Skyrim Overhaul Dev Diary 03

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Category: Giskard's Blog

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 May 2012 16:07

Written by Giskard

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No milk jokes today, just an update on the progress so far.

I have the NecroMages, ShockMages, Witches and Adventures to sort out now and then thats it, the NPCs will all have been cloned and the editing can begin. I'll have to clone various leveled lists too since they hold the equipment I need to edit and thats a job in its own right but it occurred to me that if I insert the default leveled lists back in to my cloned versions of the same list, any mod that edits the default lists will have its content automatically added to the Skyrim Overhaul.

Otherwise that content would not automatically appear unless the modder added it to some custom item.

A simple idea that I completely overlooked in CUO, so the Skyrim Overhaul will be slightly better off for this idea than CUO was.

Whilst cloning the NPCs and Creatures I have been struck by how boring and generic everything in Skyrim seems to be. For example, the Mages, here is a list of Mage names from the existing game, just to give you some idea of how little imagination Bethesda has for these sort of details.

Cyromancer
Arch Cryomancer
Ice Wizard
Ice Mage
Novice Necromancer
Necromage
Fire Wizard
Fire Mage

And so on.

When they do try and get creative they use words that simply do not suit the period and then only at very high levels do those new names appear. For mages you need to stop and think what a bandit mage would be called, what sort of organization would they be part of.  Then create the name from that.

For example... better names for these mages would be

Frost Cult Mage
Fire Clan Mage
Solstice Fire Clan Mage

Or for clan or cult leaders

Solstice Queen
Solstice King

Names that go with the period, unlike Pyro and Cryo.

Necromancers are the only mages that sound about right in the game to me. Unlike Novice Ice Mage, how dull is that. How about "Ice Cult Initiate" instead ?

Don't you think that sounds better than endless lists of generic and unimaginative naming schemes.

Even the Drauge could be spiced up as I said in the first dev diary. Ask yourself this, which sounds better.

Drauge or "Dead Walker"
Drauge Wight or "Sentient Dead Walker".

Drauge means Walking Dead
Wight means "Sentient Creature"

So the names say the same thing but I think they sound better.

Let me know what you think in the mods development thread on the forum.

PS In case you have not noticed, these Dev Diaries are not being shared outside this website. This are for this websites regulars mostly.

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