A new post on the Elder Scrolls Online blog offers a look at the creation of everyone’s favorite flaming daedra, the flame atronach. The ESO dev team has been focusing on lots of flickering flame effects and suitably creepy demonic sound effects to bring the creatures to life.



“Sound effects are critical for any creature—especially for one with so many kinds of movements and attacks,” the post reads. “Most of us are familiar with the kinds of sounds fire can make, but how do we create believable audio for a creature of animate, magical flame? Our Sound Designers get a good look at creatures and their animations before they get to work to get an idea of the kinds of sounds they’ll need to create. For the flame atronach, they imagined how its various attacks would sound right away. Utilizing huge sound libraries, they found sounds for swinging torches, campfires, and even an actual geyser.”

The video shows off a lot of details in a short time. There’s enchanted weapons, dual-wielding, a first-person perspective and dodging attacks with combat rolls. There’s also the inevitable death that comes when you charge face-first into a group of flame atronachs. And with a fire damage weapon? Come on, guy, it’s like you’re not even trying.



Elder Scrolls Online is shaping up quickly, aiming for an early 2014 launch. Check out Chris's impression from his hands-on time back in May.

While Arkane did not fulfill our hope that Dishonored's next DLC would feature playable whales, I guess they've done as well as they can have without going the whole hog of adding cetaceous beings. Second and final story DLC The Brigmore Witches is out today, and judging by the launch trailer, it looks like the once-indiscriminate assassin Daud is now having some serious reservations about his chosen career.

Those slow-motion execution scenes are, as usual, rather grisly, making that pensive voiceover vaguely hilarious. Reflections on the meaning of life and death?Well, in our preview, Ian did find that the storyline was the most promising thing about this DLC, which is now on sale for $10 over on Steam. The Brigmore Witches carries on from where you left off in The Knife of Dunwall, even lifting your Chaos level and weapon upgrades from the savefile.

You'll probably know Polycount from their occasional Valve-partnered contests. Some of the site's users have made items now found in Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2. Those items have gone on to secure their creators big money hats, to be worn in a big money houses, built atop big money islands. (They made a lot of money, is what I'm saying.) The site also runs less lucrative, but equally creative contests - like this one in partnership with Sketchfab. The brief was to create low-poly gaming dioramas in the tool, and the results is a series of excellent, interactive tributes full of charm and detail.

You'll find a few (PC relevant) relevant examples below. Be sure to full-screen them for maximum impact, and remember: this is only a tiny portion of the full, frequently amazing thread.

Canabalt by adam



Dishonored by AzzaMat



Enemy Territory: Quake Wars by Shiv



The Secret of Monkey Island by hopgood



X-COM: UFO Defense by Saiblade



Mirror's Edge by robert.nally



I'll stop there before I accidentally embed the entire thread. Do go and browse it.

Voting for the contest's winner is due to take place next week. Good luck to everyone who entered.

Members of the Hatter gang hate Daud almost as much as they love hats.

Atonement can take quite a while, depending on the crime. After assassinating the empress at the beginning of Dishonored, master assassin Daud set out to redeem himself in Dishonored’s second DLC, The Knife of Dunwall. Now, Bethesda completes Daud’s story and puts him up against a new and dangerous enemy: the Brigmore Witches.

After a fitful dream featuring a cameo by a certain famous assassin, Daud wakes to find that he’s got a new mission. A coven of witches led by the mysterious Delilah Copperspoon is getting up to something at the expansive Brigmore Manor house somewhere upriver. “I cannot abide a mystery,” Daud intones, and charters a boat.

Or, he would, if he could ever do things like chartering a boat as easily as stepping down to the local travel agent. The best boat to take him past a blockade is run by a vicious gang whose boss, the scarred, tattooed, and abrasive Lizzy Stride, was recently busted and thrown into Coldridge Prison to rot. The bulk of Brigmore Witches is taken up by Daud working to free Lizzy and win the Dead Eels over to his cause.

Daud gathers his gear and heads out. The Favors system from Knife of Dunwall is still in place, allowing you to pay your network of assassins to bribe servants, sabotage doors and leave you caches of supplies nearby to help you through most missions. Most of the favors are outright bargains, and Daud has money to spend. Unlike Corvo, who lost everything at the beginning of his story, Daud is still sitting fat on a pile of dead-Empress cash. Daud can easily afford all of the favors and many of the upgrades available.

For the first mission, I spend 100 coins to purchase an old Overseer uniform. After skulking in the shadows for all of Dishonored and Knife of Dunwall, it feels bizarre and brazen to just stroll through the prison gates in a freshly pressed uniform, reeking of religious authority. Instead of skulking, I’m face-to-face with Coldridge’s guards as they complain about their duties. As I wander deeper into the prison to go about my fake Overseer business, I look for an interior door or unwatched hall to slip away and start to break Lizzy out of jail.

Of course, my false uniform is only good for as long as I act like an Overseer. As soon as I get spotted in a restricted area or found carrying an unconscious convict out the front doors, though, the ruse is up and it’s time to run.

Just like in the original Dishonored, the real pleasure of Brigmore Witches is found in moving through a mission without raising any eyebrows. It’s easy for part of the first mission, thanks to the Overseer uniform, but eventually Daud has to go back to being a ghost. But when things go wrong—and they will—Daud has a brand-new power to lean on. Pull unlocks Daud’s inner Jedi and allows him to levitate small items like keys, coins, and bullets, pocketing them from a distance. At higher levels, Pull can lift enemies off the ground and hold them until you disable or kill them. Daud’s trusty wristbow and summonable assassin helpers are also back for you to use if things really start to go pear-shaped.

Lizzy Stride. You may have rescued her from prison, but if you call her a "damsel" she will cut you.

When you do get in a scrap, new enemies mix up the sometimes-predictable rhythm of cutlass-and-pistol wielding city watch officers. The Dead Eels gang uses boat hooks instead of swords, giving them wild, long-range swings that you’ll need to get past to land any cuts. They also throw gaseous grenades of green river gunk that is less than pleasant.

The witches themselves are snarling balls of nastiness, and they fight like it. Members of the Brigmore coven throw frenetic combinations of spells and screams at you, making them especially dangerous. After a particularly bloody encounter trying to sneak past a trio of witches, I begin greeting members of the coven with a wristbow bolt to the head on sight: going toe-to-toe is just too risky. Some witches are accompanied by Grave Hounds, undead dogs that have a tendency to get back up after you’ve killed them once or twice.

All of the levels I play feel slightly smaller than vanilla Dishonored, but still feature a load of detailed world-building. As The Knife of Dunwall explored the whaling operations propping up the economy of Dunwall, Brigmore Witches spends a lot of time with the dockside neighborhoods and their warring gangs, and the steampunky flavor of the setting really starts to come out in the cobblestone streets and advertisements for Pratchett’s Jellied Eels.

Daud uses Pull on a Brigmore witch. She... seems irritated.

 

Though the levels have been designed with care, none of the puzzles I found were as difficult as the hardest missions in Dishonored. Those seeking incredibly difficult assassination missions may be disappointed. With Michael Madsen continuing as the voice of Daud and the story moving fast toward an inevitable confrontation with Delilah and the Brigmore coven, though, I think that the story itself promises to be the most satisfying part of this DLC.

Brigmore Manor is a beautiful setting for the DLC’s conclusion, and it’s a location I’m looking forward to exploring in full: just as I stepped onto the lush-but-unkempt lawn, I got a tap on the shoulder telling me I was cut off.

I’ll just have to wait until The Brigmore Witches is released next week to take a proper look around.

Perry recently told us about a mod called Gifts of the Outsider that imports the magic powers from Dishonored into Skyrim: Blink, Possession, Bend Time, Devouring Swarm, Wind Blast, and Void Gaze. I decided to the use the mod not just for its powers, but also to reenact the plot of Dishonored in Skyrim: the tale of an honorable man seeking revenge after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. It’ll be just like Dishonored, only in Skyrim, and starring a furry woman with a tail. Just call me Khorvo.

Don’t worry, this will be supremely light on Dishonored spoilers, I'll cover a few of the activities you perform during the Dishonored campaign, Skyrim style. Let’s get started. What’s the first thing you do in Dishonored?

Play Hide-and-Seek with a Child

This is how REAL assassins train. Next: hopscotch.

I find some kids running around in Solitude, but they don’t want to play hide-and-seek, so we play tag instead. Minette Vinius and I chase each other around, forming a close personal bond that will surely keep me motivated in the dark days to come. I catch her and tag her and then I fast-travel to Whiterun so she’ll never be able to catch me and she'll be “It” forever.

Go To Prison for a Crime I Didn’t Commit

In Whiterun, I use a Frenzy spell on some guy standing around in the city. He goes nuts and starts attacking anyone nearby. The guards run over and arrest me while he is killed in the background. I’m shocked and outraged. I didn’t kill anyone! It was all him! You won’t get away with this! I will have my revenge! Looks like I’ve been... DISHONORED!

Can you believe the crime around here, officer? Wait, what did I do?

Escape from Prison

Not a problem! Pulling a lockpick out of my butt, I open the cell door, sneak through the prison, collect my gear, and slip back out into the streets. You’ll all pay for what you’ve done, I silently vow. All of you. It’s time to reclaim my honor. But how?

Meet the Outsider

Since I’m a wanted woman in Whiterun, I need to get away to plot my revenge. I head out to an abandoned house west of Riften, where I find a book and read it. I appear in Limbo, where everything is floaty and slanty, and meet The Outsider. He gives me the Blink power, which lets me teleport short distances. He tells me there are other powers I can collect by visiting his other shrines. Could these powers be the key to destroying those who wronged me?

I promise I'll only use Blink for good or for revenge or for fun.

Assassinate an Important Religious Figure

There are plenty of religious types in Skyrim, but when I think about one I’d like to assassinate, a particular zealot immediately comes to mind: Heimskr, the Nord Priest of Talos. Even if you don’t know his name, you know him: he’s the dude who stands in the middle of Whiterun and screeches incessantly about Talos, all day, every day. Oh, and is it a coincidence that the spot he stands in is just yards from where I was arrested for my “crime?” Not a chance. His death will mark the beginning of my quest to dis-dishonor myself.

This looks cool but I'm actually sliding off the statue for the 8th time.

I creep through Whiterun, using my new Blink spell. It’s neat, it really does zip you around, even on top of buildings, though I tend to slowly slide off. I blink onto the statue behind Heimskr, then to the ground behind him, and then I stab him in the back. I blink away onto a rooftop and the guards look around, confused, having no idea where I went. Actually, they don’t seem confused at all. They immediately shoot me with a bunch of arrows. I run away, but only because I'm in a hurry to reclaim my honor.

Now to just fold up my sword and OWW IT’S NOT A FOLD-UP SWORD

Now that Heimskr is dead, it’s time to find another Outsider shrine, collect a new power, and choose a new target. In the sewers under Riften, I find the shrine, caress the skull, and acquire the Devouring Swarm rune.

Assassinate Two People in a Brothel

Haelga’s Bunkhouse in Riften isn’t a brothel, but it sort of sounds like it could be. You know there are at least a few inappropriate back-rubs going on in there. I summon up a swarm of rats, and try to kill two people with them.

The perfect crime. Good luck trying to arrest swarm of rats, coppers!

Okay, the rats sort of killed everyone in the entire building. Those rats are NOT messing around. Having killed a room full of people with rats, a feeling seeps into my heart. I haven’t felt it in a long time, not since earlier today, but I know what that feeling is. It’s honor, slowly returning to me. I collect the Possession rune near the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, and I’m on to my next mission.

Abduct a Doctor on a Bridge

The first step goes well: I head to Dragon Bridge. I run into a bit of a snag here, though, as there do not appear to be any doctors out for a stroll across Dragon Bridge today. For a lesser assassin, that would be a problem, but I’m clever enough to find the owner of a lumber mill sitting nearby. A lumberjack is sort of like a doctor for trees, if doctors killed all of their patients and cut them into pieces, right? (The answer is: right.) He’s not on the bridge, but that can remedied with my new Possession spell. I leap into his mind and run him onto the bridge, where I pop out of the back of his head.

Revenge is a dish best served inside an innocent lumberjack’s head.

Having gotten him onto to the bridge, it’s time to abduct him off the bridge, which means possessing him again. I steer him off the other side of the bridge and into the wilderness. Abduction accomplished! I figure I’ll just keep possessing him and repossessing him and making him run so far away he’ll never find his way back, thus completing the abduction, but thirty seconds later we run into a bear and the bear kills him.

Looks like I got out of this dude’s head just in time.

I’ve just used magic to get a lumber mill owner murdered by a bear. I’m one step closer to regaining my honor. I visit another shrine and collect the Wind Blast rune.

Kill a Fancy Woman at a Fancy Party

There actually is a dinner party quest in Skyrim, but I’ve already completed it, so I need to find another fancy lady at a fancy place and kill her, fancy style. For honor. I know! The Blue Palace at Solitude. It’s the fanciest place I can think of.

Making sure to avoid Minette Vinius (I don’t want to get tagged “It” again!) I run through Solitude and enter The Blue Palace, which is run by Elisif The Fair, a fancy woman. I creep into the throne room, where there are some people hanging around. Looks like a party to me. Sorry I didn’t bring any WINE, I growl from the shadows, but I did bring some WIND!

Get it? Wine. Wind. Almost the same word. And so forth.

They don’t seem to get my wine/wind joke, probably because they are being slammed all over the room by magic wind. It’s a great spell: it’s like the Unrelenting Force shout, only you can hold down the button to keep it on, sending everyone flying all over the place until your Magicka is drained. After blowing everyone around the palace for a while, I head to the nearby mountains to collect the Bend Time rune. It’s time to kill the most important person in Skyrim.

It’s Time to Kill The Most Important Person In Skyrim

I figure the Jarl of Whiterun is the most important person in Skyrim, except for maybe me. I sneak into his chambers in the dead of night, slipping past a couple guards after slowing down time. It doesn’t quite work how I want: I was perfectly hidden from them until I cast the spell, which made them aware of me. The spell slows down time just fine, though, and even having seen me, the guards don’t seem to care that I’m creeping around near the Jarl’s bedroom casting time-bending spells in the dead of night.

You can’t really tell, but he is dying in slow motion. I can vouch for that.

The Jarl has an honorable, slow-motion death as I hack at his sleeping body. The guards run over to arrest me, and I try telling them that I’d rather die than go to prison, anticipating a fun Blink-filled escape from Whiterun. Unfortunately, Skyrim does that thing where it doesn’t select the line of dialogue I’m pointing at, so I accidentally bribe the guards and they peacefully escort me to the front door. Oh well.

Skip A Big Part of Dishonored’s Story To Avoid Spoilers

My easiest mission yet! I collect the final rune, Void Gaze, so I guess we’re ready for the big finale:

Kill Someone At a Lighthouse

Back in Solitude, I run around the lighthouse long enough discover there’s no one important in the lighthouse or on top of the lighthouse. There’s only Ma’zaka, the lighthouse keeper, but he’s downstairs in his little chambers. I sneak in, and use Void Gaze, which works like Detect Life, letting you see people through walls. I could possess him, run him up to the top of the lighthouse, and Wind Blast him off, but when you’re possessing someone they can’t open doors, so I have no way to get him out of his room. If I want to kill him, I’ll have to kill him right here.

Yep. There he is.

This isn’t quite the grand ending from Dishonored, though. I know that killing people with rats and blasting a fancy woman into her own ceiling and getting a lumberjack bear-mauled were all necessary -- absolutely necessary -- to regain my honor. But killing Ma’zaka, a humble, harmless lighthouse keeper in his own bedroom to end the story... it would just be complete anti-climax, wouldn’t it?

Yep. It was a complete anti-climax.

Lesson learned: if you want Dishonored’s story, go play Dishonored. If you want to have fun with Dishonored’s powers in Skyrim, though, this mod works great.

Installation: I installed this with the Nexus Mod Manager, but the mod looks as if it's just a single bsa and esp file. So, if you're doing it manually, just download the files and plop 'em in your Skyrim data folder (Steam > steamapps > common > skyrim > Data). No magic required.

Looking for more Skyrim mods? We recently updated out grand list of the best 50 for your perusal.

At QuakeCon last night, Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls Anthology, a special edition retail release containing every TES game, expansion and DLC pack. That's a hell of a lot of prison escapes, grand adventure, and stilted voice acting being packed into a single box. But if you're not tempted by an attractive re-release of games you likely already own, the developer is also packaging the ultimate in PC gaming physical rewards: five maps, covering Tamriel, Iliac Bay, Morrowind, Cyrodiil and Skyrim.

Here's what you'll get:




The Elder Scrolls Arena
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The Elder Scrolls III DLC: Tribunal
The Elder Scrolls III DLC: Bloodmoon
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV DLC: Knights of the Nine
The Elder Scrolls IV DLC: Shivering Isles
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The Elder Scrolls V DLC: Dawnguard
The Elder Scrolls V DLC: Hearthfire
The Elder Scrolls V DLC: Dragonborn


Given Bethesda's tendency to bundle the official Oblivion add-ons onto retail discs, it's a likely bet that they'll be included as well. After all, it's not much of an anthology if it doesn't include Horse Armour.

It's a lovely looking artefact for fans of the series, but if you just want the games, there are cheaper options. With Bethesda running Steam sales this weekend in celebration of QuakeCon, expect to see Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim all get heavy discounts at some point. As for Arena and Daggerfall, both have been released as free downloads directly from Bethesda.

The Elder Scrolls Anthology will release September 13th in Europe, and September 10th in North America. It will cost £49.99 / $79.99 / €59.99 / $89.99AUD

Thanks, IGN.

I’ve never been much of a magic user in the Elder Scrolls series. Reading spellbooks, memorizing incantations, and finding robes with just the right thread count simply takes too much time for the busy rogue that I am. Luckily for me, someone has implanted Dishonored’s mysterious ability-giving being known as “The Outsider” into the world of Tamriel.

The Gifts of the Outsider mod grants you six of the powers you were given as Dishonored's titular assassin, Corvo, which include the ability to slow time, teleport across environments, and summon an army of rats to aid you in glorious battle. The teleport ability (known as Blink) was my primary means of transportation in Dishonored, so to see it in Skyrim’s expansive world is nothing short of a dream come true.

You can find the mod on the Skyrim Nexus website, which also explains how to endow yourself with powers through console commands, skipping the custom quest where you'd normally receive them. Those who also wish to don Corvo’s assassin attire can download the files here.

Between this and the amazing Falskaar mod (though you could practically call that one an expansion), it’s difficult to come up with something you can’t change, fix, or improve in the world of Skyrim. You want bunny mounts? Superhero costumes? Whatever the hell this thing is? The world is your modifiable oyster.

We love Skyrim mods. A new, noteworthy one for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Falskaar, was released over the weekend, and it is quite a doozy. Falskaar adds almost 25 hours of content, a land mass a third the size of the original game, new characters, new voices, and dozens of quests. As impressive as it is, though, it’s nowhere near as impressive as the creative force behind it: Alexander J. Velicky, a 19-year-old gunning for a job with Bethesda with his first try at modding Skyrim.

“I organized everyone involved, but the voice actors themselves recorded all the dialogue and submitted it to me,” Velicky told me. Though over 100 people contributed in some way, including composing an original soundtrack, Velicky took their contributions and plugged them into Falskaar himself. “I had some people help me out with a few models and textures, someone wrote a book or two for me... But otherwise all content was implemented, written and developed by me.”

So how does a 19-year-old take the helm of a creative project of this size? Velicky wants a job. He graduated from high school over a year ago, and instead of finding a design school, he turned Bethesda’s Creation Kit into his classroom, spending 2,000 hours over the last year building Falskaar.



“ was incredibly supportive and allowed me to live here, paying for living expenses and charging no rent,” Velicky says. “I was able to not go to school and not have a day job. Meaning, more or less, that Falskaar was my day job.”

The mod is fully voice-acted by 29 voice actors playing 54 characters (Velicky held auditions), and the quality is much higher than most community-made content. “I'm still kind of shocked at some of the talent I got on the project... and every single one of them surpassed my expectations by leaps and bounds.”

A massive dungeon, “Watervine Chasm,” may be Falskaar’s crowning achievement. It took Velicky three weeks to build and players report it takes an hour or two to complete. The community response has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Falskaar isn't perfect,” Velicky says. “I'm not an expert who's been crafting game experiences for the last 20 years, so I certainly still have a lot to learn, and I always will. I'm always looking to learn and improve, and Falskaar was a huge chance for me to do this.”



According to Velicky, Bethesda is aware that he’s out there, and he isn’t shy about putting his goals right out on the table. “The best way to show Bethesda Game Studios that I want a job there and should be hired is to create content that meets the standards of their incredible development team.”

Falskaar is available now on Skyrim Nexus, and I encourage you to check it out. Have a gander at our list of the 25 Best Skyrim Mods, too.

After yesterday's brief teaser, Bethesda have today fully unveiled the third Dishonored DLC pack. *Crosses fingers* Please let us play a whale, please let us play a whale, please let us... oh, it's just Daud again. The Brigmore Witches will continue the story started by The Knife of Dunwall, and see the assassin attempt to stop a ritual that threatens to end his aerial knife-plunging ways.

New areas are promised, including gangland streets of Draper's Ward; Brigmore Manor, home of the titular witches and their scary rotting dog pets; and a return to Coldridge Prison - the place where a certain royal bodyguard spent an extended holiday.

Daud's existing weapons, powers and upgrades will carry over from The Knife of Dunwall playthroughs, and a new ability will be introduced in the form of Pull, letting him supernaturally grab and suspend enemies, to be used as a human shield.

The Brigmore Witches is out August 13th, and will cost $9.99 or "equivalent price points".