When fighting a dragon that has just landed beside me, or in the middle of heated combat, the shouts suddenly stop working. Nothing happens when I press Z.
I can see that the "Shout Cooldown" has finished. I also noticed that I cannot even switch shouts with the "Q" menu. I tried assigning numeric shortcuts to shouts, and then pressed them, but the said shouts do not get activated, nor does anything happen when I press Z.
When I click on or press E on any of the other shouts (in the hope that re-equipping the shout might make it work), in the Q menu, nothing happens.
Also, after blindly pressing the Z button many times in a row, the shout finally comes out sometimes, but because I have not pressed it for a full duration in my impatience, only the first word is shouted, further delaying me from unleashing my character's power.
The shouts start working again when the moment passes. Once the dragon is far away, or the Deathlord is dead, the shouts come back to me again.
Is this by design of the game developers?
Best Answer
I've done a bit of testing, and stagger definitely prevents shouting. Notably, I've been unable to shout until the camera stopped shaking after a dragon landed nearby. Being staggered by other enemies produces the same result, which isn't really surprising, considering attacking and spellcasting are also impossible while staggered.
Also, I've experienced shouts remaining disabled after a stagger for a few seconds, but it only happens occasionally, which seems to be a minor bug.