i meant if its standard for everyone to be archer by nature in skyrim. he shoulda thought. casual.. back step... dissappearance...

Which would require even less training than trying to learn how to hit a select target at close range. You could literally learn how to fire a bow in a general direction en masse in a few hours, or a couple days at most. The only thing difficult about archery is learning to hit something. The type of military archery you are describing where you are just firing in a general direction when your leader yells "fire" would not take long at all to master. It would take longer to learn to march in formation than to draw and fire a bow en masse on command.

To add to the "country boy" discussion, I grew up on tales of Robin Hood, probably a blend of Disney's Fox Robin Hood and a bit of Errol Flynn's. I had a bow and arrow set at some point, and even learned or perhaps taught myself how to craft a makeshift bow and arrows from tree branches. Probably not the best quality, but they were functional enough to shoot targets in the woods with (and also easy to lose before I learned to paint the arrows... Lol).

I think Skyrim is "hick town" enough for pretty much any Nord to grow up with a fair amount of woodsman skills, so it only makes sense to have at least as many archers as melee foot soldier types. And considering Bethesda did away with spears, and since no one but the PC rides horses, the various military factions don't get to fall back on the classic spear line, heavy infantry, and cavalry battle tactics. Most destruction magic is mid-range at best, with fairly slow speed projectiles, so pretty much the only truly effective means of killing someone at range in Skyrim is archery skill.

The prevalence of archers doesn't annoy me so much with my most recent character, a spellcasting thief-type Khajiit specializing primarily in bows. Since she's a bit too squishy to go toe-to-toe with heavy melee guys, the more fellow archers in the enemy group, means the less heavy hitters her atronach has to distract while she shoots people in the face from a safe distance. She's pretty quick on her feet, and has Mage armor spells for protection, so far from levels 1-10, not a big problem from other archers. I have played several other character types and haven't seen so many one-hit kills with magic from a distance. If archers weren't a little annoying, battles wouldn't be as much of a challenge. With a somewhat squishy char, I treat facing a group of bandits as I would a firefight - take cover, use distractions, aim, fire, cover. Shoot your closer targets first, return to cover, etc. If you are a melee or mage char, use whatever stealth tactics you have at your disposal, don't just charge straight at the archers, hoping to close on them before they shoot you in the forehead, and if you have to, then at least use a shield smartly. Remember that their purpose in life is to kill you from a distance.

Yes! Not to put too fine a point on it (hee, hee, hee, pun intended) but the military use of archery is completely different from the Robin Hood style that, I believe, most people associate with the bow and arrow.

I haven't looked this up in a long time, but it was the English long bow (made of yew? wood) that was the deciding factor in their victory over the French in Agincourt. Of course, those bows are around 6 feet high so forget using one in Skyrim. Anyone who has the time should browse the wikipedia info, very interesting.

He may not have had the opportunity to slip away unnoticed as there were several soldiers in the area.

Arrows were not the only thing he had to worry about either. Some of the soldiers might have chosen to give pursuit (instead of just standing there...) and there would no doubt be guards posted at the gate. Basically, it was always a long shot, but he was a desperate man with little to lose.

Basically for the same reason that guy being executed in Solitude can't be saved. Go ahead and kill the executioner and the guards on the stage, he will die anyway and blood will spurt from thin air where he was supposed to get his head chopped off. Bethesda likes their scripted events and they want to make sure they happen as intended, so the guy running slowly away yelling "you're not gonna kill me!" just before getting shot was simply what the intro called for. To his defense, he did zig slightly, though maybe he should have zagged a bit more.

That said, if I recall correctly, his wrists (not his hands) and everyone else's in the wagon, looked to be bound pretty tightly wrist-to-wrist crossways, which makes it harder to pickup and use a weapon than if they were bound hands together, and would make it pretty difficult to sprint. If you are curious, try putting your wrists together firmly, crosswise and try sprinting to see how awkward it would be to do at speed without losing your balance. You use your arms to help balance when running.

I always think to myself "Look! He was really Achilles!"

Of course we have to remember that the OP was actually also talking about bandits having so many archers, and one must remember that these bandits are indeed shooting in the "Robin Hood" style. You don't get a rain of arrows when you approach Halted Stream Camp, or Valthiem Towers, you get arrows that are aimed (and usually well-aimed at that) directly at you. To me, it says these guys have been using a bow for years, and likely as hunters where accuracy counts.

Oh my gosh - I can't remember the details, but somebody posted a video of that scene using different models from the CK in place of the humanoid thief. So one time, he's a horse, one time he's a goat, one time he's a mammoth and every time, he takes a header and sprawls. I laughed so hard - I had no idea what's possible with the CK so it was a complete surprise.

A goat, and also a mammoth? I will have to see that for myself... Speaking of scripted executions, I wish someone would do something like that for the execution sequence in Solitude. I'm sure some comedy would ensue. With my first character, I actually tried to save Rogvirr by attacking & killing the executioner/guards, etc. and was extremely annoyed to see that he always dies anyway in glitchy ways due to the scripting. I was kind of frustrated at the game design for forcing an event like that yet allowing you to interfere with it and thus causing awkward glitches to happen and breaking immersion. It annoyed me to see a story event forced in such a linear (but glitchy) way in TES (among other quests in the game) to the point that I actually stopped playing Skyrim for a long time.