How realistic is Skingrad from The Elder Scrolls Oblivion?

get your medieval geek on with shadow versity hoodies available through teespring link in the description [Music] greetings i'm chad and welcome to my realism and practicality review of skin grin one of these cities from the video game the Elder Scrolls oblivion now in this review I'll be looking at how effective or sorry how effectively designed the city's defenses are and also how realistic and practical they are compared to proper historical medieval architecture that's embattlement designs fortification I have to say I just love skin rad and also all the buildings and cities in Oblivion and the attention to detail is exceptional in this game they have this wonderful high medieval style to the architecture and it just looks beautiful now that isn't to say it's perfect see what we see here in at the buildings is that the upper floors overhang the lower floors now this is a very historical design style for medieval style buildings but what they've done here is they've actually done it a bit too much for a stone style buildings you see how much the upper floors are being extended out from the roll ones this upper wall here should really be resting on the horrible that is supporting it underneath if it was built out of that timber the Timbers could be jutting out to support this extended wall and in timber buildings you can get and just to let you know this style it's called jetting so jetting is the name for when a building's upper floor is extended out above its lower floor and for timber buildings you can jetty the upper floors to the extent that we're seeing here but because these are stone it's just extended to much like this wall and like I said it's stone it's very architectural II unsound and it would collapse I mostly what we're seeing here is architectural II impossible what is we've done is what we see here see how the corbels supporting the walls underneath are in line with the with the wall above it that's how it should be done and that's how they were done historically and also how they're done on Castle style battlements but still you know we're there's minor inaccuracies like this they're mostly forgivable when in regards to just how beautiful they are the lead 10 to the D now see the timber framing here I just looks brilliant and the Gothic Chapel here but let's have a look at the city overall and thanks to the wonderful open cities mod we can zoom out and have a look at this city's layout in a great detail of course the first thing to mention as I always mentioned with the city slash castle reviews is the size and skin grad is not the size of the city it's of course far too small but if this city was say ramped up in size but the basic layout as we see here was kept the same oh my goodness this is a beautiful way and one of the best I have ever seen in fact I want to say one of the best I've ever seen I'm referring to video game cities do you see what they have done here have a look where the primary entrances are well first of all they're of course three are two of them kind of run down the guts of the city dividing it into now I'm going to talk about this more because there is a lot to talk about this design feature but first I want to just address the third entrance off to the side because having this third entrance here might seem like it is undermining the defensive advantages that I'll be talking about on the two main entrances and that is not actually the case because this third side entrance it opens to a bridge which leads to another kind of a mountain which would be a hard to get access to especially for like siege engines and stuff and it also has a secondary gatehouse to this third entrance well you see a given man is like you've you've seen any of my castle reviews before you meant yo he me mentioned that having secondary gate houses are awesome well skin grade has that doubling up the defenses of this third entrance so I consider it quite well fortified and it doesn't undermine the two main entrances of the city now let's have a look at it now as I mentioned these two main entrances cut the city into from a defensive standpoint this is brilliant it means if the enemy ever breaches one of these outer gate houses for the third entrance I have another gatehouse to deal with and for the two primary entrances they get caught in the middle of two defensive walls on either side if you've watched my review of the Imperial City specifically part two I mentioned how they could have improved the connecting roadways to the prison and also the wizards college thing that they should actually have two walls on either side of the walkway and this is essentially exactly what has been done here you see with castles and castle like defenses it's much easy to break through the gates they're not trying to make your own entrance by breaking through one of the outer walls the gate is wood much thinner than the six stone so they need to be the most heavily fortified parts of any type of medieval style defences now so the enemy of course that's where they're going to target generally most of their attacks unless it's so fortified that it would be suicide which is the whole point you want to strengthen the weak path but say if an enemy does manage to break through the gate they get here and they don't have direct access to the city because there's you know a bit of a mound barrier here and unfortunately what there is and that does not seem to be portcullises blocking off these two kind of entrance ways from the bridge bridge and also the actual entrances from this section to the main cities now if there does look to be of course for a portcullis I just don't see one because say if the portcullis was raised from this you know entrance this archway gates well there's not enough room for it to fit into the wall above so there's actually no portcullis here at all this is a big defensive blunder but I mainly put that down to a modeling game error and then you know because if anyone actually did make this city and they would have brains to put it there but still I got to take points off for that like I've taken points off for every other city that does not have portcullises or room for portcullises in their archways but say if they were there okay and an enemy broke through they wouldn't be able to get direct access to the archways and entrances from the bridge or the main access ways from this kind of I would call it the kill zone because look at what they have on either side here two big defensive walls and one of the things that I particularly love about it is that the battlements of these walls are facing the direction where the enemy will be so often when you know videogame castles and designs like that and I will put a caveat here because you also see this historically done when an enemy is able to break to get in behind the walls of a city or castle there are no battlements on the backside sometimes there are but also historically sometimes there were not and in my opinion it is far more advantageous to have double sided battlements on walls so if an enemy ever breaks in and gets behind them the defenders on the wall have cover and are able to fire down on the attackers who are inside and this is what we see here this is one of those ultimate kill zone areas which are just brilliant are big points to skin grad for having this so the overall layout that we see here is brilliant and it's also brilliant even for the size I say skin grad was just a four to five commune say it feels like a a monk ad or something like that brilliant okay very defensible this is truly a fortress and if you were to ramp it up in size as well but keep the same layout still brilliant wonderful so now that was how to look at the layout let's have a look at some of the more kind of small our defensive elements like this thickness of the walls or just the walls let's have a look at the walls themselves and first thing yes the thickness is a brilliant look at it this is at least two meters thick this is exactly as thick as you would want a city or castle wall to be aa big points and then the Merlin's are the right size head height and not only that on top of that we have arrow loops in between the Merlin's it is a very historical design not all Merlin's had an arrow it loops in between but many did very historical very accurate and very effective so the advantage of having an arrow loop on a Merlin is that if you have a defender standing here and so there would be about head height so about here now you can either lean out and fire down at attackers you know assailing the walls or if there's too much arrow fire you know shooting at them and of course shoot through the arrow loop here yeah brilliant see these straight kind of stone pillars that are running down the walls these are called buttresses now buttresses came in design war so with Gothic cathedrals because to build stone high and for it to be stable they need to be thick that was the medieval kind of mentality but if you wanted the wall to be much thinner and to have the same height you would put what's called a buttress on it which is Aziz which is a part of stone which extends out of the wall to add extra stability and that enabled stone walls to be able to be thinner but built just as high so in regards to having buttresses on an actual thick castle like wall there's no architectural reason for them to be put on there apart from aesthetics and they great okay and so it's interesting there are a lot of Castle design elements that were added purely for aesthetic reasons so I'm not going to detract points are you know from skin grab for having buttresses along the wall because they also serve as intermediate kind or intermediary mixing up my words here are Merlin's as well yeah defenders on these walls could use these buttresses as cover as you know they are effectively Merlin's so I will actually you know kind of a few more points in my mind for this city slash castles defenses now of course we will get to the castle itself which is right here and if there's a lot of good things about that castle see here on the Gothic cathedral itself ah this is exactly where you need buttresses and of course it has buttresses as well and this like they have just this is a textbook perfect Cathedral scaled down which is perfectly fine there were smaller cathedrals and there are larger ones but in terms of how accurately designed this Cathedral is mostly accurate okay there are a couple of odd things see like the buttresses here are extending on the inside of the wall which could be done to give that accessibility doesn't really need to be the main purpose of the buttresses as they extend out from the wall on the outside not on the inside so the outside here to add that stability because of all as much thinner and what we have here see these things here these are called flying buttresses and so the purpose of these buttresses these are suspended ones in the air add to add stability to the inner wall because there's generally not as much room for actual normal buttresses but the put normal buttresses here extending on the inside which is a bit odd but still I mean overall this Cathedral is just brilliant just add another thing that is brilliant you know attention to detail chimneys you see how all these buildings most of them thank goodness have chimneys every many evil building whatever if it was meant for any level of actual human habitation would have a fireplace and chimneys that was a main and only source of proper heat in this period and of course there's none of our farms in the surrounding land around about so the gate houses all of them seem to follow the exact same design mostly so the gate houses the two main gate houses on the city have the odd kind of flanking tails are I'm hard-pressed to call them actual flanking cars because they are not extended far enough out in front of the gate and so when we see here no flaking towers here which is you know that's not a historical thing it just means it's a bit less defended than what it could have been but a real but there's a question of are they necessarily in and see this one here it does have two proper flanking tails but again they are not extended far enough in front of the gate to enable anyone who's actually kind of in these towers to properly fire down people trying to batter down the gate itself and they will be out of fire to some extent to people on the bridge but to get the best angle of fire these two towers here would be extended forward and this is where we see a very common design style for a medieval castle and/or city gate houses where the flanking towers are architectural II combined with the gatehouse itself but this does not mean what is actually here already isn't good sorry like this gatehouse here no there are no flanking towers but it is still brilliant for one glorious thing and it's the same on all the gate houses can you see what is so good about it let me come down I'll come down and show you what is so brilliant about these gate houses design we will go in and what do we see particular yes there are properly designed the circulations here you see here provision it is not blocked off and a yes if we go right in we can say look there's a they have a model but that's because I have a model be inside of the you know upper gate house itself it is clearly being made to show that these are proper architectural machicolations have a look people I actually think this might be a first alright this might be the first time in there any video game castle city review where I have seen actual my circulation and it's not just you know on this gate house look it's on both sides of the gate house see here so the Korbel extending an opening for you know people to be out of fire down in between so as long as they're - on all of the gate houses look my circulations this gives skin grad and oblivion to some of the biggest points I've ever given to any city or castle us like it is rarely ever done but this is one of the most you know serious and effective you know design features you can have on castles and they look brilliant because so often people think this design where you have these small art rages in between the corbels people think that it's just an aesthetic visual thing and they've been that has been added for pure visual embellishment on castles even historical castles and it was done just purely aesthetic you know extensions that did not have the military application at all but to see it done properly okay on real castles and video game consoles is brilliant this really makes skin grad one of the most accurate and effective city flash castles I have seen to date in any video game look at these windows beautiful and supported by you know proper stonework underneath and it just just looks great so yeah just something odd about this gatehouse he here is again there's no portcullis now you know there does seem to be enough room that it could have been raised up into the gatehouse above but the odd thing is we go have a look at you know the companion gate house there's a portcullis here but yet there's no port colors on this one down here so there's an oversight isn't something to be there so yeah that's a bit weird a little dumb and the other thing about are this gatehouse that you know look this is great don't get me wrong I think it's one of the better gate houses I've actually seen in any video game so far as I've mentioned but doesn't mean it couldn't be improved like the thing that I mentioned about the flaking tails being in the right position as opposed to the gate itself and then it could have had to portcullises not just one sitting smack bang right in the middle because if you had a front one and a back one you could then fit in murder holes in the tweener which would just increase its defensive capabilities more so ya see this hill that connects the third entrance from the city to the castle it's pretty high it's got some steep edges to it so yeah as I mentioned before you're not going to get siege engines up on top of this thing so then that's the thing because this is the main entrance to the castle so someone was trying to assault the castle through its main entrance you have to first get on top of this hill and the easiest access to this hill is from the third entrance but to get access to that third entrance on the bridge to the hill you need to get into the city and so that is a lot of layers of defense now I'm not saying that just men you know could run up this hill they could but trying to defend themselves properly and without you know siege equipment helping them it would be very much suicide so the terrain here is really helping out the defensive capabilities of the city and castle as we see it and in respect to the castle as opposed to the city I love it it is just awesome first of all its position is glorious like I've mentioned in other castle videos at one of the more important principles castle design is location you know the saying location location location well with castles that's the first primary thing you would want to look at because if you put the castle on the right location it can almost become impenetrable just by sheer inaccessibility from its position and skin Grad really has this hour speaking of the castles can grand not the city now just have a look at it there's no way siege tower or even like look you could probably set up trebuchet Zhai you know for at a distance from close enough I'm what I mean to say to be able to bombard at the castle but it would be difficult like that you can't get right up close to it I must mention its outwards defense meaning this beautiful big bridge leading from its primary gatehouse and having a secondary gatehouse on the other end this is so good I like this is what you want okay this huge big bridge here will bottleneck the enemy and really it's the only primary way of approaching the castle any other way is extremely difficult like look at how steep the hill that it's on okay so effectively you really do you have just one approach which is the bridge right here so the enemy is going to be completely bottleneck and then there are two gate houses to it 1 external gatehouse and then the primary gatehouse to the main castle body and these gate houses have articulation on them and yes the flanking tails could be done better and there could also be a drawbridge okay so there one or two missed opportunities here but look at the way they have to approach now the inn pressing thing about having this big bridge here is that there are many historical castles that had bridges to their main front entrance that also did not have draw bridges when there could have been draw bridges added to them the best example that I can think of this is Corfe castle one of my all-time favorite historical castles a big beautiful bridge leading to its most external gatehouse and it's a net kind of external Bailey and what's interesting though there isn't a gate house on the far end of the bridge of Corfe castle but it doesn't necessarily need it because there are like two or three other gate houses you've got to get through to get to the main castle body itself so it has that layers of defense element but just like Skindred castle again no drawbridge on the bridge that leads to the gatehouse so not unhistorical just in my mind it could have had been more defended than what it is but that's the thing you can never really have too many defenses on any castle like building and sometimes people are satisfied with enough you know enough defenses to do the job to protect the occupants if it's a city or a castle just if it's enough to protect the people enough is enough and so I think that is a mentality with the bridge of course castle and therefore also applies here with the bridge of Skindred Castle now regards the castle design there are some great elements to it and just one or two odd things there are no windows of any you know significant size close to the ground it doesn't have battlements on the back end so that is a you know I negative to it but then you have to ask how many people will be trying to assault the castle from this side because there aren't many windows facing it for them to get through anyway I mean you would only assault the parts of the castle that you can get purchase on so that means running up with ladders to try and assault the walls to get access to the ramparts attacking or trying to batter down the front gate and then of course getting access to Windows and so if there are not any of those things ramparts windows or gates what on earth you trying to assault you know what to get onto the roof good luck what what good is that going to do and so because of that there is not much need for skin glad to have you know battlements on its backside the only exception to this if they try and bombard that part of the castle with some serious kind of siege equipment like Attribution but that's just going to demolish that part of the castle and then you could try and get people to you know get in but demolishing a castle isn't always a great thing one you can use it then afterwards and two are the rubble doesn't go anywhere so if you knock down a part of the wall oftentimes the rubble is going to be in your way to try and get into the castle as well someone obviously lost the plot when modeling this part of the roof of the castle what is going on here is unless they of course who really ever would actually get up to see this part of the castle and they also using free cam so extra the context of playing the game normally you'll never see it so I guess I just left it like that still is a mess something that I really love about Skindred castle is that it's a layout so when we look at it from above its outer walls and layout are basically comprised of different buildings and so this is interesting because that's and it's also a historical thing so if we have a look in closer just to emphasize what I mean it just doesn't have a wall which creates an internal Bailey the wall itself is made out of different buildings different structures that can have rooms or any number of things within them so if we have a go down close and have a look here from the Bailey we see these are essentially different parts of the building and now of course when you go in you can't get access to any of the rooms that would be in these you know parts of the building and structure but they essentially create the outer wall this is exactly how another historical castle was basically constructed to get at the castle kind of style which is having an internal Bailey and such and that is chateau de chillon or castle chilean this is one of the most beautiful and iconic kind of real medieval style castles that you will see and it honestly comes up a lot in terms of when people are showing awesome pictures of castles or even making 3d models of castles many people take chateau de chillon as a foundation or inspiration for their designs and what you'll see here on Shelley on is that its entire structure is made out of essentially different buildings that are all interconnected making kind of a ring forming the common castle like layout as I mentioned we just have an internal Bailey in fact there seems to be a lot of similarities between Julian and skin God castles so the fact that skin Greg castle is done in the same way just thrills me and adds to the realism of this castle and it makes it so much more immersive there is like the way I kind of describe it and this is how you can kind of look at a lot of medieval castles and even just start cottage designs there is this chaotic kind of realism and it's almost like it's mish-mashed together in terms of what parts of the building are then put on next like we'll just add a you know a lot a square kind of a building here and then a more rectangular one next to it and like I said it creates this chaotic kind of symmetry all symmetry but everything then sits in balance and it just looks really aesthetically pleasing as a result like a chaotic balance to it all I love it and skin grand castle has it's one of the best video game castles I have seen and of course big points for having those my situation right there out in front on the skate house so when we have a look at the castle of Skindred itself combined with all those brilliant elements that we looked at of the city ah my yes skin grad so far the best medieval you know city castle in a video game that I've reviewed so far in my mind this is even better than novigrad particularly because of all the bigger you know points the castle itself received and how well done it was so there you go this has been my historical evaluation indeed my analysis of the medieval castle like defences how realistic and effective or practical they are of course skin grad from the Elder Scrolls oblivion thank you very much for watching it has been a pleasure I hope to see you again and until that time our [Music] [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 491,977

Keywords: the elder scrolls, oblivion, skyrim, castle, castles, defence, defences, fortified, fortress, building, design, battlements, review, analysis, history, historical, skingran, game of thrones, medieval, sword, swords, shad, shadiversity, lord of the rings, fantasy, epic, video, game, dnd, dungeons and dragons, d&d, rpg, roleplaying, for honor, knight, samurai, katana, realism, realistic

Id: DIOGzOJaEkM

Length: 30min 4sec (1804 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Gutgrinder]

Turns out Bethesda nailed most of it from an historical standpoint. The layout of the defenses actually make sense.

[u/xOsibis6]

MACHICOLATIOOOOOOONSSSS!!!

[u/ilikedickssir]

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie Oi Oi Oi