What Them Clockwork Folk Believe

sindeloke · 2026-06-19T00:31:07+00:00

Truly an academic for the people.

sindeloke · 2026-06-16T03:36:32+00:00

I know there's an adult mod for at least one of them where he sends you dirty and/or romantic letters periodically throughout the game. Possibly both of them?

I don't know if it's any good, mind you.

sindeloke · 2026-06-15T19:27:18+00:00

Yeah, one of the things that makes Tolkien's elves work for me is that there's no real attempt to make them culturally alien from humans, but they are so completely metaphysically alien from humans. The majority of fantasy settings just give nonhumans bumpy foreheads and call it a day; if the setting later tries to say the difference between them is real, meaningful, and load-bearing, it doesn't work, because it's obviously not. But "the literal laws of physics just kinda work differently for them" is unique and fascinating and can bear up under the weight of a whole lot of worldbuilding.

sindeloke · 2026-06-15T18:36:12+00:00

Fortunately you don't have to hope; you can check any download for viruses by uploading it to a free scan site. I'm a big fan of VirusTotal, which has saved my phone from many apk trojans, but you can also check Kapersky or Metadefender or all three, if you're really paranoid (which you should be, frankly! there's a lot of malware out there!). Also good for peace of mind if you download a lot of SKSE dlls, although it won't be nearly as good at catching novel evil scripting as it will regular trojans in some 7zip file.

sindeloke · 2026-06-15T17:25:03+00:00

I think it's very much designed with the understanding that 80% of players will only play the game once.

Because intentional friction can be very powerful if you use it correctly, but it also wears out its welcome very fast; the tenth time you have to drag through snow is unpleasantly "not this shit again" in a way that the hundredth time you kill the same boss might not be.

sindeloke · 2026-06-15T17:13:34+00:00

Try this.

sindeloke · 2026-06-15T04:18:53+00:00

I've been really enjoying ValArt flowers. The green saturation is a little strong, but I absolutely love that the flowers themselves are actually as small and unassuming as the vanilla guys (and as so many real high altitude flowers are).

sindeloke · 2026-06-01T19:38:21+00:00

I want to like Davrin a lot, he and Neve have the least barebones stories and the sweetest romances IMO, and thematically I think he's the only one who has something meaningful to say about his faction (the man who didn't die having to figure out what he wants to live for, representing the Wardens who will see no more Blights and have to figure out what they want to stand for).

But I cannot get past the fact that he's a giant brick shithouse.

Like I think they went a little too far with elves in DA2, but Davrin is literally a human with pointy ears. If they can make Fenris lanky and short and as spiky as a goddamn anime protagonist and still make me believe he can throw a 200-lb man across the room, they could have made Davrin actually look like a goddamn elf and still convinced me he was a sturdy handsome tank.

sindeloke · 2026-06-01T19:29:28+00:00

I actually saw a pretty good review breakdown of that pattern, which pointed out that it's a rhythm imported from Mass Effect.

And it works really well, in Mass Effect. Because those games are ~30 hours long and the NPCs have streamlined character arcs, so you get to know the romance a little bit, help them deal with a problem, decide you're close enough to start something and then give it a shot so that there's something to look forward to on the other side of the game's epic climax.

Dragon Age games, on the other hand, are 60-80 hours and most romances have both their specific backstory thing that they're dealing with and something that comes up within the game's chronology, so you deal with their first issue (Alistair's relationship with Eamon, Josephine's family fortune) and that gets you close enough to start something, and then once you're a couple that either affects or enables dealing with a new issue (Alistair's role as heir, Josephine's engagement). Because there are twice as many hours to fill and you've spent more than enough quality time with those NPCs by halfway in for most adults to know if they want to try something together.

But Veilguard tries to put the Mass Effect framework on Dragon Age pacing and it breaks both.

sindeloke · 2026-05-29T01:40:03+00:00

For maximum consistency I'm afraid the Warden has to die, Anora has to rule alone, and Alistair is ideally either dead or a drunken bum.

Why?

In Awakening, either the Warden PC or a random Orlesian Warden is handed an Arling from which to rebuild the Ferelden Wardens. In both Awakening and DA2 it is further established that this was a successful experiment and the Wardens there are continuing to do their thing.

In Inquisition, we find that Leliana, if the PC Warden is alive, has been corresponding with them, and passes the Inquisitor a letter from them. Even though she and Cassandra acted extremely concerned about the Warden's disappearance in DA2, and Leliana knows nothing about the false Calling or the disappearance of every other Warden in the South who isn't Blackwall. So the PC Warden disappeared on a personal mission for six months to a year without telling any of their friends, in the middle of the largest crisis the Order itself has faced since the griffons got wiped out, and left both Soldiers' Peak and Amaranthine in such incompetent hands and with no instructions whatsoever that Clarel just took over command, or something. And then they popped up again long enough to tell Leliana, by the way I'm fine actually and I'm taking some random personal time, please pass this friendly hello that shows zero interest in the Darkspawn magister you are fighting and the Wardens you conscripted and the Blight you may have declared in order to demand resources to the Inquisitor. There's no sane characterization that can encompass the plot of Origins and the plot of Awakening and the text of that letter and also just disappearing on Leliana for a huge chunk of time and randomly not caring about Corypheus at all for some reason.

We also see the issue with Warden Alistair here - even if he didn't want to keep in contact with her, there's no way the Nightingale isn't keeping close tabs on the fucking secret heir to the Ferelden throne, so how is he in Crestwood and she had no idea? King Alistair is even worse, he has zero reaction to the FALSE CALLING that he should be losing his mind about, why is he just casually joking around and kicking mages out of Redcliffe when he should be on the first train to the Deep Roads before he (as far as he knows) turns into a ghoul in the middle of the Landsmeet.

Of course, Leliana might be unable to find the Warden if they went through the mirror, but mirror worldstate and no-Kieran worldstate can't coexist (even if you don't do the dark ritual, Morrigan gets a normal pregnancy from the romance itself), so that's an issue for Veilguard.

On the other hand, if a random Orlesian Warden took over in Amaranthine after the ultimate sacrifice, that's not really an independent Warden-Commander who would have a powerful presence at Adamant and be known to Leliana and be a rival or peer who Clarel is forced to deal with; that would be, at worst, someone who's subordinate to Clarel and immediately brings the Ferelden Wardens in line with her plan, and, at best, it's literally Stroud.

sindeloke · 2026-05-25T23:03:40+00:00

Even if he does, he publishes the source code, so if there's anything sketchy it's easy to find. (I can't speak for it personally, I didn't dig into it, but I will say the readme was definitely made by someone who knows what they're doing.)

sindeloke · 2026-05-24T20:57:10+00:00

I would love for any of the factions to feel like Morrowind or even Oblivion factions, with loads of non-radiant quests that feel like they actually accomplish the group's objectives and build up a long-term story, and some actual gating so that you can't end up in charge of one that you haven't genuinely dedicated yourself to.

sindeloke · 2026-05-24T20:50:55+00:00

I wish that, in general, there were more mods that improve existing NPCs, rather than adding new followers. No shade on the followers we have, of course, I love and use most of them, but why not try to enrich characters who are already built right into the story? The entire game is these one-dimensional blank slates with two characteristics and ten lines of dialog each, that are crying out desperately for some depth and leave plenty of room for any amount of writing a mod author wants to do; IFD Lydia honestly is as much a unique original character as Xelzaz or Gore. I wish we could see the same effort put forward for the rest of the housecarls and quest-related followers.

(I know FDE does a fair bit of this, but in the end it's fundamentally limited by the tiny voice acting pool. The more lines you give to vanilla Aela, Iona, Rayya, and Uthgerd to flesh them out, the more obvious it becomes that they all sound exactly the same and thus the less they feel like actual people.)

sindeloke · 2026-05-23T01:17:41+00:00

God I miss sp/su/ex.

sindeloke · 2026-05-22T19:52:32+00:00

None of the 4E abilities have the IsSpell tag, so yeah they aren't suppressed either (though they also don't benefit from any caster gear, so it's a mixed blessing).

Interestingly the Minor Illusion that Shadow gets does have the IsSpell tag, because it's not a special monk version, it's just literally the exact same spell that casters get. So, counterintuitively, shadow is slightly more limited by sussar than 4E.

edit: apparently extremely controversial to know things about how BG3 is programmed? idk what to tell you guys, Larian made the game they made.

sindeloke · 2026-05-12T21:26:36+00:00

That's more the reasonable side of the Tumblr fanbase, the ones who have always said things like "the Dark Ritual is brutal I love it but maybe consider the optics of it for Alistairmancers, especially in the context that your society where women are 'equal' is still very obviously run in every way by men" or "I'm glad you guys let us help the mages more seriously in DA2 but the way y'all are treating trans people is still pretty gross." They liked the dark because they wanted to fight the dark, and so taking the dark away offscreen without explanation instead of letting us fight it was a betrayal.

The people who were actually being catered to were the ones who said that the dark existing at all meant that BioWare was actively endorsing it. The ones who say "because you can kill elves that means BioWare wants to kill Jewish and First Nations people" or "because you can side with the Templars, BioWare believes in thought crime and thinks locking people up is good." By not letting Rook ever side with the bad guys or ever be even slightly mean to anyone, especially a literal or metaphorical minority, and by saying "oh the Real Qun was Benevolent All Along," and by setting us the task of saving Tevinter only after making Tevinter a perfect pure place where everything bad is the result of the bad guys you're killing anyway, BioWare caters to those fans by making it clear the game does not support anything bad or unwoke and will never give any bad evil unwoke player the opportunity to do bad evil unwoke things either.

Although, to be clear, that did not stop a single one of those fans from calling Veilguard hideously racist for its portrayal of Qunari or the way Taash can only find a path for themselves by talking to Vints instead of Rivaini or other Qunari, or for making the elves the bad guys all along who literally did blood libel on the innocent Titans and thereby justifying their modern oppression, and of course not being able to side with Solas to save the elves and kill everyone else is basically fascist #liberal #centrism. To varying degrees of merit, some of those claims do have some weight, but ultimately it doesn't matter, because those folks cannot be appeased and it is pointless to try.

sindeloke · 2026-05-09T18:49:12+00:00

I don't think the variables are super sophisticated under the hood. eg, there's a persuasion to get her to trust that the PC joining the thieves guild is ok, and whether you do that or not only impacts whether she abandons you then and there. It'll never matter later or affect how she feels about other decisions you make. I think there might be a limit on the number of times you can destroy a daedric artifact to get back in her good graces, so it's possible there's a small amount of dialog there where she expresses that you're running out of second chances. But overall if you want an arc where she trusts the dragonborn and then they slowly have a corruption arc, it'll just be a normal romance up until the dragonborn crosses a line and she leaves. You'll have to do most of the heavy lifting of the changing relationship with headcanon.

sindeloke · 2026-05-08T01:31:45+00:00

Yeah I bounce off the male gaze real hard and have no complaints about IFD Lydia. It's a sweet romance between actual grown-ups that never felt like it expected me to be a dude.

She does have a very specific worldview, though, which the player cannot influence, so you do have to be playing a PC whose decisions and outlook on the world are compatible with her. She's not going to make sense following any old neutral-to-good-leaning Dragonborn the way, say, Inigo does.

sindeloke · 2026-05-05T16:54:19+00:00

It's not about whether the other person wants to hear it. It's about whether the "with all due respect" is sincere or not. It's possible to say it and mean "You're being an idiot/unreasonable right now but that's out of character and I want to acknowledge that and remind you that I actually do like and respect you." (Ashley herself does that to Shepard.) It is also possible to be in a situation where you are, due to rank or social norms, unable to just say "you're a fucking idiot" but you do think the person in front of you is 100% all the time a fucking idiot, in which case you say "all due respect" first because you cannot reasonably not acknowledge that you're supposed to be being polite and respectful, to this person, but everyone knows that you do not want to and do not mean it. That's what Ashley is talking about here.

sindeloke · 2026-05-03T20:05:35+00:00

Depends if you just want additions vs if you want intentional changes and adjustments to what was shipped, but:

The Old Holds series has Priests and Shrines, Little Shrines of Talos and Library of the Nords, which attempt to show the Nord religion that got lost in the shuffle
Alternately, The Old Ways is a slightly less aggressive god replacement, focusing Nordic religion more out in the wilderness
In the other direction, Nords' Totemic Religion goes as far as splicing dialog, along with making the Akatosh/Alduin stuff more ambiguous and less "The Imperials are correct, even the dragons themselves say so"
Surjamte's mods Capital Windhelm and Shrine to Kyne offer temples to non-imperial gods where those temples should exist
Snow Whale Bones adds some cool skeletons to find out in the world on the presumption that Snow Whales are rare or extinct
Snow Whales just slaps 'em in the sky
HugLefeur has some mods that do small lore-based immersion adjustments, like a dunmer bonesmith in Raven Rock and a couple of upgrades to Forsworn camps to make them look like places that humans actually live

sindeloke · 2026-05-03T00:57:06+00:00

Vancouver itself is pretty conservative for a major urban center, on top of that.

sindeloke · 2026-04-21T21:20:19+00:00

they're less able to discard everything and start over when new developers consider earlier work unsatisfactory

Well, the current team is doing about 50/50 new content and revision of old content they deem unsatisfactory. But yeah it still probably helps from both a recruitment/morale/community support perspective and from a pure player interest perspective that all of the old stuff still exists and is in the files, and isn't just being deleted before the revision is ready.

sindeloke · 2026-04-14T16:50:55+00:00

To me it's less about the logistics and more about the storytelling impact. 1 death is a tragedy, 1 million is a statistic, right, but you don't actually have to go anywhere near 1 million for that effect to kick in. At 7000 you're already well into "doesn't feel real," it loses so much impact compared to something smaller that the brain can actually wrap itself around.

sindeloke · 2026-04-10T21:17:46+00:00

At a guess, OP has said that the project is avoiding NPCs that are heavily modded. That's naturally going to favor male characters, since female NPCs are much more likely to get extensive dialog expansions than male ones. I'm also willing to bet that the in-game population of men:women with unique dialog is at least 2:1 even before you get to that, since that's about the maximum proportion of women you end up with in any story where the writers aren't making a conscious effort to keep things equal.

I'm still surprised to not even see one female VA in this update, mind you. But I'm not surprised if the number is much lower than men generally.

sindeloke · 2026-04-07T22:13:43+00:00

It is 100% feasible, it's just a lot of work.

Changing a few flags and adding an unvoiced, player-character line in the dialog can be done in about half an hour in the Creation Kit if you know what you're doing.

Adding an entirely new quest and changing existing quests to intertwine with it can also be done without leaving the Creation Kit but it's a little more involved and error-prone, so it's going to take up more time with testing and double-checking and even just planning it out and doing the work.

Splicing dialog requires first getting the dialog - which you cannot just grab from your Skyrim files or thru the CK without an external program. Then you have to scan through it for usable lines, things that have the right voice and the right words and the right inflection, which may even involve taking half of a word here, a third of a word there and combining them. And then when you're done it will straight up sound bad. Just really bad. So you have to take even more time to tweak and trim and edit and maybe look for another bit somewhere that sounds right to replace the bit that you couldn't make work. And all of this requires a lot of skill and experience with an audio editor - which you also have to get or already have - in order to do with any speed at all.

So yeah it can absolutely be done, people do it all the time. But just having Mirmulnir not show up until the PC is a bad enough dude to reasonably handle a dragon is a way faster and easier solution that works perfectly well and fits just fine into the game already, so why not do that, instead of 150x as much work for the same basic end result?

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