The Sheogorath quest is... bad, to say the least

Jaimeh · August 7

Spoilers ahead for dialogue.

I liked the silliness and frivolity, but I wish the writing was better. Too many modernisms, the same jokes over and over (and Uncle Sheo's brand of sadistic humor is boring and unfunny anyways), and flippancy for the sake of flippancy. The quote 'there isn't a manual to Daedric Princedom' was particularly egregious, and the Vestige's responses were also not great (that 'Not well?' reply in particular felt like something out of a comedy flop). I liked Noth, the new character, her unhinged giggle made me giggle as well, but I missed Haskill, his rapport style with Sheogorath would have been great given Sheo's predicament. I also wish we didn't have to revisit the same areas, and that we had additional places to explore, but given how this was a mini-story, I guess it was to be expected. There were also a few bugs, like shenanigans with Noth, and some portals that didn't work, but these were minor issues.

SilverBride · August 7

What exactly does Sheogorath need a vacation from? He doesn't work. And how is giving up his power to become a mortal a vacation?

Maybe it should have been "Sheogorath tries difficulty and plays as Vestige."

RaikaNA · August 7

SilverBride wrote: »

What exactly does Sheogorath need a vacation from? He doesn't work. And how is giving up his power to become a mortal a vacation?

Maybe it should have been "Sheogorath tries difficulty and plays as Vestige."

Sheogorath doesn't need to go on a vacation, and there is no need for him to give up his powers to become a mere mortal. He's already having lots of fun by creating chaos in Cyrodil right now by intoxicating mortal players with the power of a powerful deadric artifact: Volendrung.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Volendrung

This questline makes zero sense, and I can't honestly believe that Sheogorath would do something so low as to give up his powers and live in nirin for a short time as a mortal.

SilverBride · August 7

This quest line completely destroyed my perception of Sheogorath as the Daedric Prince of Madness. They could have had him disguise himself as having lost his powers then turn the tables on us once he got what he tricked us into doing for him. That is the kind of trick I could see him pulling. But this quest chain just reads like a bad sitcom.

AlienatedGoat · August 7

SilverBride wrote: »

This quest line completely destroyed my perception of Sheogorath as the Daedric Prince of Madness.

Daedric Prince of Dementia. Old man rambles on about cheese, makes you go on nonsensical errands and gets scammed out of his valuables.
C'mon Gramps, it's time to take you back to the nursing home.

thedocbwarren · August 7

RaikaNA wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

What exactly does Sheogorath need a vacation from? He doesn't work. And how is giving up his power to become a mortal a vacation?

Maybe it should have been "Sheogorath tries difficulty and plays as Vestige."

Sheogorath doesn't need to go on a vacation, and there is no need for him to give up his powers to become a mere mortal. He's already having lots of fun by creating chaos in Cyrodil right now by intoxicating mortal players with the power of a powerful deadric artifact: Volendrung.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Volendrung

This questline makes zero sense, and I can't honestly believe that Sheogorath would do something so low as to give up his powers and live in nirin for a short time as a mortal.

Agreed as isn't he messing around on Nirn already as Skooma-cat? He did have a "vacation" in Skyrim with Emperor Pelagius Septim III. That quest was irritating in a similar way and felt even that one was better than this one. I did enjoy the atmosphere of the Inn however.

Maitsukas · August 8

There couldn't have been a more perfect line for him to utter, especially after all those jokes and memes over the years were getting stale:

reazea · August 8

FabresFour wrote: »

ZOS, I know this is a bad time to post this, but i wanted to give my opinion about that outside the PTS part of the forum. I also want to make one thing absolutely clear: this is my personal opinion.

The new Sheogorath quest is, quite simply, one of the worst pieces of content ESO has ever released in the history of this MMORPG. It normalizes esoteric concepts from the lore in ways that strip them of their meaning, and Sheogorath himself has been progressively dumbed down until he's become nothing more than an unfunny comic relief character. The writing is painfully cringe from beginning to end, with little to no narrative foundation. Nothing makes sense, and I don't mean that in a good "Madness" kind of way—I mean it in the worst possible sense.

Frankly, it's disappointing.

The Thieves Guild storyline is genuinely interesting. Even if it doesn't come close to the quality of the original DLC, its characters are still compelling and enjoyable. By contrast, everything about this new Sheogorath storyline feels disappointing, poorly written, and... honestly, there's no better word for it: cringe.

I'd also like to share the feedback I posted in the PTS forums regarding this quest:

Honestly, I’m doing this quest for the second time, and I wanted to share some of the disappointment I felt revisiting Sheogorath’s story.

Sheogorath is the God of Madness. He represents one of the most tragic aspects of existence: the loss of control over one’s own mind, the distortion of reality, and psychological chaos taken to its extreme.

That’s why it was disappointing to see the character reduced almost entirely to childish cheese jokes, empty threats, and extremely predictable behavior. This is the Prince of Madness and Creativity—someone who should evoke unease, discomfort, and unpredictability.

What always made Sheogorath interesting was the fact that he was never just "funny." He is cruel, manipulative, and deeply disturbing. He drives people insane for his own amusement, destroys lives, and twists minds into spirals of paranoia and suffering. There’s a dark and complex side to him that feels largely absent here.

Reducing such a rich character to "an old man who likes cheese" ends up feeling genuinely sad for people who know the franchise’s lore more deeply.

I would really like to see ZOS handle these characters with more care and depth, because sometimes it feels like the focus is more on turning iconic figures into simple memes than on telling truly memorable stories.

All of Season 1 feels like AI slop to me. It's the weakest, shallowest content ZOS has ever released.

Elvenheart · August 8

Silaf wrote: »

It's fun because the characters are great but the narrator could have done better. The dialogues writing is good but the quest could have been so so much more instead of CHEESE!

Some rendom toughts developed right now.
_Make sheogorath remember parts of when he was a mortal and make the reason why he want to get back his powers the fact that he can't bear the loss of his loved ones.
Make the last moment of sanity after regaining his powers be a moment when he does something good for others or in memory of his past like making flowers bloom trough all Glenumbra or similar.

Literally i did this in 25 seconds.

This is what I’m going to pretend happened.

Elvenheart · August 8

Oh, I just had an idea! Wouldn’t it have been funny if we had gotten to the end of the quest and find out the person we had been helping wasn’t really Sheo all along, but a mad follower who believed so strongly that he was Sheo that he took on the persona and convinced us as well! And in the end the real Sheo shows up after having a fun old time watching all the chaos (and directing it from behind the scenes)!

Syldras · August 8

Honestly? I found the beginning promising. Sadly, the many lore buzzwords strewn in (like the Coldharbor Compact) were never elaborated on later; and also what looked to me like it could lead into the topic of "What does mortality feel like for a daedra?" (which could have told us more about what being a daedric prince "feels"/is like) never got any deeper either, beyond Sheogorath shortly telling us once, in the first quest, that having emotions was somehow weird. That would have been a good start to give us new lore - but instead, the focus were solely jokes. It's a bit of a missed chance.

thedocbwarren · August 8

Elvenheart wrote: »

Oh, I just had an idea! Wouldn’t it have been funny if we had gotten to the end of the quest and find out the person we had been helping wasn’t really Sheo all along, but a mad follower who believed so strongly that he was Sheo that he took on the persona and convinced us as well! And in the end the real Sheo shows up after having a fun old time watching all the chaos (and directing it from behind the scenes)!

I was thinking "Hero of Kvatch" honestly.

TaMmEh · August 9

MasterSpatula wrote: »

"Lackey." And I thought I hated being called "Mercenary."

I wholeheartedly agree.. I think for me it was just so predicable and run of the mill that maybe if it was more crazy, more mayhem and more chaotic out of the box outcomes then I wouldnt have noticed just how many times I was called a lackey..

What happened to the Mad God that made you frustrated because outcomes were crazy and twisted but logical at the same time and if you got things wrong then you would end up back where you were to do it again - all for his amusement?

Waits_Behind_Walls wrote: »

PrayingSeraph wrote: »

I enjoyed it. Did anyone else get very mild horror vibes at The Violet Vvardvark? Like to me it portrayed how scary madness can be, such as the description of what happens to a character and his skin. And the overall atmosphere of the tavern was...unnerving to me.

Loved it, best part of the quest, I wish more of it was like this. I was genuinely impressed with that space. They kept telling me that there was madness leaking everywhere, but here they showed it.

This really was the only part I enjoyed, the randomness, the atmosphere, the craziness and the fear that comes with what should be Sheogorath. What I also noticed with them commenting constantly about the madness leaking everywhere but there was no madness to be seen when you were literally following the madness and absorbing back remnants of his power -so much could have been added here to make it crazy and out there and match the vibe of what was taking place! Instead you just got a little floating orb or a piece of madness jumping around.. The dancing skeletons were the closest thing to the madness actually affecting the surroundings!

Just my 10c anyway..

RaikaNA · 3:48AM

So I went to Deshan to buy some things from the trade store... while I was there, I bumped into Noth the unhinged... I decided to engage with her....

Her dialogue was so cringy... so insufferable that it's shameful to call Sheogorath the god of madness at this point. I feel like I'm just a babysitter for this "Daedric prince".

I hope @ZOS_Kevin and @ZOS_JessicaFolsom are taking note of this, as this questline should not have been released due to the extremely bad writing.

tomofhyrule · 5:12AM

After finishing the questline, I will say that it did exceed my expectations.
However, considering that I have been unimpressed with the writing of late and I loathe Sheogorath in all of his incarnations, I will say that my expectations were so low that you would have had to dig for them, so that's not exactly a high bar to clear.

I did think that parts of this line could have been interesting, but I'm so over the "lol cheese" personality at this point. Honestly, I'd have dropped the latter half of this quest with Maddy and made the whole line end with whats-his-face the lieutenant.

But again, a lot of this was "we'll show a sanitized version of Sheo, and just have him mention all of these vicious things he could do if we weren't making this for kids." At this point, every time Sheo says something about skipping rope with someone's entrails (which is also getting old at this point - for a god of Madness, he's really predictable), I really just am like "ok honey, let's get you to bed now."

I would have liked more dialogue options. Specifically those that allow you to say "You don't scare me, now stop this before I'm the one who shows you what it's like to be mortal."

darkriketz · 5:47AM

rothan117 wrote: »

I finished the quest line, it did nothing to change my feeling of not liking Sheogorath. I did not find it the least bit enjoyable.

Same.
Sheogorath is one of the Daedric Princes I hate the most (not "I like the less", but really "I hate the most"), I've never been a fan of "chaotic madness humour", I even prefer straightforward "evil" guys like Mehrunes Dagon or Molag Bal (at least you know what to expect from them, you know how to handle them) and honestly I completed this new storyline in autopilot.

Last time I was deeply, narratively invested in a storyline was through West Weald and Irelia's story, even if I hate Hermaeus Mora almost as much as Shelly (he talks so slow, ugh -_- and I don't like Lovecraftian creatures and lore).
I really could have went on without Sheogorath's questline, I did it only to see what was at the end.

kind_hero · 8:28AM

I don't know why you expected depth like you would find in a novel. True, the daedric princes are disturbing, dark and messy. However, as I am tired of these lighthearted quest lines, I am also tired of the dark gritty fantasy tropes. Not sure if I want to see more disturbing madness in a video game while I am trying to escape from the real world problems.

What I didn't like, and would change, is the unnecessary fetch style quests which replace story elements or role play with hoping from one place to another. Chasing that urn/tomeshell was more annoying than Sheo's predictable jokes. Actually, this is the heart of the issue, when a character becomes predictable in a way that makes you care less or skip dialogues.

ESO moves from the tradition of the previous Elder Scrolls games, where daedric quests were usually complex, weird and lore rich. Daedric princes feature to casually in ESO, while Aedric divines are only mentioned. There is no chain quest for Dibella, for example, or for Arkay etc.

Jaimeh · 12:38PM

MasterSpatula wrote: »

"Lackey." And I thought I hated being called "Mercenary."

Sheogorath's 'lackey' almost made me miss Narsis Dren's disdainful 'assistant!' calls

logarifmik · 1:44PM

At first I disliked the idea of Uncle Sheo going on vacation, but as the plot developed I found it surprisingly fitting the lore. From what I recall, Daedric Princes have difficulty manifesting fully on Nirn, so this partial renunciation of power is a clever idea — almost genius. Think of the Mad God’s vacation as an experiment on his own nature: one that was a complete disaster, but still worth trying. But why doesn’t Sheogorath explain his motives to the Vestige? Well, why would he? Makes no sense. His expressly naïve behaviour can also be seen as a result of his hidden agenda and nature splitting. Well duh, once again, mortals failed to understand the Mad God, which is actually pretty good and adds real value to the plot, don't you see? Maybe, though, I’m just going mad myself and seeing things — but I find that more comforting than bluntly criticizing the writer's work without giving it some thought.

As for the writing itself, unfortunately I don’t find it any good. Most of the text looks generic, with the notable exception of Noth the Unhinged dialogues. She was the only character in the whole narrative I was genuinely interested in — a lovely lady who reminds me of my own cat with her cute little madness in the left eye.

Meridiano · 2:08PM

The only time the cheese fanservice was interesting in ESO was the first time - in vanilla, 10+ years ago. And never since then, because it only reminds us how desperately ESO wants to be "yeah, Oblivion was so cool, but me too, me too, look here, I have a reference to it, do you like me now?"

Every new cheese mention from Sheo is -1 aura. And it's deep negative at this point.