Cut: Sheogorath's Riddle

Skyrim's Mad God and the Impossible Riddle that Almost Was

Sheogorath, Daedric Prince of Madness, from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, voiced with menace and delight by Wes Johnson.

I often say that you never get to play the game you made, you just get to play the game you almost made.

Every time I fire up a game I worked on, I find myself constantly saying, “Oh, I remember when this was going to be twice as complicated”, or “Aw, the side quest that was going to be here was so promising.” It’s exhausting, honestly. You’re haunted by the ghosts of could have been, and sometimes the only way to exorcise them is to share their stories.

So here’s one of my favorite things that could have been.

A Crazy Idea for a Mad God

I left Bethesda after working on Skyrim for a year and change, designing and writing the first draft or so of a bunch of quests, including the quest for Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. He’s a delightful character, a favorite of the fans as well as the developers, and a personal favorite because he was previously written by the delightfully deranged Ken Rolston (who I consider my personal game design granddad), and voiced by the charming and hilarious Wes Johnson (who is an actual family friend I’ve known since childhood).

So when I was about to leave Bethesda, I really wanted to leave behind a little Easter egg for one of my favorites. I had the idea to let the player play a game of riddles with Sheogorath.

It was a totally optional bit towards the end of his quest — easy to miss if you didn’t talk to him much — and he would warn you several times that a high-stakes game with a reality-bending god who cheats is a bad idea, because obviously it very much is.

Still, what player wouldn't want to test wits with the semi-divine embodiment of madness? And hidden touches like that are what makes open-world games (especially Bethesda games) so fun to explore. Plus, the idea made me laugh like a fiend, which seemed like a good enough reason for Sheogorath to do anything.

A Poultry Excuse for a Riddle

If you finally convinced him you were determined to take the risk, his riddle was simply this: "What is the opposite of a chicken?"

To this, the player was given a bunch of plausible answers to choose from: an egg, a fox, a brave man, a cow, etc. And, as you'd expect from him, good old Sheo had a different explanation for why each answer was woefully wrong.

"A brave man? No, actually this chicken is really quite courageous, in its way. / Pecked a troll right in the eye to protect its brood! What a heroic little nugget it made! / You two have a lot in common. I'd introduce you, but you'll be busy falling to your death."

Picking a wrong answer (which is to say, any of them) got you teleported a mile above the highest mountain in the game, giving the player a lovely view of the world before falling to your death.

Like the map screen, only with a one-way zoom feature. And death.

I remember the biggest issue was that I didn't want to make the player wait through a long loadtime just to die - especially since loading into a new space would end up replacing their autosave with a new one where they're inescapably falling to their doom. 

I mean, Sheogorath may be a murderous smartass, but he's not about to ruin your playthrough. Although you really should be making separate backup saves, you know.

Try Again?

Now, that was fun enough, but I wanted to find a way to break the fourth wall a bit. It’s perfectly in keeping with Sheogorath, after all. And also, death-trapping the player is just bad form — of course you can do it as designer, but you shouldn’t. You really need to give the player a way to feel like they’ve won in some way.

So I set it up to give an achievement when you had tried one (or all) of the answers unsuccessfully and realized none of them were right. That way, when you reloaded and tried again, the conditional-based dialogue system could see that you had the achievement, and would auto-magically present you with a new dialogue option to complain that he was cheating.

Naturally, Sheogorath's response to that was to grin and remind you that he had warned you in the first place.

But he’d take some sort of mercy on you and let you live with that answer. It’d just serve to be a reminder not to bet your life with a god that delights in breaking the rules. Sometimes, the way to overcome an obvious deathtrap is to not walk into its jaws.

Turning the Tables

But! The best and most devious part of my plan was that there actually was a way to win the contest — but only for those with special skills.

In addition to all that, I added another variable to the editor, which could be accessed through the debug menu or the console commands. If you did so, you could set the variable to true to turn on a hidden answer in the dialogue tree. I think the variable was a simple bool named "SheoRiddleAnswer”, but it’s been a while. 

At that point, Sheogorath would recognize that you had altered the fundamental rules of the universe just to win a riddling contest, applaud you as a kindred spirit in your trivial abuse of phenomenal cosmic power, and give you a sweetroll or something.

Nothing too great, because the real reward of a dumb little thing like that is having the story to tell your friends afterwards. If you wanted a more game-breaking reward, there were plenty of other options to choose from (may I suggest anything involving the Wabbajack?). Plus, you clearly have access to the editor/debug menu, so what more do you need?

Cut From Existence

When I left, I handed the quest to my friend and colleague (the excellent Nate Ellis), who went on to do wonderful things with it. But I'm pretty sure the riddle contest got cut before release, possibly because of limited dialogue budgets or any of the several ways it would have been a hassle to implement cleanly. Plus, between when I left and when the game shipped, the game switched to a quadrant-style dialogue choice system, which would have made this riddle contest effectively impossible to implement as envisioned.

Then again, it might just have been cut because it's kind of a dick move for a designer to do to the player, and Nate is a much kinder DM than I am.

Knowing that engine, bits of the riddle contest may still be hidden in the quest's code and dialogue entries somewhere. I haven't gone digging through the editor to check over the decade of Skyrim’s re-releases, because I'd rather let it live on in my memory untainted by cruel reality. Besides, I have other games to work on these days.

But that riddle contest will always be part of my personal lore about Sheogorath, Daedric Prince of Madness. And now it can be part of yours, too!

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