Skyrim Main Quest Overhaul [WIP]

[behughes]

presents

a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Skyrim Main Quest Overhaul is a mod project dedicated to improving the dramatic pacing, character development, and dialogue of Skyrim’s central questline to create a more immersive and interactive experience.

The Elder Scrolls games have always been known for their vast, immersive worlds, open-ended gameplay, and gripping storylines. Skyrim’s central plot, while fun and engaging, feels short, underdeveloped, and overly linear in the context of this huge and epic franchise. It unfolds with manic urgency, thrusting the player into the dragon crisis without giving any opportunity to explore and engage Bethesda’s massive, beautifully constructed world. This mod aims to expand the main quest with more dialogue, more choices, and diverging storylines, as well as all-new quests, characters, and challenges.

With the Skyrim Main Quest Overhaul, your journey from ill-fated prisoner to hero of prophecy will no longer be a meteoric rise to godhood, but rather a hard-fought battle filled with choices, consequences, victories, and defeats. You will encounter compelling, multidimensional characters, both friend and foe, who will guide you to glory or test your mettle. Go boldly towards your destiny or deny it outright; the choice is yours. Should you accept your fate, you will learn the true meaning of Dovahkiin.

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The Skyrim Main Quest Overhaul will feature:

• An expansion of the court of Jarl Balgruuf, with new warriors gathered in Dragonsreach “to discuss the ongoing hostilities,” and new quests to add to the sense of exposition and rising action
• An expanded role for the Greybeards
• A massive overhaul of the Blades faction, with dynamic new recruits, an expanded headquarters, and new missions
• A resolution to the “Paarthurnax Ultimatum,” with a few twists
• New campaigns against powerful new dragon adversaries
• And much more!

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Half Goat Studios is currently recruiting talent for this project. We are looking for writers, level designers (with Creation Kit experience) and programmers (Papyrus experience preferred but not necessary) to make this mod possible. Anyone interested in joining this project can send me a private message, or email me at [email protected]. Thanks to everyone who has offered their praise, support, and constructive criticism toward this project... and a very special thanks to those who have already offered their talents:

 

The Half Goat team:

behughes: Project Director, writing, quest design, level design
JibstaMan: writing, quest design, level design, scripting
MatorTheEternal: writing, quest design, scripting
Drytor: writing
Fantasmeitor: level design, 3D modeling

Edited June 23, 2013 by behughes

[Galacticat42]

Good to see you move to Mod Talk from Mod Request - hopefully you'll get enough recognition and help as this idea deserves.

[TheCommonerPrince]

I can help with the voice acting. Demo tape in my signature. Also could assist with writing if required. :) Edited April 18, 2012 by TheCommonerPrince

[behughes]

Good to see you move to Mod Talk from Mod Request - hopefully you'll get enough recognition and help as this idea deserves.

 

Thanks! I hope so too.

 

I can help with the voice acting. Demo tape in my signature. Also could assist with writing if required. :)

 

Your demos are great. Glad to have you! This project could definitely benefit from having a few more writers, otherwise I might get stuck on some crazy, idiotic idea when a better one is right under my nose :P

 

- - - - -

 

I'm currently brainstorming ideas for Proventus' optional side quests, and would love some input.

 

At the moment, I'm toying around with the idea of the Death of a Taxman quest, as a sort of tip-of-the-hat to Morrowind's quest of that name. I want to make use of a new world-space I'm planning, a small village outside Whiterun, extending along the road from the stables to the watchtower. I'd like to relocate Heimskr and the Talos shrine to this village, re-purpose Heimskr's house to be the tax collector's home, and give the "thief" a home in the village.

 

So before I move forward with the quests themselves, I need to add these new towns to the game. I've attached a map of their proposed locations:

 

1. A village outside Whiterun, near the Western Watchtower. It will serve as an extension of the farming community outside the city walls, with an outdoor market, houses, a tavern, and a chapel dedicated to Talos. Parts of this town will be destroyed when the player goes to fight Mirmulnir in Dragon Rising. As of yet, I have no name for this town.

2. A small hamlet in Falkreath hold, near the Hammerfell border. A possible location for the dragon attacks in The Dragonborn Comes. I'm considering the name Glenmoril, but open to ideas.

3. A mining community near Morthal, another potential target for the dragons.

4. Possible location for a village in the Pale, perhaps a traditional Nordic camp similar to the Skaal in Solstheim.

5. A mining community tucked into the mountains near Winterhold.

6. A village of Dunmer refugees.

[TheCommonerPrince]

Thanks! Added ya then, I hope I'll do my part in making your mod a memorable one :P Edited April 18, 2012 by TheCommonerPrince

[Drakescale]

I'm currently brainstorming ideas for Proventus' optional side quests, and would love some input.

 

At the moment, I'm toying around with the idea of the Death of a Taxman quest, as a sort of tip-of-the-hat to Morrowind's quest of that name. I want to make use of a new world-space I'm planning, a small village outside Whiterun, extending along the road from the stables to the watchtower. I'd like to relocate Heimskr and the Talos shrine to this village, re-purpose Heimskr's house to be the tax collector's home, and give the "thief" a home in the village.

Still remember that one! Had to fight a kwama near the corpse and it was a tough one! :P Anyway, the taxation quest does sound good. With the war going about, it's a good motive for a murder, more so when it comes from Imperials. Maybe you could make it as a trigger to the "Join the Stormcloak" quest.

 

Another idea is, to send the db to Falkreath to ascertain the location of a messenger from Whiterun that had failed to report the situation in Falkreath (with the new pompous Jarl-brat taking the seat, coronation?) or maybe from Helgen itself about the execution. It must have been a big news to be known by the Jarl Balgruf that maybe the rebellion is at an end! Besides, it was in HIS territory that Ulfric was captured!

 

So before I move forward with the quests themselves, I need to add these new towns to the game. I've attached a map of their proposed locations:

 

1. A village outside Whiterun, near the Western Watchtower. It will serve as an extension of the farming community outside the city walls, with an outdoor market, houses, a tavern, and a chapel dedicated to Talos. Parts of this town will be destroyed when the player goes to fight Mirmulnir in Dragon Rising. As of yet, I have no name for this town.

2. A small hamlet in Falkreath hold, near the Hammerfell border. A possible location for the dragon attacks in The Dragonborn Comes. I'm considering the name Glenmoril, but open to ideas.

3. A mining community near Morthal, another potential target for the dragons.

4. Possible location for a village in the Pale, perhaps a traditional Nordic camp similar to the Skaal in Solstheim.

5. A mining community tucked into the mountains near Winterhold.

6. A village of Dunmer refugees.

Here's a good site for Norse Mythology Names and Ancient Scandinavian Names. Personally, I'd choose Groa (old Norse for "to grow") or maybe Gudrun (god's secret lore). I'd take the latter since it's more up to what you're thinking of doing! :)

 

I've got no comment on the village location but I think I'm interested in the 6th item. Dunmer refugee village or camp, which ever you choose with all that Red Mountain exploding and everthing. Maybe if we can get a good modder to join, we could possibly add a little Indoril, Redoran Telvanni, Hlaalu or maybe Dres into it, just for the immersion! :D

[avenger404]

Hey Just got your message on here! I'll do what I can, although I must admit the majority of scripting is above my head, but I'm trying to learn... Did you like any of my bosses enough to import them to your mod, or do you have different ideas where my bosses are? Edited April 21, 2012 by avenger404

[LittleBaron]

I think this sounds like it would be a great, great overhaul and make a replay that much more awsome.

 

I know a little bit about everything (see my two main mods linked in my siggy). If you think you could use my help, please feel free to PM me.

 

Otherwise, good luck, I really hope to see it finished some day.

[behughes]

I'm currently brainstorming ideas for Proventus' optional side quests, and would love some input.

 

At the moment, I'm toying around with the idea of the Death of a Taxman quest, as a sort of tip-of-the-hat to Morrowind's quest of that name. I want to make use of a new world-space I'm planning, a small village outside Whiterun, extending along the road from the stables to the watchtower. I'd like to relocate Heimskr and the Talos shrine to this village, re-purpose Heimskr's house to be the tax collector's home, and give the "thief" a home in the village.

Still remember that one! Had to fight a kwama near the corpse and it was a tough one! :P Anyway, the taxation quest does sound good. With the war going about, it's a good motive for a murder, more so when it comes from Imperials. Maybe you could make it as a trigger to the "Join the Stormcloak" quest.

 

Another idea is, to send the db to Falkreath to ascertain the location of a messenger from Whiterun that had failed to report the situation in Falkreath (with the new pompous Jarl-brat taking the seat, coronation?) or maybe from Helgen itself about the execution. It must have been a big news to be known by the Jarl Balgruf that maybe the rebellion is at an end! Besides, it was in HIS territory that Ulfric was captured!

 

So before I move forward with the quests themselves, I need to add these new towns to the game. I've attached a map of their proposed locations:

 

1. A village outside Whiterun, near the Western Watchtower. It will serve as an extension of the farming community outside the city walls, with an outdoor market, houses, a tavern, and a chapel dedicated to Talos. Parts of this town will be destroyed when the player goes to fight Mirmulnir in Dragon Rising. As of yet, I have no name for this town.

2. A small hamlet in Falkreath hold, near the Hammerfell border. A possible location for the dragon attacks in The Dragonborn Comes. I'm considering the name Glenmoril, but open to ideas.

3. A mining community near Morthal, another potential target for the dragons.

4. Possible location for a village in the Pale, perhaps a traditional Nordic camp similar to the Skaal in Solstheim.

5. A mining community tucked into the mountains near Winterhold.

6. A village of Dunmer refugees.

Here's a good site for Norse Mythology Names and Ancient Scandinavian Names. Personally, I'd choose Groa (old Norse for "to grow") or maybe Gudrun (god's secret lore). I'd take the latter since it's more up to what you're thinking of doing! :)

 

I've got no comment on the village location but I think I'm interested in the 6th item. Dunmer refugee village or camp, which ever you choose with all that Red Mountain exploding and everthing. Maybe if we can get a good modder to join, we could possibly add a little Indoril, Redoran Telvanni, Hlaalu or maybe Dres into it, just for the immersion! :D

 

Yeah, I have to admit, I'm pretty nostalgic when it comes to Morrowind. It doesn't help that Skyrim uses a lot of the music from that game... I like your idea of connecting the tax collector quest to the Civil War in some way. Is the thief/murder a Stormcloak sympathizer? Sick of paying taxes while the Empire lets the Thalmor walk all over the Nord traditions? In Morrowind, the killer was a disgruntled Dunmer who thought the Empire was corrupt. Is it the same situation here?

 

As for the Falkreath quest... In my mind, the Jarl of Falkreath would already be aware of Helgen's destruction, but he might not believe that it was done by a dragon. The DB, Ulfric, Hadvar, and Ralof were the only ones that survived, and the dragon flew North from Helgen, so its not likely there were any eye-witness in Falkreath to confirm the dragon attack. Thus the Jarl of Falkreath would probably think Helgen was sacked by Stormcloaks, and would be anticipating an attack on his city. Meanwhile, in Whiterun, the dragon attack on Helgen was only a rumor until the DB talks to Balgruuf to confirm it, so its not likely a messenger was already to Falkreath. After the DB talk to Balgruuf, it seems logical Proventus would send him/her, since the DB is one of the only true eye-witnesses, and he/she is in a good position to convince Falkreath that the troops in Riverwood aren't staging an attack. Also, by delivering the message and acting as an emissary, its a good opporunity for the DB to earn Whiterun's trust, building up to the task of retrieving of the dragonstone. Let me know what you think though...

 

As for the villages, I'll have to check out those Scandinavian names for ideas. Gudrun has a nice ring to it, but I almost think it sounds better for one of the Nordic barrows than for a town... What do you think? Its funny you mentioned adding lore-friendly stuff from Morrowind's great houses to the Dunmer town, because I had a similar thought. I think most of the great houses fell into ruin long before Skyrim, but there could be an NPC who is selling "antiques" from the 3rd Era. Bonemold armors, Indoril armors, etc. I was even thinking it would be cool to have a town somewhere along the Morrowind border that has Dunmer architecture, and maybe even a netch farm, but we'd need some people to help with models...

 

Hey Just got your message on here! I'll do what I can, although I must admit the majority of scripting is above my head, but I'm trying to learn... Did you like any of my bosses enough to import them to your mod, or do you have different ideas where my bosses are?

 

Glad you're interested! Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to check your mod out... my experimental scripting screwed up a lot of the games vanilla quest scripts, and I had to clean-install my game about 3 times before I figured out what I was doing wrong. As a result, I don't have any mods installed. I did read the description for your mod, and I liked the direction. Higher risk, higher reward (it's what Todd Howard promised, but didn't deliver). Do you have a demo video for your mod?

 

I'm currently interested in playing with the dragon combat scripts. A lot of people complained about their attacks being too predictable. I think changing their movement patterns would be difficult, but I have a different solution to make the dragon battles more fun. Think of classic video game bosses... many were predictable in their movements, but were still really hard! Perhaps there's a way to explore this idea to make dragon fights feel more like classic video game boss fights. One idea I had was to give them the ability to heal during battle. When they hover in place doing nothing, they would heal themselves. They would be temporarily invulnerable to normal attacks, but shouts would interrupt the healing process and deal damage. This way, you'd have to reserve your shouts for this particular moment in the battle. Additionally, they should have some overall resistance to normal attacks, except after being hit by a shout. Your shouts would stun them, giving you a temporary window to do real damage. That way, shouting would actually be necessary and strategically useful for all classes of player.

 

I also want to add some new Nordic barrows to the game as well as some new civil war quests, so there will be plenty of opportunities to add bosses there as well. Let me know what you think!

 

 

I think this sounds like it would be a great, great overhaul and make a replay that much more awsome.

 

I know a little bit about everything (see my two main mods linked in my siggy). If you think you could use my help, please feel free to PM me.

 

Otherwise, good luck, I really hope to see it finished some day.

 

I really appreciate your interest in my project! I'll PM you for details, but I can say for sure that I'll definitely need help on this, so if you're interested, welcome aboard!

[David Brasher]

This project is too ambitious because Skyrim is a fully voiced game. This would have worked fine with Morrowind which was not voiced much except for greetings, and fine with Oblivion which was broken so that no one was expected to have voiced dialog. But in Skyrim, if you edit the dialog of any NPC, for the purposes of changing the main quest, then you will have to redo the voice acting for every bit of their dialog just for the sake of adding or changing a few lines. If you changed the lines for 10 NPCs in the main quest, that could end up being hundreds and hundreds of lines of voice acting and all the audio editing work to fix the voice acted files and then all the CK work to deploy them and re-lipify them.

 

It would be technically feasible to complete such a project, but the expected amount of labor hours required is daunting.