The modding community is proof that people will perform labor without coercion if they're invested in the thing they're laboring over.

Vaush being anti-Minecraft has made me a reactionary conservative

oh god the infinity stones in skyrim. integer overflow damage is by all definition "infinite"

I hate how everyone is so damn friendly. No matter if you're joining the thieves guild or the assassins. They're just like "Oh, we don't know you, but we accept you as one of us after some minor errands!".

20 years of Imperial occupation, billions of Septims wasted, countless dead Legionnaires… …and the Stormcloaks take Skyrim in a few days.

love how this is already more divisive than any recent political take

That line about "Is it optimal? Yes, is it fun? No," I feel that so hard, it like I've met people whose eyes start glazing over when I say I don't have that much fun when I play the most busted build and or abilities in a game. Doesn't feel like I earn the win, the gear did. If I get busted because of the way I play then I can live that way because I earned it.

"The one with the performatively masculine voice" narrows it down to all the male characters

An aggressive decade-long marketing campaign and a vibrant modding community is a big reason as to why we're still talking about Skyrim, not necessarily because it's a masterpiece.

Confession: I was the guy who brought up about why Vaush should play Skyrim instead of Metro Last Light, that night. Someone in chat, before the stream started, showed that Bethesda were remastering Skyrim for the 100th time and I thought it would be funny if all of us convinced Vaush to play that game instead. Little did I know, it ended up being a 20 minute rant about why he hated that game xD

For anybody calling out Vaush for saying the crafting is broken, look up “Skyrim is a perfectly balanced game with no glitches” dude makes like a 10000 damage fork and 100 damage on a vanilla weapon is pretty high.

Playing skyrim back in early 2010s: hundreds of hours of playtime Playing Skyrim now: hundreds of hours of downloading mods 2 hours of playtime then you get bored and never touch it again

Vowsh: *Makes controversial political take* His audience: We sleep Vowsh: Skyrim sucks. Audience: U FUKIN WOT M8!?

"Ok, I SWEAR I'm gonna play a different style of character this time." "Aaaaaand I'm playing a two handed sword wielding sneaky archer Argonian again."

The moment Skyrim really lost it for me was when I tried to assassinate Ulfric in his palace and the game wouldn't let him die. Contrast that with New Vegas where you can just blow up Caesar if you want to.

I do not understand how Paarthurnox is not an interesting or memorable character. He may not challenge the writing of everything after him, but he's still the kind of character that makes me sit down and go "Man.." after playing

"Fallout New Vegas had a lot of voice actors" Meanwhile, Emerson Brooks voiced every black character in the game.

Never before have I been so offended by something I one hundred percent agree with.

The setting and atmosphere are A+, everything else is a huge meh.

I can’t believe Vaush actually mentioned Condemned: Criminal Origins. That game is incredibly underrated.

I love Skyrim with mods. The modding community does all the heavy lifting for this game and I wouldn't be playing it today without them. Vanilla Skyrim is kinda just mediocre. I have mods that turn it into more of a fantasy life sim, improved first person camera, animations and physics to make combat feel less shit. It's a vastly superior experience because of the modding community, and Bethesda wouldn't be successful today without them

This is the the definition of never before have I been so offended by something I 100% agree with

Killing Floor 2 is just about the only game I know of that has a good difficulty system. On harder difficulties, tougher enemies spawn, the enemies get more abilities, the AI is smarter, and only the enemies that are difficult because of their health get extra health.

Since the comparison to New Vegas came up: New Vegas had an impressive amount of variety in the way some of its quests could play out, and the way skills and stats can influence dialogue options. Just taking the quest where a couple of ghouls want to fly away with some rockets: You start it because someone said he needs your help and will give you information you need for the main quest. First option: Ignore the quest by stealing the information from the person (probably requires you to have skilled sneaking and stealing) or killing and looting him. Second Option: Deal with the problem by killing all ghouls. Or you could help them ready the rockets and... Third Option: send them on their merry way. Fourth Option: sabotage the rockets so they would crash. Fifth option: If your character knows their science and technology well enough: Optimise the route the computer had planned for the rockets. And then you have options beyond that, like talking the human in the ghoul-group out of thinking he is a ghoul. I've played Skyrim quite a bit but I can't remember a quest that had similiarly branched outcomes. And as to the dialogue options: It's pretty telling that two thirds of the speech-perks in Skyrim have to do with selling or buying. And the few times that any sort of speech is useful outside of bartering it's always "[What your character would say] (Persuade/Intimidate/Lie)" with no hint of whether you have the skills that are required or how likely you are to succeed. New Vegas just tells you what skills you need to succeed, and gives you a joke option that fails if you don't have the skills. And then it aren't even always just speech-skills that are required. If the PC isn't a good talker but know their way around computers, they could call out someone who is lying about computers with a dialogue options that requires sufficient points in the science-skill, or they could impress a fellow hunter with survivalist knowledge about some animal.

I agree vanilla Skyrim lacked a lot after awhile (I’ve played almost 3,000 hours over the course of my life), but the modding community really improved upon the game. Better graphics, more story driven mods, the whole nine yards. And honestly, the community is why I kept playing, screw Bethesda and all their cash-grab garbage. The elder scrolls community, in my opinion and experience, has been a really fun and creative community

I see Vaush has decided he wants a new controversy to be canceled over

Separate “I don’t like thing” from “thing is bad”

Rimworld is an example of good modding, The game stands on it's own, but also has been designed with the ability to expand in mind.

"Skyrim takes like 30 seconds to refill!" Have you played morrowind, outlander? Stamina matters for LITERALLY EVERYTHING and it takes an age to recharge. Running also uses stamina, so you have to wait around before engaging in combat (especially at low levels) to be at all effective. Somehow morrowind still manages to be my second favourite game, but good grief there are many questionable game design elements.

The late great John Bain said it best. Skyrim is the size of an ocean with the depth of a puddle.

I could listen to Vowsh tear popular games apart for days. Tempest, make him do it more pls. Use blood magic if you need.

Serana was a kind of interesting character. Until one day I walked into a building and suddenly she just vanished without a trace 😔

The most divisive and annoying part to me about this video was the people in chat dissing on Morrowind in the last seconds of the video

the people going "wrong" when you were describing something as simple and well-known as the restoration loop are pretty funny, ngl.

Melee - whilst being trash & boring - was actually the backbone of one of my favourite characters. Exploiting an alchemy bug you could use the Atronauch stone to get 100% magic absorption at the cost of not being able to restore your own mana - making you an unstoppable mage slayer & the magic that’s recharging as you’re hit with spells you can use to empower your melee, or fire magic back at people, so you’d pump points into heavy armour, melee & magic & end up by the end of the game an unkillable tank who can drop a fire storm & still beat asses in melee. An amazing way to play & it was a fucking bug.

Magic was really useful if you wanted to avoid combat completely. Max out conjuration stealing the soul of a dead crab over and over, and then every fight from then on is summon dremora, summon dremora, wait around corner for combat music to stop, return and loot.

Ah my favorite leftist streamer Vaush: this take You know maybe the tankies are right

You have committed crimes against Skyrim and her people. What say you in your defense?

You CANNOT use Golden Eye as an example of a good game. That game has aged like milk in the Sahara.

He's talking about the Potion of Restoration exploit, where you can drink one to improve your alchemy potion effectiveness over and over only to then make the ultimate enchantment potion to make god-tier equipment.

"Hating Skyrim is communism brother!!" - conservative gamers

if ever there was a good reason to cancel vowsh... just because he might have good points doesn't mean he can just destroy my childhood.

Paarthunax is pretty memorable imo. And maybe the vampire woman from Dawnguard. That's really the only ones I can think of.

Also I did enjoy Skyrim’s story, I thought the Dragonborn dlc was way better then the main quest line.

As someone who personally really loves Skyrim.... Yeaaaaaaaah I kind of agree. But I just can't help myself with that game. The music and atmosphere are absolutely beautiful and I always get sucked in as a khajiit or argonian and play out my dumbass furry fantasies. It's better with mods and the modding community is absolutely frickin amazing, but the game will always be very flawed and thats chill with me lol

I have the same opinion of Skyrim that I have of Fallout 4; I really liked and remember my first time stepping out of Helgen/Vault 111. However the stories both main and side quests are completely ass; it's almost all just fetch quests. The main quest has me chasing down some dragon/baby I don't care about until eventually I fight some climatic battle with him for no real reward or impact on the world. Since there's no RPG system in place I never feel like any one playtrhrough matters because I can become anything I want in any playthrough. If I try to skip the story I install the game, wander around for 40 minutes clearing the same handful of beginner dungeons that are completely similar in design/difficulty/cool factor to any other dungeon anywhere on the map. After I get a few rewards I realize it's all building to nothing and leave the game.

Skyrim is among my favorite games to this day, and I agree with basically everything Vaush says. The fun of Skyrim, for me, 200% is in the atmosphere and the fact that it’s an Elder Scrolls title with all the accompanying fun lore rather than the gameplay (to be fair though, and maybe I’m just too casual a gamer, but I don’t think the game was *that* unfun). While I recognize that it isn’t a good gameplay feature, but I actually had a lot of fun exploiting the enchanting system. I basically made my mage Iron Man and enchanted a suit of armor so that Destruction and Conjuration spells wouldn’t cost any magicka. Maybe not fun in the traditional difficulty sense, but definitely fun in the power-trip sense.

Love coming back to Vaush having the most horrific media takes of all time

"Does Skyrim have anyone even close to Caesar or to Mr House?" M'aiq the Liar - *>:(

I'm sorry that Vaush doesn't understand Minecraft story lol

hes objectively wrong about melee combat, shields and enchantments and dual wielding and magic make it pretty intrecate.

Skyrim: shiny smooth mechanics of the elder scrolls For writing play morrowind For a happy medium play oblivion

Everything he said was true, but god Damn do I still love Skyrim and by extension The Elder Scrolls

Dragon's Dogma is like budget Skyrim, stapled to budget Dark Souls, but the combat feels amazingly fun, and you can climb 3-story tall cyclops and 747-sized dragons like you were in Shadow of the Colossus.

All this made me want to do was go play skyrim

One of my favorite things about Skyrim is the crazy amount of details in every single location. Even unmarked ones have crazy secrets you can unlock. It has some AMAZING environmental storytelling

This is easily the most controversial thing you've ever said. I fucking love skyrim. And I love you too vaush. So fight me.

He's out of line, but he's right.

Oblivion is my favorite Elder scrolls game, Martin Septim, Baurus, Lucien Lachance, Sheogorath, Duke of Mania, Dutchess of Dementia are just a few charactyers that I can still remember to this day, plus the entire Dark Brotherhood questline was amazing.

I think that the experience of playing the game is the most important part - if everyone loved Skyrim, INCLUDING IT’S CRITICS (which DOES include me, btw), then there are reasons for that, even if they are difficult to articulate. Even if they’re difficult to re-experience. Game design theory is largely intellectual reconstruction of why something FEELS good on an unintellectual level - you can’t approach it from the perspective of, “Here’s why this thing that feels fun isn’t actually fun.”

"Skyrim is a bad game" me: true "It's kinda like minecraft" me: aaaand you lost me "I've played hollowknight like 4 times" me: ok I'm listening

Yep. It popular and has greatly affected the gaming culture. But it's shallow even for an open world game. However, I like it as a game I can play while I listen to political KZfaq to sate my ADHD, without need pay attention. Keeps the hands busy. The difficulty is even worse than you described. It only effects the player. Your Summons and Followers are uneffected when you change the difficulty. Want to beat Legendary? Make a Conjuration character and give all the best gear to a Follower. The crafting recursion is a bug known as the Fortify Restoration Loop and is a bug that you can mod out. Crafting it still crazy overpowered even without the bug. Vendors money limits are hilarious in how you can reset their inventory by saving, attacking the shopkeeper, and then reloading the save. Want to sell more stuff? Commit a felony and then rewind time! Yeah, mods make it better, but you can't fix fundamental issues with mods.

The thing is, it's an open sandbox rpg. It doesn't need to have a good story or interesting characters in order to be a great sandbox rpg. You can't really conpare it to more story-driven games. I have 2k hours in the game and only bothered with the main quest once.

I love it when I can absolutely break games. I get why you wouldn't like the fact that you can make a billion damage fork or whatever but I enjoy that.

Skyrim blew me away when I was 10. Hasn't held up so well though. I also find standard fantasy stuff kinda boring compared to dark fantasy nowadays so it could be that.

I think Serena and Sheogorath were the most memorable characters. I also liked Paarthurnax.

My appreciation for skyrim is largely though it's potential to let me retell the story as I choose. It's more like a solo DnD run with the framework to replay with new mods whenever you want. Skyrim is a broken mess, but it's our broken mess.

Skyrim is a great sandbox. Just avoid crafting and conjuration (dremora lords specifically). I dont get why they didnt make the dremora lords scale to your level like they did with the sanguine rose (supercool staff that doesn't break the game). Up to level 60 the dremoras just demolish everything in sight while you're just sitting there. Sounds fun, but it isn't. I personally just use the rose staff and a bound bow. Use the dremora lord as a meatshield while I snipe targets from afar (without sneaking). Generally keeps me amused for about 30 hours untill I put the game away again. The story is just background noise. It's all about exploration and looting. If you get 100 in enchanting there is no reason to do either anymore and the game just immediately turns stale.

That’s it vaush, I’m a groyper now

lmao the male performative voice got me good. WE MUST HAVE MORE SWORDS FOR THE IMPERIAL SOLDIERS

Magic in Skyrim is bad? if you manage to resist the urge to go down the sneak archer path, summoning two daedra to solve your problems is fun.

and I always carried items to another room to steal, I never did the bucket thing but the fact that that works just shows how well the game is programmed cause I would have figured NPCs could just see through the bucket as if it wasn't actually in the way of their line of sight to you stealing things.

You know, he's 100% right about this. But i still fucking love skyrim. And dual wielding is actually amazing

When I start a new skyrim file I inevitably go to dawnstar and steal from the khajiit chest to start the blacksmithing, enchanting, alchemy cycle lol

16:30 not really like that. The way the recursion works is that your armor enchantments scale up with restoration (since they are considered buffs). So you enchant full gear of fortify alchemy, make a restoration potion, drink it, unequip and reequip all your alchemy gear to update the stats, and creat a new more powerful restoration potion; until you want to break the cycle and make multiple restoration potions (as to save the progress), enchanting potion and blacksmith potion to have op gear (can be like 1million dmg enchantments and armor in 2 mins of doing this)

I love the stealth archer rant. That is pretty true. But i still love skyrim.

Skyrim is not perfect, but it did serve to get me into the older games like Oblivion, Morrowind and even Daggerfall and Arena.

On the fifth day, look to the East, and HBomberGuy will be there at the Sky's Rim to reinforce you, Vaush.

Skyrim leveling is the absolute WORST. Since loot is also leveled to your character, LEGENDARY WEAPONS ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS THEY ARE WHEN YOU GOT THEM. So when I’m level 80, I’m fiddling with my favorite sword ever that’s stuck at level 15 damage.

Oh btw I used to only do magic builds like, full magic. For the first few playthroughs I just did magic and boy was I surprised when every enemy took 5 minutes to kill and then died to a single stealth archer shot of similar level.

I came here to disagree and am now having to begrudgingly admit that everything Vaush says here is 100% true

Insanely based and relevant take from Vaush considering that they’re re-releasing it AGAIN for the fucking PS5.

“If you ever do a pure melee build-“ me, who has had a one handed ebony mace and a healing spell equipped since 2011: “What?”

Half the characters in New vegas are voiced by Liam O'Brian. Skyrims voice actors did a fine job, WITH THE MATERIAL THEY WERE GIVEN

Just making different weapons and armor straight upgrades is lazy IMO, especially when the esthetics of weaker stuff might be cooler to you.

I can't believe Vaush betrayed Gamers and our lord Todd Howard like this.

The worst thing that happened to me is I did the companion guild and when you go on a hunt in whiterun, the shopkeeper died, and apparently the mammoth tusk woman is supposed to take over the shop. Literal irl weeks past and I still didn’t have a whiterun shop keeper

That's a pretty fair take on Skyrim. It's been more than 8 years since I played the game and the only character I vaguely remember is the Jarl played by Vladimir Kulich from The 13th Warrior. The main story line, equally unmemorable. From a combat perspective, I prefer more tactical, party-based games. I absolutely loathe busy work/grinding, crafting/recipes, & inventory management/shopping. There've been a few games where I've fallen behind the curve in equipment because I've held off on crafting & shopping around (in so many games the best gear is not found adventuring), despite having an abundance of ingredients & coin; ultimately leaving the game unfinished because I couldn't be bothered going through the rigmarole of upgrading - yeah, I'll do all that optimisation stuff with my best ingredients later.

I love Skyrim, it got me to go through the older games in the series too, which made me realize further flaws and simplification of game mechanics. It's hard to play it for ang length of time anymore. Good memories to cherish.

Skyrim staying with the legion is the best way forward for both the nords and the rest of the empire Change my mind.

I laughed when he did the impression of the one voice actor who played every role. Was spot on

Vaush's anti minecraft arc fucking sucks. 10/10 game

Skyrim definitely sucks. That being said, I love it and have over 2,000 hours into it and will probably play it for the rest of my life.

I'm playing Skyrim for the first time on Switch and its okay. My favorite is still Morrowind, the level of detail in the combat and pacing is unparalleled.

i like skyrim fine but i will say this: i can't imagine at this point playing unmodded Skyrim. by which i mean, basically all this criticism is pretty valid, when you need mods to make it fun.

Dammit Vaush! Why must you make such good points against one of my most cherished games? Oblivion had some of the same issues with redundancy. For instance, the gate missions all feel very identical. And idk about anyone else, but having to fight Dragons in Skyrim really loses its novelty quickly. Also, I HIGHLY recommend Fallout New Vegas's DLC called Old World Blues if you want an example of memorable characters. It's over the top a bit, but in a self-aware way.

One word why Skyrim will always reign supreme: music

Fitting you upload this as I've been binging Skryim for the last 2 weeks lol It's definitely flawed, but Elder Scrolls has a sense of adventure and player character building that no other series really replicates.

They actually did somewhat fix the iron dagger thing a little. They changed it so the exp you gain scales to the value of the item, so it changed to gold rings and other jewelry being the best to produce. Not a whole lot better, but at least more lucrative. Also it gave you a good reason to track down the transmute spell.

Why does everyone say magic is underpowered in Skyrim ? For me it’s only destruction magic that is underpowered. Illusion is so OP it’s broken. Conjuration is powerful af, and restoration and alteration are decently balanced in comparison imo.