Monthly Modder: TateTaylorUSA

Many mod authors may own and love their pets, but TateTaylorUSA takes his devotion to a new level in the form of his mods “Gladys the Corgi” (Xbox) and “Merlin the Corgi” (Xbox), which insert his real life dogs into Skyrim as pet companions, each with their own unique abilities to assist any Dragonborn – Gladys to cheerfully “carry your burdens” and Merlin to transform into whatever elemental form will most help you in combat.

In addition to capturing the physical likeness of the real life Gladys and Merlin in these mods, TateTaylorUSA Bethesda.net,Nexus) also recorded their real barks to use in the voice acting for the companion mods. He tells us more about his furry muses, his other integration mods, and the larger modding community in this month’s modder interview.

Two of your standout mods are Gladys and Merlin, the corgi companions. Can you tell us a little about the originals, and how they inspired the more fantastic abilities of these Skyrim followers?

We got Gladys in late 2019, a day after we moved into our new home. I’ll be honest; I wasn’t Gladys’ biggest fan for a while. However, as she got older and I got used to all her corgiisms she really became my dog. Merlin we got in late 2020 because we wanted to get Gladys a friend. Having one dog can be exhausting but, seemingly against logic, having two is easier because they can both play together.
From the very start of my time modding I’ve always said, “If I can get a good corgi mesh I will put Gladys in the game.” After about a year of searching I found one. So when I designed Gladys she was supposed to just kinda be a dog follower. I had nothing special in mind really. I did the fetch mechanic and the loot mechanic just because that seemed dog-like and they were neat features to have. The real Gladys cannot fetch well and the only thing she’s ever looted for me was half a dead rabbit. Gladys does really like to herd, but I am not sure how to translate that into the game.

I didn’t want to rehash Gladys when I made Merlin, so I decided to do something a little different. I thought that Gladys’ fetch, looting, and bags to carry stuff made sense with her background as the dog of a merchant. So I didn’t want Merlin to be able to do any of those things. In the end I decided to lean into Merlin’s name and make him a magical daedric corgi. So Merlin is the combat focused companion that can become elements and Gladys is the companion that is good at holding and finding things.

I intend on porting Gladys and Merlin over to every Bethesda game from Skyrim on. The guys at Fallout: London are rigging up the Gladys model to use in their own mod. When they’re done they’re going to hand it over to me and soon thereafter some corgis will be available in the Commonwealth. I think I’ll continue with the theme of making Gladys a normal dog and Merlin a special dog (cyborgi?) limited to mainly combat roles.

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How do Gladys and Merlin respond to hearing their own voice acting in the game?

Merlin doesn’t really seem to care, but that is about in-character for him. It was actually hard to get him to bark so I could record his “lines”.

Gladys on the other hand is a loaf of nerves. Sometimes when she hears herself in Skyrim she feels the need to yell back. I had no issues getting Gladys to bark for her “lines”.

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You also do a lot of integration mods. What are your goals here?

Creation Club content is distributed in a very concentrated way, probably for compatibility reasons. I like a lot of the new stuff that the Creation Club offers, so try to make it feel more naturally ingrained in the world. For example, with Netch Leather Armor I replaced basically all instances of vanilla leather on Solstheim with the new Netch Leather, this really helped Solstheim stand out as an alien land.
Recently I’ve been exploring some more ambitious overhauls of Creation Club content. I did Knight of the North which completely overhauled the vanilla acquisition method with a quest that was built as an homage to the original Oblivion DLC (I am a big Oblivion fan). In the future I’d like to explore larger voiced expansions for Creation Club content. I suppose working with Extended Cut has got me thinking about that kind of thing.

Outside of the Creation Club I usually tweak a lot of the mods I use to make them fit into my personal load order better. I don’t publish most of these, but I did end up posting Beyond Skyrim in Skyrim, which has much the same goals as the projects I mentioned above. Just this time for integrating Beyond Skyrim content into the vanilla game.

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You’re part of a larger mod project, Skyrim Extended Cut, any surprises in how your modding process changed?

Prior to joining Extended Cut I’d floated between a few mod teams. I would either get overwhelmed by the sheer size of some of these teams, find the time commitment too much, or simply not agree with the work they were doing. I had come to the conclusion that I simply worked better alone.
I became friends with the project lead, Catir, and after a while joined the project. I had reservations due to my past experiences, but Extended Cut showed me I just needed to find the right kind of team.

Since then I’ve found myself doing more direct collaborations than ever before; I have collaborated with Catir, EpicCrab, Simon Magus, Jelidity and VictorF extensively. Right now it feels like I am always working on or planning something with Jelidity.

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What is your favorite part of modding?

I’ve always wanted to tell stories, but I have never found my writing skills to be particularly strong. Modding has shown me a whole new world of storytelling in environmental design. The most fun I’ve had in modding is designing points of interest and coming up with narratives to go along with it. I haven’t done much level design in the mods I have published right now, but there are some new and exciting projects coming up the pipeline!

Beyond the actual act of modding, I also love the community. There are a lot of great people and good friends I have met since I started making content. Just the other day I had the pleasure of meeting Grandma Shirley in person!

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Any mods authors you’d like to recommend?

I could name off some of my absolute favorite authors like JaySerpa or EpicCrab, but instead I want to recommend a few authors I don’t think get the attention they deserve:
Jelidity (Bethesda.net), Nexus) is someone I’ve worked with a lot recently, she is a great collaborator and is always making interesting content. Like me she has done Creation Club integration mods but also neat lore-based mods like Eastern Dwemer Towers in Solstheim and Pocket Mammoths. I’d also be remiss not to mention Amber Refossilized and Stalhrim Refrozen, she loves her multilayer parallax.

Parapets (Nexus) does a lot of DLL work and everything they make is just very cool. My favorites would probably be their clothing crafting mod More Craftable Equipment or the recent DLL mod Dynamic Armor Variants that allows you to do things like toggle a hood up and down without swapping between two different armor pieces.

ButaneBoss (Nexus) doesn’t have a lot of mods but I do enjoy what he has released, namely Ancient Nord Armo(u)ry EXTREME, which adds a ton of new Ancient Nord Armor variants. His modpage images are also super whacky which makes looking at his content a special experience.

AndrealphusVIII (Nexus) has made everything from minor tweaks to technically impressive overhauls. I think my favorite mod from him is Vittorias’ Alternate Wedding where you can attend Vittoria Vici’s wedding peacefully if you’ve destroyed the Dark Brotherhood. Worldspace Transition Tweaks is also really impressive, being able to see Solstheim from the mainland is so cool! I’d also like to mention Bring Meeko to Lod because that man needs a dog.