SHOTN Interview with Worsas & Roerich - Video & Transcript
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2016 1:43 am
Alright, I'm making a new topic here with the full edited transcript so people can get to it easily and also so we can link to it elsewhere for people to find without having to scroll past a dozen other comments.
And without further ado, here's the full edited transcript: (Note: the end of the interview is on the second post due to character limits)
DEG: Greetings and welcome to the 25th episode of Morrowind Modding Interviews, with me today are two members of the Skyrim - Home of the Nords team, Roerich and Worsas, and today we're going to be talking a bit about the development of Skyrim - Home of the Nords and the Druadach Highlands in particular. And so first things first, thanks for agreeing to do this interview.
Worsas: You're welcome
Roerich: Ah yes, it's nice to be here
DEG: Now I wanted to start off with a few basic questions, the first of which is when did you first start playing Morrowind and the Elder Scrolls in general?
Worsas: Well for me, it was in 2003 I think? And a friend of mine showed me the game on his Xbox. I played it and I got lost and it was, I dunno, very special, a very, very, very new experience so to say.
Roerich: Same for me, I started playing it, I think, a few months after its release. I had like a game subscription where I got a new game every month, and the game I got when I subscribed to it was Morrowind, and I got that game and I canceled my subscription because I was completely blown away by the, by the then amazing graphics and completely open-world. Later on I played Oblivion and Skyrim of course, but I kept coming back to Morrowind.
Worsas: Well I played Skyrim and Oblivion as well, of course. But later on I tried Arena, and I was surprised really because it was already very similar to the newer games., had many similar mechanics. The sleep mechanics were right, there was already ebony armor and all that stuff. I also tried Daggerfall, but didn't get very far, probably should try it again sometime.
DEG: Oh yeah, Morrowind was a pretty special experience I think, for a lot of us, and going into this next question, I'm kind of curious, have you made any mods outside of working on Project Tamriel with Skyrim - Home of the Nords.
Worsas: Well, I played a lot with the level editor of Warcraft III in the past... And I don't know, maybe Neverwinter Nights editor at some point, but didn't get very far with it. And, uh, well probably many people know my grass mod for Morrowind, that covers Sheogorad and Azura's Coast and also maybe one of Tamriel Rebuilt. And what I've done in the past for myself was armor rebalancing mods, but just for personal use, because the armors in the original game aren't very fair. I've made them a bit closer to each other, somewhere around the Orc armor, so the weak armors would get a bit stronger and the stronger armors a bit weaker. And just recently I don't know if you know the game, Dominions 4, I've made two civilizations for it but I don't know if anyone knows it. It's a very special game, I love it, I've played it for about 200 hours probably.
Roerich: I actually started with the editor of Warcraft III as well, but I never really finished and released anything. And for Morrowind, I have loads of unfinished projects, I published one, Blightward Player Home, which you covered in one of your videos as well. I usually lose interest pretty quickly with some of my mods, so I have to have like piles of unfinished mods on my hard-drive. Some of them are almost finished and some of them are just ideas. One which is almost finished, uh... which I can't remember his name right now, but the Khajiit bookseller you meet during the main-quest in Vivec, I can't remember his name... But anyway I changed the interior to sort of have obscure antiquarian bookshelves, with you know webs all over the place and bookshelves towering over the player. I used the two-level walls for the interior, and I think almost every book in the game could be found in there now. And I added a lot of the obscure texts from the Imperial Library and People and Society and stuff like that. That was the main idea for the mod. I also started a Kogoruhn make-over, the last Sixth House home north of Red Mountain. But I really needed to make new assets for that, and I can't do that. It was supposed to be more of a unique location, not using the stronghold set. I tried to use the Old Mournhold set because it fit better, but it's a really limited set. And then of course I did some interiors for Tamriel Rebuilt before I got with Skyrim - Home of the Nords.
Worsas: Right, I was with Tamriel Rebuilt as well.
DEG: Well it sounds like you've both dabbled a lot in modding different games, and you know this kind of brings me to a sort of broad question, what draws you to modding video-games in the first place?
Worsas: For me it is that I like extending games, I like adding new stuff that adds on top of what's there. For example, for Warcraft III, I made an extension for myself, I called it similar to Frozen Throne, and I added units to the four civilizations and balanced them and wanted to make them seamless with the rest of the game. And I think that modding for Tamriel Rebuilt or for Project Tamriel here is very similar. It's about extending the original content, and that's what I like.
Roerich: I think it's a really entertaining and creative outlet, especially as you can see yourself improve the quality of your work, and you end up with something that you're really proud of. And that, you think you have this idea of what you think Tamriel should be like, and try to achieve that, and sometimes it just feels right, like this is what this town is supposed to look like.
DEG: Now going into some general Skyrim - Home of the Nords questions, Skyrim - Home of the Nords is a pretty massive undertaking, you know building the entire province of Skyrim in Morrowind. Can you tell us a bit about the history of the project and how it got started exactly?
Worsas: The project got started somewhere I think in 2005 or 2006 maybe. It was founded by Lestat, and the first time I saw the mod was on the official forums when he posted his first screenshots of the Haafinheim Forest he was working on. And it was already very dense back then, but he was using Bloodmoon pines and assets at the time. At the same time, I was following a different Skyrim project by Vality, which got abandoned. But I don't know, Lestat seemed a bit more open about his project... And at some point I thought, yeah let's try it, maybe I can add something that would make it great.
One of the reasons why I joined the project was because I had previously, in school, made an exam about Germanic beliefs, you know Norse Germanic beliefs. And I knew some of the embellishments and aesthetics I had seen, and I thought, maybe I can add something to it. I actually never got around to modeling that kind of stuff, but it was the thing that made me think I could add something there. And the history of the project consists of several forums and endless reworks.
The history of the project consists of several forums, endless reworks, and sometimes disagreements also. In the early days the project used Bloodmoon assets, and at some point a decision was made that we wanted to use more custom assets. It went up to a point where Lestat only wanted custom assets and not vanilla assets, not even a single piece. He had a very extreme stance at some point and we had some disagreements about it, but we made a lot of great assets together I think.
Later we had several forums, right? The first forum was something from Forum Motions. Afterwards we had a forum hosted by SGMonkey, and then that went down because he couldn't pay upkeep anymore, and then we went to the SHOTN forum, and after the SHOTN forum we went to Project Tamriel. That would be the fourth forum. but it could even be the fifth one! There were really many forums.
What we did a lot over this time was going back and changing things, improving things, that always took some time. Although, we also saw what a timesink that was and wanted to keep it limited, and we said to ourselves, "no let's focus on progress instead", and that's something we try to do time and again. When I do something like overhauling something that's already there, I usually try to balance it a bit by adding something new. Recently, I overhauled the clothes we have, and I added in an additional piece of clothing, and I overhauled the guard armor, and I added in an additional set of armor in the course. Well, I try to balance it a bit, because sometimes you just want to overhaul things, we want it to look better, you have an idea of how it should be like, and it isn't how it should be like. I try to balance it somehow, and I think that's what we're doing all the time. I sometimes have the impression that people are a bit dubious about it, and say "yeah, they're constantly going back, like Tamriel Rebuilt". Tamriel Rebuilt has a reputation for that, for going back and changing things over again. And it's true, it happens with us as well.
Roerich: I think you summarized it rather well, I came in later than you, so I'm not so familiar with the early history of the project. I can remember when I joined, 2011 or something maybe. But I agree with what you've been saying, that's been my understanding as well.
DEG: You know, since you bring it up, I actually kind of forgot about this, but Vality did have his own like Skyrim project going on for a while. Has there ever been an attempt to, I don't know, talk to him and maybe think about merging the two projects? Like I don't know if that would even be possible really, since they're kinda different visions, but I know he made a lot of impressive work on that project, and it seems a waste that it never got released.
Worsas: Well we had Vality around and he was in our IRC channel too, and we spoke to him, and he wanted to make us a height map with mountains. But I don't know, he didn't finish it and well he disappeared again. And well, he was interested in our project, but seemingly he didn't want to bring his own project in with it. I don't know.
DEG: Alright, and sort of moving on, how much of western Skyrim, that is to say like the Reach, would you say has been finished so far and when can we expect a new public release?
Roerich: I think we've finished a lot of exteriors, especially in the Reach, but also in Haafinheim, which is the area to the north and to the east of the Reach. For the Reach, I think we've finished something like perhaps 70% of our exteriors are completely finished, and for Haafinheim it's a lot as well. For the Reach, we need two cities, I don't know how many cells but it's not a lot. And the thing is, the Reach is a very detailed place, compared to when we go further east, it has taken a lot of time to figure out how everything should be setup. And we've spent a lot of time, the last year especially, redoing some content. So we felt it was just the way it should be. I think the direction we have now, it's efficient, I don't think there'll be any future overhauls of these areas. And I really think we should be able to put something out during this year, and if not a fully playable release with quests, at least a preview of the new lands and all of the interiors.
Worsas: I also think it really paid off, or it will pay off, well to me it already paid off, because after this recent overhaul, especially in the western area, it's so much better than before. I think it will be really enjoyable.
Roerich: Yes, I agree. It was an impressive area before, but this is really something else. I think the whole region just fits together perfectly. We've had some of the areas which have been worked on by different people, then we have mainly our user Berry, who's been doing a lot of overhauls and it gives some sort of resemblance between the different exteriors. Like they fit together now, just these little details just all over the place, kind of like the same character.
Worsas: Yes it feels like the regions are more consistent with each other now. There are more fluid transitions and the landscape features are more evenly distributed. There's more subdivision generally, and intricateness to the landscape. Also really many small hidden secret things thanks to Berry. He added many exterior caves that are really well hidden in some places. And for the Druadach, it's a really good fit, because with the Reachmen that live there, and they're, well how would you call it? They're a witchy character, they're a mysterious people, and it just fits with them very well.
DEG: Well, speaking of public releases and overhauls, you know the first major release for the project was Vorndgad Forest back in 2012, but since then that area has gotten a massive overhaul. And can you tell us a bit about what players can expect to find in the new version of Vorndgad Forest, particularly with what's different from the public release from back in, I think it was, 2011?
Worsas: Well what we added to Vorndgad Forest was Reachmen sites, we added some barrow structures, also many more hidden paths and hidden secrets. Our landscape has been made a bit more, well it's not this classic forest as much. It's still a forest, but it's much rockier, it's really a rock-scape, it's more similar to surrounding areas. Also we changed the scale of the trees, in order to promote a different sense of scale, while also adding more subdivision.
The forest is something we didn't do in order to make it more eyecandy, the forest was already eyecandy before. We did it to, well, to give it a feeling that it's more at home in the game. Like that you have more feeling of how large things are really. Previously, everything due to the scale of the trees, the trees were all scaled up to twice their size, and it looked good, but also it made everything feel much smaller than it really was. That's one thing, we changed the sense of scale.
We've also hidden some things, like ores, we have added Orichalcum Ore for example. Some more sites, more points of interest I think. We also changed the density of container plants to be less, because I don't know, it didn't feel really rewarding to find them. They were everywhere in mass. I don't know, maybe 60 container plants per cell, maybe more. And we reduced that in order to make the discovery of container plants, well as said, more rewarding. Because it's something I've personally enjoyed in the original game, just walking around and ah! There's a plant finally, the one I want to find. That's another thing we've changed. And as said, paths, we've added a dirt path that leads through the forest with some branches, well a twisted little path that connects two roads to each other.
Roerich: There's also the Karthgad overhaul, which is a part of Vorndgad, and which was the village that you could visit in the first release. And the new overhaul by Worsas is really genius I think, it's a huge improvement on our original layout, which was a bit, you know, a bit grid-like. And the new layout is usually one of my favorite SHOTN cities, if not cities in the entire game, it feels really organic and realistic in the way that the buildings are placed next to each other, and the assets used. It's like everything feels really realistic in what materials are used for everything, from furniture to the houses and the surrounding forests and the layout of the city itself. It feels really like a lived-in city, even without any NPCs.
DEG: Oh yeah, I've sort of been exploring the new version of the Vorndgad Forest and you know, I gotta say, it's really quite spectacular, it's so dense and easy to get lost in. And you do find a lot of cool things you know, just exploring the forest, I remember I found a sort of Nordic burial, one of those barrows, and I found it kind of near the river that goes towards the Karthwasten docks, and you know, from the sky you can't even see it, it's like all of these trees are blocking the view, and you just have to find it by wandering through the tree lines, and it's kind of an interesting experience.
Worsas: Yeah, it's really good. I was at first a bit hesitant about all those barrows, because I don't know, we've got how many barrows in Vorndgad Forest now? One, two, three, four...five maybe even? And it isn't too much really, because there's too much subdivision, and if you find a barrow it's not really abundant, every time it's special. Though when looking at the original game again, I checked the CS at some point, the Construction Set, and Vvardenfell, there's sometimes, you know, you've got a Dunmer Fortress one cell next to a Daedric Shrine, they're fairly close often. But, due to the fog, and due to the subdivision, Vvardenfell has got a lot of those hill ranges, and yeah, they really make everything close. And I think that's the main difference between what we have made in our new versions and what was there before.
DEG: Now what part of Skyrim is currently being worked on at the moment? I mean, is there a particular country or region that's being prioritized right now?
Worsas: We are about to start a slight remake of the so-called Midkarth County, it's the area north of Karthgad, north of the Vorndgad Forest, and contains some farmsteads, and it's a grassy landscape. And well, we just want to do a few things up on the mesa. Some of the fields are very large, almost as large as real-world fields, and the performance is very bad. But it will be a relatively minor overhaul. We did a lot in Vorndgad Forest, changed a lot really, we changed a lot about the Druadach Highlands.
The other regions in the Reach will not be reworked as heavily anymore, because they're already great, and it's only a few things. We try to, at least I try to, keep it limited, because I know these overhauls are time-eaters, and we want to get onwards with things, not only redo things all the time. And that's the reason we make a gander for it, what we want to change, we have a list of like... rescaling the trees, we were rescaling the trees in our regions to promote the different sense of scale I spoke about. We reduced the amount of container plants, we sometimes changed the container plants compositions to make the regions more distinctive from each other.
For example, at some point, we made a list of what container plants should be where and what region there are plants like the, I don't know, the Honey Lily, the Wrothgarian Grape, the Vicar Herb. Previously it was a little bit like each plant was in each sub-region of the Reach, and we thought it would be better to have them more distinctive from each other. Only have container plants in certain sub-regions and remove them from the others, so it makes sense to go to a different region just to get the container plant from there for example. It's really a gameplay consideration, but also something to make them more distinctive. For example, we've moved the Wrothgarian Grape out of the forest, and it's only growing in the Druadach Highlands and the Midkarth County now. Well, because it's a, I don't know, you look at it, and it's a sun-loving plant with those round leafs, and you see it really lingers for sun and it makes no sense to have it in dense forests. Even though it was really eye-candy actually, with its yellowish leaves. It was eye-candy in the forest, but still we thought it just made no sense to have it there and we moved it to different regions. And we moved from the other regions other plants that remain in the Vorndgad Forest, the Honey Lily only grows in the Vorndgad Forest and Midkarth County for example. Just more distinction.
Yeah, and in-between Roerich has been doing some work on an area in Haafinheim...? I don't know, probably he should speak about it himself. And most importantly, the two largest cities, Dragonstar and Markarth, they are being completed as we speak. Well, I don't know, Dragonstar could still take a little bit, but I don't know, it won't be in the too distant future, Berry has already worked on it a lot, and Roerich is really far along with Markarth, and it's very polished already, just needs some landscaping? Right? Roerich, what do you say?
Roerich: Yes, besides the overhaul, we are working on the three cities, as you said, Dragonstar and Markath, and then the one you were talking about, Dunbarrow in Haafinheim, which was a city that Lestat built, I think. But we wanted to change some things about it, it was too large and a bit plain grid-like in structure. Its been cut up, it's much smaller now. More organic and, yes I've changed the entire area, and added a barrow, and besides the exterior work, we can say that Yeti, our Quest Implementator and NPCer is working on Karthwasten. He's hard at work there, I think he's almost finished with a lot of the dialogue and the quests - No, not the quests yet, but you know, NPCing. And then Scamp has started working on an overhaul of some of the mesas as well. But most importantly I think, we're doing a lot of work in planning future areas. Worsas has created this great location map we're using as a base, so we've, besides working on actual exteriors and interiors and stuff like that, we've done a lot of conceptualizing of future areas, like Haafinheim and the Hjaalmarch also.
Worsas: Yeah, we've done some planning recently on the Ridgelands also, it's a new region that'll be east of the Reach, in essence towards the inside of the province. We want to make it lower than the rest of the province, which will be fairly difficult, because those cliffs, those mesas, are already very tall. Yeah, we're really trying to really elevate the whole landscape inside of the province to be on a, well, elevated level already so you really, when you approach the Reach, when you approach it from the east, you'll really see it as an abatement, as a landscape that is lower. That's at least something that I, I don't know, I've been wanting for a long time. Three weeks ago or something, I edited our landmass file to make some initial changes in that direction, and made some edits according to plans. So it could be worked on in the future, but right now we're still stuck in the Reach. But we're making some plans, like for the western half of Haafinheim that has not been worked on at all yet. Roerich has some cool plans, and we already have a relatively good idea what goes there, what locations we'll have, fortresses... And generally, we already have a fairly good idea of how the rest of the province will actually look like, regarding mountain ranges and also roughly what will be where, and it still needs some more detailed planning, should we get there at some point, but we have this overall picture by now, which is good, even if we never get around to making it. This overall picture is just good to be referenced, because it already effects what we're doing here in the Reach.
Roerich: Exactly, also I think it's a good way to prevent having to do a lot of overhauls in the future. I guess, we finish the Northshore area, and then we figure out if it doesn't fit into the plans. I think it's good to have a plan that everyone agrees with and that should last, instead of just taking one area and then another and then nothing makes sense. Or...you know.
Worsas: Yeah, indeed. And I think and I hope, we won't have additional overhauls in the future. I hope the ones we have, the ones we're having at the moment, will be the last ones really. Because I don't know, we've got...2016? And well, I think I'm pretty happy with everything we have at this point, everything that's finished, and Aldkarth Lowlands. it's an area around Karthwasten, everything that we've done there, I like it all, the forest is great, I love it.
Well, that's not to put the previous work, the previous work was really good, qualitatively it was very good, there was nothing wrong with it and it was eye-candy as well. From an eye-candy point of view, we wouldn't have needed to change anything. We were mainly doing what we do to promote certain aspects about the world. Subdivision, more stories, we wanted a bit more story-inclusion, more points of interest, more paths, just that kind of thing, and a better sense of scale that feels a bit more consistent with the original game, so you can better relate things to each other. Well, as far as I'm concerned, we've succeeded in that. And, well I hope that the other overhauls of the other areas will be relatively quick, I hope they won't take as long as the Druadach Highlands and the Vorndgad Forest have taken, because they also don't need that much work.
In particular, the Sundered Hills, that's how we call them now, it's the wasteland area, it's amazing, it's always been my favorite area actually, and we'll probably do very little there. Maybe add a little bit of life to it, because at the moment, it's just dead trees with yellow leafs, and I don't know why. They must have lived a short while ago, and one of the things that we're trying to do is to make things so they make sense. I think that's also important, not to destroy people's immersion I think. Even if from an aesthetic and eye-candy point of view, there's no need for change at all. Generally, Lestat was really good, he was a really good exterior modder, and one who really focused on quality. Messing around with his work is almost a sin, but I think we do have some reasons and I think the eventual results justifies it.
DEG: Alright, so sort of going to a similar question. Skyrim - Home of the Nords is obviously taking a pretty different direction from the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in terms of, you know, your interpretation of the province, you know less Dwemer ruins and more cities that are larger than three houses. Can you tell us a bit about those differences?
Worsas: The top difference is Alduin, I think for me it is a top difference between us and the Elder Scrolls V because, in my opinion, the Alduin in the Elder Scrolls V was a joke. It just didn't in the slightest really portray what this god of time is about, and the world devourer, and I don't know, it just didn't make much sense to me, it was too mundane. Showing Alduin as an actual creature, as a being, is one thing, but it doesn't even, it doesn't show its qualities really. As a world devourer I would have expected to see a creature with a giant mouth like a wyrm or something. A really foreboding side, a creature that almost just consists of a giant mouth, like a wyrm mouth maybe, I don't know. I don't need to exaggerate, but just a bit more impressive, and what we got was a dragon, a black dragon with spikes that could fly, and I don't know... Well, we don't reference the Alduin lore that was established in the Elder Scrolls V, for example our Alduin is not Akatosh, for us Alduin is still the time god. Just well, just a threatening aspect of it, something like Coronus in Greek mythology, the time god that eats his children. Something like that. Well, that's a top difference, and we don't include those references. Roerich, you want to say something?
Roerich: Yes, we have a lot of differences, and one of those is obviously our take on religion. The Skyrim that was shown in the Elder Scrolls V was a bit more like an Imperial province in culture and religion and everything. So we're going to show the Nords as being more culturally different from the other Human races you see in the game. For one, I hope we can achieve a more rugged and wild feel than the new game. Our Skyrim should be a bit more barbaric and dangerous, especially as you exit the Reach.
But there's a lot of differences in lore, for one we have almost no Dwemer ruins, none yet, but we might add a few towards Hammerfall and towards the Velothi Mountains. Instead we have a lot of Clan Direnni fortifications around the Reach, which is more grounded in lore. And the cities are indeed closer to Morrowind's scale, they're even a bit larger when you look at a town like Karthwasten, which was at its largest it was almost, what was it? 90 or a 100 interiors?
Another difference is what was seen as holds in the Elder Scrolls V was more like, it was actually jarldoms, in our version of Skyrim they're still independent kingdoms or at least semi-independent. But they each have their own goals and sort of freedom and independence. Their relationship between each of these kingdoms is an important point in our history, all of the politics and power-plays and relations between each other. Our Skyrim was seriously being described as these warring kingdoms that could war with each other, and we didn't really see a lot of that... Of course, we saw the civil war, but that seemed like something completely new and not a typical Skyrim situation. So there's that, and then also a lot of, it will be almost like different nations, these different kingdoms. Instead of having the High King be like the president of the United States of Skyrim, it will be like someone who's able to subjugate all of the kingdoms, it should be like a really strong character and not just a diplomatic figure. It should be someone wielding terrible power to be the High King of Skyrim.
Worsas: We generally reference the first Pocket Guide lore, and I don't know, in our version of Tamriel, at least the one in my head, the dwarves went through Cyrodiil's jungles and not over Skyrim. Though I don't know what Tamriel Rebuilt does, we're trying to synchronize our lore with them a bit. It's our completely own branch of lore that we're having at this point. It's something that Atrayonis at Tamriel Rebuilt has written about recently on the Tamriel Rebuilt forums. There's something like three mainstreams of lore that are currently present in the community, but Tamriel Rebuilt and what we're doing, is completely different, separate from all of these three. We're having a different Tamriel altogether.
DEG: Well, on a similar note, you know I was kinda curious, would you say there's anything that Skyrim - Home of the Nords has borrowed from the Elder Scrolls V in terms of art or design or lore? And how much would you say you consider Skyrim, the Elder Scrolls V, and also the Elder Scrolls Arena since I think it included Skyrim as well?
Worsas: We are adding some more towns from Arena than what Skyrim had, which won't be ruins in our point of time. Like Snowhawk, which was a ruin in the Elder Scrolls V, it's going to be a town. We're also not calling it Snowhawk, we're calling it Falkirstad. Many names we've Nordified to have a different approach on the province, like Bethesda had on Morrowind in its time. And you can sometimes see remnants of that approach in books like, there's a book, Ice and Chitin, and Danstrar was called Dunstiorr. On another map they wanted to rename Drangstor to Drungstiorr to Nordify these, but well they didn't get far with it. But we have generally used this approach, renamed towns, like Amber Guard is Karthgad.
Roerich: We have a lot of assets, furniture, and some exterior assets which we borrowed from the new Skyrim, almost directly some of them. Stuff like our chests, Nord sets, there's also some concepts, landscape concepts, like the Hjaalmarch which was never mentioned before the Elder Scrolls V. So a few bits comes to mind, and probably a lot of things that we aren't even thinking about but which just becomes a part of how we viewed Skyrim after we played the game, but which would be hard to point out directly.
Worsas: Totally went off track before, thanks for getting me back to the question. Well, we adopted some barrow designs already, not just from the game, but also I remodeled some things from their concept art, but not much. I just never managed to get back to the barrows, I would like to make much more because they made some really good concept art for them. And well, the barrows are one of the highlights of the Elder Scrolls V, and it's one influence that we use and that could be extended. And we have adopted a few names, like the Karth river. Did you say that Roerich?
Roerich: No
Worsas: The Karth River and the Druadach. Well, the Druadach is also a name from the Elder Scrolls V that we have adopted, it's the mountain range that separates Skyrim from Hammerfall and High Rock, and in our case it's not quite a typical mountain range, it's a highland with a plateau, well a high plateau.
Roerich: We've continued with sort of Celtic influences on the Reachmen, but of course, among a lot of other inspirations like the Sami people of northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, and the Celtic peoples of Scotland and Ireland. And so, I would pronounce it as Dwa-dach or something like that. But, I think it sounds a bit, I don't know, perhaps Scottish? I like to see some Celtic influences in the place names of the Reach.
Worsas: You know what? You know the straw tent that the Reachmen have? I can't show them at the moment, but Roerich knows them, and I have modeled them after an African thatch-hut.
Roerich: Interesting, so we have a lot of different inspirations, which is good.
Worsas: Yeah, indeed. And that Orc drum is also modeled after a African drum. Well, the Orcs have some African influences and the Reachmen as well. They have got this, with the sticks, and the Africans, in Western Africa at least, I think they carve wood a lot like the Nords also. We have included a little bit from that, not much, but you get a little bit of that flavor when you go into that Orc camp or into Reachmen villages, they have a little bit of that too. It's a witchy feeling to it, like I don't know, like in the hut of an African medicine man a little bit.
DEG: Well I have one more question in this set before we go into our more region-specific questions, and you know, I realize it's probably a bit early for this, but I was sort of curious, is there going to be a central main quest or storyline in Skyrim - Home of the Nords? Or is there going to be more like regional storytelling rather than an overarching main quest?
Roerich; We're not really at a stage where we can discuss this in-depth, I doubt we're going to finish the entire province if I'm going to be honest, at least if we stay true to our current level of quality and detail and number of members. But to answer your question, I think we'll definitely see more regional storytelling. But if we're going to have a main quest for the entire province, which wouldn't need to actually involve every exterior, but the overarching story would be of the rise of King Thian of Haafingar.
DEG: Well that sounds pretty interesting, and going into our regional questions here, the Druadach Highlands, and you know we have some video footage of this in the background, and the Druadach region is home to the city of Dragonstar and many other smaller settlements. Can you tell us a bit about the design and landscape decisions that were made to create this region?
Worsas: Originally this area that is now the Druadach Highlands, it was an area of rolling hills, a grasslands area, according to the first Pocket Guide, because it says the western Reach is a hilly landscape with pleasant valleys. And Skyrim supposedly annexed some parts of High Rock (Hammerfall) thirty years ago in the War of Bend'r Mahk. Well, that's what we had before, but even though that was in some way lore-friendly, it didn't really work. The issue was, we still had those border plateaus in the background, and it didn't work with it, it was like it had almost no subdivision and well, very little in it.
There was a little burned village and one ruin in the corner and that was it almost. It was really large without anything in it, to put it bluntly. It didn't look bad, but then we decided to add more continuity with the rest of the hold. We wanted to add cliffs to the area, small plateaus or mesas. And yeah, more subdivision and landscape, more points of interest, more distinction from neighboring regions, as I mentioned before, like really confining it to certain container plants, to certain rock formations. So it's more distinct while at the same time also more consistent a bit. Previously it was also so that the Vorndgad Forest stopped abruptly towards the border with the Druadach Highlands.
What also came to it, I think for me two factors that really played a big role, were both the Elder Scrolls V and Map 5 of Tamriel Rebuilt, you know the Velothi Mountains, and that very densely detailed landscape there from Aether. And, I don't know, what we had here felt comparatively bland. It's hard to say, I mean it's not a good thing to compare, because you should actually treat everything you see individually, and as long as it's great in itself, there's no need to, I don't know, downgrade it or to make it better. But I don't know, I had such a Skyrim vibe from Map 5, I thought we were totally lacking that same vibe, we had some cool things already like those destroyed villages that we had planned and executed on one hand. There was some vibe about the Reach in the Elder Scrolls V, and I saw it and I thought it was a really, the Elder Scrolls V was a really wild and untamed landscape, and our Reach at that point, in many parts, looked like domestic landscape with railings everywhere, the forest stops abruptly like it was cut down by human hands. Farms and houses, and that rolling landscape, and overall that feeling... I don't know, I just wasn't happy. I thought what Bethesda had made was a bit better than what we had. And...yeah, that's probably one reason why we came back to this and reworked it. And it really turned out well I think.
DEG: Now can you tell us a bit about the lore behind this region? I mean obviously it's pretty close to Hammerfall, so can we expect to see a big mix of Redguard and Nordic cultures?
Worsas: Well, the towns of Dragonstar and Karthwasten, they've both got this Redguard architecture, but this architecture, it's really a merge between Redguard, Colovian and Nordic, and even Reachmen architecture. Really of everything. And those two cities are also the cities that should really represent the multi-cultural aspect of this hold the most. Like having much more, I don't know, Redguards, Elves, Orcs, that you've got everything there.
Roerich: Yes, I think an important aspect is that these lands have shifted ownership so many times. They are not Skyrim proper, and they are not really Hammerfall or High Rock either. They have even seen Reachmen independence. But yes, a lot of culture mixing involved in, as you said, in population and architecture and so on. Also, I think it's important that, especially the cities of Dragonstar and Karthwasten, they act more like city states in the past with some independence. And when they've been occupied by High Rock or Hammerfall or Skyrim, they've always been at the very border of these lands mostly. So they're not really connected to these foreign nations. A really unique area in Tamriel, especially with the Reachmen, which could have been a nation of their own and almost a race of their own. They are described as being a... what the PGE says they're like a mongrel breed of humans and Bretons, so they're something different than Bretons.
Worsas: Also the Nords conquered Dragonstar thirty years ago, but its been fought over since that time, somehow... I still don't know how that really works, because I don't know, have they been fighting in that one city all that time? I don't know. The way we've been doing it, there's this separating wall between the two city halves, as in ShadowKey, as in the game where Dragonstar is featured. But this wall is occupied by the Legion, it's under Imperial control, and the Empire really has her hands over this whole thing at the moment. The Empire wants to, the way I think about it, it's probably the Empire wants to keep the Nords, both the Nords and the Redguards loyal somehow. And by preventing a decision over the ownership of this city, they probably want to please both sides somehow. Something like that.
Roerich: Yes, they're like a peace-keeping force.
Worsas: Well, then the Druadach Highlands are, of course, something like a core region of the Reachmen. It's a very wild subdivided landscape, and fits their culture. Well, the Reachmen, most people know pretty well about them, they have been in the Reach since the Mythic Era, have most of the time been govern by other nations, by Nords or Redguards. And only for a short time has it really been an independent kingdom for themselves. But they really want it, and I think at the time of Tiber Septim they also rebelled, they were really fighting him, and Tiber Septim stepped in and defeated them back then. And well, in the Elder Scrolls V you see another uprising of the Reachmen.
DEG: Alright, you bring up an interesting point that Dragonstar was actually in a previous Elder Scrolls game, the Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey, how much influence would you say has been taken from Shadowkey with regards to Dragonstar's design?
Worsas: Well, Yeti made a city plan for it at some point in the past, using that overview map of Dragonstar from Shadowkey, just using some parts that seemed appropriate to him, and that map continued undeveloped. And there are some things, I don't know too many details off the top of my head. Of course there's a separating wall, there is a fighter's guild there, but it's currently closed, and I'm not sure if there's going to be an Imperial guild side. And there is also a fountain on the western part of the town, and an arena on the, I think on the eastern part. I don't know right now, but there are a number of things surely.
Yeah, we were already on about this mod since before the Elder Scrolls V of course, and before there was the Elder Scrolls V, we took everything we could from everywhere. So it came that we added a number of plants and two creatures from Shadowkey. The wormmouth we've got, and also the spikeworm. The spikeworm, I don't know if the spikeworm from Shadowkey looks the same, probably very different, but I've made one regardless. And some plants, for example there was a black mushroom that gave restore health, that was a healing mushroom, and we made a black-spore mushroom that also has that effect. Let me think for a moment, what plants... Ice grape, right the ice grape was the reason why we made the Wrothgarian grape in the first place, because I don't know, we just took what we found, and thought we wanted to make the Reach a bit different from the rest of Skyrim by adding these weird container plants. Like this grape plant, or Vicar Herb. The Vicar Herb is a plant taken straight from Shadowkey, and also has a healing effect to it.
A number of plants, and of course Dragonstar, and we are maybe going to add Azra Nightwielder somewhere, that's the wizard from Shadowkey, he was casted in ice somehow? We might add him somewhere as an undead lich. Well, we've had some ideas there, maybe even come back to some of that Shadowgate or the star-teeth stuff. Right, right, star teeth, we've been going a little bit in that direction for the Direnni ruins. The Direnni ruins, they have an aperture for their glass domes on top, and that aperture they have, I've called it Magus Console, it uses the star teeth, they're basically bended varla stones. Like those, you know, varla stones that the Ayleid had. It's basically a manifested piece of sky magic, and the Magus Console, it draws energy from the stars. The idea behind it at least is it should do something magical. We have it already, but it doesn't do much at the moment, just supplies the fortress with magical energy to power lights and stuff. And that's another thing, we've used a number of things here and there from Shadowkey.
DEG: I'm actually kinda surprised that you guys took that much influence from Shadowkey, considering you know, it was released on a really obscure platform, the Nokia NGage, and I don't think a whole lot of people actually played it back when it was released.
Worsas: Yeah right, I thought it was... It's almost silly, but you know, when we were planning the region and adding stuff and the Elder Scrolls V wasn't there yet, we took what we found, and when you've found something in a previous Elder Scrolls game, no matter how obscure it is, you feel like you're official a bit. You can always point to the game and say "yeah, see over there, it's lore friendly". It's actually an approach that doesn't always make sense, and Tamriel Rebuilt has moved away from that approach for example, and Bethesda doesn't use that approach so much either. They say they always start from scratch and rethink everything from ground up instead of using something because it was in a previous game. But many of these things just fit into place, and it doesn't hurt. For the few people that have played Shadowkey, it will be a nice reference.
Roerich: Yes, there is one particular character that will be really interesting to come across if you played ShadowKey.
Worsas: I don't know, was Jona the Ansei-Slayer maybe also from ShadowKey?
Roerich: I don't think so, but I'm not sure actually.
Worsas: Yeah, I don't know either, would have to check. But it's the Count of this area. Well, in our political system, what's the Jarl in the Elder Scrolls V is a king, and the king has jarls below him, and Jona is one of these jarls. And jarls again have thanes I think on the next level, and all of these can have huscarl. It's just an additional layer, just one step further up.
Roerich: Yes, exactly. More precisely, Jarla Jona is the Jarl of Karthwasten and the Skyrim half of Dragonstar. She is currently situated in Dragonstar to sort of take control of the situation there. Obviously she wants the western half as well. She's a bit of a warlike typical Nord. And in her absence she has three thanes governing Karthwasten.
Worsas: Ah right, and the son of the King of the Reach is residing there.
Roerich: Yeah, he is receiving a tutelage from one of these thanes, trying to learn how to be a king, but it is not going so well. He's sort of like plump to the luxuries of Karthwasten.
Worsas: Yeah, it didn't become better with him. He went astray, or I don't know if that makes sense.
Roerich: No really, he's become more like a, I think Yeti described him like a foppish character. Not very Nordic compared to the rulers and to his father and probably also to his younger brother who is serving in the Legion.
And without further ado, here's the full edited transcript: (Note: the end of the interview is on the second post due to character limits)
DEG: Greetings and welcome to the 25th episode of Morrowind Modding Interviews, with me today are two members of the Skyrim - Home of the Nords team, Roerich and Worsas, and today we're going to be talking a bit about the development of Skyrim - Home of the Nords and the Druadach Highlands in particular. And so first things first, thanks for agreeing to do this interview.
Worsas: You're welcome
Roerich: Ah yes, it's nice to be here
DEG: Now I wanted to start off with a few basic questions, the first of which is when did you first start playing Morrowind and the Elder Scrolls in general?
Worsas: Well for me, it was in 2003 I think? And a friend of mine showed me the game on his Xbox. I played it and I got lost and it was, I dunno, very special, a very, very, very new experience so to say.
Roerich: Same for me, I started playing it, I think, a few months after its release. I had like a game subscription where I got a new game every month, and the game I got when I subscribed to it was Morrowind, and I got that game and I canceled my subscription because I was completely blown away by the, by the then amazing graphics and completely open-world. Later on I played Oblivion and Skyrim of course, but I kept coming back to Morrowind.
Worsas: Well I played Skyrim and Oblivion as well, of course. But later on I tried Arena, and I was surprised really because it was already very similar to the newer games., had many similar mechanics. The sleep mechanics were right, there was already ebony armor and all that stuff. I also tried Daggerfall, but didn't get very far, probably should try it again sometime.
DEG: Oh yeah, Morrowind was a pretty special experience I think, for a lot of us, and going into this next question, I'm kind of curious, have you made any mods outside of working on Project Tamriel with Skyrim - Home of the Nords.
Worsas: Well, I played a lot with the level editor of Warcraft III in the past... And I don't know, maybe Neverwinter Nights editor at some point, but didn't get very far with it. And, uh, well probably many people know my grass mod for Morrowind, that covers Sheogorad and Azura's Coast and also maybe one of Tamriel Rebuilt. And what I've done in the past for myself was armor rebalancing mods, but just for personal use, because the armors in the original game aren't very fair. I've made them a bit closer to each other, somewhere around the Orc armor, so the weak armors would get a bit stronger and the stronger armors a bit weaker. And just recently I don't know if you know the game, Dominions 4, I've made two civilizations for it but I don't know if anyone knows it. It's a very special game, I love it, I've played it for about 200 hours probably.
Roerich: I actually started with the editor of Warcraft III as well, but I never really finished and released anything. And for Morrowind, I have loads of unfinished projects, I published one, Blightward Player Home, which you covered in one of your videos as well. I usually lose interest pretty quickly with some of my mods, so I have to have like piles of unfinished mods on my hard-drive. Some of them are almost finished and some of them are just ideas. One which is almost finished, uh... which I can't remember his name right now, but the Khajiit bookseller you meet during the main-quest in Vivec, I can't remember his name... But anyway I changed the interior to sort of have obscure antiquarian bookshelves, with you know webs all over the place and bookshelves towering over the player. I used the two-level walls for the interior, and I think almost every book in the game could be found in there now. And I added a lot of the obscure texts from the Imperial Library and People and Society and stuff like that. That was the main idea for the mod. I also started a Kogoruhn make-over, the last Sixth House home north of Red Mountain. But I really needed to make new assets for that, and I can't do that. It was supposed to be more of a unique location, not using the stronghold set. I tried to use the Old Mournhold set because it fit better, but it's a really limited set. And then of course I did some interiors for Tamriel Rebuilt before I got with Skyrim - Home of the Nords.
Worsas: Right, I was with Tamriel Rebuilt as well.
DEG: Well it sounds like you've both dabbled a lot in modding different games, and you know this kind of brings me to a sort of broad question, what draws you to modding video-games in the first place?
Worsas: For me it is that I like extending games, I like adding new stuff that adds on top of what's there. For example, for Warcraft III, I made an extension for myself, I called it similar to Frozen Throne, and I added units to the four civilizations and balanced them and wanted to make them seamless with the rest of the game. And I think that modding for Tamriel Rebuilt or for Project Tamriel here is very similar. It's about extending the original content, and that's what I like.
Roerich: I think it's a really entertaining and creative outlet, especially as you can see yourself improve the quality of your work, and you end up with something that you're really proud of. And that, you think you have this idea of what you think Tamriel should be like, and try to achieve that, and sometimes it just feels right, like this is what this town is supposed to look like.
DEG: Now going into some general Skyrim - Home of the Nords questions, Skyrim - Home of the Nords is a pretty massive undertaking, you know building the entire province of Skyrim in Morrowind. Can you tell us a bit about the history of the project and how it got started exactly?
Worsas: The project got started somewhere I think in 2005 or 2006 maybe. It was founded by Lestat, and the first time I saw the mod was on the official forums when he posted his first screenshots of the Haafinheim Forest he was working on. And it was already very dense back then, but he was using Bloodmoon pines and assets at the time. At the same time, I was following a different Skyrim project by Vality, which got abandoned. But I don't know, Lestat seemed a bit more open about his project... And at some point I thought, yeah let's try it, maybe I can add something that would make it great.
One of the reasons why I joined the project was because I had previously, in school, made an exam about Germanic beliefs, you know Norse Germanic beliefs. And I knew some of the embellishments and aesthetics I had seen, and I thought, maybe I can add something to it. I actually never got around to modeling that kind of stuff, but it was the thing that made me think I could add something there. And the history of the project consists of several forums and endless reworks.
The history of the project consists of several forums, endless reworks, and sometimes disagreements also. In the early days the project used Bloodmoon assets, and at some point a decision was made that we wanted to use more custom assets. It went up to a point where Lestat only wanted custom assets and not vanilla assets, not even a single piece. He had a very extreme stance at some point and we had some disagreements about it, but we made a lot of great assets together I think.
Later we had several forums, right? The first forum was something from Forum Motions. Afterwards we had a forum hosted by SGMonkey, and then that went down because he couldn't pay upkeep anymore, and then we went to the SHOTN forum, and after the SHOTN forum we went to Project Tamriel. That would be the fourth forum. but it could even be the fifth one! There were really many forums.
What we did a lot over this time was going back and changing things, improving things, that always took some time. Although, we also saw what a timesink that was and wanted to keep it limited, and we said to ourselves, "no let's focus on progress instead", and that's something we try to do time and again. When I do something like overhauling something that's already there, I usually try to balance it a bit by adding something new. Recently, I overhauled the clothes we have, and I added in an additional piece of clothing, and I overhauled the guard armor, and I added in an additional set of armor in the course. Well, I try to balance it a bit, because sometimes you just want to overhaul things, we want it to look better, you have an idea of how it should be like, and it isn't how it should be like. I try to balance it somehow, and I think that's what we're doing all the time. I sometimes have the impression that people are a bit dubious about it, and say "yeah, they're constantly going back, like Tamriel Rebuilt". Tamriel Rebuilt has a reputation for that, for going back and changing things over again. And it's true, it happens with us as well.
Roerich: I think you summarized it rather well, I came in later than you, so I'm not so familiar with the early history of the project. I can remember when I joined, 2011 or something maybe. But I agree with what you've been saying, that's been my understanding as well.
DEG: You know, since you bring it up, I actually kind of forgot about this, but Vality did have his own like Skyrim project going on for a while. Has there ever been an attempt to, I don't know, talk to him and maybe think about merging the two projects? Like I don't know if that would even be possible really, since they're kinda different visions, but I know he made a lot of impressive work on that project, and it seems a waste that it never got released.
Worsas: Well we had Vality around and he was in our IRC channel too, and we spoke to him, and he wanted to make us a height map with mountains. But I don't know, he didn't finish it and well he disappeared again. And well, he was interested in our project, but seemingly he didn't want to bring his own project in with it. I don't know.
DEG: Alright, and sort of moving on, how much of western Skyrim, that is to say like the Reach, would you say has been finished so far and when can we expect a new public release?
Roerich: I think we've finished a lot of exteriors, especially in the Reach, but also in Haafinheim, which is the area to the north and to the east of the Reach. For the Reach, I think we've finished something like perhaps 70% of our exteriors are completely finished, and for Haafinheim it's a lot as well. For the Reach, we need two cities, I don't know how many cells but it's not a lot. And the thing is, the Reach is a very detailed place, compared to when we go further east, it has taken a lot of time to figure out how everything should be setup. And we've spent a lot of time, the last year especially, redoing some content. So we felt it was just the way it should be. I think the direction we have now, it's efficient, I don't think there'll be any future overhauls of these areas. And I really think we should be able to put something out during this year, and if not a fully playable release with quests, at least a preview of the new lands and all of the interiors.
Worsas: I also think it really paid off, or it will pay off, well to me it already paid off, because after this recent overhaul, especially in the western area, it's so much better than before. I think it will be really enjoyable.
Roerich: Yes, I agree. It was an impressive area before, but this is really something else. I think the whole region just fits together perfectly. We've had some of the areas which have been worked on by different people, then we have mainly our user Berry, who's been doing a lot of overhauls and it gives some sort of resemblance between the different exteriors. Like they fit together now, just these little details just all over the place, kind of like the same character.
Worsas: Yes it feels like the regions are more consistent with each other now. There are more fluid transitions and the landscape features are more evenly distributed. There's more subdivision generally, and intricateness to the landscape. Also really many small hidden secret things thanks to Berry. He added many exterior caves that are really well hidden in some places. And for the Druadach, it's a really good fit, because with the Reachmen that live there, and they're, well how would you call it? They're a witchy character, they're a mysterious people, and it just fits with them very well.
DEG: Well, speaking of public releases and overhauls, you know the first major release for the project was Vorndgad Forest back in 2012, but since then that area has gotten a massive overhaul. And can you tell us a bit about what players can expect to find in the new version of Vorndgad Forest, particularly with what's different from the public release from back in, I think it was, 2011?
Worsas: Well what we added to Vorndgad Forest was Reachmen sites, we added some barrow structures, also many more hidden paths and hidden secrets. Our landscape has been made a bit more, well it's not this classic forest as much. It's still a forest, but it's much rockier, it's really a rock-scape, it's more similar to surrounding areas. Also we changed the scale of the trees, in order to promote a different sense of scale, while also adding more subdivision.
The forest is something we didn't do in order to make it more eyecandy, the forest was already eyecandy before. We did it to, well, to give it a feeling that it's more at home in the game. Like that you have more feeling of how large things are really. Previously, everything due to the scale of the trees, the trees were all scaled up to twice their size, and it looked good, but also it made everything feel much smaller than it really was. That's one thing, we changed the sense of scale.
We've also hidden some things, like ores, we have added Orichalcum Ore for example. Some more sites, more points of interest I think. We also changed the density of container plants to be less, because I don't know, it didn't feel really rewarding to find them. They were everywhere in mass. I don't know, maybe 60 container plants per cell, maybe more. And we reduced that in order to make the discovery of container plants, well as said, more rewarding. Because it's something I've personally enjoyed in the original game, just walking around and ah! There's a plant finally, the one I want to find. That's another thing we've changed. And as said, paths, we've added a dirt path that leads through the forest with some branches, well a twisted little path that connects two roads to each other.
Roerich: There's also the Karthgad overhaul, which is a part of Vorndgad, and which was the village that you could visit in the first release. And the new overhaul by Worsas is really genius I think, it's a huge improvement on our original layout, which was a bit, you know, a bit grid-like. And the new layout is usually one of my favorite SHOTN cities, if not cities in the entire game, it feels really organic and realistic in the way that the buildings are placed next to each other, and the assets used. It's like everything feels really realistic in what materials are used for everything, from furniture to the houses and the surrounding forests and the layout of the city itself. It feels really like a lived-in city, even without any NPCs.
DEG: Oh yeah, I've sort of been exploring the new version of the Vorndgad Forest and you know, I gotta say, it's really quite spectacular, it's so dense and easy to get lost in. And you do find a lot of cool things you know, just exploring the forest, I remember I found a sort of Nordic burial, one of those barrows, and I found it kind of near the river that goes towards the Karthwasten docks, and you know, from the sky you can't even see it, it's like all of these trees are blocking the view, and you just have to find it by wandering through the tree lines, and it's kind of an interesting experience.
Worsas: Yeah, it's really good. I was at first a bit hesitant about all those barrows, because I don't know, we've got how many barrows in Vorndgad Forest now? One, two, three, four...five maybe even? And it isn't too much really, because there's too much subdivision, and if you find a barrow it's not really abundant, every time it's special. Though when looking at the original game again, I checked the CS at some point, the Construction Set, and Vvardenfell, there's sometimes, you know, you've got a Dunmer Fortress one cell next to a Daedric Shrine, they're fairly close often. But, due to the fog, and due to the subdivision, Vvardenfell has got a lot of those hill ranges, and yeah, they really make everything close. And I think that's the main difference between what we have made in our new versions and what was there before.
DEG: Now what part of Skyrim is currently being worked on at the moment? I mean, is there a particular country or region that's being prioritized right now?
Worsas: We are about to start a slight remake of the so-called Midkarth County, it's the area north of Karthgad, north of the Vorndgad Forest, and contains some farmsteads, and it's a grassy landscape. And well, we just want to do a few things up on the mesa. Some of the fields are very large, almost as large as real-world fields, and the performance is very bad. But it will be a relatively minor overhaul. We did a lot in Vorndgad Forest, changed a lot really, we changed a lot about the Druadach Highlands.
The other regions in the Reach will not be reworked as heavily anymore, because they're already great, and it's only a few things. We try to, at least I try to, keep it limited, because I know these overhauls are time-eaters, and we want to get onwards with things, not only redo things all the time. And that's the reason we make a gander for it, what we want to change, we have a list of like... rescaling the trees, we were rescaling the trees in our regions to promote the different sense of scale I spoke about. We reduced the amount of container plants, we sometimes changed the container plants compositions to make the regions more distinctive from each other.
For example, at some point, we made a list of what container plants should be where and what region there are plants like the, I don't know, the Honey Lily, the Wrothgarian Grape, the Vicar Herb. Previously it was a little bit like each plant was in each sub-region of the Reach, and we thought it would be better to have them more distinctive from each other. Only have container plants in certain sub-regions and remove them from the others, so it makes sense to go to a different region just to get the container plant from there for example. It's really a gameplay consideration, but also something to make them more distinctive. For example, we've moved the Wrothgarian Grape out of the forest, and it's only growing in the Druadach Highlands and the Midkarth County now. Well, because it's a, I don't know, you look at it, and it's a sun-loving plant with those round leafs, and you see it really lingers for sun and it makes no sense to have it in dense forests. Even though it was really eye-candy actually, with its yellowish leaves. It was eye-candy in the forest, but still we thought it just made no sense to have it there and we moved it to different regions. And we moved from the other regions other plants that remain in the Vorndgad Forest, the Honey Lily only grows in the Vorndgad Forest and Midkarth County for example. Just more distinction.
Yeah, and in-between Roerich has been doing some work on an area in Haafinheim...? I don't know, probably he should speak about it himself. And most importantly, the two largest cities, Dragonstar and Markarth, they are being completed as we speak. Well, I don't know, Dragonstar could still take a little bit, but I don't know, it won't be in the too distant future, Berry has already worked on it a lot, and Roerich is really far along with Markarth, and it's very polished already, just needs some landscaping? Right? Roerich, what do you say?
Roerich: Yes, besides the overhaul, we are working on the three cities, as you said, Dragonstar and Markath, and then the one you were talking about, Dunbarrow in Haafinheim, which was a city that Lestat built, I think. But we wanted to change some things about it, it was too large and a bit plain grid-like in structure. Its been cut up, it's much smaller now. More organic and, yes I've changed the entire area, and added a barrow, and besides the exterior work, we can say that Yeti, our Quest Implementator and NPCer is working on Karthwasten. He's hard at work there, I think he's almost finished with a lot of the dialogue and the quests - No, not the quests yet, but you know, NPCing. And then Scamp has started working on an overhaul of some of the mesas as well. But most importantly I think, we're doing a lot of work in planning future areas. Worsas has created this great location map we're using as a base, so we've, besides working on actual exteriors and interiors and stuff like that, we've done a lot of conceptualizing of future areas, like Haafinheim and the Hjaalmarch also.
Worsas: Yeah, we've done some planning recently on the Ridgelands also, it's a new region that'll be east of the Reach, in essence towards the inside of the province. We want to make it lower than the rest of the province, which will be fairly difficult, because those cliffs, those mesas, are already very tall. Yeah, we're really trying to really elevate the whole landscape inside of the province to be on a, well, elevated level already so you really, when you approach the Reach, when you approach it from the east, you'll really see it as an abatement, as a landscape that is lower. That's at least something that I, I don't know, I've been wanting for a long time. Three weeks ago or something, I edited our landmass file to make some initial changes in that direction, and made some edits according to plans. So it could be worked on in the future, but right now we're still stuck in the Reach. But we're making some plans, like for the western half of Haafinheim that has not been worked on at all yet. Roerich has some cool plans, and we already have a relatively good idea what goes there, what locations we'll have, fortresses... And generally, we already have a fairly good idea of how the rest of the province will actually look like, regarding mountain ranges and also roughly what will be where, and it still needs some more detailed planning, should we get there at some point, but we have this overall picture by now, which is good, even if we never get around to making it. This overall picture is just good to be referenced, because it already effects what we're doing here in the Reach.
Roerich: Exactly, also I think it's a good way to prevent having to do a lot of overhauls in the future. I guess, we finish the Northshore area, and then we figure out if it doesn't fit into the plans. I think it's good to have a plan that everyone agrees with and that should last, instead of just taking one area and then another and then nothing makes sense. Or...you know.
Worsas: Yeah, indeed. And I think and I hope, we won't have additional overhauls in the future. I hope the ones we have, the ones we're having at the moment, will be the last ones really. Because I don't know, we've got...2016? And well, I think I'm pretty happy with everything we have at this point, everything that's finished, and Aldkarth Lowlands. it's an area around Karthwasten, everything that we've done there, I like it all, the forest is great, I love it.
Well, that's not to put the previous work, the previous work was really good, qualitatively it was very good, there was nothing wrong with it and it was eye-candy as well. From an eye-candy point of view, we wouldn't have needed to change anything. We were mainly doing what we do to promote certain aspects about the world. Subdivision, more stories, we wanted a bit more story-inclusion, more points of interest, more paths, just that kind of thing, and a better sense of scale that feels a bit more consistent with the original game, so you can better relate things to each other. Well, as far as I'm concerned, we've succeeded in that. And, well I hope that the other overhauls of the other areas will be relatively quick, I hope they won't take as long as the Druadach Highlands and the Vorndgad Forest have taken, because they also don't need that much work.
In particular, the Sundered Hills, that's how we call them now, it's the wasteland area, it's amazing, it's always been my favorite area actually, and we'll probably do very little there. Maybe add a little bit of life to it, because at the moment, it's just dead trees with yellow leafs, and I don't know why. They must have lived a short while ago, and one of the things that we're trying to do is to make things so they make sense. I think that's also important, not to destroy people's immersion I think. Even if from an aesthetic and eye-candy point of view, there's no need for change at all. Generally, Lestat was really good, he was a really good exterior modder, and one who really focused on quality. Messing around with his work is almost a sin, but I think we do have some reasons and I think the eventual results justifies it.
DEG: Alright, so sort of going to a similar question. Skyrim - Home of the Nords is obviously taking a pretty different direction from the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in terms of, you know, your interpretation of the province, you know less Dwemer ruins and more cities that are larger than three houses. Can you tell us a bit about those differences?
Worsas: The top difference is Alduin, I think for me it is a top difference between us and the Elder Scrolls V because, in my opinion, the Alduin in the Elder Scrolls V was a joke. It just didn't in the slightest really portray what this god of time is about, and the world devourer, and I don't know, it just didn't make much sense to me, it was too mundane. Showing Alduin as an actual creature, as a being, is one thing, but it doesn't even, it doesn't show its qualities really. As a world devourer I would have expected to see a creature with a giant mouth like a wyrm or something. A really foreboding side, a creature that almost just consists of a giant mouth, like a wyrm mouth maybe, I don't know. I don't need to exaggerate, but just a bit more impressive, and what we got was a dragon, a black dragon with spikes that could fly, and I don't know... Well, we don't reference the Alduin lore that was established in the Elder Scrolls V, for example our Alduin is not Akatosh, for us Alduin is still the time god. Just well, just a threatening aspect of it, something like Coronus in Greek mythology, the time god that eats his children. Something like that. Well, that's a top difference, and we don't include those references. Roerich, you want to say something?
Roerich: Yes, we have a lot of differences, and one of those is obviously our take on religion. The Skyrim that was shown in the Elder Scrolls V was a bit more like an Imperial province in culture and religion and everything. So we're going to show the Nords as being more culturally different from the other Human races you see in the game. For one, I hope we can achieve a more rugged and wild feel than the new game. Our Skyrim should be a bit more barbaric and dangerous, especially as you exit the Reach.
But there's a lot of differences in lore, for one we have almost no Dwemer ruins, none yet, but we might add a few towards Hammerfall and towards the Velothi Mountains. Instead we have a lot of Clan Direnni fortifications around the Reach, which is more grounded in lore. And the cities are indeed closer to Morrowind's scale, they're even a bit larger when you look at a town like Karthwasten, which was at its largest it was almost, what was it? 90 or a 100 interiors?
Another difference is what was seen as holds in the Elder Scrolls V was more like, it was actually jarldoms, in our version of Skyrim they're still independent kingdoms or at least semi-independent. But they each have their own goals and sort of freedom and independence. Their relationship between each of these kingdoms is an important point in our history, all of the politics and power-plays and relations between each other. Our Skyrim was seriously being described as these warring kingdoms that could war with each other, and we didn't really see a lot of that... Of course, we saw the civil war, but that seemed like something completely new and not a typical Skyrim situation. So there's that, and then also a lot of, it will be almost like different nations, these different kingdoms. Instead of having the High King be like the president of the United States of Skyrim, it will be like someone who's able to subjugate all of the kingdoms, it should be like a really strong character and not just a diplomatic figure. It should be someone wielding terrible power to be the High King of Skyrim.
Worsas: We generally reference the first Pocket Guide lore, and I don't know, in our version of Tamriel, at least the one in my head, the dwarves went through Cyrodiil's jungles and not over Skyrim. Though I don't know what Tamriel Rebuilt does, we're trying to synchronize our lore with them a bit. It's our completely own branch of lore that we're having at this point. It's something that Atrayonis at Tamriel Rebuilt has written about recently on the Tamriel Rebuilt forums. There's something like three mainstreams of lore that are currently present in the community, but Tamriel Rebuilt and what we're doing, is completely different, separate from all of these three. We're having a different Tamriel altogether.
DEG: Well, on a similar note, you know I was kinda curious, would you say there's anything that Skyrim - Home of the Nords has borrowed from the Elder Scrolls V in terms of art or design or lore? And how much would you say you consider Skyrim, the Elder Scrolls V, and also the Elder Scrolls Arena since I think it included Skyrim as well?
Worsas: We are adding some more towns from Arena than what Skyrim had, which won't be ruins in our point of time. Like Snowhawk, which was a ruin in the Elder Scrolls V, it's going to be a town. We're also not calling it Snowhawk, we're calling it Falkirstad. Many names we've Nordified to have a different approach on the province, like Bethesda had on Morrowind in its time. And you can sometimes see remnants of that approach in books like, there's a book, Ice and Chitin, and Danstrar was called Dunstiorr. On another map they wanted to rename Drangstor to Drungstiorr to Nordify these, but well they didn't get far with it. But we have generally used this approach, renamed towns, like Amber Guard is Karthgad.
Roerich: We have a lot of assets, furniture, and some exterior assets which we borrowed from the new Skyrim, almost directly some of them. Stuff like our chests, Nord sets, there's also some concepts, landscape concepts, like the Hjaalmarch which was never mentioned before the Elder Scrolls V. So a few bits comes to mind, and probably a lot of things that we aren't even thinking about but which just becomes a part of how we viewed Skyrim after we played the game, but which would be hard to point out directly.
Worsas: Totally went off track before, thanks for getting me back to the question. Well, we adopted some barrow designs already, not just from the game, but also I remodeled some things from their concept art, but not much. I just never managed to get back to the barrows, I would like to make much more because they made some really good concept art for them. And well, the barrows are one of the highlights of the Elder Scrolls V, and it's one influence that we use and that could be extended. And we have adopted a few names, like the Karth river. Did you say that Roerich?
Roerich: No
Worsas: The Karth River and the Druadach. Well, the Druadach is also a name from the Elder Scrolls V that we have adopted, it's the mountain range that separates Skyrim from Hammerfall and High Rock, and in our case it's not quite a typical mountain range, it's a highland with a plateau, well a high plateau.
Roerich: We've continued with sort of Celtic influences on the Reachmen, but of course, among a lot of other inspirations like the Sami people of northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, and the Celtic peoples of Scotland and Ireland. And so, I would pronounce it as Dwa-dach or something like that. But, I think it sounds a bit, I don't know, perhaps Scottish? I like to see some Celtic influences in the place names of the Reach.
Worsas: You know what? You know the straw tent that the Reachmen have? I can't show them at the moment, but Roerich knows them, and I have modeled them after an African thatch-hut.
Roerich: Interesting, so we have a lot of different inspirations, which is good.
Worsas: Yeah, indeed. And that Orc drum is also modeled after a African drum. Well, the Orcs have some African influences and the Reachmen as well. They have got this, with the sticks, and the Africans, in Western Africa at least, I think they carve wood a lot like the Nords also. We have included a little bit from that, not much, but you get a little bit of that flavor when you go into that Orc camp or into Reachmen villages, they have a little bit of that too. It's a witchy feeling to it, like I don't know, like in the hut of an African medicine man a little bit.
DEG: Well I have one more question in this set before we go into our more region-specific questions, and you know, I realize it's probably a bit early for this, but I was sort of curious, is there going to be a central main quest or storyline in Skyrim - Home of the Nords? Or is there going to be more like regional storytelling rather than an overarching main quest?
Roerich; We're not really at a stage where we can discuss this in-depth, I doubt we're going to finish the entire province if I'm going to be honest, at least if we stay true to our current level of quality and detail and number of members. But to answer your question, I think we'll definitely see more regional storytelling. But if we're going to have a main quest for the entire province, which wouldn't need to actually involve every exterior, but the overarching story would be of the rise of King Thian of Haafingar.
DEG: Well that sounds pretty interesting, and going into our regional questions here, the Druadach Highlands, and you know we have some video footage of this in the background, and the Druadach region is home to the city of Dragonstar and many other smaller settlements. Can you tell us a bit about the design and landscape decisions that were made to create this region?
Worsas: Originally this area that is now the Druadach Highlands, it was an area of rolling hills, a grasslands area, according to the first Pocket Guide, because it says the western Reach is a hilly landscape with pleasant valleys. And Skyrim supposedly annexed some parts of High Rock (Hammerfall) thirty years ago in the War of Bend'r Mahk. Well, that's what we had before, but even though that was in some way lore-friendly, it didn't really work. The issue was, we still had those border plateaus in the background, and it didn't work with it, it was like it had almost no subdivision and well, very little in it.
There was a little burned village and one ruin in the corner and that was it almost. It was really large without anything in it, to put it bluntly. It didn't look bad, but then we decided to add more continuity with the rest of the hold. We wanted to add cliffs to the area, small plateaus or mesas. And yeah, more subdivision and landscape, more points of interest, more distinction from neighboring regions, as I mentioned before, like really confining it to certain container plants, to certain rock formations. So it's more distinct while at the same time also more consistent a bit. Previously it was also so that the Vorndgad Forest stopped abruptly towards the border with the Druadach Highlands.
What also came to it, I think for me two factors that really played a big role, were both the Elder Scrolls V and Map 5 of Tamriel Rebuilt, you know the Velothi Mountains, and that very densely detailed landscape there from Aether. And, I don't know, what we had here felt comparatively bland. It's hard to say, I mean it's not a good thing to compare, because you should actually treat everything you see individually, and as long as it's great in itself, there's no need to, I don't know, downgrade it or to make it better. But I don't know, I had such a Skyrim vibe from Map 5, I thought we were totally lacking that same vibe, we had some cool things already like those destroyed villages that we had planned and executed on one hand. There was some vibe about the Reach in the Elder Scrolls V, and I saw it and I thought it was a really, the Elder Scrolls V was a really wild and untamed landscape, and our Reach at that point, in many parts, looked like domestic landscape with railings everywhere, the forest stops abruptly like it was cut down by human hands. Farms and houses, and that rolling landscape, and overall that feeling... I don't know, I just wasn't happy. I thought what Bethesda had made was a bit better than what we had. And...yeah, that's probably one reason why we came back to this and reworked it. And it really turned out well I think.
DEG: Now can you tell us a bit about the lore behind this region? I mean obviously it's pretty close to Hammerfall, so can we expect to see a big mix of Redguard and Nordic cultures?
Worsas: Well, the towns of Dragonstar and Karthwasten, they've both got this Redguard architecture, but this architecture, it's really a merge between Redguard, Colovian and Nordic, and even Reachmen architecture. Really of everything. And those two cities are also the cities that should really represent the multi-cultural aspect of this hold the most. Like having much more, I don't know, Redguards, Elves, Orcs, that you've got everything there.
Roerich: Yes, I think an important aspect is that these lands have shifted ownership so many times. They are not Skyrim proper, and they are not really Hammerfall or High Rock either. They have even seen Reachmen independence. But yes, a lot of culture mixing involved in, as you said, in population and architecture and so on. Also, I think it's important that, especially the cities of Dragonstar and Karthwasten, they act more like city states in the past with some independence. And when they've been occupied by High Rock or Hammerfall or Skyrim, they've always been at the very border of these lands mostly. So they're not really connected to these foreign nations. A really unique area in Tamriel, especially with the Reachmen, which could have been a nation of their own and almost a race of their own. They are described as being a... what the PGE says they're like a mongrel breed of humans and Bretons, so they're something different than Bretons.
Worsas: Also the Nords conquered Dragonstar thirty years ago, but its been fought over since that time, somehow... I still don't know how that really works, because I don't know, have they been fighting in that one city all that time? I don't know. The way we've been doing it, there's this separating wall between the two city halves, as in ShadowKey, as in the game where Dragonstar is featured. But this wall is occupied by the Legion, it's under Imperial control, and the Empire really has her hands over this whole thing at the moment. The Empire wants to, the way I think about it, it's probably the Empire wants to keep the Nords, both the Nords and the Redguards loyal somehow. And by preventing a decision over the ownership of this city, they probably want to please both sides somehow. Something like that.
Roerich: Yes, they're like a peace-keeping force.
Worsas: Well, then the Druadach Highlands are, of course, something like a core region of the Reachmen. It's a very wild subdivided landscape, and fits their culture. Well, the Reachmen, most people know pretty well about them, they have been in the Reach since the Mythic Era, have most of the time been govern by other nations, by Nords or Redguards. And only for a short time has it really been an independent kingdom for themselves. But they really want it, and I think at the time of Tiber Septim they also rebelled, they were really fighting him, and Tiber Septim stepped in and defeated them back then. And well, in the Elder Scrolls V you see another uprising of the Reachmen.
DEG: Alright, you bring up an interesting point that Dragonstar was actually in a previous Elder Scrolls game, the Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey, how much influence would you say has been taken from Shadowkey with regards to Dragonstar's design?
Worsas: Well, Yeti made a city plan for it at some point in the past, using that overview map of Dragonstar from Shadowkey, just using some parts that seemed appropriate to him, and that map continued undeveloped. And there are some things, I don't know too many details off the top of my head. Of course there's a separating wall, there is a fighter's guild there, but it's currently closed, and I'm not sure if there's going to be an Imperial guild side. And there is also a fountain on the western part of the town, and an arena on the, I think on the eastern part. I don't know right now, but there are a number of things surely.
Yeah, we were already on about this mod since before the Elder Scrolls V of course, and before there was the Elder Scrolls V, we took everything we could from everywhere. So it came that we added a number of plants and two creatures from Shadowkey. The wormmouth we've got, and also the spikeworm. The spikeworm, I don't know if the spikeworm from Shadowkey looks the same, probably very different, but I've made one regardless. And some plants, for example there was a black mushroom that gave restore health, that was a healing mushroom, and we made a black-spore mushroom that also has that effect. Let me think for a moment, what plants... Ice grape, right the ice grape was the reason why we made the Wrothgarian grape in the first place, because I don't know, we just took what we found, and thought we wanted to make the Reach a bit different from the rest of Skyrim by adding these weird container plants. Like this grape plant, or Vicar Herb. The Vicar Herb is a plant taken straight from Shadowkey, and also has a healing effect to it.
A number of plants, and of course Dragonstar, and we are maybe going to add Azra Nightwielder somewhere, that's the wizard from Shadowkey, he was casted in ice somehow? We might add him somewhere as an undead lich. Well, we've had some ideas there, maybe even come back to some of that Shadowgate or the star-teeth stuff. Right, right, star teeth, we've been going a little bit in that direction for the Direnni ruins. The Direnni ruins, they have an aperture for their glass domes on top, and that aperture they have, I've called it Magus Console, it uses the star teeth, they're basically bended varla stones. Like those, you know, varla stones that the Ayleid had. It's basically a manifested piece of sky magic, and the Magus Console, it draws energy from the stars. The idea behind it at least is it should do something magical. We have it already, but it doesn't do much at the moment, just supplies the fortress with magical energy to power lights and stuff. And that's another thing, we've used a number of things here and there from Shadowkey.
DEG: I'm actually kinda surprised that you guys took that much influence from Shadowkey, considering you know, it was released on a really obscure platform, the Nokia NGage, and I don't think a whole lot of people actually played it back when it was released.
Worsas: Yeah right, I thought it was... It's almost silly, but you know, when we were planning the region and adding stuff and the Elder Scrolls V wasn't there yet, we took what we found, and when you've found something in a previous Elder Scrolls game, no matter how obscure it is, you feel like you're official a bit. You can always point to the game and say "yeah, see over there, it's lore friendly". It's actually an approach that doesn't always make sense, and Tamriel Rebuilt has moved away from that approach for example, and Bethesda doesn't use that approach so much either. They say they always start from scratch and rethink everything from ground up instead of using something because it was in a previous game. But many of these things just fit into place, and it doesn't hurt. For the few people that have played Shadowkey, it will be a nice reference.
Roerich: Yes, there is one particular character that will be really interesting to come across if you played ShadowKey.
Worsas: I don't know, was Jona the Ansei-Slayer maybe also from ShadowKey?
Roerich: I don't think so, but I'm not sure actually.
Worsas: Yeah, I don't know either, would have to check. But it's the Count of this area. Well, in our political system, what's the Jarl in the Elder Scrolls V is a king, and the king has jarls below him, and Jona is one of these jarls. And jarls again have thanes I think on the next level, and all of these can have huscarl. It's just an additional layer, just one step further up.
Roerich: Yes, exactly. More precisely, Jarla Jona is the Jarl of Karthwasten and the Skyrim half of Dragonstar. She is currently situated in Dragonstar to sort of take control of the situation there. Obviously she wants the western half as well. She's a bit of a warlike typical Nord. And in her absence she has three thanes governing Karthwasten.
Worsas: Ah right, and the son of the King of the Reach is residing there.
Roerich: Yeah, he is receiving a tutelage from one of these thanes, trying to learn how to be a king, but it is not going so well. He's sort of like plump to the luxuries of Karthwasten.
Worsas: Yeah, it didn't become better with him. He went astray, or I don't know if that makes sense.
Roerich: No really, he's become more like a, I think Yeti described him like a foppish character. Not very Nordic compared to the rulers and to his father and probably also to his younger brother who is serving in the Legion.