The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles

2025-02-26
Coming back to replay this after all these years I was hoping to give it a full CHEESE / CHEESE score. Sadly my madness must have subsided over the years because I found myself only at about three fifths of a full cheese wheel of enjoyment. Sure Sheogorath is amazing and this time around I think I appreciated the Jyggalag/Sheogorath split-personality lore so much more (a god so powerful, so all-knowing their fellow gods cursed them with madness and an eternal rebirth-destruction cycle). And yes the Shivering Isles themselves are visually interesting and delightful and yes some of the quests are fantastic like running Sheogorath's dungeon and choosing how to mentally torture adventurers trying to explore it. But that's really the main draw: the flavor.

Mechanically you're doing the same stuff you've been doing before in Oblivion. And by the time I stepped in I had already done everything in Oblivion. A couple new weapons here, a new armor there, and some new looking enemies weren't exactly enough to keep me entertained for the 10 or so hours I was poodling around the Isles. So while I think the years have been very kind to Oblivion itself, the Shivering Isles left me feeling boredom, a weird emotion to have when exploring a place called Mania.

2022-10-08

Just replayed this (though I'm marking it as completed now because I'm not 100% sure if I finished the whole story all the way through).

Solid bit of DLC. I remember adoring this when it came out for how absurd and weird the Shivering Isles are. Sheogorath in particular is a hilarious character with a lot of great dialogue. Coming back to it I think I mostly appreciate it for its additional environments and enemies, the visual spectacle of the place, especially the capital and some of the ruins are something else.

I think my favorite part was the lore of the duality of Sheogorath and Jyggalag where Jyggalag was this ultimate force of order and knowledge who had a library able to predict all events to unfold in the future. The other Daedra feared him so they cursed him with madness turning him into Sheogorath. You in stopping the Greymarch, the cyclical event where Jyggalag splits from Sheogorath and destroys the mad god's realm, split the two of them. Incredibly cool.

Gameplay-wise it's more of the same. No new abilities, very few new game-changing items. I will say there is one sequence where you get to run Sheogorath's torture/trap chamber for invaders to his realm and you get to choose how you want to mentally torture the adventurers. It's a pretty cool little scripted encounter with some basic choice.

2022-11-26
Dropping the score a bit because honestly it's not that good. Yeah sure Sheogorath is funny and some of the side quests and the vibe is cool but it honestly wasn't that fun to play. It's just more of the same.