One of the developers on Skyrim has admitted that despite designing the game's final boss he’s never actually encountered it in the game.
Artist Jonah Lobe has recently created A Skyrim Documentary in honor of the game’s 10 year anniversary in which he shares stories from the project's development cycle and chats with the colleagues that he worked alongside.
One of the more surprising revelations to come out of the documentary was that Lobe hasn’t actually seen final boss Alduin in-game, despite designing the creature all those years ago. This is also the case for the whalebone bridge leading to the climactic fight, which Lobe reveals he also has never seen in the flesh (or should that be 'bone'?)
- Skyrim's iconic opening was done by Starfield's quest lead, but only after he was brutally called out for "everything we're doing wrong" in front of the Bethesda team
- RPG veteran Josh Sawyer says Skyrim is the perfect example of why it doesn't matter if players finish games because "a lot of people never finish the crit path," but "they love it"
There’s a pretty good reason for this though. During the 'what makes Skyrim so special?' segment of the documentary, Lobe and Skyrim programmer Jean Simonet discuss how rewarding it is to get lost in the game due to there being so many side-quests buried within it. This is when Lobe explains: "I made the last boss of Skyrim, Alduin, and the whalebone bridge that you cross to reach him, but I’ve never actually seen them in-game. Why? I just never got there, I was too distracted."
We’ve heard a lot of behind the scenes development secrets from a number of developers who worked on the iconic Bethesda game including that Skyrim’s famous opening sequence was almost ruined by a single, unstoppable bee, as well as finding out that the "an arrow to the knee" was never supposed to be a meme. Not to mention one developer who recently debunked the decade-long "Myth of the Treasure Fox."
Fancy doing a quick side quest now? Take a look at our best Skyrim quests list for inspiration.
