These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
The Empire of Tamriel ranges from the last bastion of goodness against the Aldmeri Dominion, to an oppressive foreign power that doesn't belong in Skyrim, to a fractured shell that deserves to collapse until someone worthy can reunite the continent.
Is the Emperor a craven appeaser, who doesn't care what happens to his people as long as he can hold some power for himself? Is he a good man and a political realist, who signed the White-Gold Concordat to buy time for the Legion to recover? Is he simply an unremarkable person in an age that demands heroes? His behavior during the final mission of the Dark Brotherhood plotline shows that, whatever else he may be, he is definitely not a coward
Is Ulfric Stormcloak a revolutionary hero who wants to restore Skyrim to its former glory, a power-hungry tyrant interested only in taking the throne, or a Stupid Good rebel who doesn't realize the long-term consequences of his actions? Just how controlled was he by the Dominion? Is he the kind of guy who thinks that, for anyone who died fighting the Thalmor, it was their own fault for being too weak and un-Nord-like to survive?
Are the Dunmer of Windhelm living such conditions because they are being mistreated, or because the Nords have no pity to spare for them and they have been sitting on their hands since they came from Morrowind waiting for someone to take pity on them instead of trying to improve their conditions?
Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize that similar debates exist in Real Life concerning the homeless, immigrants, and those on welfare.
According to Faryl Atheron, the Dunmer who complain about the way they're treated in Windhelm effectively ostracize and condemn those Dark Elves who try to make their way in Skyrim by working for Nords. Despite the fact that that's the only way for the majority to make ends meet. He also expresses a great deal of exasperation over what he considers his brothers continually harping on "injustices" as he puts it, and being ashamed of him and his sister for working for the Nords. So there's that to add fuel to the debate also.
Connected to the Dunmer example, it's possible to make this case for Brunwulf Free-Winter. Is he an overly-soft hearted old fool who's trying to hard to uplift the new minorities in Windhelm by affording them special status in spite of few of them barely doing anything to truly uplift themselves and contribute meaningfully to Windhelm? Or is he simply a reasonable, good man trying to afford basic dignity to every resident of his city? Again, this has comparisons to real life, with Brunwulf being akin to a left-wing politician campaigning for immigrant rights.
Are the Argonians being left at the docks of Windhelm because of pure Fantastic Racism, or because Ulfric is trying to keep peace by not letting the once enslaved race into Windhelm, where they could come face to face with their former slavers?
Amaund Motierre. Is he, as Astrid suggests, trying to get the Emperor assassinated to better his own position within the Elder Council or could it be a more collective feeling calling for desperate measures in desperate times? The Emperor seems to be aware of harsh opposition amongst his political elite. Is he really ruling that badly? Not to mention how, after the deed is done, Motierre seems to genuinely believe that the Emperor's death has "saved" the Empire.
This trope also counts for Paarthurnax' arch enemies, the Blades. Are they indeed the heroic order they used to be, or are they just an embittered remnant of an age long gone? Is their hate for Paarthurnax reasonable or are they just too narrow minded to see beings can change?
For that matter, Arngeir raises the question as to whether or not the Blades formed to serve the Dragonborn, or if the Blades directed the Dragonborn toward their own ends under the pretense of support. Delphine and Esbern's comments, actions and tone make the matter even more difficult to discern.
The Greybeards. Indecisive wishy-washys who sit out every conflict, or guardians of a power that's too dangerous to let be abused? Or overly cautious guardians of a power that is too dangerous to let be abused but too useful to not use at all?
Jurgen Windcaller, the founder of the Greybeards, implies arguing for the second point if the Dragonborn talks to him in Sovngarde.
Jurgen Windcaller: My disciples still follow the difficult path - the Way of the Voice is neither wide, nor easy. But if you stray from wisdom then to Sovngarde you will not return.
The Snow-Elves. A bunch of religious zealots who launched a genocidal campaign on the Ancient Nords at Saarthal, which Ysgramor responded by raising an army and driving them underground, where they suffered their own karmic genocide at the hands of the Dwemer? Or a race of peaceful and religious Elves that the Ancient Nord's painted as the aggressors, hunted to the verge of extinction, who were then betrayed by the Dwemer, the very people they turned to for help?
Or something in between (none of the sources for what actually happened at Saarthal are even remotely unbiased, considering they consist of a) Ancient Nord records, b) a Snow Elf). Likewise, was the attack on Saarthal simply because the Ancient Nords had uncovered the Eye of Magnus, an artefact that potentially could cause The End of the World as We Know It if misused?
The Dragonborn. Are you are heroic figure who protects the land from threats and rose to the top of several guilds due to your inherent skill and badassery? Or are you essentially nothing more than a reckless demigod who abuses the power of the Thu'um for your own ends and to help you gain influence throughout Skyrim?
If you choose to play Dragonborn last, you've slain multiple Dragons, amassed an army of loyal followers and have, on several occasions, proven that you're not afraid to screw over a Daedric Prince. Aside from him being openly malevolent, what exactly makes you any different than Miraak?
Anticlimax Boss: Bethesda Boss Syndrome hits twice in during the main quest. The only plot relevant Dragon Priest (extremely powerful undead sorcerer) is easily the weakest of them all and Alduin only appears to differ from the elite Ancient Dragons by having a few more hitpoints. Its even worse during the final battle in the afterlife, since you are assisted by the souls of three legendary Nord warriors
At the end of the Thieves' Guild questline, a big deal is made about how powerful Mercer Frey is and why you won't be able to fight him alone. But the final battle ironically ends up as a one-on-one fight against someone who's no different than any regular old mook aside from the ability to briefly turn invisible.
True to form, it happens again in Dawnguard: The fight with Vyrthur in the penultimate quest (during which he's sending dozens of Falmer at you and tearing the building apart around you) makes the final confrontation with Harkon just seem boring, no matter how many of his Vampire Lord abilities he tries to use on you. The anti-climax is arguably worse for the Dawnguard side, as the siege on Castle Volkihar is not only rather short, but part of it takes place inside, robbing you of one of two potential chances to use Auriel's Bow to rain down smiting light on them. And if the siege is taking place at night, there's the other chance gone, rendering it just a normal fight with the same Vampire enemies you've seen before, just named this time.
Also in Dawnguard, the fight with Durnehviir. Despite being a Dracolich the battle plays out like just another dragon encounter, the only difference being the waves of minor undead spawning, which are a mere nuisance.
Awesome Ego: Arguably J'Zargo. He's arrogant, but is competent and got attitude.
The Thalmor: Players either hate them to the point where they go out of their own way to kill every single Thalmor member out there even for no reason or are seen as Draco in Leather Pants.
In a way, you could see Cicero as this. If you look below under the Ensemble Darkhorse entry, he has quite a few fans. However, he has quite the hatedom as well. He has been referred to as the marmite of Skyrim for a reason. Either you love him to pieces, or you hate him with a passion. Very rarely will you find someone who is truly neutral about him.
Best Level Ever: Blackreach. An absolutely huge underground cavern (approx. four square miles) home to an abandoned Dwarven city and some of the most unique and breathtaking environmental design in the entire game. It even comes with it's own Bonus Boss! You'd have to spend several hours exploring the vast compound to find everything, but you'll love every bit of it.
Broken Base: Winning the Game & Developer of The Year awards at the Spike VGAs - You either thought they were deserved, or absolutely dumbfounded that the team which released a game that was borderline unplayable on one of the formats it was released on won these awards over other deserving titles & developers.
The Microsoft exclusivity rights for the Dawnguard DLC; It had been planned since the game came out, but a lot of fans didn't really pay attention to this until it was stated at E3. Cue hordes of PC and PS3 gamers getting righteously pissed.
A recent announcement by Bethsda is implying that PS3 fans either will have to wait even longer for Dawnguard or not be getting it at all. This will not be pretty...
All three contents are now in the process of being released for the PS3. Cue more whining
And now that the next DLC has been announced and released for Xbox 360 and PC, PS3 users are now even madder since Dawnguard wasn't released at the time.
Renewed when it (less than a day before Dragonborn's Xbox release) became apparent that an exclusivity agreement applies to Dragonborn despite the fact that Bethesda repeatedly stated that the first two DLCs fell under a Microsoft timed exlusivity agreement (while Bethesda later clarified that Dragonborn was labelled as the second DLC, that instead opened the question of why Hearthfire was delayed for a month for PC users if it didn't count as a DLC under the Microsoft timed exlusivity agreement).
Bethseda however did later clarify that Dragonborn is labelled in the gamefiles as the second DLC, while Hearthfire was created as merely additional content. Cue the base breaking as some fell on the side that accepted this as a simple miscommunication to the fandom, to those who felt this was a major cop-out on their part.
A minor crack has shown up between console gamers and some PC Gamers due to Hearthfire's release. PC gamers argue that all of Hearthfire's content can be done with existing Game Mods, while console gamers note that they don't have access to mods without hacking their systems, and that Bethesda can release whatever optional content they want.
Yet another crack starting to emerge is related to the above mentioned Dawnguard-PS3 controversy. Fans are beginning to divide on the "screwing over" of PS3 gamers by Bethesda. People either think they're a good company trying their damned hardest, see them as an incompetent group of idiots who either hate any and all PS3 users or don't even care about them, or blame the PS3 for not being a "developer friendly console". Xbox, PC, AND PS3Fan Dumb only makes the argument more heated.
And now that the Dragonborn DLC has been announced, PS3 hatred for Bethesda has reached nuclear levels. Though they now have access to the content for 50% off during the first week, cue even more whining
Catharsis Factor: The end of "Season Unending", the major Civil War leaders are leaving High Hrothgar, Tullius, Ulfric, Balgruuf, Elisif, potentially Elenwen, and the Blades Delphine and Esbern. The major players in the main storyline, who taking into account for alignment and their personalities have at least two members in their number you can't stand, walking down the mountain. You know what to do — be sure to have a quicksave ready so you can repeat it until satisfaction is had. Bonus fun because if you attack any of them normally, they're all essential so it's a puny 40 septim bounty, and any of the others who turn hostile will keep walking if you sheath your weapon.
Crazy Awesome: Neloth in Dragonborn may be mad, dangerous, and perhaps a bit unstable but the spells he teaches you are some of the best in the game.
Creepy Awesome: Cicero. The guy is like a male Harley Quinn.
Let's just say the whole damn soundtrack and be done with it. They've even gone and lifted some Crowning Musics Of Awesome from the previous games without so much as a remix.
It's got the usual remixes of varying quality, but this one stands out, combining one of the tavern songs with the main theme... and the singer's voice is about as beautiful as the graphics in the game.
This singer portraying an entire Draugr choir and actually singing in Dragon language, complete with acoustic effects and drums to fit the dark chilling atmosphere, is just beyond words.
One They Fear is a song that has got many a player killed, simply because they got so pumped while it was playing that they attacked the dragon in question head-on.
The music they play when you learn a Word of Power or slay a Dragon and absorb it's soul. They gave you your own Theme Music Power-Up for this game.
Some kind YouTube user has cut them together, so one can sample all the epicness in a [[twelve-minute package!]]
Even better, the Dragonborn DLC will feature a return to Solstheim, once the setting for Morrowind's expansion Bloodmoon. A chanting portion of the Skyrim "main theme" from the original game is a remix of the "Morrowindleitmotif" that became recurrent in all TES games from the third onwards, including Oblivion. Guess which part of the Skyrim "main theme" turned up for the trailer?
Even better, if one listens to the lyrics they are chanting, instead of being about the Dragonborn and their heroism, these same words are now being twisted and warped to reflect Miraak's menace.
Chaurus. They take forever to kill, spit poison, and will kill you pretty much instantly if they get close enough to melee. Oh, and the poison they use? Is of the health-draining variety. Lovely.
With Dawnguard, we now have a lovely new addition to the Chaurus family: Hunters. Take a Chaurus Reaper, put it on steroids, and give it wings. Or rather, they pulled out the much hated Cazadores from Fallout New Vegas and give them a nice Palette Swap. Shitshitshitshitshi-
Giant Sabrecats. 900 pounds of pure muscle and feline fury coupled with a nasty disposition and a tendency for creeping up on you from behind, and even later in the game they can do tremendous amounts of damage (early on they pretty much kill you in a couple swipes). And they are insanely fast for something the size of a bear, too. Given how they are basically sabretooth tigers, it makes sense, but it gets a little ridiculous when Sabrecats are scarier than dragons.
Bears. Huge aggro radius that's hard to avoid, runs nearly fast enough to keep up with a sprinting horse, takes as much hurt as it can dole out (IE: a lot) and always ends up in the middle of the damn road you want to travel down. Unlike wolves, which howl pretty much as soon as they're aware of you, the bear slothly gets up from its nap silently, by which time you've probably already wandered into its aggro radius. And they're freakin' everywhere. After Unrelenting Force, your most used shout will be Kyne's Peace or Animal Allegiance because of them.
If you are a warrior type, mages that use the Ice Storm spell fall into this category. Ice Storm is a spell that damages your health and stamina, robbing you from your ability to do Power Attacks. It also slows you down, turning you into a sitting duck. To make it worse; the spell has a huge area of effect, increasing your chance to get hit by it.
This extends to higher level mages as well, because magic does fixed damage, unless you been you've raising your health or bolstering your magic/elemental resistance higher level spellcasters will tear you to shreds in seconds. Even the racial resistance given to Nords, Dunmer, and Bretons won't save you most of the time.
Elder and Ancient dragons. Just when you're powerful enough to be convinced that Blood and Frost dragons aren't any more of a threat, these bastards show up and start two-shotting you.
Oh it gets worse, Dawnguard introduces the Revered and Legendary dragons who have a lot more health, does more damage, and have their own version of Drain Vitality which drains health, magicka, and stamina which hit you ALL THE TIME. So much for Dragons being a Degraded Boss.
Spriggans. They can appear anywhere in forest areas, hit hard when they do, and will heal themselves back to near-full health when they're in trouble. Oh, and they also summon bears, too. Nothing quite like a Demonic Spider that can summon more Demonic Spiders too. Oh, and now there are Spriggan Earth Mothers thanks to Dawnguard once again. They're bigger, stronger, and have a cloud of poisonous insects around them.
Forsworn, especially the Briarhearts. Their encampments include mages who will blast you with ice and lightning to deplete your magic and stamina, archers who can stagger you, and their melee warriors often dual-wield and can deal insane damage even with capped armor. The Briarhearts can be any of these but are usually the melee warriors, and they're plain stronger than the rank and file Forsworn.
Dragonborn brings in a couple of nasty enemies, namely Lurkers and Seekers. Lurkers are tall lumbering fish-things that they're physical attacks can stagger you, they have a ton of health, can cause tentacle explosions when you attack them, further damaging you, and a projectile attack. The Seekers are also annoying, floating wizard-like creatures that love spamming draining spells, are unaffected by some of your shouts (that means no Fus Ro Dah), can turn invisible, and the worst part, they can create a copy of themselves which can also attack you. Thankfully killing the original eliminates its clones. Oh yeah, and in Apocrypha, the things are everywhere!
Pretty much any enemy who can use finishing moves on you. Did you ever laugh when you first saw a guard being bitten and tossed by a dragon? You won't be laughing when it happens to you. The worst part is that the system that governs when it happens takes no regard for resistances: Armor rating, shield up, behind cover... When it wants to kill-cam you, it will kill cam you.
With Dawnguard installed, vampires become this. Not towards you necessarily, but to town populations. Boss-level hostile vampires and some mooks alongside them get dropped into cities filled with the brim with perishable low-level unique NPCs with no self-preservation instinct. It can potentially reduce even the five major cities to ghost towns.
Disappointing Last Level: The penultimate dungeon consists of the same Draugr enemies you've seen in every ruin and tomb up to that point, the only catch is this time you have no follower and the dungeon is a lot longer. Depending on how much you've leveled, this can mean either a swarm of standard Draugr, or Scourges who may have shouts (and will destroy your stamina with frost spells) and Deathlords who do have shouts and, on top of that, take lots of abuse before going down. Given that dungeons aren't even that long, and the Disappointing Last Level of Morrowind... it's an improvement.
The game also throws a couple of dragons at you there... but they don't level-scale, so they'll probably end up as the easiest to kill for you.
Discredited Meme: Virtually everyone got absolutely sick of the "Arrow in the Knee" jokes as early as a month after the game came out. Its reference in Borderlands 2 was apologized for.
Readers on the Skyrim board at GameFAQs have also become sick of the Toeh meme spawned there.
Draco in Leather Pants: Despite all that the quest/story designers did to make you want to hate the Thalmor (see A Nazi by Any Other Name )... some people still inexplicably like the Thalmor, and not in a "love to hate" way. Take a look at this soft mood-lighting and Unfortunate Implications riddled bit.
Many players feel that the Forsworn are misunderstood freedom fighters working for a just cause to overthrow a government that demonizes them, and wish that they could join them in the Civil War. Hmm...perhaps it's the raiding, genocide, and implicit rape, cannibalism, and Cruelty Rich Leather they practice that explains why it's not an option.
Speaking of the Civil War, expect around half of the player base to do this for the side they support while invoking Ron the Death Eater on the other.
Lydia, again. Most were very disappointed when a minor (and fixable) bug prevented players from marrying her. (Fixed in the 1.5 patch, or by mods on the PC before that.)
Ascended, as Lydia has recieved more specific dialogue with each DLC. Hearthfire gave Lydia character development to eventually lose her snarky attitude to the Dragonborn... and in Dragonborn she gets it back making snide comments about... well pretty much anything.
The Spectral Assassin, in other words, Lucien Lachance rides again.
Paarthurnax, due to him being The Mentor and one of the three friendly dragons. Several players have tried to slaughter the Blades for even suggesting killing him. The fact that he's voiced by Charles Martinet doesn't hurt either.
Brynjolf of the Thieves' Guild. With his accent, friendliness, and tendency to affectionately call your PC lass/lad, so many players were disappointed to find him unmarriable.
Vilkas and Farkas, of the Companions. Happily, you can marry them. Aela is also pretty popular, can'timaginewhy.
If the Kink Memes are anything to go by, Ondolemar, Ancano, Nelacar—really, almost any named male High Elf, likely because of their height, attractiveness, fashion sense, and Bastard Boyfriend-ish attitudes.
Cicero is also one of the most loved characters in the game, due to his hilarious dialogue and his sheer hamminess.
Serana and Knight-Paladin Gelebor from Dawnguard. Serana is frequently praised for her well developed character and the depth given to her relationship with the Dragonborn, leading many in the fanbase to ship the two, despite her not being a marriage option. Knight-Paladin Gelebor is also immensely popular, due to being a Badass Pacifist and (apparently) the last of the Snow Elves.
One of the more surprising ones is Emperor Titus Mede II. Yes, he signed the White-Gold Concordant that outlawed the worship of Talos and set in motion the Civil War storyline. Yes, his policies since the war have seen high taxation on the people of Skyrim. Yes, he may even be a Daedra worshiper. But once you arrive to assassinate him, he accepts his fate, faces his death with grace, and simply asks you, rather kindly, to kill whoever put a contract on him. The assassination of the Emperor was supposed to be a Crowning Moment of Awesome for the Dark Brotherhood, but instead it became a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Titus.
Brunwulf Free-Winter, replacement Jarl of Windhelm and quite possibly the "Nicest Guy in Skyrim".
Miraak from the Dragonborn DLC is quite popular, despite having most of his backstory lost in legend and ambiguity.
Also from the Dragonborn DLC is Teldryn Sero, an unassuming faceless Dunmer spellsword hireling sitting in the corner of the Retching Netch cornerclub, who has nonetheless gained a fanbase that enjoys his cool voice, sheer number of unique dialogue, snarky attitude, subtle badassery, mysterious tendency to refuse taking off his helmet and ability to defend himself competently. Finding out that he doesn't look half bad when players were finally able to take off his helmet only added to his appeal.
Among the adoptable children, Sissel has become quite popular. This is notable, because unlike the four orphans roaming the streets of the major Holds or the orphans from Honorhall, she wasn't specifically designed to invoke your sympathy and get you to adopt her. Her father, Lemkil, is also still alive, meaning you have to kill him first. Because the guy is such an abusive bastard and because poor Sissel also gets bullied by her twin sister all day long, many players find themselves traveling to Rorikstead just to kill Lemkil and adopt Sissel.
Evil Is Sexy: Astrid, "Matron" of the Dark Brotherhood.
The Windshear, a unique sword found aboard The Katariah causes unfailing stagger to EVERY enemy. Even Alduin. This effectively makes melee fighting anyone or anything with one on one combat a guaranteed win.
You can create some ridiculously overpowered equipment if you have maxed out the enchanting and smithing skills with the skills' respective perks.
According to the Skyrim wiki, your follower is able to pick up a giant's club (as you can't do it yourself). They will be able equip it and and thus be able to inflict over 200 points of damage...The trick is actually finding one, however. This is likely to be patched out, if it hasn't been already.
Max Enchanting plus the relevant perks lets you craft a set of equipment that reduce the mana costs of two magic schools to zero, letting you cast spells from those two schools for free.
Max Conjuration plus perks lets you summon two Dremora Lords at once. For reference, ONE Dremora Lord can kill a Giant in around three hits. This would not be a Game Breaker if it weren't for the fact that there is a trivially easy way to level Conjuration: Cast Soul Trap repeatedly on a dead body. Or merely hold a bound weapon in your hands with some hostiles in the area.
Max Smithing and its perks lets you build and upgrade the strongest possible weapons. You can even upgrade some of the unique artifacts like the Mace of Molag Bal and Spellbreaker. Meshes well with Max Enchanting too.
Add in Alchemy and you can boost your Enchanting and Smithing skills past the 100 limit. Make a potion that boosts the effectiveness of Enchantments, then enchant a few armor pieces with Fortify Alchemy to boost the effectiveness of your brewed potions. Repeat ad infinitum, then make a few Fortify Smithing potions, add the enchantment of the same to some armor pieces, then upgrade your equipment for weapons that do over 100 damage a hit, without any bonuses, and armor pieces with the same in defense, body armor maxing over 200. Then you can add on to them your choice of enchantments, two for each armor piece plus a ring and necklace. Make yourself immune to magic, immune to Frost, Flame and Shock, double the regen rate of your stats or more, etc.
You can speed the process along by making Fortify Restoration potions, which, likely due to a glitch, enhance the capabilities of your other enchanted equipment after taking it off and putting it back on again. Making a full set of Fortify Alchemy equipment and then performing this loop can lead to potions so strong they loop around into negative numbers after a few iterations. Make some Fortify Enchantment and Smithing potions once you're at the apex and even your pathetic starting equipment and a few petty soul gems can be made to one-shot anything in the game. And the ingredients for Fortify Restoration aren't even rare. In a hilarious twist, this is an actual game breaker, in that if you do the loop enough times, it can actually cause a data overflow, crashing the game.
Once again the Skeleton Key makes Lockpicking a joke. It just requires a lot of patience. You have to give up the very next quest after getting it, and it's only acquired near the end of the Thieves Guild questline, but there's nothing stopping you from taking your sweet time getting around to it. There's a Lockpicking perk with the same effect, so once you've had your fun with the Skeleton Key and leveled up enough, you can finish the quest and not lose a stitch.
The Oghma Infinium. It adds 5 skill points to all six branches of a relevant skill tree (Thief, Mage, Warrior), for a total of 30 points overall. However, there's also a glitch that allows players to level all the way up to 81, and you can acquire the Infinium at any point after achieving Level 15.
The Shadow Warrior perk, combined with the damage-boosting sneak attack perks makes you capable of literally walking up to an enemy's face, crouching for a second, and immediately attacking. Shadow Warrior not only makes the player invisible for a second, but completely erases the "Detected" status, making the sneak attack multipliers work even against an enemy standing right in front of you. This means you can one-shot every single enemy in the game if your weapon damage is high enough. If you're using a dagger (and why wouldn't you be, with the 15x sneak damage buff from the Assassin's Blade perk) you'll also usually get the hilarious effect of you teleporting behind your enemy to slit their throat before they can finish saying "Where are you?"
Max Illusion perks and vampirism. Vampires gain an extra 25% effectiveness to Illusion (even if the stat is already maxed) and the Vampire Seduction ability (with Stage 3 vampirism). With this combination, your character can offset every Illusion resistance in the game, and according to the UESP wiki, there is no character capable of defending against it.
The Impact perk, which allows you to stun any opponent if you double cast a projectile spell, effectively nullifies all possibility of you taking damage, should you stock up on enough mana potions because of the length of the stun. The only exception is other mages with tough wards.
Combining all the needed Smithing perks and the appropritate skills of an Assasin (eg the Assasin's perk and the Back Stab enchantment, which further boost a weapon's damage while sneaking), you can One-Hit Kill any unit, even Dragons! And if your Sneak skills are at maximum with all the needed perks, you can possibly sneak up to any unit even in broad daylight, and right in clear view of them, and strike them dead in on swipe, and no one will notice.
TIID KLO UL. There is no shout more effective for a warrior build fighting mages. At three words, it slows time down to one-tenth of its normal speed and lasts for 16 seconds. The catch? While it still slows you down, the effects are drastically reduced. Get attacked by a bunch of mages whose spells usually kill you in seconds? Shout, run around behind them while easily dodging their suddenly-slow spells, slash through their flimsy robes with your Daedric Sword of Killing Everything. See a bunch of mages in a room, but haven't been spotted by them? Shout, charge in, kill everything before they even have time to react. While it's most effective against Glass Cannon magic-based characters, it's also extremely good against large numbers of weaker melee-based foes (say goodbye to zerg-rushing bandits) or large, single, powerful foes (prepare to trivialize giants). The only downside is that the third word only shows up in the penultimate quest of a long questline and requires you to clear a huge dungeon and kill large number of enemies (including a Dragon Priest) to get to it.
FUS RO DAH is both a Game Breaker and a Disc One Nuke. At three words, it blasts back pretty much every enemy you shout it at, dealing minor damage— but it takes them a LONG time to get back on their feet once they land and leaves them completely defenseless in the interim. Combined with a decent melee weapon, it's possible to completely shatter most bosses, especially in the early stages of the game, in no time flat and with relative impunity. Combine it with fall damage, and you can probably kill higher-end mooks near ledges outright. Because of its range (just about the entire enemy draw distance) and width, it has an insanely large area of effect, making it also a fantastic way to neutralize not only a troublesome Flunky Boss, but entire corridors or smaller rooms of normal enemies if your aim is decent. The Disc One Nuke element comes into play when you consider that this will almost certainly be the first three-worded shout that a player will find, with all three words tying directly into the main quest, and only a few hours into the game.
You can meditate on Fus with Paarthurnax, which will give you increased staggering effect, and increased resistance to staggering. This combined with the Heavy Armor perk Tower of Strength makes you immune to staggering from draugr's Unrelenting Force shouts, and only power attacks from the strongest non-dragon enemies will be able to make you lose your balance.
Dragonborn takes it a step further with the Dragonborn Force power: this increases Unrelenting Force's damage, and gives it a chance to disintegrate the targets.
Enhanced crossbows. They ignore almost as much armor as a fully perked warhammer, they have higher damage than Dragonbone or Daedric Bows, they can be double-enchanted, that, and they accept the same explosive projectiles as the regular crossbows.
The Ebony Blade also counts. Its Absorb Health effect is usefull even in its weakest state, but if you manage to bring it to full power, one hit alone will heal you by thirty points! Combine this with the fact that the blade is the fastest two-handed weapon in the game, as well as the fact that it never needs to be recharged, and you'll never need to drink another healing potion again!
Genius Bonus: See if you can find a copy of the book Palla lying around somewhere - the opening lines are a reworking of Nabokov's Lolita
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Apart from getting a 40/40 from Weekly Famitsu (the very first western game to get it), Skyrim seems to be growing in popularity in Japan.
Conversely, quite a number of western gamers like the Japanese dubbed voices of the game (which for the PC can easily be had by a simple language change), particularly that of Paarthurnax.
Necromancers. It isn't that they toss frost spells or summon skeletons, that's easy. It isn't that they come in packs, though that is more worrisome. No, the frustrating thing about necromancers is that they can revive each other. And you always seem to miss one.
Lesser draugr in general (Draugr Scourge and Deathlord are Demonic Spiders). They are more annoying than hard, since many dungeons have a lot of them. They also drop very little valuables and their rusty weapons are heavy and doesn't worth much when sold.
Wolves are fairly weak, even at the start, and even if they ambush you (which happens a lot) they don't do much damage. What puts them in this category, however, is that they transmit Rockjoint, which will cut down your melee damage by 25%. And it's almost impossible to stop them from getting at least one hit in, so you'll be traveling back to town a lot to get it cured. This can somewhat be remedied with Cure Disease potions but they are fairly expensive early game and all but one the ingredients to make your own are very uncommon.
Nothing is more comically annoying than a mudcrab with zero self-preservation instincts that scuttles up behind you while you're fighting a dragon and starts stabbing away. Sure, you can turn around and one-hit kill the thing, but you have to take your eyes off the ENORMOUS DEMONIC LIZARD to do it.
Good Bad Bug: Wouldn't be a Bethesda game without them. From ragdoll hilarity to physics gaffes to invisible hats that you can wear with other hats, the game has it all!
Crossed with Gender Bender: Male Dunmer Dovahkiins' grunts sound like those of female Dunmer in Oblivion.
Normally, killing a chicken (with a conventional weapon) will earn you a bounty. Doing the same by running it over with a cart will not (as seen in this video at around 5:30).
Hell Is That Noise: Wait....that sounded like wind...rushing past a giant pair of wings? By Akatosh, that's a dragon!
Was that a roar? Oh fuck there's a red dot BY AZURA, TO ARMS! A DRAGON!
Are those bees? SWEET TALOS THOSE ARE BEES!
Did I hear a clicking sound - CHAURUS! BY MARA, THAT'S A CHAURUS! GET IT AWAY!
Hmm, was that another clicking sou- BLESSED KYNARETH, IT'S A FROSTBITE SPIDER! KILL IT KILL IT!
Hmm... Was that a growl I just heard o- BY YSMIR, IT'S A DRAUGR!
Was that a "whoosh" soun- SWEET STENDARR IT WAS! FIREBALL!
What was that clattering noi– GREAT BOETHIAH, A FALMER ARCHER! RUN!
Is that...those aren't grunts and chuffs are th- ARKAY HAVE MERCY, BEARS!
Hilarious in Hindsight: An in-game book describing the events of Oblivion takes special care to mention that it was the Mythic Dawn, and not the Dark Brotherhood, who assassinated Uriel Septim. The author even points out that it would have been suicidal for the Brotherhood to have taken out a contract on the Emperor, since it would have brought the whole of the Empire's forces down on them and destroyed them. Guess what you get to do after joining the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim?
Imperial-aligned characters often claim that Ulfric shouted High King Torygg to pieces - something that Ulfric constantly denies, since Unrelenting Force can only ragdoll people. In the Dragonborn DLC, you can actually use Unrelenting Force to disintegrate enemies thanks to an upgrade you can get from Hermaeus Mora.
One of the alchemy ingredients in the game are "Large Antlers" which can be found on deer and elk and which restore stamina in potions. In 2013, NFL superstar Ray Lewis was the subject of a bizarre rumor accusing him of using a performance enhancing snake oil made from ground-up deer antlers to give him energy to rehab from an injury.
Internet Backdraft: The Civil War storyline. Debates regarding how and why one side is better than the other can quickly get rather flame-hot and passionate. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize that this is how people often react with one another when discussing similarly broad Real Life disputes.
Bethesda received some heavy flack due to the entire DLC debacle, mostly stemming from the delayed releases of the DLC for various platforms, particularly Dawnguard. And it's best to just leave it at that.
Some of the games' major subplots could be finished in an afternoon, and the main quest will take about 20-30 hours. Given that only one or two of these hours is Disappointing Last Level compared to others in the series...it's probably a bit better that they didn't decide to lengthen the story. Once you finish however, there's a ton of sidequests quests, ranging from questlines like the College and Companions to just retrieving an item for someone, and there's also finding all the Words of Power. Even if you don't have a quest to do, the game world is just so deep that you can pick a compass direction and head off into the unknown, you're bound to come across a new tomb or cave you haven't explored yet. Thus, if you're planning to plumb the game for all it has to offer outside the two main story quests, you're going to be spending a lot of time in Skyrim.
Because of the new random quest system, there are fewer scripted storyline quests for all the questlines compared to previous Elder Scrolls games, thus it can feel a bit jarring to be proclaimed a trusted and veteran member of your guild and their Chosen One just shortly after joining. These sorts of Pacing Problems are particularly obvious with the Companions questline, where one gets to join their Circle of most trusted veteran warriors literally after the initiation and then doing one more quest.
Many reviewers are stating that they feel the main quest-line of Dragonborn was too short, at least compared to Dawnguard they usually say the amount of other quests make up for it though.
Lydia quickly became one. Though housecarls in general are pretty tough, Lydia is the one almost every player has. She can survive being hurled off a mountain.
This piece of concept art◊ was mistaken by many people to be depicting the player facing a bear with tentacles coming out of its lower half (due to mammoths having four tusks in-universe). Tentacle bears are bound to come up in any discussion about the game. It's a bear eating a mammoth, in case you're wondering.
"FUS RO DAH!!"
In particular, the first glimpse of "FUS RO DAH!" from the trailer, always preceded by the "But there's one they fear..." narration and followed by the game's theme song, is steadily becoming a Youtube Poop trend.
Weightless Carrots. This has become the rallying cry of those who decry the constant "ruined" mentality over the most inane things. Because someone actually did complain about them at one point on the Bethesda forums.
"Then I stripped the corpse naked and threw it in the river." has rapidly become the standard ending to any story involving bandits, Thalmor agents, or anyone else a player fights.
Mondegreen: The lyrics in the trailer were initially thought by some to be English, but are actually in the language of dragons:
Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin*
Dragonborn, Dragonborn
Naal ok zin los vahriin*
By his honor is sworn
Wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal*
To keep evil forever at bay
Ahrk fin norok paal graan*
And the fiercest foes rout
Fod nust hon zindro zaan*
When they hear triumph's shout
Dovahkiin, fah hin kogaan mu draal*
Dragonborn, for your blessing we pray
Hilariously, as one YouTube commentor pointed out, it's also possible to mishear it as a spot-on Stormcloak anthem!
For the king! For the king! For the sons of Skyrim! For our land! For our home! For the Empire's blood! For the Nords! For the gods! For the sole single note or perhaps "prodigal" son! Our king, our king who'll dawn with victory!
Also, this bit of misheard lyrics, by many a Youtuber, from the trailer (starts just after the fus ro dah) and they couldn't be more true:
Moral Event Horizon: The Thalmor crossed it on the 30th of Frostfall, 4E 171. That day, the Emperor's birthday according to lore, the Thalmor entered the Imperial palace and delivered the heads of every Blade in Thalmor territory.
Get used to hearing enemy NPCs tell you that YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME HERE!
Heimskr, who might be considered something of an expy of Cromwell, the preacher from Megaton in Fallout 3. Even the wiki has a list of ways to stealth kill him to shut him up.
If you install Dawnguard and don't bother starting it for a while, you'll get very tired of hearing Heard they're reforming the Dawnguard...
Also from Dawnguard, courtesy of Serana: "Where did you come from?" She says this for EVERY enemy you encounter.
Serana also tends to say "Yes? What did you need?" every few seconds. Every time she finally catches up with you when you're out adventuring? "Yes? What did you need?" When you're forging, enchanting, etc. something and she decides to stand right beside you? "Yes? What did you need?" (Over and over and over in this case.)
The children of Skyrim have this down to an art. "Another wanderer, here to lick my father's boots. Good job." "I thought adventurers were supposed to look tough." "I bet my papa could beat you up." The list goes on, inspiring modders to defyInfant Immortality.
For some fans, Cicero is this in general, with his constant yelling and cheering in his screechy voice.
Mjoll the Lioness as a follower is basically an embodiment of this. You'll be nursing a nice headache after hearing about her hunting trips to Morrowind, and her love of the cold about every 5 minutes.
The Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary contains a friendly Frostbite Spider right next to the alchemy/enchanting stations. If you plan on using your tradeskills in the Sanctuary, the sound of the spider walking around in its enclosure may prompt you to stealth-kill it just to get it to shut up.
Most Wonderful Sound: When the barbarian choir starts singing, something awesome is always going to happen. For example, it's used when you near a new Word Wall.
All NPCs have combat lines that relate to their position and race. Normally this isn't a problem, but hearing Lydia yelling "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!" while fighting mud crabs is a bit narmy.
Though the commentary on skills when you don't have the equipment to match could be justified by your reputation.
There is a lot of overlap between helping out an NPC via a favor or misc quest, and possibly going against them in another sidequest. For example, after completing both Taking Care of Business and his misc quest, the waiter at the Riften inn will be admonishing you for defeating in a brawl/intimidating the innkeeper one moment, and singing your praises for helping him make his wedding ring the next.
Nausea Fuel: Peryite's quest, "The Only Cure". You can meet a passive Afflicted early on, which indicates to you that The Virus in this example rots your skin somewhat. In the quest itself, you encounter aggressive Afflicted who can attack you Linda Blair-style with streams of vomit. Oh, and the condition is a "blessing" according to Peryite.
Namira's Daedric quest, where you slaughter a man in cold blood on a rather disturbing-looking altar and then shovel gobs of his raw flesh into your mouth with your bare hands. Then Namira speaks to you and congratulates you for your actions. Notable in that, if you want 100% Completion, doing this is mandatory.
If, on the other hand, you're not out for 100% completion, you can kill every last one of the cannibals and get a nice reward from Brother Verulus.
Dragons can attack you anywhere where the sky is visible. Even inside cities. Half the time your only warning that a dragon is about to attack is when it suddenly roars and drops down on you. The other half of the time, they don't even do that. Even in the courtyard of the mage college, in the middle of a thick snowstorm.
Hired thugs are even worse they can show up inside dungeons and have tendency to attack you in towns while you're doing things like using a smelter or arcane enchanter.
A specific plot instance is Alduin's soul-snaring mist in Sovngarde. You can't see him, and it is quite possible to come up to a random anonymous soldier who barely has time to tell you to run before he gets snatched away and his very soul devoured.
When you kill Grelod the Kind, the kid gives you the reward, all's well and good, right? Wrong. A courier shows up with a message from someone. I wonder who it is? Whoever it is was pretty eager to get it to you, apparently. So you read the note. Wanna know what it says? WE KNOW below a black handprint. Sleep tight.
Um... You may want to rethink the sleeping part...
In barrows, the mummified corpses that rise up to attack you and the ones that just sit in their tombs and sarcophagi look very similar. In an early playthrough, it's almost impossible to be sure which ones are undead and which aren't. It gets better as become more savvy and level up, but then you run into the problem of enemies and sarcophagi that don't "trigger" because your Sneak is too high, and suddenly find yourself surrounded because you made just a tiny bit of noise...
The trick is, the draugr that attack are always clothed. The ones that don't, aren't. So shoot every clothed corpse at least once just to be on the safe side.
During the quest "A Cornered Rat," you might notice an oddity in Riften; there's a Khajiit named Shavari wandering around the city proper, something you won't find anywhere else. Other than that, she doesn't seem very noteworthy, doesn't have much to say, and isn't particularly friendly. But if you pay special attention to her, you'll notice she's both watching and following you from a safe distance. When you escape the Ratways with Esbern, you'll find out she's working with the Thalmor. You can also pickpocket her and find a note that specifically says that the Thalmor are tracking you and that you'll lead them to Esbern.
Spriggans appear literally out of nowhere, right next to you, and hit hard when they do. As a result, you'll never feel safe in wooded grottoes.
With Dawnguard, vampires will randomly attack people on the streets in cities at night. You'll also encounter a "mysterious traveler" who is actually a roaming vampire who will attack people at night. You can stop him/her from killing someone, but you have to spot him/her first. Better keep those detection spells handy....
Also in Dawnguard, you can also encounter Vampires pretending to be Vigilants of Stendarr. There are also Bandits dressed as Imperials, who attempt to shake the Dragonborn down for money.
If you decide to kill Paarthurnax, you'll find that he doesn't fly off to attack you until you chip off 50% of his health, he constantly says "Su'um ahrk morah" in what may be an attempt to plead with you, and he's only Level 10, no stronger than the early-game dragons, so he hardly seems like the threat the Blades make him out to be. It really feels more like murder than a battle - especially when you absorb his soul.
For Imperial-aligned players who nonetheless have a degree of sympathy for the Stormcloak point of view, killing Ulfric can be one of these. The contrast between Rikke and Tullius's attitudes is especially jarring: Rikke clearly finds the whole thing tragic, while Tullius simply mentions that they'll put his head on a pike.
While the Xbox and PC versions are relatively stable for a Bethesda game, the PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim is plagued with massive slow-downs, almost to the point of being unplayable. This is especially frustrating for gamers who utilize larger saving files, since they will have to wait for Bethesda to release a patch, although it is unclear how effective the patch will be.
While the PC version does not suffer many technical problems (well, no more than the Xbox version — this is an Elder Scrolls game, after all), the UI is very console-adapted, to the point that it has caused problems with using a mouse for many users (as in, the game doesn't properly register that you clicked on something). Bethesda has said they have no intention of modifying the UI themselves, but luckily this is one porting problem that can be (and already has been) fixed by modders.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Bosmers in general seem to have gotten out of the scrappy heap for people have more or less accepted the current look of the male Bosmers over the previous game's dwarf, comical like appearances and a few characters such as Enthir are well liked among the fandom. If anything, people are upset that you can't marry a Bosmer in the game. Having them as Woobie Species by forcefully becoming indentured servants to the Thalmor probably gives them sympathy points.
Originally known as the guy who just gives you 10 gold for giving him a powerful item in Morrowind, fans have been much more receptive to Neloth for his mad and rude, yet humorous personality. Having him give you much better rewards such as useful spells and the ability to create staves as well as helping out the player in Dragonborn's main quest with no strings attached has helped him as well.
Ron the Death Eater: It's mindnumbingly common to see either side in the Civil War storyline demonize the other whenever it's brought up. For example, go to any popular Youtube video that is about the Imperial Legion and count how many "Hail Stormcloaks!"-comments there are.
The Scrappy: Heimskr due to his endless preaching about Talos. Makes it even worse when he loses his house and thus preaches more. He is one of the two things both Imperial and Stormcloak sympathizers agree to hate.
The Thalmor. They're generally hated by everyone. As one fan put it, people hate the Nazi elves more than the world-eating dragon. If the general NPC attitude towards them is any indication, this was likely intentional.
Delphine and Esbern. Forcing the player character to serve as their errand boy as well as ordering him/her to kill Paarthurnax did not win them love from the fans. There is even a player-made mod to force them to see things your way and continue to support you if you don't kill him.
Nazeem. He's what happens when you take Upper Class TwitUp to Eleven. His dialogue consists entirely of arrogant and condescending remarks, not just with you but in his ambient conversations as well, and since he spends most of his day right in the middle of town, chances are you're going to pass him three or four times every time you're in Whiterun. He's right up there with Heimskr as far as highly murderable NPCs go.
One of Skyrim's most loathed characters is easily Maven Black-Briar. Most players hate her for her untouchability, as she has the city guard in her pocket, goes out of her way to talk condescendingly to everyone, uses her Thieves' Guild associations to harass other businessmen, and is the sole reason why Riften a Wretched Hive. To make it worse, she is essential, and becomes Jarl of Riften if you side with the Empire during the Civil War.. Anytime someone asks which Skyrim character they hate the most, you can always expect her name to come up quite a bit. If anything, the entire Black-Briar family is a family of Scrappies, except Ingun, who despite her sadistic tendencies, is quite well liked due to her polite attitude, as well as her generosity for completing her quest.
Maven is also hated for her obliviousness to changing storyline (though that's quite applicable to almost every other NPC, but they aren't as rude as her). Even when the player is Thane of Riften and every other hold, Legate of the Imperial Legion/Hero of the Civil War, the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood and Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild (her connections to the last two organisations being the very reason why she gets to act the way she does) and savior of Tamriel, she still treats the player with no respect. And just to illustrate, during the ceremony that installs you as Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, she's present there, and when you talk to her right after you're named Guildmaster, she merely remarks, "Well I guess congratulations are in order. Now, don't screw it up!".
Scrappy Mechanic: The broken-as-hell yielding system. In Oblivion, all you needed to do to yield was block and press a button, which the enemy would recognize and guards always accepted. In Skyrim, you need to put your weapon away and just stand there like an idiot. Most of the time it doesn't work, meaning guards will keep trying to kill you for a forty-gold bounty, no matter how many times you try to surrender.
Marriage. Despite being an interesting new aspect of the game with great potential, many people have taken issue with it. Courtship is easy and short. The dialogue with your spouse is rather boring and often buggy, and you can't have any meaningful interaction with them apart from setting them as a follower, talking about various banal topics, or buying items. The only benefits it offers are certain status buffs, a source of income, and a free follower. It's become enough of a problem that there are numerous mods to improve marriage, including ones that allow you to marry more characters.
As of Dawnguard, every town has a chance to be attacked at night by a Vampire Master and two or three Vampire Thralls. Many players have noted that this wreaks havoc with nonessential quest givers and merchants.
If you travel to Soltheim and start the main quest of Dragonborn, Miraak will appear and steal the soul of most dragons you kill until you finally defeat him at the end of the main quest, this happens even if you travel back to Skyrim.
Kill cams. They have a nasty habit of missing with projectile kill cams, they interrupt player control, and there's mounting evidence that they disregard all damage-mitigating factors: damage resist, magic/elemental resist, blocking, cover, not being anywhere near close enough to be killcam'd... Not much of a problem when you inflict it on people, but when that dragon bite-thrash-toss killcam's you when you were nowhere near, had capped armor, your shield raised, had over half your health left, and were beyond their bite range... yeah, it gets infuriating.
And as with a lot of freeform exploration games, it is absurdly easy to get sidetracked while en route to a quest. Something as simple as stopping to investigate a curious landmark while en route to another quest site can result in the player ending up on the far side of Skyrim engaging in another quest-line entirely unrelated to the first one.
Hearthfire DLC will make you spend time to build your house and forget everything else.
Awesome yet totally horrid is a werewolf's double-swipe power finisher, where they grab their foe, lift them off the ground and pop their head off like they're crushing a grapefruit.
Wear the Ring of Namira around and guards will comment on how rotten your breath smells and ask what you've been eating. The answer, if you have the ring, is of course human flesh.
As well as a mod that literally deletes him from the game.
In game, Nazeem's own wife snarks to anyone within earshot about him stuffing himself up the Jarl's backside.
That One Attack: The Disarm Shout used by Draugr Deathlords. Not only is it frustrating to hunt down the weapon that was taken for your grasp while you're fighting an already annoying to kill enemy, but due to the buggy nature of the game, more often than not, the weapon will simply clip through the ground and will be unobtainable. This is especially frustrating when this happens to weapons with superb enchantments.
The Ghost of Sigdis Gauldurson at the end of the Forbidden Legend quest. He's a Doppelganger boss where you have to play whack-a-draugr to find the real deal, they're all archers (and hurt a LOT when they hit), and each one, doppelgangers and all, pack an Unrelenting Force shout powerful enough to send you flying. Even if you whack a few of the doppelgangers, the remainder will shout you onto your ass and you take forever to get back up, meaning he resets his doppelgangers all over and you probably didn't land a single hit. By which time you'll be frantically restoring whatever health was lost when you were a sitting duck getting pincushioned by arrows after being shouted over.
Still, you can own him easily by hiding behind a pillar and shooting him with a bow
You even have to fight Sigdis twice during the quest. And the second time he is part of a Boss Rush along with his brothers.
Those Eight Dragon Priests! They make Alduin look like a pushover! (Except for Nahkriin.)
One of them even ambushes when you when you're trying to learn a new word of power after killing a dragon.
May Talos have mercy on your soul when you wake said Dragon Priest while still fighting the actual dragon.
Malyn Varen can be pretty nasty. He sics three Daedra enemies on you before fleeing to his chamber, and they're fond of powerful fire spells. If you're unlucky, all three of them will gang up on you at once. Hope you brought some fire resistance and healing potions.
The single fastest way to beat him is to not let him flee. Pull a Shut Up, Hannibal! and shoot him with a poisoned arrow.
Morvarth has several vampire servants that can cast powerful ice spells and heal themselves as well. Combined with Morvath's own powerful spells and tendecy to decapitate in melee, many players will be seeing the same loading screen over and over again.
Captain Hargar of Broken Oar Grotto sure he's easy enough to stealth and his men are very weak, and you don't even have to kill him to finish the quest Lights Out! but if you try to face him head on expect to see what it's like on the opposite end of a two-handed finishing move.
Hamelyn can be a big surprise if you proceed through the Thieves' Guild questline for the first time. While most of the quest involve just stealing and doing hits on targets, the last thing that a new player expect is fighting a fireball-happy madman who can kill you in a few hits and thanks to his skeever buddies, almost impossible to sneak up on. You can even confront the quest giver about this afterwards.
Potema can be hard, but is even more confusing than anything. Once you enter her room, she will be invulnerable in spectral form and will continually toss lighting spells at you while at the same time making you fight various draugr (and there should be at least one deathlord among them). Once you kill them once, she will resurrect them and make you fight them again (so be sure to pick up the ebony weapon off the deathlord before hand). Once you wipe the room clean, you will then finally fight her physical form which is much easier, but still capable of killing you, especially if you have been weakened from the earlier fight.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: To some, the Civil War plotline was underutilized. The in-game story clues and documentation reveal a long and complex backstory involving war and political intrigue between many nations and factions leading to the start of the civil war. The war itself has distinctive factions with heaps of Gray and Grey Morality associated with them, many ways to interpret all sides, and an overarching conflict with the Thalmor. However, the civil war itself takes a backseat to the main quest centering around Alduin, and while the civil war questline is one of the largest in the game, it generally involves similar missions across Skyrim, just in different locations depending on faction. You can actually discuss this with the head of the Bard's College in Solitude, who comments that the war in Skyrim is just another war in history, and that kings and empires rise and fall regularly, but that the conflict between the Dragonborn and Alduin is something much more unique and noteworthy.
Remember how Ondolemar is nowhere to be found in Markarth after the Stormcloaks take it, and you find his coffin in the mausoleum? In the cut-out sieges for the other two major cities (Riften, Markarth), there is a special scene for the new jarl kicking out the old. And for Thongvor kicking out Igmund? The aftermath involves Galmar doing a "Not so fast!" to Ondolemar, who is forced to his knees, says some last pithy comments... and then Galmar axes him dead. We never get to see this, alas, because it's cut.
The new engine attempts to solve this issue, with the faces be a vast improvement over previous games although animations are still a bit awkward.
The new characters also attempt to carry on their daily duties while glancing at the player if you speak to them, while this is normally fine sometimes it can break in crowded areas such as a tavern when multiple NPCs think the character is about to start a conversation, as a result, everyone stares at the player every time they look up from what they're doing.
Someone made a mod that makes the horses in-game look like they came from My Little Pony. The results look like someone tried to render a My Little Pony realistically. And what happens when you try to render a cartoon realistically? Yep. You'd be right...Many of the early mods just slapped a skin on the horses and called it a day. Nothing like riding a yellow horse with a neon pink mane, fake wings hidden by the muscle contour, and-Oh my god did her pupils just blink at me?!
Another attempt to combine the two series, which uses pre-existing 3D models of the characters, also falls into the valley.
Adults have very distinct appearances. Children, clothing aside, look like clones.
Worse, many of the animations for children weren't properly rigged. When a child NPC does something like sit down on a chair, or uses an Alchemy station, their dimensions will stretch out and make them the same size as the adults.
Clothing especially, with the children. They only seem to have one outfit, based on their gender. Even Babette, who you think would look more like she belongs in the Dark Brotherhood.
If you (for some reason) strip a character naked, you'll notice their feet look like mittens with lines engraved for their toes.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Skyrim looks amazing, especially the landscape, which is very rugged and treacherous, and full of forests, mountains, snow and seas to behold. This screenshot◊ contains some amazing Scenery Porn, and is really in-game effects. And for the rest of the game, the characters, weapons and locations are finely detailed.
Woobie: Any of the orphans, but particularly the ones added in Hearthfire, who don't live at the orphanage and are variously required to sleep on the streets, in a stable, in the nearby mine, etc.
Woobie Species: The Falmer once you learn about how they became who they are now. The last untainted Snow Elf reveals that the race was mainly a peaceful race who just simply want to pray to their gods before the Nords came and claim Skyrim as their ancestral land. Most of the Snow Elves allied with the Dwemer out of desperation of avoiding extinction, only to be turned into the Falmer or the Betrayed as they call them. The only reason he was not turned into a Betrayed is because his chantry was isolated from the rest of the Snow Elves community underground.
Although not to the extent of the Falmer, every other Mer race in this game have it pretty rough. Dunmers have lost half of Morrowind to the Argonians and the other half was pretty much destroyed by Red Mountain after the Oblivion Crisis and they have only recently begun to rebuild Morrowind. Orsinium has been destroyed yet again and the Orcs are now scattered across Skyrim and Hammerfell while building another Orsinium. Valenwood has been forcefully annexed into the Aldmeri Dominion and Bosmers are being treated as indentured servents. Even Altmers who are openly against the Thalmor are being hunted down by them and those who aren't so open are scared shitless of them.
