into quest-relevant items, which become stuck in your inventory, weight and all, until you finish their quest. Have a friendly reminder that, aside from enchantments and a handful of in-game effects (which you can thankfully acquire and use in enchantments), your weight carry limit increases only by 5 each time you increase your Stamina when you level up. Quest-relevant items can pile up in inventory. The worst one?? There's a quest that requires finding 24 Unusual Gems all scattered over Skyrim, in places you might not look very often. Got one? It’s stuck among your stuff. Thank God they all weigh only 0.5, but that’s a total of 12 if you do find them all…

If you can live with all this, have fun exploring to your heart’s content!

"GET A HORSE!"

♪♫"I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road..."♪♫

Is traveling long and tedious? Are mountains in your way? Go to any town's stables and buy a horse for 1000 gold. Horses are sturdy, fast, and strong. If you've exceeded your weight carry limit and are slowed to a crawl, you can climb on a horse and be allowed access to fast-traveling again. Several laws of video game physics apparently don't apply to Skyrim horses, either, so you can definitely use them to climb mountains that the Dragonborn can't climb on their own.

Now let's get into the problems around horses. The player can only climb on or get off a horse after sheathing their weapon, and the process is very long. Akatosh help you if you encounter any enemies while on a horse, as you can fight on horseback but it's extremely impractical and best avoided. Hell, your horse is an extra target for enemies, and while they can fight, they go down in a handful of hits. It's very easy to lose your steed. And of course, climbing up a mountain works well, but the horse is not very resistant to falls - you better hope you're not going down a cliff too steep.

Honestly, the only reason I keep a horse is because I need some way to fast-travel. Other than that, it's more impractical than useful.

THE CIVIL WAR

Okay, that didn't happen to me, but seriously - It sounds
fucking awesome to fight against a flying skeleton dragon.

This may be either the best part of the game, or the worst, depending on who you ask. Me? I’m so indifferent to it I would have preferred it wasn’t in Skyrim, although you can tell the world was built for it to happen. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was rushed a smidge, one could say, so that it could be released on November 11th, 2011. Or 11/11/11, a bitchin’ date to release anything really. This can be noticed in the odd little elements that don’t quite add up – oh wait, I mean, the HUNDREDS OF GLITCHES, because yes, the topic of those had to come up eventually. I couldn’t spend over 150 hours without stumbling on a handful, or rather, a buttload of them. That’s not the only area where you can tell the game was rushed. Some quests feel incomplete, while other questlines could have had far more content to them.

...No, I would like to keep it.

That’s unfortunately the case with the Civil War, which is integrated to the main plot fairly late, but at least it doesn’t detract for too long from killing Alduin. One way or another, you will meet the two factions during your travels, hear their motivations and see what they’re all about. When the time comes to join the Imperials or the Stormcloaks, you’ll have a bit of an idea which group feels less scummy to you.

However, for all the buildup, fanfare and preparation that you can feel behind this questline, the end result feels lackluster. There’s so much to read about the History of Skyrim, and how these factions came to be. There’s decent and horrible people on both sides, and good arguments either way. I personally couldn’t be brought to care, because dragons were swarming and a World-Eater was on the loose. The petty political squabbles should wait.

Then again, it’s close to reality; we fucked up the planet so bad it’s trying to kill us all, and we keep on with our political squabbles anyway.

In the end, the quests you’ll be doing for the side you’ve joined won’t really differ all that much from the quests you’d be doing if you were on the opposite side. It’s also usually the same types of missions you might have done multiple times before. It may be that I’ve grown too attached to the place, but whatever faction you choose, shit’s gonna go sour for Whiterun, and I don't want that. I love that place too much, it’s literally home for my Dragonborn right now. Last but not least, there is no perfect ending to that conflict – one side wins, there are losses for the other side and for Whiterun. So yeah – I ain’t delving too deep within that questline, though from it you can get your hands on some cool gear, including a crown that doubles as armor headgear.

Dayum, I could get used to wearing a crown, if it looks that cool.
(Note: No quest allows you to become High King of Skyrim.)

See you in Part 5 for everything else.