REQUISITE CLANDESTINE ACTIVITY
Skyrim - https://youtu.be/vkDrNfN2Bkg
It was during this stream that I discovered two critical things:
- There is a run button
- Skyrim is nearly 24 hours long even when you ignore all side quests
I wish the game had told me about the run button. It gave me everything else! For reference, it's LB. I found it by just messing with buttons while I was running between objectives; before then, I was spamming the Whirlwind Dash shout whenever the cooldown ended. After that, I got to do both.
Secondly, I started to ignore side quests on this day. And I still didn't finish. It's a good thing I had four hours available during the next day! Also, I think Lydia died to the spiders on that hill that killed me multiple times. I never saw her again after that point. I wish I'd noticed and gotten my stuff off her corpse, at least, but thankfully I didn't need it. She would have been a great help in the dungeon afterwards, however. Up until that point, I think she was doing the vast majority of the damage. (It sure would have been nice to get some better spells!)
As for why I sided with the Legion: the quest seemed faster. That's it. I think it also narratively suited the race of my player character better, though I think I like the Stormcloaks better. (Neither seems particularly good in my eyes, considering one works with the guys who helped me out but couldn't forgive a dragon, and also with a group torturing people in the basement… and the other is a bunch of racists.) Maybe I'll play a Nord in the full playthrough so the Stormcloaks are a marginally more reasonable choice. (So it doesn't feel like my allies will stab me in the back the first chance they get.)
Finally, the title of the video: I wonder if it's possible to finish the game without performing any red text actions? It sure doesn't seem that way. Unless knowing where to go will let you skip the part where he tells you. That was literally the only time it was required for a story quest. My full playthrough… I'm not totally sure I'll do the thieves' guild quest line. I'm not happy about playing characters that aren't on the up-and-up as much as possible. (Stealing from wild beasts is fine! Just not from businessmen.) I also like to get near 100% on games, but that part just doesn't feel worth it to me.
