In the story, Odgrub has just left Nord-heaven and doesn’t know what to do next!
Before his next trip to Nord-heaven, I knew he had to do 3 things: he had to find the
gauntlets, to speak to a dragon, and to fight the Ebony Warrior. The challenge was in choosing
the order in which these things are shown, and in stringing them together into a coherent
story. The first thing was how to get Odgrub to the
mountain, which seemed a good place for all 3 things to happen. This was the hardest bit
for me. With hindsight, saying that he wanted to end it all by jumping off the top of the
mountain would have made sense, but for whatever reason I went down the ‘he wanted to be
alone’ route instead. In a world littered with tombs, bandits and settlements, the top
of a mountain is pretty much the only place you can hope to find some peace and quiet!
So he heads off to the mountain.
There’s a quest in Skyrim that involves killing Parthunnax, the friendly dragon…
simply because he did some bad things, long ago. Although it’s not part of the main
storyline, it’s easily mistaken for it. I suspect many people have done this quest
and then when they learn they didn’t have to, regretted doing so. It just seems unnecessary,
and out of character with the rest of Skyrim’s missions. The Odgrub videos have always told
their own stories, but also try to represent what Skyrim is like as a game, so I knew I
wanted to include this weird dragon-killing quest in the Odgrub video somewhere. It changed
places several times- it was originally even before Lydia was killed, and then slowly moved
later and later into the video so as not to interfere with the Lydia betrayal sequence.
Because of this, I revisited this quest several times during the making of Odgrub 3. By the
end I knew it well, and realised it fits in with the Odgrub story better than I first
expected. Parthunnax is a dragon who has done terrible things in the past. He has since
changed his ways, struggling against his evil nature to become something good. That’s
exactly Odgrub’s story! The dragon even says that, since Odgrub’s soul is Dragonborn,
he suspects that Odgrub has to battle the same evil temptations. Wow! Skyrim is a game
that lets you play however you like. But if what Parthunnax is saying is true, then the
player SHOULD be evil and merciless, just like a dragon! You’re supposed to be like
Odgrub! This explains why Odgrub is so evil, and makes
his quest to become good even more remarkable. At this stage, while Odgrub’s still not
a good person, something about that dragon encounter has given him reason to live. He’s
not ready to give in just yet, and decides to try and undo the damage he’s done to
Lydia. Somehow. I wanted this sequence of him searching the
mountain for Lydia’s gauntlets to go on for longer. I love the mysterious, scary nature
of big jagged cliffs and perilous drops and wanted this to feel like a real adventure,
but at the same time can’t risk people getting bored so shortened this scene several times-
this also helped sync up the emotional bits with key parts of the music track. Why should
only the fight scenes be synced to the music? I referenced a lot of the second Lord of the
Rings movie in the second Odgrub video- seemed fitting to reference the third in this third
Odgrub video too. And then he heads down the mountain and encounters the Ebony Warrior.
You really can’t trust me as the narrator in the Odgrub videos. I lie, I mislead, I
troll! At this point I give the impression that he’ll collect the gauntlets and then
travel to the clever people at the College of Winterhold to find a way of undoing the
curse. But of course, that doesn’t happen, and was never the intended story! But it’s
important I tell the audience that this is the plan. First, it gives them a story to
follow. Second, it nicely moves Odgrub from A to B to C in a way that sets the story up
for later. And third, it makes Odgrub’s DEATH more of a shock when it finally happens.
Again, building the audience up for a happy ending and then cruelly SUBVERTING THEIR EXPECTATIONS!
Odgrub had to die. I teased it in the trailer. I teased it in his dreams! And for Odgrub
to always be the best makes for a boring story. The Ebony Warrior is better.
Odgrub’s back in Sovngarde. I had a lot of fun with this series of cinematic shots.
I felt starting with the sky shot made more sense, since he’s just entered Sovngarde,
but there was something cold and sinister about the statue shot that made me put it
first. And the music- oh the music! It’s my favourite
tune from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. It felt wrong to use something other than Elder Scrolls
music, especially for such an impactful scene. But you know how it is. You imagine how the
scene will play out in your head for months, a tune gets attached to it and then you can’t
imagine doing it in any other way. That’s what happened here. There’s something selfish
about pet-projects like this video. I want to get the viewers to enjoy the same stuff
as I do and that sometimes means shoehorning unrelated stuff in.
The jumpy pie was just something that happened. And while it may not have suited the theme
of the rest of the sequence, who was I to question Skyrim’s will?
I imagined this to be an emotional scene and very possibly the end of Odgrub’s journey,
especially for viewers of the premiere who don’t know how long is left to the video.
But with hindsight, I think its impact is overshadowed by Lydia’s death and possibly
the ending. Had these not been done then I think this would have risen to become the
tragic bit the video. Odgrub’s dead and he can see how little impact his life has
had. He has no Lydia, he has no friends, and having to spend all eternity in a place like
this is a fate… worse than death? It is death so I don’t know what I’m talking
about there.
Which begs the question: if you’re dead, can you die again? We’ll soon find out!
Fans of the Odgrub videos will be rewarded for noticing how this scene repeats this bit
in the first video. That beheading montage in the second Odgrub
video was a problem for me. I could see no way of one-upping it. But Odgrub going to
heaven and killing everyone there came a close second, and I think with the added story element,
stands as a pretty decent segment in its own right. It was also the hardest bit of the
video for me to make. 3 Skyrim videos in, I’ve gotten proficient at recording footage
for it. But I know very little about the editor. For obvious reasons, Sovngarde doesn’t let
you equip weapons. I posted on forums asking if there was a way of being able to kill everybody
in Sovngarde and I got the usual answers that don’t answer anything, from people who feel
the need to answer even when they don’t have one. They’d be all like ‘why do you
want to’ and ‘hmm you should be able to’ and I was like SCREW IT and found a solution
myself. The way I did it was to clone the whole place. With a different name, I could
equip my weapon again! …But there was another problem. Nobody was in this cloned Sovngarde
region! I’m assuming that’s because they’re still all in the proper Sovngarde zone.
A game-changer that they introduced for the Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was the radiant
AI system. I think people forget what Morrowind was like- NPCs in that game would walk about
the spot they were placed. If they were outside, they would always be outside. If stood in
a corner in a house, they’d always be stood there. The world felt lifeless and even imaginative,
child-Philip picked up on this. Fast-forward to Oblivion and Skyrim, all NPCs in these
games exist somewhere in the world at all times, going about their daily routines, getting
stuck in places, doing unexpected things and so on. The problem was they teased this before
the game came out under faked, scripted conditions so when people got to play the game they were
disappointed. And whenever it goes wrong, the radiant AI is an easy thing to blame.
But for me, that was a game-changer! How many other games bother to simulate a world? Stalker
did, but as much as I wanted to I never enjoyed that series. The Sims did… but that’s
pretty much what the game is. As far as I’m aware, no game series bothers to simulate
the lives of NPCs in quite as much detail as the Elder Scrolls does, and it’s a very
overlooked element of Skyrim in my opinion. It’s a game-changer. There was a quest in
Oblivion where you had to reunite family members who had been separated for years. When it’s
complete, one of them goes ‘Thanks! I’ll go there to see him right away!’ and runs
off. I followed him, just to make sure he did it properly. And he did.
I can forgive the bugs and shortcomings for a game that puts so much love into the world’s
inhabitants. And it makes the massacres Odgrub goes on all the more meaningful. I love Radiant
AI. But at this moment it’s the bane of my life,
cos it’s stopping NPCs from being in 2 places at once and I some how had to convince them
to travel to my cloned version of Sovngarde. I messed about with their options and all
that and EVENTUALLY I had some success… with some of the NPCs. I cloned the ones that
did work so that Odgrub had enough people to bash to make for a decent massacre. With
hindsight it would have just been easier to place them in the new Sovngarde using console
commands. And then the next problem was that they refused to fight me unless I had hit
them personally 5-6 times! So I’d disable AI, bash a load of NPCs with
the shield until they hated me, then would enable AI again and have a bit of a battle.
Because of this, the Sovngarde fight is one of the fakest and most modded bits of the
video. But you’d expect that wouldn’t you. He’s killing people in heaven! This
is Odgrub’s last massacre. It’s a farewell to his old way of life, and a celebration
of sorts as well. Don’t know why Nazeem’s there. But it’s funny to slip mans1ay3r
references in so why not. Why are the owners of Radiant Raiment worthy of Nord Heaven?
Got to be some hidden joke there. If you pay close attention you may even spot Angi, who
Odgrub teased at romance with… before killing her. And now he’s gone and done it again.
They never had a future together! So yeah, Sovngarde fight was a struggle, it
took a lot of time, it brought back frustrated memories similar to when I first started mapping
or making my own games. But in the end it all paid off and it’s one of the bits of
the video I’m most pleased with, even if it’s modded beyond belief and makes little
to no sense when you step back and think about it. Where do the NPCs go when they die in
Heaven? I like to imagine they just respawn after a day or so. Maybe Lydia will some how
emerge from the gauntlets, or some smart guy in Sovngarde will take a look at them and
find a way of doing it. I don’t know. It pays not to think about this bit of the video
too deeply. Just turn your brain off and enjoy watching Odgrub bash people one last time.
And I think I finally perfected the Odgrub video style with this fight! Especially that
first bit, where every sword bash is synced to a bit of the song- even if some of them
aren’t shown on-screen. It’s awesome, and one of my favourite bits of the video.
After watching this one, the fight scenes in earlier Odgrub videos feel somewhat lacking.
But that’s progress for you! I don’t think I’ll be able to apply this same style to
different video series of mine, but I feel it’s a skill I’ve picked up from this
Odgrub series and that it’s helped me to level up as a Youtuber in some way.
I’m not sure why being kicked out of Heaven would send Odgrub back to the real world.
Bit of a cop out if you ask me. But at the same time, he’s forsaken his place in Sovngarde
so it’s not been without consequence. It’s at times like this that I feel my thoughts
on religion slip into the video. This life is certain. The afterlife is not. Is it worth
behaving in a way in this life in the hope of living forever in the next? I think Odgrub
banishing himself from a happy ever after in exchange for one more chance on Earth says
everything that needs to be said about my beliefs. I mean, for him he even knows that
an afterlife exists, yet he still thinks the legacy he leaves behind on Earth is more important
than living forever in heaven! And the other thing this video touches upon
is redemption. Is it possible for someone like Odgrub, who has done so many terrible
things, to ever be forgiven? I think one of my strengths as a Youtuber
is that I get bored of my videos before my audiences do. I was bored by the second making-of
video but by that point it was too late to turn back. But yeah, as much as I love how
EVIL Odgrub is, there’s only so much I can do with his character… being evil. Only
so many videos that involve him butchering everybody he comes across before it becomes
dull and predictable. By carrying down that route, he either dies a villain, or lives
long enough to become rather boring. The first question I want to ask is: does
him turning good in this third video ruin the first 2, or does it work better? I personally
don’t think this video would have worked as well without the first 2. Rather than just
starting this video by telling people he’s an evil person, we’ve got 2 previous videos
as proof. We’ve had time to see him kill innocents. We’ve taken delight in it! So
for it all to work against him once he becomes good is almost like a… twist! I think it
will let viewers watch the earlier Odgrub videos from a new and more tragic perspective,
one that ultimately ends with him killing the person who cares about him most. So that’s
my reason for going down the redemption route with this video.
If I ever make a making of of this making of, I’ll talk about how in an early version,
this video ended with a 5 minute rant about religion where I shared my rather strong opinions
about certain aspects of it, but luckily I saw the light and chose to cut it all. That
Harry Potter tangent last video was bad enough! But I feel I need to talk about it a bit because
I do think religion has shaped this video somewhat.
Something I once asked some religious people was if God could ever forgive Satan if he
was genuinely sorry for what he had done. I mean, if God is all-forgiving then I don’t
see why he couldn’t. And it surprises me when religious people say that Satan has gone
too far to ever seek redemption. It’s not like I deliberately went out of my way to
make this video ask religious questions, but I do wonder if the talks I’ve had with religious
people, and their surprising stance on Satan’s forgiveness, has in some way inspired Odgrub’s
redemption. And it begs my second question: has Odgrub gone too far to seek forgiveness?
Of course, it’s not a God who’s judging him- it’s the people of Skyrim. And I can
understand why they might not be forgiving if he’s already decapitated the rest of
their family. So I’m going to ask you: do you think, IF there was a sequel to this Odgrub
video, that Odgrub would ever be able to be forgiven by Skyrim? And if so, what would
it take? …And is this story more interesting than
if he was still completely evil?