Skyrim - The PROBLEM with the Companions Faction & Questline.

when the snow elves entered safal in the night and began their slaughter of men likely for their discovery of the eye of magnus it was said that only isgramor and his two sons survived they fled the city in fact they left skyrim entirely just making it out alive isgramor ventured back to his homeland of atmora and there he gathered 500 powerful warriors at maurens who would sail back to tamriel to seek vengeance on the elves who wronged them ultimately these warriors would force the snow elves spirits to the sky in death or deep underground as they sought refuge with the dwemer eventually being twisted into the corrupted falmouth we see today regardless of what you think of israel's actions there's no doubt they have earned him a highly esteemed place in nordic culture with his story still told to this day and many settlements and structures his people built still standing isgramor has since departed from tamriel buried far north in the winterhold region but his legacy lives on and in the elder scrolls 5 skyrim you get to take part in it or at least in what it's become maybe isgramel would be rolling in his grave if he knew of what had been made from the history of his group today we're going to be looking at the player's experience with the companions directly and discussing what i believe to be the problem or problems with the guild what's going on ladies and gentlemen my name is michael and welcome to fudge muppet today we're taking a trip to what i'd say is skyrim's most iconic city white whiterun and signing up with one of the most prestigious factions in the game if you're like me you probably joined the companions in your first playthrough as a warrior because it's the only warrior guild you can join you kind of have to join it as a warrior class build if you're looking for a fighter's guild type experience although sadly in my later playthroughs of skyrim i'll often give it a miss for the reasons i'll be covering in this video instead i choose to focus on being a warrior hero by doing dragonborn related stuff the main storyline the dragonborn dlc and even joining the dawnguard and exterminating the vampires it can all feel very warrior-like but the companions as i'll explain don't really seem to stand for much nor have a compelling well-devised main plot that makes it inspiring to be part of their faction so your first encounter with the guild was probably outside of the city when you find some of them slaying a giant together if you help them you'll be praised and directed to join the companions if you don't help them or more likely they just kill the giant before you can even get there you'll be ridiculed but then suggested to head to the guild hall anyway i can't tell you how many times i've had to pull out a bow and fire long shots from afar just to avoid being told off by ayla it doesn't really make sense that you're asked to join regardless of what happens but also it doesn't make sense to be told off for not helping they're meant to be the grand and mighty companions some of the best warriors in all of skyrim tasked with jobs that pay well and help skyrim's people such as defending people from the threat of a giant who are they to criticize a pass by is it not their contract that they're being paid for and them who have trained for years on end to deal with such matters you might be a simple farmer a traveling merchant or an old lady on her way to buy some alchemical ingredients it's not really your problem imagine a group of muscular beefed-up bouncers outside a nightclub having a go at someone walking down the street for not helping them to handle a drunken brawl with someone twice their size it just doesn't make sense but putting the small stuff aside let's go to the guild and see what they're all about so walking into the guild hall you'll see some of the lower ranking members having a brawl with everyone gathered around cheering the fighter vibes are hearty and it feels like the perfect place for a warrior to be your vasquer itself this honored and ancient mead hall looks sensational built from the ship that brought isgramor and many of the original companions to skyrim the skyforge outside is also brilliant and as you probably know has some really cool lore behind it anyways you want to sign up for this cool guild so you go to the harbinger of the companions kodlak white mane and ask to join for whatever reason he sizes you up as worthy but vilkas a master trainer in two-handed and a high-ranking member strongly disagrees regardless of what you say about your combat skills you're directed to fight with vilcas outside in the yard so he can see what you can do he'll refer to you as a whelp which seems to either be their lowest rank just an insulting term for a rookie or a mix of both it's hard to tell as there's no strong ranking system or sense of where you stand in the guild which is a problem with many of skyrim's guilds now you may think well they explicitly say in the companions that no one answers to anyone and so forth but clearly while that may be the case on paper that's not really the reality i do like the idea that kodlak advises but never commands but he still sits at the head of the guild and i can't imagine you getting far with the faction if you just constantly disagreed with him and didn't help him and then there's the circle the higher-ups who don't force you to do jobs but you'll have to do what they say if you want to progress in the story vulcus does actually say to you you do what we tell you clearly there is a hierarchy and if you don't do the tasks those above you give to you you're not going to get very far so after you strike velcros a few times in the yard he asks you to take his sword to yawlin greymane the blacksmith who then gives you a shield to take to ayla or ayela however it's pronounced it's said differently by different members of the faction you talk a little with ayla and skewer before they call farkas to show you to your quarters he tells you that you can just find a bed and fall in it whenever you're tired and it's mentioned by ayla that this is where the rest of the whelps sleep according to farkas they're eager to meet you well it turns out most of them look down on you and can't believe that you've even been allowed in regardless of your accomplishments or abilities so one of the problems here with the guild is that there's no solid recognition of who you are you could be the most powerful dragonborn ever slayer of alduin maxed out all your skills come walking in garbed an enchantic daedric armor with a flaming dragon bone sword and you'll still be looked at and treated like a noob even if you one shot vilkas in your training session this lack of immersion could all have been fixed with just two or three extra dialogue lines about how you're actually strong but still need to prove your dedication to the guild it wouldn't be that hard to just add it in and make a thoughtful role-playing walk around for high-level players so okay you're a whelp and the other whelps can't believe you've been let in regardless of your power level but then out of nowhere you begin your ascent to the top of the guild with blinding speed you have to do just one radiant quest which they force you to do constantly between missions throughout the main plot and then you're already tasked with going after a fragment of wuthrad a scholar tipped the guild off on a potential location holding a fragment of this ancient and powerful battle axe once wielded by isgramor himself and they want you to go get it as a trial considering that many of the radiant quests aren't too ambitious it's quite odd to send you who is apparently a mere whelp on this mission so soon maybe you just went and killed a wolf or a frostbite spider that entered a citizen's house honest work but not exactly impressive all of a sudden they're sending you deep into a drag-a-filled ruin to get a piece of wuthrad in fact for some reason they've really decided you're the person for the job and skill wants to speak with you about it immediately before you go do anything else they send farkas with you and he'll fight alongside you but the point of him going is more to watch you perform and make sure you don't die personally even if a fragment isn't 100 confirmed i'd still be sending at least two members of the circle out for an item that is supposedly of great significance to the companions anyway on the topic of radiant quests most of them are honorable enough but they're not very interesting having radiant quests isn't something i'm a huge fan of because it seems to be a crutch for bethesda to make it feel like the player is part of the entire main purpose of the guild without doing anything that meaningful related to it because as you'll see in today's video the whole main plot is a bit hazy and seems to just focus inwards on private affairs as opposed to focusing on the guild itself perhaps the possible directions it could go in or what it means to be a companion and live their way of life you could argue that being a companion literally involves helping anyone else in the guild with the troubles they're facing and therefore that's what you're doing but having the whole focus be on dealing with the silver hand who aren't really explored in depth and the werewolf curse or blessing just doesn't seem to be on brand for a guild based on isgramor and his followers i mean the climax of the story is you fighting ghosts and curing an old man's spirit of its werewolf ties that's hardly epic for a warrior's guild final mission after more and more thought the companions experience is a little bit like how you join the college of winterhold to be a mage and end up being an errand runner and a dungeon crawler instead of feeling like a student of magic well in the companions you joined to be a fighter or a mercenary or an esteemed warrior that theme of character but end up being forced into being a werewolf defending the guild from a faction of werewolf hunters who as i'll explain are likely justified in their action and then helping the old guy who ran the joint to remove his werewolf curse so he can go to sovngarde if you were to explain his grimoire and the original companions to me before i played skyrim and then said that there's a guild based around it this isn't really what i'd expected or want it to be i'm not saying the fighters guilty in oblivion had the best plot of all time by any means but at least it felt directed you represented the fighters guild in tasks performed for various clients within their main plot you constantly did fighters guild jobs related to their main function in society learning of new problems helping to address them and having adventures along the way that weren't just radiant quests as you did this you climbed the ranks gradually taking on increasingly important tasks and eventually dealt with a competing mercenary gang going undercover in their ranks meeting and interacting with characters and ultimately putting an end to them and their corrupt ways there was even that really hard hitting quest with the hist zap where you unknowingly slaughter a village that you perceive to be goblins there were some intense moments and the blackwood company was definitely a more memorable group than the silver hand with the companions you just end up forced into their werewolf club without the ability to say no and then solve their internal politics that have devolved so far from what the companions originally were with some basic radiant quests on the side to help make it feel like you're still some kind of warrior for hire maybe you rescue someone who has been kidnapped as one of the radiant quests but get this other times you act as non-question asking hired muscle sounds like the thieves guild's early mission to me you can full and be sent to go beat someone up like a paid thug with fokker saying he doesn't even know what it's about but that's not the companion's business anyway your job is just to look tough beat up this person and scare them into submission it seems like they really just do what they're paid to it's implied that the target has been giving someone trouble but if you don't know the full story or if their actions are justified how can you choose to get involved and feel moral or honorable about it the companions like to go on about living a life of honor but this doesn't sound too honourable to me imagine if you're a peaceful nord living in skyrim's mountains and some rich merchant wants you to sell him your land for cheap and vacate your home so he can build a gold mine there you say no and so he sends the companions to beat you up saying that you're causing him trouble the companions fixate on neutrality but just doing what you're paid to do can be far from moral i find it ironic that the companions won't kill for money because that's some assassin type evil work but they'll beat someone into submission within an inch of their life if that's what it takes with their fists with no questions asked regardless of the complications that in itself could cause but then again the companions don't necessarily claim to be chivalrous in fact if you ask all of them why they joined some of them just tell you that they like to fight and kill things and it's an enjoyable life for them while others just like collecting coin drinking mead and the feeling of being part of this family it's a lifestyle and being a companion means something different to all of them so really as you explore the main story more especially finding out that the circle are werewolves and tend to enjoy this curse or gift as they see it it seems the companions are quite the jumble and don't really stand for that much they're kind of just going with the flow which is what it feels like you're doing too as you play through their plot there are no overarching ideals guiding their ranks just a vague idea of honor there's no group goal that they all strive towards i mean they're not even upholding the same ideals isgramer would have had despite desperately seeking out his battle axe isgramor was a highly nationalist nord type and regardless of whether you like him or not the thought of there being elves among the ranks of this faction would have made him furious and upset can you imagine having elves enter the ranks of a traditionally anti-off group and then coveting this ancient relic of mass elf slaughter wuthrad it just feels a bit silly over the course of their history the companions guild has been many things and by the time of skyrim it really feels like the guild is just a bunch of blood-hungry swords for hire who larp as an ancient faction piggybacking off the traditional motifs of their predecessors but have actually strayed far from their original ideals honor to the guild members just means never backing down from a fight not operating from the shadows and looking out for one another again that's fine but that just sounds like the kind of default ideals that your average nord would carry through their life it's not uniquely companions oriented and for me this really diminishes the point of running the guild like it's this ancient nordic group but worst of all in the final mission we'll see that the highest ranking members of the companions can't even uphold this basic never back down attitude more on that later now if this was a thieves guild type situation where you could actually make a difference maybe build the companions guild back to a more old school traditional group or even double down in the other direction and take on more of the mercenary themes embracing lycanthropy for the purpose of completing jobs that would be really cool just some options to change things but unfortunately you're stuck with what you find when you get there and nothing really changes due to your actions besides the lack of choice there's not even a linear path of development or change for the guild and even if there wasn't going to be any change in the guild could we at least have the focus be on what the guild is meant to be about by the time of skyrim who the companions are just feels so ambiguous and unclear their plot feels like this too with you getting very little insight into the main antagonist the silver hand so after you finish just one radiant quest and go to get the wuthrad fragment with farkas you're trapped behind a gate and see him turn into a werewolf and slay some silver hand ambushes they could have looked super unique but instead they were made to just look like generic bandits hardly any effort was put into them this scene was also the first bit of skyrim footage i ever saw when someone licked it onto youtube before skyrim's release with a misleading title like laying carpets 4 or something like that so anyway farkas kills them you find out he's a werewolf and do a dungeon dive through draga getting the fragment and taking it back to your vaska you're then told to go out to the yard where there's a kind of initiation ceremony which is nice but i don't fully understand it in the context of where you stand in the guild so it seems like this is a formal welcome to the companions guild but if so then what is a whelp and why did ayla call all the other lower ranking members whelps when she said that this is where the whelps sleep are you now as an official member above a whelp are all those other members still whelps have they ever been officially welcomed like this after all this time or did they also get a welcome ceremony and are more like official whelps as opposed to unofficial ones were you not even a fully fledged whelp before it sounds silly to ask these questions and doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things but i just thought i'd point it out because it's another example of lack of clarity in regards to where you stand in the faction and all those other companion members who couldn't believe you'd been let into the companions still treat you the same nothing changes a lot of them are still rude they call you the new recruit life goes on anyways you're tasked with one more radiant quest such as killing a wolf again and then already it's big business time all you've done is one quest and two radiant jobs and skewer wants to meet you at the under forge at night for some secret activity you go into the cavern under the skyforge and discover that ayla is a werewolf too this is obviously a really cool moment in your first playthrough but it's definitely rushed you're now being offered to join the circle seriously unfortunately for all the ayla lovers out there the circle is not an exclusive dating app but rather the most trusted and respected group of the companions they act as leaders and shining examples to other members of the guild that's right after just one main quest one you ascend from whelp to some kind of official member to a fully fledged member of the circle complete with werewolf blood skullcuts ayla in her werewolf form so that her blood leaks into a basin for you to consume besides the fact that this faction progression is just awful and one of the main problems with the companions plot it also ends up delivering a huge blow to your role playing experience regardless of your role playing even if you're playing the most devout nord build who wishes nothing greater than to go to sovengaard you are now forced to involve her scene in having some kind of claim over your soul it's not the kind of thing that many character builds necessarily would want to agree to and have it forced so early into the only joinable warrior guild in the game is just wrong you can say no but then you just can't continue on to play the entire faction's story as skjor puts it to reach the heights of the companions you must join in the shared blood of the wolf to join the circle your blood must be ours he asks you are you prepared to join your spirit with the beast world friend by the way after becoming part of this circle the other low ranking members still don't change their attitude to you many still treating you in a condescending way in the dark elf even demanding you show him some respect this is even up until the point you're ready to embark on the final quest in the whole plot so you do the ritual and instantly become a werewolf you're forced to flee the city as you're being attacked by everyone in it quite irresponsible of these honorable companions don't you think they know that these transformations can be difficult and after you eventually black out you wake up in the forest and ayla tells you your transformation was even tougher than farkas in the law we know that werewolves have a bloodlust that is hard to resist we heard about it in the story of sending the werewolf sadly killing a little girl so why they would create a situation that could lead to the slaughter of white run is beyond me it also kind of lets the secret out of the bag right like it's not exactly low-key even if the silver hand don't have a history with the guild which is the theory we'll be discussing today it wouldn't be hard for some werewolf trackers to trace the origins back to the area around your vascular with the help of witness reports anyways you're with ayla near gallows rock a fort filled with silver hand and a silver hand leader crev the skinner ayla tells you score is scouting ahead and that it's time for a celebration to celebrate you're going to mercilessly slaughter all the silver hand there and according to ayla they always make such easy prey said like a true killer which fits her character well but it's a bit unsettling if you're not the kind of warrior who signed up to slaughter werewolf hunters in the night really your character might actually perceive werewolves as a genuine threat to society she also tells you not to transform publicly saying some cowards in this land can't stand the sight of glory before them which to be honest is just straight up narcissistic why should someone just casually accept that the person next to them turned into a blood-crazed werewolf while they were buying fruits but anyways you head through the fort killing members of the silver hand until you find a skewer dead on the floor near the silver hand leader ayla is not pleased at all but what did he expect going in all on his own crev the skinner is the most unique character you ever meet from this silverhand faction the only one with a specific name but unfortunately this makes it all the more disappointing as you don't actually meet him or her you don't get a story you don't even get a conversation creve is just a generic bandit that you fight and is randomly generated being able to appear as any race and be male or female talk about a lack of characterization ayla implies crev is dangerous but that's it for whatever reason she also looks down at skull's body and says i'm gonna find whoever did this creven the silverhand members did it isn't it obvious ayla says you and her have work to do and can then give you radiant quests to go kill unnamed generic silverhand leaders steal generic silverhand plans and recover more pieces of wuthrad they're basically meaningless radiant quests in locations randomly picked from a list with no unique characters at all but who are the silver hand do they really deserve to be slaughtered or are they in fact the ones being honorable and true to what the companions should stand for well to be honest we don't know for sure and as i've highlighted this is a problem with the plot we shouldn't have to make theories about who the antagonists actually are as fun as that is imagine fighting the stormcloaks while siding with the imperials and not even knowing what the enemy really stands for or you get told as they wear blue they oppose the empire's ways and that's it it would no doubt feel super underdeveloped so the silver hand they are often viewed as evil bandits with silver swords who just hunt werewolves for the heck of it names like krev the skinner are pretty evil and the torture instruments you can find show that they use some painful methods upon the werewolves they capture but let's not get carried away here torture is commonplace in the elder scrolls universe this isn't the 21st century if torture devices make a faction evil then the dawnguard are evil the empire is evil and pretty much every main faction with an army is evil and you may say okay but some werewolves are peaceful but consider this some vampires are peaceful too but you wouldn't think of the dawnguard vampire hunters as armored evil baddies with crossbows would you groups like the vigilance of stendar aren't evil but would definitely slay werewolves as well as daedra and undead werewolves are unquestionably dangerous everywhere beast you find in the wild is hostile towards you and they have a reputation for being creatures with this bloodthirsty curse for a reason as i mentioned earlier sinding is regretful of his werewolf status as it caused him to lose control and kill a girl he didn't intend to but only actions matter here even this circle revere the beast's blood power for its capacity to inflict violence and damage and when you first become a werewolf you can go on a bounty free killing spree of whiterun and ayla doesn't criticize you at all as for a theory i think that when turfg the harbinger of the companions a few hundred years before the time of skyrim accepted the werewolf curse and made a dodgy deal with the glenmoral witches the silverhead could have been a result of a group that splintered off from the faction they could have been companions who thought it was dishonorable and unthinkable desiring to one day go to sovengaard and or not have a daedric prince involved with a group representing isgramor's followers i suggest you check out the video linked below which scott made titled the hidden truth about the silverhand if you're interested in more insight than i have time to deliver in this video but i'll give you a condensed version right now so the companions have been around for nearly 5 000 years a few hundred years ago their leader made a bargain with witches to hunt in the name of her scene and be granted great power he didn't realize it would doom their spirits to her scene's hunting grounds from reading kodlak's journal you can get the impression that all the harbingers from then onwards willingly entered her scene's realm and accepted the curse and only the original one who made the pact regretted it kodlak the current harbinger also wishes to rid himself of what he sees as a curse but the silverhand members don't know this and would see him as just another companion willingly accepting the beast blood so you can imagine at the time this happened that many people in the companions wouldn't have liked the idea of having werewolves among their ranks especially as their leader and therefore could have decided to split creating a splinter faction a divide between the warrior group could also have happened later on as more leaders showed a willing acceptance fully knowing what they were getting themselves into this theoretical splinter faction would go on to become the silver hand we know today maybe they acted as mercenaries for hire and descended into a more bandit-like group over time or maybe they devoted themselves to creating a group that truly honored isgramor and killed these heretic werewolf types we can't be fully certain but what we do know is that the silver hand seemed to have a strong love seemingly an obsession with isgramor they are desperately seeking out and providing lots of resources towards getting fragments of isgremore's axe wuthrad and it's definitely not just so that they can ambush the companions werewolf members if they really wanted to make a trap to kill a companion they could have just paid off the scholar to give false info directing them wherever they wanted but instead as farkas says when you go to find the first fragment someone has been digging here and they're trying to get the same fragment that you are they would likely just know the companions would find out the same info and have prepared to attack them in advance it's interesting that throughout the plot the silver hand have gone to so much trouble to get pieces of wuthrad and really they could have directed all of this effort to just hunting werewolves instead after you slaughter the silver hand at gallows rock and do two more silver hand related radiant quests kodlak catches wind of what you've done and asks to talk interestingly he shows no aggression towards the silver hand he says your hearts are full of grief and my own weeps are the loss of skewer but his death was avenged long ago you have taken more lives than honor demanded the cycle of retaliation may continue for some time perhaps part of the reason he doesn't want to wipe out the silver hand is because he understands their point of view and kind of agrees with it regardless of his true feelings he asks you to go kill the glenmoral witches and to take one of their heads to be used as part of a method of curing his lycanthropy curse you can take extra heads if you wish to cure other companions later or your own werewolf form but again you shouldn't have had the beast blood forced on you to do the plot in the first place upon your return you find that he has been killed by silver hand attackers who stormed your vaska and instead of trying to slaughter other companions members seem to have quickly taken off with the fragments of wuthrad they stole the silverhand's liking of his grammar also seems to go beyond collecting the fragments of his axe when you loot the bodies of silverhand members sometimes they will have a book in their possession approximately three out of four times the book they possess is one of the songs of the return this is the book series which explores the time of isgramor telling of his deeds and the great events which took place involving the 500 companions there's approximately a one in four chance of there being a book on lycanthropy that's three times as much focus on the legendary feats of conquest and history of isgramor and the companions than on werewolves this combined with almost every interaction you have with them involving his grammar's acts makes me think this silver hand revere him just like the companions do now you might be thinking that isgramor is important to all nords and is a popular person hence the prevalence of the books but consider this the silver hand includes other races like the khajiit orcs dunmer and so on and they can all be found with these books of isgramor without some kind of cultural connection to one another there's no reason these races would be so interested in isgramor particularly so because his stories have nothing to do with werewolves or hunting them overall this makes me think the faction was originally connected to the companions and really you only look at them as evil because they're positioned that way if you got told at the start of skyrim that there's a group out there who hunt werewolves your brain wouldn't jump to oh they're bad guys would it anyways the fact that we have to theorize the depths of who they are is a problem with the plot in of itself but it's even worse that they might even be pretty justified and you're forced into taking the other side being able to join the silver hand would have been sensational there could have been so many cool silver hand characters to meet and hear the other side of the story from instead they're just presented as these meanie werewolf hunters there's no key figure to fight against or meet there's just no strong compelling enemy for the story so after kodlak dies vilkus wants revenge you go to driftshade refuge and slaughter your way through more silverhand members and recover the fragments of wuthrad there's an optional objective to wipe them all out but it doesn't seem to change the fact that you can hunt them through radiant quests ayla gives you so the silver hand isn't even exterminated by the end of the storyline after this vengeance you attend kodlak's funeral at the sky forge which is nice although if the plot was more fleshed out perhaps you'd have more time to grow attached to him outside of just a few interactions yoreland asks you for the fragments and asks for kodlak's secret fragment which you retrieve from his chambers you then go to the under forge with the remaining members of the circle where it is discussed that her scene has kodlak's soul vilcas talks about the legend of being able to cure kodlak's spirit after death but they'd need wuthrad to get into isgrimor's tomb then yorland walks in with wuthrad rebuilt and intact which you'll use to gain access to the tomb and ultimately free kodlak soul the members of the circle head off to isgramos tomb and you go with them taking the axe with you here you use isgrimoz axe to open the way forward but suddenly the most powerful members of the companions lose their nerve what little they stand for evaporates vilkas warns of the dangers ahead and says his mind is clouded by revenge and therefore decides to stay back at the statue bit of a cope if you ask me you fight through ghosts of the original companions until farkas sees spiderwebs says he's become scared of spiders now and decides to head back to the statue as well so much for the companions being all about never backing down you head further and further through with ayla killing spiders killing ghosts which let's face it are quite boring enemy types for the climactic mission of this faction after getting to the final room you find the ghost of kodlak warming his hands over a fire he asks if you have the witch heads to help with a cure and asks you to throw one into the fire you do kodlak's wolf spirit is released and you kill it curing him of his curse he thanks you decides you're the next harbinger of the companions and heads off to sovengaard ayla recognizes your new rank and farkas and vilcas learn of what happened too you can throw another head in the fire to cure yourself and later after more time to reflect vilcas and farkas can also ask to be cured which you can do if you remain a werewolf ayla can give you totems of hercine quests which let you go find three totems in radiant locations which can change up your werewolf howl powers that's pretty much everything oh and get this after you become the harbinger the other members of the companions who were often rude still hardly recognize your rank the effect is more like a disposition change with them saying hello friend instead of something less welcoming you can also ask them to be your follower now i'm not going to pretend like i didn't have fun the first time i played through the companion storyline i definitely did but upon reflection i think it's largely because of the gimmick of the werewolf form it's super fun to play as a werewolf so you're going to have a good time but if you step back and look at how the whole plot was laid out from a role-playing perspective there's a huge lack of choice in the direction things can go you're forced to be a werewolf regardless of your character's role playing the antagonist is super underdeveloped the whole story revolves around some internal squabbles of a faction that has fallen far from their original values but unlike a situation like the thieves guild where you can build the faction back to prominence and actually change something nothing really changes sure kodlak's curse is broken but the silver hand are still around you may or may not be a werewolf still ayla definitely is and the only mercenary work you got to do was basic jobs in the radiant quests here's a hot take i think if you took out the ability to actually become a werewolf and replaced ayla with someone people find less easy to fall in love with and get a crush on i think the entire experience would just rank way lower for fans at least in my opinion and you may say well heaps of storylines have a fun gimmick but really you could take out things like the nightingale armor for example from the thieves guild or the vampire lord form from the dawnguard dlc and the storylines may not be as cool but they would definitely still be solid the cool extra novelty stuff shouldn't carry most of the whole thing in the same way you could say dragon shouts are really cool and really fun but looking at previous elder scrolls games we don't actually need them for the main story to be good do we and that ladies and gentlemen brings me to the end of this video ultimately the companions guild needed more choice less being forced into things more recognition of who you are in steady rank progression a story that actually revolves around the main function of the guild as the companions and better justified characters so you can really stand by them and support them against the antagonist who should have been better developed even joinable thank you so much for watching this video i hope you enjoyed it and i hope you come check out our social media accounts if you're interested or buy some of our merch if you desire to support the content we make my name's michael like this video if you still love ayla no matter what and i look forward to nerding out with you again very soon

Channel: FudgeMuppet

Views: 789,350

Keywords: skyrim, skyrim problem, skyrim companions, skyrim companions guild, problem with the companions, problem with skyrim, skyrim worst faction, skyrim companions problem, skyrim lore, elder scrolls, elder scrolls lore, skyrim review, The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim, skyrim special edition, skyrim theories, fudgemuppet, elder scrolls v, skyrim gameplay, empire, ysgramor, skyrim werewolf, skyrim aela

Id: JrD26dnnL0o

Length: 33min 16sec (1996 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020