I first noticed the feeling when I stopped at an inn. They had a roaring fire, plenty of food and wine, and there was a dog lying at my feet. Skyrim had never felt more welcoming. I was replaying the game with some mods installed. One mod took away all the dragonborn stuff and left me starting as a simple bandit schmuck. Another mod made the world of Skyrim cold and harsh to survive in, so I had to light fires to keep myself warm and make sure I didn t fall into any water lest I catch my literal hypothermic death. But one of these mods had a side option, which was to turn fast travel off. On a whim, I did. It was only days later, in the warm glow of this inn that the feeling began to come over me. And I realised something. Something that all my gaming life I d never even thought about.

I HATE fast travel. Let me tell you why.

… [visit site to read more]

There was a trailer for a new videogame today. The internet seemed quite taken with it. We don’t actually know much about Fallout 4 at this stage, but I went through the trailer scene by scene to see what confirmations and implications I could glean from it. 40-odd screengrabs below, with annotation wibble for each. Click on any one of them for a 1080p version and gallery thinger (though bear in mind they’re grabs from a trailer so aren’t exactly After Eight-crisp.)

… [visit site to read more]

My 17,000 word feature on the 50 best PC first-person-shooters is 100% objectively correct, with once exception – due to a multiversal non-causal timeslip event, the existence of Star Wars: Republic Commando was removed from all reality for just a moment. Unfortunately, that moment just happened to be the moment that I otherwise would have noted it down for inclusion in the list. Imagine my horror when the multiverse reverted to normality and my memories of the last great Star Wars shooter came flooding back. I tried to make belated amends by noting in the feature’s postscript that RepCom was officially placed at position 17.5, but I felt further restitution was necessary. I’m very lucky: an opportunity has presented itself. … [visit site to read more]

Robin Scott started building websites to support the modding community in 2001 when he was 14-years-old. In 2007, he started a company to support his site, TES Nexus, as it became the main source for distributing Oblivion mods, and today Nexus Mods hosts “115,674 files for 173 games” and has almost 9 million registered users. If anyone knows what the modding community cares about, and exactly what mods can do for the good of games and gamers, it’s him.

In the wake of Steam’s inclusion of paid-for mods, and just a few hours before their eventual removal, I spoke to Scott about whether creators should be able to charge for mods, how he would have done things differently, and what any of this means for the future of the Nexus. Even in the wake of Valve pulling the system down (for presumed later return), his thoughts are an interesting look at the issues at hand

RPS: Firstly, what do you feel about paid mods in theory? Ignoring their current implementation, do you think there’s a way to do it that good for both developers, mod creators and mod players? Are mods something which should be free on principle?

… [visit site to read more]

Valve are known for their odd experiments, from Team Fortress 2 hats to – heck! – Steam itself, but they tend to roll with them no matter what the reception, polishing these oddities up with force of will and years of refinement. Their plan to support selling mods through Steam, however, has gone back to the drawing board.

They launched a pilot scheme last week with Skyrim, and had planned to start letting other devs enable paid mods for their own games if they wished. Instead, they’ve removed paid mods from Skyrim, refunded everyone who bought mods, and confessed that “it’s clear we didn’t understand exactly what we were doing.”

… [visit site to read more]

It used to be that the only way to make money from a mod was a) make a standalone sequel or remake b) use it as a portfolio to get hired by a studio or c) back in the pre-broadband days, shovel it onto a dodgy CD-ROM (and even then, it almost certainly wasn’t the devs who profited). As of last night, that changed. Mod-makers can now charge for their work, via Steam.

… [visit site to read more]

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. I celebrated if one of the bands I like got a single in the top 10; I took it very personally if they failed to. Because enough of my peers had also not loved whichever band of posturing men-with-guitars it was, society was in ruins. Is that, perhaps, how some Skyrim fans feel at news their beloved RPG has been toppled by GTA V as the game with most concurrent users ever on Steam, if you exclude Valve’s own games? And are GTA fans celebrating that their prized cars’n’murder game has claimed another scalp? … [visit site to read more]

Bethesda have a press conference planned for this year’s E3 – their first ever – which means it’s likely they’ve got more to talk about than merely some new DLC for The Evil Within or a new trailer for Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. What will it be: Fallout 4? Elder Scrolls 6? Wet 2? I hope it’s Wet 2.

And not solely> because I don’t want all the hard work of the Skywind mod team to go to waste. Come see their latest trailer, which shows some of the most recent modelling and environment work that’s happened in their efforts to port Morrowind to the same engine as Skyrim.

… [visit site to read more]

Ah, Morrowind‘s Sheogorad region, famed for its mushroom trees, its frigid waters, its, uh, rocks of Dela’thur and the brutish, erm, winds of Velopis. And elves. I bet it’s got elves in.

Look, so, Morrowind is one of those games I never really played. RPGs are my blind spot, especially anything pre-2005, so my posting this has nothing to do with residual affection for Bethesda’s weirdest world. Instead, it’s because a remake of it might prompt me to go back to it, and because whenever I post a video of Morrowind-in-the-Skyrim-engine mod Skywind, you all make such lovely cooing noises about the old game. So watch, coo, and stoke the fires of my, er, uh… Karap r?

… [visit site to read more]

The developers of upcoming Skyrim total conversion Enderal: The Shards of Order have released a new trailer, showing off a location dubbed the Undercity.

I’m curious: just how does one acquire a Shard of Order? First you’d need to shatter an intangible concept, which seems like a lot of hard work, even for a fantasy big boss. Ordering a Shard seems a lot easier: you can just have one custom-made by any number of Skyrim merchants. Enderal, whoever you are – you have my number. Call me.

… [visit site to read more]