Megakoresh

Yeah, that's one of the bad things about marriage in Skyrim: it's too... 1950's. Ostensibly the only purpose of a wife in Skyrim is child-rearer and meal-maker, unless you go far off-campus for more.. adult.. fare. That being said, I'd always imagined the Dragonborne as looking for more of a Valyria [sp?] type of mate. A romantic partner who wants a life-bound partner, not a house wench. LOL well, ES is not renowned for it's good characters and meaningful interactions with them (as well as their interactions with the world), it's why we are excited for this mod so much. After their gigantc failure of an MMO, I do hope the next ES does focus more on quality over quantity and that including characters and companions as well. Maybe not Mass Effect or Dragon Age level, but they certainly can do better then now. They proved it with Dawnguard, even though it could have been better. As far as marriage goes though, it would be nice to have some sort of relationship status that would provide passive combat bonuses. Like increase mana/hp regen when she is nearby or a debuff to enemies when she is taking damage. It just gives more meaning to interacting with her beyond simply going through content. I don't know how difficult it would be to implement though.

Of all the things you showed us, nothing is more reassuring than this one sentence. So many people really don't realise this. This mod will be grand, and give my regards to the actress, she does a phenomenal job.

Motherf... Bethesda should hire you, seriously. Also I do have one thing you can mention to the actress: the tone. The tone is always, and I do mean in almost every single line: from high to low. I think she could vary it up. I mean she starts off on a high note and linearly descends to finish the sentence on a low note, then repeats for the next sentence. This pattern, if you listen, repeats for every line she says. It gives the voice acting a feel of monotony and takes away from the actual acting itself and the emotion she puts into the voice, effectively masking her work. As someone who worked in the field, I can tell that this can happen from taking too large inhales right before starting to read out a line. I would suggest not taking too big a breath before acting out a line and breath normally, as she would speak naturally to someone. Also to drink something before speaking. Acting isn't same as opera singing and large inhales are not actually needed, but many people get nervous before a microphone so they do it anyway. In addition it can happen if the actor reads the line out as a "remark". That is what humorists do for instance: they read out the lines for a dialogue as a remark, to note the comedy of the whole dialogue, not the character saying it. It might help to tell her of this fact so she associates herself more with the character as oppose to the humour in the dialogue. Interesting NPCs mod, for example, has a brilliant character named Rumarin. He is a good example of a humorous character as oppose to the humorous lines that the character happens to say. Another example from that mod is a drunk dude in the Winterhold tavern talking about his horse and how it tells him of business ideas. Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins or Captain Brast from Amaleur: Reckoning DLC are also good examples. This is a problem largely present with the vanilla voice acting, which is likely caused by same actors voicing a ton of different NPCs. I feel like it can be avoided if the actor is specific to the NPC. I hope that was helpful.

Awesome!

This is funny as always, but I have to wonder... Are these linked to conditions? Like it would be pretty awkward to hear her say she's cold when we are in Whiterun or hearing her say she is tired when I have just told her to follow. But holy crap she is so socially awkward XD Also OMG... that slomo in the end made my hand hurt just watching it!

IMO even half the content that skyrim has is already a lot. And if they made that half actually good quality people would praise them for it even more, regardless of platform. Also PC is the primary platform for Bethesda they have said it and it's apparent just because it's where most of the sales are. First week sales are better on console of course, but most sales for their games still come from PC. Furthermore they can always create good content as a DLC later. What they probably can't do is "fix" the story characters/followers and that kind of stuff with proper reactions, character development and all that stuff, cuz that is not exactly "fixable". And yeah the engine is pretty much the same as the old one with a few graphical enhancements mostly in lighting and polycount. It really is not very good. Although the infamous and mighty Kettle is kinda exactly the thing I would expect weapons to copy. It damages based on it's physics mesh intersection and weight and the intersection actually occurs in worldspace. But yeah I agree, they will need to make a proper engine for the next game.

As someone who studies game development professionally, I understand how difficult it is. As I said: it's about the tradeoffs. Anything involving voice acting and integration with storyline is much easier for the studio to pull off than for the modders, however making a dungeon, castle, fetch quest, an item, a helmet, texture and so on is something modders will always provide in abundance. if they are given the tools. What Bethesda easily could do but chose not to is not make half the swords and weapons, not make half the alchemical ingredients and potions, not make half the enchantments, not make half the spells, not make half the random dungeons, not make 20+ followers and instead take that money and spend it on believable reactive characters, on some 5-6 followers that were really good quality (I wouldn't expect Dragon Age quality, but at least halfway to that), on a proper physics-based combat engine with worldspace weapon physics geometry and programmable hit reactions (e.g. individual bone nudging vectors based on impact), and then let the modders do the filling up. I have not downloaded a single weapon or spell mod (aside from balancing ones), because there are already so many weapons and spells and equipment and books, etc. etc. etc. that I am getting drowned in them. But this mod is so far the best character mod I have seen so far and it is so very rare. There are thousands of interesting and cool spells, potions, armours and weapons for download, but hardly a dozen good new characters. This is not because modders are bad, it's because it's extremely difficult to find a good actor or actress, write lines, make a model, and all that and do it all by yourself. In studios casting is done by a specialist, modelling is done by another specialist, behaviour is done by another specialist and so on. What you have been able to achieve is a miracle for a modder. It requires not only a lot of talent, but also a fair bit of luck with a good willing volunteer voice actress. It should be this type of work that the studio puts most effort into, not the gameplay content. I know they probably would never see this conversation, but I ask people to keep these points in mind. Maybe through collective effort we deliver this message to Bethesda in time for their new ES game (Not ESO, it's not really an ES game). I also have a strong feeling that this mod will be very successful.

Even so they didn't really pull that off. They really tried, it was obvious, but Serana still doesn't really have much of a personality display. She is not reactive,which is probably the most important thing for a character. The only way to make it apparent that a character has some personality mapping is to make the character respond to locations and events, as well as player's actions. Serana doesn't do that. She only drops brief comments on the locations of the DLC and nothing else, does not react to any choices of the player, even such big ones as the Stormcloack rebellion, or the faction quests. She also does not really develop much. She barely has any difference in tone based on whether you went with vampires or Dawnguard. She also makes no remarks of characters or the world in general. I take her to Blackreach she is like "What do ya need?", I take her to Solstein: the same, I give her a silver weapon, not comments, I give her Auriel's bow, no comments. Your character is already 10 times better than her simply because of that reactivity.

So far it's balanced well enough, but it's a good warning to keep in mind, I agree. The Hor..ker comment was brilliant though!

LOL this is hilarious. Also TBH I am not entirely sure I would want her to randomly start punching people (using resetAI is annoying). If it could be controlled (like, for instance, if you get her drunk and tell her to attack a civilian, she would brawl), then it should be pretty funny. Honestly I would much prefer if Skyrim has like 4-6 followers instead of current 20 or so, but all of them would be like Sofia. Quality over quantity is something Bethesda never understood.

That part about debugger: so much yes. For a game that is BUILT for mods and owes most of it's success on PC to mods, absence of a proper debugger is really frustrating. Even the simplest things, like why is the face texture so much darker, when the weight of the character is correct, are pretty much impossible to figure out because it's impossible to view texture load logs or which textures the character uses, what mods override which values and other stuff that consoles in many other games readily provide. I hope next proper ES game (not ESO, since thats not a proper ES game) will have a proper debugger.

They should hire you for their next proper game (i.e. not ESO). This is better than any of the followers bethesda ever came up with. I am a little concerned at some of the AI features though. There is UFO mod which adds all this functionality to all followers. Isn't it a bit redundant to program all that tech just for this one if it's already been done and most people probably use it (and it can cause possible interference)? If you really like to program behaviour, why not, say, program behaviour patterns for her (e.g. stay at range, tank, heal/support me commands and corresponding behaviour and equipment preferences). That sounds more compatible with a single-follower AI modifications, and it's not something that's been done yet.

JUst release the damn thing, it's too good! :P

Haha! This is actually hilarious. Skyrim misses humour dearly, just like most fantasy games. Love this mod, keep going! The voice actor is doing an amazing job at making it sound even more hilarious :D

I think what really needs improvement is the Nexus Mod manager. It is, IMO, unnecessarily complicated, really all it should have is mod list with update functionality and installation script support. It doesn't need all these tabs, it doesn't need game package activation support (for Skyrim for example, the launcher already has that feature built in), it doesn't need the multiple screens. In fact if the tabs are used, they might as well be used for the mod sorting (categories), that's the only application of them that I can see as being useful. I think I also should be able to switch servers for each mod I download, not just the whole program. On another hand one feature is missing and that is the ability to download mod or update it or download a different version of it through the application itself. I also think you should support torrents for mods. It's very often that the NMM or the site fails to download a large mod and then it's very annoying to redo it again. I think torrent support is very important for Nexus to have. Is NMM written in C++ BTW? It crashes and freezes so often and so hard (very long freezing before crash, exceptions out of nowhere and so on), that it seems like badly debugged C++ code, because C# is not as sensitive to coding mistakes. To be honest for an application that works with the web C# or Python would be better. It's probably best if you just make the program Open Source (I mean it's a modding website after all) and release the source freely for people to branch and modify without having to contact anyone. The client could really make a world of difference here. I wouldn't download any mods from Steam Workshop if NMM worked well. I also think that stuff like:Requirements for modsIncompatibilityWorks with NMM?/Doesn't?/What setup is recommendedRecommended complementary modsCommon issuesShould be in their separate sections for each mod's page and should be emphasised more (and mandatory fields to fill in for the mod uploader). So that I do not look at 20 amazing screenshots, read general description, look at some more fancy stuff, install the mod and THEN find out about incompatibility at the bottom of the mod description after my game crashed 20 times. User Experience, guys. It's important. People on the internet are not known for being very patient and thorough (like how many people actually read full super-long descriptions for each mod they install in the beginning? Hint: not many). Not too important, but still nice: some sort of file checker for the server, so I know if the file is ready and not corrupted on the server that I am downloading from. So that's my feedback in case you want it..