Highlights
- Skyrim continues to be massively extra well-liked than The Witcher 3, largely due to its bigger modding group.
- The upcoming ‘Quest Editor’ instrument for The Witcher 3 might doubtlessly encourage a brand new wave of modding and inventive content material within the sport, giving it its ‘Skyrim’ second.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Two RPG giants which might be, arguably, one of the best of their respective generations and two of the best RPGs ever made. I wouldn’t actually understand how to decide on between them if I needed to. On the one hand, The Witcher 3 marked such a bounce up in storytelling and characterisation that it virtually makes the basic-ass potato-people of Skyrim and their troubles look laughable by comparability, however there’s additionally one thing lovely within the anonymity of wandering across the harsh northern realm and carving out a personality of your precise selecting. I really like each video games, though I believe Bethesda might study extra from CDPR at this level than the opposite means spherical.
However there’s a superb cause why proper at this second, 13 years on from when Skyrim got here out and eight years on from The Witcher 3, Skyrim-related search queries dwarf The Witcher 3’s by a ratio of about 16:1 (as per Google Tendencies). Now that’s not a mirrored image of the video games’ respective gross sales, that are fairly shut at over 50m items for The Witcher 3 and over 60m items for Skyrim. And you may wager it’s not folks digging into the lore and issues like that.
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Pseudo-Maths, Anybody?
I posit that the large evergreen curiosity in Skyrim might be the truth that it has the largest mod group for any sport ever. If you have a look at the numbers on Nexus Mods, Skyrim has 10 occasions extra mods obtainable than The Witcher 3, and 26 occasions extra mod downloads. And, oh my God, what’s midway between 10 and 26? 18, which is… virtually 16?
Okay, okay. Getting a bit carried away with the number-wankery there, however level is that mods are an effective way to maintain a sport alive, and in 2024 The Witcher 3 goes to change into extra moddable than ever earlier than due to a mysterious new ‘Quest Editor’ instrument that, according to CDPR:
“… will help you create your individual experiences within the sport by making one thing utterly new or modifying present quests and content material.”
I reached out to CDPR hoping they’d go into somewhat extra element, however they politely mentioned they’d be retaining additional data below wraps for now. Nonetheless, it does make the thoughts wander and surprise and ask whether or not this instrument might be The Witcher 3’s ‘Skyrim’ second, with the brand new freedoms and accessibility it gives inspiring the group to stand up and get creating on a scale by no means earlier than seen in a CDPR sport.
Not that the present Witcher 3 group actually has been slacking. The Witcher 3 continues to be the ninth hottest sport on Nexus Mods, and that’s regardless of it being notoriously fiddly for each creating and putting in mods. The final consensus appears to be that it’s pretty straightforward to implement gameplay mods, whereas textures and environments are more durable, whereas on the set up facet you want to bounce by a couple of extra hoops than you’d with super-convenient Bethesda video games.
Mod-Ernisation Course of
Contemplating how a mod group has grown across the sport regardless of the friction in its modding course of, a toolset that can permit gamers to extra simply create their very own content material for it ought to mark one thing of a golden age for Witcher 3 modding. The large query mark is across the scope of the instruments. Will the instruments permit modders to create not solely their very own quests, however new characters, tales, areas and even complete overhauls (like, say Fallout: London for Fallout 4)? It’s an especially tantalising thought, although maybe it’s greatest to not elevate our expectations too excessive on that entrance for now. As well as, one would hope that this instrument might finally roll over into Cyberpunk 2077 as nicely—a sport that’s most likely crying out for correct mod assist much more than The Witcher 3.
In a yr that’s virtually actually going to be a bit quieter than 2023 for large releases (although with loads of expansions to make up for it), diving again into The Witcher 3 in super-expanded, mega-modded kind might be the one massive new RPG expertise I want in 2024.
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