- The Forgotten City Skyrim Best Ending
- The Forgotten City Skyrim Dooley
- Skyrim The Forgotten City Endings
The Forgotten City is a mod available today for the PC and Xbox One versions of Skyrim: Special Edition(and regular ol’ Skyrim). But it wouldn’t have ever been made if its creator, Nick Pearce, hadn’t been randomly punched in the face by a stranger.
“I got started writing when I got punched in the face by a complete stranger for no reason,” Pearce told me over email, not longer after he won a national screenwriting award in Australia for his work on the mod . “I was on my way to work one day, walking along the mean streets of Brighton, and BAM! I wrote my first short story about it, which got a lot of positive feedback.”
That was the beginning of Pearce’s writing adventures, and before he began exploring the world of Skyrim mods he maintained a strong attachment to the more traditional forms of literature: forming a book club, reading regularly, and having a crack at an attempted novel. Code key easy mp3 cutter full version software.
That was several years ago, well before Fallout 4, well before Skyrim. And Bethesda wouldn’t be the ones responsible for the canvas that would later inspire one of the better modders in the Skyrim, and Australian scene: it was Obsidian Entertainment, who had been given the task of crafting Fallout: New Vegas.
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“Around that time I played a mod for Fallout: New Vegas called New Vegas Bounties by Someguy2000,” Pearce explained. “It was amazing, like an official DLC. Maybe even better.”
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It’s not hard to see why. The original New Vegas Bounties might have been uploaded the same year New Vegas released, but it wasn’t short of class. 436 lines of freshly-recorded voice were added. Bosses were added as an alternative to fetch quests or logic puzzles. There were balance fixes, too, and it was the first instalment of a series of high-quality mods that continued to be released over the next few years.
“It was a revelation to me that mods could be a vehicle for first class storytelling,” Pearce continued. “So when Skyrim came out I started tinkering with the Creation Kit.”
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That begun a journey in 2012 that would span over 1700 hours on Pearce’s part. Like most modders, The Forgotten City came together whenever Pearce had spare time from his day job as a technology lawyer. And that largesse carried over to the design documents as well, with the master sheet totalling 100 pages, along with two-page marketing plan. For a free mod.
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“It evolved a lot over the 3 years,” Pearce told me. “I also kept a document in my phone where I wrote random ideas that occurred to me, often in the middle of the night.”
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“That happened a lot, actually. I’d have an idea at 3:00 AM and get so excited about it I couldn’t get back to sleep for hours. My lovely wife was very understanding. Then I’d regularly transpose those ideas into the master design document.”
A lot of work went into the little touches as well. The Forgotten City begins with a note from Cassia, whose brother fell down the shaft representing the entrance to the Forgotten City.
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You can simply go down the shaft and find him. Alternatively, you can “accidentally” push Cassia down the shaft. And then kill her when she gets pissed at you at the bottom.
But perhaps the most intriguing part of it all is the mod’s non-linear structure. You’re not given direct quests with obvious markers and directions. You’re completely free to explore The Forgotten City’s town and piece together what happened that caused this little utopia to collapse.
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It’s all built on Dwarves’ Law, which effectively holds the city together by threatening to kill everyone if anyone commits a crime. And that’s what ultimately drove the city to extinction: someone in the town broke the law, and it’s your responsibility to find out who.
“The structure of the story is quite complex,” Pearce explained. “It’s a non-linear murder mystery investigation where the player is free to go about it in whatever order they please, and the player can use time travel to reset time while retaining knowledge and items they acquired in alternative timelines; this opens up new dialogue options and ways of solving problems.”
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The structure alone took a few hundred hours to build, he told me, and it was done without additional help. “I didn’t know anyone into modding; I don’t think anyone had attempted the sort of time travel gameplay mechanic I wanted; I enjoyed the intellectual challenge, and I knew that if I ever decided to use the project as a folio piece, it would be an advantage to be able to say that it was all my own work.”
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The success of the mod has resulted in a lot of attention for Pearce, at home and abroad. He’s been approached by a mix of studios from the United States and Australia. “Designing and writing RPGs at a studio like Bethesda, BioWare, or Obsidian would my dream job, but it’s a tough industry and Australia is a long way from the Triple A RPG action, so I’m not holding my breath.”
And it’s not like major developers haven’t hired modders before. The creator of the Falskaar mod, which added a new area one third of the size of Skyrim itself and has been downloaded more than 2 million times, was eventually hired by Bungie two years ago.
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Pearce isn’t walking that path just yet. For now, it’s nice just to see a new fanbase enjoying his creation for the first time. The Forgotten City has already been downloaded more than 1000 times on Xbox One, sitting among the top 10 mods for most popular and most favourited on the platform. And that’s not to mention the combined hundreds of thousands of downloads through ModDB, NexusMods and the Bethesda website.
And it might not be the last iteration of The Forgotten City. Shortly after the Nintendo Switch reveal, I asked Pearce if he’d be interesting in putting in the hours to make his mod playable on the hybrid console. He was keen, but understandably cautious at the same time. “Skyrim on a Switch sounds awesome! It’s hard to imagine Nintendo opening up their system to allow mods if even Sony struggles to embrace mods, but who knows?”
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Until then, the future is wide open.
This post originally appeared on Kotaku Australia, where Alex Walker is the Editor. You can follow him on Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.
When you pick up Skyrim: Special Edition on either PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the first thing you’re going to want to do is check out all of the mods available for the open world RPG on your platform of choice. There are already over 200 mods for the Xbox One version and 80 for PS4, but rather than download them all in order to find the best, why not just check out our list of 10 great mods below?
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Before you begin, you’re going to want to head to the Bethesda account page and either sign in with your Bethesda account information or make a new account if you don’t have one. This is necessary for installing mods on console.
Now that you’re logged in, you can start adding mods to your game. You can browse through all of the currently available mods by heading to this page on Bethesda’s website and picking your platform from the drop-down menu.
[Quick warning before we begin: You’re going to notice a huge disparity between the amount of mods available for Xbox One versus PS4. This is because the PS4 version doesn’t allow external assets (i.e. anything modder create using assets not already contained within the base game), cutting out support for many of the best and most inventive mods. If you’re trying to decide which version to buy based solely on mod support, we have to recommend Skyrim on Xbox One.]
Ok, without further ado, let’s check out ten great mods for Skyrim:
The Forgotten City
The Forgotten City is an award-winning, critically acclaimed expansion mod offering a unique 6 – 8 hour experience: a murder mystery investigation set in an ancient underground city. You’ll need to solve it using your wits, and the ability to travel through time. It has a dark, non-linear story in which you’ll interrogate suspects, explore the city and its many secrets, and navigate challenging moral dilemmas. It features multiple endings, an original orchestral score, and professionally voiced dialogue.
Download for Xbox One.
Vigor – Combat and Injuries
The Forgotten City Skyrim Best Ending
A light weight combat mod that focuses on stamina, injuries and more reactive combat. Making combat more tactical and challenging. You are rewarded for keeping stamina at high levels with increased regeneration but when stamina bar is low, you deal less damage, move slower, can`t stagger your targets and even take increased damage.
Download for Xbox One.
Relationship Dialogue Overhaul
Adds over 5,000 lines of completely voiced dialogue for NPCs for more than 50 voice types, focusing mainly on friends, followers, spouses, and rivals. All dialogue is voiced using the original voices from the game, achieved through re-adding existing dialogue in new and suitable places, as well as editing together multiple lines to form brand new dialogue.
Download for Xbox One.
Campfire: Complete Camping System
Campfire is the most feature-rich camping gameplay mod for Skyrim, and the foundation of Frostfall. You are immediately granted two new Survival Skills, found in your Magic menu: Resourcefulness, and Instincts. Build a campfire from a small, fragile spark to a roaring blaze, and use it to cook with a cooking pot (or just grill right over the flames). Sit with your followers, keep warm, and let the larger campfires uplift and inspire you (granting a small XP bonus). Create tents at any tanning rack.
Download for Xbox One.
Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
A comprehensive bugfixing mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition. The goal of the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch (aka USSEP) is to eventually fix every bug with Skyrim Special Edition not officially resolved by the developers to the limits of the Creation Kit and community-developed tools, in one easy-to-install package.
Download for Xbox One.
Arcadia’s Farm
A small working farm named after the Whiterun Alchemist with player home across the road from the Whiterun Stables. Part of the “Grow Your Own” series of Mods. This time rather than just add a few grow spots to an existing farm or garden I started from scratch. The player home is a simple but comfortable one with everything you will need for crafting and plenty of storage. The smithing crafting stations have been placed in the basement out of sight.
Download for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Longer Days
“Longer Days” is a very basic mod that adjusts the timescale in Skyrim to 10 (from 20), as well as adjustments to the Fast Travel speed multiplier to make the in-game time that passes resemble that if you were to walk instead. As an added bonus, it lowers the respawn time on uncleared cells to one week (240 > 168) and replaces a vanilla loading screen message about fast traveling. Because why not?
Download for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Rain and Snow FX
Rain and Snow FX allows your character to show frost and wetness (complete with dripping particle effects) when in the rain and in snowstorms. Your skin will also be wet during and just after swimming. When the weather clears or you walk into an interior, the effect will quickly go away. When in the snow, your skin and armor will ice over in a noticeable way. When in the rain, the effect is more subtle, but your skin will be shiny and dripping. (Don’t use with Frostfall or Wet and Cold.]
Download for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Dovahkiin Keep
Large Castle that can hold a lot or armor and weapons with well over 100 Mannequins, allowing you to create every possible armor combination you can come up with.
Download for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
The Forgotten City Skyrim Dooley
Unlimited Shouts
Skyrim The Forgotten City Endings
Removes the cooldown from the Unrelenting Force shout [as well as most of the other shouts thanks to a recent update]. Use this new power with caution, or don’t!
Download for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Image Source: ModernStoryteller (Bethesda)