(Opening Intro Music)
Strap on your boots of diminishing shock,
All you you Jarls and Lasses cause
we're talking Skyrim.
(Game Theory Intro Music)
Hello internet welcome to Game Theory
the unrelenting shout
of video game education.
I just Fus Ro and he Dah-ed you know I
used to be a gamer like you but then I
took a bi-weekly gaming vlog on and just
don't have as much time anymore but
that's not to say that I missed out on
gaming's hottest meme since
do a barrel roll
which for all you newcomers to the show
I disproved two episodes ago
shameless promotion for the win. Anyway
it should come as no surprise that we're
talking about this.
I used to be an adventurer like you, then
I took an arrow in the knee, arrow in
the knee an arrow in the knee
Arrow in the Knee The knee x6
Skyrim's number one epidemic isn't
vampirism or rampant stone flesh,
it's roadside bandits taking potshots at
patelling. Which got me wondering would an
arrow to the knee really be such a
severe injury and more importantly what
could possibly explain so many
adventurers suffering from such an odd attack?
Dear viewer prepare to be rocked because
researching these innocent questions led
me to unearth a conspiracy sweeping
across Tamriel. Today we'll not only
expose the Tonya Harding of Skyrim but
we'll finally close the book on this
overused meme.
First the ground rules: Skyrim's world is
clearly based on Viking society and no
I'm not just saying this because the 
characters run around in horned helmets.
There's plenty of evidence to support
this, but here are just two very clear examples.
In the game each of the nine
holds are governed by a Jarl who swears
his fealty to the High King. Real Viking
society also had Jarls. Aristocratic men
who oversaw huge estates, leased their
land to tenants and held slightly less
wealth than the monarch,
so really a direct comparison. Same thing
with thralls you know you can summon a
Thrall to do your bidding in Skyrim.
Thralls in Viking times were the lowest
rungs in society consisting of slaves
belonging to a master,
so good on you Bethesda A+ research,
except for the horn hat thing. You see
Vikings never actually wore helmets with
horns or wings.
This actually originated in the Bronze
Age anywhere between 3.300 and 1.200 BC
The Viking Age is dated at 800 to 1.100 AD, a two
millennia difference. Missed it by that much.
Anyway, if a Viking really were to get
an arrow in the knee
what could they expect? Well, the knee is
what's known as a hinge joint allowing
movement and only one direction.
It's also the largest joint in the body
and the one that tends to be the most
frequently injured,
just ask Willis McGahee, Daunte Culpepper,
and Donovan Mcnabb.
Wait, sorry we're talking about Skyrim, sports
references don't apply here.
I don't know who they are either I was
just trying to be topical.
In short there, have been two bows found in Viking
burial sites,
both longbows over six feet long.
Estimations indicate that the draw
weight of these bows or the amount of
effort it would take to draw an arrow
would be a hundred pounds.
English longbows of similar size from
this arrow reportedly had enough power
to fully penetrate through an attacker's
armor, leg, saddle, and even reach the
horse underneath which means, for our
adventurer, a severed quadricep tendon if
slightly above the knee
a ruined patellar tendon if directly
below the knee and most definitely a
shattered kneecap if the arrow actually
went in the knee.
Skyrim's arrows are like
Nerf darts compared to the real world
weaponry, but what about recovery?
Today, most knee damage can be fixed with
surgery but what would Skyrim's denizens have
at their disposal?
Viking medicine was crude.
These were people who believed in runes,
curses and magical healing with only a
rudimentary understanding of medicinal
herbs.
Now call me a pessimist, but I'm sorry
no amount of chanting or blister wort is
going to help when your leg looks like
this and that's only if the arrow didn't
have a barbed tip.  Those suckers couldn't
be pulled out and instead were
quote-unquote treated by pushing the tip
through the rest of the Warrior's body
until it came out on the other side.
If there was a bone in the way, I don't know,
say a shoulder blade
it was shattered to make room. Wounds
were then either sewn up or cauterized
with a scolding hot piece of metal.
It's a miracle Skyrim's guards can walk
let alone talk about their injury
without experiencing some
symptoms of PTSD.
Skeletons from this
time period do show some evidence of
broken bones being set and healing
properly but once the patella is broken
it needs to be reassembled using metal
pins or removed entirely.
Viking doctors had only the simplest understanding of
surgery so removing the bones and hoping
that the tendons grew correctly was
their only option.
Today with modern medicine,
it takes anywhere between six
months and a year for a knee injury to
fully recover.  In Skyrim a full recovery
would be impossible.
I'm surprised to say this but the guards
are telling the truth, an arrow in the
knee, in their day and age would
absolutely prevent them from traversing
the countryside as an adventurer
especially when a huge ice covered
mountain blocks your path like it does
for every single quest, but I digress.
"So what?" I hear the skepticism dripping
from your comments. An arrow to the knee hurts.
What have we learned? Well, a lot
actually. I'm kind of hurt that you asked
but what we've covered so far is about
to help us uncover the biggest mystery
of all. Who is behind all this knee
targeting? If watching marathons of Law &
Order reruns on TNT has taught me
anything it's that a crime needs a
motive and I ask you,
What benefit is
there to letting a wounded adventurer live?
Think about it.  How many times have you
attacked someone in Skyrim with the
intention of letting them escape?
Looting a dead body is a whole lot
easier than pickpocketing
a live one after all,
and a guy with an arrow in the knee is
just begging to die.
He poses zero threat.  All he could possibly
do is hobble back to town and get healed
but maybe that's exactly what you want
to happen.
I presented in to evidence chapter 185 of
Frostathing Law the earliest set of
Norwegian decrees which states that each
fragment of bone removed from a wound
incurs an extra payment which gives us
our motive.
Let me put it all together.  A hired hit
man shoots an arrow in some adventure's
knee but lets him live.
The knee shatters into tiny bone
fragments but the victim is still able
to make his way back into town to get
healed.  Since Viking Age medical
practices can't repair a broken kneecap,
the bone fragments must be removed.
Coincidentally, the kneecap is one of the
simplest bones to extract from the body
but for each fragment that comes out the
physicians bill gets higher and higher.
In other words there's gold in them thar
knees which means that the group
responsible for the knee Busting can only
be Skyrim's doctors! Ever wonder why
there's no medics in Skyrim?
It's because they all got rich off their knee
extractions and moved to somewhere that's
warmer than a witch's tit in winter,
say Summerset Island. Leaving behind a
generation of handicapped adventurers
and a meme that got old a couple weeks
before I got to this video
but hey that's just a theory. A Game Theory.
Thanks for watching
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