Creation Kit – Details

Kris Takahashi Other 1 Comment

With the NPCs, I can churn them out fairly quickly.  There are only so many details to be parsed through with regard to facial features and inventory.  Most are chosen at random to prevent myself from crafting them based on my own personal tastes, although it’s debatable whether human beings are capable of proper randomizing.

However, as my powers have grown and I’ve started making quests, I’ve learned just how pain in the ass painstaking modding truly is.  There are battles to orchestrate, scenes to direct, and dungeons to build.  All of the sudden you have to consider a whole new world of things.  Music, furniture, AI pathing, to name a few. The amount of work involved makes me wonder if this is the last new location I will ever build, as I will probably die from exhaustion.

It really doesn’t have to be that way.  I could just copy something from another place, and for the most part, that’s exactly what I’ve done.  But the devil is in the details.  Take this picture for example.  I probably spent the better part of an hour(and half of the shitty part too), crafting this stupid bowl.  When I was done with the bowl and done questioning my sexuality, I looked at it like a proud papa and thought, There isn’t a person alive who is going to fucking notice this bowl.  Not one.

This is just the stuff of the self-inflicted variety.  There are just so many ways for even the smallest of cells to get buggy, so many permutations that you can’t possibly account for while testing, that you really have to admire what Bethesda was able to create, albeit with a much larger army and a giant money pit guarded with alligators.

Everywhere, details, details, details.  The decorative ones I put in, the fundamental ones you try not to overlook, and all the types in between.  You have to remember all of them, because one single fuckup can break immersion.  This is why arranging a set of virtual flowers and apples may not necessarily be a waste of time.

I mean, it’s like I tell in Hjoromir in our imaginary conversations.  It’s important to wire yourself a certain way.  If you spend an hour on a stupid bowl of apples, you’ll be that much more meticulous when you make the rest of the quest.  Still, I wish I had a better grasp of when to be lazy, and in exactly which details the devils like to hide.

Character Profile – Raynes

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I’ll burn off their ears.  I’ll scoop out their eyes.  But the one thing I’ll never take…is their tongues.
–Raynes

There are companion characters and there are marriage characters.  Raynes isn’t really one or the other.  Raynes is a sexualized character.  And by that, I don’t mean his homosexuality, although I do find that breaking away from stereotypes is fun.  When I say sexualized, I’m referring to his aggression, his fever, and his angst – all of which ooze from his pores and drip down his daggers.

You might even accuse him of being too hard, too sweaty, to be considered for a mod that prides itself on the three dimensional NPC.  Still, I find Raynes’ character to be fairly unique in that the majority of his personality remains hidden behind his impenetrable scowl.  After all, despite every indication that he is a dominant, alpha male lawman, the secret about Raynes is that he hates himself.  Or more specifically, he hates the part of him that’s Khajiit.  So much so that he keeps his head clean shaven, paranoid that somewhere in that shock of black hair he might find a single strand of fur.

Unlike most characters in the mod, Raynes doesn’t have a story to tell, and this too is as deliberate as his shaved head.  Raynes himself isn’t aware of the origins of his distaste for lawbreakers, or why he is so obsessed about bringing them to justice.  For the outside onlooker, the answer is painfully obvious.  Khajiit are known to be thieves.  As such, when Raynes hunts those that break the law, he really hunts himself.

The secret about Raynes is that he hates himself, and he’s the only who doesn’t know it.

Raynes is about the subconscious, and how it influences our pattern of behavior.  He’s a character
about bald spots and blind spots, and never being absolutely sure what’s going on in the back of your head, no matter how clean you keep it shaved.

Character Profile – Iris the Elder

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I was probably about seven or eight years old when my uncle told me my mother ran track.  It was an oddly seminal moment for a child.  You see, mom is not swift.  She’s a tiny little Japanese woman and that comes with a certain spunk, but I wouldn’t characterize her as a runner.  Yet, there was a time in her life that she was actually considered fast.  A time before I was born.  For any child, the first time you realize space and time exist independent of you is a mind blowing experience.  Mom wasn’t just the mom I knew.   My teacher wasn’t just the wrinkled old crone all the kids insisted she was.  In fact, every adult I ever met had been in my shoes, dreamed my stupid kid dreams, and had lived an entirely separate existence from the one I used to define them.

In video games, characters are often viewed through a similar lens.  The myopia of the present.  Old women are always old women.  Sweet old ladies.  Miserable old hags.  They always act their age.  Old.  Rarely do we ever get to find out who they were, and how that shapes who they are.

Ostensibly, Iris is the same.  She begins with a monologue about death, how in the twilight of her life, she can see the sky fading to black.  Yet just as the nickname Iris the Elder was never meant to imply old age, so does Iris’ appearance belie what she’s really about.  The concerns about her mortality are revealed to be her children’s.  Iris herself just wants to relax, have a drink, and enjoy a hot bath.  In her old age, her courier legs have finally slowed down.  Yet at heart, Iris remains the same person she always was.  Brave.  Kind.  Swift.

I sometimes get asked about the Windhelm courier story.  When I wrote it, I knew the narrative was good, but it was Lila Paws‘ acting that truly brought it to life.  She does more than hit every note.  She takes you there, to that cold, wintry night, and as she sets the scene you can feel the chill frisk your bones.

To this day, that story is one of my favorites, because it isn’t a traditional warrior story, and yet it fits the theme of TESV so perfectly.  It’s a winter story, a Skyrim story, but more importantly, it’s a Nord story.  It’s about courage, duty, and sacrifice, from the most unlikeliest of sources.

After all, Iris may be old, and she may be feeble, but those aren’t the traits that define her.