Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 411: Skyrim

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

10 years ago, Bethesda's open-world role-playing adventure Skyrim took the world by storm. A winter storm. Because… winter is coming? Anyway, Jeremy Parish, Jeff Green, Kat Bailey, and Ray Barnholt look back at a decade of never completing the main storyline. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts Art by Nick Wanserski; edits by Greg Leahy.

You're listening to Retronauts, a part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. To hear more great shows, or to learn how you could become part of our consortium of independently owned podcasts, check out Greenlit Podcasts.com. This week in Retronauts, I once had a clever intro in mind for this episode, but then I took an arrow to the knee. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts episode, I think it's 410, 411, something like that. It's way up there. That's a lot. This is episode 411 with the 411 on Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls part five, I think. And probably final. I don't know if they're ever going to make an old. or Scroll 6. But who needs to, because none of us here have ever finished Skyrim. It's the game

that just keeps giving and giving and giving and giving. Yeah, I'm Jeremy Parrish. I never beat Skyrim, but I did spend like 150 hours in Skyrim. So, in a sense, it's a part of me now. Who else is here recording in this Bake Chef studio? Hi, it's Kat Bailey and Winterhold College Dean. It's Jeff Green. I don't remember what any of my titles were because it's been so long. we'll call you the yarl I'm happy to be the yarl sure aren't you not the dragon born

you're the black dragon born you're the black dragon born yeah I'm pretty sure that was a 1970s superhero probably Ray Barnhold probably the well my surname is pretty close to some of the stuff in Skyrim that's true

not exactly Norris but well there you go so yes this episode commemorating it's the, believe it or not, 10th anniversary of Skyrim. It doesn't seem like it could be that old. Probably because Bethesda keeps putting it on

like every physical device. I think I can play it on my Apple Watch. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if the app shows up at some point, letting me play Skyrim. There was something someone did where they played it on a monochrome computer monitor or something.

And it was very abstract. They showed the intro, with the wagon where you start the game out. And it was recognizable, but you kind of needed the context of having seen the real thing to be able to understand what it was. But, you know, if there's a will, there's a way.

It's the new doom. I think that was an Amazon Alexa version, too. Yes, yes. Where you just play by voice guidance? Something like that. I never actually saw it, but I know it existed. Alexa, sneak. Something like that.

Yeah. Alexa, Fuss Roda. I'd be into that. So I guess the question then is what relationship has everyone had with the game Skyrim? That's actually going to be pretty much the thrust of this episode. Like I said before we started, my approach to this episode is the same as my approach to the game, which is just like, whatever. I mean, I could have sat down and we could have gone through and talked about what the director did

and what their bona fides were and, you know, very meticulous. detail the geography of Skyrim and Govie the quest structure, but who the hell actually plays Skyrim like that? That seems antithetical to the spirit of the game and really to Bethesda's work in general, but especially this game, where it's just like, here's a very cold, big place, go do some stuff, go catch some bees, go eat mushrooms, do whatever you want. But yeah, I mean, I'll start here. I reviewed Skyrim. for OneUp.com. I did not beat the game before reviewing it. But like I said. Did you do the race across Skyrim? Yes. I did 150 hours in Skyrim. I feel like if you can't review a game based on that

much experience, like what more to, I mean, that's, that's plenty. That's, that's enough. I don't, I don't, I don't subscribe to the rubric that every game has to be completed. Some games are just not meant to be finished. And I feel like Skyrim is one of those. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Skyrim. And I had no desire to see the story. I just wanted to see Skyrim. And I did. Jeff, what about you? Well, let's see. I have, I looked before I joined here just to see out of curiosity on the original Skyrim on, well, I don't actually know if that's the first time I played it. On Steam, I have 200 hours of the original version. But then there's a special edition version that they put out where I have another 100 hours. And then I got it for the switch. And on that I've got like

50-something hours. So, I don't know. Wow. How was the Switch version? I've never played it on there. It's actually pretty good. Holds up pretty well? It does hold up.

Is it better than the 360 and the PS3 version? Actually, I would only be guessing because it's been so long since I've looked at those versions, but I wouldn't be surprised if it looks better. It looks pretty good in your handheld mode. It's not hard to be better than the PS3 version, which rather famously suffered from a memory leak that would just be a huge problem with it. And I'm not even sure if they ever patch that. That's not really the Bethesda way.

No. Other people do the patching for them. They just release it on new platforms. Right. With whole new bugs. With all new bugs. We'll fix it next time you buy it. Yeah, I never finished it.

I don't plan on ever finishing it, really. I totally ascribed to the same thing as you, that you just go live in their games. In fact, I don't think I'd beat any Elder Skulls games, even though I played them all starting first. Daggerfall was actually my first. Never beat any of them, proudly. Ray, what about you? Well, my situation is a little bit more mixed up than that.

I'll put it in terms of like Skyrim and Elders Choles in general. So first of all, Skyrim, at the time when it came out, I didn't have a good enough PC. So I did decide, for whatever reason, I apologize. I picked the PS3 version. You don't have to apologize. You monster. Wait a minute. But, okay.

Cut his mic. Here's the great thing about the PS3 version is that thank God someone made a tool to convert the saves to PC. So I ended up on PC eventually. And that's just the basic thing with Skyron. I just, yeah, I've stayed with basically that Vindel of Steam version for a while. But in terms of Elder Schools in general, I am a proud card-carrying Elder Scrolls tourist. I started with Morrowind, and ever since then, what I do is I start that game up, go in the settings, go to the difficulty, slide that all the way to the left to zero or whatever,

and then go and play and do whatever. Playing is a relative term in the sense. And then, however, going back, I'm going to jump back to Skyrim, I did eventually choose to just go through the main quest line because I was like, you know, whatever, what else am I going to do? So I guess in that particular sense, I've beat Skyrim, and then I completed the main story quest line. Yeah, except I don't remember a damn thing.

I did some dragon roaring, you know. Some dragons. Some shouting. Yeah. I remember that happened. I saved the day somehow. But yeah. There you go.

At least you saved it until those elves unwrite the universe or whatever they're trying to do. Right. Yeah. See, you remember more than that, but you reviewed it. What about you, Kat? I was working at GamePro at the time, and I remember doing the preview for Skyrim. I was not on the review for that one, and it was a while before I had. I actually played it. I think it was maybe the first proper

Bethesda game I played. When I built my gaming PC in 2014, one of the first things I did was download SkyRome and just throw a ton of mods on it, graphical mods, like the various costume mods, that kind of thing. And dramatically improved the visuals and everything, and then I proceeded to spend like 200 hours exploring it and having a great time and everything. Like the rest of you, I never did finish it, because ultimately I did not want to have to choose between the empire and the Nords.

I did not want to be forced into that particular decision, so I was happy to kind of make my own way. Fair enough. Yeah, I had never played, I'm a Elder Scrolls game, and I was basically kind of the person who ended up going to a preview event here in town. I had to go up to, like, Portrero or something. And I went with no expectations and no experience.

not knowing what I was going to do. I was like, I don't know why I'm here. Like, I'm the last person who should be doing this, but for whatever reason, it was me. So I went and I was like, oh, this is really enjoyable. Like, from the very beginning, I understood that I could just basically blow off everything and, you know, give this my Grand Theft Auto approach

the way, you know, you used to be able to play Grand Theft Auto games before they were like, oh, no, we have a story to tell, and it's a grand story that is worthy of Oscars and you must experience our story in its fine complexity of all these characters who are assholes that you hate. You can't play Grand Theft Auto games

just openly anymore. It's got to be the rock star way. But immediately I understood, like, this is, you know, like the Grand Theft Auto 3 experience except that I've got bows and arrows and magic spells instead of a submachine gun and a tank.

And I'm okay with that. And so at the preview event, I basically just said, I wonder how far I can go in the wrong direction from where it's telling me to go during this preview event. And I set off across the countryside. Like, I think you have to, like, follow someone to a town at the beginning. And they kind of say, like, okay, well, here's what you need to do. And from there, I was just like, I'm just going to go in this direction on the map and see how far I can make it.

So in like this, you know, two or three hour preview, I trekked halfway across Skyrim or maybe more, not knowing what I was doing. And I was just like, this is a. Amazing. I love this. And so that was the approach I took when I got the review version and played it on 360. And yeah, just sank a ton of time into it. Pretty much never doing anything with the story. Like I got as far in the story as going up to the mountain and discovering that there are dragons and like elders or something. I was like, all right. Well, I'm never coming back here again. And basically my goal was to find every point on the map and like make that point. to peer, you know, whether it's a cave or a town or an encampment or whatever and just like have seen it all and go through a ton of dungeons and whatever. And I pretty much did that. And then, you know, the expansion came out where I got to go to Moro Wind. Is that, is that right? You go to Moro Wind? Yeah. And since I was playing as a dark elf, I kind of got

into the lore of Elder Scrolls because of this. And I was like, okay, cool. So I've got a dark elf. So this should be like a really great experience for this character. But it really, it wasn't as like, I think my experience in Morrowind as a Dark Elf was not radically different than if you played a Nord or something. They were like, oh, what are you doing here? Well, whatever. Go do some stuff. Go kill some people on

mushrooms. And like, like physically on mushrooms, not taking mushrooms. I mean, maybe. I don't know. I, you know, didn't do like a blood analysis after I killed them. Yeah, it was great. I just I, you know, I, I, I had a great time not playing the game the way I was

supposed to. I owned an apiary or something for a while. That was fun. Yeah, I think that there's something about Bethesda RPGs where, especially compared to other open world games that are sensibly like, you're in this world. I'm like, yeah, but it feels really artificial. Whereas somehow Bethesda RPGs always feel very lived in.

Like the second that I'm in this world taking my first step out, I'm like, wow, this world feels gigantic. I can do anything. And maybe it's because it's in the first person, maybe because it doesn't have a lot of ambient music, maybe just because this environmental art is so well done. But Thest RPGs just have that little extra something that just really enhances the immersiveness

and makes you want to wander. And then you hit the bugs and you're like, well, so much for my impression. Why am I flying through the sky? It's kind of like it's a mess. And I think it kind of mirrors the real world in that way too. Like everything is just a little unwieldy and out of control. And you just kind of don't know.

what's going to happen. And there's something like super appealing about that. There was something super appealing about walking into any house, houses you shouldn't be going into, you know, even unlocking them. And then something happens. You know, there might be a random quest. You know, like, how did, how did they even know I was going to walk in here? Like the sheer scale of it all was, was just incredible. And yeah, I mean, to me it was, that was the magic of it was just like never knowing what was going to happen. And, and there are always something what would happen. right i mean you never went to a town and nothing happened there would always be some random weird like cultists running around or somebody's granddad was a vampire or whatever

like a multi-quest line that was going to take you down a giant rabbit hole where all of a sudden you're a van you're a werewolf now i guess right right exactly yet i mean the my i have so many so many save games because i would start the game over and over and over and then just amass so many quests in every playthrough that i could never remember what i was actually in the middle billing, so I would just start over again. That's what the little point you put on the map before. You're like, oh, right, I'm supposed to go there. That was my secret was I just, or not a secret, but my approach was like, I would stick

a pin on the map and be like, okay, I'm going there. And then, you know, sometimes I would make a beeline and sometimes I'd get distracted. I'd be like, I was going that way. But look, there's a cave. What's in there? Right. Ooh, Dwimmer, dwarves, gold, robots. It's great.

Yeah, the last time I started playing, I was going to do what Rated. which was just belying through the story. Like, it was determined this time I'm not going to get distracted. I think it's kind of impossible to do. It's like, oh, just do that one thing over there. I went the other way. Get distracted first and then get undistracted. I did not follow the actual storyline very much.

Mostly I was just trying to figure out how to build myself up in the world. So I was like, I don't feel like going through the main quest line. Oh, like there's this giant magic college. Interesting. and then eventually I'd be completed that quest line and now I'm the dean of this college and I'm basically Dumbledore and I have my cool like room with all the magic

and I'm like, dope, this is awesome. Oh, and my magic wand, that was very good, but I digress. And you can break the progression because there are quest lines that you are clearly not supposed to get to until much, much later. And yet, like, I was doing them really early on because I was just kind of stumbling upon them.

Oh, this seems interesting. and Skyrim's difficulty seems to balance itself around the possibility that you're just going to stumble across these quest lines. And so, yeah, I like that. Yeah, I seem to recall it had kind of a dynamic difficulty where it would scale along with your character because, you know, I would find ruins. And it always seemed like they were kind of on par

with where I was, even though I wasn't following the storyline or going in any particular order. So I think the game does kind of balance itself, according to your skill level. Although the specialty that I picked, not from any real strategy, but just because I was like, this seems like an appealing way to go,

was pretty much game breaking. So everything at some point was just way too easy because I was like, well, I like ranged attacks. So I'm going to specialize in bow and arrow. And I like sneaking around and avoiding combat. So I'm going to pick stealth. And eventually, you know, you get to a point where you get like perks for attacking

from stealth and when you have a ranged weapon you can attack basically anyone anywhere from stealth and you know you get perks where your stealth is so good that basically you hunt hunger down in front of someone

and they're like where they go so I was like you know I would go up and battle dragons and basically just be crouched the whole time shooting them pretty much point blank and doing like triple damage and you know it got to a point where nothing could hurt me and I felt okay

with that I was like you know what I get to be this awesome. I deserve it. I mean, yeah, Skyrim is the definition of a power fantasy, right? It was like, you're in charge of everything. Also, you're the Dragonborn. Also, you're basically untouchable, whatever. And a lot of Bethesda ostensibly fans will complain constantly about how Skyrim was

where the series got uber casual, especially compared to Morrill Wind and Oblivion. Because it's like, oh, yeah, I can have the magic in one hand. I can have the sword in the other. And I can have a bow. And also a dragon shot. And the definition of Skyrim is. sitting up in a rafters, shooting at, plinking a boss with your bow

until they eventually die, even though they're sensibly like 20 levels above you. Whatever. Who cares? It worked because Skyrim is probably one of their most successful games ever. I would say it probably is their most successful game. Especially after you consider how many platforms it's been on. Right.

But, I mean, there's a reason they keep bringing it to all those platforms is because people loved it. I mean, that game, it was just the right game at the right time. I mean, you have to take into account the whole Game of Thrones thing, which was absolutely not planned. One year after Game of Thrones started. Or no, the year Game of Thrones started. I mean, basically the game came out right,

I think right as the first season ended. It was. So that season is so focused around the Northman and, you know, Sean Bean's character, Ned Stark. And, you know, it ends with Ned being killed, basically. And so everyone was like, whoa, where does the story go over here? Well, spoiler, Jeremy.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, my God. Game of Thrones, spoilers. Well, we haven't done the Game of Thrones episode yet because there's so many good games based on that. But, you know, basically everyone was like, it was kind of peak enthusiasm for Game of Thrones that had just started. People were like, what is this? It's so rich and detailed and the acting is good and the environment is interesting and there's spooky stuff happening in the background that I don't understand and they're not really focusing on it because there's all this medieval drama and the guy I thought was the hero got his head cut off and I don't know what's going to happen next. And here is a game that basically perfectly channels that in video game form all the way down to like the Civil War, you know?

And even starting off with almost getting your head chopped off. Yeah, exactly. And you know that wasn't planned. Like this game was in development for years. And sure, maybe they read, you know, a song of ice and fire, which had been out in the 90s. But surely they could not have known that they were going to release this game that had been in development probably since 2004, 2005. right as Game of Thrones hit, and people went crazy for this fantasy series that shouldn't have been a success, but somehow magically kind of defied the odds and became this big cult phenomenon.

Well, and I think the Elder Skulls, too, themselves, it just sort of, with every new game the momentum was kind of building and the popularity was building I mean oblivion was pretty huge too the first one that I played was also the first one I covered for CGW which was Daggerfall

and you know at that time it must have been Scorpia who reviewed it not me but like I remember like we had trouble even just getting people to you know to want to review it or to play it it just wasn't that popular back then and it was so buggy you know it was such a mess

that no one would have believed you at the time that Daggerfall came out that Skyrim would have the success that it did later. I mean, it was such a niche hardcore PC-R-PG title that was buggy. You could play plenty of other big PC-R-PGs and have a far less obnoxious experience in terms of the thing crashing every two minutes. But were there any other PC-R-PgGs as big as Daggerfall? The whole thing about that was like,

we made a game as big. is the United Kingdom, there's like this much instance content, and then the rest of it is dynamically generated, and go wander forever. Yeah, no, there wasn't. I mean, you know, you had these series that were, you know, that had huge worlds, the Ultima series and might magic and wizardry, but they were much more focused experiences with linear dungeons and, well, I guess Elder Skulls has those two. But yeah, it's like you said. I mean, it was just the sprawl of the land was the appeal of Daggerfall. In fact, with Daggerfall, I

did the same thing that you did with Skyrim, which is I went in the first time, and I just, I remember reading, they said, like, we've got so many square miles in our game, and, like, that's all I did was I just ran from one, like, how, as far as I could go, I think I spent, like, a whole day at CGW just doing that, just to see

what would happen, and nothing happens. Yeah, I've heard that game is very sparse. I've never played it, but it's just like they got, they kind of overdid it and basically made a whole lot of nothing. Whereas Skyrim is actually basically the size physically of San Francisco. It's like seven miles by seven miles. Exactly. So, you know, like, you could, you could conceivably, you know, there's a race from one side of San Francisco to another that happens every year, beta breakers. And like, that's pretty much, that was the inspiration for the great Skyrim race that

I did as a live stream with Terry Nguyen. The two of us got on to, you know, a streaming platform. I don't even know what it was at that point. Justin TV. I think it might have been Justin TV. Oh my gosh. Yeah. This was 2011, 2012. And basically we both started on one side of the map and said, our destination is this point.

So the two of us stream simultaneously playing together in the one-up offices to see who could make it there first. And I came in just after Terry. He beat me just a little bit because I stumbled and got lost somewhere in a mountain ridge someplace and fell behind. But it was fun. It was like an hour and a half, two-hour stream, just two guys with their existing elder scrolls characters dashing across the countryside to see what would happen. And it's great that the game allowed that kind of nonsense. I feel like, you know, we kind of did like a games done quick sort of thing before that even existed. You know, we never followed up on it.

I'm not taking credit for inventing anything. It was just like that it just felt intuitive to do some sort of goofy stunt like that with a game, this open. ended. And it was fun. Like this, you know, I don't remember how many people watched the stream, but it had decent engagement for, you know, a stream that early. And at the very least, it was fun, you know, it was something for me and Terry to put our heads together and basically kill some time at the office doing something we both enjoyed. It's just kind of mind-boggling the scope of the thing. Like when you, when you start really paying attention and you start looking at, like, reading any of the gazillion books in there, you're like, how much, how many, like,

know people hours went into the creation of this thing like just the lore alone like who wrote all those books yeah you know i always wonder about that you know and like how do they feel like knowing that like 99% of the people never read past the first page you know like it's a lot of effort for something oh i i read a bunch of those books i i collected a library did you read the whole thing uh the whole like did were you reading whole books yeah yeah yeah i mean it was there i was like that like the books are that long. They're like three or four pages of text at the most. But, you know, the naughty What's Her Face Made or whatever, like all that stuff. About the lore of the world. There's some really weird stuff in there. Like, there's, I can't remember the character's name.

It starts with a V, but apparently he's like an ascended emperor type character who basically became aware that he was a video game character. Really? Like, the cosmology of it is that. that, like, he transcends the world of the Elder Scrolls by realizing that he is a fictional character in a video game. And that's part of the, like, the actual lore of the Elder Scrolls. It's really, really wild. Like, like I said, I got really interested in just, like, it's just clear that there's

so much history behind this franchise. And I'd seen bits and pieces of Morrowind and of Oblivion, but I never really played them and never really had a desire to go back and play them after Skyrim, because, you know, A lot of quality of life improvements happened along the way, but, you know, I was intrigued by all the history that was represented in these books, especially, and, you know, the fact that there was thousands of years of kind of development and lore presented in Skyrim, and I wanted to know more about it. So thankfully, there's, like, Elder Scrolls wikis and stuff that just have all this text presented. So for a few months, my, my bus rides and train rides to work would just be, like,

me on my phone, like scrolling through the Elder Scrolls library on the wikis and reading and like trying to understand more about the background of all this stuff. The Elder Scrolls is kind of the er example of a bunch of nerds having a D&D, a long-running D&D campaign. And they're going, why don't we make our own game and our own world? And it's going to be like D&D, but we're going to put our own personal stamp on it. And that's how you end up getting the Elder Scrolls. And they're like, let's layer in lots of, lots of lore.

And then it just builds up and builds up for the next 10 years or so. So, yeah, no, that's how Elder Scrolls Arena basically got started. Like, so many RPGs of that year, it was a D&D campaign writ large. Yeah, it basically took over for, crap, what's the anime? Record of Lodos War? Yes, Record of Lodos War as, like, the ascended D&D campaign. Like, Elder Scrolls definitely trumps it. It's the Lusty Argonian maid, that's it.

Yes, yeah. Someone's going to write in about that. I just want to correct myself. Kajit apologizes. Skyrim, the region itself, hits just right. So I think a lot about, like, why this game in particular grabbed people to an extent, because you see a lot of Elder Scrolls fans complain about Skyrim being kind of more generic than something like Marlwind, which had, you know, the mushroom trees and everything.

And first of all, the opening is really strong. Like, people like to talk about the cliche of the Bethesda game, with you being a prisoner or whatever, but you're riding on the cart, it's very cinematic, and then the dragon attacks, and you're like, oh, my God, this is so intense, I'm, like, so into this immediately. And then when you finally escape and everything, the whole world stretches out before you, and you're just kind of staggering into this town. And it really expertly moves you from point to point until you're actually fighting a dragon.

And the dragon fights were really impressive at the time, because, like, that was the big thing, right? It's like they added in the dragons. The dragons could just show up. Now they're attacking a village. Maybe the villagers are going to go and fight the dragons. And it looks a little robotic at times when all the villagers suddenly go in and start attacking. But the effect of seeing a dragon suddenly coming in with the sound effects in particular

and the fire exploding around you, really impressive. And I think that's what grabbed people and grounded them in this world. Yeah, and I always felt bad when the villagers went out to, like, you know, attack the dragon. and they just wiped out. There was permanence to that. Like, if a character, an NPC in Towns dies, that's it for them. They're gone. They're not part of your game anymore.

Right. Like your horse. Yeah. I killed a lot of horses in that game. I mean, my own horses. I know. But you didn't have to spend any money on horse armor for this one. No.

Well, it would be, because I would be trying to get from point A to B, and I would eventually hit like a, you know, some sort of sudden drop. And I would just say, yeah, I'm just going to go for it. With the horse. The horse wouldn't never Yoshi thing. Exactly. Drop Yoshi into a pit and jump off his back. Pretty much, yeah.

Another moment that was really cool was when you're climbing the mountain for the first time and the blizzard is all around you and you get to the top and you meet the elder dragon and everything. And that to me was like, okay, I'm in on this. This is like really cool, right? And, you know, I'm from the Great North.

So, like, snow is always going to grab me in a way that it's not going to grab other people. But, like, I think it inaugurated a 10-year period where lots of games wanted to be like, no, we're going to have snow, snow and mountains, right? It's the easiest particle effect. Exactly. I think another thing that really kind of helped Skyrim succeed,

aside from the fact that it did have all the quality of life movements and just felt less janky in a lot of ways from the outset than, you know, like oblivion or something, it didn't have that ugliness to it that oblivion had for sure. was the fact that there were so many games kind of doing the open world thing right around that time. It was really sort of, that was the moment. Like you had Assassin's Creed in 2007, and that kind of came into its own around 2010 or so. And really, like, that's when the sequel started to get good before they burned themselves out and became bad again.

But you had Dark Souls, you had Batman, Arkham City, just a whole lot of games happening all at the same time. You had, you know, the following year you had Nintendo try to do Open World with Skyward Sword, but not. really. SkyRenSdoor was like the opposite of Open World. It was very discrete instances almost. Well, I mean, I think Skyrim had a big impact on Breath of the Wild because Aounuma said, like, we released

this game that had Sky in the title and there was another game that had Sky in the title and it just destroyed us. Like, it demolished us. Everyone loved it and they hated our game. So we spent some time with it and we wanted to see what they did. And so you get Breath of the Wild, which is basically Skyrim

in Hyrule. This is a moment where RPGs, after being kind of a niche genre, at this point, were really starting to make a comeback. And I think Skyrim was really pushing this forward in particular. And then it would keep going from there. I think at the same time, you also had stuff like the BioWare games, really kind of hitting their stride. You had, you know. It was like Mass Effect 2 would come out the year before. Yeah, you kind of saw that start really with Cotor.

and people were like, wow, cool, sci-fi fantasy Star Wars, but open, you know, kind of open, and my choices matter. And then you had Mass Effect come out, I guess Jade Empire, if you want to count that too. And then Mass Effect 2 kind of started to push away from that sort of RPG-ish open design. And, you know, a lot of people missed that. They, you know, enjoyed Mass Effect 2, but we're like, well, this isn't really, you know, that much like Cotor anymore. And here was a game that did have that kind of open RPG, do you know, your own thing vibe, but without the obvious morality meter, it was more like, just you can do stuff. You can join the rebellion or you can join the empire and suppress the rebellion. You can

become a vampire or you can hunt vampires. You can become a werewolf or you can fight against the were wolves. You know, it's like you had a lot of choices and they were more organic. It wasn't like, well, I pushed down left on the dialogue wheel. So now, you know, I'm following this path. It was just like, what sounds more interesting? Yeah, I think it would be kind of cool to be a vampire, even if I can't play any during the daytime anymore. I'm going to try that. Speaking vampire and SkyRoman is kind of awful, though. Yeah. Like, you're ugly, you have a lot of, like, problems. I'm like, I want to be a vampire. Come on. Why is

it so bad to be a vampire? I mean, my character was already ugly from the start, so... They released a whole expansion with a whole vampire, like, quest and everything, and still, being a vampire, wasn't that great? Like, you mostly wanted to try and cure vampirism. Boop. I want to be a hot, sexy vampire. Yeah, you had Twilight around the same time, though. Yeah, no. Yeah, they better fix that in six. I don't think you can overstate the influence of Fallout 3 as well.

Oh, that's true. Yeah. Which is where, like, you said, like, oh, believe me, was a big deal. Because that was, like, one of the first big Xbox 360 console exclusives when it came out. But then when Fallout 3 came out in 2008, that, like, was the next step for so many people were into that in 2008. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And that probably introduced a lot of people to Bethesda's style. Yeah, the very conceit of having an open world that you can explore and everything.

So I think that naturally, all the follow-out three people are like, well, I want to do fantasy. I want to do dragons. Come on, this is Skyrim. Let's go. The idea that one of their games would be that big of a mainstream hit was just like kind of inconceivable, like in the mid-late 90s. I mean, I remember thinking, you know, often like of all the companies to like hit it so big, I never would have predicted it would have been Bethesda back in the day. Yeah.

You know, when we went to visit their office in Bethesda for Morrowind, you know, they just seem like scrappy, like another just hardcore PC that was going to, they were going to have their fans and people were going to be super into them. Like, like, that's all it was going to be. But they seem happy in that as well. Like, you know, it's a humble group of people. To this day, they're still that way. You know, those of us, you know, Pete Hines and Todd Howard, those guys, like, you would never know, like, the kind of success they've had despite talking to them because they're so humble about their. achievements. And I think it comes from that start from having really been, I mean, they were just a niche within a niche. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't their first game that Terminator game?

Like the Open World Terminator game on PC in like 1988 or so. Yeah, it's a long way to go. But I mean, it's, that's about as like hardcore nerd as you get is making a game about the Terminator, you know, in the kind of interregnum between Terminator. Terminator 2. Like, Terminator 2 wasn't on the radar at that point. No one knew that was going to be the game to like, or the film to just blow the doors off and reinvent special effects and reinvent action movies. It was like, oh, yeah, here's this movie from like four or five years ago.

And we made a big open world game where you just kind of run around and, you know, try to avoid the Terminator and stop the world from ending at your own pace. It was Kyle Reese. Right. And Deckerfall, when it came out, was really kind of the nadeer in many ways of also. of that era of PC RPGs because we were just, I think we're a little bit away from the release of Fallout and

the Black Isle like mini renaissance. I think that's correct. Yeah. So at the time it just seemed like such a an artifact of the 80s right where they were going, yeah, we have all the openness of these wonderful 80s RPGs like

Ultima and whatnot. Right. Like yeah, that's great. That was from the freaking 80s. Right, right. This is the 90s. We're playing Warcraft 2. Right. Warcraft 2, Doom. I mean, there were other things going on in PC gaming that had nothing to do with what Bethesda was up to. And then they were trying to, after Daggerfall, they were trying to, like, figure out other genres they could possibly go into, right?

They had those Elder Scrolls spin-off games. It was Battlespire. They were trying to do multiplayer there. They had Redguard, I think it was called, which was like an action adventure on like a pirity island. And so they were just sort of like trying to figure things out. Like it just did not seem like they were on the trajectory that would end them in the place where they are right now, which is insane. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how you count for that. It feels like Bethesda has never really been a huge company in terms of internal development.

I mean, they're huge now in the sense that they own, God, they own Doom, they own Wolfenstein. They own Arcane, yeah, prey and the stabby game with the Assassins. Dishonored The stabby game, come on guys Follow me To keep up with me But yeah, they own so much stuff But at the same time they're like

Oh yeah, Elder Scroll 6 That's probably still a ways away Because we just don't have enough Of a development team to make them I mean, that game's in pre-production Like they're focused on Starfields like squarely Right, but I mean this is a company That I think deliberately keeps its staffing

to a modest size, kind of like Epic does, where they just, they have all the money in the world, and they could just, you know, expand, they could just explode if they wanted to and, you know, have... They could put it out in satellite studios. Yeah, they could absolutely annualize this and do, you know, the Ubisoft approach

where they have, like, seven studios and different countries around the world, all creating components to go into this machine of a video game franchise. But they don't do that. They, it feels like they really want to, hand craft each thing they do for better and for worse, you know, it would be nice if they would hire more people who could go in and kick the tires and keep the crazy glitches from happening.

But at the same time, their games are so big and ambitious, how do you possibly playtest every instance of Skyrim? Like, their games are really broken. They're, yeah, they are busted for sure. I already mentioned the memory leak in the PS3 version. And there was a point where you go, yeah, this is unplayable. Like, Fallout 4 in particular. particular. And they were using really old engines at a certain point. You're like, please, God,

please upgrade your engine. Yeah. They may still. By it at least. Who knows what's still in those engines? Yeah. I mean, I would definitely like for them to have more of the QA testing for sure. Like, staff up there, please. But it's never like, it's never like, it hasn't. I mean, it just, well, Fallout 76 maybe. That's true. That was actually broken. Yeah. Yeah. Like, there is a point at which they have to say, oops, can't do that anymore. So I don't know, maybe that was their wake-up call to kind of dial it back a little bit. I don't want them to stop, like to cut back on the ambition of their games and just the amount of stuff you can do. But just, I would love to see the sequel to Skyrim be more stable as you play.

I mean, I played on 360s, so I didn't have the memory leak. But nevertheless, like, I did so much in that world and changed so much. Like, the save file started taking forever to save and look. and you know stuff started having a little bit of trouble like remaining instanced you know the game got a little overwhelmed

by how much I was doing it was just too much for the 360 architecture and when you consider that you know this was the same platform that launched with oblivion basically like you have you know kind of the the two extremes of the platform's life

and you can see some big improvements but also a lot of a lot of issues. I mean, I got to a point where there was one quest line. We were trying to find like seven or eight artifacts or something. And I couldn't complete it because I got to this one place where I was supposed to open up a door that would let me fight a boss and take the artifact. And that door just bugged. Like, it wouldn't work for me. And I was like, well, okay, I'm like six artifacts into this, but I guess I'm done because there's no way I'm getting through here on 360 you can't just like hack your your save file or monitor whatever you're just

kind of have to roll with it so yeah it's amazing that they have so much goodwill and that their games have so much goodwill given how broken they always are it's like they they break so many rules and and yet they somehow get away with it i think it's because there just aren't that many games like it even a game like witcher three which is superficially somewhat similar aesthetically and the way you play it is just also very different because Witcher 3 in its own way is very story-driven, very linear, you're meant to get to the end.

It's all about the choices that you're making. Whereas Skyrim is like, no, do whatever you want, have a good time. Like, my end game in Skyrim was not finishing the game. I didn't even get like halfway through the actual story. I did not get to the point where I had the side between the Nords and the empire. My whole thing was like,

I'm going to get married to my werewolf girlfriend and I'm going to buy the biggest house in the imperial capital. And I did the imperial side quest where I basically wiped out the Nords on my own. Like, I didn't even get to that point in the story. So I beat the Nords before I even reached that part of the quest. Yeah. And then I was like, great, now I can go buy my house. Like, that's all I wanted to do.

But that felt like an end game to me. I was making my own story, right? Yeah. Like, that is the beauty of the Bethesda games is that you are. crafting your own narrative, you are crafting your own story, and that ultimately is what I think a lot of people want out of a particular RPG. It's like a lifestyle rather than a, yeah. You're not just playing through the story that has been prescribed for you. Right. I mean, we've all kind of said, like, in a way, like, who gives a shit about the story, right? And the story doesn't

add up to a whole lot anyway when you, like, look at it, you know. The problem with, the problem with Bethesda is that they do actually prescribe, there comes a point where they bottleneck you and say, okay, make a choice. And they do this in Fall Out 4 as well, which is really annoying. And the reason people are so into fall at New Vegas, I think, versus the Bethesda games, is that actually they had many different choices in terms of the faction that you ultimately sided with. So Bethesda's RPGs can be self-sabotaging in that own way. So that's why you can start to go, screw the story. I don't want to, I don't want to be railroaded into a particular choice at a certain point. Right. Yeah, every time I would get to one of

places, that's when I would start doing a bunch of side quests. Like, I'm just, I'm not going there yet, right? And I want to do that thing. Yeah, I actually did do some of the storylines. I didn't do the main storyline. Like, I got to the top of the mountain with the dragon god or whatever. It was like, neat. Peace out. See you later.

Backs on side out. That's great. Glad they spent all this money for dialogue that I'm not going to hear. But then, like, the Civil War storyline, I did that. I was like, well, you know, I don't like empires, but these rebel guys seem kind of racist. So they have

to go. They just can't. I've got to put them in prison. Yeah. And I was playing in the Nord too. It was me prepping for, you know, 2016 and after, honestly. It was like prepping in life. Oh, sorry, did I make it too real? No, you always just flashing on that one, there's one storyline where there's a woman who's like

being hunted by guards and she asks you to rescue her, but then when you go find the guards, they explain to you that like, Basically, she's, like, completely, like, bullshitted you, and she's actually some, like, evil witch or something. I mean, there's so many plot lines like that where, like, I never knew who was telling the truth, which side I should actually just join it, or who I should side with, so I just wouldn't side with any of them. I would just leave them all and go do some other part of the game and leave that whole side. Sort it out for yourself.

Yeah, exactly. I want to go find, like, the weird magic staff that makes me hallucinate. Like, that's what I want to find. I enjoyed finding the Dark Brotherhood storyline And it's such a cool moment where you're sitting in the house And then you look up and you see the assassin Sitting on the roof looking down on you under the moonlight And then you can kill them

And not even like partake in that quest line Or you can join them And then start going on a whole quest line Where you're going, now how am I going to kill this particular target This is going to be interesting Yeah, it was like they turned Assassin's Creed into just like a little mini game within Skyrim. It was so fun.

Like the various guild quests historically then the most enjoyable parts of Bethesda's RPGs. Yeah, people talk about those a lot, but I wasn't too attracted to them. I'm too much of a lone wolf, I suppose, but yeah.

I think one of my play-throughs, I tried to get through the Thebes Guild. That seemed like a fun thing to do. Yeah, I eventually got my combination of stealth and lock-picking high enough that, like, I could go into a heavily guarded museum or something where, you know, people were patrolling and, like, crouched down in front of them, lockpick, open up the case, steal a treasure while they're

looking at me, which kind of made the Thieves Guild quest a little too easy. I was like, all right, well, I'm basically magic now, so. Start your own guild. I mean, you are. You speak the dragon voice, and you have all the dragon calls that are super OP. Yeah, you know, you said earlier that this is kind of the quintessential game where it's like you are pretty much everything. And, you know, that that is kind of an option built into the game, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. If you choose to do everything, then yes. It's just the game gives you this buffet of options and things you can do, and it's kind of up to you to figure out, like, what do I want to do? So, yeah, you can just gorge yourself at the buffet,

or you can say, like, well, this is the part that interests me. So, you know, I appreciate that freedom. I don't know if canonically, you know, they'll look back at Illish Scroll 6 and be like, oh, yeah, that dragon board person, like, they basically ruled the world for a few years. It was pretty wild. Like, they solved every problem. It was great. They'll probably go back in and kind of, you know, like they do with street fighter endings and say, well, actually this character won the street fighter tournament that time, even though you could win as one of like 20 different characters. test six is going to be set in like the desert and I'm not looking forward to it

is not my aesthetic I mean that makes you say that that's the theory because there are like all of these like Easter eggs and hints that it's going to be in Hammerfell or whatever and I'm like I don't want to I mean it's it's been a while since I've really read up on the lore but my assumption is that the the next game is going to involve the I don't know based on what like fan speculation at the time is that the next game will involve those, that one, uh, race of elves that basically wants to end the universe, uh, like to, not, not to end the universe so much as like make it so it never happened. They want to basically unmake reality. Um, and you meet them briefly from time to time. And they're kind of

pissy at you, but I don't think you necessarily have to fight them. Uh, I can't remember what the race is called, but, but they're just like the, the snoodiest elves. Huh. But, but they're, they're part of that kind of weird metal lore along with whatever the guy's name is Victor or whatever I don't know starts with Vivek maybe The Elder Scrolls

that is a hell of a rabbit hole right there to go down in terms of the lore and there are people who are very invested in it. I get DMs from them every time I write about the Elder Scrolls now I'm looking forward to the comments on this episode should be exciting but I wouldn't jump to too

many conclusions over like the setting of the next one necessarily because like even Skyrim you know oh it looks like a bunch of snow and ice but it still has some color in it you go and walk around that's true I think there'll be in plenty of variety in whatever they do next mm-hmm Hey, Lassie, what are you doing here? Hey, Lassie, what are you doing here? Timmy's in a well. guest to and friends is a podcast looking at movies in a franchise, one film at a time, like

Harry Potter, Hellraiser, and The Hobbit, and sometimes the host talk about video games and TV as well, and now it's part of the Greenlit podcast network. Oh, lassie, we don't need to rescue Timmy. He likes the well, well enough, I guess. North Vader is Luke's father. Lassie, I told you to lay off the spoilers. Video Death Loop is a podcast where we watch a short video clip on Loop until we just can't take it anymore. Along the way, we'll try our best to make each other laugh and to hold out longer than the other guy. You can jump in on any episode, no need to worry about continuity. Check out Video Deathloop on the Greenlit Podcast Network with new episodes every Friday.

So what characters did you play as, like race, specialization in skills and combat and so forth? Do you remember, like, what you gravitated toward? We talked a little bit about mine, but I don't think anyone else has really talked about, like, what kind of character they actually played as. Ray, what about you? I was a Nord. Oh, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Okay.

Well, yeah, I usually stick to pretty plain stuff, like sort of warrior type stuff. But I do usually, I like playing as Red Guards. It's like playing as that race a long time. But, yeah, I'm usually not a magic plane class to begin with. So I usually just, I usually enjoy melee combat if I have to do it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, kind of the same for me.

And I played a Nord in that game because in their games, I always want to play the race of, like, wherever I'm supposed to, you know, it was set there, so I wanted to be from there. I don't know. Oh, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I don't want to be a foreigner. I wanted to be a native.

I did the foreigner thing, and everyone treated me like one. So that was actually a different experience, you know. Having lived in America as a straight white man all my life, you don't really get that kind of treatment here. So when you get that in a video game, obviously it's not analogous to real world, experiences, but it still is, you know, it is a little jarring and different to have everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people just kind of automatically take a dislike to you because of

the color of your skin or the shape of your ears, I guess, the color of your eyes. That's something that Bethesda does pretty well, I think actually when it comes to their individual characters, like if you pick a dark elf, you will be treated like a dark elf. Yeah, I mean, I specifically picked a character that I thought, well, this seems the least like, you know, the sort of character. you would see here in the snowy northlands. So let's try out this dark health thing.

So it seems interesting. And yeah, so I think probably I heard a lot of different dialogue than you did, Jeff. Did they ever comment on your breath? Do you remember? That I don't remember, but it was... They kind of have to walk a line with the dialogue in the game. Like,

they can't be too overtly horrible or it stops being fun and starts being kind of gross. So, you know, I don't remember exactly what was said, but it was always just kind of like a sort of belittling like, oh, are you lost or something? Or what are you doing? Yeah. And I think the lore in Elder Scrolls, which I didn't realize at the time, is that the dark elves were pretty much, not wiped out, but greatly reduced in numbers after Morrowind. So everyone was, you know, if they didn't

immediately take a dislike to me, they were like, oh, weird, a dark elf here? That's That's crazy. I played the generic Skyroom character, which is to say I played with magic in one hand, sword in the other, using a bow, shooting people from a distance, being able to stealth snipe everybody. I was playing as a Nord. Though initially, I think I started with a Cajic character, because, of course, playing as a cat. And I think that you can honestly... That's too on the nose, cat. I think that you can definitely tell a person's person.

personality based on which character they start out with in a game like SkyRome. And it's like, oh, you pick the Kijit. That's a very specific choice on your part. Yeah, yeah. But I, my main play-through ultimately ended up being as a Nord. But when I was playing as a Nord, I ended up siding with the Empire for various reasons, I guess, mostly because I wanted to live in that big, cool city. And so I went through that entire quest line.

I can't believe. Leave it. Wow. I remember going into the hall of the Nords and trying to kill the leaders of the Nords, but they were invincible, which was super annoying, because I was like, ah, because that's one thing that people get really frustrated with is that are like, I want to be able to go and kill everybody. I don't care if I end up blocking the quest line. But no, but I don't know. Someone can kill Lord British. There's got to be a way to kill the Nords. Exactly. But if you get to a certain point where you're helping out the empire, you can kill. kill the leaders of the Nords. And I killed them before I got to that part of the story as well. So I was going, running through the Nord capital, looting and pillaging and burning. I was like, great. And then I went and did the Lichenthrope quest line, met my werewolf girlfriend, got married, adopted a couple of kids.

It keeps coming back to the werewolf girlfriends. Alia, the Huntress, I believe, was her name? Was she a werewolf? I remember liking her as a character. Yeah, she was great. She, I would have, you know, I would have done the, the wedded bliss thing with her, but I ultimately was very boring and ended up marrying Lydia. Because I think like, 90% of people end up marrying Lydia just because she's like, she's the loyal companion from the beginning. Yeah.

Like, okay, I'll give you a ring. Why not? I'll put a ring on it. The were we adopted some kids. The werewolf quest was quite fun as well, I should add, because like there's this whole sequence where you're becoming the werewolf for the first time and you're experiencing it from a first person point of view. you're like, whoa, this is, like, totally don't. I actually don't think I did that. I did meet Lydia the Huntress, but I don't, I think I might have tried to kill off the werewolves, actually. You monster, killing off my kin.

Sorry about that. You know, I'm a foreigner. What do you expect? I don't appreciate the ways of your people. I don't understand. A stranger in a strange land. It's like, once I became a werewolf, like, you get all these extra power in storm it as well. And I'm like, wow, there's like no downside to being a werewolf.

I was going to ask you, there's no downside. side? That's why I never did it. I always felt like there had to be a downside. No, no, it can be a werewolf. You can get flees. The vampire, that's all. Minus five dexterity for scratch and something. The vampire stuff is all downside. Right. Right there. I feel like it should be the other way around.

Yeah. I feel like on the hierarchy of cool fantasy creatures, like vampires are up here and weirwolves are kind of like down there. Well, it should be more, yeah, it seems like a werewolf would be more like out of control or something or yeah i don't have anything i don't have a problem with your girlfriend by oh thank you she's i appreciate that i'm sure she's very nice she's one of the good ones oh well i'm just i'm just leaning into the north thing at this point but uh yeah once i got to that point i was like yeah i i think that i have really enjoyed my time in skyrim anyway

moving on you know like i explored that world quite thoroughly there were many dragons but there's a certain point where the story stopped carrying much weight for me. It was much more about all the things that I could find in the actual world. The actual story was like, yeah, there are dragons coming back, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I know I wrote a few blogs along the way as I was playing about just like random stuff I found in caves. There were, you know, you'd find just little like set pieces in caves that, you know, weren't part of the story. And unless you were actually taking the time to read notes and things like that you might not have really picked up on things but like um you know a part where people were prospecting for gold and there was like this if you read the notes you can kind

of get a sense of betrayal as the two people are trying to one up each other and figure out ways to get the gold and you know there's like friends torn apart and then you look at kind of how the their their bodies are arranged in the world and you're like oh yeah there's there's definitely some some storytelling environmental storytelling happening here which was you know still something you didn't see a lot of in video games at that point. I think that's become much more of a common thing at this point. But, you know, 10 years ago, it was still kind of novel to come across this thing that's totally like this hidden cave someplace. And you're like, oh, something happened here. And there's little hints for it. And it doesn't really

affect the game in any way. But it's just something, some designer decided to put in this cave and write a story about. Yeah, I think that's what was so neat about it to me, was that it was just that constant feeling of discovery. What's going to happen if I go in here? I mean, so many other games that have sort of adapted that kind of style, like I'm thinking of Ghost of Tsushima, which had incredible side quests, except you were kind of led there, you know, like I didn't get the same sense of discovered, like you didn't just stumble across some village, and then there was a whole

thing, like you kind of ended up there, whereas in Skyrim, you could just be, like, you were saying, just like wandering around in the hills and all of a sudden, and there's a barrow, and that barrel has a whole thing going on here that you would never have come through. I mean, the game would never have told you to go there. You really had to find it. Yeah, I really feel like this is a game that really, maybe its greatest appeal is that it just nailed that sort of sense of the more you explore, the more you'll find, which a lot of games try

for, but it's not always very rewarding. But here it really did feel like anywhere you go, you're going to find something if you're looking for it. But you don't necessarily need that thing. Like, you know, some of the big, big things, the big storylines are signposted, you know, through dialogue and other things like that. But if you take the time to talk to everyone or read every little scrap paper or something, you're going to find stuff. And, you know, sometimes there's a whole rabbit hole attached to it and you can go down it. Sometimes it's just a thing that stands alone. It's just, you know, flavor. Yeah. To me, I felt like it was, it was like a really, like,

ultimate form of escapism. I know when I was at the height of playing it, it was the kind of feeling I would want to get from an MMO of like, I'm living in this world, except so many MMOs have so many artificial trappings around leveling and things and, you know, your list of things you must do or the things you're trying to do to catch up to your friends or whatever. But because this was just basically a solo game, you could just go in there and just be like lost for hours and like really make your own story. To me, that was like what I got out of it was what I would have liked to have gotten out of MMOs.

Yeah, that's a great point. I agree with that too. That's why I don't even like MMOs that much. Because MMOs, when we imagined MMOs back around the release of Ultima Online, we were promised this sandbox where we could affect the world with lots of other people, but it turned up to be much more of a theme park in the closest that we've ever actually gotten to a true sandbox is maybe EVE Online. Right.

So I think Ultima Online had a lot of that. Ultima Online. It did back in the day. But then, you know, no one really followed up on that. They followed up on the juicy, exciting parts as opposed to like the learn to become a master bread baker, like, you know. Ultimate Online was, let's grind forever and probably somebody's going to kill you and steal all of yourself.

Whereas Yvon Online was like, you're going to, either you're going to join a giant alliance that's carving up a giant piece of the universe, an insane stuff is happening and people are backstabbing and there's a whole meta component. or you're just, you know, running a backwater mining station somewhere on the edge of the galaxy. And that's kind of what you're wanting on an MMO RPG versus Wow, where it's just like, yeah, more content. Right. Yeah, wow is kind of like, you're right, it's kind of like Disneyland. I mean, at the time, wow solved a lot of like really good problems, right?

I mean, they did an amazing job of streamlining so many things that were shitty. But then so many RPG or so many MMOs like took the wrong lessons from that or maybe not the wrong lessons. and just they copied the same thing over and over, right? And became worse as they went. Right. I mean, I went back to Wow not too long ago because I was curious. And the degree to which they handhold you in the extreme, like it blew me away. Are you talking Classic Wow?

Not Classic Wow. Okay. I was going to say, I thought Classic Wow was pretty much just like. No, Classic Wow is back. Yeah, go figure it out. And Classic Wow was considered at the time extremely friendly. Yes, it was. Right.

Jeff, have I told you about the critically acclaimed MMRPG Final Fantasy 14? I've never heard that happen in real life. Amazing. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the mods in Skyron, which I think has continued to drive its popularity for a very long time. Because whereas Bethesda has not really patched the game, they've really left it to the fans over the years to do it. The fans have really stepped up. Like there are so many graphical improvements, people have added weather systems, they've fixed various problems. They make the quests more open. They've added so much armor and everything to the

point where you're like, if you're going to play Skyrim, freaking install like 100 mods. Come on. Yeah, I was tempted to replay Skyrim on Switch because I love that system. And, you know, being able to play Switch portably or to play Skyrim portably seems great because I don't necessarily want to sit down for five hours at my TV and play. But, you know, doing it a little bite-sized chunks, going through a cave and saying, well, that was good for now. That's great. But you I can't mod the switch version, but, you know, with Steam Deck coming out, maybe that's the way for me to revisit it. Like, you get the portability and the modability, and that's, I hadn't thought about that until just this very moment. And I sure am glad I got a pre-order for that.

Yeah. So you got one too. I did. I think early 2022 is when mine's coming. I think that, and when the Skyrim remastered version came out on PC, it kind of messed up a lot of mods. Right. So it actually was very annoying, and I didn't want to upgrade into the new sky from. And everybody had to rewrite their damn mods.

Yeah, but now all those have their own mods, too. The remastered and the special edition have their own mods. And the number one mod, last time I looked, was basically bug fixes. No, it's a fan patch. Right. I'm fan patch. Right. But, yeah, having that kind of open, you know, approach, I mean, it makes sense to me that Bethesda bought id and

because Doom was very much a game about, like, and Quake, you know, we're very much games about, like, do cool stuff with this engine, make this game better or make your own game. I mean, that's where we got Half-Life. So, yeah, it does all seem of a piece. And, yeah, I'm really captivated by this idea of portable, modded Skyrim now. Like, I think I might have to do that. Like, I'll buy the game a third time. Why the hell not?

Yeah. I guess there's no reason the mods wouldn't work, right, on Steam Deck. Yeah, I mean, Steam Deck is supposed to play anything that's supported on Steam is supposedly playable on Steam deck. I'm sure some of the more current games, you know, something running on like a high-end Unreal Engine, what is it, five now. It's a totally open platform. You can throw basically anything on it. Right. I'm sure some of the more high-end stuff is going to struggle.

But I feel like last-gen-type games. You know, if you look at their specs, actually, the Steam Deck has really solid specs. Like, basically a current-gen GPU, a processor from, like, 2019. Like, it's actually shocking that they hit that price point with the specs that the Steam deck. I'm sure it's a loss leader. It's like, here's your razor. Please buy all the Blaze through Steam. And I will.

I will buy them blades through Steam. My day job interviewed Gabe Newell. He still exists. Yes, he's still around. He's back from New Zealand on his vacation there. What do you have to say about Half-Life 3? God. But when it came to the Steam Deck, he was like, yeah, we had, he called it painful but necessary to hit the price point that they did with the Steam Deck.

But, yeah, no, Skyrim on the Steam Deck seems like the optimal approach. And then by the time the Steam Deck will come out, Skyrim will be more than a decade. oh, that's wild, but it still holds up. Still a great game. It'll probably sell more copies, the Steam Deck. You know, there are people who are, like, going, cat, why are you so into Bethesda games? Like, what is it about these games that you keep going back to?

And I'm just like, I just don't get anything quite like I do when I play, like, a Sky Room or I fallout four. It's just, it's a unique experience. And so that's why I will be day one with Starfield, and I'm going to go live in space with my space vampire girl. run and it'll be great. Wait, Space Vampire? Yes. That was Space Warwick. Well, I'm just changing it around. Space Werewolf, whatever. You don't have to change

just because of what I said. It was really a joke. Either way. I don't have anything against werewolves. There will definitely be a space werewolf in this game or a space cat race. You're marrying somebody. It's going to happen. That's going to happen. In my starship, I'm so excited. And that's what Bethesda

does, right? They make me feel like I am super invested in this world. And that's ultimately what I want to feel like is that I'm stepping into a hollow deck. I mean what you're saying about the appeal of Bethesda games kind of reminds me of the fact that after I sank 150 hours into this game I kept chasing that high in other places and so I tried kingdoms of Amalor reckoning

the game paid for by the taxpayers of New England didn't hit it just an action RPG dragon's dogma actually scratched the itch in a different way and I found that very satisfying I need to go back and revisit that sometime Dragon the Tacoma is almost a hybrid between Dark Souls and Skyroms. Yeah, it was really kind of widely dismissed before it came out. I remember. Yeah, and I played a demo at a Capcom event and was like, this is really good. After everything I've heard about this, I thought it was going to be garbage.

Everybody was making fun of it because at the time, everybody was making fun of Japanese games. Oh, right. Because Japan doesn't know how to make games. I forgot about that. Because this was like 2012. Yeah. And then, like, I remember getting a demo disc because I was doing a preview for OXM or something, and I was like, wait a minute, this is good. Yeah, I really enjoy it.

Well, remember, these days, people only play Phil Fish games and nothing from Japan anymore. Yeah, like, I was very shocked by how much I enjoyed the demo and really, really liked that game. And, you know, I played that on console, Xbox 360, I think. So it was pretty jinky, but I think the more recent remakes are, you know, re-werext. releases are supposed to be much better, so I'll revisit that again someday. I feel like there were a few other games where I was kind of like, is this going to be it? Oh, no, that's not it. So.

Yeah, I thought the Witcher games, like, yes, the Witcher. That's another one. But not really, though. But very linear. And like when we were talking earlier about Ghost of Tsuchima, that is very in the Witcher tradition where you have these multi-part side quests that are very dense with story and everything, but it very much leads you to that. Right.

And there is a, the intention is not to live in the world. The intention is to play out a story, an epic tale. That's right. Yeah. And there's no jank. The jank is so key. Where's the jank? I see the jank.

It's too polished, which means it's not like open enough, basically. Right. I think the closest we've maybe gotten is that one game from the Eastern European studio that's like hyper-realistic, and I'm, like, grasping at the name. Got to narrow that one down. I know, there are games like Gothic, too, and that kind of thing, but, oh, crap. Are you talking about, did they come out in, like, 2013 or so? It's like 2018.

Oh, I don't know. Oh, something more recent. Yeah. I stopped paying attention to games after I left the press. I don't know. Kingdom Come Deliverance. Oh. Which, uh, was somewhat, had its own baggage.

in the way that it approached things but... Is it like the sequel to deliverance the movie? No. Oh, that's too bad. An MMO in the American South,

not MMO, but an open-world RPG. That would be frightening. That would be weird. But I'm into the idea. Like, you get into New Orleans and, you know, all kinds of weird stuff happens. Now, Kingdom Come Deliverance is

set in Eastern Europe, like in the Middle Ages, and it's basically, what if Skyrim but hyper, realistic in everything that it does to the point that it's fairly obnoxious about it but the people are like skyrum isn't realistic enough that they're the people when you eat food do you have to like manually chew the food with a button or less that is effectively what it's like you're going to you're probably going to turn the right stick in a in a steady rhythm then press r3 to swallow

it's quite a tedious game i will say but yes that is i would say that like games like can them. Like, a lot of developers have been trying to capture Skyrim by going denser, more realistic, more hardcore. That's not what people loved about Skyrim. They loved that it was breezy. I know that's why the Elder Scrolls faithful are like, meh. But I don't want to play a super dense game like that. I want to just kind of cruise around and get my stealth so good. I can, like, stand or crouch actually right, you know, like two feet in front of someone and basically flick an arrow between their eyes and kill them. And they don't. even realize I'm there.

That's not realistic. It's stupid, but it's, you know, it's satisfying. It's fun. It's like, I put a lot of time into leveling this up. Little bit by little bit. I deserve, I deserve this. I deserve to be a murder machine at point blank range. I earned this.

They're going for, they want a holodeck experience where it's like, I am so totally immersed in this world. Everything I can do, I can do it. But what Bethesda is doing with. their games is even though it's not functionally uber realistic it's just close enough that you feel like you have a lot of agency in the world even if it is somewhat artificial at times they're they're proud enough to stand up and say i am not a merry map

has anyone else tried skyrim vr no no that game made me sick it's very good at getting you sick yeah huh is it the same game Yeah, it is Just walk around in it I don't want to stick my face into that kind of jank I don't know Well actually it might even be janker

Because they have to turn down The image quality At least on Pets 4 they did But yeah I tried to like it But yeah It gets me sick more than any other VR game Which is too bad

But You're putting on a headset And spending multiple hours in it And within 10 minutes I want to die When I'm in a VR headset Yeah Yeah, they need better headsets for one thing.

Need more air-conditioned headsets. Well, maybe, like, an Oculus Quest isn't so bad. I don't know if you can put Skyrim VR on one of those, but, like, they're much more lightweight. Yeah, right. I mean, at least playing a PC version through it, yeah. That's amazing. They put that whole game in VR.

That was Bethesda for a year there. They were, like, let's put everything on VR. You know, they put Doom in there as well? Yeah. No, thanks. I mean, Doom 3 initially. Or the original Doom? Well, there was Doom 3 and, like, kicked off the prototype Oculus back in the day, but

I remember there was an E3 where they had both Skyrim and a Doom. Yeah. The Doom one is a spin-off of 2016, New. There were a couple of E-3s that were really like VR. It was either VR or it was like 3D TV. Because there was a lot of... All those frickin demos we had to sit through from shit that never mattered. Where you were wearing 3D glasses?

Yeah. That was the worst. I forget what year that was. That was like 20, 2011. Yeah, the glasses. Yeah, I'm glad we got past that. Me too. I'm glad Nintendo was like 3DS.

Now here's the 2DS. This is the thing you really wanted. I like the 3DS. Of all the 3D stuff that happened around video games, I thought the 3DS did it better than... I remember talking to you about the 3Ds demos at E3 the year before they came out. Both of those agreed like, oh, this is legit.

I'm more with this. But still, I'm happy to have moved away from that. No, me too. I'm surprised you never got Skyrim on the 3DS. It seems like something. they might have tried. Well, they barely got oblivion on PSP. Yeah.

Oh, come, they did that. No, they were trying. No, it was Elder Scrolls travels. Yes. It was unreleased. But there was a demo. Yeah, there was a demo. There's prototypes out there.

Prototypes. Oh, okay. I'll have to check those out. I guess. You don't have to. You don't have. I'm curious. I mean, they did get an Elder Scrolls game on Engage, so anything's possible.

Did they really? Yeah. Which one was that? It was just like. Was that the first Elder Scrolls travels? Was that the first Elder Scrolls travels? Was that going to be a series? Yeah, there was a lot of weird stuff on Engage.

Like, Nokia put a lot of money into luring people to develop games for their platform, and people were like, okay, sure, we'll take your money and do this, and then we're done. So it's a wasteland of really interesting things that never should have happened. But it's kind of cool that they did. My boss at Limited Run Games is trying to talk me into doing Engage works and cover the Engage library. He's like, yeah, I'm working on collecting this. So when you decide to do that, you can borrow my library. I'm like, no, why would I do that to myself?

My life's too precious. The legend of the taco phone. Yes, exactly. No, it's only like a 20-minute video. Don't be so complaining. Every game deserves a 20-minute video. So about Skyrim. So about Skyrim, actually, you know, we're kind of winding down at this point.

I guess maybe the question now would be, given what you've experienced with Skyrim and other Elder Scrolls games, what do you want from Elder Scrolls 6? Did any of you do anything with Elder Scrolls online? No. That was the one like, you know, I was chasing after that high again. Yeah. Chasing the dragon and I, the dragon born, I guess. I just, I still couldn't bring myself to do ESO.

I dabbled. When ESO went into the Skyrim expansion, I was like, I'll give it a shot, but it doesn't feel right. There's just something about it that feels off. And I think it's because it's an MMR RPG. I know somebody who worked on ESO, and it was just a freaking mess when it came out. And it's actually really impressive the amount of work that they've done to save that game and make it viable. And it's actually way bigger than anybody, like, ever thinks about because it doesn't really have coverage in the mainstream presence.

It's a very self-contained ecosystem. Right. But it's huge. It is very successful, and it's a game I never want to play. I mean, it's not the first RPG that's shipped in a miserable state and has been, you know, fought back from oblivion or maybe from the grave by hard-fought progress. I mean, you love the multiplayer online RPG Final Fantasy 14. And isn't it free to play now, ESO? Is it free to play?

I think it is. Probably. I don't know. It's probably. if there are anything like FF14, there's going to be a certain amount of content that's free to play, and then just to get you into it. Yeah, I think it is like that.

Yeah, no, I don't have a huge amount of interest in ESO. As for what I want from Elder Scrolls going forward, I think that there can be a lot done in terms of, so there's the radiance system, right? And that makes the actual town people have their own kind of, like, world and, like, their own thing. And actually, like, Cyberpunk 2077 tried to implement a version of that. It was a complete freaking mess.

It was such a bug fest. It was ridiculous. I mean, that game was a bug fest anyway, but even more so with those characters. So I would love to see in Tess 6 and Starfield, actually, a much more sophisticated AI in terms of, like, routines for the characters. So it doesn't feel quite as robotic and it therefore makes the world feel more organic. And then beyond that, I'm really excited about. the improvements that they're making to the engine because Starfield is going to have brand new engines

I think the creation engine 2 or whatever that and the thing that they were showing at E3 as a teaser trailer that was all an engine and it looked really good. It was very, very impressive. So I am ready for a fairly substantial visual overhaul for this series in 2030. If we're all sold,

live then if we're all still look at a great planet exists i'm gonna be like that person wearing the vr headset sitting in the like dank basement and be like i'm in my fantasy world with the dragons and everything i don't even care anymore fair enough i i forgot about the the what was it radiant system yeah like they they promised you know oh infinite content you'll have just infinite quest they'll just be generated on the fly but after i got like three or four of those it was just like the same madlib letter like saying a person has done a thing please go and murder them that was it i was like well okay so there's not actually any real content to this just filler well we're like a ways off yeah doing the radiance quests in sky room was very boring it was

like very simple fetch quests but my hope is that in like 10 15 years algorithmically generated AI and like all that jazz will result in AI complex enough that we're effectively getting organic quests spun out in real time. And that would be fascinating in an RPG like Skyroom. Yeah, I think all I want is for them not to follow anybody else. I want them to keep doing their thing. You know, I don't want them to adapt any trends going on. I don't want them to get better about onboarding.

You know, a lot of the things that I do in my day job about, like, you have to help people get it, understand what your game is about. Like, I don't want that for Bethesda. I don't want Elder School 6 to have, like, three hours where they teach everybody how to do everything. Like, it should just be, like, good luck. They kind of do that, like Skyroom versus, you know, Oblivion or Moralwin. It's way more accessible than either of those. It is.

It is. But it doesn't, still at the same time, doesn't feel like tutorials. It doesn't feel like, you know, Skyward's sword. I mean, that was kind of the big difference. I'm sure that Nintendo discovered was like, oh, Skyrim just kind of drops you into this thing. and you don't have a sword telling you, like, what every action you should take should be every five minutes. And it makes a huge difference.

Like, you just go out there and do stuff and you get to, like, make mistakes yourself or figure things out yourself. And when you figure out how to, you know, like find a really quick way to master forging or something and level up, you feel like you've figured something out. Like you've kind of cheated the game. Even though, you know, the system is actually pretty simple and baked in,

but, you know, there is that, that process of discovery. I agree. Like, I really appreciate that. And, and you kind of compare notes with other people who played Skyrim going in blind and realize, oh, we all, we all kind of did a lot of the same things and figured out a lot of the same exploits, but it feels like you're discovering something, like you're coming up with these ideas on your own. And that's a rare, that's a rare feed in video games to make you feel like, oh, I did something, and maybe I wasn't supposed to do it, but I figured this out. Yeah, and it was neat, too, to just, like, stumble across a town and get a feeling like this is a town or like this place has a

personality that's different than this other place that I just visited or there's some whole soap opera going on in here that if I walk by I hear I hear pieces of it and I could get involved if I want to but I don't necessarily have to but it feels like stuff is happening off screen right that I don't know there's something just that's what I want them to keep just this sort of unwieldy openness to it you know I don't want them to get more professional. I want it to have bugs. The bugs are the selling, but that's part of the charm.

Exactly. I want it to be a feature. I want the bugs to be a feature, not a bug. I mean, for me, the bugs just mean that their reach has exceeded their grasp. Exactly. And that's not a bad thing all the time. Right. When there's so much being reached for and, you know, what they do manage to grasp is so enjoyable and just so, like, you know, make your own fun.

fun, then that's great. They do seem to get away with more than anybody else, so I shouldn't be enabling them. I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be saying, please have bugs. I think Fallout 76 was kind of a come-to-jesus. Yeah, that's true. So I think, I think they've kind of figured out what's the threshold. What can we get away with? Okay, let's stop maybe a little short of that next time.

But it gets a point where it's just not fun anymore. You're like, okay, this game is so legitimately broken that it is an absolute bear to play. Why am I even wasting my time with this? But Fall of 76, the other problem was whereas Skyrim just felt like full of stuff to do, Fall of 76 did not feel like that

at all. There was nothing to do. There were no people. There were no MPCs. And I'm like, go hang out with other people. I don't know. And then people are like, there's nothing in this world. Why would I hang out? Oh, and by the way, it's broken. And Bethes was like, we did this

wrong. Yeah. And he gets, that just says make your own fun and then you know we didn't provide any you know it's going to be suspect i mean sims online tried to do that too like we were you know there's not going to be it we're not putting the game in you're going to make your own games like well most people just aren't that creative yeah Minecraft got away with that but that's about it it's you know it's like a once in a generation thing yeah if that once in a decade once in a yeah the difference between minecraft though was that like you could dig up the world you could create basically it's legos right

Whereas Fall of 76 was very simple. You were just kind of crafting stuff. And it was like, to what end? There is no end. There was no end. Well, you know, Minecraft crafting was the basis of everything as opposed to like, oh, we should put that in because why not? So, yeah. Ray, what about you?

Well, let's see. I think a basic thing I would like from the next game would just be a world that's a bit more funky. because I'm one of the old Morrowind fans and Morrowind has a lot of varied terrain, let's think. You need more cliff racers is what you're saying. No, less. No, many fewer, many fewer cliff racers. That's why I don't like the dragon than skyrim.

Too much drama about things in the sky. But yeah. Less drama. Less excitement. More terrestrial drama, please. Yeah. So yeah, just something a bit more colorful in that sense, a bit more funky, mushroom-y-type landscapes, I think.

It would be cool to see. Yeah, I would really like to see Elder Scroll 6 explore some of the weirder lands, like where the Argonians are from or the Khadjut. Like, go, go strange. I'm tired of, like, white people from Europe. Like, we've seen a lot of their kingdoms already. We've seen it for them throughout the world. If it's Hammerfell, I think you'll be okay on that.

What is Hammerfell? Hammerfell's like a desert, and I think the Red Guard live there. Okay. Yeah. That'll still be, like, Western-type people, though. Ish. Yeah. Yeah, like South Europe.

North African, Northern Africa. Yeah. They were like saying, it's said in Tamriel, and Tamriel's kind of that equivalent of Europe, I guess. But from everything I understand of Hammerfell, it makes me think of like North Africa. And that's more interesting. And you can do a lot with desert settings. It is not just like trackless wastes of sand. There's more happening in arid areas than just that.

Well, you could have interesting oases, oases. Well, I mean, even as we saw with Skyrim, there are places where you kind of hit the snow line and it becomes green. And, you know, there's a lot more going on there than just, like, a treacherous cliff covered with snow and ice where it's constantly a blizzard. So I have faith in their environmental designers to create a lot of variety in the world, you know, the overworld. So even if it is desert, which, you know, seems like, oh, that's going to be the most boring place. No, not necessarily. No, they're good. Desert can be a really beautiful biome.

But I'd still rather explore wherever the Khazid are from. Just, you know, a world full of weird talking cat people. Jeremy, there's an entire expansion in Elder Scrolls online featuring the Khaget in their worlds or something. I thought you were going to recommend I play Final Fantasy 14. The cat girls there, what are they called? I don't remember. You don't remember what the cat girls? They're like an entire world.

Boy the catgirls, come on. Yeah, but what are they called? Oh, gosh. You know this. Come on. I think it's the Miko. Yes, the Mekot. There you go.

I don't pay attention to the lore. What do you do in Final Fantasy 14 if you don't pay attention to lore? I watch Ted Lassow and I grind. I see. Okay. Huh. That's not what I thought Final Fantasy 14's appeal was. I thought the appeal of 14 was like, they get Final Fantasy so well.

the story is so good these villains are amazing I love all the NPCs who give me quests No you left out the Jason Sudeikas factor I didn't even realize he was in Final Fantasy 14 I could just

There's so many things I'm learning this episode It's amazing I think that the Cajit world is in Elder Scrolls Arena Ah Yeah it goes all the way back to them I could be wrong That's what I remember

That's a big app right there. Yeah, a little bit. I don't even know if you can get that game anymore. I believe you can, yeah, actually. I'm sure they... It's all free down, though, and I think. Bethesda, like...

On Bethesda, I know they have Daggerfall. I didn't know they had to rain at it, too. I think it goes all the way back. I think they've got Battlespire, too. The question is, is that a good idea? No. Right. But it's not.

Daggerfall is about as far back as I'm willing to go. Yeah. Your scientists were so concerned, et cetera, et cetera. Random note, someone or people are making a source port of daggerfall to Unity, and you can just download that free version from Bethesda and use it as the source-based for it. Really? Yeah.

Just saw that on GitHub the other day. Okay, yeah, that's kind of like what people did with Marathon, because that was open source, and people created their own engine, and you can just put the content in there and play it on like a semi-modern remake engine. What Bethes did with Doom? Yeah, I like when that happens. That's good. It's good stuff.

You know, I'm going to be able to be, you know, I'm going to be. All right, anyway, that was the Skyroom episode. I wasn't sure we were going to talk for an hour and a half. And yet here we are. Yeah, here we are. An hour and a half exactly, as the minutes just rolled by. There we go. So I feel like we've done our good deed here.

So we will wrap this episode and everyone can give their shout-outs and promotions and so forth. I think. We'll reconvene again in 10 years to talk about Skyrim's 20th anniversary and maybe what we've been doing in Elder Scroll 6. I don't know. How about Morrowind's 20th? Oh, well, yeah, we could do that. We could. There's, there's a lot, a lot to Elder Scrolls. There's, it has layers like an onion. Let's talk about potions. Potions. So many potions. So yeah, we'll, we'll revisit Elder Scrolls at some point. Oblivion, Morowind. Maybe it's all. I don't know. Anyway, but yes, we will do that more rapidly than Bethesda will create a sequel. We promise this.

It won't be another eight years before we do this again. Exactly. Anyway, thanks all of you for coming in and risking in-person human contact to talk about a game full of dragons and things. Very exciting. Anyway, thanks everyone for listening if you enjoyed this. episode. I have amazing news. This is episode 410 or so of Retronauts. And you know what that means? There are like 409 or so episodes before this, plus all the ones from OneUp and all the Retronauts live and all the Retronauts micros. Basically, if you enjoyed this episode and like

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Patreon.com slash Retronauts. That's the one. Yes, go there. You can go to Retronauts.com. It's okay. Anyway, I'm going to stop talking now. Kat, where can we find your stuff on the Internet? Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at the underscore Kappa.

I also have a podcast that's Axe of the Blood God, a lot of you listening to this probably also listen to Axe the Blood God, because we're in like the Retronauts extended universe. There is a VIN diagram happening. But we also have a Patreon, patreon.com slash Blood God Pod, and we're doing lots of cool pantheon episodes. We're exploring

RPGs. Right now we're exploring Fantasy Star, the original for Sega Master System. Oh, I've played through that last year for the first time. On Switch. It holds surprisingly well. It does on Switch. Very enjoyable. Yes, on Switch. Don't play it anywhere else. Yes.

All right. That's it for me. Me? You can't really find me very many places anymore. I'm at Greenspeak on Twitter. And it breaks my heart. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to break your heart. You need to stream more, man. I need to stream more. Yeah, I have a very busy day job at Minmax consulting. So if you're making a video game, then you can find me. Otherwise, I probably need to just get out there more, don't I? I fear of self-monitioner during the pandemic. You were on episode of Blood God. We were talking about System Shock 2. And you gave me my own podcast for a few episodes there. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Brachy narratives. That was a great podcast. That was a great show. Yeah. One season, in and out. In and out, but I think we made the most... It was good season. It's good to go out of a high note.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Ray. All right. I'm on Twitter. It's RDBAAAA. And there are... I also have many ways you can give me money.

For example, I'm that username on Twitch. And I have a podcast called No More Whoppers at No More Woppers.com. And we have a Patreon there. And I have a game company called BipelDog, and Bipel. Dot Dog. Can you download a game from there? See? It's many ways.

Many ways to give me a couple bucks at a time. And finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, probably on Twitter. That's where I make most of my dad jokes. Even though I'm not a dad, it's a skill I've honed despite this impediment. Of course. You can also find me doing stuff at limited run games,

writing stuff, publishing stuff, and sometimes even producing the physical version. of games that you buy. If it has a cool book in it, I was probably involved. I can say that. And, of course, you can find me on YouTube under a channel by my very name, Jeremy Parrish, where I'm chronically in the history of many, many video game systems. I probably ought to reel it in. But what can you do? There's so much history to talk about, and every week there's more. So that's it. That is this week's lesson in history, talking about Skyrim, which now is It's historic because it's 10 years old.

It's so weird. But time marches on. And yeah, thanks for listening. We'll be back again next time that we publish a podcast. So look forward to it. And until then, I have a confession to make. I was the one who stole your sweet roll. You know, I'm going to be able to be.