[WIP] Ethas: Embrace of Destiny

[jhardingame]

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/5901/ethaslogosmall.png

 

 

Hey everyone, it's Elijah Houck and Justin Hardin, the team that brought you Alton, IL for Fallout 3. Today, we're announcing a brand new project many times larger than even Alton, titled Ethas: Embrace of Destiny. Below is a both a description of the mod itself, as well as an introduction for those not familiar with our past work. The community support for Alton was overwhelmingly great, and we can't wait to bring Ethas to the masses as well. We'll add posts as we develop the mod, giving you guys an inside look at the work that goes into a project like this. We might also write a few posts (or even make videos) that are more learning-oriented, so you guys can see the workflow that worked so well for Alton. Keep your eyes on the blog and site- updates are hopefully coming soon!

 

 

 

"Ethas: Embrace of Destiny is a modification for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim being developed by Justin Hardin and Elijah Houck, the team that brought you the mod Alton, Il. for Fallout 3. In Embrace of Destiny, you will explore the lands of Arelia and Virardan, two countries currently at war with each other. Your role starts you out as one of the five famous Captains of the Arelian Army. Choices will be made, and sides will be chosen. The only question that remains, is, will you become the hero, or the villain?

 

Ethas will bring the player to a huge new world to explore, and lets the player choose at any time whether to play Skyrim or Ethas. Whether it be the the sweeping valleys, lush forests, or harsh, volcanic wasteland, Ethas will immerse the player in an experience rare to the modding community. Ethas will of course be free for all to download, and is planned for release on both Steam and various other modding communities.

 

Elijah Houck and Justin Hardin, the creators of Ethas, are certainly an experienced duo. In 2009, Elijah started development on Alton, IL for Fallout 3, which took players to his hometown in a world over twice the size of Point Lookout. Elijah would continue work on Alton for almost three years, finally releasing the mod on October 27th, 2011. Alton was (and currently still is) the largest mod for Fallout 3, and won File of the Month on Fallout3Nexus for the month of October. It wasn't only Elijah that brought Alton to the masses, however. Justin Hardin was essential to the project, creating amazing trailer and in-game music and sounds, brilliant voiceovers, meshes, textures, and even finally getting the GECK to generate LOD meshes for Alton (which is usually unheard of for such a large world).

 

With this experience under their belt and Alton completed, Justin and Elijah looked forward to Bethesda's next title, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Since July, they have been hard at work writing quests, creating artwork, and even preparing in-game assets as they await the release of the Creation Kit."

 

 

We'll be keeping this forum thread up to date with posts and information, but most importantly, we'll be posting stuff on our Moddb Page. We hope you'll enjoy watching the project grow, and we can't wait to release it to ya'll in the future!

 

Update; If you wish to volunteer for any voice acting, PM jhardingame, and please, if you can, attach or link a voice sample in the PM. Make sure you have a good mic too, as I'm really big on professional audio, and making sure things sound nice, clear, and not full of static (I'm talking to you Eli.)

 

Summer Update 2012: http://www.moddb.com/mods/ethas-embrace-of-destiny/news/ethas-embrace-of-destiny-2012-summer-update

 

Winter Update 2012/Early 2013: http://www.moddb.com/mods/ethas-embrace-of-destiny/news/2012-winter-update-final-week

 

Select Images (You can view all our images on our moddb page!);

 

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/21/20603/thumb_620x2000/Rilekarth.jpg

 

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/21/20603/thumb_620x2000/Just_an_Epic_Screenshot.png

 

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/21/20603/thumb_620x2000/SteelClaymoreScreen.jpg

 

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/21/20603/thumb_620x2000/Wasteland_Dwarven_Ruin.jpg

 

http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/21/20603/thumb_620x2000/Elven_Ruin.jpg

 

 

Trailer 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkhIGR-SFxI

Edited February 8, 2013 by jhardingame

[ElijahHouck]

Hey everyone, Elijah Houck, creator of Alton, IL here! I can't wait for you guys to see what we've got in store, this is certainly going to be a fun adventure for all of us!

 

Like Justin said, be sure to check out our site (designed by yours truly ;) ) and bookmark it! We've got a few images and a music sample on there, so be sure to check that out too.

Edited January 6, 2012 by EMH

[c2552]

sounds interesting, imma keep an eye on this.

[jhardingame]

sounds interesting, imma keep an eye on this.

 

Oh c'mon chris, I know you can say more than that.:P

[meticadpa]

This sounds brilliant. I'm probably no good at it, but if you guys need any voice work done for the mod or anything I'd be happy to help out. I have a Scottish accent if that makes any difference. :P

[Esteris]

The fact that you guys have big finished mods on your account gives hope that this too, will get finished one day. I wish you best of luck! CK is said to be out next week, so soon soon ^-^

[Adolon]

Is Ethas something completely divorced from TES lore or does it share some things?

[jhardingame]

This sounds brilliant. I'm probably no good at it, but if you guys need any voice work done for the mod or anything I'd be happy to help out. I have a Scottish accent if that makes any difference. :P

 

As long as you have a good mic, then I'm game to give ya a try. I'll add you to my "Voice Actors" bookmark folder and send ya PM when we actually get around to starting voices, which, this time around, I'm actually in charge of, instead of just being one of the voice actors who happened to end up doing more than voice acting when Eli was making Alton. :P (And yeah, I'm an audio nerd, so I'm real keen on mic quality thing xD)

 

@Adolon; It's divorced from TES Lore, and is it's own separate world, like Nehrim, though, we're not doing an overhaul, as we want to keep in the option to play Skyrim along with our mod.

 

@Esteris: Thanks! We're super excited to get this underway, and we're constantly looking at the Bethsoft site on the off chance we'll see it posted up before they actually announce it's available :thumbsup:

Edited January 23, 2012 by jhardingame

[bogdee]

I'm not much of a forum-goer-guy (which is obvious if you take a look at my astounding post count), but for some reason (maybe because i don't have anything to do at work today), i managed to convince myself to eye over the Skyrim part of this forum in hopes of finding out if there's any talk about new and ambitious projects already underway even before the release of the CK. And, of course, this topic was the first to spark quite a lot of my curiosity.

I'd also like to say that I don't care much about item, texture or gameplay mods (even though i do use a fair share of each). What i do care for are stories - quest mods.

 

Having said that, i can't help but wonder. Since this will be a completely new world, with no tie-ins to Skyrim whatsoever, how "big" will this mod be story-wise?

- will this world have a decent (if not solid) history presented through books or by characters in the game?

- will it have a plot riddled with unexpected turns of events, political machinations or military strategies much like the XV-th century War of Roses or R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire"?

- will I care about the characters I interact with and about my own character?

- will there be rich and meaningful dialogue?

Or will it be a speed-through story with "go there, do that because i say so" kind of run-around?

 

Basically, what i'm asking is to what extent will you take the player-to-story immersiveness, leaving aside the surely baffling work that will be put into creating the land, it's location, it's inhabitants, etc. ?

 

And as a side note, do you guys need any help with writing the story? I could try my hand at this if you need an extra pair of hands :happy:

[jhardingame]

We actually have the main quest planned/written out already, something the time without the CK allowed us to get done. I shall answer some of your questions though :P

 

Having said that, i can't help but wonder. Since this will be a completely new world, with no tie-ins to Skyrim whatsoever, how "big" will this mod be story-wise?

 

Well, lets put it this way. Oblivion's/Skyrim's we're both roughly 16-18 quests long.

Nehrim, for those who played it, was roughly 36 quests long.

Ethas has 2 different branchings within the story, each branch essentially catering to either being a hero, or villian. At last count, the total number of quests in the original story branch is about 17-18 quests, and then the "hero" branch is at last count about 23 quests long, so that's around 40 quests there. The "villian" branch will be around the same amount of quests(I haven't done a count for that yet), so at a total, that's about 60-65 quests. So, you WILL have to have multiple characters to experience it all.

 

- will this world have a decent (if not solid) history presented through books or by characters in the game?

 

Yes.

 

- will it have a plot riddled with unexpected turns of events, political machinations or military strategies much like the XV-th century War of Roses or R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire"?

 

I've never actually read "A Song of Ice and Fire", so I don't know how the story in our mod compares to that, but without revealing too much, I will say that there will be some things you don't expect along the way. We're going for a real "wow" factor within our story.

 

- will I care about the characters I interact with and about my own character?

- will there be rich and meaningful dialogue?

Or will it be a speed-through story with "go there, do that because i say so" kind of run-around?

 

In a nutshell, yes. One thing I focused on when writing out the MQ was incorporating that "human emotion" into it, so it's not just all "Go do this, go do that." We really took into consideration how annoying "fetching" quests can be, but they are always, unfortunatley, a seemingly inevetable part of any story, but we've carefully tried to avoid that for the most part to make the story line more interesting. I guess a good way of putting it is that there are a few, and I emphasize few, fetching quests, but they're being designed so they don't really "feel" like being some tedious "go fetch me this!" quest.

 

Basically, what i'm asking is to what extent will you take the player-to-story immersiveness, leaving aside the surely baffling work that will be put into creating the land, it's location, it's inhabitants, etc. ?

 

Immersiveness is a priority on our "make sure this happens" list, we're coming up with some ways to do this that we think you'll enjoy. We'll reveal more of this in the future though, as I don't want to say too much right now. ;)

Edited January 23, 2012 by jhardingame