I like butterflies and cheese, so we have common interests. Delivery of his lines amuses me at times, such gravitas for the inane.

I also enjoy whimsy. He is equal parts terrifying and innocent wonder. Madness made incarnate. Kinda gives me “Dogma” vibes, in all honesty.

I don't like him either, but I don't need to be sold on him. Have faith in your convictions! To me, he's just annoying, and has been since the beginning, but his ubiquity has made him unbearable.

Sheo alone is not that interesting. I think part of Sheo's charm is that he rules a complex and bizarre realm, the Shivering Isles. But somehow ZOS has forgotten that part, where has it gone?

Uncle Sheo kinda reminds me how to take it easy.

Considering my complaining posts on this forum he has some work to do.

There is nothing to like. He is a schoolyard bully with godlike powers. He exists to be infuriating.

Convince me to convince you.

I hate Sheogorath.

He’s the prime example of a character who could have been interesting once upon a time, but his personality was completely replaced by a one-dimensional joke because of sledgehammer writing and the desire to keep moving in the direction of a single joke because some people found it funny. After all, if something is funny once, it will definitely be more funny if we bash people over the head with that joke and give them nothing else, right?

Sheo was in Morrowind, but his existence amounted to three quests: you needed to deal with the minion he summoned to bother Azura’s priestess, you made him an offerring for a Temple quest, and then the only one where you interacted with him directly was him telling you to kill a netch with a fork for the lulz (and then he inexplicably gave you Hircine’s artifact). That was it.
He was even in Daggerfall, where he would randomly pop up on the wrong summoning day and task you with killing a mage in a dungeon while saying a bunch of non-sequiturs. Again, that was about it.

Guess what though: cheese was not involved or mentioned. That came from Oblivion’s quest, and it wasn’t even the point. You just had one step in that quest where you had to steal stinky cheese and put it in a pot to draw a bunch of rats to a town (before they poisoned the rats and then you had to kill the sheep before Sheo made flaming dogs rain from the sky). But since then, they were like “omg cheese is so funny!”

I hated Shivering Isles. It was really where we went from “Prince of Madness” to “Prince of omg so random and funny!” and it really took away from the character. That was where Sheogorath essentially became the Alice in Wonderland expy he is today, and that really meant dropping (or at least severely minimizing) the dark sides of Madness in general. It’s the same way a lot of media with DC’s Joker is more about the clown part and his murderous side is sanitized under fifty layers of joking: It’s more corporate-friendly to not talk about him as a psycho and then people love to think of him instead as a joke. One which I think ran its course about 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority here. It seems Shivering Isles was the template for “how to write Sheogorath in the future,” and that just meant leaning into everything harder and harder.

Skyrim’s and ESO’s initial version were both at minimum forgettable, in that you could do their quest and then move on. But then he popped up in Cyrodiil (offerring Malacath’s artifact for some reason) and shouts at you every time you walk by. And now they’re shoving him back in again - a whole story that you know is going to be 90% cheese and lame jokes.

I had to roll my eyes when they first announced “Sheogorath” as a feature for 2026. I hate him. I hate that he’s the “easy” way to make a joke. I hate that his personality is shallower than most of the returning characters we’ve had in ESO on their second pass. But I’m sure there are people who are like “oh boy, my favorite character is back! Cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese!”

2026 as a whole was not made for me personally. I only want two things from ESO: new Group Dungeons and new Classes, but I’m getting neither (and seemingly ESO will not be making either of those ever again…)

CHEESE!!!

I’m not keen on Sheo, but his quest in Elsweyr is disturbing, in that it shows the nasty & cruel side of his nature, and less of the butterflies & cheese.

I like that he makes me feel ‘icky’ and uncertain; it seems appropriate.

He's had moments of comedy and cruelty, but overall they lean way too hard on things like cheese.

I want to look in Sheo's eyes, see the cosmos, and be driven mad. Or deal with cruel tricks that ask for impossible choices. I don't want to hear about cheese or him taking a vacation. It's just not funny, entertaining, or appropriate for how the character was established. And just like Mora, I feel like they soften the edges on these Daedric Princes. I want them to be vile. That's the point of them. And I think they're too commonplace. The punch of having Daedric experiences is lessened because of it.

He started out interesting, but he's been used too often and he's become a bit of a joke. That's why more and more players are fed up of him.

With so many Daedric princes to choose from, I really hope this is the last time Sheogorath is featured. Given what's happening with the studio, I understand why they went to him (they can use existing assets), but after this, I hope to never see him again except for his quest in the SP TES games.

This may not be a sale but rather my own opinion but if you want a good characterization of Sheogorath, it has to be his own daedric shrine quest in TES:4 Oblivion

Im not talking about his shivering isle expansion, I mean his actual daedric shrine quest. Sheogorath works well if he is not whimsical but scary. There is no comfort in his madness, only chaos and insanity. And in that questline, he gaslights an entire community that the end times are coming and that village falls into complete madness.

The Shivering Isle DLC, Skyrim, and ESO quests sort of butcher him by dialing his whimsical nature as your "crazy uncle".

You mean you don't like hearing the same cheese joke a million times?

Have you done the Mages Guild questline in ESO? Sheogorath is a character, but he serves the quest's plot that brings out what people will do for power, the fragile tensions underlying the alliances, and lead you to a difficult choice to make.

As a character I find him interesting, I think he's not as "wacky for wackiness' sake" as they try to market him as. But a good Sheogorath quest highlights the other characters and their complexities.