An atmospheric, narrative-oriented total conversion mod for Skyrim
Forgotten Stories by MKsoundtracks published on 2016-12-16T20:04:05Z This piece was composed for the announcement teaser of the upcoming Enderal expansion 'Forgotten Stories'.
Forgotten Dreams - Vergessene Traeume: 02:28: 25: Goetterdaemmerung: 02:25: 26: Heading for new Shores - Auf zu neuen Ufern: 02:35: 27: Koppophon: 01:27: 28: Nightshade: 02:03: 29: Ocean of Sand - Sandmeer: 02:20: 30: Overcome the Beast Inside - Die Bestie Ueberwunden: 02:10: 31: Path-Abidingness - Der Weg ist das Ziel (old) 03:00: 32: Phoenix: 03:00: 33: Price of Steadiness - Preis der Ordnung: 02:04. Enderal: Forgotten Stories. If youre missing the music only that is because of an old bug which sadly is still in the mod. One of the 'silence' soundtracks gets stuck in an infinite loop. This blocks all other soundtracks includeing 'new location' sounds and combat soundtrack.
If there is one thing that the Elder Scrolls games are known for, it's the enormous, vibrant modding community – heartily supported by Bethesda providing extensive support and modding tools. Although there are literally tens of thousands of mods available for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, one in particular has managed to stand out as being exceptional among them. Developed by German studio Sureai, Enderal is a total conversion mod for Skyrim, meaning that it uses some of Skyrim's assets to create a completely new open world setting, replete with new quests, characters and items. Sureai have over a decade of experience in using Bethesda's modding tools to give form to their own original worlds, having also made Nehrim for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the less-known Cube Experimental for Fallout 3, and two more mods for Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. If Enderal is anything to go by, this experience has payed off, as they have managed to create a mod that, for me and many others, has completely eclipsed the base game in terms of story and worldbuilding. Having said that, Enderal is certainly not without faults. The combat system is only passable and the Creation Engine that Enderal is built on hasn't aged particularly well, and while not as buggy as its predecessor, is still prone to random crashes and getting the player stuck on otherwise inoffensive terrain.
Enderal was originally released in 2016, but in February 2019 was re-released on Steam as Enderal: Forgotten Stories with a plethora of additional content. This content includes some new highly detailed side quests, items, and performance improvements. Enderal can be installed for free on Steam, but you do need a copy of Skyrim installed through Steam for it to work. Side note: it specifically has to be installed with the vanilla version of Skyrim – not the Special Edition.
Gameplay
Coming to Enderal after spending a lot of time playing Mordhau wasn't my best idea, as the (mostly unchanged) Skyrim combat system felt a lot clunkier than I remember it being. Really though, it works just fine. The only real issue I had was the same issue that I had with Skyrim's combat system in that late-game enemies get stupidly tanky and fighting more than one enemy at once will generally result in you being slowly stunlocked to death. There are a couple of ways to get around the tedium of trying to avoid being repeatedly staggered to death, and these ways can be found in Enderal's custom level up system. In addition to being able to choose from extra health, stamina or mana, leveling up gives you valuable memory points that can be used to gain different perks and abilities from the eleven skill trees available.
There are three skill trees each for melee combat, magic and thievery, and an additional two skill trees that are essentially focused around summoning minions to aid you and being able to turn yourself into a werewolf. If you decide to go with any form of melee combat, I highly recommend getting the heavy armor talent that makes you less likely to be staggered when hit, which is easily the worst aspect of the combat system. I went with a half-melee, half-magic themed build, which ended up working well in the long run, but there were some frustrating moments where I would run out of magic after just being able to defeat one enemy and would be left with several more full-health enemies chasing me around the terrain while Yakety Sax played in my head. As luck would have it, the magic-focused skill trees also provided me with some abilities that I could use without mana, such as Shock Nova, which made every encounter after unlocking it much, much easier. The skill trees give you a lot of dynamic ways to build your character, and by the end of the game I could see uses for pretty much all of the skill trees, with the minor exception of some of the thievery-oriented skills, some of which seemed to have too narrow a niche to really be of any use.
In Skyrim skills are leveled up through repeated use, but in Enderal this system has been done away with. Instead, you level up skills by finding and buying ‘learning books'. At first I didn't mind this system, but by the end of the game my opinion had changed for the worse. Sure, it's gratifying to find skill books as you explore the world, but you can never quite find the ones that you want. By the end of the game most of my skills were still fairly low and if I wanted to say, learn to craft some decent higher-level gear or learn a mythical spell, I'd have to travel around to all of the relevant vendors and buy out their entire stock of learning books for that particular skill. This ended up being by far the biggest money sink in the game for me, and couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't quite how the developers intended me to increase the skills, but couldn't really think of any other way to do it.
Enderal is as buggy as you would expect from a Skyrim mod made by a dozen or so people. At several points the game randomly crashed to the desktop without any error. After finishing a conversation with an NPC they would regularly seem to forget about it and chase after me to try to initiate the same conversation again. Terrain would sometimes turn into quicksand, forcing me to reload if I couldn't find a way to wiggle out of it. Walking across items on the floor would sometimes catapult me across the room or simply crash the game. None of these issues were outright gamebreaking, but they did make the game a fairly frustrating experience at times. Given the scope of the game and the small development team, it's easy to see why there are so many bugs. Skyrim was also a smorgasbord of glitches in its day, and many of those glitches seemed to have just carried over into Enderal.
A Unique Campaign with New Gameplay MechanicsThe Last Roman Campaign Pack is an epic expansion for Total War: ATTILA, delivering a narrative, mission-based experience on a new, highly-detailed campaign map of the Mediterranean theatre.
Story
Enderal takes place several years after the events of Sureai's previous total conversion mod, Nehrim, but you don't need to have played that to get the most out of Enderal, as they take place in different locations, with a totally different story and cast of characters. Characters from Nehrim may show up and plot points will be referenced, but these are mostly just throwbacks and knowing about them isn't crucial to the story.
The plot begins in a familiar way; you are a stowaway on a boat bound for the continent of Enderal and after awakening from a disturbing nightmare, you are caught by the ship's crew and thrown overboard. Luckily you wake up on the shores of Enderal anyway and after a brief tutorial and meeting Jespar, one of the first major characters, you are set loose into the world. From there, following the first lot of quests given to you by Jespar will inform you of the strange occurrences in Enderal, like the zombies and skeletons roaming the wilderness, animals attacking travelers without provocation and a mysterious condition called the ‘red madness' wherein unsuspecting citizens will go mad overnight and attack the people around them. Eventually you learn that the Holy Order that rules Enderal believes these things to all be connected to an historical event that could cause global mass extinction. From there, it's a race against time to discover what exactly this enigmatic mass extinction event is by trawling the ruins of past civilisations believed to have been wiped out by it.
It's the sort of plot that smacks more of Sci-Fi than classic fantasy, but while it gave me more than a few flashbacks to Mass Effect, Enderal is a dark fantasy tale through and through and accordingly isn't afraid to up the ante at any given point. The story escalates rapidly when you start finishing main quests, and I can't help but feel that the pacing could have been a bit slower in the early quests, giving you more of a chance to work your way up to the events that happen later. Although, if you're the kind of player to spend all their time exploring the world and doing sidequests, this is a non-issue. In the later main story quests, twists are smart and plentiful, without falling into the trap of over-explaining certain aspects of the world. Instead, the story ends up quite firmly focused on it's strongest feature: the characters.
Theplot has a strong psychological component to it, and the neuroses ofeach character has a definite impact on how the story plays out. Thisis even true for the player character, despite being only able tocommunicate in dialogue options. The game subtly introduces apersonal narrative that explains the motivations and backstory of theprotagonist, providing some unexpected context for their actions inthe game world.
Overall the story of the main quest was the highlight of the game for me, and I also found that it was complemented by the highly detailed sidequests. The side quests don't have anything to do with the main quest, but manage to tie back into it in a purely thematic way. My favourite side quest involved infiltrating the ranks of the Rhalâta, the mysterious ascetic thugs that controlled the Undercity, a city literally underneath Ark. This quest was again mostly driven by the characters, and unfortunately played out badly for me, as my people pleasing tendencies backfired in an unexpected way during the epilogue of the quest. Turns out that simply picking the dialogue options that other characters approve of most isn't necessarily the best course of action. In this case, an innocuous dialogue option which I avoided because it lost points with the character may have been crucial to a better outcome for the quest line. This was quite surprising to me and I respect Enderal a lot more for it; games very rarely punish the player for going out of their way to score the most approval points with the other characters.
Visuals& Sound
Enderal is an incredibly photogenic game. The engine shows its age in the blocky quality of the assets and environments, but Enderal still manages to create some interesting and downright beautiful locales. Many of the more interesting areas have a history behind them, which is either explained through quests or the environment itself. The Whisperwood is a particularly dangerous example of such an area. The Whisperwood was the first location I set foot in that really made the realization that Enderal is more than just a mod sink in. It's a sprawling shadowy forest, with dead trees lit by ominous light and clumps of oversize glowing mushrooms littering the hills. The sinister environment was a good indication that my fresh player character might not be strong enough to deal with the monsters roaming the forest. Sure enough, the area was full of fairly tough monsters and the mushrooms gave me arcane sickness when I got too close to them. A few reloads later and I decided that I should probably wait until I was a higher level before sating my curiosity and exploring the area. The imaginative visual direction of some the locations make the game feel closer to Morrowind than the somewhat mundane landscapes of Skyrim.
Environmentsin Enderal are cluttered with detail, and I mean that in a good way.Plants are messily strewn everywhere in the surprisingly colourfulforests, caves and ruins are filled to the brim with cobwebs,furniture and objects of interest, and just walking through thefields will take you through bridges, valleys and past towers andruined castles. While I was keen to continue the gripping main storyquests, walking from place to place made it very difficult to resistthe temptation to explore, and I often ended up very far from thequest marker when I finally decided I should go back to trying tofinish the quest I originally set out to do. The busy environmentslends a strong feeling of authenticity to the setting, as though theworld has a genuine history and has been inhabited and weathered forgenerations, not simply the bland digital amusement park that manyopen world games seem to be these days.
Despite being developed by a German studio on shoestring budget mostly composed of donations, the English voice acting in Enderal is fantastic, and stacks up well when compared to any AAA title. Amateur voice actors are seamlessly interspersed with more well-known professional voice actors and I often had trouble telling them apart, with a few exceptions. Every now and then while walking the streets of Ark, Enderal's capitol, I'd walk past an NPC who would yell out jarringly loud, overacted lines that would pull me right out of the otherwise immersive environments. If anything, it's a testament to just how well crafted the rest of the game is, as a glitch or just a bit of out of place audio is all it can take to ruin the immersion to the extent that it does. The music is similarly excellent. It's not quite as heroic or dramatic as Skyrim's soundtrack, but more subdued and melancholic, complementing the atmosphere and story well.
Conclusion
It's a huge disservice to call Enderal a mod, but ultimately, it being a mod is the main thing holding Enderal back. The main drawbacks I had were the clunky combat system and overall bugginess, which are just part and parcel of being a total conversion mod for Skyrim. For those that can overlook these issues, there's world teeming with life and history ready to be explored, and a deep, atmospheric story far superior to that of any given AAA title.
Enderal: Forgotten Stories is available for free on Steam, but requires the base game, TheElder Scrolls V: Skyrim War thunder - german starter pack download. , to be installed before it can be played.
What is 'Enderal?'Enderal is a total conversion for TES V: Skyrim: a free game based on Skyrim´s engine. It features a new game world, complete with different regions and dungeons and its own lore and story. It offers an immersive open world, all for the player to explore, overhauled skill systems and gameplay mechanics and a dark, psychological storyline with multi-faceted and believable characters. The estimated playing time is about 30 to 100 hours, depending on the playstyle. You can check out some details and background info about Enderal and its predecessors (for example Nehrim for TES IV: Oblivion) here on our website.
Enderal is as buggy as you would expect from a Skyrim mod made by a dozen or so people. At several points the game randomly crashed to the desktop without any error. After finishing a conversation with an NPC they would regularly seem to forget about it and chase after me to try to initiate the same conversation again. Terrain would sometimes turn into quicksand, forcing me to reload if I couldn't find a way to wiggle out of it. Walking across items on the floor would sometimes catapult me across the room or simply crash the game. None of these issues were outright gamebreaking, but they did make the game a fairly frustrating experience at times. Given the scope of the game and the small development team, it's easy to see why there are so many bugs. Skyrim was also a smorgasbord of glitches in its day, and many of those glitches seemed to have just carried over into Enderal.
A Unique Campaign with New Gameplay MechanicsThe Last Roman Campaign Pack is an epic expansion for Total War: ATTILA, delivering a narrative, mission-based experience on a new, highly-detailed campaign map of the Mediterranean theatre.
Story
Enderal takes place several years after the events of Sureai's previous total conversion mod, Nehrim, but you don't need to have played that to get the most out of Enderal, as they take place in different locations, with a totally different story and cast of characters. Characters from Nehrim may show up and plot points will be referenced, but these are mostly just throwbacks and knowing about them isn't crucial to the story.
The plot begins in a familiar way; you are a stowaway on a boat bound for the continent of Enderal and after awakening from a disturbing nightmare, you are caught by the ship's crew and thrown overboard. Luckily you wake up on the shores of Enderal anyway and after a brief tutorial and meeting Jespar, one of the first major characters, you are set loose into the world. From there, following the first lot of quests given to you by Jespar will inform you of the strange occurrences in Enderal, like the zombies and skeletons roaming the wilderness, animals attacking travelers without provocation and a mysterious condition called the ‘red madness' wherein unsuspecting citizens will go mad overnight and attack the people around them. Eventually you learn that the Holy Order that rules Enderal believes these things to all be connected to an historical event that could cause global mass extinction. From there, it's a race against time to discover what exactly this enigmatic mass extinction event is by trawling the ruins of past civilisations believed to have been wiped out by it.
It's the sort of plot that smacks more of Sci-Fi than classic fantasy, but while it gave me more than a few flashbacks to Mass Effect, Enderal is a dark fantasy tale through and through and accordingly isn't afraid to up the ante at any given point. The story escalates rapidly when you start finishing main quests, and I can't help but feel that the pacing could have been a bit slower in the early quests, giving you more of a chance to work your way up to the events that happen later. Although, if you're the kind of player to spend all their time exploring the world and doing sidequests, this is a non-issue. In the later main story quests, twists are smart and plentiful, without falling into the trap of over-explaining certain aspects of the world. Instead, the story ends up quite firmly focused on it's strongest feature: the characters.
Theplot has a strong psychological component to it, and the neuroses ofeach character has a definite impact on how the story plays out. Thisis even true for the player character, despite being only able tocommunicate in dialogue options. The game subtly introduces apersonal narrative that explains the motivations and backstory of theprotagonist, providing some unexpected context for their actions inthe game world.
Overall the story of the main quest was the highlight of the game for me, and I also found that it was complemented by the highly detailed sidequests. The side quests don't have anything to do with the main quest, but manage to tie back into it in a purely thematic way. My favourite side quest involved infiltrating the ranks of the Rhalâta, the mysterious ascetic thugs that controlled the Undercity, a city literally underneath Ark. This quest was again mostly driven by the characters, and unfortunately played out badly for me, as my people pleasing tendencies backfired in an unexpected way during the epilogue of the quest. Turns out that simply picking the dialogue options that other characters approve of most isn't necessarily the best course of action. In this case, an innocuous dialogue option which I avoided because it lost points with the character may have been crucial to a better outcome for the quest line. This was quite surprising to me and I respect Enderal a lot more for it; games very rarely punish the player for going out of their way to score the most approval points with the other characters.
Visuals& Sound
Enderal is an incredibly photogenic game. The engine shows its age in the blocky quality of the assets and environments, but Enderal still manages to create some interesting and downright beautiful locales. Many of the more interesting areas have a history behind them, which is either explained through quests or the environment itself. The Whisperwood is a particularly dangerous example of such an area. The Whisperwood was the first location I set foot in that really made the realization that Enderal is more than just a mod sink in. It's a sprawling shadowy forest, with dead trees lit by ominous light and clumps of oversize glowing mushrooms littering the hills. The sinister environment was a good indication that my fresh player character might not be strong enough to deal with the monsters roaming the forest. Sure enough, the area was full of fairly tough monsters and the mushrooms gave me arcane sickness when I got too close to them. A few reloads later and I decided that I should probably wait until I was a higher level before sating my curiosity and exploring the area. The imaginative visual direction of some the locations make the game feel closer to Morrowind than the somewhat mundane landscapes of Skyrim.
Environmentsin Enderal are cluttered with detail, and I mean that in a good way.Plants are messily strewn everywhere in the surprisingly colourfulforests, caves and ruins are filled to the brim with cobwebs,furniture and objects of interest, and just walking through thefields will take you through bridges, valleys and past towers andruined castles. While I was keen to continue the gripping main storyquests, walking from place to place made it very difficult to resistthe temptation to explore, and I often ended up very far from thequest marker when I finally decided I should go back to trying tofinish the quest I originally set out to do. The busy environmentslends a strong feeling of authenticity to the setting, as though theworld has a genuine history and has been inhabited and weathered forgenerations, not simply the bland digital amusement park that manyopen world games seem to be these days.
Despite being developed by a German studio on shoestring budget mostly composed of donations, the English voice acting in Enderal is fantastic, and stacks up well when compared to any AAA title. Amateur voice actors are seamlessly interspersed with more well-known professional voice actors and I often had trouble telling them apart, with a few exceptions. Every now and then while walking the streets of Ark, Enderal's capitol, I'd walk past an NPC who would yell out jarringly loud, overacted lines that would pull me right out of the otherwise immersive environments. If anything, it's a testament to just how well crafted the rest of the game is, as a glitch or just a bit of out of place audio is all it can take to ruin the immersion to the extent that it does. The music is similarly excellent. It's not quite as heroic or dramatic as Skyrim's soundtrack, but more subdued and melancholic, complementing the atmosphere and story well.
Conclusion
It's a huge disservice to call Enderal a mod, but ultimately, it being a mod is the main thing holding Enderal back. The main drawbacks I had were the clunky combat system and overall bugginess, which are just part and parcel of being a total conversion mod for Skyrim. For those that can overlook these issues, there's world teeming with life and history ready to be explored, and a deep, atmospheric story far superior to that of any given AAA title.
Enderal: Forgotten Stories is available for free on Steam, but requires the base game, TheElder Scrolls V: Skyrim War thunder - german starter pack download. , to be installed before it can be played.
What is 'Enderal?'Enderal is a total conversion for TES V: Skyrim: a free game based on Skyrim´s engine. It features a new game world, complete with different regions and dungeons and its own lore and story. It offers an immersive open world, all for the player to explore, overhauled skill systems and gameplay mechanics and a dark, psychological storyline with multi-faceted and believable characters. The estimated playing time is about 30 to 100 hours, depending on the playstyle. You can check out some details and background info about Enderal and its predecessors (for example Nehrim for TES IV: Oblivion) here on our website.
When will Enderal be released?The base version of Enderal was already released in summer 2016 and in 2019 we released a improved version on Steam, with a lot of extra content. A detailed FAQ for the Steam Version can be found here.
Which version of Skyrim is required to playe Enderal?You will need a legal copy of Skyrim Classic Version or Skyrim Legendary Edition, however, it´s not required to own the official DLCs needed. Enderal does not work with Skyrim Special Edition which was released in 2016.
I´ve encountered an issue while installaing or in-game - What shall I do?Enderal Forgotten Stories Ost
Installation or update issues should be posted in the English Forums. Bugs that are encountered in-game can be reported either in the english forums or at our Bugtracker.
