Anyone who knows anything about triple-A game development will understand: creating games
of any size, but especially on a massive scale, isn’t easy.
And with a series as ambitious and expansive as the Elder Scrolls, it is even more difficult.
So it’s probably not surprising that some pieces of content in Skyrim just don’t make
the cut.
Features can be cut due to time constraints, quality concerns or just straight up not working.
Some of that stuff manages to be discovered after the fact though...and a lot of it is
pretty interesting.
So this week we’re going to be making our way through just a few of the many features
that never quite made it into Skyrim.
We’ll start with a small, but interesting, change that was made to the game.
The Elder Scrolls is known for giving players the ability to explore and make their own
choices but there are some people you meet in the game that are basically invincible...no
I’m not talking about characters marked essential, although yeah, them too, I’m
talking about children.
As you probably all know, the player isn’t really allowed to do anything to them throughout
Skyrim.
This was not always going to be the case though.
Cut dialogue from the game reveals that at one point there were plans to allow the player
execute kids if they wanted to, in keeping with the rest of the game.
For unknown reasons though, this was changed well before release.
Leaving all the children of Skyrim safe from all your bloody rampages. Until you install that mod of course.
Speaking of Skyrim, divorce was another feature that almost made it into the game.
There was even a whole quest dedicated to divorcing your spouse if you chose to do it.
And apparently this made it pretty far into development, with fully voice acted lines
being found in the game’s files.
The lines include stuff like "You're a monster.
Leave and never come back.”, “We have nothing to talk about!
I can't believe what you did to me!”
But that’s not all, apparently it was also possible to remarry, since there are lines
like “Alright.
We'll start again.
But watch yourself."
and "You're testing my patience, but very well.
I'll give you another chance."
In the end though, Bethesda decided to drop divorce altogether.
Leaving marriages just a little bit happier in Tamriel.
One of the most interesting things cut from Skyrim is the possibility of a much more advanced
and dynamic Civil War.
Sure, the battle between the Stormcloak Rebellion and the Imperial Legion was pretty memorable
in the game we got, but there was originally meant to be a lot more of it.
Large scale sieges were initially planned for every major city in the game, with there
even being a possibility of winning or losing them based off your actions.
There were also going to be quests where the player tried to get soldiers to defect from
one side to the other, possibly changing the course of the war.
Killing enemy generals, freeing political prisoners, attacking settlements, even the
ability to give money to the families of those who’d lost men in the war.
The Civil War story was planned to be incredibly ambitious.
One of the cooler things cut was the ability to purchase land and set patrols on them.
Unfortunately, as we all know, these inclusions were not meant to be.
And it is generally thought that time constraints, along with Skyrim’s engine being unable
to handle huge battles well, is what kept them out.
But hey, there's a mod for it! But it's pretty buggy as it stands or at least the last time I played it.
Elisif the Fair, the Jarl of Haafingar and the widow of High King Torygg, is a fairly
minor character in Skyrim, but she is still marked as essential and cannot be killed.
That wasn’t always the case though.
One scrapped quest in Skyrim shows that the player originally was meant to be able to
kill Elisif to appease the Daedric Prince Boethiah at some point during the game.
Not much is known about the quest, but some of the left behind dialogue does give us a
hint of who would have ascended to the throne, with a guard saying “Damn Stormcloaks.
First Torygg, and now Elisif.
Let's hope Erikur fares better than they did."
Speaking of rulers getting bumped off, a lot of unused scripts and dialogue in the game’s
files show that the great Nord warrior Hrongar was going to replace Jarl Balgruuf at the
end of the quest “The Whispering Door”.
This is because not just Nelkir, but all of Balgruuf's children were meant to fall under
the influence of Mephala, and all three of them would end up killing their father.
This of course never happened, leaving the Jarl still in charge.
These are just some examples of content cut from Skyrim, but if you have more let us know!
And we’d be happy to include them in a future episode.
Okay next up is our comment showcase!
In our episode about the similarities between the Imperials and the Roman Empire, Orlel
Eise also had a theory of who they could be based off of, saying: “The Empire is also
based on the British Empire, since the Imperials were enslaved by the Aylieds, similar to how
the Britons were 'enslaved' by the Romans and Normans.
Also, you've got the East Empire Company being a parallel to the still-existing East India
Company.”
What do you guys think?
Do you agree with the theory or do you have another idea of who inspired the Imperials?
Now for our our shoddy comment, which comes from Rich “Red Cell 96” Montalvo this
week who says “I don't also start a rebellion, but when I do, I'm a puppet to The Aldmeri
Dominion and don't even know it.
- Ulfric Stormcloak”.
Damn.You all seem to HATE the Stormcloaks.
Is anyone willing to stick up for these guys?
Finally it’s time for some trivia!
The answer to last week’s Fallout question was D) The Brotherhood of Steel.
This week we want to know who was the first ruler to establish a centralized kingdom in Skyrim?