When I first began following Yik-Sian James Seow on Twitter, it was because he was the developer behind Steam Marines, a squad-based tactical roguelike that launched back in 2013. But today, I follow him for a completely different reason: The fascinating stories of his many Fallout characters.
Amazing article!
This is kind the reason why I enjoy Elder Scrolls games a lot. In my case, overtime I think I turned my Oblivion and later Skyrim in my own jrpg (in fact I did once find a amazing mod, which added a High School…I am not kidding, it even have a Persona style velvet room…), it all start back in Oblivion, when I found some forum where people make thread showing their characters and telling some stories about them (kind like a AAR),
In my case, I soon start to download jrpg themed mod here and there, while I also created my own companions in both games (in effect, giving my main character a party) and also download lots of “pose” mods (mods which allow you to pose your main character or npcs), imagining their backstories and even creating scenes, in fact most of my gameplay is divided between exploring the world to collect resource to forge new armor and clothes for new scenes, and later making those scenes. In fact I think my mod list mostly clothes, armor, hairs, poses and places, very few other stuff for gameplay itself.
I tried the same thing with Fallout, but I never enjoyed this game much as the Elder Scroll games, but I did tried to create a Kenshiro (from Hokuto no Ken) inspired character…
Yeah, I feel like I get a ton of mileage out of those “Alternate Start” mods that usually pop up for Bethesda games. Especially when the main questline is meh and I never end up finishing it. Like in basically all Bethesda games.
It’s usually way more fun to just start out as some rando and make up a backstory of my own and let that character’s story unfold as it will.
Two points:
I’m definitely heavily invested in replaying skyrim for the past two weeks full stop with mods like this. I don’t go all out with spread sheets but I find myself creating limitations for myself and mods like isleep for the challenge and realism. I tend to play the glass cannon that ONLY puts points into magicka so that, even when I have some OP spells from all the mods I enjoy, I can justify it with the strategy needed to make use of such spells. My biggest gripe is that Skyrim spells, even the vanilla ones, suffer the issue of an overabundance of choice. It’s extremely hard to enjoy the variety when I just buy all my spells and learn them en masse with no real connection to each new ability. That feeling is there for the start but the moment you invest into bettering your combat prowess it becomes so overabundant it gets more monotonous because I choose a few and stick with them.
There should be an article about how the spaces we craft can sometime reveal our views. I used to LOVE the CBBE body changing mods for skyrim but now can barely enjoy it. The picture gallery reminded me of why, and the most guilty offender was how alien the body of the vault dweller smoking in the gallery looked. I’m not saying anything about this interviewee, of course. We all do this and it’s his world. But even from an artistic endeavor, there comes a time where one should look at the world they created and ask if it the realism and non realism comes from a place of creativity or just conforming to harmful norms
