#esbern lb

[brinamerilis]

you talk to esbern and learn that the "prove delphine is the one who sent you" passphrase delphine gave you is "the day our colleagues were beheaded." like there's nothing to even analyze here, just…the way delphine technically never brings up the other blades, beyond the bare fact of their deaths, all the way up until her ill-fated "do you ever think about them? the others?" at sky haven, but her grief is in all her dialogue and everything she does like a vase of water filled all the way to the top

[brinamerilis]

first. esbern is going to make any dragonborn who is even CLOSE to delphine's level of paranoia tear their hair out by having dialogue branches where he DOESN'T EVEN demand anything that would even necessitate her "here's how to prove you were sent by me!" passphrase. you have a dialogue option to just convince him that you're the dragonborn and it WORKS. esbern!!!!

[brinamerilis]

since this game is contemporary with pacific rim (kaiju as worsening climate change hurricanes) i completely assumed esbern was based on scientists talking about climate change when i watched his scenes last year, and then i joined the fandom and didn't see anything about it so ig the reference isn't as definite as i assumed, but……I still give it 70/30 the devs based him off that figure, 30 the ambient "distinguished but panicked middle-aged researcher talking about an impending disaster" at the time was just a subconscious influence on top of the "elderly man afraid of the end of the world" archetype and that's why he ended up that way. 80/20, even.