Bethesda games and mods, mods and Bethesda games. These two forces are inextricably linked, having enjoyed a powerful symbiotic relationship dating back to at leastThe Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowindin 2001, which was the first of Bethesda’s games to enjoy a huge modding community that persists all the way to this day (and with the whole game now ported to an open-source engine by modders, OpenMW, the possibilities are pretty much endless, to the point of the game getting a largely functional multiplayer mode).
Ever since Morrowind, each successive Bethesda RPG has been ‘built to be modded.’ Bethesda’s Creation Engine, for all its limitations, is regarded as one of the most mod-friendly engines out there. Bethesda has provided modders with a robust framework, and modders have obliged, keeping its games in the public consciousness by constantly improving their graphics, fixing bugs, adding new parts to the maps (or whole new games), as well as quirkier creations that make for whimsical news stories that us media outlets like to publish.
Modular Histories
Mods keep Bethesda’s games alive, they let us go back and enjoy games likeFallout: New Vegasthe way itshouldbe played rather than the buggy version that was released in 2010 (with even the game’s lead designer Josh Sawyer getting in on the action by releasinghis own rebalancing mod for it). The Skyrim: Special Edition, released in 2016, looked a bit prettier than the base game, sure, but the real draw was the fact that it was 64-bit, giving modders much more versatility in what they could do with it.
I Took On One Of Starfield’s Toughest Systems Right After The Intro
Here, there be dragons… err, twistfins.
So naturally, as Starfield’s popularity wavers (compared to games likeSkyrimandFallout 4, at least), andBethesda seems to be biting back at reviewsof the game (which now, according to Metacritic, rank it lowest of all Bethesda’s single-player RPGs), there’s this sense of ‘just wait until the modders get hold of this,thenit’ll be a great game.’
That’s inevitably (to an extent). A modded Starfield, say, five years from now, will be far superior to what we’re playing today, but the catch is that I don’t believe that the game will inspire the same degree of uptake and enthusiasm from the modding community enjoyed by the likes of Skyrim, Fallout 4, or New Vegas. For that to happen, there’d need to be a comparable degree of enthusiasm for the base game, and that simply isn’t there. Again, we’re talking on a relative scale here, because Starfield clearly has its fans and will certainly have a strong mod community, but we’re comparing it here to some of the most beloved and mod-centric games of all time.
The Elder Scrolls and Fallout are powerful IPs, supported by decades of lore and iconography that fans continue to discuss and pore over to this day; there are perpetual questions (who dropped the first bomb in Fallout?), longstanding mysteries (what happened to the Dwemer in The Elder Scrolls?) that simply don’t crop up in the same way in Starfield. Granted, Starfield is a new IP, but it doesn’t offer nearly as compelling a foundation to make us want to dig deeper.
I Stalked 5 NPCs In Starfield To See What They Get Up To
Epic NPC Man and Women and a Child.
The success of Bethesda’s past modding communities correlated with the adoration people had for the games. New Vegas is regarded these days as the best-written of Bethesda’s RPGs (and it was the only one they outsourced to another developer, Obsidian, go figure), and much of its modding community has revolved around giving this compelling world the treatment that it didn’t get at launch due to a rushed development.
It’s a similar story to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which while not having a huge mod community, basicallyrequiresyou to play the Unofficial patch—a fan-made mod that’s been worked on for the best part of two decades. Again, an excellent game with compelling lore and a great RPG experience that was blighted by bugs upon release.
A Legacy of Lore
Starfield actually didn’t have the buggiest of launches, so it’s not like it needs ‘rescuing’ like the above-said games did, but nor does it have the gravitas that Skyrim or Fallout 4 had to make modderswantto dig in and start improving and expanding it. While there’s some revisionism these days about just how good Fallout 4 really was, the fact is that both it and Skyrim were acclaimed and adored by fans and critics on release, offering compelling, evocative worlds that inspired modders to get creative with them. Based on the comparatively lukewarm reception Starfield’s received, it’s hard to see that happening to anything near a similar degree here.
For years, Bethesda RPGs have been somewhat harshly labelled as games that get ‘bailed out’ by the modders; that people play them for what modders do with them, rather than what Bethesda does. That’s never rung true for me, and I always saw it more that the base games were loved by their communities, which, combined with their modular engine, compelled modders to dig in. The greatness of the modding communities usually correlated with the greatness of the games, whereas in Starfield we have a good, but not great game, and with time its modding community will reflect that.
WHERE TO PLAY
