Enderal: Shards Of Order - Mod Interview

Bethesda interviewed Johannes, and Nicolas of the Sure AI team on their Beth Blog.

How many folks are working on Enderal?

Nicolas: Altogether, we’re 14 people on the core team, of which around eight spend a lot of time on the development. Then, there are a lot of external contributors, mainly 3d artists, and, of course, voice actors and a German recording studio, 2day Productions, who help us with the localization.

For fans of Skyrim, what do you think players will appreciate most about Enderal’s world?

Johannes: Enderal has a different feeling, a different “flair” in comparison to Skyrim – which also results in it feeling more like a separate game than a mod. We spent a lot of time on the creation of an interesting world, and in total, I’d say that Enderal´s world is a little bit more “European”, especially when it comes to cities and locations. We draw a lot of inspiration from medieval places and cities in Germany and Europe in general. There’s also something hidden everywhere, be it a quest, an interesting sight or a dungeon – that altogether makes exploring Enderal a lot of fun.

What would you say is radically different about Enderal when compared to Skyrim?

Nicolas: The story and leveling/skilling mechanics. The story, because it puts, in general, more emphasis on “mature” themes — as in politics, philosophy and psychology — and the the leveling system because Enderal has no level scaling and learning-by-doing anymore. Instead, the player has to traditionally gather experience points to level up, which can be done by killing monsters, exploring, completing quests, or being witty in dialogue.

That allowed us to reward the player for a variety of accomplishments, rather than just combat. When leveling up, he (or she) then gets skill, perk, and crafting points which he can use to improve his character. The “perk system” has also been entirely overhauled — to the point that we use a custom menu coded in flash instead of the beautiful “star-menu” – and is now a mixture between a traditional class-system, which still has all the advantages of a sandbox-system.

To sum it up: While fans of Skyrim will also like Enderal, it is different. You could say that it is a traditional RPG mixed with hand-crafted design and a beautiful, open world to explore, tactical and challenging combat, and an emotional, psychological story that differs from the usual.