There always are a lot of cool-looking modding projects in the works for any Bethesda game at any point in time, so there’s a chance that if you don’t eat, sleep and breathe mods for work like I do, there’s a chance Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil is one that’s flown under your radar.
The good news is that, as part of its quest to add a version of Cyrodiil as it is during the time in TES history when Skyrim takes place to that game (ie long after the events of Oblivion, this ambitious mod’s dev team has just done a fresh Reddit AMA, and in doing so confirmed that it features a key thing any game needs: tabloid papers designed to feel authentic in their unhinged vibes.
This Q and A session comes just a couple of months after the Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil team last showcased some gameplay from their project, giving us a look at some questing involving the Vigilants of Stendarr during the Creation Mod Con 2024 community showcase. It’s been a little while now since they put out a big progress update, so naturally folks had questions.
Someone even got quite meta with that, enquiring if the team had “anything you can and want to tell us, but just haven’t gotten the right question yet?” The answer they got from Cyrodiil modder EnstoneDC might was juicy goss, but possibly not in the vein that they might have expected.
“We have an entire system, both in terms of writing and gameplay systems for newspapers. It took a wee bit of guide-writing and overhauling of existing content, but it’s very satisfying in-game now,” the modder wrote, “Basically, we have some low-level, generic, world-building articles that are fed into the game over time, that is then superseded by quest-related content, so it feels like there’s a constant stream of news. Unless the player does absolutely nothing for an in-game year, of course, it’ll feel like there’s always something new to read, a lot of which could involve your exploits, or at least point you to new quests and content.”
They added that the mod will have three newspapers, each with its own “very different style, approach to news and tone of voice”, as they’ve apparently been made with real-world journalistic guidelines in mind, so you’ll have at least one with “shrieking tabloid vibes” in an attempt to help make the mod deliver a more immersive experience. “If you do something of note, finish a major sidequest, a house blows up or a new emperor is crowned, you’ll get to see people’s takes and opinions on it,” EnstoneDC explained, “whether from the local paper or from all over Cyrodiil, depending on the impact. And honestly, some of them are really quite funny.”
So, yup, get ready to read a shitty op-ed from the Tamrielic version of, well, people who’re in the same profession as me, about how you’re scum because you’ve accidentally tanked Chorrol’s property market with one ill-timed explosion.
While Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil’s team is still yet to commit to a release date for the mod, they did confirm that it’ll that full release will “likely be an update” to ‘Beyond Skyrim – Bruma‘, the re-creation of Cyrodiil’s northernmost city and its surroundings that it put out back in 2017, though it’s unclear at the moment whether you’ll be able to just use your saves made with that mod to access the full version of Cyrodiil.
Oh, and when you get there, it’s now been confirmed that you’ll have a choice between four different candidates for Emperor in the mod’s main quest, which is all about a “succession crisis” caused by a certain Dark Brotherhooder doing a thing to Titus Mede the second.
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