Alternate Lore

[Rennn]

Well, I always thought that Elder Scrolls lore was very 'meh' compared to games like Dragon Age, or even Drakan. It's a matter of opinion, of course, and since it's a matter of opinion, I decided that I'd convert Oblivion to some new lore, invented by me, primarily for me, but also released as a mod. The problem in this was two-fold; first, Oblivion (great game as it is) has a terrible game engine. Skyrim runs with ambient occlusion better than Oblivion runs without it. Second, Oblivion has many argonians, orcs, and khajiit, which are not very easy to get rid of for the sake of a conversion. Skyrim has so few beast races and mer by comparison, they won't be missed much as long as they're replaced.

 

Well, there's a third one as well, I guess: the style of Skyrim is more agreeable to my style, so I won't have to re-make every potion bottle and plate.

 

Therefore, though I planned to do this for Oblivion, I will instead be converting Skyrim. Until the Construction Set releases, I'll just be making textures and practicing my mesh-making skills. And writing more lore, I suppose.

 

Here's the basic rundown:

1) Mer and beast races will be removed. Any quests attached to these characters will be lost, since I could care less about the vanilla quest system. (I like Skyrim, including it's quests. But they don't fit for this conversion.) I'll still let players play as whatever they want, however.

2) All dialogue references to the Eight/Nine Divines, Daedra, and anything else that's too 'Tamriel-ish' will be replaced with references to Saba (Depraved Goddess), Iy (Fertility Deity), and Biht (God of Pride). All shrines will be replaced with large, intimidating, newly created statues of one of the three deities.

3) New quests will not be in the quest journal. Instead, the player will find hints, diaries, and the like, similar to a mix of Morrowind and King's Field's questing styles.

4) At least three companion NPCs with fully developed personalities will be able to be recruited, assuming you meet their requirements.

5) All vanilla dungeons and landscape features will be basically intact, but region styles will be 'densified' with trees and other objects to make them more unique and forested. Vanilla dungeons will all remain, but the vanilla quests will be gutted since I prefer mysteriousness to the 'go here and follow your journal and kill 5 falmer' type of questing.

6) Many NPCs will be removed and/or replaced as I see fit. Most people have been slaughtered. Every single remaining NPC and new NPC will have a full personality, a full backstory, and overhauled radiant AI. This will be non-voiced.

7) Many new models and textures will be used, but most mods, such as body mods, clothing mods, and gameplay modifiers will of course remain intact as I'm mostly altering content rather than mechanics. I'm planning on giving most objects roughly vanilla poly counts, so performance hit should be small.

8 ) For the sake of mysterious-ness (and so this doesn't turn into a wall-o-text) I've omitted most of the lore from this post.

9) My planned Mysteriously Dangerous Dungeons mod will be fused with this one, since I'll be devoting all my efforts to this.

10 ) This mod will be M-rated, primarily for "National Geographic' style nudity. Some areas of the Landscape will be temperate after this mod. This is not intended to 'get some breast' showing, but instead is intended to display realism and create some culture shock. Did I mention the theme is heavily dark fantasy, like Dark Souls or King's Field?

11 ) If you think this idea is lame it really doesn't bother me since I'm going to make it for myself regardless, and it's purely your choice to download or not, eventually. I don't want to sound defensive here, but this has potential to get criticized heavily based on the removal of content.

 

Hopefully concept art will be up in a couple days, since I can't exactly start modding this without the Construction Set.

 

*Edited for typos and grammar errors. I know I use too many commas.*

Edited January 7, 2012 by Rennn

[Lachdonin]

Wait.... You find Dragon Age lore better than TES lore? Have you read up on TES lore?

 

I agree with some of the changes you propose, such as more mysterious quests, more fleshed out characters, denser forestation and the like, and think such things have a good degree of merit.

 

However, the TES lore is much more rich than any of the games you've mentioned, for those who are willing to dive into it, and i feel that your judgement comes from a lack of information than anything...

 

Still, i will keep track of this, see how some components of it play out.

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

TES has the deepest and most intellectual lore of any IP ever.