Is there peace and quiet to be found in Skyrim?

[any_austin]

Hi everyone. Here’s a video to watch when you finally get a quiet moment away from family on this nice Christmas Day. I’ve always celebrated Christmas and not any of the other ones but I’m a big fan of rituals and agreed upon celebrations so all of them are cool in my book.

Be safe and have a good new year and I’ll see you next week probably.

[Carazhan]

the way you describe ivarstead makes me want to see a "real estate agent of skyrim" series. just going to uninhabited houses around the world and rating its features for prospective buyers.

[matthewmorgan]

Feeling bad for a digital lighthouse is a new Christmas tradition.

[usagimimi]

"Where should we go be quiet next?" is such an underrated question and I wish more people asked that

[fauxnoob]

Theres a spot between the Rift and Eastmarch just off the path. There's a giant mourning his lost mamoth friend. I always take a moment to just stand there with him before moving on. The giant won't agro you and the two of you can stand there mourhing his friend together as long as you like.

[FatalAlcatraz]

Jeremy Soule's music seals Skyrim as an atmospheric classic.

[AJGundam]

I've actually tried to find a peaceful place to sit and enjoy the ambiance, and about 5 minutes into chilling a pack of wolves had to ruin it

[Leo_RL]

That house in Ivarstead used to belong to that guy walking around but it burned down. He is involved in 2 quests: the first one has you listen to his emotional story about losing everything, including a very important person in his life, recovering something from her corpse and bringing it back to him, causing him to have an emotional breakdown. The second one has you murder him in cold blood for the dark brotherhood.
Happy new year!

[sysstuff]

Hey Austin, regarding the part of the video where you were staring back at the island from the top of the lighthouse and had trouble deciding why it felt weird, I think the answer is that it forces you to think about the passage of time. In your head you can visualize the past "you" down on the little lump of ground, walking around staring at rocks, and even a layer deeper, you as a person, sitting in front of your TV playing skyrim, trying to decide what to say about that rock. When you looked up at the top of the lighthouse, you were unwittingly staring back at your future self, staring down, visualizing the past. Its so interesting that in a game with a calendar system and fully realized day and night cycle with weather patterns trying their absolute best to differentiate one in-game day from all the others, looking down at a rock where you were standing earlier is really what impresses the passage of time. It makes me recall your halo multiplayer map video where you said something along the lines of the maps being playgrounds that never change. A video focusing just on the details games use to try and define artificial time passage and how effective or uncanny they are, might be a good way to flesh out the topic.

[gkaholic]

I use to play a hunting game when I was like 8 called Hunting Unlimited 2008. Really fun. But I use to wonder the maps and you can find farms, houses, camps, occasional planes and vehicles. And every one of them I wanted to go into. I would try to drop what I was doing and go into the house, try to interact with the plane, fish on a solemn dock, drive the tractor and tend the fields, maybe even go inside one of the houses and talk to the people who live there. I would be so long trying to trick the game into letting me do these things. But I couldn't. I was in a hunting game. A lonely lonely hunting game with me and an assortment of animals. The saddest part was when I would find small roads and follow them. They would lead to the edge of the map. I would stand in the middle of that road on the edge of the map border. I would look as the road stretched far beyond what I could see. I would use my gun sights to look down the road and look for cars, lights, anything. But there was nothing. I wanted to go further, beyond the reaches of this game and it hurt my heart that I couldn't.

[callsignvalkyrie]

you really nail the "i dont really know what im going to talk about but i like talking about it" voice and its so nice to have in the background

[godofredo]

I reckon the "lighthouse" is more of a beacon to warn ships not to approach because the water is shallow and they will get beached. If so, the fact we don't see any ships is a sign that it is in fact serving it's purpose.

[corvaes]

expanding on the prayer bit in a more positive way- the lighthouse is sending a message but something unexpected is receiving it. it’s there to send a message to ships but it ends up messaging the player details of the world. what it intended and what it conveys ends up being totally different from each other, but nonetheless something sees it and takes something from its message. that’s not dissimilar to how prayer can comfort others or provide a sense of internal strength even if the purpose is to reach a god

[secondarycontainment]

"GO BE QUIET IN SKYRIM!" Mom yelled at the kids playing outside. And so they did.

[synthetic]

One of the reasons I enjoy the house-building DLC is that it requires you to stay in a single location for an extended period of time, gathering materials, going to town for supplies, crafting. It gives a lot of opportunities to stop and absorb your surroundings. Ideally, you've also chosen a particular building site because you like how that location looks and feels.

[high_ryze]

"I recommend that in any game that has the ability to just sit" - yes. I used to do this in skyrim, and I do this even more now that I'm an adult, in a lot of different games. Some of my best times in cyberpunk even are just riding around night city on my motorcycle, looking at all the pretty lights, or just finding an area just outside the city where I can watch it in all it's glory while I take a couple dabs and just chill.

[WaffleBat]

One of my favorite liminal spaces is in Fallout 4 at the edge of the Glowing Sea. It's so starkly beautiful, quiet and intimidating and depending on where you enter you can get completely swallowed up by the sadness of the place and feel lost. There are parts of the Glowing Sea that are so purposefully alienating, where every visual clue tells you you're on the bottom of an ocean and not what once was probably Sherborn, Massachusetts, where radioactive spores float past you like they're carried on the tide and only the sound of the wind and the steady ticking of your Geiger counter (or sudden radscorpion ambush) reminding you where you are. I especially love moving out of the Glowing Sea to the south near Somerville Place, the ocean floor illusion gives way to menacing petrified trees that blend into a quiet rainy swamp. It feels like such a thoughtfully constructed liminal space designed to bring you from somewhere that feels alienating and contaminated into something familiar and natural.

[mygetawayart]

my personal quiet and peaceful spot in Skyrim is on the upper level of Narzulbur Stronghold, in front of the entrance of Gloombound mine, overlooking the landscape beneath. Go there late at night, with clear skies and the auroras shining above. There's no place quite like it.

[Voondubah]

I cannot tell you how many times I came out of the college of Winterhold only to be greeted with battle music and an Ice Dragon.

[suave]

“This lighthouse’s entire existence is fraudulent and performative, and I think in some ways I find that relatable.” 😂 12:07