What got me thinking this is a quest that I did while finishing up the Dawnguard arch. Before facing off with the vampire lord Harkon for a final showdown, players need to find a legendary weapon called Auriel's Bow in order to prevent the prophecy he wants to fulfill from ever reaching fruition. This requires exploring a cave containing some ancient ruins which are guarded by a Snow Elf, one of the last in Tamriel. He goes on to explain how his people were tricked thousands of years ago, and twisted into what are now known as the Falmer. It seemed a tad out of place. Here was the game giving me a vaguely interesting back story to a race that often times feels like filler meant to add padding to a dungeon.
It's almost a disappointment to be scaling the depths of some Dwemer ruins, areas dripping with mystery and lore, only to come upon the chitin-centric markings of a Falmer settlement. What was once a dungeon exploring adventure in search of ancient relics from a long dead civilization quickly turns into a monotonous trudge past hapless sentries, either pegging them off from afar as a stealthy ranger, or charging in sword swinging and magic blasting. In either case, the Falmer don't put up much of a fight unless you happen upon some particularly powerful variants while your character is under-leveled, but that's something that holds true in any game and quickly falls by the wayside as your character gains levels. If you're on level parity with them, fighting these creatures is a snooze fest, and most places that have the Falmer lurking their halls are absolutely infested with them. It's not just a matter of clearing a half dozen or so. Instead it just keeps going and going.
 |
| What? The Falmer may actually be slightly interesting? |
That's when I saw them: three spider silhouettes dropping from the ceiling. I can't even begin to tell you all of the expletives that started swirling around in my head. My character landed in a shallow pool, and I quickly hit Q to bring up my favorite weapons, equipping Dawnbreaker in my left hand, and a flame spell for the right, making sure that I had Fire Breath readied as a shout. From there, I hit Q once more to resume the game, and pretty much ran in with my eyes closed, swinging wildly, intermittently stopping to haphazardly spew fire in all directions, hoping the encounter would end as soon as possible. It was at this time that I could hear Serana behind me, launching spells with wreckless abandon. Opening my eyes a crack, I saw that the spiders were almost dead. It appeared I'd even managed to hit them a couple of times, so I buckled down and finished them off. There were a few more ahead that we had to deal with, but before long we'd cleared the area, and were on to greener, less arachnid-riddled pastures. At the time, I absolutely hated it, but in retrospect I'll begrudgingly admit that the fight was exciting.
 |
| Did the developers think that if they made things dark enough we wouldn't notice that we're fighting Falmer? |
Contrast this with when I came upon Knight-Paladin Gelebor a short while later. He sent me on a journey to the Forgotten Vale to follow the footsteps of pilgrims hoping to worship at the inner sanctum of Auri-El. Doing so would require plodding through vast caverns and a massive vale crawling with Falmer who had invaded the area millennia earlier. Sure, he did provide incite as to how the creatures became what they are, but this only wound up frustrating me because I couldn't reconcile how such a boring species to fight could somehow have the gall to possess anything remotely resembling an interesting back story.
Embarking on my insincere sojourn to get a hold of that magical bow, I set off into a large network of caves teeming with Falmer. What transpired was a gauntlet of skirmishes that just couldn't end soon enough. After a time, I came upon an exit and found myself in a large vale with ruins strewn throughout it. Neat! It was a fairly open area that looked like it hadn't been touched in centuries. Here, I wandered around looking for the remnants of some old shrines where I could talk to their ghostly caretakers in order to complete the pilgrimage. I also encountered a pair of unusual and particular badass-looking dragons that came bursting out from under a frozen lake. Exciting! There was even a mountain pass crawling with spiders. Sideways frowny face! It was a welcome change from the hordes of Falmer fodder I'd been killing a short while earlier. Then I noticed that I had a fairly long hike ahead of me in order to reach the final shrine. After those dragons, I wonder what sort of epic battle awaits! Oh, look!...more Falmer...sigh... And so I set off to shoot and stab countless more of their kind. It was actually a relief when the quest was done and I could finally leave that place. Surely the fastest way to suck all of the life and joy out of an area in Skyrim has to be by putting some Falmer there.
Perhaps the Falmer and the Forsworn deserve a little credit. Maybe we can look at their generally atrocious loot drops as some vain attempt at "keeping it real" in a world where loot scaling reigns supreme, and bandits are running around with glass swords and dwarven shields by level 20. It's a small consolation I suppose, but does little to brush aside the intensely boring vibe that they bring to Skyrim. These guys may have interesting back stories, but actually stumbling upon them in the game makes encounters a chore, which is a real shame.
On the plus side, I did manage to finish off the Dawnguard expansion, so yay for that. Next on the agenda will be the Mage's College. Having met Tolfdir, he seems liked such a sweet old man. I'm sure he'll be far more interesting to hang out with than those Forsworn and Falmer!
Other Installments of Doing All the Things: Skyrim Edition:
- Part One: Getting Started
- Part Two: Picking Sides
- Part Three: Of Werewolves and Vampires
- Part Four: The F Words
- Part Five: Parenthood
- Part Six: Doing all the Things was a Terrible Idea
