Critical Role
4x08 Fanged Revenge [2nd hour]
[Watch it (again) for free on YouTube, or for subscribers on Beacon or Twitch.]
Tuesday, 16 December 2025
TV
Video Games
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
Before I installed Skyrim almost on a whim (more about that here), I was putting proper effort into trying to decide which many-hour RPG to start playing. My recent Steam Deck and 3DS acquisitions, and acquiring tonnes of games for each, have meant I've ended up with a raft of options in my backlog, and the fact RPGs are some of the most praised games around nowadays (Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3 have between them topped PC Gamer's Top 100 for years; Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has already scooped several major Game of the Year awards for 2025) means they're close to the forefront of my mind.
Anyway, the reason I was putting so much thought into it is because they're so long. Obviously how long varies based on how much time and effort you invest (that's why HowLongToBeat has multiple types of playthrough and shows ranges for each), but many suggest 50+ hours just to do the main story (Persona 5 Royal averages 100+ for that). Those numbers boggled my mind — my main frame of reference is point-and-click adventure games, which typically last 6–8 hours (The Longest Journey's forecast 18 hours used to sound epic to me). The upper estimates for RPGs (where people have spent 400+ hours on just one of these games) I figured came from multiple playthroughs and the like, so they didn't bother me so much; but the length of 12 or more adventure games for just the main story? When this is a genre that has a rep for diverting you with side quests? Jeez!
Well, my perspective has changed now, because here I am passing 100 hours in Skyrim, still not having properly started the main story (no dragons in my game yet!), still not having progressed most of the major secondary stories, and still not even having visited many major locations (I'd been intending to go to Falkreath almost since the start, when I got invited there (at the time it felt I'd been playing for a while, but with hindsight it feels like it was near the start!), and I've only made it there in the past few hours...)
Who knows when I'll finish. I guess I will someday. But I think it will have two effects on future RPG choices. Firstly, the times won't feel as daunting, because I know what it's like now; that it can be done, that I can do it; that 100 hours can still feel like you're barely getting started. But secondly, that I will take those lengths seriously, because if the game promises playthroughs of several hundred hours, there's a chance that will happen to me.
Or maybe there's nothing else quite like Skyrim and I won't spend this much time on one game ever again. We'll see!
(It also crossed my mind to use the 100-hour mark as a point to take a break, to play some other games (I have hundreds awaiting, and several I was already in the middle of), but I'm in the middle of stuff and don't want to! Maybe sometime soon. Or not, who knows.)
Before I installed Skyrim almost on a whim (more about that here), I was putting proper effort into trying to decide which many-hour RPG to start playing. My recent Steam Deck and 3DS acquisitions, and acquiring tonnes of games for each, have meant I've ended up with a raft of options in my backlog, and the fact RPGs are some of the most praised games around nowadays (Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3 have between them topped PC Gamer's Top 100 for years; Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has already scooped several major Game of the Year awards for 2025) means they're close to the forefront of my mind.
Anyway, the reason I was putting so much thought into it is because they're so long. Obviously how long varies based on how much time and effort you invest (that's why HowLongToBeat has multiple types of playthrough and shows ranges for each), but many suggest 50+ hours just to do the main story (Persona 5 Royal averages 100+ for that). Those numbers boggled my mind — my main frame of reference is point-and-click adventure games, which typically last 6–8 hours (The Longest Journey's forecast 18 hours used to sound epic to me). The upper estimates for RPGs (where people have spent 400+ hours on just one of these games) I figured came from multiple playthroughs and the like, so they didn't bother me so much; but the length of 12 or more adventure games for just the main story? When this is a genre that has a rep for diverting you with side quests? Jeez!
Well, my perspective has changed now, because here I am passing 100 hours in Skyrim, still not having properly started the main story (no dragons in my game yet!), still not having progressed most of the major secondary stories, and still not even having visited many major locations (I'd been intending to go to Falkreath almost since the start, when I got invited there (at the time it felt I'd been playing for a while, but with hindsight it feels like it was near the start!), and I've only made it there in the past few hours...)
Who knows when I'll finish. I guess I will someday. But I think it will have two effects on future RPG choices. Firstly, the times won't feel as daunting, because I know what it's like now; that it can be done, that I can do it; that 100 hours can still feel like you're barely getting started. But secondly, that I will take those lengths seriously, because if the game promises playthroughs of several hundred hours, there's a chance that will happen to me.
Or maybe there's nothing else quite like Skyrim and I won't spend this much time on one game ever again. We'll see!
(It also crossed my mind to use the 100-hour mark as a point to take a break, to play some other games (I have hundreds awaiting, and several I was already in the middle of), but I'm in the middle of stuff and don't want to! Maybe sometime soon. Or not, who knows.)