Does Windhelm from SKYRIM have realistic defences?

this episode of shadow versity is brought to you by the castle shirt because castles are awesome and you want to let your friends know that not only are they awesome but you know that they awesome as evidenced by his awesome shirt with an awesome castle on it but not just any castle I'm talking about a historically accurate properly designed high detailed castle with all the bells and whistles available through teespring link in the description [Music] greetings I'm Chad and in this video we'll be looking at wind helm from the video game the Elder Scrolls Skyrim and analyze it's designed for how effective it really would be in regards to its defenses if you haven't seen one of my castle review videos before basically I take a look at a castle and/or castle-like structure and ask if this you know structure actually existed in real life how effective would it be at its primary purpose which is to protect the occupants who live inside and we shall start where I like to start all my reviews and that is the big picture the size location or first of all in regards to your size of Windhelm like nearly every other city in Skyrim it's not big enough to be a real city now I understand that in this video game it's a representation of the actual war of Elder Scrolls and in the lore Windhelm is a much much bigger city than what is represented in skyrim the video game I understand that completely but this is a proper 3d rendered model and structure that could be converted into something that will exist in real life and it was a one to one conversion this is not a city and I like to point that out just so we get a good basis what is interesting about Windhelm very much like solitude is that it's actually small enough to be a self-contained castle or fortress with a decent number of other buildings within its walls which is perfectly fine for a that's what we you can actually find in many historical castles take a look at moldboard castle largest castle in the world by surface area look at all the difference you know buildings and structures that are within the this castles walls so this could have actually been the castle or fortress over the king and I know that no political strife that Skyrim is in at the moment so the king a surfer maybe anyway if you hear me refer to windhelm by city it's only because it's called a city in the game and not because I really actually think it's a size of a city it'd be more accurate to call it a castle or fortress now to its location well looking at it there are two major problems what we can see here now it's not to say that's awful overall if it wasn't for these two big problems the location were actually pretty good I mean it has a natural moat and in the you know way of a river that runs right in front of it so that's a really big defensive advantage but the first problem is a similar problem that has come up in other videos like solitude and also like Kem Warren from The Witcher this big huge mountain right beside it I I just don't understand why video game developers do this it seems fairly obvious to me but I guess it's not but one of the biggest you know more significant principles in castle design is location specifically get it up high on a mountain or Hill or anything the first and most significant defensive advantage you can give to a castle or fortress is in location and if you can make that location so inaccessible specifically only accessible by one path you have almost made your fortress castle impregnable if you do that give the attackers no other choice but from approaching the castle the way you want them to because as soon as you can manipulate attackers to the only approach in one way you can fortify that path that way you know way to approach a castle or to the dais just beyond and really that's what they did in real life I've mentioned how trusted its castle so much it's just the best historical example of a castle that has just done this in babe so many gate houses along the only path that can reach the castle this is the principle of castle design one of the first primary and most significant principles of castle design that you should understand when you think about castles locations one path one accessible way to the castle and I'm talking primary access okay for like wags and stuff because you can have back doors like a Poston okay the Sallyport so in regards to Windhelm we have this big beautiful mountain right next to it and I'm just wondering why on earth didn't they put the city on top of the mountain is their idea Allie come on guys what a missed opportunity I mean my goodness but it's dead no it's plunked right down at the base of the mountain next to it and lonely is it clearly vulnerable to landslides and other things like this natural landscape I'm talking about here but if that enemy was motivated enough they could climb a mountain and engineer a rocks Idol there so I can take out to you I have a look at expecting half of the you know fortress below or even bolting a massive vulnerability here now I understand that there's some more complex parts to wind Helms location because it is supposed to represent a city not a fortress and putting a city on top of a mountain can make no sense at all because a city is supposed to be easily accessible for the people who live in it and also people traveling to and fro trading and other things like that and so in this sense it for a city it makes more sense for a city to be placed nearby or beside a river easy access to fresh water and it can also make it a better trading hub if it can have a port so in regards to your city a city here can be better placed near a river but if Windhelm as a fortress just a castle it would be better placed on the mountain so with the city aspect of lindholm taken into account yes it makes sense for it to be me by the river but not right up against the mountain where it's vulnerable to these landslides in fact I would have placed it on the other side of the river where it's more open and it also gives more room for expansion when the city's population grows and what would have worked even better on top of this because the king would want to be as protected as possible that he would have put his palace on top of the mountain separate to the city the other problem with its original location okay if you have a look at the city there is an area that fairly flat right next to the walls and not only just next the walls it extends a decent distance away from the walls which is the it provides the perfect approach for an attacking army all they have to do is cross the river downstream yet wryly assemble their army out of arrow shot or anything that and just assault this wall and they have a clear path right to those walls with no real obstructions in their way they can just run up with their ladder men I can got you know soldiers carrying letters and get ladders against the wall get up and if they all motive man enough they can even have a siege tower the waiver that could have fixed this okay is by digging a big wide trench offside the river that's right there to cover this exposed part of the wall definitely easy enough to do you have the river there and that would have basically protected all sides of this fortress except the side that has the mountain on it now granted okay the mountain blocks army is from getting access to a wall on that side it just means the army like I said can engineer landslides on the mountain itself is a threat so these two big problems make swinged Helms location very good if it wasn't for those it would be pretty good perfectly decent especially with it sitting right on the edge of a river it does no mountain behind them they could have sorry easily dug that trench on us mentioning all the way around these and have a full-fledged Moke protecting it perfect all good but now it's not there so location is now rubbish which is a big pity because in terms of win the Helms primary entrance they have the specify that I've done the right thing but there the thought of the right thing and executed in a very lazy ineffective way which again renders the effectiveness of this Ridge towards the castle city far less than what it could have been of course the main problem with the bridge is that it is not the only option that the enemy has to approach the city they can just go around it which makes the bridge useless utterly pointless to have it fortified and defended so much even though there's problems with it and we'll get to that but if there was no other option to approach the city apart from this big beautiful bridge well that'll be awesome absolutely awesome that's what you want force the enemy to approach the castle the way you want them to approach and then punish them for it and so their initial idea with the bridge was really good in fact the bridge there's some something that is potentially just absolutely awesome but they trip at the finish line like so many fantasy castles do it's a pity that books are so what we see here essentially there is a big long gate house you can almost call it - gate houses but I could most mostly consider this a single gate house with two armed entrances a front entrance and a back entrances or two gates and I need a you know correct myself because they're not gates they're archways and this is where we run into the first problem the archways there's nothing blocking them there's no portcullis not it not even a gate there's just an archway and I know like in the siege of Solitude that gates magically appear on archers that didn't have them before in the regular game and so perhaps that's what they did here with Windhelm and it's just ridiculous like I don't understand should have permanent gates there all the time and also let me just add okay at the secondary air entrance to this long gate house eBridge thingy after they exit the second part they could a perfect place for a drawbridge to perfect but instead they've just extended the bridge to the front entrance of the city so again the missed opportunity okay back to the gatehouse if this was a proper gate house meaning it had two flanking cows on either side which were a permanent part of the structure itself with multiple levels for murder holes and a portcullis and all that and a roof atop you would actually call it a Barbican a Barbican was kind of like the outer most gatehouse and the farthest gate hostel or secondary gout house from the main structure can be called a Barbic it's an odd term Barbican because I have heard its use be applied to some different structures but this is certainly one use of the term calling this amount of gatehouse of Barbican and sometimes Barbican has also been used just synonymously with gatehouse and they call the primary gatehouse the Barbican and so I have found some confusing kind of odd definitions for this term I think the most accurate use of Barbican is right here if there's a propagate house on this bridge this would be a more accurate representation of a historical Barbican so you can call the standard gate house over castle walls at gate house and if there's a secondary outer one therefore yes you could call it a Barbican so no barriers over these archways which I don't I'm just yeah anyway what should have happened is yeah there would be gates and make it very very difficult for the enemy bus through the issues and I just above the gate on the ledger here all we see there's only the barest barrier that between at the actual rampart and the edge what really for me is crenellations their actual battlements to give the defenders cover from the four arrow fire from the enemy and also room for them to shoot back and be protected there's nothing in no crenellations which means the enemy would easily be able to just walk through this archer because there's nothing stopping them and then we get to this pathway in between kind of two walls or walkways on either side this again is a potentially a brilliant medieval defensive feature because what it should have is nice high walls on either side with battlements ok defending of protecting the defenders up on top which enables the defenders to just rain down death upon anyone who is so unfortunate to be caught in between but there's some big problems here one there is access to the ramparts from the inside this is like absolutely you do not do you did not give the attackers a means to get up to your walls especially in the primary location where you want to kill them you don't want to give them a means of escape but that's what they have here perfect means of escape a bodily escape it means for them to brought up the walls and take out the defenders it is ridiculous what really should have happened here there should be no access at all to the walls from the inside of this gate house from this pathway in between instead the access needs to be from outside the gate house specifically past it in between the gate house and the front entrance of the city or a better yet have the wall of the city next to the front gate extend forward and connect to the gate house and so there's an actual pathway from the ramparts of the city walls to the ramparts of the gate house and no other access meaning you cannot get access to the top part of the gate house from the pathway that actually leads through it and into the city that is how it should have been designed but because it is not it is ridiculous so it breaks my heart because there was such potential and it almost like it always seems like the you know developers or designer and someone must have known partially what they were doing to get the initial elements there in place but then there just falls apart you will for return me never go for return this bridge gate house is like an inbred version of a real historical gate house that something is just gone incredibly wrong with it now let's look at the city's outer wall okay it's big and it's thick I guess points to that that's what it should be it should be big and it could should be thick that's what she said but also there should be proper battlements on top the wall to give the defenders cover and there should be good ramparts the ramparts are top Windhelm we're all blocked up with stone bricks and everything like that'll be very hard to walk to and fro on them and there's no real cover you see these intermittent you know that protrusions that are an effect from the buttresses that are running up and down from the bottom up the wall but these aren't really no ones they're not made to give a set of cover therefore it would be very difficult for defenders to utilize the top of these walls effectively to fire down on any enemies they could be use I mean they have you know room dike there's a flat above them to walk to and from it's just full of crap and not good cover the other big disappoint thing about the walls is that there are no towers okay so that means there are there's so much covered that the enemy can receive when they assault these walls all have to do is go right up a quote put their backs to the wall and it'd be very difficult for the defenders atop and actually fire down and as soon as they you know walk around one of these buttresses on the wall or even around one of the corners because there's no protrusion on the walls to extend the defenders outwards a bit so they have a better field of fire they will be out of your cover the enemy will be adding a cover the other big sale with their city walls is the main gates there's no gatehouse you're all it's just at least has a door on it thank goodness but there's no gatehouse per se meaning there is no wearing parts above it there's no extensions there is no matriculation sort of the fire down anyone who tried to beat down the wall the door I mean and remember the gate okay is the most vulnerable part of any given castle historically it's the gate the gate houses that are the most fortified parts on the castle because that's the entrance it's just logic but here on Windhelm is nothing here it's just an ornamental gate with a door on it now in regards to wind Helms internal layout there's no real internal divisions there could be I mean there are some passageways and arches that if the gates are put on them it would create some internal divisions but again there are no gates anywhere even in front of the palace where this is clearly again and I'm pretty sure in the siege of Windhelm and gates magically appears here as well but but in the normal game just casually walking around the streets there's no didi even in front of the palace every single passageway an archway throughout the city is completely open now in real life that would mean as soon as the enemy breaches any part of the walls of this city castle they would be able to take the entire castle clearly there is provision for on the palace so I'm sorry let's just say that all right they they would still need to breach this wall here at least there would be some level of defense and separation for the King okay there's a small internal Bayley or it just in front of the main entrance to the palace so if there is a gate there which I kind of is in the siege at least there is that now let's look at the palace itself if something just screams at me as to just not working it's ridiculous as yeah okay and this is the same issue that I explained in my review of the castle of Grand Sauron from Dragon's Dogma so that is in the video looking at Grand Sauron city it's looking at the Grand straw and castle and it's that each you know upper level is a bit smaller than the one beneath it now structure like this can be built it exists but so often whenever people in video games and castles everywhere design this type of structure they don't understand basic architectural design principles for instance load-bearing points there is a sizable bit of structure sitting high up and more scented than the external walls pro-ana specifically the smallest most highest part what is holding it up there needs to be support columns on the major load-bearing points which is the corners and then you could have archways underneath out distributing the load to those corners but those that columns would need to run all the way into the ground because that's exactly where the load has to go for extra building to stand up right that needs to be supported by the ground knots in air and so often in video games stuff like that people who make this design and I see it more often than you would think they design the outside yeah it looks cool a tiered kind of structure that looks pretty it's going up it's in you know profile slim and all that but then they completely forget about that when they design be in the side of it which essentially makes the center part that we see on the outside the highest and most center part floating on tin air because there's nothing internally holding it up and the way we can notice well we just go inside and the most center room you know within the palace is the throne room thing which is a big room okay tinkly there should be poor pillars running right down the center of this room holding up the center part of the palace above us a great real-world example of what I'm talking about here is in Gothic style architecture and why don't we take a look at the neo gothic Chapel from my nearby home city Melbourne in Australia this is st. Patrick's Cathedral and just let you know I have a whole video store in Gothic style architecture on location at st. Patrick's Cathedral so for this just for this video what I'm referring to is the center Tao Sears beautiful big center tower right that is sitting in the middle of the Cathedral so for it to sit in the middle it can't be floating on thin air there needs to be something holding it up and of course there is for big massive stone pillars and archways in those stone pillars to support the whole structure right here is where the central tower technically is and I am where is the tower closer heart above us it's right there and so these four pillars and capping these pillars are one two three and four it is these four pillars that are holding up that huge central tower and that's how st. Patrick's Cathedral can have this massive Tower right in the center of itself they need to be pillars holding it up and sorry back to the palace no there's nothing there here okay now there is a secondary entrance to Windhelm which is the entrance to the docks and I I like it mostly because it's this you know thin kind of walkway in between two big walls and so all the principles that we talked about on the bridge okay with that bridge kind of gatehouse ours to higher walkways on either side well that creates the same effect and death zone for anyone trying to break through this lower passageway and there isn't battlements at the top because it's such a narrow space I mean it would be very hard for any attackers down at the bottom to get the angle good enough to hit or shoot at the defenders at the top so it's not as much of an issue here which leads me to the conclusion that this set our exit entrance is mostly defended adequately enough okay it's effective it's good which seems to be one of the only few effective thoughts about windows design unfortunately now I have been only looking at it in pure practicality and believability and realism how effective would this building be for defense if it actually existed outside of defense okay windhelm is beautifully like the architecture I'm not saying design in terms of loud but the stylistic design of the buildings and stuff like that are just very consistent to the war of sky very beautifully shines in my opinion not necessarily have the true efficacy of their designs and from a military kind of viewpoints but the stylistic design is beautiful and it's such a pity because if they got the practicality in realism side with this beautiful style that they can just hit out of the park oh my goodness so just be glorious and unfortunately for windhelm it is intense a solitude of course ology had the big problem the dear gravity-defying archer that it's built upon but in terms of its layout have a pretty good layout with good solid internal divisions that just didn't have gateways and blocking them off or anything like that so it's interesting solitudes big blunder was the archway and the lack of gateways on the internal divisions and it even had like a secondary outer bailey protecting itself but that was kind of it when the helm almost has this awesome thing if the location was better with a proper moat all the way around it and if it's bridged the gate nails bridge didn't have those massive blunders on it the bridge gatehouse could have been awesome and when Elm could have been brilliant unfortunately like many of the castles in Skyrim it rips at the finish line blast you Bethesda hey I love Dori I love you Bethesda but also browsed you for your constantly tripping at the finish lines you haven't you stopped so well and then it just goes off and it gets ruined but there you go that has been my review of Windhelm from Skyrim thank you very much for watching I hope you have enjoyed and I hope to see you again and until then farewell [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 517,035

Keywords: windhelm, city, castle, castles, defences, defenses, the elder scrolls, skyrim, oblivion, dragon's dogma, game of thrones, video game, video, game, lord of the rings, medieval, fantasy, dnd, dungeons, dragons, d&d, katana, sword, longsword, rpg, roleplaying, role, playing, review, for honor, fight, real, realism, realistic, hold, holds, hold's, play, merlon, machicolation, machicolations, shirt

Id: lVisK0C3upo

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2017