Did you know that there is a book in Aged man's house "The Crystal Jellyfish - Its Physique And Use In Alchemy" that lies opened to the left in the room where you can go down? This book describes the use of this Jellyfish to preserve living tissues in liquid, just like the woman in the glass below is preserved. It is like the hint for the fellow prophet how to make your mortal partner survive for a long time in case you choose to flee at the end. As well as the letter on the table from Gaius to the player about his hopes for the Nerhim's circumstanses being not so high. Foreshadowing is great. And about "illusions" of protagonist's and Sirius's bodies - they are probably not illusions, as the "real" protagonist we start with is dead and could be dragged by waves ashore.
One thing you missed was that even if the dream flower did knock the player into a coma the high ones plan is still ruined. Because without the prophet to push the plot forward the knights never figure out how to activate the beacon since the beacon is the catalyst for the cycle!
Is that so? I mean, the prophet only gets their hands on the dream flower at a point where all thats missing is the numinos. They would still know that it is missing and i think, *if* i recall it correctly, anything that the knights would need to know about operating the beacon, they would know. They would also know about that city in the sky since the preparations for that would have already started. There might be some massive road bumps since the prophet helped speed up the preparation process, but they should eventually get there
Congrats on publishing this; this has been my favorite breakdown of Enderal I’ve seen. You absolutely have a knack for long form content and this video was a wonderful watch
The quest with the deformed child was an absolute knockout. Like the Barons quest in the Witcher 3, it really makes you think about the outcome and how hard hitting quality writing can be. I wish Bethesda had it in them to write quests and characters with this level of depth to them. However, they always seem to stop short, afraid that if they do, it’ll turn folks off. As such, they write fluffy nonsense that has no gravitas and carry no consequence. Whilst I didn’t agree with all you said, this is an excellent review. You gained a sub.
Its honestly such a crime so many people don't know about Enderal. I love this Mod so much and I wish I could experience it for the first time again stepping out into the sun coast and listening to the amazing score.
yes, i try to advertise it amongst all the people i meet (who plays Skyrim). Everybody looks at the trailer and says wow that's awesome but never plays it. What makes it even more painful is that people who don't know how to use mods can easily play it given that it's just on steam as a standalone game.
I am only just now realizing that you could buy teleport scrolls. I thought the only teleport scrolls you could get were the ones that were given to you. I always felt like Enderal was a lot less of an open world that Skyrim and that might be part of why. I never went back to Riverville because I only had like one or two scrolls that were given to me and I didn't know if I would need those later. I did the main quest and a few side quests and I loved by now I'm realizing that I missed out a lot on my only playthrough. I kinda wanna play Enderal again. Edit: OH MY GOD THE SIGN POSTS COULD TELEPORT YOU
on one hand respect for playing that way on the other hand, homieeeeeeeee. Its one thing to not realize about teleport scrolls but you were running around ark without the sign posts? go replay enderal if you haven't, and take time to really explore and do side quests+ explore random dungeons and stuff. Like you're missing out a lot if you avoided that because you missed the fast travel options XD also later in the game you even can get a spell that works like mark/recall in elder scrolls games. I.e. you set an anchor and then can teleport to the anchor, so custom fast travel point
I came for Enderal, since it's not talked about enough, and stayed for the great analysis. Very in-depth and presented in an interesting way. Subscribed.
It will be interesting to watch this video. I completed Enderal six weeks ago and, to be honest, still can't get rid of deep sadness after the main quest. The ending was mind-blowing... I can't watch now, but they say it is helpful to write a comment to support a video.
I prefer Calia too! It's rare to meet kindred spirits. Have to say tho. Jespar's writing and voice acting seems to hit the mark of so many people that even from what I can tell, straight male players tend to romance him. At least it's much more common than with many other characters. I really appreciate the writing for managing to do that.
Honestly, the first time I found Calia to be the annoying one. If Jespar is your edge jaded rouge, I found her to be an overly preach bleeding heart kind of person. I personally just find the latter are harder to deal with then the former. Jespar just wants to bee seen as cool and uncaring and you not prying accomplishes that, Calia on the other hand continually ties to get you to buy her coolaid of life. Like I'm okay with her world view it's the fact she can't be content without you sharing it that annoyed me.
Enderal has to be THE most amazing game I've ever played in five decades of gaming (I started with a Coleco Ranger). As you noted, storytelling, the nuances here are beyond belief. I can't recommend this game enough.
Came her to say this, basically. I can never replay this game because it's burned into my memory, such an wonderful expirience it was. This game is also what killed Skyrim for me. You can't go back to that puddle of a game knowing, that if they put more focus onto the story than glorifying tech demo of a 'big world' - we could've had the expirience of the century.
@@seeinred So kind of some where tween Morrowind and Oblivion story - quests immersion wise, with a smoother game play Skyrim engine?. Judging from how much he has to say, and has already said in this review video,( I'm still only quarter way through atm). there is a ton more to it than Skyrim. Definitely play this if I ever get chance too. Admittedly I got bored with Skyrim, with all dlc's years ago. Cause even with all dlc's there ain't that much too it yeah.
@@colddaze6680 do it, it's my favourite game ever and kinda got me into philosophy (it's not a dense game but some of the story elements can fuck with you and your perception in a really good way and i got to reading cause of it), also the best city in any elder scrolls hands down, cause it's actually city sized, maybe second to the imperial city in oblivion, but i like enderals ark better for thieve/assasin types due to the undercity, an underground favela type of area, really cool
2015-2016 1st time I played a modded out Skyrim that includes the fantastic Forgotten city story, played Witcher 3, NWN 2 Mask of the Betrayer, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 including expansions, Dragon's Dogma, Nehrim, Fallout New Vegas and Enderal. As far as gaming goes, this 2 year period was probably the best experience in my life, I still look back to this time period very fondly.
I don't feel like I beat Enderal. I surely completed it (even multiple times) but it always leaves me so hollow that I feel like actually it beat me .. And there I stand defeated, completely in awe and can do nothing but love the game, its world and story.
1:25:35 those are not illusions. They are actual bodies of Sirius and the Player character. It's explored in Ralata questline. As I understand, it's an idea that if a person dies with a strong enough wish this wish manifests in an "undead" copy of this person driven by this wish. I think Tealor and Thereal are also similar "undead" creatures: one dedicated to his desire to be the savior of the world and other set to get his revenge.
I dont think that is quite the case. They may very well be the real bodies, but the black guardian explains that the high ones have kind of "created" the prophet after their death, also explaining why the player doesnt really feel the effects of the cleansing while everyone else is dying or at the very least struggling and clinging to life The idea of a person manifesting as basically another copy of themselves is probably still true, but i dont think its the case for the player character. What wish should they have even had before arriving on enderal, they simply wanted to live free. Tealor is also explained by the black guardian to be "created" by the high ones, though i am unsure at what point in his life that happened or if he has even "died" at any point, or is simply being controlled and manipulated. He does clearly show signs of being affected by the cleansing. Tharael (i assume that is who you mean) is adressed by the father within the rhalata questline, given a new life by the father as he was going to die to his illness. Unlike the other children, tharael has retained his own consciousness and was able to remember the things that were before, and did not become a simple puppet. That might actually be him remanifesting, and the father actually having failed to "rescue" him. Theres probably no way to really confirm any of this but i feel like this is more accurate
SPOILERS DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE MAIN GAME SERIOUSLY, IT'S ONE OF THE BIG TWISTS You are right, they are probably the prophet's real body. The black guardian reveals that you drowned in the intro, but were revived by the high ones to play the role of the prophet. Aranteal died in the mountains after his escape attempt and was brought back to be the Emperor. Yuslan died as well, probably killed by Arantheal's men during the massacre. The high ones used the player's feelings of powerlessness, Arantheal's pride and fear of failure, and Yuslan's desire for revenge. All three of you are "fleshless"; you are dead, and according to the black guardian the three of you don't actually have bodies, though I'm not how that would work.
I went into a cave found a note that said (paraphrasing) "Don't care what you do to her, but keep the woman quiet", found her dead and "naked as an npc can be" in the cell next to the note (suggesting rape and murder). Further down, you find a (her daughter?) child, naked and dead as well in an underground river. Also I found two Burned Corpses, one with broken arms in the fetal position, another "On Top"... if you catch my drift. The writers/creators really went crazy with the world building. If you search and pay attention you can find some really weird things.
This is the one where you found a family castle that has been overrun by a group of bandits if I'm not mistaken. And also the bandit boss worried and angry about his minions starting to read books while occupying the castle is so funny, the devs clearly had put every brilliant writings they can into this game.
Enderal is a completely fresh experience if you're an Elder Scrolls fan. Especially in regards to how it handles playstyle and your general exploration and combat in the world. And the Forgotten Stories crafter classes definitely add quite a lot to the game. Lycanthrope can combo with other classes that'll enhance your werewolf form, changing colors (light brown is a default appearance) or even becoming a werebear instead with added abilities. Case in point the Throat Ripper class, which is a stealth-focused werewolf class that has your werewolf form being capable of becoming invisible
It baffles me how little content there is of Enderal on youtube compared to Skyrim Also I'm glad you didn't cut out the empath bit, it was fucking great
Oh my god, this video is so good. It puts so many of my thoughts on Enderal into words. The game's fantastic introduction, the way the quests subvert your expectations of both game design and game tropes, the improvements SureAI made to the base game of Skyrim. One of the greatest mods of all time, and one of my favorite games I've played.
This video has entered my list of game breakdown/analysis vids I would return to randomly every few months and just binge in one sitting (up there with Jacob Geller's vids and hbomberguy's video on Pathologic). Absolutely phenomenal production
Hey man, I'm very late to the party and just started playing enderal special edition for the first time and thank you! You share the exact same enthusiasm about this game I have. It's a beautiful mysterious world, made for you to explore but also dangerous, unforgiving and really rewarding if you get over yourself. The voice acting blows it out of the park, the quests actually grabs your feels and morales and throws them into the chicken shredder, enemies actually feel like a threat and the dungeons really makes you feel, you're just a silly Slug, that could or could not be the hero of this world.
Would really love a similar analysis for Enderal's predecessor Nehrim. It was pretty good too and I'm really interested in your (possible) opinion about it. Great analysis, looking forward to your future works.
1:38:50 you can empathize with a bad guy without making excuses for them or justifying their actions. I think an evil character that's tortured into that position is more believable than a randomly evil sociopath.
@@tzimiscelord8483 Sadly it is an early access rogue like and not a narrative rpg. But at least there is going to be a sequel to Dreams of the Dying Enderal book.😐
@@ArgentumSilvam I hate to reciprocally be the hammer that crushes your dreams, but the current Big boss man in charge of the company made the author remove every reference to enderal from that book. That series is no longer within the universe. The series is now called the 12th World series, Jespar has a different last name etc
Wow.. just wow.. i knew Enderal was good, but i would never have thought that it was THIS good, thank you so so much for this long Video about it, missing out on all the Story that's in there, that would have been really sad.
To be fair to the dream flower ending, it's implied you fall into a deep sleep as soon as you drink it. So if you drink it just before you die you still get to live in a dream world but also happen to get the usual benefits for the normal ending. It's a more meta salutation, and clearly not supposed to be how it goes connonically so maybe it doesn't really matter.
This game is just... Pure art. Now, when developer team gone and Enderal lead gamedesigner and writer working on Gothic Remake, i fear that we will never see "Enderal 2"
The "but.. whatever is reality anyway?" Is something that resonated with me. After quite a few trips I know how different you can experience it. To the point where we can hardly agree.
I just got finished with the someguy retrospective and I just want to say thank you for this content. This is the first channel I’ve ever seen that really delves deep into modding and the thought and quality of it. Keep it up man, you’re doing great.
You forgot to mention that tons of quest lines will give you the “wait till i contact you”, so that gives you the wiggle room to side quest. Also the Bard songs are banger! Taverns actually feel utilized by the working class.
"constant dread mixed with tinges of perhaps futile hope" just wanted to note that down, you summed it in a very good way haha :D Enderal deserves more content and this is a great analysis. Thanks and cheers^^
Still kind of bugs me you have to pay more of Skyrim to get the full version of Enderal too even though that money doesn't go to the Enderal creators but just Bethesda. AKA Microsoft now
It never really pulled the curtain all the way back on her, though. Much of her is still unknown. She's suggested to be even older than the High Ones. What could she possibly be, in terms of entities in the universe? In all other timelines, she's completely passive and was explicitly explained to have never intruded before.
He mentioned Esme a couple times, but I really wish he'd actually covered it in the video. It's definitely worth analyzing, especially with regards to its perspective on mental health. And it would have given him a space to discuss the veiled woman, who is a really interesting character like the Aged Man imo.
I've got a few comments about Our Mark on this World now, and it might be a good topic for a solo video about depictions of mental health in games. It'll go on the list!
Absolutely amazing analysis! Enderal is one of the most inspired and inspiring pieces of media, i've ever consumed. It's one of my favorite, if not The one favorite game, ever. As a gamer, as an artist and as a writer, the game addresses themes and choices in a fashion that made me fall even more in love with the medium. Not to mention Nicolas amazing novel, addressing even more themes that speak to me, directly. I love it. Up until i played Enderal, i had nearly 900h dissecting The Witcher franchise, from books to games (not that horrible show). I have now played and replayed Enderal a few times, always found something new and will be doing so, again.
I played Enderal when I was pretty young and at a particularly vulnerable part of my life, and while I haven't gone back to it in some time I still regard it as my favorite game of all time. Watching your analysis of it has really opened my eyes to just how much this game steered me philosophically. One thing that I would note is that I believe another one of the games main themes and questions that it asks throughout the game is the reality/illusion of freedom and what it means to be truly free, which I personally took away as the most important and integral message of the story. Maybe I should try my hand at making my own video essay on it lol! Thanks for the great vid, I'm gonna replay Enderal post haste!
My view of the second ending, where in you escape to the Sterling City, is that you simply continue the cycle. All cycles have someone/a group use magic to become immortal and more or less take the place of god. In my eyes you are more or less doing the same thing, becoming a false god and attempting to influence humanity, which just more or less continues the cycle. The only difference is you do it relatively sooner then the other gods would have gotten to, but I'm really not sure it matters. I see no reason we would end up any differently from the lightborn.
To add, i also think that this is not a unique outcome. I have a feeling that the Aged Man is a fleshless prophet from another cycle, possibly long before the Black Guardian, who just like you managed to avoid it with his partner, and that lady in stasis in his basement is his Jespar/Calia, whom he somehow managed to keep alive all this time (considering that fleshless are immortal and their partners are not). May be he also tried to reshape humanity and failed, or didn't dare to try, or tried for several cycles and gave up.
so a tldr would be, enderal is to skyrim what new vegas was to fallout 3 great analysis btw you're actually fun to listen to unlike most other reviewers
Amazing work man, this brought me back to my first playthrough and all the great memories I had playing it. It's hard to play many of the shallower RPGs after this game, that's free no less!
i love your channel bruh youre gonna get HUGE soon im calling it the amount of effort and time you put in your videos is astounding and very very impressive keep it up i stg so many people will be PISSED if you stop making this absolute gold
I would argue that Andrasta is guilty of hypocritical vanity not because of her accumulation of wealth but the fact she specifically uses their lifeforce to remain young and not accept even the illusion of aging while being functionally immortal.
2:29:42 "To your knowledge" Damn straight, it's pretty clear to me that The Aged Man is a Prophet from a previous cycle who *has already* attempted to do exactly what the Black Guardian asks us to do Also in Online discussions of Enderal's endings I've seen some players overestimating the High Ones powers, instead of correctly intuiting that the High Ones are only capable of manipulating Egos they seem to believe the High Ones are more powerful than that, and use that to support the New World Ending, in simple words they basically think the Cleansing is inevitable in the Catharsis Ending, it's as if they think Humanity is Fated to repeat the same mistakes unless you do the New World Ending (Ignoring the fact that The Aged Man has already attempted to do that and the fact that Nehrim's Ending happened) The people who think that clearly haven't played Nehrim yet, I believe Nehrim's ending *is* important to understanding Enderal's ending sequence, this is just a theory but I believe there's a reason the Veiled Woman saves the Prophet in this iteration of the cycle, the Black Guardian's dialogue clearly shows that he's never spoken to a Fleshless since he gained his Immortality, he literally tells us that the Prophet always dies when the Emperor leaves to activate the Beacon, this leads me to believe that the Shadow God's actions at the end of Nehrim's Main Quest may be the reason the Veiled Woman saves our Prophet, for those who don't know, Nehrim's Player Character is the Shadow God, at the end of the Main Quest it's revealed that the Shadow God is prophesized to die after the Lightborn have all been killed. Because we don't want to...y'know die, we decide to *Kill Fate Itself,* in the process of doing so we learn something interesting, although we clearly aren't the first Shadow God who attempts to Kill Fate, we *are* the first to succeed, or at least we're the first Shadow God to succeed since the Black Guardian became Immortal My theory is that The Shadow God's success at killing Fate is in some way the direct cause of the Prophet's survival after Tealor leaves them to die
It's particularly fun to explore as an utilitarianist, thinking in meta about which action generates the most good to whom. If you also add a Mahayana twist to it- essentially that humanity is already enlightened, but dooms itself to sansara because we don't know it- then you realize, that the High Ones are empty, they don't exist at all, they only exist because of their erroneous perception by humans. Meaning that the Cleansing is in fact a conscious act of humanity itself, there are no High Ones to trigger it. The only way not to repeat the Cycle is in fact by your character realizing the dependent creation of events and never triggering the main quest, which I consider a fourth, unmarked ending.
great review!! i really enjoy ur videos and im glad u reviewed this mod. one thing i wanted to add regarding the dreamflower ending is that even if ur character really just falls asleep and everything that happens after is a dream it doesn't seem like a bad ending since the way this universe views different realities and eventualities means that ur dream may as well be a newly created reality in which the high ones lose. i think it's hard to be attached to just one reality in this game's world anyway since there are so many, so might as well hop out and make this new one fare better than others, not like you're a normal human being anymore
Enderal is Skyrim's hotter goth sister. Every time I feel like playing Skyrim I go back to Enderal instead and the music just instantly draws me in again. It's almost criminal that it's free to play.
I found it really interesting, hearing you talk about this, how familiar and yet different it sounds to one of my favourite mods for Skyrim, Beyond Reach. I'd love to see a comparison done between the two. Hell, I'd like more discussion of Beyond Reach to be had in general - I feel like it all to often gets overlooked because of its similarity in name to the Beyond Skyrim project, and the impenetrable flowery prose it sometimes likes to throw at the player.
Interesting video, showcases a really cool project. I haven't had the time to dig into Enderal, but it looks pretty neat. I do have one objection though... I'm that contrarian naysayer that doesn't care about the cart ride. The post dragon tutorialising is one of the things that made me install an alternate start. I'd rather twice as much cutscene in return for not having to follow a dude through a cave ever again.
Absolutely a phenomenal retrospective! Loved it. Did you read the Butcher of Ark? You don't mention it at all in the video, while that book and the story behind it is very important to the Enderal lore and serves as a big piece of exposition. Also closely connected to the Rhalata questline!
I've watched this, 8 or so times so far. I had thought about making an Enderal retrospective, but I couldn't ever compare to this. I loved your structure, spacing out story sections with breakdowns of different sections. My only unique views (as not seen on youtube, has been talked about on Reddit) I have on Enderal that you or Wereyoi did not cover, was the strength of Enderal's dungeon designs compared to Skyrim. Traps are more lethal and better hidden. Vertical changes and jumping sections. Enderal has much better visual variety in it's dungeons. I did every single dungeon in Enderal, and many were stand out exceptional. Also, personally, I am a large fan of the learning book system. Skyrim has a problem that nothing is worth spending your money on, and you collect far too much money. Enderal forces you to budget between gear, learning points, and scrolls and potions in a way that Skyrim never did. I only wish more of the cut content in Enderal had been finished. Anyways, thanks again for your breakdown, you've gained a fan!
To be fair the skype discs where established in the previous game, Nehrim. They used to belong to the Lighborn, one for each, so there are 7 skype discs total. But yes, when it comes to the train and the city of a 1000 floods being below Ark I agree with your point.
This is amazing man, thanks so much for your hard work. Enderal is one of my favorite games ever - it paved the major potholes of Skyrim. I can only hope that Bethesda can learn from SureAI for ES6 and Starfield, though I don't have high hopes.
Watched this video a few days ago and decided to start another run of Enderal. My thoughts on this haven't changed much from when I played a few years ago. It really is one of those games where you just need time to appreciate and absorb all you've experienced and thought about. Your analysis here has given me more to appreciate from this masterpiece and it definitely does Enderal justice. Excellent video, dude.
I see 500k subs on the near horizon. You have the voice, you have the writing and you have the editing. You're going places my friend, I'm glad I got to you sub 10k.
Isn't the third ending exactly what happened before? the floating city did escape the cleansing, and if you did build a better humanity, you'd still have to punish the people who had ego so you'd crash them back into the all the countries below where they would build another ego centric humanity. and somehow the city was empty when you did go up there.
1:48:50 Dude, before Wandavision and before Enderal, I remember an episode like this on Justice League. The episode when the Justice League meets the Justice Guild, they are in this town that looks like the 1950s and meet this cheerful boy, but at the end of the episode they find out the boy was actually mutated after a town was plagued by radiation or something and he used his psychic abilities to make the town look the way it did before (I haven't seen that show in a while, but it was something like that).
1:28:57 Actually you have a pretty neat in built reason that we can borrow from fallout 4. The courser chip. In this instance, let’s just say that there’s a strong magical presence in the destination and that it requires we fetch an item to slot into place before being able to transport there. Or Maybe theres just so few scrolls to this place as there’s usually such little reason to go in the first place/someone keeping the supplies intentionally low and now you have to convince, kill, or steal a noble that happens to have a collection of these scrolls as the destination is a wonderful place to visit and work on his own art of the landscapes of this place.
I absolutely loved Enderal for its writing. I was constantly floored by the main quest and several big side quests because of how incredibly good they were. It's easily one of my favourite RPGs just for the writing. That said, I don't share your opinion on the combat. My main gripe is that at the start of the game when I realized that potions made your fever go worse, my reaction was "so they made magic a chore then" and proceeded to never touch magic in my playthrough. I also played my melee build very conservatively. Drinking any potion felt so bad, I didn't get the feeling that I needed to be careful with my resources, which I find really interesting in other games (and even in this game for the fast travel options), you simply need to drink potions, there's no choice there .it just made me play in the least fun way possible. I understand that it's the solution they landed at because of the limitation of modding skyrim. They did their best to make the game as good as they could. I don"t think it landed though.
That Deadfire soundtrack piece when you started talking about the merchants guild at 1:29:39... - I see what you did there and I applaud you for it. This is a great chunk of work. I'm happy someone did Enderal justice and hope your video will make more people interested in playing it.
Regarding the Master Skull from the first side-quest you talked about, the 2 learning points you gain from taking the skull is the superior reward, hands-down. Sure, you miss out on 175 XP. But that's a paltry sum, and the learning points are permanent stat-increases that exist independently of your level.
learning books are so expensive, i never found myself running low on learning points. are you talking about the knowledge points that you get from some dialogues?
@@mutton_5322 Learning Books are affordable--even on higher difficulties--if you run a tight ship money-wise. You have to do things like investing in the Enderal bank to make efficient use of your Learning Points, but it's well worth it, because your skill levels influence your effective power _very_ directly. There's a total of 28 "loose" learning points available in the game through various means, including the two gained from the Master Skull. Collecting all of them allows you to have skills that are nearly six level-ups higher than what you could naturally achieve at your character's nominal level, which is very useful when trying to do things like maxing out Enchanting.
Awesome video! You managed to keep me engaged throughout the whole thing, although... I do have 2 complaints. 1. You never gave an analysis on Esme which I atleast give you credit for owning up to. 2. The way you pronounce Calia XD Also if you ever feel like it I would love a shorter analysis video talking about the portrayal of mental illness through the rhalata and Esme quest lines! Or just a video talking about the Esme quest line as a whole :)
Just finished enderal a few. Months ago. Spent 55 hours on the one play through and did all I could do in one playthrough(quests, locations, etc). Had a great time for 45 of those hours just exploring the world and doing side quests, especially the quest with the father. The last 10 hours of the main quest was just so unenjoyable for me. Just felt like railroading the devs philosophy down my throat. Other than that it was an incredible experience and I can’t believe that this game is free. The world and music was top notch
One interesting meta take on both the Descarte quest & the Kor cult is video game characters recognizing they're in a video game. In a way you could argue that Kor is right & refusing to speak is trying to remove yourself from the "system" of the game as cult members (if any were still alive) would be refusing to interact with the player.
You did a great job. I have played full Enderal 5 times myself. I think that you might appreciate going outside of marked quests or even sidequest. The visual storytelling of some dungeons or even areas enriches the main story. Even the parts you might have been confused by a bit. I expected inclusion of the quest Elixir, Mythic monsters and focus more on different "biomes" of the world. I suggest trying different playstyles too, even melee is very engaging with different shouts. I have completed 100% of dungeons and most of the books. It is still hard to justify the "train scene" it is kinda dumb and I am not sure what to think about Lishari either, she is underdeveloped.
I made a bit of a one off gag about the triceratops included in mythic monsters but the rest are really cool too! There's lots I probably could've gushed on about for another 3 hours tbh
@@ramblelime Maybe I am a bit weird in this, but I appreciate the complexity and foreshadowing of themes that is still being discovered more deeply over many playtroughs over one time experience. That is also one thing that occurs in Enderal in a few quest: reference to other completed quest/ items available on player, it is more Wither like than Skyrim like in this sense. Anyway enough rambling. Well worth the subscribe, thank you so much for your effort and looking forward to more of this in depth analysis.
Taking the skull is still pretty good especially if you do the quest at a later level since two learning points are almost half a level's worth of skill points.
Just found this video. A real gem. Keep it up. I actually really enjoy looking firm content but only a few can do it right. You got it right. Keep it up.
Thoroughly enjoying this great video. Enderal is special to me. I started it a month after finishing my Master's degree and I completed everything in that game over the few months it took for me to get and start a job. I do have my criticisms of it (namely jank, balancing, difficulty and an explanatory part near the end of the main quest), but overall it's an outstanding experience that was extremely memorable. I suspect that in a few years I will be very nostalgic for it. The developers were not afraid to take quests down dark yet impactful paths. This brilliant atmosphere along with the genuinely engaging characters and excellent immersion are why I'll remember this game for years to come. It certainly is close to being one of my favourite games of all time. The quests were fantastic too. There was always something more to them - they always have twists and turns and are not afraid to trick the player. The characters were also superb (Cakia Sakaresh was my personal favourite - she was exceptionally well written and voice acted), with each of them having many great lines of dialogue. Constantine Firespark was also just great. Couldn't help but laugh every time he was on screen.
1:30 Actually, that's the content added by the Forgotten Stories DLC, and the DLC is automatically added to both the Classic and Special Edition versions of the game. It is not exclusive to the Special Edition version.
I'm 30 years old and didn't discover Enderal until late 2023 which is absolutely criminal considering how speechless it often left me. I'm somewhat Gnostic myself so the philosophy and ideals were just incredibly refreshing to me but I know some religious nutbars trash talk it for it's ideologies and find any and all reasons to do so. To each their own and all that but these are just biased, ill-conceived conclusions. What a mind-blowing and might I add, free experience. I just came here to see other's opinions on it because every time I've brought it up, no one knows what I'm talking about and it bothers me. The intro was extremely "what in the actual f*ck" at first but once you come to grips with and begin to understand the lore, It's just amazing. "Gimme a nice crisp piece of meat!!" like wtf 😂😂 Edit: Absolutely insane review, by the way, and I mean that in the best of ways. I enjoyed and agreed with it so much that I am saving this video for later reference. 🙌
Enderal, in my opinion, is most likely my favorite fantasy RPG to this day, no matter if standalone game or mod... its writing is fascinating, the premise of the world is absolutely intriguing and the changes they did to how it is played compared to Skyrim make it so much better, in my opinion, and that's from someone that has overt 1k hours in Skyrim special edition on pc alone, and probably a few hundred more on legendary edition. And honestly, I kind of expect my 1k hours to only be the start to my playtime lunacy with skyrim... i'll play it untill i die, propably. with how big the modding scene is and with the wabbajack modlists, there will always be new content available or new things that change things up enough to feel fresh again.
Subscribed after watching this! I just finished Enderal and was looking for some catharsis and reflection on the game (beyond the in game catharsis ending). You told such a wonderful summation of the ambitious story and character threads! Thank you for putting so much effort into this, it made my day. The only thing I would add more to is the wonderful design of biomes beyond ark and rivervillle; the game has so many amazing and immersive environment with added music and enemies that suit the individual tone.
This is now my favorite CZcams-Video. The amount of research is incredible. Together with your grest humour makes this video so great. While I never had such a deep understanding of the world in Enderal as you do. I agree with you on almost every point you make. The only thing I wanna add is the german voiceacting. I never played Enderal in English, but by hearing the english voiceacting in this video I am pretty sure the german voiceacting is better. I really hope SureAI starts to make more games, because their understanding of game design and storytelling is one of the best in the industry. Same goes for you and your videos, I will watch them all now ❤
I love how thorough you've been here. Really going deep with the analysis with great insights into what makes Enderal so special and how it counteracts the flaws of Skyrim. Enderal's a fantastic game. It blew my mind when I played it upon release (and it was far buggier then, also with a lot of material still untranslated from German). It was my top game of 2016, and I really need to get back to it again, especially with how much has been added since release.
You put in a lot of work into this and it shows. I can get my own opinions about games, but I always like to have an analysts perspective to bring to light things that I would have otherwise missed.
This has been easily the most difficult (and rewarding) project i've ever done. Thank you for your patience.
Loved it though! Definitely worth the time, thank you. :)
Appreciate the hard work. I've been excited for this video since you announced it, keep giving light to mods i think it's needed
wanted to like but there's a nice number
Did you know that there is a book in Aged man's house "The Crystal Jellyfish - Its Physique And Use In Alchemy" that lies opened to the left in the room where you can go down? This book describes the use of this Jellyfish to preserve living tissues in liquid, just like the woman in the glass below is preserved. It is like the hint for the fellow prophet how to make your mortal partner survive for a long time in case you choose to flee at the end. As well as the letter on the table from Gaius to the player about his hopes for the Nerhim's circumstanses being not so high. Foreshadowing is great.
And about "illusions" of protagonist's and Sirius's bodies - they are probably not illusions, as the "real" protagonist we start with is dead and could be dragged by waves ashore.
The Father of the Rhalata reminds me the design of Zobek at the and of Castelavenia 1.
This mod needs to get the treatment Forgotten City got. We need it as standalone game on all platforms
Gods I agree, but sadly I think due to copyright w SureAI there can’t be a standalone- at least not anytime soon 😢
@@theacespace9897 yeah sides theyd probably remake all 4 games in vyn in order. literally need 4-5 more games to see every country in the world.
Stunning analysis! I'm truly humbled. You gained yourself a new subscriber!
and i'm humbled to have you here! Big fan of your work, keep it up!!
YOU'RE THE GUY?!?!!
@@NarsMcain He's the guy
he's THE GUY bro love the enderal book
@@billb.4420 Who's the guy?? Btw where the fuck is Enderal.?
2+ hour video essay? Deep analysis and jokes that land? Hell yeah! Great stuff mate.
Thanks man, appreciate it a ton!
Oh shit you're the guy that translated Olympus 2207
One thing you missed was that even if the dream flower did knock the player into a coma the high ones plan is still ruined. Because without the prophet to push the plot forward the knights never figure out how to activate the beacon since the beacon is the catalyst for the cycle!
Is that so? I mean, the prophet only gets their hands on the dream flower at a point where all thats missing is the numinos. They would still know that it is missing and i think, *if* i recall it correctly, anything that the knights would need to know about operating the beacon, they would know. They would also know about that city in the sky since the preparations for that would have already started. There might be some massive road bumps since the prophet helped speed up the preparation process, but they should eventually get there
@@ensamvarg8504 this and if the high ones didn't get their way the first time they would just create another fleshless prophet again.
Congrats on publishing this; this has been my favorite breakdown of Enderal I’ve seen. You absolutely have a knack for long form content and this video was a wonderful watch
thank you so much!! That's so kind. Glad you enjoyed
The quest with the deformed child was an absolute knockout. Like the Barons quest in the Witcher 3, it really makes you think about the outcome and how hard hitting quality writing can be. I wish Bethesda had it in them to write quests and characters with this level of depth to them. However, they always seem to stop short, afraid that if they do, it’ll turn folks off. As such, they write fluffy nonsense that has no gravitas and carry no consequence. Whilst I didn’t agree with all you said, this is an excellent review. You gained a sub.
Its honestly such a crime so many people don't know about Enderal. I love this Mod so much and I wish I could experience it for the first time again stepping out into the sun coast and listening to the amazing score.
yes, i try to advertise it amongst all the people i meet (who plays Skyrim). Everybody looks at the trailer and says wow that's awesome but never plays it. What makes it even more painful is that people who don't know how to use mods can easily play it given that it's just on steam as a standalone game.
I am only just now realizing that you could buy teleport scrolls. I thought the only teleport scrolls you could get were the ones that were given to you. I always felt like Enderal was a lot less of an open world that Skyrim and that might be part of why. I never went back to Riverville because I only had like one or two scrolls that were given to me and I didn't know if I would need those later. I did the main quest and a few side quests and I loved by now I'm realizing that I missed out a lot on my only playthrough. I kinda wanna play Enderal again.
Edit: OH MY GOD THE SIGN POSTS COULD TELEPORT YOU
Oh dear, you did not click the sign posts? Thats rough man:D
Hahaha what a an amusing comment... you poor thing you must play Enderal again.:)
on one hand respect for playing that way
on the other hand, homieeeeeeeee. Its one thing to not realize about teleport scrolls but you were running around ark without the sign posts?
go replay enderal if you haven't, and take time to really explore and do side quests+ explore random dungeons and stuff. Like you're missing out a lot if you avoided that because you missed the fast travel options XD
also later in the game you even can get a spell that works like mark/recall in elder scrolls games. I.e. you set an anchor and then can teleport to the anchor, so custom fast travel point
@@DivineXPotato wait, there's sign posts all over the map? i used the big flying bird for traveling or did it all by horse, don't regret it tho lmao
I came for Enderal, since it's not talked about enough, and stayed for the great analysis. Very in-depth and presented in an interesting way. Subscribed.
It will be interesting to watch this video. I completed Enderal six weeks ago and, to be honest, still can't get rid of deep sadness after the main quest. The ending was mind-blowing... I can't watch now, but they say it is helpful to write a comment to support a video.
I prefer Calia too! It's rare to meet kindred spirits.
Have to say tho. Jespar's writing and voice acting seems to hit the mark of so many people that even from what I can tell, straight male players tend to romance him. At least it's much more common than with many other characters. I really appreciate the writing for managing to do that.
Calia is goodest boi by the end of the story, I can't not choose her every time
Honestly, the first time I found Calia to be the annoying one. If Jespar is your edge jaded rouge, I found her to be an overly preach bleeding heart kind of person. I personally just find the latter are harder to deal with then the former. Jespar just wants to bee seen as cool and uncaring and you not prying accomplishes that, Calia on the other hand continually ties to get you to buy her coolaid of life. Like I'm okay with her world view it's the fact she can't be content without you sharing it that annoyed me.
Enderal has to be THE most amazing game I've ever played in five decades of gaming (I started with a Coleco Ranger). As you noted, storytelling, the nuances here are beyond belief.
I can't recommend this game enough.
Came her to say this, basically. I can never replay this game because it's burned into my memory, such an wonderful expirience it was.
This game is also what killed Skyrim for me. You can't go back to that puddle of a game knowing, that if they put more focus onto the story than glorifying tech demo of a 'big world' - we could've had the expirience of the century.
@@seeinred so this is a shit load better then Skyrim with all dlc's?
@@colddaze6680 Hands down.
Skyrim DLCs are, admittedly, better then base game, but barely.
Enderal, on the other hand, is fenomenal.
@@seeinred So kind of some where tween Morrowind and Oblivion story - quests immersion wise, with a smoother game play Skyrim engine?.
Judging from how much he has to say, and has already said in this review video,( I'm still only quarter way through atm). there is a ton more to it than Skyrim. Definitely play this if I ever get chance too. Admittedly I got bored with Skyrim, with all dlc's years ago. Cause even with all dlc's there ain't that much too it yeah.
@@colddaze6680 do it, it's my favourite game ever and kinda got me into philosophy (it's not a dense game but some of the story elements can fuck with you and your perception in a really good way and i got to reading cause of it), also the best city in any elder scrolls hands down, cause it's actually city sized, maybe second to the imperial city in oblivion, but i like enderals ark better for thieve/assasin types due to the undercity, an underground favela type of area, really cool
2015-2016 1st time I played a modded out Skyrim that includes the fantastic Forgotten city story, played Witcher 3, NWN 2 Mask of the Betrayer, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 including expansions, Dragon's Dogma, Nehrim, Fallout New Vegas and Enderal. As far as gaming goes, this 2 year period was probably the best experience in my life, I still look back to this time period very fondly.
The Forgotten City is a standalone piece now, they rebuilt it in unreal
Try mass effect 1 2 and 3
Ever get around to Planescape Torment?
Enderal is the first game (mod) that struck my heart and made me feel empty after beating it. Truly deep story.
I don't feel like I beat Enderal. I surely completed it (even multiple times) but it always leaves me so hollow that I feel like actually it beat me ..
And there I stand defeated, completely in awe and can do nothing but love the game, its world and story.
honey wake up, new 3 hour ramblelime upload about a Bethesda game mod you will never play but will watch 3 times
This is amazing!!! Congratulations on releasing this masterpiece of an analysis. So excited to watch this
That's really high praise, thanks a ton! It was a lot to get done over the last 3 months and I hope you enjoy it :D
1:25:35 those are not illusions. They are actual bodies of Sirius and the Player character. It's explored in Ralata questline. As I understand, it's an idea that if a person dies with a strong enough wish this wish manifests in an "undead" copy of this person driven by this wish. I think Tealor and Thereal are also similar "undead" creatures: one dedicated to his desire to be the savior of the world and other set to get his revenge.
I dont think that is quite the case. They may very well be the real bodies, but the black guardian explains that the high ones have kind of "created" the prophet after their death, also explaining why the player doesnt really feel the effects of the cleansing while everyone else is dying or at the very least struggling and clinging to life
The idea of a person manifesting as basically another copy of themselves is probably still true, but i dont think its the case for the player character. What wish should they have even had before arriving on enderal, they simply wanted to live free.
Tealor is also explained by the black guardian to be "created" by the high ones, though i am unsure at what point in his life that happened or if he has even "died" at any point, or is simply being controlled and manipulated. He does clearly show signs of being affected by the cleansing. Tharael (i assume that is who you mean) is adressed by the father within the rhalata questline, given a new life by the father as he was going to die to his illness. Unlike the other children, tharael has retained his own consciousness and was able to remember the things that were before, and did not become a simple puppet. That might actually be him remanifesting, and the father actually having failed to "rescue" him.
Theres probably no way to really confirm any of this but i feel like this is more accurate
SPOILERS DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE MAIN GAME
SERIOUSLY, IT'S ONE OF THE BIG TWISTS
You are right, they are probably the prophet's real body. The black guardian reveals that you drowned in the intro, but were revived by the high ones to play the role of the prophet. Aranteal died in the mountains after his escape attempt and was brought back to be the Emperor. Yuslan died as well, probably killed by Arantheal's men during the massacre.
The high ones used the player's feelings of powerlessness, Arantheal's pride and fear of failure, and Yuslan's desire for revenge.
All three of you are "fleshless"; you are dead, and according to the black guardian the three of you don't actually have bodies, though I'm not how that would work.
Tealor died back during Nehrim when he was imprisoned. We just see the fleshless version during the eventd in Enderal.
I went into a cave found a note that said (paraphrasing) "Don't care what you do to her, but keep the woman quiet", found her dead and "naked as an npc can be" in the cell next to the note (suggesting rape and murder). Further down, you find a (her daughter?) child, naked and dead as well in an underground river.
Also I found two Burned Corpses, one with broken arms in the fetal position, another "On Top"... if you catch my drift.
The writers/creators really went crazy with the world building. If you search and pay attention you can find some really weird things.
Child r*pe and burn victims!? Im sold!
/s
This is the one where you found a family castle that has been overrun by a group of bandits if I'm not mistaken. And also the bandit boss worried and angry about his minions starting to read books while occupying the castle is so funny, the devs clearly had put every brilliant writings they can into this game.
Enderal is a completely fresh experience if you're an Elder Scrolls fan. Especially in regards to how it handles playstyle and your general exploration and combat in the world. And the Forgotten Stories crafter classes definitely add quite a lot to the game. Lycanthrope can combo with other classes that'll enhance your werewolf form, changing colors (light brown is a default appearance) or even becoming a werebear instead with added abilities. Case in point the Throat Ripper class, which is a stealth-focused werewolf class that has your werewolf form being capable of becoming invisible
It baffles me how little content there is of Enderal on youtube compared to Skyrim
Also I'm glad you didn't cut out the empath bit, it was fucking great
Oh my god, this video is so good. It puts so many of my thoughts on Enderal into words. The game's fantastic introduction, the way the quests subvert your expectations of both game design and game tropes, the improvements SureAI made to the base game of Skyrim. One of the greatest mods of all time, and one of my favorite games I've played.
This video has entered my list of game breakdown/analysis vids I would return to randomly every few months and just binge in one sitting (up there with Jacob Geller's vids and hbomberguy's video on Pathologic). Absolutely phenomenal production
Hey man, I'm very late to the party and just started playing enderal special edition for the first time and thank you! You share the exact same enthusiasm about this game I have. It's a beautiful mysterious world, made for you to explore but also dangerous, unforgiving and really rewarding if you get over yourself. The voice acting blows it out of the park, the quests actually grabs your feels and morales and throws them into the chicken shredder, enemies actually feel like a threat and the dungeons really makes you feel, you're just a silly Slug, that could or could not be the hero of this world.
Would really love a similar analysis for Enderal's predecessor Nehrim. It was pretty good too and I'm really interested in your (possible) opinion about it. Great analysis, looking forward to your future works.
1:38:50 you can empathize with a bad guy without making excuses for them or justifying their actions. I think an evil character that's tortured into that position is more believable than a randomly evil sociopath.
And that's why they nail the bad guys perfectly. People are never born evil and everything influences them to ultimately become who they are.
1:14:50 A better criticism "She accuses the rich of vanity which is hypocritical because she uses their life force to maintain her youth and beauty"
I got to 10:30 before I decided I will no longer watch your video I have a skyrim mod to play. Thank you
Let's all donate SureAI so that they make another masterpiece, based on Starfield
that will not happen, they dont do mods anymore, their next games will run on the Unreal Engine.
@@overdev1993 *Thats even better, shut up and let me send them my money*
@@tzimiscelord8483 Sadly it is an early access rogue like and not a narrative rpg. But at least there is going to be a sequel to Dreams of the Dying Enderal book.😐
@@ArgentumSilvam I hate to reciprocally be the hammer that crushes your dreams, but the current Big boss man in charge of the company made the author remove every reference to enderal from that book. That series is no longer within the universe.
The series is now called the 12th World series, Jespar has a different last name etc
How are you not more popular?!?!? This content Is A++ and I need more as I’ve just binged almost all your stuff from the past year!
Did the court wizard tell you to read theory?
tfw you do not have a grasp on the materialist dialectic and as such you are denied enrollment in Fireballs 104
Wow.. just wow.. i knew Enderal was good, but i would never have thought that it was THIS good, thank you so so much for this long Video about it, missing out on all the Story that's in there, that would have been really sad.
Videos like this is what make me happy you’ve gained a supporter from this. Hope you do more like this for Fallout like New California
"A dark evil God kind of way" 😂
I've literally used this exact term so many times that it caught me a little bit off-guard to hear it lol
Nice 👌
Spoilers.
.
.
.
.
.
There is a painting in the back of the dreamflower ending. It shows up three times in the story. All during dream sequences.
):
aw man........
To be fair to the dream flower ending, it's implied you fall into a deep sleep as soon as you drink it.
So if you drink it just before you die you still get to live in a dream world but also happen to get the usual benefits for the normal ending.
It's a more meta salutation, and clearly not supposed to be how it goes connonically so maybe it doesn't really matter.
This game is just... Pure art.
Now, when developer team gone and Enderal lead gamedesigner and writer working on Gothic Remake, i fear that we will never see "Enderal 2"
Writer posted a vid addressing that point
"Almost 3 hours of me explaining, analyzing, and retrospective-ing the biggest and best Skyrim mod ever made. "
Bloody fitting if you ask me mate!
The "but.. whatever is reality anyway?" Is something that resonated with me. After quite a few trips I know how different you can experience it. To the point where we can hardly agree.
Just discovered you thru my new vegas playthrough and im hooked! What a great channel! Very clear analysis and great research! Thanks Lime!
I just got finished with the someguy retrospective and I just want to say thank you for this content. This is the first channel I’ve ever seen that really delves deep into modding and the thought and quality of it. Keep it up man, you’re doing great.
You forgot to mention that tons of quest lines will give you the “wait till i contact you”, so that gives you the wiggle room to side quest.
Also the Bard songs are banger! Taverns actually feel utilized by the working class.
"constant dread mixed with tinges of perhaps futile hope" just wanted to note that down, you summed it in a very good way haha :D
Enderal deserves more content and this is a great analysis. Thanks and cheers^^
Still kind of bugs me you have to pay more of Skyrim to get the full version of Enderal too even though that money doesn't go to the Enderal creators but just Bethesda. AKA Microsoft now
Did you played the quest 'Our Mark on this World'?
it shines a little more light on what the Veiled Woman is.
It never really pulled the curtain all the way back on her, though. Much of her is still unknown. She's suggested to be even older than the High Ones. What could she possibly be, in terms of entities in the universe? In all other timelines, she's completely passive and was explicitly explained to have never intruded before.
He mentioned Esme a couple times, but I really wish he'd actually covered it in the video. It's definitely worth analyzing, especially with regards to its perspective on mental health. And it would have given him a space to discuss the veiled woman, who is a really interesting character like the Aged Man imo.
I've got a few comments about Our Mark on this World now, and it might be a good topic for a solo video about depictions of mental health in games. It'll go on the list!
Absolutely amazing analysis! Enderal is one of the most inspired and inspiring pieces of media, i've ever consumed. It's one of my favorite, if not The one favorite game, ever. As a gamer, as an artist and as a writer, the game addresses themes and choices in a fashion that made me fall even more in love with the medium. Not to mention Nicolas amazing novel, addressing even more themes that speak to me, directly. I love it. Up until i played Enderal, i had nearly 900h dissecting The Witcher franchise, from books to games (not that horrible show). I have now played and replayed Enderal a few times, always found something new and will be doing so, again.
I played Enderal when I was pretty young and at a particularly vulnerable part of my life, and while I haven't gone back to it in some time I still regard it as my favorite game of all time. Watching your analysis of it has really opened my eyes to just how much this game steered me philosophically. One thing that I would note is that I believe another one of the games main themes and questions that it asks throughout the game is the reality/illusion of freedom and what it means to be truly free, which I personally took away as the most important and integral message of the story. Maybe I should try my hand at making my own video essay on it lol! Thanks for the great vid, I'm gonna replay Enderal post haste!
My view of the second ending, where in you escape to the Sterling City, is that you simply continue the cycle. All cycles have someone/a group use magic to become immortal and more or less take the place of god. In my eyes you are more or less doing the same thing, becoming a false god and attempting to influence humanity, which just more or less continues the cycle. The only difference is you do it relatively sooner then the other gods would have gotten to, but I'm really not sure it matters.
I see no reason we would end up any differently from the lightborn.
I think with this ending, you and your partner manage to go down, and wipe out any trace of the machines used to destroy civilization.
To add, i also think that this is not a unique outcome. I have a feeling that the Aged Man is a fleshless prophet from another cycle, possibly long before the Black Guardian, who just like you managed to avoid it with his partner, and that lady in stasis in his basement is his Jespar/Calia, whom he somehow managed to keep alive all this time (considering that fleshless are immortal and their partners are not). May be he also tried to reshape humanity and failed, or didn't dare to try, or tried for several cycles and gave up.
Or we could build the machine after the first people are evolved again without any interference from other people and actually activating it properly
so a tldr would be, enderal is to skyrim what new vegas was to fallout 3
great analysis btw you're actually fun to listen to unlike most other reviewers
Amazing work man, this brought me back to my first playthrough and all the great memories I had playing it. It's hard to play many of the shallower RPGs after this game, that's free no less!
i love your channel bruh youre gonna get HUGE soon im calling it the amount of effort and time you put in your videos is astounding and very very impressive keep it up i stg so many people will be PISSED if you stop making this absolute gold
Dude, your channel is phenomenal. You've got some of the best videos I've seen in a while, really in depth analyses. Love it
I would argue that Andrasta is guilty of hypocritical vanity not because of her accumulation of wealth but the fact she specifically uses their lifeforce to remain young and not accept even the illusion of aging while being functionally immortal.
2:29:42 "To your knowledge"
Damn straight, it's pretty clear to me that The Aged Man is a Prophet from a previous cycle who *has already* attempted to do exactly what the Black Guardian asks us to do
Also in Online discussions of Enderal's endings I've seen some players overestimating the High Ones powers, instead of correctly intuiting that the High Ones are only capable of manipulating Egos they seem to believe the High Ones are more powerful than that, and use that to support the New World Ending, in simple words they basically think the Cleansing is inevitable in the Catharsis Ending, it's as if they think Humanity is Fated to repeat the same mistakes unless you do the New World Ending (Ignoring the fact that The Aged Man has already attempted to do that and the fact that Nehrim's Ending happened)
The people who think that clearly haven't played Nehrim yet, I believe Nehrim's ending *is* important to understanding Enderal's ending sequence, this is just a theory but I believe there's a reason the Veiled Woman saves the Prophet in this iteration of the cycle, the Black Guardian's dialogue clearly shows that he's never spoken to a Fleshless since he gained his Immortality, he literally tells us that the Prophet always dies when the Emperor leaves to activate the Beacon, this leads me to believe that the Shadow God's actions at the end of Nehrim's Main Quest may be the reason the Veiled Woman saves our Prophet, for those who don't know, Nehrim's Player Character is the Shadow God, at the end of the Main Quest it's revealed that the Shadow God is prophesized to die after the Lightborn have all been killed.
Because we don't want to...y'know die, we decide to *Kill Fate Itself,* in the process of doing so we learn something interesting, although we clearly aren't the first Shadow God who attempts to Kill Fate, we *are* the first to succeed, or at least we're the first Shadow God to succeed since the Black Guardian became Immortal
My theory is that The Shadow God's success at killing Fate is in some way the direct cause of the Prophet's survival after Tealor leaves them to die
It's particularly fun to explore as an utilitarianist, thinking in meta about which action generates the most good to whom. If you also add a Mahayana twist to it- essentially that humanity is already enlightened, but dooms itself to sansara because we don't know it- then you realize, that the High Ones are empty, they don't exist at all, they only exist because of their erroneous perception by humans. Meaning that the Cleansing is in fact a conscious act of humanity itself, there are no High Ones to trigger it. The only way not to repeat the Cycle is in fact by your character realizing the dependent creation of events and never triggering the main quest, which I consider a fourth, unmarked ending.
great review!! i really enjoy ur videos and im glad u reviewed this mod. one thing i wanted to add regarding the dreamflower ending is that even if ur character really just falls asleep and everything that happens after is a dream it doesn't seem like a bad ending since the way this universe views different realities and eventualities means that ur dream may as well be a newly created reality in which the high ones lose. i think it's hard to be attached to just one reality in this game's world anyway since there are so many, so might as well hop out and make this new one fare better than others, not like you're a normal human being anymore
A 3 hour retrospective of a mod I'll never own of a game I haven't played in years??
Why yes, please.
Love the video! Can’t wait to see more from you!
criminally underrated channel, the rest if the comments are 100% correct you have a knack for long form content.
AYEEEE BROO CZcams RECOMMENDED ME THIS VIDEO! YOU MADE IT TO THE ALGORITHM DAWG!
LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
You mentioned Gothic in your video, now the next your video must be about Archolos or Beliar will take your soul.
Archolos really is such an amazing mod.
thank you for taking the time to make this great analysis. Cheers!
Enderal is Skyrim's hotter goth sister. Every time I feel like playing Skyrim I go back to Enderal instead and the music just instantly draws me in again. It's almost criminal that it's free to play.
I found it really interesting, hearing you talk about this, how familiar and yet different it sounds to one of my favourite mods for Skyrim, Beyond Reach. I'd love to see a comparison done between the two. Hell, I'd like more discussion of Beyond Reach to be had in general - I feel like it all to often gets overlooked because of its similarity in name to the Beyond Skyrim project, and the impenetrable flowery prose it sometimes likes to throw at the player.
Interesting video, showcases a really cool project. I haven't had the time to dig into Enderal, but it looks pretty neat.
I do have one objection though... I'm that contrarian naysayer that doesn't care about the cart ride. The post dragon tutorialising is one of the things that made me install an alternate start. I'd rather twice as much cutscene in return for not having to follow a dude through a cave ever again.
Absolutely a phenomenal retrospective! Loved it. Did you read the Butcher of Ark? You don't mention it at all in the video, while that book and the story behind it is very important to the Enderal lore and serves as a big piece of exposition. Also closely connected to the Rhalata questline!
I've watched this, 8 or so times so far. I had thought about making an Enderal retrospective, but I couldn't ever compare to this. I loved your structure, spacing out story sections with breakdowns of different sections.
My only unique views (as not seen on youtube, has been talked about on Reddit) I have on Enderal that you or Wereyoi did not cover, was the strength of Enderal's dungeon designs compared to Skyrim. Traps are more lethal and better hidden. Vertical changes and jumping sections. Enderal has much better visual variety in it's dungeons. I did every single dungeon in Enderal, and many were stand out exceptional.
Also, personally, I am a large fan of the learning book system. Skyrim has a problem that nothing is worth spending your money on, and you collect far too much money. Enderal forces you to budget between gear, learning points, and scrolls and potions in a way that Skyrim never did.
I only wish more of the cut content in Enderal had been finished.
Anyways, thanks again for your breakdown, you've gained a fan!
To be fair the skype discs where established in the previous game, Nehrim. They used to belong to the Lighborn, one for each, so there are 7 skype discs total. But yes, when it comes to the train and the city of a 1000 floods being below Ark I agree with your point.
This is amazing man, thanks so much for your hard work. Enderal is one of my favorite games ever - it paved the major potholes of Skyrim. I can only hope that Bethesda can learn from SureAI for ES6 and Starfield, though I don't have high hopes.
I have been binging my way through your videos. This was just great, so engaging. Thank you!
Watched this video a few days ago and decided to start another run of Enderal. My thoughts on this haven't changed much from when I played a few years ago. It really is one of those games where you just need time to appreciate and absorb all you've experienced and thought about. Your analysis here has given me more to appreciate from this masterpiece and it definitely does Enderal justice. Excellent video, dude.
One of the best game in the world.
I love Enderal! Haven't beaten it yet, but can't wait for enderal 2
This is one of the best analysis of Enderal (if not the best one) that I've ever watch.
I see 500k subs on the near horizon. You have the voice, you have the writing and you have the editing. You're going places my friend, I'm glad I got to you sub 10k.
Isn't the third ending exactly what happened before? the floating city did escape the cleansing, and if you did build a better humanity, you'd still have to punish the people who had ego so you'd crash them back into the all the countries below where they would build another ego centric humanity. and somehow the city was empty when you did go up there.
1:48:50 Dude, before Wandavision and before Enderal, I remember an episode like this on Justice League. The episode when the Justice League meets the Justice Guild, they are in this town that looks like the 1950s and meet this cheerful boy, but at the end of the episode they find out the boy was actually mutated after a town was plagued by radiation or something and he used his psychic abilities to make the town look the way it did before (I haven't seen that show in a while, but it was something like that).
Hell yea, just sitting down to watch this after seeing the post on Reddit let’s goooooo
When the Piece of Meat dream faded out I half expected "hey, you're finally awake"
1:28:57
Actually you have a pretty neat in built reason that we can borrow from fallout 4.
The courser chip.
In this instance, let’s just say that there’s a strong magical presence in the destination and that it requires we fetch an item to slot into place before being able to transport there.
Or Maybe theres just so few scrolls to this place as there’s usually such little reason to go in the first place/someone keeping the supplies intentionally low and now you have to convince, kill, or steal a noble that happens to have a collection of these scrolls as the destination is a wonderful place to visit and work on his own art of the landscapes of this place.
I absolutely loved Enderal for its writing. I was constantly floored by the main quest and several big side quests because of how incredibly good they were. It's easily one of my favourite RPGs just for the writing.
That said, I don't share your opinion on the combat. My main gripe is that at the start of the game when I realized that potions made your fever go worse, my reaction was "so they made magic a chore then" and proceeded to never touch magic in my playthrough. I also played my melee build very conservatively. Drinking any potion felt so bad, I didn't get the feeling that I needed to be careful with my resources, which I find really interesting in other games (and even in this game for the fast travel options), you simply need to drink potions, there's no choice there .it just made me play in the least fun way possible.
I understand that it's the solution they landed at because of the limitation of modding skyrim. They did their best to make the game as good as they could. I don"t think it landed though.
freaking good video!
Enderal turned into my favourite videogame years ago and this video seems to explain exactly why
That Deadfire soundtrack piece when you started talking about the merchants guild at 1:29:39... - I see what you did there and I applaud you for it. This is a great chunk of work. I'm happy someone did Enderal justice and hope your video will make more people interested in playing it.
Regarding the Master Skull from the first side-quest you talked about, the 2 learning points you gain from taking the skull is the superior reward, hands-down.
Sure, you miss out on 175 XP. But that's a paltry sum, and the learning points are permanent stat-increases that exist independently of your level.
learning books are so expensive, i never found myself running low on learning points. are you talking about the knowledge points that you get from some dialogues?
@@mutton_5322 Learning Books are affordable--even on higher difficulties--if you run a tight ship money-wise. You have to do things like investing in the Enderal bank to make efficient use of your Learning Points, but it's well worth it, because your skill levels influence your effective power _very_ directly.
There's a total of 28 "loose" learning points available in the game through various means, including the two gained from the Master Skull. Collecting all of them allows you to have skills that are nearly six level-ups higher than what you could naturally achieve at your character's nominal level, which is very useful when trying to do things like maxing out Enchanting.
Awesome video! You managed to keep me engaged throughout the whole thing, although... I do have 2 complaints.
1. You never gave an analysis on Esme which I atleast give you credit for owning up to.
2. The way you pronounce Calia XD
Also if you ever feel like it I would love a shorter analysis video talking about the portrayal of mental illness through the rhalata and Esme quest lines! Or just a video talking about the Esme quest line as a whole :)
That is... genuinely a great video idea. It's going on the list
@@ramblelime hope you'll do it soon!
Just finished enderal a few. Months ago. Spent 55 hours on the one play through and did all I could do in one playthrough(quests, locations, etc).
Had a great time for 45 of those hours just exploring the world and doing side quests, especially the quest with the father. The last 10 hours of the main quest was just so unenjoyable for me. Just felt like railroading the devs philosophy down my throat. Other than that it was an incredible experience and I can’t believe that this game is free. The world and music was top notch
One interesting meta take on both the Descarte quest & the Kor cult is video game characters recognizing they're in a video game.
In a way you could argue that Kor is right & refusing to speak is trying to remove yourself from the "system" of the game as cult members (if any were still alive) would be refusing to interact with the player.
You did a great job. I have played full Enderal 5 times myself. I think that you might appreciate going outside of marked quests or even sidequest. The visual storytelling of some dungeons or even areas enriches the main story. Even the parts you might have been confused by a bit. I expected inclusion of the quest Elixir, Mythic monsters and focus more on different "biomes" of the world. I suggest trying different playstyles too, even melee is very engaging with different shouts. I have completed 100% of dungeons and most of the books. It is still hard to justify the "train scene" it is kinda dumb and I am not sure what to think about Lishari either, she is underdeveloped.
I made a bit of a one off gag about the triceratops included in mythic monsters but the rest are really cool too! There's lots I probably could've gushed on about for another 3 hours tbh
@@ramblelime Maybe I am a bit weird in this, but I appreciate the complexity and foreshadowing of themes that is still being discovered more deeply over many playtroughs over one time experience. That is also one thing that occurs in Enderal in a few quest: reference to other completed quest/ items available on player, it is more Wither like than Skyrim like in this sense. Anyway enough rambling. Well worth the subscribe, thank you so much for your effort and looking forward to more of this in depth analysis.
Taking the skull is still pretty good especially if you do the quest at a later level since two learning points are almost half a level's worth of skill points.
1:28 Oh shit someone other than me acknowledging Nehrim's existence? Based
Just found this video. A real gem. Keep it up. I actually really enjoy looking firm content but only a few can do it right. You got it right. Keep it up.
Thoroughly enjoying this great video. Enderal is special to me. I started it a month after finishing my Master's degree and I completed everything in that game over the few months it took for me to get and start a job. I do have my criticisms of it (namely jank, balancing, difficulty and an explanatory part near the end of the main quest), but overall it's an outstanding experience that was extremely memorable. I suspect that in a few years I will be very nostalgic for it. The developers were not afraid to take quests down dark yet impactful paths. This brilliant atmosphere along with the genuinely engaging characters and excellent immersion are why I'll remember this game for years to come. It certainly is close to being one of my favourite games of all time. The quests were fantastic too. There was always something more to them - they always have twists and turns and are not afraid to trick the player. The characters were also superb (Cakia Sakaresh was my personal favourite - she was exceptionally well written and voice acted), with each of them having many great lines of dialogue. Constantine Firespark was also just great. Couldn't help but laugh every time he was on screen.
1:30 Actually, that's the content added by the Forgotten Stories DLC, and the DLC is automatically added to both the Classic and Special Edition versions of the game. It is not exclusive to the Special Edition version.
thank you for the correction, i'm realizing now I never went back to the classic version to check, I haven't played that one since 2017. My mistake
@@ramblelime It's cool. Great video, man!
I'm 30 years old and didn't discover Enderal until late 2023 which is absolutely criminal considering how speechless it often left me. I'm somewhat Gnostic myself so the philosophy and ideals were just incredibly refreshing to me but I know some religious nutbars trash talk it for it's ideologies and find any and all reasons to do so. To each their own and all that but these are just biased, ill-conceived conclusions. What a mind-blowing and might I add, free experience. I just came here to see other's opinions on it because every time I've brought it up, no one knows what I'm talking about and it bothers me. The intro was extremely "what in the actual f*ck" at first but once you come to grips with and begin to understand the lore, It's just amazing.
"Gimme a nice crisp piece of meat!!" like wtf 😂😂
Edit: Absolutely insane review, by the way, and I mean that in the best of ways. I enjoyed and agreed with it so much that I am saving this video for later reference. 🙌
Enderal, in my opinion, is most likely my favorite fantasy RPG to this day, no matter if standalone game or mod... its writing is fascinating, the premise of the world is absolutely intriguing and the changes they did to how it is played compared to Skyrim make it so much better, in my opinion, and that's from someone that has overt 1k hours in Skyrim special edition on pc alone, and probably a few hundred more on legendary edition. And honestly, I kind of expect my 1k hours to only be the start to my playtime lunacy with skyrim... i'll play it untill i die, propably. with how big the modding scene is and with the wabbajack modlists, there will always be new content available or new things that change things up enough to feel fresh again.
about the awesome underwater cave at the island: you can find one of the powerfullst spells in the game there
Subscribed after watching this! I just finished Enderal and was looking for some catharsis and reflection on the game (beyond the in game catharsis ending). You told such a wonderful summation of the ambitious story and character threads! Thank you for putting so much effort into this, it made my day.
The only thing I would add more to is the wonderful design of biomes beyond ark and rivervillle; the game has so many amazing and immersive environment with added music and enemies that suit the individual tone.
This is now my favorite CZcams-Video. The amount of research is incredible. Together with your grest humour makes this video so great. While I never had such a deep understanding of the world in Enderal as you do. I agree with you on almost every point you make.
The only thing I wanna add is the german voiceacting. I never played Enderal in English, but by hearing the english voiceacting in this video I am pretty sure the german voiceacting is better.
I really hope SureAI starts to make more games, because their understanding of game design and storytelling is one of the best in the industry. Same goes for you and your videos, I will watch them all now ❤
Sees new Enderal video
Sees 2hr 40 length
Fucking yessss.
I love how thorough you've been here. Really going deep with the analysis with great insights into what makes Enderal so special and how it counteracts the flaws of Skyrim.
Enderal's a fantastic game. It blew my mind when I played it upon release (and it was far buggier then, also with a lot of material still untranslated from German). It was my top game of 2016, and I really need to get back to it again, especially with how much has been added since release.
You put in a lot of work into this and it shows. I can get my own opinions about games, but I always like to have an analysts perspective to bring to light things that I would have otherwise missed.