The Idiot's Guide to Dawn and Dusk

"And by the way, N'Sync, why do they sing?
Am I the only one who realizes they stink?
Should I dye my hair pink and care what y'all think?
Lip sync and buy a bigger size of earrings?
It's why I tend to block out when I hear things"

 

Slim Shay-Dee - I'm Back

 

 

Continuing my years-overdue wrap-up of Skyrim, I'm pleasantly impressed by the Dark Brotherhood storyline, with its twists and turns and ups and downs and ups again outshining RPG quests' predictable standard trajectory. I was as counterpoint unimpressed by the Dawnguard expansion and its clutter of forgettable, redundant filler NPCs, loot ranging from chores (soul husks) to cheesy (Arvak) and exaggerated build-up to a lackluster boss fight, etc. The high point of it all came shortly before the end:

 

The Forgotten Vale plays expertly on its Lost World appeal through everything from playing cosmetic changes to monsters right for once (symbolic evolutionary divergence in an isolated environment) to a satisfyingly unsatisfying little dip into Falmer history to the terrain... but especially the terrain. Adventuring across a melting glacier scratches this wolfe's extremophilic itch. In the spirit of exploration, they even reward you for thoroughly exploring the various crevasses with minor but otherwise rare rewards like bird eggs.

That spirit of exploration was banished from the game industry over a decade ago in favor of focusing entirely on keeping customers addicted via "kill ten rats" random loot drops in otherwise as inoffensively bland a casino as possible to house said slot machines. When I first tried Skyrim, one of my first complaints was being ordered to the map's best vantage point as soon as the main quest chain started, instead of being allowed to seek the mountain myself because it's there. Especially jarring in The Elder Scrolls which offer landscapes and exploration as chief selling points. And yet...

 

Azura's statue at dawn

After finally making my way down to Blackreach, I came up through a lift I hadn't used before, which placed me relatively high on the northeastern range. About to transform into mule form and run to Dawnstar to begin selling my dwarvish loot, I noticed another possible path upwards, to the east. While from up close it's too large to appreciate, this little vantage point leading from the lift seems to have been positioned specifically to view the statue of Azura in its full glory. That I exited the cavern just in time to witness the statue of the deity of dawn and dusk outlined against a breaking sunrise was just icing on the cake.

Please, sirs, I'd like some more.

Fast forward to Solstheim. If Dawnguard ultimately disappointed, the Dragonborn expansion builds more successfully on TES' strengths and was obviously given more attention. Voice acting, architecture, quest structure, everything has improved... slightly. Apocrypha alone is a nerd's delight. As is my wont, I set out exploring before running through the main quest. After unraveling the mystery of the exploding spiders I noticed an accessible slope running slightly northwards, suggestive of a map location... but with no marker. Sure enough a glance at my map confirmed an unmarked gap in the mountains.

A hop and a skip later I found myself looking down on a barrow opened to the elements, sarcophagi overgrown with a layer of Skyrim's newest, most wonderfullest ersatz mithril, stalhrim!

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it ain't no trick to get rich quick if you dig-dig-dig with an ancient nordic pick, in a mine, that's all mine, where a million molars... shiiiiiiine!

 

I thought it would've been a nice touch to have all the draugr aggress just as you finish chiseling the last of them out of their mineral cocoons, but must admit it feels even more right climbing back out with my treasure to leave them largely as I found them:

- windbeaten atop their lonely but peaceful mountaintop. Rest easy, noble warriors of yore. This humble lizard-wolfe thanks you and bids you a-dieux.

The stalhrim mine felt perfect: a remote unmarked location with a modest reward, enough to show recognition, conveying an air at once of secrecy, solemnity, giddy discovery and that vague nostalgia for heroic ages past on which high fantasy is built. I immediately minimized to jot down a few notes... and this is where the story turns sour. I had originally intended this as unequivocal praise of the Dragonborn expansion's return to open-world exploration, not only for this episode but for the many chests hidden under waterfalls, the carefully sculpted terrain tempting you with forking passages, the more witsful Morrowind-reminiscent music tracks, all the little gimmicks which make immersion, which make a world out of a plaything. However, in looking up the correct spelling of the word "stahlrim" I ran across a little detail. There is indeed a quest and a marker appended to this barrow. They just don't show up until you've advanced the storyline. Otherwise there's nothing special about the location. You're dragged there by your nose-ring a.k.a. map marker like a good little domesticated, castrated farm(ing) animal, as you're dragged everywhere in Skyrim. Instead of a self-driven discovery, a shared secret between the player and the makers of the universe, a personal challenge to the unknown, it's degraded into a gaudy little tourist attraction complete with folksy tour guide and economic incentivizing.

Why?

Why did this place need a quest and a marker?

As I said before, both the terrain as you exit the hatch from the spider lab and the map itself suggest that cleft in the mountains was intentionally level-designed. Intent = content. Investigate.

 

Why not leave it at that? Bethesda, you possessed a team talented enough to convey information with the elegance of a Sistine Chapel storyboard, yet you treated them like five-year-olds whose tangled crayon ouevres must be explicitly interpreted at every step. You just had to demean your grandest offering, to wreck the effect, to appeal to subhuman imbeciles who need to have everything spelled out for them.

The mass market.

What a mass.