Of all the new additions to The Elder Scrolls series that were introduced in Skyrim, none impacted the gameplay quite as much as the Shouts. These spells, spoken in the language of dragons, allow the Last Dragonborn to cast many unique spells such as breathing fire, tearing souls, or even summoning an undead dragon from the depths of the Soul Cairn.
While Bethesda tried to make these spells make sense in the context of the world they are in, there are still some aspects of Shouts that don’t make sense or, at the very least, there are certain aspects about Shouts that are never fully explained before Alduin is defeated.
10 All Shouts Are Made Of Three Words Of Power
When the Last Dragonborn first reaches High Hrothgar, Arngeir tells them that all Shouts are made of three Words of Power when at their full strength, though before this point, players were able to use Unrelenting Force with only the first word. Immediately after telling the player this fact about Shouts, he teaches you the second Word of Power for Unrelenting Force and proceeds to test your abilities in casting it by making you use it on the Greybeards, with only two out of three words known. While this could be simply to prevent the player from accidentally throwing a Greybeard off of the top of the mountain, this law of three is broken before it is even introduced.
9 The One Shout That Is Made Of Four Words
In the Dragonborn DLC, players are introduced to Miraak, the self-proclaimed First Dragonborn, whose skill with Shouts outpaces anything seen before, even by the Greybeards. His most deadly power, however, is his unnamed Shout that rips the soul from a dragon while it is still alive that is something of a superpowered version of Soul Tear. This Shout, unlike every other Shout in the game, is made up of four words instead of three. Even the other dragons stick to the law of three no matter which Shout they cast, so the fact that Miraak is able to break this law brings the Greybeard’s knowledge of Shouts into serious question.
8 The Greybeards
After absorbing the first dragon soul and learning the first word for Unrelenting Force, the Greybeards literally shout down the mountain for the Last Dragonborn to get their butts up to High Hrothgar and learn how to talk properly. They are, in general, apolitical due to their violent history and try to stay out of the Civil War storyline for as long as possible, though inevitably get dragged into it.
It is learned during the main story that Ulfric Stormcloak, the leader of the rebellion force, was once in training with the Greybeards and is where he learned to Shout himself. Although the Greybeards try to stay out of military affairs, they have corrected their own mistakes in the past, and keeping Ulfric from killing the former High King of Skyrim should have been number one on their to-do list.
7 Word Wall Functions
Although the people of Skyrim had no idea what the Word Walls were for, aside from being something of a gravestone for several high standing Nords, it is later found that they were made to teach the Last Dragonborn Words of Power, though the how and why are never given. What doesn’t make a whole lot of sense is that, even though the Word Walls have full sentences carved into them, the Last Dragonborn is only able to learn one Word of Power from each wall, with the only exception being the Throw Voice wall where they learn all three words at once.
6 Meridia’s Word Wall
For the most part, Word Walls are placed either in areas of importance within Draugr ruins or atop mountains as some kind of place of worship, as well as locations for dragons to roost and respawn. One Word Wall that is bizarrely placed in the one beside Meridia’s statue in Solitude. Both of these structures are very old, so it is hard to know which one was built first, but the fact that the Nords built either one beside the other raises some questions about how they view Meridia since she isn’t a part of the Nordic pantheon and most Nords don’t worship the Daedric Princes.
5 Cooldown Periods
Early in the story while talking to Arngeir, he states that the Last Dragonborn is the only person in the world who can learn Words of Power as fast as they do and that it takes several years of training for even a Greybeard to learn a new word. This doesn’t explain why the player has to wait quite a long time between Shouts, while every other character and enemy in the game that can use Shouts doesn’t have this problem. This can be offset by breaking certain aspects of the game, such as using the Restoration Potion loop, but it is still strange that this restriction is limited only to the player.
4 Elemental Fury
Each Shout in the game, with the exception of Dragonrend and Dragon Aspect, is said to have been created by the dragons themselves and, as far as the player is told, this is the only Shout they can’t use due to them not being able to comprehend its meaning. However, this raises questions about certain other Shouts in the game, particularly Elemental Fury.
This Shout increases the swing speed of weapons that don’t hold an enchantment, something that dragons have never had to use, particularly because they don’t have hands. While it could simply be that Elemental Fury has a different meaning for a dragon, its effect is a little too specific for it to not have been man-made.
3 Dragonrend
After struggling against the tyranny of Alduin, three Nord warriors created a Shout that would allow them to fight the dragons on equal footing which would become known as Dragonrend. While this Shout is incredibly useful, particularly for melee-focused characters, it doesn’t really address the main power that dragons have over mortals: their Shouts. While mortals can learn to Shout, it is significantly weaker than anything a dragon can produce and it seems like Dragonrend should have prevented dragons from speaking rather than flying.
2 Throw Voice
This one Shout goes against the very nature of the spells and it is hard to justify its existence alongside every other Shout in the game. Unlike other Shouts, Throw Voice is a whisper-quiet spell that distracts enemies while not alerting them to your presence and, unlike all other Shouts, isn’t actually shouted by the Last Dragonborn. This effect can be easily replicated by simply firing an arrow at a wall near an enemy, so the addition of this spell that goes against the very name of its spell class is a little odd.
1 Dragon Revival Shout
One of the cooler Shouts in the game that is only used by Alduin is his unnamed Shout to revive dragons from the dead, as seen during his assault on Kinesgrove early in the story. This Shout would have been useful for every other dragon in the game to use, but Alduin is the only one who knows these words in their native language. Had any other dragon known this Shout after Alduin was cast into the future, the dragons might not have all died in the past.
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