Creation Kit – Limitations and Development

Kris Takahashi Other 6 Comments

One of the fondest memories I have of watching football with my dad was a meaningless regular season game.  It was a minute before the half, and the quarterback had just tossed a 40-yard touchdown with pinpoint accuracy, just over the defender’s fingertips. I leaped into the air, looking for a willing partner to high five, and turned to dad as the replay was showing on the screen. His face was stuck in a grimace.  I said, “Did you see that throw?” And he said, “Yeah, but the receiver on the other side was wide open.”  It was dad in a nutshell.

It’s easy to be critical of athletes. I’m guilty of as much.  Yet armchair quarterbacks like me don’t know what it’s like to try and make a split second decision while 300-pound behemoths are flying at you spitting glass with full intent to do bodily harm.

So I thought I’d take a post to help explain some of the characteristics in the mod, and how more often than not, they are influenced heavily by limitations, and how you can help improve it.

First, the voice acting.  I think it has been phenomenal, and will only get better as the available pool of actors grows.  There may be slightly different recording qualities, but I think the videos show they blend in well when conversing with vanilla actors.  These people have volunteered their time and effort, borrowing mics from neighbors, getting feedback from friends, working tirelessly in the dead of night in hopes that their recording will have one less click, a bit less noise, so your experience is more immersive.  Knowing how much they’ve sacrificed to make this mod happen makes me feel warm and tingly, and it pisses me off when some drive-by commenter says something along the lines of:

Yeah, but it doesn’t sound exactly like a studio.

To that I say, then mods are not for you.  However, if you feel a particular voice could be improved, don’t be vague and overstate the problem.  Find the specific NPC’s name and tell me directly.  If I get enough feedback, perhaps I can see if the actor can re-record. I may have already asked him to do so.  If the actor is unwilling, I might consider making an optional version.  Version 2.22 will feature a revamped version of Eldar, which James worked diligently to provide while juggling responsibilities with school and being a Resident Adviser to what is likely a rowdy dorm, when he could’ve easily told me to go fuck myself.  And if you’re the type of cynical, unfeeling bastard that still feels the need to pick nits, then I can’t help you.

Second, the development of characters. When I started this mod, I wanted to make nothing but quests.  I wanted to take all these ingredients and make a full course meal.  All of this had to be scrapped the moment I opened up the CK.  I had to pare everything down to what I could do, and that was essentially make stories.  I separated them into 3 acts, introduction, conversation/role-play interaction, and finishing with a personal anecdote.  This was the best compromise for proper progression.  For most of the mod’s existence, I couldn’t spread anything out over time, I couldn’t do much of anything.  Life gave me lemons, so I made lemonade.

Yeah, but I hate lemonade.

Fair enough.  Now that my skills have developed, I can make quests.  I can have the player involved in the narrative.  The question is whether I should go back and make alterations. Yet those conversations all have a distinct flow, from A to B to C, and interrupting them would mangle the dialogue.  For instance, Zora‘s story with her sister is something I considered moving to the inn or some other location, to use space as a substitute for time. Yet all the other dialogue that was built upon that limitation, the assumption that story was already told, would seem out of place.  That isn’t to say these things can’t be addressed, but they will have to be done with care.

For other characters like Wander-Lust, I think they’re much better as they are – living, breathing storybooks – and if a book is interesting enough, I’ve found many players don’t mind reading it cover to cover.  Moreover, some NPCs may not have even been conceived if not for these limitations.  As for the others, I think the best course of action is to do as I did with Zora and Anum-La. To turn the monologues from a period to a comma, to have the player turn the page and write the final chapter.  So when I say the goal is 100 quests, it’s no boast.  Every NPC that has a loose end, or doesn’t work as well as a standalone character, will have a quest, as long as the quality and substance is there.

Lastly, I don’t want this post to imply that criticism, suggestions, and the like is not wanted.  Last I heard, free speech was legal and generally a well-liked concept.  I just want to clarify some of the choices in the mod, and how my programming limitations and the financial/time constraints of all the volunteers has influenced the current product.  I also want to stress that as far as products are concerned, what is there now is by no means a final one.

So send me your feedback, your suggestions, and criticism, and we can debate it.  All I want to do is help you understand why it seems I didn’t see the receiver, even if he was wide open.

Character Profile – Hjoromir

Kris Takahashi Character Profiles 7 Comments

Riverwood Blues

When you first arrive in Riverwood, you’re presented with a choice of followers, and the distinction is rather clear.  On one side you have a titan with a warhammer stained in blood, a mountain whose very breath tumbles through the sky.  On the other is a callow but eager weakling, who struggles to polish your boots as he daydreams of better days.

Perhaps the choice is easy. For practical reasons alone, the brute would be the one. He would stand tall against the waves of bandits and beasts, while his counterpart would spend half his time getting stomped, and the other half getting trampled.  Combine the brute’s size with a bit of charm, and the poor errand boy doesn’t stand a chance. In fact, it only gets worse when he opens his mouth.  The boy talks of being a hero, of saving the world and becoming something bigger than himself.

He talks as if he were you.

Hjoromir is the very first NPC you meet for a reason. As we embark on this journey to become a person we’re not, we inevitably leave behind the person we are.  Hjoromir is the embodiment of the person at the keyboard, every gamer who’s ever immersed themselves in a fantasy world because the real one wasn’t up to standard.

Still, we don’t play games to be ourselves.  The last thing we want is our avatars to be the common man.  As great heroes, those are the people we ignore.  At times, they’re the people we resent.  They want us to fetch this or resolve that.  Their menial, everyday squabbles mean nothing when compared to the scope of our destiny.  And the boasts of someone like Hjoromir will only look foolish as we attempt to fulfill it.

Yet Hjoromir is also a follower for a reason.  Maybe when we set out on this great and tireless odyssey, we don’t have to say goodbye to the person we were.  Maybe, when you make your choice of companion, you’ll see a fellow traveler, a fellow dreamer, and take him along for the ride.

Character Profile – Fareloth

Kris Takahashi Character Profiles 2 Comments

The Differently Same

Video game characters didn’t always look alike.  They used to not look like anything.  They began as a pattern of colorless squares, and the game relied on your imagination to round off, color in, and animate the pixels.

Eventually those pixels morphed into something that resembled a face, albeit a face everyone shared.  Over time, those faces became more distinctive, and in Skyrim, we’ve reached a point where no two NPCs are exactly alike, even if they still mostly look the same.

Which in a way, is reflective of real life.  Our doppelgangers are out there, in many different forms, sharing everything from our bodies to our minds to our experiences.  The odds are they exist, and the odds are we will never meet them.

In college, I had a friend whom everybody would confuse with a man named George.  They shared the same gait, the same appearance, and possibly the same mother.  As it was the style then, they both had a strong devotion to the baggy pants and the baseball cap.  They even shared similar
names(Geoff/George).  The fact that George lived on the other side of campus only added to the mystique.  In our dorm, the Myth of George soon took on a life of its own.  It only got worse when strangers would approach my friend and say hello, make small talk, and respond in bewildered confusion when my friend informed them of their mistake.  I began to wonder if on the other side of campus, the same shit was happening to his doppelganger.  In fact, I know it was, because I was once one of those strangers.

Meeting the real George, however, made one thing clearly evident.  For everything they shared, the two men couldn’t have been more different.  My friend was affable, outgoing, and a bit of a goof.  George, on the other hand, was the sort of uncomfortably serious man who would win a staring contest with a brick wall.  George was not Geoff, and Geoff was not George.

In the end, meeting George was a disappointment.  The whole thing turned out to be nothing more than a genetic accident, one that is both rare and at the same time inevitable.  On a planet with billions of people, there are going to be people who look like you.  When I set out to build Fareloth‘s character, I wanted to make someone that thought like you too.  Perhaps this doppelganger even shared your childhood, and many of your adolescent experiences.  One might say, given everything you share, that this person would be the perfect clone.  Yet it would be so much more interesting if he wasn’t.

Everyone at some point in their life experiences a fork in the road.  A decision so impacting that it alters everything that comes after.  For Fareloth, that was his decision to leave the Thalmor and start a family.  When we make these choices, it isn’t unusual to look back and wonder what might have been.  Rarely do we ever get the chance to see what actually becomes.

Fareloth’s doppelganger is identical in every way, with one glaring exception.  He chose the other path.  He joined the Thalmor, came to Skyrim, and embroiled himself in the politics of the Civil War.  When Fareloth tries to envision another life, he doesn’t have to use his imagination, he doesn’t have to color in the pixels.  All he has to do is find his doppelganger and compare the differences, even if they still mostly look the same.