“Places just exist, and then things happen in them, and then the things that are happening go happen other places, and it goes back to just being a place”
Realest shit I ever heard

I play an argonian character. Literally last night at like 4am I was swimming at the bottom of the ocean looking at each and every kelp I swam by, focusing my attention on specific unassuming branches of kelp thinking about how it was placed there and how, despite the popularity of this game, there has probably never been someone who focused so heavily on that one individual kelp before. I gotta say skyrim's oceans are my favorite liminal space in the game, they were so undeveloped yet still so "existing". I go there sometimes just to say I went to the place the devs allowed and expected you to go, yet also never expected for you to focus so heavily on given the lack of stimulus it provides

this video (and channel overall) really changed how i play skyrim. ive been doing a 100% run the last couple months and i find myself slowing down and appreicating little details of the environment a LOT. ive decided my favorite thing in skyrim is when theres a section of a dungeon or cave where the ceiling opens/breaks and you can look up and see the sky even though youre in what is programmed as an 'indoor space'. less 'unremarkable' but when you defeat alduin if you dont leave Sovngarde right away after he dies it starts to softly snow, and something about that gentle falling snow in the afterlife made me FEEL something

I used to inspect fire alarm systems for a living, and my favorite part of that job was the amount of places you get to go that most people don't ever get to see. All kinds of weird attics, crawlspaces, and runt rooms. And you put it beautifully at the start: Man, this place is WEIRD. My favorite would usually be schools, which we would only inspect during the summer break when everybody is gone for like three months, so I'd get to run around these utterly massive buildings completely alone. You start to realize just how much administrative and maintenance space is required for a building that's essentially just a place for people to sit down.

There's a poetic beauty to "looking at the brushstrokes" of a video game that I never appreciated before, but I totally get what you're saying after you explained it.

“Three plates Four chairs” sounds like a indie math rock band name or a novel. I might steal that one

5:12 the table is not crooked. The table is aligned with its space....it's the rug that's askew AF

I particularly liked the yawn at approx 8:50 mins in

This video gives the feeling of being at a sleepover with someone, where both of you are tired and the other guy is just playing a game and talking half to you and half just cause he can

The southern part of skyrim feels like a whole different game. While that area around whiterun is packed with quest, areas like the solitude and windhelm docks feel like they should be the areas with the most action, while in reality they are almost empty

I did not have a great childhood especially due to my dad. I remember pre ordering skyrim with my own money and just so happened to be grounded the week of its release date. I remember being torn apart and told i would not be getting the game by my father. (My mom was scared of separating from him do to threats he would constantly make.) Even though i know she was not understanding of the impact these games can have, ended up picking me up early from school release day and sneaked the game over to me. It is a HUGE reason why i am still in contact with my mother and the game had kept me alive during that dark period of my life. The small things you do for others really can change their life!

Strangely enough,  anniversary edition actually got you to explore random and unremarkable part of Skyrim, there are some oddities in the game.

Somewhere in the North of Skyrim, there's a skeleton lying half-buried in the snow, a tattered flag still waving in the wind clasped in his bony hand, and a chest lying next to him. I don't remember where this was, though I still have the screenshot I took of him saved away. Finding that little landmark is still one of my most vivid memories of the game.

One of my favorite places in Skyrim is an unassuming footpath that runs between the Whiterun Stormcloak camp, partially up the northern edge of the Throat of the World, and back down to the area near Lost Knife Hideout. Nothing in the game tells you it's there, there aren't any enemies or marked locations along the way. It's just a cool little trail you can walk.

I absolutely love the Whiterun tundra. I head out there and do some early-game dungeoneering on almost every single character I play. I guess it’s just a comforting tradition at this point.

the area south of windhelm, with the sulfur pools, always fascinates me. its such a different biome compared to the rest of skyrim, and theres really not a whole lot there besides the word wall and the grove

0:21 that transition was neat

I love that he's already aware of his audience overlap with Jacob Geller and didn't have to clarify who he was

It's a weird experience exploring games like this because the world is a stage for quests to happen rather than somewhere that just exists. So everything feels oddly lifeless until you start a quest and then the npcs jump to life, saying unique dialogue instead of the same repeated lines over and over. And you come across locations that seem a little out of place, with things arranged so specifically they must have some sort of purpose, and later you come back to the location during a quest and realise how it's supposed to be experienced. It's like the world is a huge penny arcade machine waiting for you to put a coin in the slot and bring it to life. When you take a moment to look closer at the world, it's like peering behind the curtain. Is the world of Skyrim the one you explore, where npcs have a daily path cycle and eat a loaf of bread for 2 hours or is it the one that you experience during a quest, where people talk to each other and have drama and their actions actually have consequences on the world?

This man casually making little things matter.