Funny Skyrim Clip Shows Markarth NPCs Pretend to Use Smelter

gamerant.com:

Non-player characters can have a surprisingly busy schedule in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Bethesda prides itself on creating a living world whose inhabitants follow a schedule and go about their day with or without player involvement. This was an often-mentioned feature of Oblivion that Skyrim expanded upon by significantly increasing NPC’s abilities to interact with their environment.

However, Skyrim NPCs often do things that don’t make sense in context, as many players noticed the first time Serana randomly started working a forge or swinging a pickaxe. Recently, a Skyrim player noticed another odd behavior, with a pair of smelter workers who appear to be faking their job.

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Reddit user CanadianAndroid was walking around the lower part of Skyrim’s city of Markarth when they spotted two NPCs working with the city’s ore smelter. However, “working” may be a strong word for at least one of them. While the man shoveling coal might be doing something productive, his buddy can’t be accomplishing much by striking the side of the smelter with a hammer. In fact, it almost comes across as a cartoonish attempt at looking busy. CanadianAndroid points this out themself, saying, “When The Jarl is around and you have to look busy.”

This is obviously the result of some oversight on Bethesda’s part, allowing the animation to play where it doesn’t make sense. For example, the man with the hammer isn’t even lined up correctly, leaning on thin air as he bangs on the smelter’s stone shell. It’s hard to tell if his hammer is even making contact. However, it is funny to imagine that the workers were slacking off and hastily grabbed whatever tools they could to look busy. One Reddit user commented