[Elder Scrolls] Thor's Mod Farm

[Thor McOdin Senpai]

Aloha, CF. I'm currently putting together an experiment on Skyrim that I hope to run in a few weeks (pending IRB approval). My participant groups will be asked to play one of four versions of the game: vanilla, "tweaked" mods (more companions and more interesting NPCs), "modded" Skyrim (i.e. Alternate Start), and "total conversion" Skyrim (Enderal). My goal is to see what, if any, difference each version might reveal about perceptions of control in a game like Skyrim.

For anyone who has played recently, what would be a good starting point for two of those mods? Obviously, with Alternate Start and Enderal, the participants will have to play from the beginning. However, what about the other two versions? My gut says right after Helgen, but what do you think?

[Delthazar]

If not Helgen then maybe Riversomething or Whitesomething at the latest. It's been so long since I last played Skyrim I can't even remember the early fantasy-basic town names, so I'm probably not the best person to comment on this I guess, but those three feel like the most natural ways to define a starting point in Skyrim from what I remember: Helgen is the full-context, full tutorial start; Riverthing is pretty much intentionally designed to be the first place most people wander to a la Megaton; Whiteplace is where both central story threads begin in earnest.

[Falcon Critical]

Yeah the first little town is a good place to drop people in, it lets you just kind of set off in whatever direction you want, but you'd also have a quest which leads you to Whiterun where you get to talk to the Jarl and get a bit of the culture and such. Depending how much time they have to play it leads through the first dungeon and comes back to the dragon fight outside Whiterun. It's probably Skyrim at its best.

For the more companions etc perhaps start them with a couple of companions and set them on an interesting quest or dungeon... perhaps the part of the civil war storyline where you go to get the crown - it's like a dungeon delve with fights against draugr, but also you fight against the other faction and have NPC fighters around you to make it a bigger event.

These are both high energy moments though, which will be quite different to alternate start and Enderal which will start slow. Also alt start might start you in the snow naked next to a dragon so be prepared to let them restart if they get a bad draw.

[Flarecake]

Yeah, probably when you get to Riverwood. On the other hand, you might want to start after you meet the Greybeards, so you have access to getting more shouts and whatnot.

[Falcon Critical]

Yeah also at that point in the story dragons can happen at any time which is part of the fun.

[Delthazar]

Especially if you replace those dragons with Macho Man Randy Savage or Thomas the Tank Engine.

[Delthazar]

May as well make this the current Elder Scrolls thread 'cause the other one is old enough to be fridged.

Speculate here, keep the main E3 thread clean of mudcrabs.



Almost impossible to get a good read on the setting from such a brief teaser but that's probably a sea/ocean in the distance, so... that's something? I don't remember what's west or south of Cyrodil. Guess it could also be an island.

[Falcon Critical]

With all the coastline I'm pretty sure this is High Rock, the Brettonian zone and location of Daggerfall. I'm not against that since Daggerfall itself relied on procedural terrain so you didn't really get a sense of the zone.

Still kinda sad they didn't go for one of the more visually different areas like Elsewyr or Valenwood, but maybe at High Rock we'll get into Hammerfall as well.

[Delthazar]

hey more analysis

[Falcon Critical]

Yeah I was pretty sure it's High Rock, though they could be ambitious and cover at least part of Hammerfall as well. The war drums observation was interesting, since the Orc homeland used to be between Skyrim and High Rock, and they talked about helping the Orcs reclaim their homeland in ESO at E3.

Not sure that would be the main story of the game, but certainly there's good potential to either help or hinder the Orsinium re-establishment efforts, maybe as something like Skyrim's civil war.

[Delthazar]

From a purely real world marketing perspective, "High Rock" is a kinda bad subtitle to sell a huge game with, whether it already has 99.999% of its audience on-lock or not. They should totally call it "Hammerfell" even if it mostly takes place in High Rock just for that raisin.

Like, "Skyrim" and "Morrowind" are cool-sounding unique words that no one else was ever gonna use for anything. Skyrim in particular is practically a household term at this point, it's been verb'd and everything. They'll never have that with "High Rock" 'cause it's too generic. There could be like three different Game of Thrones locations with that name.

[Flarecake]

They've verbed Skyrim? How?

[Falcon Critical]

High Rock isn't a great name for a game, which is probably why the second game was called Daggerfall. You forget though, they're not locked into naming them after the zone:

TES1: Arena
TES2: Daggerfall (city)
TES3: Morrowind (zone)
TES4: Oblivion
TES5: Skyrim (zone)

So only two of the five games are named after zones, it's more likely they name it something like Oblivion where the central conflict of the game is the calling card.

[True Perception]

Arena was the first. For some raisin, I always thought it was three. That's still the only one I've played.

[Falcon Critical]

Arena is the only one I haven't played, but yeah it was the first outing.

[Delthazar]

If you didn't catch it in the Fallout thread, there's a lot of old-ass Elder Scrolls chat in the Noclip Bethesda documentary, Arena included of course.

[True Perception]

Yeah, I played Arena back in late '96. I think that was when I did most of my PC gaming, because we had moved, and gaming was all I did when I wasn't at school. Except for that one week I sold newspaper subscriptions...

[Flarecake]

So, I found a random character generator online and decided to use it to make a character.

So, I have a Khajiit who uses warhammers and greatswords. Her main secondary trees are conjuration, illusion, and restoration. Her armor type is regular clothes and her standing stone is The Warrior. She's on the side of the Imperials and the Vampires. Her companion is Serana and her home is Hjerim. She's going to be joining the Companions, Bards College, Thieves Guild, and Dark Brotherhood. There's also thieving and murdering options, but I'm just ignoring those because I know I won't follow those anyway.

Here's the link if anyone else wants to do it: http://www.scenariogenerator.net/generators/skyrim

[Delthazar]

Noclip Shorts going up for all the Bethesda stuff.

[Falcon Critical]

I guess he got a lot of content from his visit to Bethesda! It's all good stuff though.