I of course had to adopt the dog bc i'm not a monster
April 12, 2016 5:08 AM   Subscribe

 
The kids you adopt in the game aren't much trouble, but I spent quite a lot of energy thinking about how the war and storyline in Skyrim would play out, and if they would be safe or not. I ended up moving my family around to keep them out of harm's way, and buying way more property than I would strictly need.
posted by Harald74 at 5:21 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Just wait until you have 100 smithing before you pick a side. Then everything you want to be safe will be safe and everything else will die screaming.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:33 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


In a game flexible enough to accommodate this storyline, I want to believe it can also manage for some kind of crazy easter egg/deus ex machina to reward him for this wonderful altruistic behavior. /not a gamer
posted by wenestvedt at 6:42 AM on April 12, 2016


It's funny how what we would consider to be an AI failure in a human character is all very, very accurate real-world behavior for a Beloved Idiot Dog.
posted by griphus at 7:12 AM on April 12, 2016 [23 favorites]


I also had a lot of pet owner anxiety when I had a dog in Skyrim. I didn't have the Hearthfire DLC so I didn't have to deal with the orphan thing but you could tell the dog to stay while in one of your houses and then he would be safe, until he stopped waiting and would go back to where you found him.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:36 AM on April 12, 2016


I've never played Skyrim but my wife put some hours into it... I know she got a dog at some point, but was always afraid to use them in battle because they liked to be in melee range and get killed by enemy NPCs. Apparently there's some quest line where you get another dog that's invincible in battle, though if you finish the quest they go away. So she just never finished the quest.
posted by kmz at 7:56 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Nothing like buying a dog and finding out it was raised on a diet of human flesh.
ALWAYS avoid breeders! They're too unscrupulous.
Unless they breed armor clad huskies. They know their shit.
posted by charred husk at 8:01 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


He briefly mentions the demon dog, but I think it's worth noting that the demon dog is immortal and not only talks, but has accent of a 5th-tier Mel Blanc character. It's all pretty weird.
posted by Copronymus at 8:09 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Barnabus is the best addition to any Skyrim character.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:23 AM on April 12, 2016


Unless it fits my current character, the questline for "A Daedra's Best Friend" usually goes like this.

[The Dragonborn is walking down the road with some meat. He sees a dog up ahead. The dog approaches.]
"You're EXACTLY what I was looking for!" the dog exclaims in a loud, annoying voice.
[The Dragonborn escapes from the dialogue and walks back to Lod, the Blacksmith.]
"About that dog you were looking for."
"Yeah?"
"He wasn't worth the trouble."
posted by charred husk at 8:28 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's been awhile since I played, but I thought enemies couldn't kill the dog (or any NPC companion) -- just wound him badly enough he knelt down and whined until he auto-healed enough to get up and attack again? I thought the player was the only one who could deal a killing blow, which makes the death all the more dramatic for me because if he dies you know you're the one who did it. The dog would've been fine if it wasn't for you kicking him while he's down.
posted by lilac girl at 8:51 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's been awhile since I played, but I thought enemies couldn't kill the dog (or any NPC companion) -- just wound him badly enough he knelt down and whined until he auto-healed enough to get up and attack again? I thought the player was the only one who could deal a killing blow, which makes the death all the more dramatic for me because if he dies you know you're the one who did it.

In practice, I think that's how it generally plays out, but I've heard that what actually happens is that once the NPCs go into that crouch-and-heal mode, enemies will immediately de-target them, but they can still take damage and die if they're in an area that's taking non-targeted damage (like dragon breath or I think some of the traps).
posted by Copronymus at 10:30 AM on April 12, 2016


ughhh I just remembered in the original Fallout, you either can't beat the game in a certain way if Dogmeat is following you around or I couldn't figure it out and on top of that I couldn't figure out how to dismiss him and that led to my single most traumatic video game memory that I probably don't need to describe
posted by griphus at 10:33 AM on April 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


I got out of my way not to encounter that dog, because I find the barking annoying in whichever house I leave him at, and running him off to a spare house and leaving him there with whichever of my various retainers lives there just feels weird. "Here dude, you get this dog now, cope!"
posted by Archelaus at 11:26 AM on April 12, 2016


What is the point of having retainers if you can't dump your unwanted pets on them?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:24 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


> original Fallout, you either can't beat the game in a certain way if Dogmeat is following you around or I couldn't figure it out

Near the end there's a sequence that is almost impossible for Dogmeat to survive. It was in incredible bit of micromanagement to keep the dog out of harms way.
posted by porpoise at 2:10 PM on April 12, 2016


Are you talking about infiltrating the Church in disguise? That's the part I could never pull off because there was no way to disguise Dogmeat. As soon as you enter the back room you get attacked if he's with you, and I don't think there's a way to see the Real Final Boss without getting back there.

I can remember in glorious detail a video game I haven't played in 15 years and yet I still have trouble finding my keys in the morning
posted by griphus at 2:14 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I believe that Meeko (the dog in the house with the dead owner) is that special form of protected where they can only die by the PCs hand, but there is also a totally random Stray Dog encounter where you could adopt the pup, but it's a totally vanilla, fragile dog. There was one time when I saw it out in the middle of the Whiterun Savannah and before I could get to it and adopt it, a sabercat came up and bit its head off. Poor guy.

I get a similar level of the sads when I see see the random Wandering merchant fighting off bandits and I'm never quite good enough to kill off the bandits before they kill the merchant.

I also do rather wish that whenever you run into an Imperial or Thalmor patrol escorting a Nord prisoner, when you give the prisoner a weapon and cut their bonds, you could keep them as a retainer if they manage to survive the fight.

Mainly I like rescuing folks even if I am usually crap at it.
posted by bl1nk at 3:01 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


What is the point of having retainers if you can't dump your unwanted pets on them?

Hell yeah. You're sworn to carry my burdens, Lydia, and feeding and walking my dog is one of them.
posted by Jacqueline at 6:46 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


sworn to carry my burdens, Lydia, and feeding and walking my dog is one of them

snort

> infiltrating the Church in disguise?

Yeah, the force fields thing. PITA.

But we used to put up with that kind of minigame/thing in the bad old days; modern games? -
posted by porpoise at 9:28 PM on April 12, 2016


This was excellent.
posted by OmieWise at 5:32 PM on April 13, 2016


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