I’ve been saying that for a while. Nobody to root for in the game. Not the Empire, not the Stormcloaks, not even the Forsworn. And the Forsworn thing is a whole racist trope of its own, holy shit. You have basically this blackface take of Native Americans, who’ve been wrongfully dispossessed of The Reach, but they had to make them all black magic worshiping, centered around the witch/hag hierarchy, every weird colonialist slur you could even dig up from the “Manifest Destiny” days. Skyrim’s great as like a fidget spinner for the ambience and the like, but man does it have problems.
I don’t think you seriously know the lore of the Elder Scrolls and the way it usually works out, and are really projecting your own prejudices without realizing it. The Forsworn are a take on Breton mythology in The Elder Scrolls universe, and The Elder Scrolls universe is essentially all about subverting the expectation of what you thought the past really was like, what it truly was like, and the transposition of both of these into the same time frame. Hell, the whole concept of Aedra and Daedra may be a literal manifestation of this dichotomy at the “god/demon” level, “may be” because in true Elder Scrolls fashion the lore never tells you in an outright manner and just drops hints within the lore.
Neither the Empire or the Stormcloaks were supposed to be wholly good options, the player was supposed between distinctly flawed options, where siding with the Empire might very well have been the best in an imperfect world option. I suspect that the fact that the player base was as divided as they were between the two is why they went the complete opposite end of the spectrum in Starfiled and just slapped you with the “this is what you were supposed to choose!” companion commentary.
I’ve been saying that for a while. Nobody to root for in the game. Not the Empire, not the Stormcloaks, not even the Forsworn. And the Forsworn thing is a whole racist trope of its own, holy shit. You have basically this blackface take of Native Americans, who’ve been wrongfully dispossessed of The Reach, but they had to make them all black magic worshiping, centered around the witch/hag hierarchy, every weird colonialist slur you could even dig up from the “Manifest Destiny” days. Skyrim’s great as like a fidget spinner for the ambience and the like, but man does it have problems.
I don’t think you seriously know the lore of the Elder Scrolls and the way it usually works out, and are really projecting your own prejudices without realizing it. The Forsworn are a take on Breton mythology in The Elder Scrolls universe, and The Elder Scrolls universe is essentially all about subverting the expectation of what you thought the past really was like, what it truly was like, and the transposition of both of these into the same time frame. Hell, the whole concept of Aedra and Daedra may be a literal manifestation of this dichotomy at the “god/demon” level, “may be” because in true Elder Scrolls fashion the lore never tells you in an outright manner and just drops hints within the lore.
Neither the Empire or the Stormcloaks were supposed to be wholly good options, the player was supposed between distinctly flawed options, where siding with the Empire might very well have been the best in an imperfect world option. I suspect that the fact that the player base was as divided as they were between the two is why they went the complete opposite end of the spectrum in Starfiled and just slapped you with the “this is what you were supposed to choose!” companion commentary.