10 Video Game Villains Who Stupidly Helped The Hero Win

Alduin might well go down in history as one of the most weak sauce antagonists ever portrayed in a video game. As a piece of visual design he’s every inch the terrifying mythical World-Eater, but as a final boss to a hundreds-hours long fantasy epic he might as well have been soggy origami.

He also wasn’t a very bright boy.

Skyrim opens with Alduin laying waste to the city of Helgen, incidentally, just in time to interrupt the execution of his future nemesis, the Dragonborn. Naturally, fans have asked why he didn’t fry the Dragonborn when he had the chance.

One theory suggests his target was actually Ulfric Stormcloak, Stormcloak having recently used a Dragon Shout, marking him out as a potential Dragonborn. A neat theory, but one that still doesn’t explain why Alduin, following this stellar bit of detective work, rocked up at Helgen without a physical description of Ulfric, who just happened to be stood in front of him.

The grand irony here is, of course, that had Alduin not interrupted the execution the Dragonborn would have been beheaded, and his problem solved before it even began. True, we also wouldn’t have had a game, but at least he wouldn’t have made such a ridiculous fool of himself.