Things and stuff and things.

If you’ve spent any time in the Stardock community, you know that we love mods here. Between Galactic Civilizations III, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, Star Control: Origins, and our other titles, there are thousands of available mods out there from an abundance of talented creators.

A lot of us here play with mods not only on the studio’s games, but also games we’re playing from other studios. I know that one of the members of GalCiv’s creative teams has been working on a Fallout mod on and off for years and plays with several installed himself. And the majority of us are definitely no strangers to Skyrim mods (My Little Pony dragons, anyone?).

So let’s talk about a mod I found circulating in games news last week for a little game called Dark Souls III. I played this game for about 4 hours - and about 3 of those hours were spent in what felt like a time loop, because the entirety of my gameplay was facing the first boss, dying, respawning, and doing it again.

For three hours.

Suffice to say, I am not really much of a Dark Souls player. But, I do know an entertaining mod when I see one, and this mode from Forsakensilver that replaces all crossbows in the game with modern weapons is definitely one of them. For example, the heavy crossbow is modded to become an AK47, while the light crossbow becomes a Vector. The weapons also come with full sound and visual effects.

The modder was also able to replicate real-world fire selection. Two-handing a weapon puts it in full automatic, while holding it in one hand switches it to semi-automatic. Forsakensilver says that this mod should be compatible with others - if you’d like to check it out for yourself, you can find the mod here.

Maybe if I’d been able to shoot my way out of trouble, I would have passed the first boss quickly and actually continued playing. I suppose that spoils the “fun” that is supposed to be the challenge of a Dark Souls game. Again, not for me, but more power to those who enjoy being tortured by a video game!

Personally, when I mod a game, I tend to choose things that don’t alter the experience drastically, especially visually, unless I’m on a second playthrough. Like one of my examples above, the Skyrim ponies mod is hilarious, but takes away from the intensity of the game and isn’t the way I’d like to experience my gameplay the first time through.

What games do you mod and what kind of mods do you like playing with?


Comments
on Jul 16, 2020

I've created mods for GC3, and regularly play the game with other's mods as well as my own.  I use mods on Morrowind and Oblivion to fix bugs, and I use hundreds of mods on Skyrim.  Of course it's pretty much required to use mods on Bethesda games since they seem to leave bug-fixing to the modders.

on Jul 20, 2020

Publius of NV

I've created mods for GC3, and regularly play the game with other's mods as well as my own.  I use mods on Morrowind and Oblivion to fix bugs, and I use hundreds of mods on Skyrim.  Of course it's pretty much required to use mods on Bethesda games since they seem to leave bug-fixing to the modders.

 

I still haven't forgiven Bethesda for flaws in their saving system for Skyrim on PS3. My friend started a new game just to explore it and try it out, and although he made his own file and everything, it saved over my 145 hour save file. I still get a little tight in the chest when I think about it, lol.