YMMV / Enderal

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was the Butcher of Ark really inducted into an order of vigilante assassins, who after his desertion pulled strings and planted evidence to discredit his story? Or was he just a trauma-driven psycho who was so deep into his delusions he made up the entire story? There is no conclusive evidence, though the fact the Veiled Woman makes an appearance in his story and coincides with him dying and being resurrected during his initiation (possibly making him Fleshless) further blur the line.
• Complete Monster: Taranor Coarek is the cruel, anti-religious leader of the Free People of Nehrim. Taranor unified the continent after a gruesome civil war, characterized by massacres against priests and religious people. Influenced by visions induced by the High Ones, he's convinced that the Cleansing is actually the evolution of mankind to a higher level. Taranor invades Enderal to stop the Holy Order from using the Beacon that could defeat the High Ones. Taranor shows to be untrustworthy when, after interrogating a captive PC and Jespar, "awards" their collaboration by throwing them in a raft, leaving their survival to chance. When his armies encircle Ark, Tealor firmly refuses to destroy the Beacon as Taranor requests; he orders his men to crucify all captured soldiers and to kill every civilian spotted in the countryside. Finally, Taranor negotiates a truce with the Truchessa, promising to end all bloodshed if she opens the gates. When she does that, Taranor kills her on the spot and his troops start massacring everyone in their way. Ruthless, megalomaniacal, and genocidal, even in the complex and morally gray world of Enderal Taranor stands as an absolutely dreaded figure, feared by all but his fanatical troops.
• Contested Sequel: Despite the general consensus being that it's a very well done mod with others even praising it as an Even Better Sequel to Nehrim and Skyrim, there are some who found it to be a step down from Nehrim, having issues with the linearity of the story, numerous Retcons to the previous mod's established lore, and the unrelenting bleakness in the majority of the quests and world space. Additionally, there are also people who prefer Skyrim due to Enderal's CRPG-styled skill progression and the unforgiving difficulty curve.
• Demonic Spiders: Any enemy who have an attack which stuns the Player Character are this (an attack which interrupts your own attack, while shortly preventing to attack again or moving). Many enemies have such a move (including low level bandits and undead), and they are usually fought in groups.
  • A single mage using Frost spells can be this for any character, sapping your stamina and slowing you down to a crawl to a point where you can't close the distance, run away or even strafe into cover while they keep pelting you with ice. Malphas forbid they come with melee allies or summons to hold you at bay.
  • Lions, panthers, and bears (oh my) are often completely silent until you are right next to them. They hit really hard, and can one-shot a lower-level player character.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Lishari became immediately a fan favourite due to her serial cussing, her supportive attitude towards the Prophet and the time they spend getting to know each other at The Fat Leoram inn. Many fans were disappointed that she wasn't made a romance option. Goes without saying how fans reacted when she was killed off..
• Even Better Sequel: While Nehrim is already considered to be one of the best mods of all time, many regard Enderal as SureAI's best work yet with its more deconstructive and philosophical storytelling both in the main quest and side quests, unique world space, improved gameplay and leveling systems, higher quality voice acting notably in both German and English, and its Darker and Edgier take on the Vyn lore. Some even prefer Enderal over Skyrim due to its increased focus on storytelling and worldbuilding.
• Fanon:
  • Given the lack of official explanations on how exactly the lore of Enderal connects to the ending of Nehrim, the most popular explanation is that the defeat of Fate itself in Nehrim was crucial to break the Cycle in Enderal. Without the power of Fate, the Veiled Woman could finally manifest herself and use her power to influence the course of events, culminating in the encounter with the the Black Guardian, so that the Prophet would realise the true nature of the Cycle. While this is never made explicit in-game, pretty much the entire fandom accepts this theory.
  • Although it's never revealed in the game, many players believe that Yuslan Sha'Rim is an emissary for the Cycle due to his enormous role in the main plot, and by extension is a Fleshless One driven by the previous Yuslan's desire for revenge.
• Good Bad Bugs: Skyrim isn't exactly stable in the first place, and the mod tends to follow suit. However, there are quite a few bugs that are quite amusing, including...
  • Weapons with "increased critical hit chance" inexplicably doing several magnitudes of damage more than what they should every hit.
  • NPCs being able to stand on specific bucket models, and be moved about by the player by holding the bucket. A good example of this is near Ark, in a small goat pen with said specific bucket models in it.
  • The oil pot talent granted by the vagrant tree occasionally causing enemies to fall through the floor in interior spaces.
• Memetic Mutation: Bring me a nice crisp piece of meat! Bring me a nice crisp piece of meat! Bring me a nice crisp piece of meat! Bring me a nice crisp piece of meat!
• Narm:
  • Although the game generally avoids this in both localizations, in the English version, the quest "Into the Deep" has Firespark's "NO! STAY AWAY FROM ME!" sound less like a distressed scream and more like a Jar Jar Binks impression.
  • Unfortunately, it's precisely the superb voice acting of Enderal that clashes starkly with the clumsy mannequins from Skyrim, which aren't intended for long, cinematic sequences. A jarring example of this is in "Two Souls Part IV", when Calia has a mental breakdown over being taken over by "It" and butchering a group of mercenaries. She weeps and sighs with a very emotional voice acting... all while her body sits immobile, with a barely disappointed sad mouth on her face.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The very beginning of the game. It seems you're enjoying a nice summer evening with your father, until you end back to your house... And see the burnt corpses of your mother and your sibling. Your father isn't phased by this at all, before telling you YOU are the one who killed them, just as you killed him. He then orders you to cook their remains for him, shouting "Bring me a nice crisp piece of meat!" over and over (see Madness Mantra above), as the entire house starts to burn. And then you wake up. From the beginning, you just know this won't have the same tone as Skyrim...
  • The location of the last quest in the Rhalata questline, big time. As an appetizer, on the way there, you will meet probably for the first time Grotesque Lost Ones, which are basically Skyrim giants, but reskinned as giant zombies, complete with rotten flesh that lets parts of their ribcage poke through. Lovely. Then when the quest actually starts, you end up in this extremely old (as in, it was already old when the previous civilization in the Cycle was around) temple. It's not long before you find fleshy growths EVERYWHERE in the temple (there's even a giant beating heart in one of the rooms), and then you meet its guardians : obscene, snarling meat puppets that explode upon death. They're still nothing compared to the boss of the area : a creature two to three times bigger than a Skyrim giant with scorched skin that erupts out of a massive flesh pile in the middle of the arena. But as if the Body Horror going on wasn't enough, the place is also revealed to mess up with the heads of whoever stumbles into its halls, creating evil doppelgangers of people you know, who look different to whoever look at them (so you can't even know what their true form really is). For the Prophet, the first one they encounter look like Jespar, and the second takes the form of his father. Oh, and the scorched titan also shouts things that are relevant to the ones it's trying to kill : Tharael tells you it talked with the voice of his dead brother Letho, but all the prophet hears is "Bring me a nice crip piece of meat !" with his/her father's voice. By the time the quest ends, you have absolutely no explanations about the whole deal about the place, and can only wonder what this place was and why it was built.
• Player Punch: One of Jespar or Calia WILL die in the cleansing.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The bard song titled "Song of the Winter Skies", which is a ballad of a woman who's husband dies in war, growing old and Dying Alone, before reuniting with her partner in the afterlife.
  • Rynéus' slow and quiet death is definitely this. His whole quest becomes this too when you discover his entire story. All he wanted was to be normal and to have a friend, even if it meant he had to create an illusion.
  • The ENDING. Everyone you meet in the game besides your companion and maybe you are dead, either the whole world or just Enderal is decimated, and the High Ones still remain a threat. The somber music that plays when you are walking around the destroyed Sun Temple for the final time is also pretty heartbreaking. Both endings, either Sacrifice or Escape, are equally depressing as you must either sacrifice yourself to buy the rest of Vyn time and hope that the other countries will somehow be able to succeed against the High Ones' powerful manipulation, or allow the Cleansing to happen and wait for a new civilization to form so that you can hopefully teach them to fight back the flaws of humanity that the High Ones exploit.
  • The Forgotten Stories quest "A Drop in the Ocean". It starts with Yuslan asking you to help him activate a device that's capable of traveling to alternate realities, however he remains very cryptic on what his plans are for using it besides ensuring it to be a personal matter. Upon using the device, you both are thrown into an island near Qyra where Yuslan then pleads with you not to follow him. Regardless, you discover he traveled to an alternate reality where his wife and daughter were still alive. Witnessing his other self living happily with his deceased family causes him to have a Despair Event Horizon where he intends to kill himself by staying on the island and succumb to the eventual Arcane Fever. Despite knowing what Yuslan will do in the final quest, it's hard not to feel sorry for the guy here.
  • The ending of the Rhalâta questline if you side with Tharaêl. On top of learning his closest friend became an Empty Shell of his former self, his entire revenge plan against the Father comes crumbling down when they manage to escape and achieve Transcendence anyway. At the very end, he stands next to Letho's dead body and sounds completely dead inside, and will choose to fall to his death if you can't convince him to find redemption.
  • The ending of the questline "Our mark in this world". You find out that Tara, Esme's lover, sacrificed herself in some ritual for the Veiled Woman. Esme is obviously upset about this,lashes out at you, and then storms off. If you had a high enough affinity with her, a few in-game days later you'll receive a letter from Esme where she'll tell you to meet her at an old lighthouse. She eventually accepted the death of the woman she loved, but she's still devastated by what happened, and can't help but feel guilt over not having managed to quell her lover's dark thoughts and eventually let her go a few months earlier, which led to her getting into a cult and die. She'll probably try to move on, but this certainly won't be easy.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: If Tharaêl survives the Rhalâta questline, you have the option to tell him about the Cleansing. While he declines helping out right away because he's trying to lay low and doubts the Order would accept help from a former cultist assassin. However, he promises to think of a way to help, while also stating he's fascinated by the idea the Father might have had a point about the coming end times. You'd think this would lead into an interesting Take a Third Option but Tharaêl has no further involvement in the main quest and simply sits around for the rest of the game.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The bleak story and lack of any heroic characters can lead to this for some. It does not help that the story is bleak in such a way that unlike Nehrim almost nothing you do prior to the very end has any impact (there are two exceptions, but they are minor), since every area you visit is wiped clean of life no matter your ending choice.
• The Woobie:
  • Ryneus is a boy horribly disfigured by a disease who was abandoned by his father and hated and feared by everyone because of his appearance. With the power of a black stone, he made Silvergrove into a perfect little town where everyone was nice to each other and he got to play all day, but unfortunately it was all an illusion.
  • Calia died as a child from an illness and her dad frantically searched for a way to resurrect her. He succeeded, but was killed in the process and also gave Calia her Superpowered Evil Side. She has never had real friends due to the rumors that she destroyed her own childhood village, which is probably true. She is soft-spoken and kind, in spite of all this. Her reaction to the player complimenting her face tattoo shows she hardly ever gets anything nice said about her. After her Superpowered Evil Side is unleashed in Castle Dal'Galar the player finds her on the ground, crying and shivering.
  • Esme. At the end of her questline, she finds out that her former lover, Tara, who she wanted to find again, basically committed suicide in some ritual. Even though Esme knew she always had suicidal thoughts, she can't help but blame herself for not being alongside her when she needed help. You really want to hug her at the end of all this.

---