While The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was the game I played growing up, my deep dive into the lore and world introduced me to Morrowind & Oblivion. While I have yet to play the former, I bought the ladder and spent the better part of two summers exploring and completing it’s quests. And while The Shivering Isles is the DLC that gets all the credit and all the praise, I actually found myself enjoying Knights of the Nine quite a bit more. Not that The Shivering Isles was bad. Far from it. The story, characters, and pure wackiness it added made for a great addition to an already-superb game. But Knights of the Nine was wonderful in its own right, too.
The largest complaint or criticism of Knights of the Nine is that it may seem too boring or vanilla, especially when compared to The Shivering Isles. After all, the entire point of the story is to gather the armor of Pelinal Whitestrake in order to defeat the returned-Ayleid king Umaril the Unfeathered. Until the final battle, each quest is merely overcoming an obstacle to fetch a new piece of armor.
Yet, while Knights of the Nine may be predictable in it’s story and execution, it holds a certain level of charm that appealed to me the whole way through. For one, the quest for the Mace of Zenithar was obviously modeled after the leap of faith scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a brilliant little easter egg, and the quest to retrieve the Boots of the Crusader by being a pacifist toward nature in the form of a bear was an intriguing and unusual idea for a fantasy RPG.
However, the most endearing part of Knights of the Nine and the reason I speak so highly of it, is what happens after the questline is completed. During the questing to reach the Priory of the Nine and find all the pieces of armor scattered throughout Cyrodiil, the player meets many friendly NPC’s along the way, most of whom are surely forgotten about after quests are received. But, once the player defeats Umaril and returns to the Priory of the Nine, all those NPC’s are gathered there, and will follow you if you wish. While in the world of the Elder Scrolls, most NPC’s that are good people end up dead for story purposes, for once, nice NPC’s remain alive, and will even follow you as companions. For the first time in an ES game, it feels like there are other characters who are worth being around. No longer does the player develop an affinity for an NPC, only for them to be killed off a few quests later. No, instead Knights of the Nine has a happy ending, which is something growing ever more rare in the current climate of fiction.
Russell A. Wells 