Skyrim - The Problem with the College of Winterhold

what's going on ladies and gentlemen my name's Michael and welcome to fudge Muppet today we're gonna be taking a trip to the most arcane joinable guild in Skyrim the College of Winterhold the College of Winterhold is the default faction you join in almost any major playthrough if not simply because it gives you access to vendors who sell lots of good spells and offer some of the highest tier training why no means do you have to join the guild but I at least found in my mage playthroughs it pretty much always happens it's a resourceful guild to be a part of but what about the main purpose of the faction being in the game anyway you know to provide an awesome guild for magic users to join and complete quests for to develop your spell casting talents earning the respect of others and uncovering power until you become the Archmage yourself it all sounds very exciting and by no means do I think the College of Winterhold in Skyrim was awful but I would say that in some ways it was disappointing I could remember in 2011 when Scott and I actually got our pre-orders a day early I finished the college of winterhold storyline the next day on November the 11th the official release now it's usually when you first finish a storyline that you're the most blindly impressed I walked over to Scott and kind of told him it was cool and I liked it but I didn't vibe it as much as the mages guild in Oblivion in this video I'd like to have a discussion with you guys about how it could have been a lot better quite easily - so with that said let's first take a look at the setup of the college of winterhold and then go through the details and of course spoilers alert and a warning in advance that I do rip on the College of Winterhold storyline a lot in this video but I obviously still do enjoy playing it and as you know love Skyrim to bits so the college of winterhold is situated in the city of Winterhold and is basically the only institution based in Skyrim that is dedicated to the study of magic aspiring mages aren't exactly spoiled for choice it is said to be created by arch made shall adorn himself existing for thousands of years prior to the events of Elder Scrolls v skyrim legend has it that shall adorn even built the city of Winterhold itself with a whispered spell Winterhold was actually the capital of skyrim long ago although it has become a lot less inhabited and far less desirable than ever before this is mainly due to an event known as the great collapse in which a freak disaster saw most of the city fall into the sea of ghosts when to hold resides on a cliff overlooking the sea and after this categories event involving a series of never-ending damaging storms not many buildings remained no one knows for sure what caused the freaky and natural events that triggered the collapse although many Nords who are already very distrustful of majors blame the college of winterhold the fact that the college miraculously did not fall into the sea makes things even more suspicious because of the great collapse the majors are less trusted than ever although the college claims they had absolutely nothing to do with it perhaps it was an experiment gone wrong or perhaps as some in the college claimed it was due to an earthquake that occurred in Povetkin the eruption of Red Mountain that happened after then again the great collapse occurred in one hundred and twenty second year of the fourth era over a hundred years after the eruption of Red Mountain it doesn't really add up and considering that the Archmage is a Dunn MA and that dunmer majors tend to find refuge in the college it makes the racial tensions between Nords and Dark Elves even worse Winterhold has become a very sad place and you can find the residents drinking away their grief in the frozen half in but you would think that after such a long time since the great collapse people wouldn't really think about it all day and would have rebuilt quite a lot but anyways we're here to talk about the college not the town after the collapse the fortress like college is more isolated than ever before and it's perched on a big rock that's shaped sort of like an ice cream cone a long stone bridge that must be incredibly sturdy connects the college to Winterhold and parts of this bridge have crumbled falling into the sea below when the great collapse happened to be honest I would have preferred it if prefers the fleshed-out Winterhold greatly and ditched the whole great collapse thing altogether but I guess it's not the worst setup surely the guild really redeems the rest of the city I mean it all looks very mystical in arcane so let's go visit this amazing place and see what we can find now before we can travel across the bridge we come across a woman named for outer outside and for outer won't let us in unless we can demonstrate our skills as a mage she'll ask us to cast a spell or if we're forced to come here as a dragon boy and she will ask to see a shout either way he must complete this or use a hundred in the speech skill to convince her to let you in she'll direct you a cross the bridge and give you access to the college you're directed to a lady named Mirabelle who happily gives you a pair of robes to wear so you can begin your tour of the facilities and your apprenticeship she shows you around and specifically shows you the Hall of attainment which is your new quarters as an apprentice this incapsulate s-- the first let down i had with the college of winterhold which becomes a lot clearer when you go to the lecture hall you see while this is the college of winterhold there's actually only three students in the whole academy not including yourself then there's the other quarters called the hall of countenance and this is for the senior faculty members you know teachers scholars and vendors who specialize in a respective magic school or skill the layout of these quarters is basically exactly the same as well there's ferrata the destruction master drevis the illusion master finished guests or the conjuration expert colette marin's the restoration obsessed expert and Sergius tori anis the guy in charge of enchanting these instructors aren't particularly interesting but they're not the worst characters as far as Skyrim goes my main problem with this whole thing is that there's only three students plus you in the whole damn college and a whole load of instructors literally twice as many instructors as students before you walk in there I don't know about you but this is one weird College now I know it's not meant to be some thriving Hogwarts kind of faction but surely there would be more students than teachers and just more students in general I mean luckily there was just one spare bed remaining for you but what if another capable student comes along is he meant to sleep on the floor now I can imagine that Bethesda just decided to focus on making the students that were there more memorable like Brianna the aspiring done mermaid with a tell Vani family Almond who has been interested in magic since he was a child and of course j'zargo the competitive and smug Khajiit who's always seeking new information to learn these student characters were solid but I think everyone would have preferred if they were way more people studying here even if Bethesda didn't want to spend time creating lots of in-depth characters because they wanted to focus on a select few I wouldn't even mind if they had just added in a bunch of robed individuals of various races simply named students they could be seen going around the college reading and practicing spell casting and generally making the College of Winterhold feel like the place it's meant to be the center of arcane learning in Skyrim now I know that Skyrim isn't exactly filled with aspiring mages but there's certainly more than three capable people who would seek out the location and join the faction becoming students even if you couldn't have conversations with these random student and PC it would still be cool it would also make the instructors seem more valuable as they would be scarce err by proportion perhaps we could actually see the instructors giving these students lessons instead of sleeping and eating bread all day a lot of these instructors aren't even masters - even though you can do the ritual master quests with them plenty are just expert trainers anyways there's more members at the college of winterhold who you meet soon enough we've already met Mirabelle who is a master wizard there's or a Grolsch of the college librarian and Maria who is another out muscala although she doesn't offer you any training this is also a Breton conjurer named Arnie alkane who is a scholar and spends tons of his time researching things unrelated to spell casting for example he has a keen interest in - Hema secrets so including the Archmage and Carnot and a few others there's like 13 members and three students some of these members are done well and others are very boring and lack any depth but regardless of this it just accentuates the lack of students even more so in summary we could have added more NPC students doing various activities around the college larger accommodation for all of them and fleshed out the tutors making them feel like masters of their crafts instead of meeting the illusion master and having him not sure if he's still invisible or not and speaking of mastery another annoying thing about the college was that the master spells you obtained by doing these ritual quests weren't even as good as just jewel casting expert spells and the quests themselves were weak sauce for example the restoration quest has you visit the augur of Don Lane which we'll talk about later and you're just stripped of your gear and attacked by ghosts you just have to survive a time period by using restoration magic and you finish the quest you now have restoration master spells you can also just use shouts like become ethereal to survive imagine instead of just standing in a room being attacked by ghosts and calling it a quest you actually have to survive some sort of gauntlet for example so it works on the same concept of taking your gear and testing your restoration skill but it would just be way crazier involving traps full damage that is calculated to hurt you but not kill you instantly and even undead attacking you this would also force you to whip out those turn on dead spells to really show off your restoration prowess maybe in this gauntlet you and another major each paired up with a warrior and you have to fight each other so you have you and an armored warrior on a team versus another mage and a warrior then whoever the best restoration talents when it came to healing their warrior and keeping them alive would win this is just me spitballing random thoughts but you can see how these master quests really could have been more developed the illusion quest is just as simplistic and boring you're taught a novice spell to go locate four books around the college go collect them and there you go how about instead of this you're sent to investigate a town that has a massive illusion spell or up placed over it people in the town are having huge mood swings as a result sometimes civilians will break out into frenzied combat and other times the guards will be so relaxed they can't be bothered to fight crime you go there to discover the source of the illusion magic and after using your talents to investigate you track down a mastermind mage the source of the problem you defeat him in battle by using illusion spells to turn his allies against him and then you can loot a powerful tome of his corpse a book that explains how his illusion magic is so strong and detailing the master spells you then learn expensive quests like this would have been much more appreciated like I said it wasn't too good that a lot of the master spells you've got were then too time-consuming to cast and not as effective as jewel casted expert spells the illusion master spells are a prime example while we're on the topic of spells the lack of spells available in general also didn't impress me too much especially in the conjuration tree you see oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game and I actually played as a conjurer in my first playthrough I loved having a huge list of things I could summon instead of just three elemental action arcs and a small few extras although obviously the addition of necromancy was pretty cool this isn't exactly a fault of the college itself but why not have exclusive new spells inside that expanded the lists of spells you could get why not give us the ability to summon scamp's clan fears hungers day drops and spider Daedra why not give us the ability to absorb enemy skills using a spell or the option to cast to reflect spell on ourselves damaging enemy majors who try to hurt us I think when it comes to spell variety more is actually better but anyways let's get into the storyline so you've gone to the college they accept you into their incredibly small student numbers after you show them you can cast a spell and then you go and listen to Toth dear do a lecture on wards the other students beg him to teach them something more exciting which is very cliche to be honest but nonetheless he persists with his lesson on wards he asks you to cast you do and he casts a fireball at it you block a spell and the lesson is over well now that you've learned how to block a spell it makes complete sense to send a complete rookie deep into an ancient Nordic ruin you know the place that most scholars like Toth tierno are filled with dangerous threats like draaga Tofte will even mention how dangerous it is although at least he travels with you and the rest of the students and in theory could keep you safe sadly Ward's don't block the edge of ancient Nordic swords though south wall is one of the most ancient Nordic settlements in Skyrim well it was a settlement but not so much anymore Safa was sacked by snow elves in an event known as the knight of tears that said not much is known of the place and the College of Winterhold believed it to be a good place to study the magic used here long ago there's magical seals placed on the tombs which they're quite intrigued by each students given a task and has an opinion on the place and you're told to gather some nearby artifacts for Arne I'll gain one of the scholars working in there he's not too happy to see you and gives you a fetch objective you go find some enchanted rings and an ancient amulet there's no enemies either so it's been pretty boring so far that said when you pick up the amulet a spear trap activates behind you locking you into a small space now things are getting interesting you then equip the amulet which lets you see some resonance coming from the wall and you shoot a spell at at which makes it collapse the trap is also load and Tofte comes running on over you walk through the now accessible part of the ruin and a ghostly apparition of a member of the Civic order appears he spouts some mysterious predictions to you saying no that you have set in motion a chain of events that cannot be stopped judgment has not been passed as you had no way of knowing judgment will be passed on your actions to come and how you deal with the dangers ahead of you this warning is passed to you because the siddik order believes in you you mage and you alone have the potential to prevent disaster take great care and to know that the order is watching Toth deist saw nothing of the ghosts but when you tell him he tells you it's Orden that you should take it as a compliment because the siddik order only deals with those they consider worthy you a complete magical novice has been considered worthy now it could just be because you're the Dragonborn but then why wouldn't you be addressed as such I find this a bit weird because for those who don't know the CID you can order possess some the most overpowered mages ever and could easily deal with any threat you're faced with weirdly it almost seems like a test as they say judgment will be passed based on your actions to come perhaps they'll actually let us join their order and we'll end up going on crazy adventures with them sadly not the case anyways you continue through the ruin and fight Drago with Toph dear which again I think is really weird because he's only taught you to cast the ward spell and is now happily fighting hordes of undead with you risking your life maybe this is why there's hardly any students the other ones are all dead eventually you come into a large room with a huge spinning orb in the middle and it looks super arcane unfortunately there's a highly powerful dragger here drawing energy from it and it's up to you to defeat him while top tier servers this enemies energy source after you kill this opponent top tier can study the orb more closely you're told to go back and report to Archmage Aran and say you've found something magical in nature like nothing they've ever seen before Aran first says please don't tell me that another one of the apprentices has been incinerated I have enough to deal with right now what kind of college is this for the students and you thought college loans were bad anyways Aran just tells you to visit the librarian for possible leads involving the artifacts which gives you the next quest this quest involves retrieving three books and on your way out to find them the Thalmor advisor and Cano who is just so heavily foreshadowed to be the bad guy asks you to tell him what you saw after this you continue on your way now it just so happens that the exact three books you need in order to research the orb which was only just discovered were very surprisingly recently borrowed by a runaway apprentice named or thorne this is the biggest coincidence of all time and I'll suggest an easy alternative soon anyways you go track this guy down who has apparently joined a rogue group of majors in fel glow keep you fight your way through hostile mages until you meet a thorn and it turns out he was actually imprisoned in a cage as a test subject you can free him and he's obviously grateful and will fight alongside you make your way up the tower and battle the leader taking the three books from her you can actually trade her or thorne for the books to avoid conflict if you want to anyways it's not the most impressive quest but it's still fun seeing his fellow keep was full of mage experiments and the leader known as the caller was intimidating too and I definitely think that instead of doing the whole oh wow a student just happened to take those exact three books related to the thing we only just discovered thing you could have just been told that you need to find a election of powerful ancient texts buried deep in ancient Nordic ruins this could then lead you to some beast locations which explore their historic relationships between the Nords and the snow elves back in ancient times so you take the books back and in the meantime Tofte has magically and discreetly moved this giant orb from South Pole to the College of Winterhold excellent work Tofte has been studying it it is the eye of Magnus an ancient artifact of great mystery and power the writing on it isn't a lead Daedric or elven and karna the Thalmor elf who seems very suspicious tells us that we have an unexpected visitor in the Archmage quarters who wants to speak so we go and meet another member of the Civic order Warren II he freezes time to speak to you and you can only hear him he basically says that we must stop someone from abusing the eye of Magnus and tells us to seek out the augur of Don Lane we asked our fear about it and when directed to what is essentially a sentient aura in the basement called the midden the midden is a cool enough place although again I wish more happened with it had loads of potential it's basically a dungeon underneath the college that contains stuff like the Atronach forge and also this augur of Don Lane being the augur is actually a former major of the college but he ended up becoming this magical aura due to his overzealous ambitions he essentially died and his soul became fused with the energy from the college area he's known for his great wisdom but his kept secret to me the ogre was quite intriguing but I would have actually loved to learn the hard truth about him I know some things are better kept mysterious which is why I probably wouldn't want to es6 to be in black marsh but I feel like the orga would have benefited as a character if we were actually told more about him anyways the augur is used as a plot device to point you in the right direction and you're told you need the staff of Magnus to avert the disaster the siddik order warned off you tell what the augur told you to the Archmage who tells you to tell this to Mirabel who then tells you she heard members of the synod talking to other members of the synod about a Dwemer ruin called me soft it's a lot of he-said she-said middleman messenger stuff anyway she thinks they may be traveling there to find the staff so off you go to ms often you find a dying Synod researcher he's conveniently dying just in time for you but just manages to get out some final words of course crystal gon find paratus in occu Laurie perfect timing am i right anyways you make your way through the ruins finding a living Synod member paratus and going to the ocular II this holds a big drum machine with unknown purpose paratis is quite suspicious of you understandably you use fire and frost spells on the dwama device to bend light differently until finally a map is produced paratus says it shows that there's something causing interference from your college something of great power he's very distressed and increasingly suspicious quite mentally unstable if you ask me but then for some reason ends up telling you that the staff of Magnus is in the labyrinthian and that he wanted to use the ocular II to scan the lands for powerful sources of magic for the good of the Empire I think this is all quite strange as if he suspected you are up to something he shouldn't help you at all though perhaps there could have been an option where he's rambling on about the Synod actually starts to intrigue you and then you have the option to suggest joining their ranks and helping them with their goals perhaps betraying the College of Winterhold admittedly this would be hard to write into the current storyline so it would probably be a case of rewriting the whole thing from the start to make it work in the first place perhaps we could be put in a place where an opportunity to help the Synod seemed very legitimate maybe the dodgy nature of the College of Winterhold was made more obvious and your character believes that the eye must not only be kept out of the wrong hands but that it is already in the wrong hands altogether you may want to give it to the Synod because you actually think they would keep it guarded better and use it for good regardless of what happens here you have to go back to the Archmage to tell him what you've learned but before you can leave yet another member of the siddik order appears telling you that you must go back to the college ASAP and difficulties lie ahead but you're on the right path and I quote you will prevail well that really takes the suspense out of it doesn't it look there's some super crazy dangerous stuff about to happen and I'm an omniscient fortune-teller who can basically do what I want but won't help you but don't worry you don't need my help because I already know you're going to prevail don't sweat it you're destined to win it goes without saying that they definitely should have removed that you will prevail part so you go back to the College and the Archmage enter Mirabella panicking the gates of the room holding the eye of Magnus is blocked by an arcane barrier and then Carnot is in there doing something to it surprise surprise the Thalmor character that was foreshadowed throughout the whole thing to be someone you shouldn't trust was someone you shouldn't trust it was very predictable wouldn't have actually been really interesting if the Archmage himself betrayed everyone and an karna was actually a well-intentioned elf obviously giving his allegiance to the Thalmor but providing a more great perspective on their goals instead of Bethesda just painting them all as evil this would make sense when we find out about the past actions of the Archmage in the labyrinthian he could have been a much darker character underneath the surface maybe he reveals that the college did cause the collapse by accident and he covered it up who knows anyways the Archmage tries to stop an carnot and a huge explosion happens killing the Archmage and sending you flying away top tier is there and tells you when to hold his under attack by whatever powers killed the Archmage you go there and slash at magic anomalies which are just these small blue orb things flying around after you kill them you're told the only way to stop an Karno is to get the staff of Magnus so guess what the entire time you go adventuring through the ruins of the labyrinthian and carnot is still in there just messing with the eye and no one can stop him the CG quarter doesn't even try to intervene also apparently before the Archmage died he gave Mirabelle an item called the talk of labyrinthian which he gives to us we use it to open a door at the location and go on with the quest so we go through these ruins which are pretty cool and they feature a skeletal dragon which wasn't explained at all I made a video called the two unexplained dragons which you can check out if you're interested in some theories on us as we venture deep in these ruins we see ghostly apparitions of past events involving the now deceased Archmage and some students he took to the labyrinthian in the past turns out he led an expedition that saw all the students die due to the dangerous dragon priest named more acai more oak I will speak to as you venture through the ruins towards him training your magic her in the process also it really makes Aran look like a massive dick because not only did he force two of the mages to stay behind to try to seal moeraki away so he could survive but add it to that snobby comment he made earlier that was like please don't tell me another apprentice has been incinerated he really should feel shameful saying things like that after what he did and again it would have made it all the more fascinating if he did turn out to be a character who fell from grace becoming shameful guilty and eventually unstable and dark anyways you eventually find mark I defeat him and take the staff of Magnus from him and return to Winterhold killing more magic anomalies and going into the College you used the staff to break the barrier and ultimately take down NCAR no saving the day and being promoted all the way to Archmage now acidic monk appears again congratulating you he says you met his expectations which really shouldn't be a surprise because they knew it would happen and then he says the order will safeguard the eye because the world is clearly not ready for the eye as n carnage is demonstrated again I'm not sure exactly how it makes sense if they knew it was gonna happen in the first place anyways after all this they take VI with them and go you can then complete a radiant quest that involves killing those blue balls the magic anomalies all over Skyrim so here's the quest line in a summary cast the spell to get in block a spell and Alexa go to a ruin and pick up an amulet cast a spell at a wall and to meet an apparition from the siddik order find a giant glowing orb and talk to a librarian about it go to a fort to retrieve three very needed books that happen to have just been taken and speak to a sentient aura in the basement about it consult the college scholars and go to a Dwemer ruin where you'll meet a member of a different mage faction who is super suspicious of you but cooperates and tells you where the staff of Magnus is anyway get told you're going to succeed no matter what by acidic monk and go to the College where surprise surprise the suspicious thermal member has betrayed you to gain power from the artifact you found at the start go get the staff from the labyrinthian which I must say was a pretty cool place and then go kill an Karno get promoted to Archmage and watch the siddik order congratulate you for something they knew what happened and then take the I do two reasons they also seem to know would happen it was a very quick storyline that can be completed in under three hours and I must say I do feel pretty bad for ripping on it so much in this video obviously it's still fun to play it's still scar and I did still enjoy it somewhat but it just doesn't stand up to the magic faction storylines from previous Elder Scrolls titles and I definitely wish they added in a rank system imagine if by doing the main plot quests and extra side quests you were granted a new title within the college and given new benefits making you actually feel like your progress was being recognized instead you just go from noob to Archmage super fast even though there appear to be wiser and more competent mages in winter hold who should likely have the title instead like I said I also wish we had the opportunity to join other factions like the Synod I know it seems far-fetched but it's just a gripe I have with all the Bethesda faction storylines for example joining the Silver Hand in the companion storyline would have been based pun intended now imagine how crazy it could have been to join the CG Korra after you proved yourself this small storyline could have turned out to be the opening to something much larger imagine if the siddik monks said they had something to show you and then teleported you n to the I to the Isle of Artyom there quarters artyom is an island in the Somerset archipelago that the city order made disappear entirely around the end of the first era they brought it back 500 years later and kept where it went a secret it then vanished again between the time of the Civil War in Skyrim and a hundred years prior the location features orchids in pastures tranquil lagoons and misty Woodlands it could be home to some seriously powerful spells that you can only learn to cast if you are a true master and a whole new plot could unravel involving events more significant than locating a staff to stop a backstabbing thalmor from abusing the power of an artifact secured in the college and that concludes my thoughts on the college of winterhold storyline and the problems that I had with it what parts were decent but mostly what parts didn't fulfill their potential I hope you liked some of the ideas I went through and I'd love to hear what ideas you can come up with in the comment section below it's always good to brainstorm together as a group to really create some sensational concepts social media links are in the description my name is Michael and I look forward to nerding out with you again very soon

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 1,954,976

Keywords: skyrim, elder scrolls, skyrim critic, skyrim mage, college of winterhold, skyrim problem, the problem with skyrim, winterhold, synod mages, what skyrim could have been, mages guild, arcane university

Id: vHkjchvpcC0

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2017