Lucas Versantvoort / April 1st, 2015
Any PC gamer worth his salt will be familiar with the act of modding,
aka modifying your game. Modding can range from adding textures to your game,
npc’s, sound effects to full-on new environments and missions. The possibilities
are literally endless and the fact that even now, 4 years after the game hit
store shelves, there’s still a vibrant community creating mods for Skyrim should tell you something.
Back when the game came
out, I played Skyrim for quite some
time on PS3, but grew bored of it after a while. The lag didn’t help matters
either… Several months ago, I finally got myself a regular gaming PC and I was
reminded of the fact that there existed countless mods for Skyrim, even more so now, several years after I first played it. So,
off I went on a modding excursion, downloading mod after mod and trying to get Skyrim working. I had modded Dragon Age: Origins several months
before it with great success, so I was confident modding Skyrim wouldn’t be any different. Turns out I couldn’t have been
more wrong. Whereas with Origins it
was simply a matter of dumping the mods into a specific folder, Skyrim was much more complex. Although
most mods instruct you to basically do the same, it wasn’t the recommended
course of action as you would be overwriting Skyrim files. So, thankfully I stumbled upon a hundred-step guide
for noobs beginners which instructed me to download a very specific mod
manager (Mod Organizer), because that one would not overwrite Skyrim’s files,
but create a ‘virtual’ folder, so that Skyrim’s
files would remain untouched. I would also have to download a Skyrim Script
Extender, a SKSE.ini, tamper with my skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini files,
download something that would extend the amount of memory Skyrim could handle, a program that would automatically arrange an
ideal load order for your mods (if two mods overwrite the same file, your
preferred one needs to be loaded after the other), a tool to edit and clean
mods if necessary, bashed patches, etc, etc, etc. This small summary doesn’t
even touch upon dual sheath redux, ENB’s and so on. So yeah, a very daunting
prospect for someone who had only modded one game before, but I persevered and
I got my modded Skyrim running pretty
well, though it wasn’t without a lot of work and hardships—don’t even get me
started on CTD’s; I can’t even look at a loading screen anymore, ‘cause my
heart just starts racing.
 |
| Wait a minute, this isn’t the loading screen. |
In the title, I
referred to what I feel is the paradoxical nature of modding. What I mean by
that is specifically related to all the work that accompanies the act of
modding, especially with a game like Skyrim.
First off, ask yourself: why do you think Skyrim
is the single most heavily modded game in gaming history? The answer is quite
obvious: it’s an epic, medieval, fantasy open world game with swords, sandals,
dragons and so on. It allows you to roleplay in a lot of different ways: be a
regular guy who works for a living, join guilds, play a part in a civil war,
fight dragons in the main storyline, etc. It appeals to certain gaming
fantasies, so naturally, many seek to expand upon the groundwork laid by Bethesda,
by adding new characters (some of them even custom voiced!), new quests, new
items, new character customization options, atmospheric sound effects, etc., not
to mention the (mandatory) bug fix mods. It’s gotten to the point where mods
are likely the sole reason Skyrim is
even relevant anymore. So, the point of all these mods, the lore-friendly ones
at least, is to increase immersion,
to grant you more ways in which to lose yourself in the world of Skyrim. You
get the Lively Inns and Taverns mod, because you want an inn to be a place
filled with chatter, song and dance, and drunken Nords. You download the Interesting
NPC’s and Inconsequential NPC’s mods, because you want more people to inhabit
Skyrim and make the world feel more alive.
But you know what the main problem
is: the very act of modding actually serves to decrease immersion, because it makes you more and more aware of the
underlying game mechanisms. Now, in the case of Origins it wasn’t a big deal; you just dumped the files into the
specified folder and you were done. With Skyrim,
as I explained above, it’s a whole different ball game. You have to read the
description of every mod very carefully for installation instructions and compatibility
issues. Some independent mods require a very specific installation order if you
want to use them together! Plus you are advised to plunge headfirst into what
is most likely a comment section filled with hundreds of comments to see if
there’s any indication of the mod not functioning as advertised. This might
save you a CTD or two. Speaking of CTD’s, get used to those, because you’re
going to be seeing a lot of them. You might be loading a game and it’ll
suddenly Crash To Desktop and you’ll have no idea why. What’s worse is that the
game doesn’t provide you with any information either. Your only solution is to
enable Papyrus logging, which generates a text file indicating what precisely
happened, what was the game loading, what kinds of errors occurred. But even
this isn’t really a crash log and many of the errors it notes are harmless
anyway. You start thinking it must be the mods, so you start removing some. One
time Skyrim crashed when I loaded it
after some time. So, I removed two mods and it functioned again. Then it
crashed again, but after I reinstalled the same two mods, it worked again…you
try figuring this shit out... The point is that it’s impossible to heavily mod Skyrim without becoming fully aware of
the underlying mechanisms. What this means is that you’ll automatically see the
world of Skyrim in a different light.
Instead of wandering through the wasteland, you’ll probably find yourself
thinking, ‘hey, that lantern mod I installed is working fine’ or ‘hmm, the
lantern’s lighting feels off, I might have to change that later’ or ‘hmm, this
skin texture mod doesn’t feel right; I’ll have to try another’ or ‘damn, why do
I still have a neck seam? Did I install the right .dds file,’ etc. Instead of
thinking ‘wow, what a sunset!’ you’ll at least partially think, ‘wow, that ENB
sure is working right!’ All these issues prevent you from losing yourself in
the game, because every time the effect of a mod becomes visible to you, you’re
aware that you made it happen. This is the paradox. It simultaneously increases
and decreases immersion. It’s wonderful to see your mods functioning properly,
but you’re also altering every aspect of it any way you please, rather than
losing yourself into a predefined world with its own rules. Now I’m not saying
that immersion becomes impossible, just that the very act of modding—especially
in the case of Skyrim—makes it a lot
harder. But despite all this complaining, if asked why I don’t just go back to
vanilla Skyrim if modding is too much
of a hassle, my answer would be: ‘And live without these mods? No, thank you.’
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