Game design lessons from Enderal (Skyrim total conversion)
Enderal is an uneven masterpiece with a lot of valuable lessons.
Love of writing
Enderal understands a core tenet of open-world games: expansive worldbuilding.
Enderal's lore is tremendous, in scope, complexity and sheer exploratory value. The narrative design may struggle with how much information it delivers, but the issue is relaxed by making some lore questions optional.
The main storyline lore can be overwhelming when characters deliver a mandatory batch of information before being allowed to progress.
Enderal's themes tend to be more mature than those found in TES games. A feature which wouldn't count for much, if not for the near-perfect writing.
Enderal's dialogue is the standard mix of Medieval-inspired language sifted through modern English. It sometimes tries to be too hip and modern, but often delivers some of the most poetic and philosophical dialogue in a game.
Love of exploration
The joy of exploring Enderal is unbounded. The world is crafted with love, attention to detail and avoiding repetition.
To be fair, Enderal's world may not seem special when compared to The Elder Scrolls games. Except Enderal banks on quality and a focused diversity of biomes. TES games insist on quantity, often ending in the trap of repetitive dungeons.
Enderal is built on quality over quantity.
Even so, its world is expansive, both as play-space and as a living cosmos sustained by worldbuilding. The land is interesting to explore and enticing to live in.
If anything, I wish Enderal would have lasted for many more adventures. Buying a house in Enderal is less justified for immersion, but I wish I would feel otherwise, for the story to last for much longer and not fall so quickly into the urgency cliche.
Love for storytelling
Narrative design-wise, Enderal should have opted for more choice in dealing with its quest and apocalypse.
The linearity may be justified for some storylines, but works against the freedom needed in an RPG. Some quests make the mistake of keeping the protagonist onto a set path, even while having an underdeveloped Rhetoric skill.
Enderal wraps the main story into a somewhat depressing adventure of impending apocalypse and determinism. The modern or post-modern approach to the cliche of the chosen one having to defend the world from doom is predictable.
The protagonist is partly a cliche, a chosen one meant for a specific purpose within the apocalyptic story.
Tis no wonder of how the ending can be bittersweet at best and depressing at worst. But the story is treated with great writing and a skillful deconstruction of the aforementioned cliches.
How to improve Enderal
When Playing Enderal, I remind myself the temptation to be disappointed with something may be proportional to how much I love it.
It's easy to be disappointed in Enderal, only because of how ambitious and well-crafted it is, how well it carries passion on its sleeve.
By being stellar in certain areas, I expect the journey to be amazing at every step. When it was not, I tried to understand why it felt underwhelming.
Enderal is an unrefined masterpiece, a relentless example of passion in any medium.
Instead of enumerating all the aspects I found disappointing, I'd rather look forward and consider the ways in which Enderal may be improved.
1. Redesign the long introduction
- Enderal is impressive, yet it begins with a cardinal mistake: the introduction sequence is protracted, it easily takes one hour, mostly forcing the player on a narrative roller-coaster.
- Like some of its characters, I felt ready to give up, wanting to be free of narrative expectations and be allowed to explore the world.
- Long introductions might make sense for narrative purposes. Narrative design is still game design and should combine its story with fun and functionality.
- A long introduction where the player can only move along a set path for an hour is weak game design for an RPG.
- Reduce the introduction by at least half. Let us gain freedom of exploration much earlier. Edit out the intro combat encounters to half or less. Make most of the conversation with Jespar optional.
2. Integrate a combat mod
Enderal does combat somewhat better than Skyrim thanks to a more balanced approach to difficulty.
The movement remains stiff, sometimes more limited than Skyrim, which had a simple Dash ability in the form of a shout.
To make Enderal's combat more engaging and less time-consuming, take inspiration from modern action games:
- Add a dash or dodge ability for better movement and agility, regardless of class.
- Make it available from the start, with stamina consumption.
- Enderal contains a basic roll, but it can take a while to obtain it, only available while sneaking. Its combat use is heavily diminished.
- Introduce enemies that can move or teleport fast around the player, instantly evading some attacks.
- Reduce enemy damage sponging and use more elemental resistances where it makes sense.
- Increase overall combat speed.
3. Make the Rhetoric skill useful from beginning to end
Enderal contains a speech and personality skill in the form of Rhetoric (not Rhetorics), but its usefulness is uneven, often being an afterthought.
More so, many quests lack meaningful choice on the player's part, and will sometimes box the hero onto a set path. This takes away from the choice of playing a diplomat or a streetwise scoundrel, something that would be expected from a game praised as a paragon of RPGs.
Let the hero engage more quests through dialogue alone, or make Rhetoric an integral part of most conversations. The skill has its use in the uneven level-up system, but it can be easily ignored in favor of much more useful skills.
Rhetoric wants to be useful as a systemic mechanic, because it contributes more to improving everything else.
But systemic design must support hand-crafted content, so Rhetoric should be used in conversation for various options - persuasion, lying, intimidation, romance etc.
While at it, balance diegetic sounds. Some dialogue is hard to hear when inside a tavern or near a cursed waterfall. Realism and naturalism are great, but not when I cannot hear what someone is saying.
4. Integrate the perk menu in the user interface
Enderal's perk system achieves what it intends, but its design is frustrating. Every single time the hero levels up, he or she must enter a different game-space and engage with one of the weakest aspects of gaming: pixel-hunting.
Granted, choosing a perk is easier when using the crosshair, but for those of us who prefer a clear screen, having to hunt for specific points in the perk "menu" is unpleasant.
Even with the crosshair visible, the mechanic remains a time-consuming chore. Skyrim did something similar, no less frustrating.
To fix this, move the entire perk menu inside the 2D interface. Skip the pixel-hunting and the frustrating walking around between classes, and let us see the skill trees at a glance.
The perk game-space looks beautiful indeed, and a lot of work must have been done to make it so, but its implementation is an exercise in frustration. Beauty should be supported by user experience.
5. Make skill progression more intuitive
Enderal's level-up and skill progression mechanics do not make much sense. I assume the system was chosen in order to mimic realism, though it fails on all accounts - realism, naturalism, gameplay.
As a passionate reader, I appreciate the intent behind the design - encourage the hero to devour books. Perhaps literally, because the books somehow disappear into nothingness after we read them.
This might be a commentary on how books become useless after we open them, which I don't exactly appreciate.
Gameplay-wise, the mechanic is an example of failure in system design - the player experience is ignored in favor of making a point about books and balancing out their availability.
If needed, the system can be partially maintained. Books can be used to provide extra skill and perk points, while experience should also be gained by simply using your skills.
The hero should not have to roam around constantly for what are virtually the exact same books every time he or she wants to assign skill points.
Skyrim did this better. Improve gameplay and reduce frustration by combining the Elder Scrolls model with the one in Enderal.
6. Do another writing and translation pass
Some of Enderal's writing is stellar, and I say this with all my heart. It was often a pleasure to listen to characters debate various ideas, memories and philosophies, even when I did not have much choice in responding.
But the interface suffers from an incomplete translation pass, and some dialogue seems to have been written by a more novice writer. Or perhaps it's dealing with the same translation issue.
One egregious instance is when a character, of the Sun Temple, keeps repeating the f-word, followed by "sissy". It's not clear what the intent behind this line is, apart from edginess and "realism", but it sounds like something not written by the game's main writer.
Most of Enderal's dialogue is well above that of Skyrim - and above many commercial games - in both quality and themes.
A useful rule of writing is this: every time we feel inclined to include swear words and insults we must double check if they make sense, if they contribute to characterization. Should their only purpose be to make the dialogue edgy, it's time to edit them out.
7. Enderal is an uneven masterpiece
After wandering Enderal, I realized I consider it something that I rarely attribute to video games - Enderal is a work of art. Discussing the issue of authorial intent versus player freedom is beyond the scope of this text.
Making abstraction of that, I realized that while playing a video game I was also taking part in a contemplative exercise on faith, choice, determinism.
I was disappointed with Enderal, but at the same time I wanted it to go on. I wanted to see more of its world, to take part in more of its stories, to have more choice in dealing with its people.
On the flipside, Skyrim has an absurd amount of content, but too much of it feels shallow and must be carefully avoided to enjoy the stories built on quality over quantity.
Enderal is partly disappointing because of how ambitious it is. Because of how much it accomplishes, how it made me want to discover more of it, to live in that world in a way that most games do not achieve.
Ultimately, the one thing that elevates Enderal is passion. Passion for storytelling, for writing, for complex themes and characters.
Passion in video games is often hit and miss. Enderal wears passion on its sleeve. Regardless of faulty design decisions, it is impossible not to be impressed with how much it achieves, how pure it feels in its authorial intent.
Passion cannot be faked, and game design can be improved. Nehrim was also a work of passion.
Even better, Enderal's sequel, direct or spiritual, will have the advantage of learning from past mistakes while carrying the torch of passion forward.
Share your knowledge in the comments.