You all know Skyrim. The 5th mainline entry in the Elder Scrolls franchise, it was a massive hit, generally being praised for its expansive open world and the many ways players can approach it.
Not to say the game isn’t without its critics, indeed, this article is about tearing the game apart for what I believe to be one of the worst parts of Skyrim: the Companions questline.
The Five Hundred Companions of Ysgramor
The lore of the Companions is actually quite vast. During the late Merethic Era, Atmorans, led by Ysgramor, were eager to sail down to Skyrim and claim it as their home. After the first Atmoran city in Skyrim, Saarthal, was attacked and burned by Elven forces in an event known as the Night of Tears, Ysgramor returned to Atmora to gather warriors to retaliate. Those who answered Ysgramor’s call later came to be as the Five Hundred Companions who drove elves out of Skyrim and Solstheim and claimed them for the Nords.
Following the Companions retaking Saarthal, Jeek of the River, captain of the ship Jorrvaskr, and a childhood friend of Ysgramor, took his crew and started exploring Skyrim. Eventually they found the Skyforge, an ancient forge said to drive a magic almost as old as Nirn itself, and established the Jorrvaskr meat hall just outside the Skyforge, and from it grew the city of Whiterun.
“Wait a minute”, I pretend to hear you ask, “you said the Companions are disappointing but all of this sounds epic!”, and yeah, it really does, the writers clearly spent a lot of time fleshing out the history and feats of the Companions, and I’d say they did a great job, but that’s exactly why the incarnation of the Companions seen in the game are so disappointing.
The glory of old, the generic mercenaries of new
At the time when The Elder Scrolls V takes place, The Companions are little more than a mercenary guild, replacing the Fighters Guild seen in previous games. They are respected across the land due to their history and traditions, but besides that they are no different from any generic mercenaries: they just take any jobs that come their way, which usually means intimidating some shopkeeper, rescuing some hostages, taking out bandits, vampires, or wild beasts, etc, and that’s reflected in their storyline.
Clearing dungeons and not much else
The Companions have the fewest unique quests in their story line of any faction in Skyrim, with only 6 quests (of which the first is more of a theatre play to introduce the faction).
For context, the other 3 main guilds have - College of Winterhold: 8 unique quests, of which one is a theatre play - Thieves Guild: 12 unique quests, of which 2 are theatre plays - Dark Brotherhood: - 14 main quests, of which 1 is a play and 1 an optional prequel quest - 12 unique assassination contracts
But quantity isn’t everything. Notice how I put the emphasis on “unique”. That means these quests are a one and done deal, they can’t be repeated, and they play the same on each playtrough. That’s because Skyrim also offers “Radiant Quests” which are quests generated on the fly by the game. These quests definitely provide a lot in terms of quantity, but little in terms of quality. Because the developers can’t know exactly where the quest will play out, they have to keep the objective vague, so usually they boil down to “fetch an object”, “kill a bandit” etc. Now why do I bring this up? It’s because the Companions questline makes extensive use of radiant quests to pad the 6 unique quests. Not that you’d know it, for most of the 5 quests that aren’t plays, you just do the same tasks as in radiant quests.
With all of that in mind, here’s how the Companions questline plays out in practice:
- Take Up Arms
- mostly a theatre play
- do some errands to have an excuse to
- meet most of the important members of the guild
- overhear some discussions that foreshadow the main conflict of the questline
- 1 radiant quest
- Proving Honor
- halfway trough there’s a theatre play revealing that some members of the companions are werewolves
- otherwise just mindlessly clear out a dungeon full of bandits and undead
- only catch is you must have Farkas as a follower, you can’t go alone or with a different follower
- 1 radiant quest
- The Silver Hand
- You become a werewolf and clear out a camp of The Silver Hand, a faction of werewolf hunters
- 2 Radiant Quests
- Blood’s Honor
- Kill 1 to 5 Hagravens and claim their head
- at least 2 heads must be claimed if you wish to forsake your Lycanthropy later in the questline
- Purity of Revenge
- you just clear out a bandit camp
- only catch is you must have Vilkas as a follower, you can’t go alone or with a different follower
- Glory of the Dead
- Clear out a dungeon full of undead
- at the end you fight Kodlak Whitemane’s wolf spirit
- Upon conclusion you may fight your own wolf spirit to relinquish your lycanthropy
- the fight is a repeat of the former
- must have a 2nd hagraven head to do this, either from Blood’s Honor or the radiant quest Purity
If you read this, it should become pretty clear what the issue is: it’s just a whole bunch of killing followed by yet more killing. As far as gameplay is concerned, the only thing that makes the Companions questline different from going on your own and clearing random dungeons is the fact you become a werewolf. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it really feels like a demo of how integrating Radiant quests into the main questlines could go. And the answer is: not very well.
“Bad people who don’t like dogs are bad because they’re bad”
The storyline of the Companions largely revolves around lycantropy. As revealed by Kodlak at the beginning of the quest Blood’s Honor, previous companions made a deal with some witches (the witches you slaughter in the same quest) to grant them strength. This strength was given in the form of Lycantropy, or in other words, some Companions became werewolves.
It is unknown if the initial deal only included themselves, the entire faction, or part of it, but at the time the game takes place, only The Circle are werewolves. The Circle is an inner group of the companions, largely regarded as the leaders of the Companions.
Sidenote: The faction has an otherwise flat structure, with Eorlund Gray-Mane remarking “don’t always just do what you’re told. Nobody rules anybody in the Companions” and “I’m not sure how they’ve managed it, but they have. No leaders since Ysgramor. Kodlak is the Harbinger, and he’s a sort of advisor for the whole group, but every man is his own. Every woman, her own”.
In theory, this is a pretty good setup for a story. You have this group or courageous and honorable people who became werewolves after a short sighted deal by one of their ancestors, but despite this, they’ve kept their honour as warriors and people. You have moral ambiguity, you have a conflict that could actually raise some philosophical questions. Werewolves are considered evil-natured beasts, but then you see some of those werewolves being good people. The conflict being set up here is that of someone overcoming their evil nature to do good.
This isn’t actually unique to the Companions questline either. Bethesda also touched on this theme in the main storyline, and with Dawnguard, with dragons and vampires respectively being dominant creatures in nature but some of them such as Paarthurnax or Serana overcoming this nature.
But if you know anything about these 3 storylines, it’s that Bethesda didn’t quite deliver with any of them. One can write entire essays about any of these 3 (in fact here are two about the main storyline and Dawnguard), but here I’ll focus on the Companions and say that you wouldn’t even notice this was a theme being set up on a casual play trough. In fact, I wrote no less than 8 paragraphs about the story before realizing this was the case (then promptly discarded everything and started over).
The Silver Hand is introduced in the story as an antagonistic force. Werewolf hunters who oppose the Companions for being werewolves. All of this could add up into a story with 2 sides, the companion side that shows all the nuance of being of an evil nature and overcoming it, and the Silver Hand side which simply marks the Companions as evil beings who got the world tricked, kinda like the reptilian theories if you will.
But of course, we don’t get that. The Silver Hand are just generic bandits with silver weapons and werewolf heads on a pike at the entrance of their base. And the Companions? Your hesitance to accept becoming a werewolf is treated simply as delaying it to prep for it, you’re not actually given the choice to advance as a Companion without becoming a werewolf, helping Kodlak relinquish his Lycantropy while steering clear of it yourself. You’re forced to accept the beast blood, and then choose if you keep or relinquish it.
All of this ends in a story that sets you up for a bunch of things but then just doesn’t really scratch any itch. You don’t get a satisfying story about one’s nature and what they choose to do with it, you don’t get a 2 sided story of werewolves and werewolf hunters, you just get bad people who don’t like dogs because they’re bad people, and werewolves who figured being one isn’t all it’s cracked up to be because they go to a different afterlife where they hunt instead of drinking and partying for eternity.
Final Notes
I believe Bethesda saw these issues and agreed with the critics, as Dawnguard rehashes some of the story ideas with better results, but the Companions? The only reason there is to go ahead with the story line is if you want to be a werewolf for roleplay purposes, otherwise you’re better off steering clear of the disappointment.