Sometimes NPCs are jerks. They will see you clearly engaged in a conversation with another person, and yet still find the need to rudely babble in the background about the layout of the city or the rich history of their underpants. It would be nice if there were a way to prevent this, and there technically is. It’s just a ton of work.
The problem is there is no single condition that stops the quest when appropriate – it has to be applied to individual NPCs and scenes. At least, as far as I know. I could be wrong. Please let me be wrong.
The video above demonstrates how this brute force tactic works. A condition has been placed on the DialogueFollower3DNPC quest to not run while MorthalInitialScene is playing. A similar condition IsInDialogueWithPlayer can be run on individually referenced NPCs, such as Al’Hassan in the picture below.
The reason I’ve been slow in implementing these conditions is because I’m not entirely sure this is the only way to go about it. It certainly isn’t the most efficient. So it’s a low priority, because eventually someone smart is going to make all of this brutality a complete waste of time. It’s possible someone already has.
EDIT: It appears that the scenes are considered “playing” if you’ve never seen them. Meaning, the IsScenePlaying condition has to be applied to individual comments instead of an entire quest. So it’s useless.
While I don’t want to say the upcoming Darkened Steel questline is a means to an end, the focal point isn’t necessarily on the plot itself as it is with Blood of Kings. It’s almost a six-part excuse to resolve some personal conflicts, try out some modding tricks, introduce some new characters, and add a tavern that is slightly more dynamic than the existing ones.
Here is the barkeep, voiced by Serithi, who will essentially act as the steward for this location.
Often times people will hold the mod to a different standard than vanilla Skyrim. One of earliest complaints was the use of the word ain’t. The user(artist rendition above) never even played the mod, but swore it off as the devil based on a screenshot which had the term in the subtitle. His argument was that ain’t and ain’t no were slang phrases, and that he would sacrifice his first born child before I polluted his pure, fantasy playground with my jive-talking cyberpunk NPCs. It was then pointed out that the words are centuries old and are commonly used by vanilla NPCs, and much hilarity ensued.
Of course, there are complaints such as these that are completely baseless, and those that are derived from changes made in Skyrim. One common misconception is Khajiit only speaking in the third person, when vanilla Khajiit, immigrants directly from the motherland of Elsweyr, will never use their first name.
In fact, I too was guilty of this belief. Which is why the early Khajiits all spoke in the third person. It was Dar’Rakki thinks this and Dar’Rakki wants that. Then I overheard a few caravan conversations and realized this third person orgy simply wasn’t happening. Here are some examples for your persual:
Now, it’s entirely possible this decision was made in order to allow various NPCs to use the same voice. Still, it’s a decision that alters the lore nonetheless. So, when trying to reconcile which NPCs should use the first person as opposed to the third, I decided that some Khajiit were likely Imperialized as a result of growing up outside of Elsweyr. With NPCs like Qa’Dojo, I chose to use first person – as opposed to someone like Dar’Rakki or Gnives, who migrated from warmer sands.
Similarly, the word “N’wah” is pronounced entirely different in Skyrim than it is in Morrowind. This mod being a Skyrim mod, I believe I opted for consistency. So please, send your EN-WAH complaints to Bethesda. Or be like me and shrug it off.
This isn’t to say there aren’t mistakes. The irony is, fewer people notice the actual parts where I screwed up. NeoNudel I believe pointed out that I’ve been calling the White-Gold Concordat the White-Gold Concordant. I’ve also been referring to Thalmor Justiciars(Jus-ti-see-ars) as Thalmor Justicars, and the NPCs reflect that mistake. I blame Mass Effect, of course, because I certainly can’t be held accountable for my own foolishness. Interestingly enough, there are vanilla Nords who also dabble as Commander Shepard in their spare time. So that makes me feel a little better.
Shiiieeet, did you hear that? This here is a vanilla NPC and he said Justicar. Let’s all blame this guy.
