The final update came for the huge (and extremely impressive) free Skyrim Enderal total conversion mod yesterday. It is a small patch, but it causes a little bit that the developers are working on a new commercial project. They don’t give any hints as to what it might be, but considering the years that have passed with Enderal and also with the Oblivion Nehrim mod, it’s hard not to assume / expect it to be some fantasy RPG. Fingers crossed?
Enderal tells a whole new story in a whole new world, using Skyrim as technoscaffolding for a game that is familiar, but different. Richard Cobbett noted in our Enderal analysis: “A lot of your DNA comes from games like Gothic and The Witcher, and most systems are altered in some way.” And it is huge, even though it has its own expansion. Three and a half years after its initial release, it is now done.
“This patch will be the last one in Enderal, because we no longer have the free time we had to continue applying the patch!” SureAI developers said in Sunday’s announcement (seen by the PCG). “It also means that we will not be creating a port for Skyrim Special Edition.”
This second part is a shame. It would be nice to have the game in the slightly more sophisticated version of Bethesda, both for its small technical improvements and for, you know, people who don’t have the non-special version. But they have good reason to be busy.
“SureAI is currently working on a new commercial project that will be announced this year,” they joked. The SureAI website lists a “Soon TM” on its games page.
That’s it. That’s all they say. No suggestions as to the genre. But given that they have been making their own fantasy RPG series for over a decade, and even a trilogy of Enderal books coming in, I presume it is along similar lines. Unless they are so fed up with fantasy now that escapist fantasy would be a first-person shooter about American soldiers conducting high-caliber diplomacy in a fictional post-Soviet state. But probably not, right?
You can download Enderal for Skyrim from Steam. Nehrim is also on Steam for Oblivion.
Speaking of Elder Scrolls mods spawning commercial games, this must be the year we finally see the chic remake of The Forgotten City, the cool Skyrim mod about a city stuck in a strange time loop. After a long delay, the launch is scheduled for this spring. Our Katharine talked to one of the developers in 2019, who always wanted to say it was last year, but it definitely wasn’t.