Recently a new mod for Skyrim has surfaced, of course this is for the PC players only, but console owners can still marvel at this mod.
In short the mod is a new island called Falskaar, with quests, new books, 2 new spells, a new shout a whole original soundtrack made just for this mod, which can be downloaded from the mod page.
[There are] 26 quests, including a 9 quest long main story, and 17 side quests. (Along with some unmarked content)
– Says the author on the mods page
Take a look at the gameplay trailer.
The mods description states that,
Falskaar is a new lands mod. [And it’s], goal was to act as a DLC, [and] adds roughly 20+ hours of content, and favors all types of characters.
Speaking with PC Gamer the mod creator, Velicky, said,
“I organized everyone involved, but the voice actors themselves recorded all the dialogue and submitted it to me, I had some people help me out with a few models and textures, someone wrote a book or two for me… But otherwise all content was implemented, written and developed by me.”
Making content by yourself is always hard, the proof is it took a whole year for Velicky to make this mod, and making almost all the content him self, for that I belive he deserves a round of applause [pauses for applause].
Again speaking with PC Gamer on how exactly a 19 year old can spend a whole year making content Velicky said,
“[My dad] was incredibly supportive and allowed me to live here, paying for living expenses and charging no rent, I was able to not go to school and not have a day job. Meaning, more or less, that Falskaar was my day job.”
So what about the quests? Are all the NPCs just going to stand there and say nothing and make me read everything? The story is quite the opposite, as there are 29 voice actors. They each play 54 different characters. Velicky held auditions for each one (over the internet of course with files being submitted to Velicky), this means that the quality is higher than most community-made content. Velicky responds to this by saying,
“I’m still kind of shocked at some of the talent I got on the project… and every single one of them surpassed my expectations by leaps and bounds.”
In total there were around 100 people who helped on the project, from writing books, to the voice acting, and again for the Soundtrack, which adds 14 brand new tracks composed by Adamm Khuevrr just for Falskaar, this adds more than 40 minutes of new music. Impressive right?
For the environments, there is a massive dungeon, “Watervine Chasm,” this may be Falskaar’s most impressive piece. Velicky said that it took three weeks to build and players have said it takes an hour or two to complete, which is enough time to say … do any number of boring house chores, so thank you mod, for giving as a reason to not do these.
For the project there has been a massive amount positivity, to this, again speaking to PC Gamer, Velicky said,
“Falskaar isn’t perfect, I’m not an expert who’s been crafting game experiences for the last 20 years, so I certainly still have a lot to learn, and I always will. I’m always looking to learn and improve, and Falskaar was a huge chance for me to do this.”
Velicky has said that Bethesda is aware that he is on this planet, and that he “isn’t shy about putting his goals right out on the table.”
He has also stated,
“The best way to show Bethesda Game Studios that I want a job there and should be hired is to create content that meets the standards of their incredible development team.”
So these goals are indeed on the table, and he is indeed intent on creating the best experience he can, as we all known, meeting Bethesda Game Studios standards is hard, and Velicky is well on his way to meeting them.
The link the PC Gamers article on this is here. I have taken the quotes from this article.
The link to the mod page is here. Seriously go check it out, then download it, and play it. It is just like a new DLC.
There are also add-ons you can check out, just buy searching Falskaar on the Skyrim Nexus. I suggest this one, it adds a fast travel map marker, much like with the Dragonborn DLC, for the island of Solstheim.
