Author Topic: Come for the food, stay for the mods  (Read 2257 times)

Offline jcompton

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Come for the food, stay for the mods
« on: April 01, 2004, 06:34:23 PM »
I talk plenty about the mods I've worked on directly (and have no doubt, I'll continue to do so) but I want to take a moment to talk about the other mods people have worked on and will continue to work on for your enjoyment.

Stuff You Could Be Playing Now

Ashes of Embers: Ghrey and Corvis had a really ambitious plan laid out for the Embers of Empire world and I still think it's got great Fantasy World concepts in it. AoE preserved at least some of the hard work that went into it, and the Universal Weapons are a touch of 3e, you might say. Sort of the father of the modern series of tweakpacks, and as such reflective of the tastes of its author, but Ghrey's not an arbitrary tweaker.

Unfinished Business: UB is an excellent example of what good can come of an ambitious concept if a few hard-working people are left to their own devices and decide to just go do it. Faithful to Bioware's concepts without being slavish, icelus's UB gives meaning to those characters in the game who seemed pointless, and does something with all those False() dialogues modders and curious InfExp users ran into from time to time.

Virtue, and Other Sim Stuff: Speaking of ambitious concepts, for literally more than half a decade BG players have crabbed about reputation. Only Sim was crazy enough to do something about it, and give players a chance to make the reputation-affecting game elements really mean something to their roleplay. Improved Oasis II is one of the more interesting "single-focus" mods you'll find anywhere, and its rich history as a completely accidental mod makes it that much more of a gem.

Stuff You Can't Play Yet, But Should Later

Cailean: It's a fact that not enough people pay attention to the Cailean project, and there's no good reason. Kismet and St. Jo have proven themselves to be quite good at what they do. St. Jo has an insidious sense of humor as seen in Getting Rid of Anomen, and as for Kismet, despite denials of being a writer, she just so happened to turn out one of the most frequently named "that's my favorite Anomen flirt!" Anomen flirts of all time. If you like the rose flirt (and if you do, you know what I'm talking about), you're going to love Cailean.

Surayah: Bons is a one-woman wrecking crew, between writing and coding and art and music and voice. Her sole downfall--glasses of juice that take hours on end to consume. Surayah takes a character whose only role is to die by Anomen's hand and makes her into something more--a look into a culture and personality that isn't captured in the game already. How does her blend of vanity, compassion, and naivete play out? (referring to Surayah, of course.) Wait and see.

Quest Pack: Another from the "Many complain, but Sim does" files. In the wake of all the NPC-related mods that came out, many clamored for more things to do, places to go, people to see. Along comes Quest Pack, to both expand on the "what if?" possibilities Bioware opened but never followed through on, and to introduce new missions. I'm personally looking forward to kicking righteous ass with Jaheira by my side in the Thieves Guild in chapter 6.
Cespenar says, "Kelsey and friends be at the Pocket Plane? Ohhh yesssss!" http://www.pocketplane.net

Offline Aurora

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Re: Come for the food, stay for the mods
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2004, 04:07:22 AM »
Okay. Where's the food?
Well, there was this doggy. He was a very clever doggy. He said things like...like... "I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options."

Offline Lady Ladile

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Re: Come for the food, stay for the mods
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2004, 08:30:26 PM »
Currently playing a game with UB installed (looking forward to future versions!) and I've also taken an interest in the Cailean and Surayah mods. Looks good to me!  :)

*at the risk of going off-topic* What sort of food?  :P