The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Monthly Modder: Tom_Tesoro
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Designer Tom_Tesoro discusses his epic extension of the Dark Brotherhood questline in this month’s featured modder interview.
In The Brotherhood Of Old (PC, Xbox, Nexus), players who have completed the Dark Brotherhood questline are given a new adventure that looks to the future – and past – of the organization. It is an epic and enjoyable story, and we wanted to get a behind-the-scenes look from the author.
The Brotherhood of Old has you follow several story threads. How did you go about designing them and pacing the narrative?
I knew starting out that I wanted to get the Dark Brotherhood back into form, back to tradition. After the events of Oblivion, the Dark Brotherhood never really recovered, and in fact, got significantly worse. The Brotherhood fell into a state of near disrepair. No longer holding to tradition, barely clinging on to life with one pseudo-sanctuary in the entire continent wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Not for me anyway. Sure, it ended on a high note with things looking up, but it didn’t go far enough for me. It left me wanting more. I wanted to address this and also address some hanging threads from Oblivion that never really got tied up.
I ended up weaving the rebuilding of the Brotherhood and the resolution to Oblivion’s woes together in one package, and The Brotherhood of Old was born.
How do you balance narrative design with quest design, especially in a project this large? Were there very substantial changes to one due to needs of the other?
This was something I struggled with substantially. Working together with my lead writer, wjHarnish, we came up with a 170-page screenplay which needed to then be adapted into playable content. This was way more difficult than I had anticipated. It was written as a story first and a game second. This, I believe, was our fundamental mistake as a ton of things had to be changed and reworked to fit within the confines of what the game would allow me to do. I think we got a little overly ambitious with certain things, which lead to some major implementation struggles.
This isn’t just an extensive questline, but one that continues the story of Skyrim’s Dark Brotherhood, and even reaches back to TES IV Oblivion. What challenges did you face using existing characters like this?
For one, voice acting. Finding actors that sounded similar to existing characters was difficult, but I think they turned out great in the end, and all of the actors did terrific jobs.
I did actually reach out to some of the actors from the official game, and although very gracious, they were not able to return to the roles in an unofficial capacity. I knew that would be the case going in but hey, worth a shot, right?
Any quests or story elements you hoped to use, that had to be cut?
Absolutely. There are a ton of things I wish could have been included or done differently.
A specific example is one quest called The Death of my Daughter that was cut entirely. To sum it up, the player and our main character Vala are tasked with assassinating a mage in Winterhold but things went south, which lead to Vala being stuck in a state of paralysis called a Soul Link with the mage for over a month real time, but in their minds they spent several lifetimes together. There wasn’t much gameplay here, and it deviated too heavily from the main narrative, so I decided to cut it.
Another example is a quest reward that I was unable to include due to Creation Kit limitations. It was a soul gem that could be worn as an amulet and could store multiple souls at a time. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get something like this to work.
What is your favorite part of modding?
I have a deep appreciation for game development. The fact that I’m able to tell new stories for my favorite games through modding is what I enjoy the most. I’ve been an aspiring game developer since I was really little, so being able to use Bethesda’s tools and learn how the games I love were crafted is a special thing for me. Sadly, due to life's many hurdles, I was never fully able to pursue a career in game development. Modding has allowed me to scratch that itch, to an extent.
Other than your own, any mods you'd like to recommend?
The recently released Skyrim’s Paraglider mod recreates the paraglider from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in Skyrim and it’s the coolest thing ever.
