Skyrim seems to enjoy perpetual popularity. Be it through remakes, new ports to different platforms, or a litany of transformative mods, gamers cannot get enough of it. Interestingly, the relationship between Bethesda's seminal RPG and mods is not unlike most others. Mods not only fixed bugs in the game, but also added amazing content. While some of these popular mods added swords and new magic, others had more lofty ambitions. One such mod is The Forgotten City, which did not enhance the gameplay of vanilla Skyrim. Instead, it created an entirely new adventure, one unlike any quest Bethesda made for its own game.
Initially developed by mod creator Nick James Pearce, The Forgotten City not only adds a new locale to the game, but a sprawling 3-8 hour questline as well. Unlike other more straightforward detection quests in Skyrim, this is a true murder mystery. The powers of deductive reasoning, puzzle solving, and a thirst for knowledge are essential for any intrepid detectives hoping to solve the mysteries of the Forgotten City. Thanks to the incredible function of Skyrim as a platform for mod creativity, players can now enjoy the city and its mysteries as a separate fully fledged game. As a standalone title, The Forgotten City shows some of the incredible things Bethesda's Creation engine can accomplish.
What Exactly Is The Forgotten City?
No longer a simple mod, The Forgotten City is now its own standalone game. Now set in Ancient Rome, the game still incorporates the open world mechanics of Skyrim. The original mod racked up an incredible 3 million downloads, and even some awards. In particular, the mod got an Australian Writer's Guild award for its incredible storytelling. Since this mod received so much acclaim, the developer, Dear Village studio, started work on the title as its own product. Due to the pandemic, the game's release date changed multiple times, shifting from Winter 2020 to Spring 2021 and finally to Summer 2021.
The mod (and corresponding standalone game) uses a mechanic that will be familiar to any fans of Groundhog Day. In a similar fashion to games like 12 Minutes and Majora's Mask, the core gameplay conceit is a time loop. As a traveler from modern times, players appear in the ancient Roman metropolis, with no idea how or why they are there. With members of the city dying around them due to the inscrutable "Golden Rule" of the city, players must figure out what is going on and why the loop keeps happening.
Solving these mysteries is possible through various means. Players can charm, deduce, sneak, or trick their way around the game's puzzles. The central gameplay mechanic of the time loop can also be manipulated to change the game state and delve deeper into the narrative. It is this plurality of gameplay styles that made it so compelling the 3 million mod users that downloaded it. Further to that, it is why it can stand on its own as a game, and make it exactly what The Elder Scrolls is missing.
What Do Mods Like The Forgotten City Add To Skyrim?
When a player finishes all of the quests Skyrim has to offer, which is no easy feat, mods often come to fill the content gap. It is an incredible feat for Skyrim to have maintained its massive player-base since 2011, but Mods play a huge part in this longevity. So, Skyrim and its mod community have an almost symbiotic relationship: the mods help keep the game alive, but the game is so good that it inspired so many mods in the first place. For many independent developers, modding is where they cut their teeth.
The reason that the game's fans love its mods is due to the incredible content some of them bring. Some creators recreate games like Morrowind in Skyrim, and others add brand new stories to the game. After the game's main content wraps up, there are "Radiant Quests" available in the vanilla version. These perpetual quests, however, do not stack up to the complexity of many of the quests in the game's mods. When a mod like The Forgotten City comes around, it adds hours of replayable content to a title that so many gamers already love. As a mod, it blends the familiar with the different, the old and the new. Ironically, the Groundhog Day style gameplay loop in The Forgotten City does a very similar thing.
What Are The Problems Facing Bethesda Games?
With nearly a decade between installments, the hype for The Elder Scroll 6 is certainly potent. Many are curious how Bethesda can make a sequel that lives up to Skyrim. It is, after all, one of the most popular games in gaming today. Another problem arises from taking time to develop the Skyrim sequel; excitement builds even further, as do the associated expectations. Of course, this not to say that the game should be released quicker than that, as it takes a long time to develop the kind of sprawling RPG the studio is known for.
This cycle of hype and initial disappointment has haunted the studio since Skyrim's release. It happened to Fallout 4's initial buggy release, and The Elder Scrolls Online also launched to middling reception. The bugs in Bethesda games are infamous. Unfortunately, they also lead to especially harsh critique of the studio due to the heightened anticipation that long waiting times generate.
How Could A Game Like Forgotten City Help Bethesda?
The Forgotten City, when compared to the game it was first built it, is relatively tiny in scale. While the final release might be its own fully open-world city with reactive plot lines, it still pales in comparison to the thousands of hours some players invest into Skyrim. That is exactly why Bethesda needs to consider producing games like it. What the popularity of the original mod proves is that potentially millions of gamers would happily play through a murder mystery set in the Elder Scrolls universe. While diversifying the tone of the games would definitely breathe some fresh air into the franchise, that is not the only reason it would work well.
Unlike other Bethesda RPG projects, games like The Forgotten City are short, tight, expertly-authored pieces of narrative. The Forgotten City mod was initially developed by one person using Skyrim assets. If Bethesda was creating smaller games like this, it would take it a fraction of the time it would take at an indie creator. This could have two effects. First, it would take some of the pressure off of mainline games that have all the weight of near-decade waits between installments. Secondly, it would also give the development more opportunities to practice mystery-based quest development. While Skyrim does have some great quests, well-developed multifaceted mysteries could vastly improve the variety of adventures in future games.
The Forgotten City is scheduled to release in Summer 2021.