#i modded skyrim to hell and back and could get better customization

[cherriesforheaven]

need 2 get something off my chest rn…

these comments make me feel crazy im playing dai rn and that Frostbite engine is atrocious (aside from the environments) !!!! It cannot do realistic skin texture well at all like HELLO?!?! Cullen are you in there???

I know its a decade old game but look at it versus tw3's REDengine 3 it came out six months after dai but both started development in the same year like

Yes tw3 doesn't have a cc & wasn't plagued by the same production issues (i believe) so i may just be comparing apples to really ugly oranges here BUT i do know the dev's hands were hogtied by using the frostbite engine bc it was never intended for anything beyond a 1st person shooter game.

I HOPE im not speaking too soon but i really cant see this as anything but an improvement over dai's look esp since they re still using frostbite

addendum: is i still think DAI is worth playing for story alone! In hushed whispers has been my fav quest so far and im romancing cullen <3

[tanadrin]

okay, final thoughts on beating inquisition. good stuff first:

the game is of course very beautiful. it is realistic without being drab, full of color, and very good at atmospheric environments and dungeons. the incidental art--the character tarot cards in particular--also have a very distinct and delightful style.

the sound design is also terrific, and that's something i usually never notice. the music is great, too.

the characters are all great. special mentions to Ms.-Killing-For-Jesus-Or-Possibly-Just-For-Fun, Captain-Buzzkill-The-Lady-Cop, The Ancient Furry Who Is Also an Elven Fascist, Mr.-Gets-An-Erection-Every-Time-We-Fight-a-Dragon, and the Necromancer with Daddy Issues. all of them would be exhausting as hell in real life.

many of the mechanics, like recruiting agents, the war table, and the way skyhold changes over time do make you feel like you’re building up a big organization, and that’s quite fun. it’s a pity it mostly goes to waste when it comes to the actual plot.

the game develops the backstory to the setting in tantalizing ways. the plot in some ways feels like it’s obviously setting up a sequel, but it manages to do so without feeling incomplete. the bioware method of storytelling and incorporating player choice is fraught in a lot of ways, just because of the limits of what video game designers can reasonably do with those choices, but overall i think dragon age as a franchise and DA:I handle those limitations well.

the meh stuff:

not wholly bioware's fault, but the fact that the only mod manager for DA:I is extremely hit-or-miss seems to be down to the fact that an awkward rube goldberg machine of software must kick into gear for da:i to start. if you are going to force me to use your storefront rather than selling me a standalone piece of software, *it had better run flawlessly.* as it is, i cannot recommend buying any game that isn't available solely through steam. (DA:I wasn't available on Steam when I originally bought it; it seems to be again, but if it's like DA2, you still have to install EA Desktop and run it every time you play). unfortunately, mods are a must for reasons i covered elsewhere. they help sidestep some of the boring padding, like idle mechanics and bad map design. otherwise, though, i think moddability in an RPG like this is a strength: one reason Skyrim has had such a long afterlife is that Bethesda has made modding relatively easy, allowing people to customize and embellish their gameplay experience in countless ways (only some of which involve giving the Dragonborn a monster hog).

shallower ability trees and thus less interesting combat. give me more tools, not less!

took away attribute customization for no good reason. let me minmax, dammit!

in general, despite the crafting system (thbbbbt), the armor and weapon customization still feels pretty shallow. you just don’t have that many options for stats, and since i can’t minmax my underlying stat scores, the benefits are limited.

the stuff that i think really fails:

all those zones are a fuckin' slog, lemme tell u. it would be one thing if the zones' quests fed in an interesting way back into the main quest, or if the zones had unified and compelling stories, but it's honestly mostly fetch quests and random collectibles. DA:O was *really* good about having narratively unified side/sub-quests as part of the main quest; there were other small tasks you could accomplish while doing those, but they didn't require taking a break from the main action. They were woven into it.

doesn't help that the zones aren't differentiated enough, and there's too many of them. why do we need three desert zones, all next to each other? why not have fewer, larger zones?

and on top of all that, the main quest is actually kinda sort! it's 1) join up, 2) recruit the mages or templars, 3) close the breach, 4) go to a party in Orlais, 5) visit the Temple of Mythal for a surprise macguffin not foreshadowed at all elsewhere, 5) kill the final boss. The only reason the game is as long as it is is that next steps are usually gated behind large amounts of inquisition power, so rather than the story carrying you along as it did in DA:O and DA2, it's "do a ton of filler quests and then have a major story beat as a treat." That structure sucks ass! and the recruitment/inquisition-building work you do only shows up in the background of quest 5. it doesn't take you to open-world locations much, mostly to one-off specialized zones like halamshiral, the temple of mythal, or the breach.

despite gating main quests behind inquisition power, i did a ton of sidequests and was swimming in it by the end. i had like 200+ power. i couldn’t tell you what those side quests were about, really; they certainly weren’t memorable, and didn’t affect the main plot at all. i wish all the time poured into those side quests had gone into developing the main story.

even da:o had a way for the armies you recruited to matter in the final battle; your forces are explicitly absent in DA:I (but it’s ok because the villain shows up to the final confrontation alone anyway??), which means that, narratively, it feels like all the side stuff you do to build the inquisition is mostly pointless. the final showdown is a 4-on-1 slugfest, and not even an especially interesting fight. and this is related to the next point:

last quest is kinda random and makes no sense. we made a huge stink about closing the breach earlier; but surprise! it's open again! and suddenly we transition to a boss battle, with very little intro. it feels *very* rushed, like they had to cut out a bunch of stuff in the middle. (also why dos a guy who can lift mountains into the air need an army to conquer Orlais?? he could just turn Val Royeaux upsid-down if he wanted) visually, it looks like a lot of the assets meant it was gonna take place in the Fade or something, but they changed it up at the last minute. Where do those towers in the distance come from? There isn't anything like that around Haven or the Breach.

there are no decision points, no interesting mechanics, and no stakes other than “lol the breach is open again i guess kill this guy or the world ends.” compare the battle of denerim in DA:O, where you’re defending a whole city, or the last quest in DA2, which (though it starts with little buildup), has immediate fallout with your companions, and forces you to pick a side, with repercussions for the game’s ending.

also this feels like kind of a minor writing quibble in comparison, but corypheus seems to go from "self-aware and very much in control mustache-twirling villain" to "gibbering megalomaniac" in the last mission, and it's pretty jarring

we got a moment with each companion before the climax in da:o and da2, and we don't get that in da:i for some reason. i guess it's in part bc the game doesn't actually end like in previous installments--you can finish up side quests after if you want--but it really contributes to the rushed feeling.

all the language in the post-battle scene about "just getting started" feels very strange knowing they shut it all down in the trespasser DLC just two years later. i still think that's a terrible ending--they should let a dragon age protagonist rest on their laurels a bit for once!

seriously, why the FUCK do i not get a mabari in this one?!

despite all the things i like about inquisition, it’s just not as good a game as da2! or even da1! i don’t know if the team was bigger and the franchise so popular by 2014 that it was harder for a single creative vision to cohere, what development was like and what executive mandates were handed down from above, or what constraints the frostbite engine imposed. i worry that with the departure of david gaider and the game’s financial success, those problems might only get worse with dreadwolf as commercial demands trade off against creative consistency. as it stands though i’m hoping dreadwolf is much more structurally linear--the three act structure in da2 was actually kind of a godsend from a narrative perspective, since each act had to have its own contained arc, and you had room for time to pass between them, and i would very much welcome something like that showing up again in dreadwolf.

[strigital]

Hey! So I love your Miraak and it kind of inspired me to make my own. Only problem is that I can’t freaking figure out how to mod him. I’d be super grateful if you could give me some tips!

hello there! sorry it took me like a million years to reply. my life’s been heckin’ wild these past few days. anyways, let’s talk about modding the miraakulous ass.

first of all i am in no way a modder, this small little .esp that affects the face and body of a follower from another mod is the first and only working mod i’ve ever made. second - my main sources of info were these two vids (i followed the first one to the T in order to make my miraak fully standalone, i. e. not dependant on any cosmetic mods that, if suddenly removed, would mess up my boi’s face):

this second one mostly helped me to understand NifSkope and NifMerge.

so uhhh... yeah. i basically just followed these two tutorials in order to make my miraak have a unique face and body meshes and textures. anyways, i made this mod mostly by just trial and error, lots of loading and reloading, redoing stuff, changing stuff. so imma just tell you the short version of my process (which hopefully i still remember correctly, it’s been a while).

first thing first - get yourself some tools:

creation kit (how else ya gonna make miraak’s face, ya dummy?)

nifskope if you need to know each and every texture your man is using on his face

nifmerge in order to slap your desired textures onto a ck generated miraak’s facegen

install racemenu in your skyrim. just do it

cosmetic mods of your desire, such as mods for custom hair, brows, beard, eyes, skin, scars, warpaints and tattoos

and now... LET US BEGIN THE MAGIC!!1

step one: launch skyrim and create a miraak of your dreams.

i just loaded my latest Nim’s save, created another save, typed showracemenu 14 in the console and went to town with sliders. i race changed my gorl into a Nord (another race may cause some unseen bugs so better choose Nord), sex changed her into a dude and just... made myself a miraak.

once done i used Racemenu to save his face as a preset for future use and then exported it using a name like MIR_FACE_NEW or something like that (refer to the second video to know where the exported face file is kept). 

then i pressed done, confirmed his name as Test Miraak, opened console again and typed savenpcface miraakface.

now, with these two files, we’re ready to go into the ck and do some magic.

step two: open ck and make your .esp file and do some modding magic

if ya wanna make your miraak standalone, refer to the videos i linked to learn how to do that. i followed the first video and was able to succesfully make my miraak have his own body and face textures (gotta love that dragon tattoo on the back!).

remember to save often and to have multiple copies of your .esp file! ck crashes like a motherfucker, just as todd howard intended.

when you’re ready to edit miraak follower, load your mod as an active file with miraakfollower.esp also enabled, go to the actors tab, search for miraak. note: all things added by the miraak follower mod will have letters MF in their names. find miraak follower, you’ll know it’s him by the potentialfollowerfaction faction addedd to him as well as some 30+ users in the users tab. now, listen up. idk what’s the matter with ck or what the hell are users, but by the love of talos make sure the number of users for miraak remains the same! if you see that users are now 0, exit ck without saving, reload your .esp and check if number of users is back to being something over 30. if not, reload an older .esp version, even if it means redoing a lot of stuff. why you should care about users? i don’t know, but i noticed that if users are 0, then the mod won’t work, your miraak will be pure vanilla and won’t use any of your modifications. complicated stuff, i know, just keep those pesky users above 0 and miraak shall work as intended.

now, double click ya boi and with the help of the videos i linked edit his face meshes and textures. if you also created custom body textures (how to do that - refer to the beginning of first video where you’re shown how to create them) you should apply them at the very first tab, the same tab that also gives you the ability to edit his scale and weight. me being hellbent on the fact that atmorans were huge folk, i edited his scale to be something like 1.2, just a tad bigger that an average Nord (note: if you edit his scale you’ll notice a lot of shrinking and expanding whenever he’ll be using various animation markers around the world, such as a smelter, a stool, a wall to lean against... that’s normal, just a bit silly).

anyways, when you’re done editing his face in that window, save the changes (or apply, i forgot what the button says) and press ctrl+f4, twice for good measure. why? it’ll export your new miraak’s facegen, don’t know what it is but it’s hella important! check again if users are above 0, if yes then save your .esp and close ck. refer to the second video to learn how to use nifmerge in order to make your miraak use custom make up and warpaint textures.

once all that is done, place your .esp file after miraakfollower.esp, disable any other miraak face mods to avoid conflicts and load your game. now... at this moment many things may go wrong or refuse to work, idk why. :\

if you have the ability, load a save before the game spawns miraak follower in if you edited his weight. if not, load any save with him at your side. why? that’s because npc’s weight is baked onto a save and it will not change to match your mod’s. however, the neck of the npc will morph to match the weight you set in the ck and thus miraak may have a permanent gap between his body and neck. loading a save before the miraak follower mod’s quest sends you to get some sleep at raven rock and then check his temple is best in such case, because then the game will spawn miraak in with body weight modded and thus no neck gap!

once loaded, locate your miraak follower, click him in the console, use the unequipall command to get him naked, maybe even toggleai to keep him still. take a look at your homeboi. no grey face? body textures loaded as intended? he looks like you expected? good. dress him up again and go kill some bandits. or use some Other Type of mod to enjoy that new face and body. but if no, click him in the console again and type disable then enable a few times. eventually he should pop into his new textures. it took me quite a few resurrect commands before his grey face bug disappeared.

and... that’s it. really. i dind’t explain much, because these two vids is all you need to know how to make a custom face and body for miraak. they do a really amazing job at explaining, plus the first vid has a doc file in the describtion that you can download and use in the future. it’s very easy to follow step by step.

all i can add from myself is that don’t despair if shit doesn’t work for quite some time. it took me like a dozen attempts before my miraak .esp began working as intended and even to this moment i worry that something might break. just try again, make a fresh clean .esp, reinstall miraak follower mod if something got overwritten. look for more tutorials online. if you feel like making him standalone is way too hard, make him dependant on cosmetic mods, you won’t have to create custom texture files, but in case any of these mods get deleted, your miraak might end up bald or without eyes XD

TL;DR

i just used these two vids for the entire process, exept i didn’t create a follower, i edited an existing one from miraak follower mod.

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Gaming #222 (and life in general)

Do I even have anyone left to read my stuff? Alright, I’m gonna be real here. There’s a few variables that led to my inactivity on Tumblr. Let’s break down a few. 1) It’s not as fun. And not just because nudity was removed, though let’s be honest that’s certainly a variable. Ever since the Tumblr company shuffling of leadership there’s been a few choice updates that just don’t lend well towards the community. My activity feed is mostly just memes at this point. Also, I love blogging but I’ve yet to find a different platform to do so on, but I’ll be sure to google some alternatives soon enough.

2) I’d rather just be playing. These bigger CA posts typically take an hour or two to write up. I don’t plan them, I just open the post up and let my thoughts just get dumped. An hour or two is a lot of time, and that’s plenty of time to make some headway in certain games. Maybe pausing during an MMO during a dungeon queue or a raid party reset, but I don’t think I’ve touched an MMO in a couple of years so that window has closed.  As a 2a, you could also just say I just very simply haven’t been in the mood to dedicate an hour or two every couple of days.

3) Schedule switchup and fatigue. A few months ago I transferred out of front end at the grocery store I work at, and into the produce department. There was more than one chance. For one, I no longer work morning shifts (often was 7am to 1pm or noonish). That’s 5-6 hour shifts and that gives me my day to play around with. However the produce department needed a closer, so now I’m up to 8.5 hour shifts, typically 1:30 to 10pm (EST, in case that matters). I was getting 40 hours a week but I asked my boss to downgrade me to 32 instead, which is still a few more than what I was getting on front end in addition to a raise, because front end is typically the “bottom” of the retail totem pole for some reason, despite them being pretty damn important to customer experience. Regardless, at the end of almost 9 hours, I typically just come home, turn on an ASMR video on my second monitor and basically shut my brain and body down as I mindlessly plug away at whatever game I’m playing. And yes, apparently I’m ‘essential’. So I’m still working during the pandemic.

Now then. Let’s get to what I’ve been up to, and none of this is in any particular order since I’ve last posted. I must have hopped to two or three different Conan Exiles servers while ultimately settling on Oasis of Pleasure, a very ERP driven place. I spend a good month or two being active and then I just gotta wait for the next server reset and let my personal CE batteries recharge.

I’ve gotten back into Skyrim, and I really should do some scrolling to find my last CA number for that. I’ve more than doubled my hours on the special edition, and apparently it’s been just under four years since I touched it last. Right now I’m playing a sort of nonlethal thief. The Ordinator perk overhaul (which is a must have, honestly) gives the light armor tree some big bonuses to hand to hand and makes it incredibly viable even in higher difficulties. She keeps a bow and knife around for “monsters” but ultimately uses her fists against most humanoids. I’ve been trying something different during the thieves guild questline: Actually sneaking by everyone and not murdering the fuck out of every humanoid you run into. Which is an option, fun enough. You can fail the radiant quests by murdering the homeowners but most of the questline is filled with mercenaries and you can’t really ‘fail’ the main missions (though I wonder what happens if you kill that argonian?) otherwise players could block a shit load of content from themselves.

I’ve also played a hot barbarian werewolf girl, some kind of Nazgul looking woman, and some other stuff.

Hilariously I’ve yet to get a decent screenshot of my current nonlethal thief. Her kit is pretty damn basic, wearing a custom set of the guildmaster armor with the black bandoleers. Honestly she looks pretty unassuming, which is kind of the purpose. Maybe I’ll go take her hood off and get a screenshot. Some day.

After that, I will say I’ve done some preorders. I still await Bloodlines 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. Delays notwithstanding, last time I checked they’re being released at roughly the same timeframe. I also preordered Horizon Zero Dawn which I am enjoying but must admit that some elements of it are a tad underwhelming. Maybe it’s because I played a good chunk of AC:Odyssey again recently, but I grow tired of the random garbage pickup game for basic crafting. Games just can’t really stand on their own two legs anymore, and open world games seem to be stuck on a few trends they can’t shake. Running around mining for ore and picking at tree branches is not fun. It’s a side effect of HZD indeed being four years old already, but I’ll still probably get a good few dozen hours on it. Not sure if I’ll bother beating it, but I do like Aloy and her story, though I’ve been treated with some spoilers since its release so I kind of know where it’s headed. After that... Let’s check my ‘recent’ list on Steam.

So we got some Town of Salem, which has become my go-to night closer before bed most nights. Last time I made a post on it I probably only had 10-20 hours played, of which I now have over 200. I’m sure as hell a lot better than I used to be, but the All Any gamemodes still manage to make my headspin, but they lead to some hilarious moments. All other modes makes it very difficult because of the “no claim space” meta, so I like hitting AA so I can claim whatever the hell I want. I’ve wanted to get back into Dying Light but it does something dirty to my computer that always demands a hard restart. You basically can’t tab away at all, even in borderless mode. And when I try exiting, I can no longer click any tabs. So hard power button it is. It’s such a good game and it feels really good to play, but I just can’t let it force me to do hard restarts anymore. I’ve dabbled into many others and some aren’t worth mentioning too much. We got Star Wars Battlefront 2, which I was approaching with some level of skill. I like the Co-Op modes but it feels like there’s only like three maps for that. Was fun with my brother for a while but that mode needs like ten new maps. But I believe development has stopped (a while ago, too), as the team is probably working on the next thing. I’ve already posted my dealings with the likes of Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord and Generation Zero. I never got around to beating GZ’s Alpine expansion. I got my 40 hours of it and frankly... that was enough. Good game, just lacks some depth. Some reviewers mentioned that the loop became too shallow and I can kind of agree, even though it took me 40 hours to get to that point.  As for MNB, I’m sort of waiting on the more final phases of its early access. It’s basically getting patched every since week and I had trouble keeping up with all the mod downloads. So I’m thinking of doing a full uninstall (mods and all) and waiting longer down the development line. Maybe with workshop support, playing and updating will be more stable. That’s about the last I have within the last few months. I’ll probably get around to finding my last Skyrim post and pick up from where I left off.

[curiosusdea]

Video Game Questionnaire

Tagged by @magicalcrusaderfruit

Rules: Fill in your answers and tag some friends!

<<GAMES>>

First game you ever played: Like first first would probably Super Mario World on the SNES. Being the youngest of 3 I only really got to play when one of my other sister would get tired of it since they’d tag team it as Mario and Luigi without me. 

Favorite game: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines my dude. It’s the game that actually fully got me into gaming. Especially PC gaming. As a kid I for some reason thought PC gaming was a whole new horrible world since I grew up with consoles mostly. Bloodlines helped me realize I honestly prefer PC and that there’s a whole world out there of not co-op or multiplayer games (which I was restricted to growing up due to having siblings. We weren’t really allowed many non multiplayer or co-op games since that would leave people out and such).

Game you hated at first but now love: Arkham Knight. I was part of the group that went for the PC release and decided to power through the lag and terrible frames and just overall broken hell to finish it. It was a terrible experience but I needed it. After it got all fixed way later I actually came to really enjoy it.

Game you used to love but now hate: Knights of the Old Republic. Now, hear me out it’s a good game and all but I’ve just gotten kinda bored with it. Played it too many times I guess. Plus I’m actually not that huge of a Star Wars fan so there’s not a giant draw from a fandom level for me. 

Game with the best group / companion(s): Dragon Age: Origins

A game with your favorite ending: Portal 2.

A game with the worst ending: Imma agree with Magical here and say Fallout 4. Just, why?

Best character customization: That’s not a hentai game? Skyrim. Unmodded it’s already pretty good when it comes to variety but mod that shit and it’s beauty. 

<< HEROES AND COMPANIONS >>

Your favorite playable character: Zero from Borderlands. He’s a babe and I honestly just love Borderlands. Plus his skills are basically when I tend to go for in games so it makes for the perfect set up for me. 

The funniest playable character: My boy Timothy the Jack Doppleganger. Helps that one of his possible skills is Jack coming on to spew “inspiring” thoughts. 

Your favorite companion(s): 

Dragon Age - FUCKING CULLEN (he’s top tier husband material and I fucking waited patiently for Inquisition just to finally husband this bastard), Alistair

Skyrim- Cicero, Serana, Marcurio

Fallout - NICK!, MacCready, Curie (I may be biased due to name but you know she’s wife material), Dogmeat, Lily

Mass Effect - Liara, Tali

Star Wars - Carth, Atton

Companions you could live without: 

Fallout - Cait, Piper, Preston, X6-88, Clover, anyone in New Vegas minus Lily (seriously maybe part of my lack of fondness from the game stems from the fact I can’t stand any of the companions)

Mass Effect - Ashley, Jack, Kaidan

Dragon Age - Fucking Solas (I hate this bastard with a fucking passion like ugh I just I cant), Shale, Oghren, Vivienne

<<RELATIONSHIPS>>

Favorite game relationship(s): Inquisitor/Cullen, Geralt/Yen, Darien Gautier/FemVestige. Yeah I know it’s not like a full on relationship but but he’s beautiful and I love him. And I mean if you count Smolder Scrolls as being cannon it works.

Favorite companion banter: Dragon Age: Origins. Just but Alistair in with Morrigan and it’s a good time. Or Alistair with literally anyone. 

A relationship you loved but went bad: AGAIN DARIEN. My love. Why must we be separated. Also need I say Yuri from Doki Doki?

A relationship you weren’t sure of but loved: Honestly, when I started Mass Effect I wasn’t sure about Liara. Like I started with a thing with Kaidan but grew to dislike him and when I tried a second save I thought ok I’ll try Liara. Never looked back.

A character you wish you COULD romance: OK I’m not a furry buuuut Razum-dar. Let me romance that cat. Smolder Scrolls just made me want to romance him even more. Why do you tease me ESO. 

A minor character you wish could be a companion: Ser Gilmore. He deserved better

<<FUN>>

Shoutout to a random NPC: To that random merchant just happening to walk by a dungeon in Skyrim as I finished looting it and decided to carry fucking everything out- I love you. You know how long it woulda taken me to get back to a city to fucking sell that shit? You saved my life sir.

A game you love watching playthroughs for and want to play: Right now it’s Predator Hunting Grounds

Love watching playthroughs but won’t ever play: Dead by Daylight. I used to love the game but after some toxic hell I don’t play anymore. Still fun to watch though.

Online gaming or solo?: Solo unless it’s specifically with friends. I’m not fond of MMOs or playing with strangers. 

Why do you play video games?: Because it’s fun. I get to be whoever and get to explore without consequence. 

Uh I don’t really know who to tag so if you wanna try it go ahead. 

[enchantment1385]

My most magnificent mega must (have) mods memo.

So, I’ve been putting this off (big surprise!), but the time has come! I am going to try and provide some recommendations of my favorite mods. Mods I will not play the game without, or mods I love so much, I can’t recommend them highly enough! Hopefully some of you will find a new excuse to play one of these games again! I will split the list up into games so you skip if you don’t play a certain game. Again, these are my personal recommendations, so please don’t get all bent out of shape over this people. I also won’t be adding the very amazing utility mods (such as SkyUI or mcm or mod organizers) as I feel these are required mods. Today's installment -  

~Skyrim~

VIGILANT  +  VIGILANT Voiced - English Addon Okay, where do I start with the amazingingness of the mod? It’s massive, compelling, scary (chapter 3 holy fucking shitballs, batman!), and just absolutely perfectly executed on every level horror mod! This is not a mod you complete in a couple of hours, this you need to put aside a day or 2 and go through all 5 chapters! 1 guy made this. 1 awesome japanese dovha, alas it’s not as adored as it should be as, when originally released, the english subtitles (literally translations from Google) didn’t really translate well... or at all at some points. Hence why you need the voiced addon which makes this mod a 15+ hour, fully awesomely voiced adventure to seek out daedra, and be physically, and morally tested by the one and only Daedric Prince of domination, Molag Bal. Your choices WILL affect the outcome. This mod gives you everything you want from a mod. New weapons, new armour, new enemies, dark soul like boss battles, new places, new people, new land. With Halloween quickly approaching, this is the perfect time to give this a shot! 

Legacy of the Dragonborn

I stayed away from this mod for SO long thinking it was just a massive oversize player home to put all your crap on display. I was wrong. I was SO wrong. This mod is the ultimate scavenger hunt turned up to 11. It adds some of the best mods out there and puts them all together to make you WANT to go find that bloody staff, or helm, because A, it now looks amazing, and B, there’s a place for EVERYTHING in the museum, it must be filled! It adds old relics, new quests, a very gorgeous fair sized player home, you get to go to Elsweyr, and even get an airship you CAN use later! And trust me when I say, there is nothing that looks quite as impressive as your dovah walking around a city with your massive ass airship looming overhead. The way everything gets placed into the world is fucking flawless, and if you’re bored or just want more out of Skyrim, this is the mod that does that, and WAY more. Also a massive bonus, it has several patches for other mods that didn’t get incorporated (vigilant being among them) to add extra wings for you to display the items from other mods! 

Interesting NPCs

Another mod I stupidly avoided to begin with. So as we know, vanilla followers are... meh. But now with all these new battles and exploring you have to do, you might want someone watching your back, right? Forget vanilla, time to go interesting! This mod adds -

• 250+ Voiced NPCs • 25+ Followers with Location Based Commentary • 15+ Marriage NPCs 

This mod makes Skyrim feel inhabited, but with REAL people. People who you can, should, and will want to talk to. The voice acting is just fantastic, the characters are an absolute joy, they fit into the world so perfectly you’d never know they weren’t there all along! Well... Except for the fact they’re actually interesting, and have more than 5 things to say! It also has something called ‘Super Followers’. These followers actually comment on what’s happening in your story. Just about to go kill your first dragon? They have something to say about it. Just joined the college of mages? Have a chat to see what they think! I can not express how much this will change your game, but 151% for the fucking better! Oh! And just in case you were running short on things to do, this also adds 50+ more quests! *(footnote) Pleaaassssee go to Soljund's Sinkhole and take Rumarin with you. What he says when you clear that place out has me laughing my ass off every time.

Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul

Are you tired of being the only one is Skyrim who actually seems to DO anything? Are you weirded out by the fact when you walk into an inn at 4am everyone is doing the same thing as they were at 2pm last week? Confused as hell by the comment ‘Do you hunt? The plains outside Whiterun are ripe with game.’ How the fuck would you know, Anoriath?! You never leave Whiterun, dude! EVER! That ends with this mod. Now people have routines. They sleep, they eat, they walk around, they don’t just stay in one place all the time! It makes the npc’s go from a static feature and changes them into actual people, or goes a long way to help! Even people like carriage drivers now have a lil tent near the carriage, and will even take shelter under cover if it starts raining. (if it’s not too far from the carriage!) Random people will now not try and fight the big dragon who is burning everything to a crisp, but instead run away and take shelter, you know, like a normal person would? Which is helpful, as I tend to hit them with a stray spell then get into shit for accidentally electrocuting the blacksmith or someone who shouldn’t have stood in the way of the MASSIVE FUCKING DRAGON IN THE FIRST PLACE! Anyway... This mod is awesome and makes all the vanilla npc’s less static and weird!  

Relationship Dialogue Overhaul - RDO

Don’t know about you but, I’m kinda bored with the dialogue in this game. The same 5 lines on repeat, over and over and OVER again. I want people who hate me to say something a bit more nasty that ‘What do YOU want?’ This mod adds over 5000 lines of dialog that was never used. Braith finally has more insults to throw at you! Which is great, because I hate that kid and now you will too! Your rivals will be rude to you. Your friends will compliment you. And your spouse will finally say more than a handful of lines to you! With this and the AI overhaul Skyrim will finally feel like it’s come alive. It seems like such a small addition, but it makes a huge impact when you hear lines that you’ve never heard before! 

PC Head Tracking and Voice Type &  Expressive Facial Animation (M)  (F)

So we’ve finally got a living breathing Skyrim, and holy shit, it’s a beautiful thing, right? Time to focus on bringing you to life. Don’t know about you, but I found it plain fucking odd that I didn’t ever look at the person who’s talking to me. Like, not even accidently. I also found it creepy the only time I ever made any sound whatsoever was when I shouted. So the first mod is going to fix that shit. You’ll finally look at the person talking to you, or at that dagger you’re just about to steal. What's more, you’ll be able to assign a voice to yourself, so you’ll greet people who talk to you. Fun doesn’t stop there! You can download voice packs such as, Ciri, Yenifer and loads of others! But... What if you know who you want them to sound like and there isn’t a pack for them? Well, make your own! The page is really good and explains how. So we’re not a clueless goon anymore, we look and talk, but that basically makes us no better than the T 800 terminator. The second mod will make you actually have emotions, instead of constant blank face. You’ll smile at friends and loved ones, and scowl at people who you hate, like you Elrindir. For the last time, I didn’t mean to steal the fucking apple pie! But I think me spending HUNDREDS of gold should have made up for that and did NOT warrant you sending a group of thugs to come kick the shit out of me!  Sorry. Just... Some unfinished business between me and that bastard bosmer. 

Enhanced Lights and FX

I have a potato as a laptop, as such a lot of these amazing ENB’s are totally off the table for me. But... We all deserve a pretty Skyrim, right? Fuck yes we do! And this is the mod that does that for me. So there are two versions of this bad boy, and you will really want to think about which one you want to go for. You’ve got standard, or hardcore. The MAIN difference is, the hardcore version will make dungeons dark. No, I mean pitch black darkness. Really think you know bleak fall barrow? Install hardcore then go run through it. It make sense that it would be dark down in these places, but fuck me dark is now really dark, which I personally love, but you might not. Install at least the main file and the weather mod and I guarantee when you boot your game back up you’ll be saying ‘wow’.  

Enhanced Character Edit  OR  RaceMenu

Okay, first off you only need one or the other NOT both. Here’s the difference. If you want to make a character that looks like they’re from FFXV or korean mmo, you’ll want to get Enhanced character edit. They’re all so damn pretty! Even the men are pretty! If you want something a little less cute looking and maybe more mature, Racemenu is character creator for you. Both give you a TON more customization when creating your new oc, down to finger and toe length and what’s not to love about that?? 

Enhanced Camera

You finally have a body in first person mode. not just hands when attacking. Which FYI Bethesda, is creepy as fuck. Next mod. 

Familiar Faces

Right, last one as we could be here forever, but I need to do more of these things for other games so let's finish with something stupid, but awesome, shall we? You know who’d make the best companion? That spellsword character you made. Or the sneaky archer. Or that tanky as fuck warrior, but they’re on that other save.. No more! When you fire up the game with this mod installed, you get a portal stone placed in your inventory. Use it and get get warped into this empty hall. Go to any of the books on the pedestals and hit yes when prompted. You, your abilities, spells, shouts, game progress and inventory has just been recorded. Load up another save and do the same in a different book, then you can go recruit... you! You can even make yourself marribale! Got that perfect otp? Create them both and have them travel around with you! Want them to use their shouts? No problem! Want them to not use shouts? That’s fine too! Isn’t that overpowered? Who gives a flying fuck?! 

Now go have fun in Tamriel, Bahlaan fahdonne!

[adatedreference]

On the Creation Club and Boycott

So I just made this (rather long) post to make arguments against the Creation Club to someone on r/Fallout and I felt it should be shared here too. I’ve done some minor editing to make it less direct but anyways, here goes:

I know there are people who rather foolishly moan and complain about DLCs and increased base-game costs but those gripes are mostly foolish; a game can be a Complete Experience and still have room for DLC to add things and increased development costs are a real thing hat effects Devs. But those aren’t the issues that effect the Creation Club, as much as people like to bring them up as a response to the criticism against it... and unfortunately as much as some people against the Creation Club bring up just the idea of DLC in general as an in issue with the Creation Club. But here are some of the many real, critical issues with Bethesda’s Creation Club:

The Creation Club is Bethesda leveraging the passion and effort of the Community for its profits and its benefits with almost no benefit coming back to us. Mods keep the Game alive and kicking for years after its Market Expiration because people can keep coming back to get some new content they'd always hoped for — usually for free, sometimes with the option to contribute specifically to the creators of the content. Bethesda is taking the fact that the Community undertakes these projects of passion to squeeze more money out of the players for things that would all but certainly be made anyways.

Pricing. The Creation Club is priced very wrong. See I really want the faction paint jobs for the weapons, especially the Minutemen ones because I'm a Settlement (Over)Builder and the Minutemen are the epitome of that. Let's say I determine that I would spend money on this mod? Well it's not worth its current cost ($1.33) to me, it's worth maybe $0.25, $0.50 at most but that's not at all what they're asking. I'm not miserly about spending money on these kinds of things, look at General Dave's Wasteland Walls; I quite like Evil Viking and when he announced the project, I decided I should start start putting my money behind what he does and have given him $5/month ever since. Name an appropriate price or ask me the right way and I will pay, ask too much of me and you lose a potential customer.

The Creation Club is not the product we were sold. When they talked about the Creation Club their marketing campaign painted great, vast swathes of content made at a quality just below the studio's own and more ambitious than most mods normally could be. The Creation Club can't facilitate files that large, hell Better Breezehome for Skyrim — which is a phenomenal mod despite being fairly small — is either too big or at the very upper bounds of what they could manage. They sold a product that promised things like Beyond Skyrim Bruma but in reality can only deliver us Better Blade of Woe — Better Blade of Woe is nice but if you're going to make me choose one, well I can deal with a named Orcish Dagger thank you.

Its implementation. Do you know anything about how Creation Club files are downloaded? If you do, me mentioning it should make you cringe, if you don't (or you're someone reading this argument who doesn't because I'm not just framing this discussion for the person it's directly a response to) well... I have some shitty news for you. So the way it works is that Bethesda downloads all the files with every upload and then just puts up a pay-wall for the content in your game. For some that might not seem terrible at first glance but look at it another way: Content you may not want, that you might protest/detest, that you may never elect to pay for will take up space on your SSD/HDD no matter your objections for as long as you decide to keep the game installed.

The Mods are coming out in a way that is very different than what most of us long-term Modded Gamers are use to and, I would argue, certainly not for the better. Creation Club mods hit the CC when they are finished and bug free. Cool. Now what makes that substantially different and worse than Classic Mods from the nexus? Well looking again at the Faction Weapon Paint Jobs — because I want this mod and so I'm going to pound on this drum til the skin tears — on the CC at release it is and will only ever be 10 weapons. On the Nexus it would probably launch at about 5 Skins and then over the course of a couple of months to a year it would expand to cover all but a few of the more unique weapons from Vanilla (like the Broadsider). It would also likely be quite modular, with editions to include paints for Various DLC weapons, and maybe an extra version that turns down the goddamn American Flags down to a 5 from their current 11, since the Commonwealth isn't the Full USA. And that would all be one single mod. Now look at how sad the CC version looks. Sure it has no bugs but it's also lacking in character or growth, restricted utterly for no reason except to fit into Bethesda's store set up.

It, Bethesda.net and the various fiascos following Bethesda's efforts to both monetize Modding and force its adoption for Consoles (Mods should be on Consoles they (that's Bethesda and Console Devs in general) need to improve the infrastructure for the Mods) are SEVERELY damaging the Modding Community. Look at DDProductions83, FO4's NIF-Messiah; love him or hate him personally, as I understand his personality was not exactly universally acclaimed, he made absolutely amazing mods at an incredible rate even when the tools available to us were middling-at-best. He left the Community because of some of the shady and shitty practices going on in the early days of the Bethesda.net Mods and I mourn that loss deeply. Another example is 5Like, his amazing mod 'Thematic and Practical' is one of the most amazing, if simple, mods ever added to FO4 and was likely to grow even better... and all the baggage tied to the Creation Club left such a bad taste in his mouth that he washed his hands of the project and declared it dead. How much better off would the modding community for Fallout be with those two still working and impassioned over these hobbies of there's? How much, comparatively, have we really gained with such inspired mods as Camo-patterned Pip Boys and Hot Rod Flame paint guns?... You can guess which I'd choose.

So yeah, that's why I personally boycott the CC. I would love to hear rebuttals or things I may not have considered but honestly, This is how I see Bethesda in 2016, licking their lips at the idea of Paid Mods and fittingly this is where I see them by next Summer. Maybe there's a side of this I don't see, and if you think that's the case please make your case — a new perspective on a troubling issue is always welcome. But until something changes, be it my views or their practices, I really want Bethesda to crash-and-burn a bit on this venture — not enough to damage them long term and jeopardize some of my favourite IPs in existence but enough to dissuade them.