Evaluating Oblivion's notable side quests + The Shivering Isles

so I was working on something a little different for my next video but then this happened I'm super happy that people enjoyed it but I also noticed that a lot of people were saying that the side quests in Oblivion is where the game truly shines along with the dlc of course now I've definitely played through the Shivering Isles a few times in the past not that I remember exactly what happens in it but if there's one thing I haven't done it's the side quests so for better or worse I'm going to run through both the Shivering Isles and some of the most notable side quests in the game completely blind at least on the side quest front and give my impression on all of it and how it affects oblivion overall I apologize in advance if I didn't hit a certain quest or set of quests but I feel like I did cover a good span here if you'll remember in my last video I still loved oblivion for what it is but came to the conclusion that it wasn't as good as I remembered it being as a teenager I'll let you know now that this video is definitely going to have spoilers for all the quests that I cover I know a couple people were kind of upset that I didn't just outright say that last time so here you are anyways let's dive back into this thing please know I'll be starting with the side quests because I know that the Shivering Isles are good and I want to save it for the end and the first side quest I jumped into was this painting basically this lady wants you to figure out what happened to her hut hold on a second [Music] all right this lady wants you to figure out what happened to her husband and so you do when you arrive in this guy's painting he explains to you that he's a bit of a fraud and the way that he paints so well is via a magical brush this quest is really cool I love the painted look even if the objective is kind of straightforward basically you have to bash six trolls who Naruto - at you and recover the super paint brush from the thief I don't actually think you have to beat the trolls but same difference I just like what they give you turpentine to do more damage against them it's a nice touch my only nitpick I'd say would be that the music is anyways I got a cool-ass apron as my reward but I decided I needed a nap after that adventure so I bencher down over to the bloated float in for some rest when I woke up I was greeted by a message explaining to me that I was now at sea which is kind of exciting I mean don't get me wrong it's definitely underwhelming but it's a cool idea anyways this guy was kind of milling around outside my room he goes on to start spouting stuff out about some heist and how he's only working with three others and whatnot now this dialogue definitely seemed unique like I figured that if I gave him some different answers there might have been a second outcome here so when I made my way up to the next bandit who had helped hijack the ship I tried telling her that I was sent to help her - which she flipped out at and then I tried to tell her that I was sent to help her boss and she of course asks you why the guy below sent you up and your only option is he's dead so so much for bluffing anyways the same deal happened with the third of the Three Stooges and then I was sent to the big boss who seemed pretty damn dense but due to my correct answers to her probing actually surrendered this made the rest of the conversations have a purpose but ultimately had me wishing that I could have infiltrated the gang and maybe tried to steal the fabricated treasure with them it'd have been pretty funny to side with the bad guys only for the innkeeper to tell us that the treasure doesn't actually exist please leave me be I suppose you're wondering what I did with lene the authorities at the Imperial City took her off the ship as soon as we docked next up I went for another nap though this one was for a different purpose you remember the Mages Guild quest giver could I could could could you no I'm not gonna say most of these things correctly so I'm sorry anyways she was losing her mind about what I assumed was one of the major Kreutz playing a prank on the other but apparently it was because her close friend was in a coma well sort of a magical coma think of it as exploring a new land but a land within your own mind I shudder to think what's happened to him in there this quest is goddamn awesome you go into this guy's dream and you have to undergo four trials which all pertain to different virtues this was probably one of the only quests in the whole game that made me go wait is this a vanilla oblivion quest did someone mod this it is so goddamn cool I loved every bit of it I almost don't want to spoil it but the game's twelve years old and that's what I do so after you've bested these four trials you bring Hennessey back to his senses and he pulls you back out from his inception dream allow me to present you with something that may help in your travels you wake up naked with could I standing over you for some reason and awkwardly shamble out of the house after your third nap in a row on my next leg of nap quest 2006 I stopped by anvil and bought a manor I just needed a little more privacy after that last nap experience I was told it was a bargain but I honestly have no idea how the economy works in this game or in real life anyways I made my way to this creepy ass Manor and like any good protagonist in a horror movie made a stupid decision to progress the plot of course a fresh pack of scooby-doo ghost popped out of the walls and proceeded to ruin my sleep again stop talking so the manors haunted in the guy who sold it to me skipped town so I go to find him and he comes at me super aggressively like so you made it out of there alive huh so you think I'm responsible I suppose you're right is the manner used to belong to my grandfather Loren Boehner's but then he immediately mellowed out and became super helpful so I really didn't know what to make of him but he came to help me purge the ghost by removing the family blood seal from the wall or whatever the character I'm playing is then tricked by this skeleton with a really cool voice which let's be honest I've got to be an idiot to listen to this guy go on and on about how he's sorry now and just believe him after he's sacrificed a few however many individuals so I'm making a new narrative on this one I'm one of the most powerful people in the world I just want to sleep in my Manor without a goddamn warlock glitch hanging out in the basement so I restore him so that I can make some cool-ass windchimes out of his ribs for the front porch 6 out of 10 I then proceeded over to coral where I was told that the daughter of a merchant there was missing and last seen and Hector this quest had a lot of potential to be really creepy but I think it ultimately failed in that regard you show up in this small half-burnt town and all of the residents absolutely despise you for seemingly no reason other than being an outsider this [ __ ] follows you around everywhere and it's actually really unsettling when you go to confront the merchant who the girl was supposed to deliver her goods to you're giving me I don't know what you're talking about that's my horse out back and go away treatment so your average DMV experience after exploring around a bit more you find a resident who's willing to tell you what happened explaining that the girl that you're there for is going to be sacrificed to bring back something called the deep ones now this is about the height of how creepy this quest is and it's sad because I feel like it really failed to deliver on this new information you basically go down one of the many trap doors in town to a cave system underneath it and it's there that the merchant girl is being held if you happened to go down the door that I did she's pretty much directly to your right you burglar away and ride off into the night that's it so I decided I'll reload and do this the hard way and see if there's a better story here there wasn't well maybe there was I mean if being swarmed by shirtless dudes makes a better story for you and I highly recommend this quest I just wish that the deep ones had been revealed as creatures that you could actually fight I found myself in Bruma for the next quest because that's where I was told to go for it it was here that I was sent on a mission to recover an echo very artefact called the draconian mad stone let me tell you the name of it sounds cooler than it is because it just prevents all poison damage I know I said that like it's nothing that's because it doesn't even do what it's supposed to do but even then I was honestly hoping for some kind of increased damage Berserker type effect she's kind of what it sounds like to me anyways the lead-in to this quest is pretty neat just like the previous one you're told about a battle that was fought a long time ago between the akaviri and Sara Dale and how the akaviri were relying on a message to be delivered to the Battlefront well long story short the Scout sent to deliver the message got his spine cracked in the dust by ogres guarding pale paths causing the akaviri to ultimately lose this is where you come in the draconian mad stone was said to be buried with the echo very soldiers but nobody knew where pale pass was so your test with trekking to each chunk which the akaviri scout traveled along using his rudimentary map which he drew the landmarks on this is actually a pretty neat way of progressing things long even for somebody like me who likes to be told where to go when you make it through the cave full of Spriggans ogres and bears you come out the other end to the long-forgotten pail pass which actually doesn't show up on the map again super cool setup after running through ogre battle 64 you make it to the regular old skeleton filled ruins and that kind of sucks you make it to the end and deliver the orders from the Scout all those years ago allowing the akaviri soldiers to rest it's a bland ending to an interesting start and I just wished the finale of it didn't remind me of the main quest where you have to put the four Knights to rest the last real side quest I decided to hit up brought me to just north of the Imperial City to a town called ales well as always I went to the end for the fattest supply of naps they had available only to be met with this fella telling me how the whole dang town is invisible you may be wondering why you can't see me so in order to get my sleep on I needed to visit the wizard who did this to the town fortunately it was right down the road so I paid him a visit after slaying a few invisible animals he then proceeds to introduce himself explaining to me that the villagers have been a pain in his ass the entire time while he experimented this experimentation eventually resulted in ales wells population becoming invisible along with him this quest was short the wizard gives you a scroll to reverse the spell and a ring to protect you from any side effects and then that's it now I can't fault the quest for doing something that I usually desire which is cutting straight to the point it honestly sounds like it could have been a go fetch these ingredients from this cave by fighting these creatures sort of thing and that would have sucked but it also could have been something where you accidentally turned the villagers into chickens and then made them tiny when you tried again and then in two nirn routes until finally they're back to normal it wouldn't have added anything but it would have been kind of funny overall I'd say that this quest along with the majority of the others I've played would have been a lot more fun if they had caught me completely off guard while I was exploring but ultimately fall flat up legendary for me personally besides the could I dream quest and the painting quest of course those were definitely awesome regardless there are a few last things I wanted to accomplish before I took on the Shivering Isles but don't quite count as regular side quests or maybe they do I'm not really sure you see I've only ever done two Daedric artifact quests before now Molag Bal and Europe to me assure it was the same old kind of quest objective and involved you killing off some of her followers who were vampires in a cave it's really a shame because this is the quest that the game points you towards when it comes to trying to gain a Daedric artifact for Martin during the main quest and it's what personally drove me away from doing any of the other ones the only other one that I had done was Molag Bal because I wanted his mace for my initial playthrough his quest was definitely more interesting as the Prince had you trying to mess with a guy who was regarded as a genuine hero and a good person until he finally snaps and kills you with a cursed mace this quest definitely had me reconsidering the Daedric shrines as a whole but I wanted to try to wrap up my previous video at that point and ultimately wrote off Daedric shrines is half interesting side quests I was so wrong I'm not kidding you when I say that I set out to do four of them because I just wanted to cover them in general and wound up doing ten in a row just from the sheer entertainment I got out of them if you hadn't figured this out already I really am the type of player who plays a game and likes to be told what to do I know that's generally frowned upon in games like these but that's just how I am whether it's in the form of side quests that I happen to get when I run through town or just seeking out guild quests which I know exists I tend to not explore as often as I should these shrines have made me completely reconsider that philosophy things that appeared to be normal like go take this or back from a wizard and a tower turned into a sprawling nightmare of half cyrodiil half plains of oblivion and it was awesome you were generally just wreaking havoc on quests tailored to each Daedric Prince's personality type whether it was snuffing out the light of priests who were trying to purify an area teeming with fanatics hunting and killing the only unicorn in the game getting to families in a village to slaughter each other after killing their leaders and planting evidence [Music] freeing ogres from slavery wiping out a band of necro 8 now that not that one crashing a dinner party by suddenly removing everyone's clothing in items including mine or getting a superstitious a lot of people to believe that the world is ending I had so much fun with almost all of these sure there were some mediocre ones and I didn't do three of them at all for various reasons but man believe me when I say that these were up there with some of my favorite guild quests in terms of sheer entertainment value but enough gushing about Daedric shrines let's hit the Shivering Isles finally now full disclosure I started the dlc before when I was trying to squeeze it into my last video still so you might see some switches graphically and equipment-wise just letting it out approaching the giant portal in the middle of the lake is always so daunting you have a guard who's sitting there trying to warn people away explaining that whatever's on the other side of the portal was driving people insane and that they weren't coming back out mentally intact ignoring this warning of course brings you face to face with Haskell faithful servant of the Daedric prince shale Garth after hearing out Haskell and agreeing to attempt to become show Garth champion you make your way to the merry town of pass wall which seems to be the entryway to the rest of the realm unfortunately there seems to be a tremendous creature guarding the gate absolutely named the gatekeeper he's nearly impossible to kill according to everyone except for one batshit crazy deviantART enthusiast jared ice veins I'm jarred ice beans do you ever wonder why things look better without this skin on with his help you're able to fill the behemoth leaving you with a choice between two realms they both lead to the same place albeit with different tour routes one of them mania is described as a place filled with bright colors and wildlife and ecstatic and while manic citizens the other one dementia is described as a dark and glue place filled with swamps and decay and paranoid and negative citizens as neat as these concepts sound I feel like they could have really dialed up the colors and theme of each side don't get me wrong they're definitely two separate sides which contrasts in many ways but every time I think of the realm of dementia I pictured dark hues of purples and blues and grays and every time I think of the realm of mania I picture vibrant yellows oranges greens again what they have going for them isn't bad I just wish they cranked it up to 11 anyways dredging along this path eventually leads you to new sheäôs the central hub where shale gorath resides I shale Gaurav Shia gorath Prince of madness and other things I'm not talking about them it is here where you finally meet the man in charge and he promptly assigns you to getting's a Dillian operating again the purpose of zilean is to basically punish the unworthy in place of the gatekeeper which you killed but we'll get to that aha silly me the book has no pictures can't really expect you to read that now can I on the way out I encountered this man here I paid him absolutely zero mind when I played before but I decided to humor the guy before making my way out to get to Dillian up and running again when you meet with him after dark he tells you that he wants you to kill him I need you to kill me I was naturally caught off guard by this but I assumed that it was for some nonsensical reason as the citizens here aren't the most logical Bunch marry on that aisle before so I heard him out and he goes on to explain to me that he hasn't felt like himself for a long time and that he has no friends and that it seems like no one seems to notice that the happiness of this world has drained almost entirely away I don't know why this caught me off guard so bad but he went on to explain that if he killed himself he would just respawn basically up on the hill as if nothing happened and be tormented for eternity so I agreed with his request and pushed him off this ledge can't just jump don't want to end up on the hill but I hope that someday maybe a big gust of wind will come push me off so I can end it all he told me I was to collect my reward from his house with the key on his corpse inside the jewelry box was a single ring called the ring of happiness and a final note from him the note details how he's felt horrible for a long time and that he was grateful that someone had finally killed him and that a wizard had given him the ring because he reminded him of his dead son I'm not sure that this game had sobered me up more than it did during this quest I don't want to analyse it too much more but it's amazing when a game can make you pause like this and think I just never expected it from oblivion of all games after that tiny moral crisis I went through aka the time that videogames got too real I continued on to civilian your first task is to restore the power to the joint by taking out all these goblin shaman boys and placing the crystals they stole back into their proper places once that's said and done the real fun of this quest begins you are now a dungeon master and like any good Dungeon Master besides Matt Mercer you're trying to kill the party in the absolute best way you can think of I'm not lying when I say this could have been the entire reward of the quest line for me I'd be totally satisfied you get to either overwhelm them forcefully or mentally break them each time and it's fantastic when you're through reloading to see what happens with every option you're cut off by a roving pack of regice also known as the Knights of order after dispatching them you report back to shell Gareth who hardly seemed surprised he goes on to explain to you that jyggalag the Daedric prince of order is the perpetrator behind this encounter his objective seems to be to destroy this realm and bring an end to its chaotic nature to teach you the importance of the realm staying intact you are to meet the Duke of Mania and the Duchess of dementia and are in their favor I started with the Duchess who immediately told me that I shouldn't speak to anyone and then no one could be trusted and that she was being actively hunted by a traitor which sounds insane as with everything in this realm so you're granted the role of Inquisitor which means that you're supposed to get answers from people which means this I don't know anything about a conspiracy [Music] this quest is great I loved how weirdly unorthodox it is and it perfectly encompasses the role of dementia within the mad realm you're running around and screaming at people about a conspiracy and they keep telling you that they don't know what the hell you're talking about you call them a liar and this zappy boy comes flying around the corner just smokes them with enough power to make them feel like Ben Franklin's lightning kite it's amazing now that being said I honestly thought we'd torture a few people until we finally just pinned it on some random innocent person in order to sate the Duchess as it turns out there totally is someone plotting against her and you gather the evidence necessary to convict them before they get sent to yield lightening gauge for a SAP and a half after this I was sent by the Duke of Mania to recover his big drug Goblet he basically explained to me that when you ingest fell do and drink from the Goblet your world becomes a much better and brighter place this basically involves retrieving a chalice at the end of a long series of tunnels with insectoid creatures called Elektra in order to access and stay in these tunnels you needed to ingest a dollop of fel do which came from the Elektra themselves this causes you to become addicted to the substance creating a feeling of euphoria when you're on it and causing terrible side effects when you're going through withdrawals overall the message and theme of this quest is unique and interesting but the actual navigation through these tunnels goes on for far too long in my opinion upon your return you are taught the importance of addiction and what it has to do with how mania works either way you now have your understanding of both dementia and mania and are now ready to report back to shale gorath who promptly tasks you with the relighting of the great torch which hangs over new shaft when you arrive on site to perform this task you find out that the soldiers of mania and dementia are in a small war against each other and you may choose which side to help out whatever the result you are bathed in flame and then sent back to new shale you then choose which side to light and are rewarded with an outfit that reflects that choice the citizens of new Shia also react to your choice accordingly which is a nice touch clouds don't smell bad they taste the butter and tears from here you are tasked by shale gorath to take the place of either the Duke of Mania or the Duchess of dementia for the Duke you must poison him with an overdosage of a powerful drug which he ingests every night for the Duchess you must straight-up murder her and cut out her heart which one sounds more fun to you the right answer is the poisoning which involves you following the good Duke servant to the underground silo filled with green moats and then sneaking into the kitchen area to poison his meal yes I must attend to him the wrong answer is this [ __ ] right here where I'm trying my best to sneak and it doesn't matter because even if I actually do lose the guards they still come running to my exact location anyways and I really start to resent this games combat system but either way I did like the dementia reward better so I went with that you wish an escort Lord I think they have a thing for pain I was kind of hoping the Duchess flipping out and calling sheogorath a fool would be exclusive to her and a different storyline would split off or if you had killed her instead but the duke does the same thing almost verbatim albeit a little more funnily worded after this little confrontation you are sent to the fringe to fight off the incoming order invaders you want to hear something annoying [Applause] this quest sucks look at this look at this [ __ ] this isn't fun again this really started to sour Oblivion's combat for me I was never a huge fan of it but I never minded it too much but this quest in particular really started to drive at home to me just how bad the combat is in this game I did my best to ignore it and try to focus on the actual role-playing storyline parts of the game the combat really starts to sour when you're forced to fight multiple of the same enemy type in order to progress with the mission I didn't mind it as much before because my play style was basically just me running and jumping past everything that I didn't need to absolutely fight and I couldn't do that in this particular scenario because I needed to talk to this soldier to progress the storyline but I do have to admit that compared to the vanilla game the Shivering Isles dungeons are a delight in terms of design some of them still aren't that great some go on a little too long but most of them are really fun to look at and navigate from my experience this does include this quest and the next quest which has you attempting to rebuild a gatekeeper in a quest this one has you running through interesting level layouts with interesting monster designs I mean look at this guy I mean it doesn't do much but look at him he's got some sick flips anyways after you're done you get to assemble your very own flesh bound and he is the very best boy any father could ask for this was a really awesome quest reward I know a lot of people need to have something of material value in order to justify a quest but man just give me cool [ __ ] like this and I am super stoked to finish these quests seriously most the time I'm getting useless trinkets that I'm not gonna use anyway when you make it back to shell gorath again he finally reveals to you the plot twist that only he can offer that he is jyggalag and that he will be the one to destroy his own realm with the Knights of the order when he finally turns back into gigolo happens every time the gray March starts order appears and not become jyggalag and wipe out the whole realm you know when you hear this Daedric Prince say this stuff you tend to go oh dang dude alright what do we do when I hear myself say it I go what what the what the hell did I just say anyways you're basically trying to stop shale gorath and his alter ego from destroying his own realm so you're off to stop the order once again on another front but when you return shale gorath tells you that your time is up as his manic and goofy demeanor shifts to be a more serious and thoughtful one lion that wasn't funny at all he then pulls off one of these classic maneuvers and [ __ ] clean off this leaves you with Haskell who tells you that there may be hope yet you are told that you have been trained to take the mad gods place and if you are able to construct a new staff of shale gorath then you can rule the Isles in his stead and hopefully halts his destruction as the newly reborn jyggalag so you go off to fetch a stick from the same area of the water temple where you fight your clone in ocarina of time or in the great palace if you're super old-school then you grab that stick and this nice lady kindly donates her eye to your cause you Jam the eye onto the stick and that's how you make a staff except you got a blessin but the problem here is that jig logs newly found Ally the former duke of Mania has infiltrated the tree from which this blessing comes from thus limiting its blessing capabilities I think this is when I started to realize my biggest issue personally with the Shivering Isles the dungeons are designed much better than the vanilla game but they have a tendency to stretch on and on for far too long in my opinion I particularly noticed this more with the quests where you ventured into trees the main issue here is that I started to get this idea in my mind that the Shivering Isles aren't as unique as I remember them being because I felt like I was trapped in a lot of the dungeons for much longer than I had anticipated it really made me yearn and wish for more unique and interesting scenery especially after the vera mina Daedric shrine quest it just feels like the realm of the mad God of all places should have had the most interesting and varied map types in the whole game random voids with different colors venturing through a seemingly normal temple door and emerging out into a snowy mountainous bridge in one room and then crossing that bridge and finding yourself on the inside of a volcano and the next just nonsense you know but maybe that's a bit stereotypical I'm not really sure I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here I'd love the Shivering Isles even more so after going through the entire vanilla game and comparing it to them I don't want to mindlessly nitpick but I also don't want to mindlessly praise it at any rate after you wait for these big dumb lumbering idiots to open the passage way so that you can cleanse the tree you return and empower your new staff you are now treated as shale gorath and just in time as the order invades that try to wipe you out I guess I didn't expect too much but I was still pretty underwhelmed by this fight the staff is really cool and allows you to freeze everyone so if you had stocked up on hearts of order then this fight is about as simple as freezing everyone pushing hearts in and then fighting jyggalag which seems like it's going to be tough but I think most of the common enemies in the Shivering Isles are tougher but I think that this may have been intentional it seems like a super underwhelming boss fight but then jyggalag appears once more telling you his story basically jyggalag was once a powerful Daedric prince who spread his order across the seas of oblivion every passing gave him more and more control as his forces pushed onward like wildfire soon the other Daedric princes felt threatened by him and cursed him with madness turning him into shell gorath at the turn of every era jyggalag was allowed to be himself once again and he dominated and wiped out everything that he had built as shale gorath but every time that he did he would soon revert back to his insane form and the cycle would repeat this was the first time that he had been defeated and it was all because you had taken the place of sheogorath because of this the curse had been broken and jyggalag is free to roam once more so in other words a happy ending for everyone plus you get the best reward of all there are a number of benefits to which you are entitled as well as a number of duties to which you must attend radiant quests all in all I'd have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised with the content I missed in Oblivion it was nice to not only experience a large portion of content which was new to me but to re-experience the insanity that is the Shivering Isles sure there were definitely parts of both the side quests and the Isles that were a bit lackluster but I honestly have to say that this whole endeavor has me really waiting my stance on both the way I play my games and on Oblivion's overall entertainment value so here's my quick final breakdown of oblivion as a whole and I will note that I did not cover the order of the virtuous blood but can confidently say that it will not affect my judgment here the main quest isn't horrible but it's also not great I'd put that at the middle ground the mages guild is boring and not fun at all in my eyes the arena is fun but has little depth to it obviously the Thieves Guild is good but it falls short of great for me the fighters guild suffers from a very slow and tedious start but ends spectacularly the Dark Brotherhood reigns as king of all of the guild quests hands down the side quests which I experienced were for the most part decent with some standout all-star quests which carried the rest the Daedric shrines were nearly all phenomenal and the Shivering Isles were as always my favorite part of the game as a whole my final final assessment is that if you haven't played this game and have any remote interest in it please pick it up when you can and mod it definitely mod it if you can if you've played through the game in the past but can't quite remember the details I encourage you to run through it again if I haven't completely ruined it with my videos and if you really didn't enjoy it before I mean you're probably not gonna even like it now let's be honest but if you want to torment yourself anyways I tell you to hit a few side quests run through some of the Daedric shrines hit up half of the guilds and play through the Shivering Isles and that's it man that is it I appreciate you guys hanging out for another insert amount of time here adventure and definitely want to weigh in on skyrim and morrowind at some point as long as you guys don't kill me over them but either way I'll probably wind up covering some other topics between now and then so hang tight on that and as always I sporadically stream on Twitch whenever my little heart desires so you may catch me there until then have a good one

Channel: The Salt Factory

Views: 1,257,244

Keywords: The Elder Scrolls IV, TES4, TESIV, Oblivion, Analysis, The Shivering Isles, Side quests, DLC, Review, Breakdown, Evaluation, Ranking, Daedric shrines, Molag Bal, Painting quest, Kud-Ei, A Brush with Death, Through a Nightmare Darkly, Walkthrough, Sheogorath, Jyggalag, Haskill, Jayred Ice-Veins; a true legend, Gatekeeper, Mania, Dementia, I am robot, beep boop, i make tags, in hopes of success, Merry Christmas, Azura, Clavicus Vile, Namira, Sanguine, Vaermina, Nocturnal, Malacath, rip

Id: AnEcWql-zBk

Length: 34min 35sec (2075 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 25 2018