big feelings about some characters

Todd Edit Every Day Until TES VI: Day 523

She’s Ur-Dra, the eldest spirit, likely the most powerful of the Daedric Princes, whose very nature is truly unknown, and could potentially be older than reality itself. Her artifacts can rewrite reality and unlock metaphysical barriers. She doesn’t ask for worship, only deals—FAIR deals, in contrast to Clavicus Vile or some of the more insidious Princes.

Like, the plot of Arena is 'a ghost tells you that the king has been kidnapped but no one knows because an evil wizard is using magic to pretend to be the king, and then the ghost guides you to a series of dungeons which each contain part of the macguffin that kills evil wizards and frees kings. You win the dungeons, reassemble the macguffin, and save the day, the end.' It's not quite 'storm the castle free the princess', but it's not far off. The world this is happening in is interesting and complex, but the actual plot is pretty simple. I think I could explain the plot of Arena to a 5 year old without much difficulty.

Then Daggerfall's plot is 'there's a complicated 4 way civil war going on among client kingdoms, and you have been sent by the emperor to retrieve a letter he sent to one of the queens, because if it's read by the wrong person, it will make the whole clusterfuck a million times worse. Once you get there, you learn that the letter contains information about how to find and activate an ancient super-weapon, and you have to decide which faction should know this and which one should get the superweapon. Also there's 2 different undead wizards here and one is plot relevant and the other one is fucking shit up for the lols, have fun figuring out which is which.' That's a whole lot more complicated, and it begins to touch on some deep esoteric themes, but you don't need to know that the numidian is actually an artificially constructed god to follow the plot. You can play the whole game assuming it's basically just mecha-godzilla, and still understand what's going on. There's a lot of nuance and complexity to the worldbuilding, but the confusing element about it is mainly that it's a non-linear mystery game, so you have to piece things together yourself, rather than the core plot being incomprehensible. The five year-old is lost, but any reasonably intelligent pre-teen could follow it.

And then Morrowind barrells in like 'do you have a degree in philosophy? you will by the end of this game!'

'so the god who created the world wasn't supposed to do this and the other gods were pissed about it so they cut out his heart and threw it away and it landed in a volcano where it constantly phases in and out of existence, and one time the dwarves built a robot to be their new god and they were going to power it using the god heart but when they touched the god heart their entire species instantly vanished and we have no idea why but that's not important what's important is that because of that event, a bunch of elves also found it and they swore to never use its power but then three of them got together and decided that touching the 'disappear your entire species' macguffin sounded like a fun time so they killed the guy who said not to use it and touched the heart and this made them living gods and one of them writes transcendental poetry riddles for fun and profit and you need to read all 36 books of these and then do some cryptography shit and this will reveal the truth about how they murdered a dude that one time. anyway there's a guy who convinced himself that the entire world is actually a dream he is dreaming and this actually sort of became true and gave him powers but to understand why you need to first grasp how achieving enlightenment works in this religion. Also you the player are the reincarnation of that murdered guy from earlier but you're maybe also an incarnation of that murdered god at the same time, but before we can unpack that we need to deal with the dream guy because he keeps using his powers to turn people into vampires for some fucking reason and it's becoming a problem. go read this book on dragon-breaks and come back when you understand the concept of non-linear time.'

I could not explain the plot of morrowind to a child. I could not explain the plot of morrowind to most adults. you cannot even begin to effectively explain the plot without first explaining huge chunks of fictional philosophy and cosmology.

male Listener x Cicero

Cicero "Does it involve sneaking and stabbing? Ooh, please say yes!"

No matter how sleepy you are, seeing something you love wakes you up instantly, doesn't it?

寝ぼけているシセロっち。

Alduin Crunch Munch

Concept art for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I had no idea this man was so short.

Cicero waiting for the Listener to finish talking to other NPCs.