The Skyrim mod Enderal - Forgotten Stories is now released on Steam:
More information.
Thanks porcozaur!
More information.
Enderal - Forgotten Stories released
- Thread starter HiddenX
- Start date
Well it seems the updated version with the expansion will not be available for download in a non-steam release like the original mod, and probably will never be.
Carnifex
SasqWatch
I finished the game I was playing and downloading this one right now. I've never been a huge fan of Skyrim but I have two friends that rave about this version, so I'll be trying it out for myself soon.
- Joined
- August 17, 2008
- Messages
- 354
I did not had the time to actually start playing it again, but I've already lost like 10 hours modding it and adapting the mods I used in the old version.
Hope to start a complete replay on the easter vacation
Hope to start a complete replay on the easter vacation
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2008
- Messages
- 354
Carnifex
SasqWatch
I played for maybe four hours between Friday and yesterday, wow this game is a bit tough. I'm pretty sure one thing I didn't like about Skyrim was that enemies for the most part simply fell over, that's not the case here at all! They might have overdone it a bit on all the rabies and gangrene diseases you can pick up, but other than that I'm having a great time so far. I've just been following the main quest for the most part, last night I stumbled upon a really nice bow so I might be hanging up my sword for a bit and trying out some pew-pew next time I play.
JFarrell71
SasqWatch
Mod stories are almost always disappointing to me. There are a lot more people good at texturing or placing trees and whatnot than there are those who are good at writing dialogue and scripting and designing quests. I never quite wanted to commit my Skyrim install to Enderal though I was always curious about it... this standalone release gave me the excuse I needed. Impressions after 19 hours:
The story, characters and dialogue are very occasionally squirmy, mostly solid, and often very good. In general, I'm impressed, especially given the translated nature of the script. There's relatively little bland fantasy speak; in fact, the characters are in general considerably more individually vivid than the vanilla Skyrim characters. I've played so many fantasy RPGs that my eyes glaze over very quickly if you don't write with flavor and specificity, but Enderal has kept me engaged, with both the main story and with (most of) the various side tales. The voice acting is also mostly good.
The written materials, however, don't match up with the spoken dialogue. Tons of typos, grammatical errors, and just plain purple prose. It could use another pass or two to bring it up to the standard of the rest of the mod.
Visually, the design is good, especially Ark (and settlements in general, to a lesser degree). The Undercity is particular is fantastic. Many games (including Skyrim) have some area(s) where the discarded lower class of society scrape by, and SureA.I. actually does a better job creating the proper atmosphere than I've seen in most of those games. The few instances where I noticed entire geographical features transposed from Skyrim into Enderal were a bit jarring, but overall it's a strong effort.
I wish there were more unique looking enemies. Maybe there are more later in the story. The Mynar look neat, though.
None of the music is particularly memorable, but it's all competent and it blends well into the background, setting the mood effectively in some areas.
It's harder than Skyrim. Skyrim is almost trivially easy on Adept, but I find that Enderal is plenty challenging at that difficulty, especially given the existence of Arcane Fever. The mechanic reminds me a lot of Mask of the Betrayer.
It's relatively stable. The jankiness is mostly Skyrim jankiness, like NPCs walking into you and pushing you slowly away from the person you're talking to. The game has crashed 3 times. I've never lost much progress.
I do wish it paralleled Skyrim a bit less at times. I don't know why we need a Nirnroot analog, for example, complete with sound effect. Also, just a personal irritation: I've always disliked how in Skyrim, when the guards accost you, they give you the choice of paying your fine OR going to jail, but even if you pay the fine you're still teleported to the jail. I shot a goat on the approach to Ark, and that subsequent teleportation kinda destroyed my first approach to the city. That just seems like the kind of oversight that a mod like this would give people a great opportunity to change.
Overall, I really like it. After 700-odd hours in Skyrim and an overall decline in warm feelings about Bethesda games, it was almost impossible for me to play Skyrim anymore, but this is just well done enough and just different enough that it has my full attention.
The story, characters and dialogue are very occasionally squirmy, mostly solid, and often very good. In general, I'm impressed, especially given the translated nature of the script. There's relatively little bland fantasy speak; in fact, the characters are in general considerably more individually vivid than the vanilla Skyrim characters. I've played so many fantasy RPGs that my eyes glaze over very quickly if you don't write with flavor and specificity, but Enderal has kept me engaged, with both the main story and with (most of) the various side tales. The voice acting is also mostly good.
The written materials, however, don't match up with the spoken dialogue. Tons of typos, grammatical errors, and just plain purple prose. It could use another pass or two to bring it up to the standard of the rest of the mod.
Visually, the design is good, especially Ark (and settlements in general, to a lesser degree). The Undercity is particular is fantastic. Many games (including Skyrim) have some area(s) where the discarded lower class of society scrape by, and SureA.I. actually does a better job creating the proper atmosphere than I've seen in most of those games. The few instances where I noticed entire geographical features transposed from Skyrim into Enderal were a bit jarring, but overall it's a strong effort.
I wish there were more unique looking enemies. Maybe there are more later in the story. The Mynar look neat, though.
None of the music is particularly memorable, but it's all competent and it blends well into the background, setting the mood effectively in some areas.
It's harder than Skyrim. Skyrim is almost trivially easy on Adept, but I find that Enderal is plenty challenging at that difficulty, especially given the existence of Arcane Fever. The mechanic reminds me a lot of Mask of the Betrayer.
It's relatively stable. The jankiness is mostly Skyrim jankiness, like NPCs walking into you and pushing you slowly away from the person you're talking to. The game has crashed 3 times. I've never lost much progress.
I do wish it paralleled Skyrim a bit less at times. I don't know why we need a Nirnroot analog, for example, complete with sound effect. Also, just a personal irritation: I've always disliked how in Skyrim, when the guards accost you, they give you the choice of paying your fine OR going to jail, but even if you pay the fine you're still teleported to the jail. I shot a goat on the approach to Ark, and that subsequent teleportation kinda destroyed my first approach to the city. That just seems like the kind of oversight that a mod like this would give people a great opportunity to change.
Overall, I really like it. After 700-odd hours in Skyrim and an overall decline in warm feelings about Bethesda games, it was almost impossible for me to play Skyrim anymore, but this is just well done enough and just different enough that it has my full attention.
Carnifex
SasqWatch
I'm liking it a lot so far, almost every battle is challenging, at least up to now. I just hit tenth level after doing some long mission, but I'm sure I've just barely scratched the content available. The only issue I have is the game seems really dark, adjusting the brightness and gamma within the game seems to make no difference, hopefully a patch might address this.
100 hours in and I cant believe this game was free. Only partially paying attention to the main quest line, there are a lot of nice sub quests. The voice acting is superb and now I am firmly convinced that any game maker that doesn't take care to hire a competent voice director is simply stealing our money.
One thing the game does almost perfectly is that none of the enemies like to stay put when you are in archer mode. And when their health gets low they will run away...… Hey wolfie come back, I got one more arrow for you.... grrrrrrrrrr. OTOH, they kinda spoil immersion when you are hidden and take out your bow and suddenly they run and hide.
The one mechanic that got mostly wrong is that far too often you enemies cooperate when they are chasing you. In Gothic, I would love to run a monster through a village and have the city folks take care of the baddie. In Enderal, for the most part the baddies seem to team up to get me, no fighting each other. One time I did lead some tree elemental into a bandit hidey hole and they fought each other to my utter delight. But . . . bandits team up with wolves, bandits team up with mini trolls (auks?), wolves team up with skeletons. Oh well, I love exploring and exploiting bad guy dynamics , so well see what happens
great game.
One thing the game does almost perfectly is that none of the enemies like to stay put when you are in archer mode. And when their health gets low they will run away...… Hey wolfie come back, I got one more arrow for you.... grrrrrrrrrr. OTOH, they kinda spoil immersion when you are hidden and take out your bow and suddenly they run and hide.
The one mechanic that got mostly wrong is that far too often you enemies cooperate when they are chasing you. In Gothic, I would love to run a monster through a village and have the city folks take care of the baddie. In Enderal, for the most part the baddies seem to team up to get me, no fighting each other. One time I did lead some tree elemental into a bandit hidey hole and they fought each other to my utter delight. But . . . bandits team up with wolves, bandits team up with mini trolls (auks?), wolves team up with skeletons. Oh well, I love exploring and exploiting bad guy dynamics , so well see what happens
great game.
Carnifex
SasqWatch
Yup, totally agree I played the heck out of this thing for a solid three weeks before wrapping it up. If I'd paid thirty bucks for it I would have praised the value, but getting it for free, well, it was most excellent. I really didn't do many of the side quests so I'm likely to replay this one again in the future just to see what I might have missed the first time around.