In creative writing class, they teach you: show, don’t tell.Todd Howard and his family bethesda game studio Apparently taking notes on this, because skyrim It’s all about stumbling into mysterious scenarios and being drawn to figure out what’s going on here. It shows you an unusual corpse surrounded by an incongruous set of objects, and it knows you’re being pulled into the narrative, and it’s impossible to hear the NPC tell you it’s impossible.
Skyrim is so good at this kind of ambient storytelling that a segment of its player base has been cataloging and revealing its mysterious scenarios, unexplained phenomena, and tiny details that hint at a wider conspiracy since its release. Especially impressive for virtual detectives and developers, many of whom do have solutions and conclusions, such as “Gold and Silver Fox,” whose AI pathfinder takes you through programming quirks to a massive Treasure area. Players aren’t just looking for meaning – often, designers and writers really take those details into account and finally solve and unravel the mysteries for us.
But many don’t. So, considering these six mysteries of immortality, why The Elder Scrolls 6 should not seek to provide answers to these questions, but to ask new ones. The last thing we want is an RPG version of Prometheus that, through our beloved lore, replaces the seductive with the casually prosaic. Let’s treasure these unsolved mysteries and let them spark our imaginations until a new game arrives with a brand new headline.
Symbols in bug jars
Scatter around the world map and you’ll find many insects trapped in jars. They look beautiful and you don’t even have to feel bad for these little critters as they don’t seem to need oxygen or food there and will live in their glass house indefinitely. The community has found five in all, and they’re just what your player home needs to complement the fireplace area.
However, if you look closely at the bottom of the jar lids, you’ll see a strange rune symbol etched into each jar lid. This is no accident – someone at BGS sat down and designed a custom texture map for the five wooden lids, each one different. Why spend so much effort to decorate it?
Trouble is, no one knows what the runes mean. Attempts to decipher them all come up with…well, basically gibberish. One theory is that the jars may be related to an amnesic character named Rune, who was linked to the Thieves Guild, and may have been part of a later cut quest that explained his true identity. personally? I’m drawn to the idea that maybe there are more than five jars in the world…
Kagrenzel’s Giant Skeleton
OK, this is Prometheus. Just southeast of Mzurft, there is a huge Dwemer ruin called Kagrenzel. These are always a bit of a mystery, as the fate of the Dwemer remains unknown, and wandering the halls of a lost civilization’s territory is inherently creepy. But there’s something about Kagrenzel that goes beyond the usual chill — it’s skeletons.
Three huge skeletal remains occupy the area. They are far bigger than any creature ever seen in Skyrim, bigger than a mammoth or even a dragon. And the assets themselves aren’t just exploded versions of the former’s bones, which means BGS took the time to make these customizations. This suggests that they are either important, or at least intended to be at some point. Maybe another cut mission?
Whatever the reason for their appearance, these giant skeletons make Kagrenzel one of the most disturbing places on the world map. No matter what’s here, no matter how long ago, if you came across it, it would definitely mess you up.
The Dark Secrets of the Temple of Mara
Your own wedding scene, home to some of Skyrim’s most benevolent characters, the shrine to Eros itself, the Temple of Mara is one of the warmest and fuzziest places on the map, but it’s not exactly full of that warm and fuzzy vibe.
So when you notice the infamous book “A Kiss, Sweet Mother” in a guest room upstairs, it raises your eyebrows. This is not an incest-sounding erotic novel, but instructions on how to perform the ritual of summoning members of the Dark Brotherhood. Of course, the Dark Brotherhood is an organization you’ll remember for all the rainbows, kisses, and good deeds they showed. I mean assassination.
How did this book get here? Is anyone going to a wedding with dark motives? Maybe an outcast lover? Or maybe the permanent residents of the temple just misplaced their book of darkness?
headless rider
I’ve been playing this game for eleven years and have never seen him, but the Headless Horseman is very real. Well, to be clear, he’s real in video games. Video games are not real. There is not actually a headless horseman roaming our plane of existence.
However, between 10pm and 4am in Skyrim, there is. He appears to be randomly generated, rides on ghostly horseback, and wanders around with no apparent motive or meaning. He has no head. This is what we know about him.
Why is he in the game? How did he lose his mind if he had one in the first place? How could he ride in that state, let alone put on armor? We’ve known nothing about these issues since he was first discovered, and it’s unlikely we’ll make any progress without someone from BGS addressing his existence directly.
Let me tell you though: If I didn’t know this guy was in the game and I happened to see him one night, I would absolutely screw it up.
Rorikstead Soul Stone Conspiracy
Next up is my favorite Mystery of Skyrim: at first it might seem like there’s nothing there, like it’s just some player with an active imagination reaching for something that doesn’t exist. But t hen you go check it out yourself, and you decide: yes. Yes, something must have happened here.
The same goes for Rorickstead, a quiet hamlet with little to no specials, where a small community of simple farmers lives peacefully. Or so it seems. Because there are a few things that don’t add up here, like each house contains a Soul Stone, a Philosopher’s Stone used to hold the souls of the dead in arcane rituals, and books on Daedric worship scattered all over the place. Sissel asks Jouane to teach her more magic one time, so he lowers his voice to a whisper and encourages her to be more cautious in case anyone overhears and learns “our secret.”
What secret? Friends with no idea. Nobody will. This could be another cut content, a remnant of a once-deep questline involving the dark rituals of the residents of Rorickstead. Or it could be – this is my personal preference – a deliberately mysterious dead end, a tantalizing hint of deliberately inconclusive.
The Fate of the Dwemer
This is the big ticket project for all Skyrim loremasters, detectives, hobbyists and documentaries. What happened to the dwarven race who built so many buildings around the map and who got caught in Morrowind and the Forgotten Mountains? Long after the Dwemer disappeared, what happened to those advanced enough to make Mechanical Sentinels? It’s a decades-old mystery, and no matter what you imagine what happened to them, it’s definitely more interesting and satisfying than anything BGS has come up with at this point.
It doesn’t matter to the developer. It’s amazing in terms of lore and world building. But when you let a mystery run like this, when you let the fanbase flip it in their heads and actually own it, it’s not wrapped up later at all. Ridley Scott, George Lucas, and many other filmmakers were tempted to answer the questions their fans wanted to answer, only to find that no satisfactory explanation was possible, nothing to bring old material back become stupid.
Rather than trying to unravel this famous mystery, I’d like to see The Elder Scrolls 6 establish a new plot point of equal depth. These little nuggets keep us coming back to the game a decade after its release, and trick us into thinking we live in a real place. These carefully placed objects, mysterious books, unexplained lines, and teasing dead ends are what makes The Elder Scrolls games so special. More of that sort of thing.
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