A great PC gaming moment is celebrating your favorite game memories in bite-sized pieces.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Year: 2011
“Skyrim is not a reactive game.” This is a common criticism of Bethesda’s open-world RPG where you’re secretly the leader of the world’s premier assassin and a literal guild of thieves while saving Viking Disneyland from dragons while giving your soul to multiple Daedric princes, all of which will really surprise you when you fall to the salvage en masse.
Admittedly, NPCs don’t necessarily know you’re head of the Mages Guild. But in Oblivion, every shopkeeper knew you were a Kvatch hero. And that shit got old quickly. On the other hand, did you know that if you buy any Dwemer artifact from the shop, Calcelmo (an archaeologist excavating Markarth for Dwarven pottery) will send you a letter asking you to buy it?And when he goes for anything on his wishlist on eBay, he intention I will send a courier to look for it.
My point is that Skyrim can be a little weird in choosing which user actions to react to. All the guards know your best skills and comment on them, but what about when you’re trying to save the world from Alduin, the soul-eating dragon? Not so much. The way to solve this is to use super followers with mods like: Inigo, a friendly Blue Khajiit who explains the vast amount of events that can happen in Skyrim. Thanks to the author’s skill at reconnecting existing voice lines, and the number of actors who play multiple characters in Skyrim, Inigo can even be in full conversation with Lydia if they both happen to be in the party.
It’s not just Inigo and Lydia. My troops roll deep.i also have ViljaAn alchemist who dreams of becoming a bard, and Lucian, A scholar who dreams of becoming a scholar. Both are fully voiced by modders who worked with Inigo’s creators. That means you can also talk to Inigo and have fun chatting with me while I do some serious work, like stealing all of Winking Skeever’s honey nut treats.
Take Serana with you. She’s a vanilla follower, but she’s experimenting with a popular mod called Serana Dialog Addon This replaces Laura Bailey’s performance with another voice actor’s, greatly extending Serana’s dialogue and making her more romantic. She doesn’t look much like the canonical version of Serana, can’t you see?She also interacts with Inigo. And like everyone else, she has a quest commentary.
When I met Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Tentacles, Lucien was there and suggested that I should not accept quests from god-like beings made of eyeballs and slime. The first time I absorbed Dragon Soul, Inigo was there to make sure I was okay. And as I climb Mount Odahvaing and prepare to head to the Dragon Temple, where I must fight my way to the afterlife alone and save the world, they all have something to say about that too.
The drama of this moment is heightened not only because everyone wants to say goodbye and good luck, like I’m marching to the climax of Mass Effect 3, but also because I’m used to having a small army with me. A lot of the fights won’t be easy if you don’t increase the difficulty, but I’ve gotten used to having him 4 or his 5 followers in the game with his 1 balance. I almost have to face multiple dragons and draugr deathlords alone, but only when I finally face Alduin do I get allies again. The heroes of Sovngarde first appeared when I read the Book of Frost in the Throat of the World, and have returned to fight by my side.
Of course, if that happens, we’ll definitely beat Alduin. Because Skyrim balances the game with one follower at most. And when I return to the Land of the Living, Lucien is waiting to ask if I have succeeded. And the rest of my band want to say something new as well. If you want Skyrim to be more responsive, this is the way to do it.
