The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Fus Ro Dah!
  • In the Gametrailers short demo at E3, Todd chooses to mess with some normally peaceful Mammoths and their Giant masters, who normally would not attack the player. While he is facing off with one of the Giants, there is a roar and suddenly a massive dragon swoops down, grabs the Giant in its talons and drops it from the sky to its death before turning its eye to the player for its next victim.
    • In another E3 demo, Todd slows down time and uses a two handed lightning blast to Kamehame Hadouken a Draugr into the ceiling, receiving a round of applause for his efforts.
    • Storm Call is a weaponized Empathic Environment on demand. Watching as the dragon desperately tries to keep flying as it's hit by lightning, knowing that abandoning its tactical advantage and meeting you on the ground is death...and not choosing in time and plowing into the ground as it dies. Cue soul absorption.
  • The anonymous soldier in the initial demonstration video gets one: after being set on fire by the dragon, he draws his sword and challenges the dragon. Then he is bitten in half.
  • Animation of Skyrim Video. How do you kill a lizard with a toothpick? Let Dovahkiin show you.
  • The first time you kill a dragon. Especially if you're high enough level (around 10) to fight it with little trouble. Regardless of how easy or hard the fight is, once you strike the final blow, the dragon realizes who you are and yells: "Dovakhiin, nid!" (Dragonborn, no!)
  • Occasionally, when fighting a high-level enemy (such as a dragon), a triumphal remix of Sons of Skyrim begins playing. Whatever's happening on-screen is instantly transmuted into pure win.
  • The Dark Brotherhood gets one in their introduction. In Oblivion, you awaken to find a Speaker of the Black Hand offering an initiation contract. In Skyrim, you still have to sleep but the local leader kidnaps and places you in the middle of a remote cabin, along with three similarly kidnapped individuals, one of whom is a contract target. When you awaken, she tells you to kill one of them. No matter who you pick, you are accepted because you followed orders to kill. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Dark Brotherhood.
    • And if you're good, you can instead kill Astrid herself, and then go on to have the Imperial Army commission you to assault the Sanctuary and wipe the Brotherhood out. Payback for all the deaths in Oblivion has never been sweeter.
  • Speaking of the Dark Brotherhood, the final mission has you assassinating the Emperor.
    • The whole final confrontation is almost more of a Crowning Moment for HIM then for you; He greets you calmly, explaining that he knew nothing as simple as a fake would stop the Brotherhood. He then willingly accepts his death, leaving you with one final request: kill the man who ordered his assassination, as a final act of justice.
  • Also with the Dark Brotherhood, we have Shadowmere's cameo; a nearby pond turns into pitch-black bubbling tar, and the demonic steed rises up from its depths with fire in her eyes.
    • The Subquest to get him is even called "Behold! Shadowmere!"
  • Another one for the Dark Brotherhood: you gain the ability to summon Lucien Lachance to fight for you, and if you encounter Shadowmere with him summoned he will greet her as an old friend.
  • A random secessionist NPC gained one for successfully pointing out the Logic Bomb of a loyalist. He asks her why it is Skyrim shouldn't fight the Empire's control, comparing it to how the Empire gave in to Thalmor's demands. She says the conflict with the Thalmor was different! They were foreign invaders who threatened the Empire's way of life.

Secessionist: "My point exactly."

    • She proceeds to shut up, and the conversation ends.
  • The first time you kill a dragon outside main quest. Full stop.
    • Especially if it attacks you while you're in a village and you manage to keep anyone from dying. Picture it: You're just harvesting cabbage, and see two people walk by, maybe give you a nod. Suddenly, there's an unholy sound and nightmare monster swoops in, torching everything in its path. The two people don't run from it like all the rest. They actually shoot arrows at the thing! Then lead the creature outside down, and actually take it down, one with just the power of their own voice! "I've never seen ANYTHING like that!" is an understatement.
  • The final main storyline mission. Wow. After finding a lost Elder Scroll and using it to look back in time, you bring a Physical God down to your level and nearly kill him. But the coward flees to Sovngarde to eat the souls of dead warriors to recoup his strength. But how are you going to get there? Well, you simply catch a live dragon after negotiating a cease-fire between two hated enemies, have him tell you how to get there, then ride on his back there. Have fun storming the ruin, filled with high-level Druagr and two dragons at the gate, then when you reach the top and fight a lich, you literally are transported to Valhalla, where you team up with three legendary heroes, combine your forces, and kill something that can't be killed. I don't care what Ulfric says, you are the only one fit to rule Skyrim.
    • Finishing the Companions quest chain and meeting Kodlak there is even better, I sprinted to find Alduin just after the fogs were lifted and found Kodlak there, after I used Dragonrend and brought Alduin down, the two of us destroyed the World Eater together. Felt good fighting alongside him.
    • And once you're finished and return to Skyrim, (assuming you didn't kill Paarthunax) you will find yourself surrounded by dozens of dragons who are roaring and thundering into the air, loud enough to shake the snow and deafen an unwary player, as they all acknowledge Paarthunax as their new leader. There's something deeply moving about that entire sequence.
    • An alternate interpretation: consider the power structure of dragons, where Asskicking Equals Authority, and only the strongest is considered fit to lead. Alduin half-unseated himself from power by fleeing to Sovngarde, rather than fighting you to the death as a true leader of the dov would. Then, you finished the job when you chased him into the afterlife and defeated him. The dragons you see are indeed honoring the strongest among them, except it isn't Paarthurnax they're acknowledging. It's YOU.
  • The battle to save Winterhold College, the Eye of Magnus, the atmosphere, the special effects and everything else, a really fitting ending to the quest line of what is basically Skyrim's Mage's Guild.
  • The fight against Queen Potema, there aren't many fights this flashy and cinematic in games running with this sort of engine.
  • Roaming near a village en-route to a town on the other side of some mountains, Alduin is flying around and lands by a burial site to resurrect another dragon. Doesn't seem like much, right? The encounter is done by chance alone. This encounter isn't scripted, it just catches your curiousity enough for you to check it out. You'll never feel more powerless no matter how much you've levelled up in the middle of the game knowing the big guy's doing as he pleases. This is a pure moment of awesome for the developers alone for thinking outside the box and showing us the main antagonist is doing more than just sitting around waiting for you.
  • The prisoner beheaded before you at the start of the game. I don't care if he was a regular guy, verbally flipping off your executioner as you're about to be killed takes some serious courage.
    • Hell, everything he said was made of awesome! He defended Talos by telling the priestess to shut up, yelled at the Imperial Captain to hurry it up all without fear in his voice.
      • And he does all in this annoyed voice as if his own execution is making him late for work.

"Hurry up! I don't have all morning!"

    • Heck, he's so badass that one of the Imperial soldiers praises him.

"As fearless in death as he was in life."

      • Actually, if you look around at that point, you'll notice it's Ralof, the Stormcloak who first speaks to you, who says that. Doesn't really take anything away from his badassery, though.
  • Ulfric's Rousing Speech right before you tear into Solitude.
    • Listen to it in Japanese here starting at 0:28; his soldiers already cheering while he spoke, then they all cheer together right after just when they begin the seige. And even Ulfric's ending speech is just as good, and he knows it (after asking Galmar how he did, Galmar replied "Not bad", and Ulfric remarked "I thought so").
  • The first time you see Alduin resurrect one of his long-dead dragons. The sheer spectacle of watching a godlike dragon do his thing is beyond words.
  • Encountering a dragon nearby certain important NPCs, such as the Mages of Winterhold -- Dragon lands down in the courtyard, Sons of Skyrim starts up...And the dragon proceeds to get utterly destroyed as Mirabelle and Saros Aven pummel it with firebolts before you've even drawn your blade.
    • Also related to encountering dragons at the College of Winterhold is something of a Self-Imposed Challenge. Instead of fighting the dragon in the courtyard, you can choose to make your way to the top of the main building and fight it up there. It sounds pretty basic, but given the heightened arena-like design of the building's roof, the blizzard thundering at you non-stop and the aforementioned music playing continuously, it's a really good opportunity to impress yourself with your character's skills with fitting imagery to boot.
  • The way that the Greybeards summon you once you find out that you're the Dragonborn. You're walking back to Whiterun after slaying the dragon and suddenly there's a bellow of "DOVAHKIIN!" that's loud enough to make the heavens and earth tremble. It's short, but it made this troper wonder exactly how powerful the Thu'um can be.
    • You wanna know how powerful? Tiber Septim used it to turn Cyrodiil from jungle to deciduous forest. Quoth the (now canonized) tidbit of lore miscellany. The latter parts may sound familiar

Tiber Septim: "You have suffered for me to win this throne, and I see how you hate jungle. Let me show you the power of Talos Stormcrown, born of the North, where my breath is long winter. I breathe now, in royalty, and reshape this land which is mine. I do this for you, Red Legions, for I love you."

    • On my first playthrough of the game, I found it to be more Nightmare Fuel than Awesome. I knew nothing of the Greybeards, and everything of how Ulfric had used his voice to kill the High King...my initial expectations were to find the Jarl fo Whiterun, and probably the entirety of Dragonsreach, blown to pieces. (It didn't help that I didn't quite catch what was being said through the thunderous booming that accompanied it...) Thank the Divines I was wrong...
  • A subtler one for the designers: if you've played Morrowind, taking a walk through the Grey Quarter, on a windy day, while The Jerall Mountains is playing, is an instant nostalgia trip.
  • This Dovahkiin was wandering in Skyrim when they chanced upon a wandering bard in the road. Not having heard "The Dragonborn Comes" yet, they requested to hear it from said bard. Who decides to appear in the sky in the middle of the bard's song? Alduin. Truly a winning moment for Bethesda's programming.
  • Most non-scripted dragon battles are awesome events. Picture this: You're talking to a guy. Maybe requesting entry to the College of Winterhold, maybe asking a bard for a request, maybe just selling some cabbages. All of a sudden, a dragon swoops in. You quit out of the conversation, kill the thing... then go back to the conversation and pick up from where you left off. The entire event of slaying a dragon oozes with epicness, no matter where you are, who you are or how you kill it.
  • JOOR ZAH FRUL. Basically THE shout which "kills" a dragon. Not only can you get those nasty lizards down - them faceplanting being an option-, but each time you use it, you're introducing them to the notion of their own mortality. Which kinda makes you the dragon equivalent of the Grim Reaper. Bonus point if you're using Volendrung and punctuating each of your blows with "JOOR!" (mortal) to keep the dragon from taking off or roasting you: here, you're not just introducing him to the notion of death, you're literally BEATING ITS SENSE INTO HIM, one bash at a time.
    • Speaking of shouts, TIID KLO UL, also known as Slow Time. Think about it for a minute: it's a Shout that slows time. You are yelling at time itself to slow down. And it listens.
      • Actually becomes Fridge Brilliance when you remember that dragons are related to Akatosh, who is not only king of the Divines, he is the god of time. It makes perfect sense that his children would be able to command time, and for Alduin to survive being blasted into the future through a time wound without any loss of power.
  • A dragon attacks Whiterun. The Stormcloak guards put up their defense as the citizenry flees, all the while one screams out to the beast; "I'll rip your heart out!!" That guard embodies so many different tropes.
  • While negotiating a peace treaty between the Stormcloaks and the Empire, you can kick Elenwen out of the negotiations.
    • The peace treaty itself. The Greybeards want nothing to do with the civil war and the political strife of Skyrim, Ulfric and Tullius are at war, Elisif is the widow of the High King that Ulfric murdered, the Blades are enemies of the Greybeards hunted by the Thalmor, and Elenwen, well everyone hates the Thalmor. But, teeth-clenching though it may be, you manage to get all of them to sit down in a room together to discuss a temporary truce so you can deal with the larger threat of Alduin. And inevitably they each look to you for your opinion on how Ulfric and Tullius should handle the other's demands, and even if they don't like what you say they yield to your will.
  • This is a long one, and admittedly more of an Evil Plan then a Crowning Moment, but still Awesome. You and Mercer Frey track down Karliah, who betrayed and killed the previous Thieves' Guildmaster Gallus. Gallus's death and the infighting that followed are responsible for the Guild's run of bad luck, and Mercer wants revenge. Except MERCER was the traitor, having killed Gallus in that very same spot then framing Karliah and devoting all the Guild's resources to hunting her down for her "betrayal." And then he stabs you and leaves you to die, with no one but the "traitor" the wiser. You go on to learn that he, Gallus, and Karliah were all Nightingales sworn to protect Nocturnal and her artifact, the Skeleton Key. Mercer took the oath to get rich, stole the Key, killed/framed the other two to cover it up, and used the Key to break into the Guild Vault. Then he bought a manor with a secret passage into the sewers, so he could take more at his leisure. Then he forged an alliance with the most powerful noble in Riften, to keep up a steady flow of riches that he could easily steal back. THEN he used the Key in the most abstract and badass manner possible to UNLOCK HIS OWN POTENTIAL. Since he's now a perfect human being, he can hack through huge hordes of Draugr, open Nordic puzzle doors in seconds, and smash giant stone towers the size of dragons. After bleeding the Guild for all it's worth, he does a runner, stopping to steal the most valuable gems in Skyrim from a Dwemer ruin crawling with traps, mechanisms, and Falmer. So, to recap: Mercer Frey, already a highly skilled thief, steals a ridiculously powerful artifact from the Goddess of Darkness and Thieves, then gains incredible abilities with it that not even the Dovahkiin can use, swindles his own organization out of a crapton of cash, eliminates the only two witnesses (in a way that nobody else would ever suspect him), becomes insanely wealthy with a swank mansion to boot, then--after screwing everyone he can possibly screw--gets away scot free and throws in one more badass heist. He even takes out the player, the one and only Spanner in the Works. And it would have worked perfectly if not for Karliah happening to shoot you with a poisoned arrow. This troper was actually very impressed. Of course, he still wanted to chop Mercer's goddamn head off...except, you know, with the respect befitting a worthy adversary.
  • In Winterhold, there's a skeleton clutching a tattered flag. No matter what you do to disturb it, the skeleton will not let go of the flag. Nearby, there's a book about the fall of the Knights of the Nine. The implications are astounding.
  • If you kill enough of the wandering Thalmor Justicars (or trick them into attacking you then kill them) eventually the Justicars will start attacking you on sight. Loot their bodies to find out why; the Thalmor have put out an order for your execution. They consider you such a threat they've ordered their troops to kill you on sight. Not captured, not tourtured, they want you dead. How does that feel? It feels pretty awesome.
  • Simply learning a word - you hear echoes of chanting, then you approach the place where the word was written, then it fills your vision as you receive a Theme Music Power-Up
  • On occasion, you will find Couriers running through Skyrim. Try to talk to them, and they will hurriedly state that they have no time to chat with you. But if a dragon happens to land nearby one? Out comes the dagger and he rushes in to meet it. No time to talk to you, but he will make time for some dragonslaying. Granted, he is almost surely to get swallowed whole, but still. Also worth mentioning that they do all their message delivering on foot, unlike those sissies at the Black Horse Courier.
  • Even some of the books that can be found in the game have their moments. For example, one book, The Marksmanship Lesson tells the story of a Bosmer Slave getting a boy to kill his father by telling him exactly where to aim his bow and shoot, then leading his father to be exactly where he needs to be when the arrow ends up getting there. And he does this all while being whipped by the man who ends up dead. How awesome is 'that?
    • "The Locked Room" tells of a master thief who trains people on how to pick locks, but one student prefers to tinker and study the locks instead of break them, even when she has an obvious talent for it. Fed up with her wasting his time, the teacher locks her in a room with a crated vampire and tells her to hurry and get out before it wakes up. The student breaks the lock in seconds, but comes back the next day and asks the teacher if she can use the vampire room to test a lock she's been designing. She promptly locks the teacher in the room and triumphantly announces her lock is impossible to pick, but she was nice enough to leave the key in the room if he gives up. The teacher refuses to submit and tries again and again to pick her lock, and when he finally gives up he can't find the key she left. Eventually the vampire wakes up and descends on him, the teacher seeing the key around its neck as it rises.
  • Simply seeing Blackreach, the huge underground area with glowing plants, Dwemer ruins, and red nirnroots. Plus the Dragon that shows up if you FUS RO DAH at the orange orb at the middle of the whole place.
  • Any time you kill a new type of enemy is bound to be this for you.
  • "Let the Dragonborn be the one to do it. It would make for a better song."
  • During "Diplomatic Immunity", I rescue the prisoner from the Thalmor embassy. Then those two Thalmor soldiers come up to the balcony with Malborn as a hostage. They start telling me to Put Down My Sword and Step Away. While they ham it up, I roll my eyes (it should be noted I was close to level 50 by this point) and pull out my bow. Let's just say a daedric arrow to the forehead makes a great way to say, "Shut UP, Hannibal"
    • I did something like that too. Except I ran up the ledge while they were speaking, sneaked up behind them and killed them mid-speech.
    • I dropped a max-level Slow Time shout, then ran up there like the Flash and stabbed them to death.
  • After witnessing Ulfric curb-stomp Tullius to the ground, he starts giving us his summations, telling us we've pretty much given the Thalmor what they wanted. Ulfric replies that while the Empire may not be the villains in all of this, they are certainly no heroes either. Tullius agrees with him. It's moments like this that truly show how well-written the Civil War storyline truly is.
  • Civil War questline. Assaulting the Stormcloak fortress in the Rift. The Imperials begin their charge. The Stormcloaks prepare to fight back. Then the barbarian choir starts up. I look up, and an Ancient Dragon swoops down on the battlefield, strafing the fort with a column of fire breath. But the Imperials press the attack, and just before the Dragonborn joins them, he lets out a shout of "ODAHVIING!" Odahviing swoops down to join the fray, and suddenly you've got this epic-full-scale war raging. Two dragons are flying overhead shooting fire and ice at each other, Imperials and Stormcloaks are ducking it out, a pair of summoned Atronauchs are rampaging around, Mjoll the Lioness is smashing skulls, and to the entire glorious storm of chaos we have One they Fear pounding away. Its this kind of unscripted moment that makes Skyrim epic.
  • "I faced him fearlessly - my fate inescapable, yet my honor is unstained - can Ulfric say the same?" This quote from High King Torygg sums up how his death went. He wasn't scared of Ulfric, even knowing he was going to die, but as a true nord, he was honorable and fearless in battle, while Ulfric simply continued his attack on the people of Skyrim. His only regret is leaving behind Elisif
    • This seems to have been the mindset of the Emperor as well when you're about to kill him. Apparently being awesome is a requirement for the job.
  • A simple one, but there is nothing so satisfying as calling Odahviing to rip another dragon's throat out.
  • After many games, the Player finally gets to read one of the titular Elder Scrolls. And it turns out it's not so much "reading" them, but using it is as a viewport to scry events elsewhere/elsewhen in spacetime. And it turns out that's but a simple use of them: you can also use them to unbind entities from spacetime, and do many other things to screw around with the fabric of reality with them.
  • Becoming a Nightingale toward the end of the Thieves' Guild questline. Getting to put on that badass gray armor and stand in front of a Daedric Prince with Karliah and Brynjolf is little more than ceremony padding out the quest, but the setting and armor make it look and feel like a massive accomplishment. The final battle against Mercer running around a massive statue and narrowly escaping the flooding chamber isn't too shabby, either.
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