Still Vigilant

I'm still playing that Vigilant mod for Skyrim. It's vast, it's like a whole other game. I'm amazed how many assets one modder made. The mod's plot is divided into acts, I'm now in the third which is a completely separate hellscape from the main game. It's Coldharbour, a realm that is part of the game lore. It's the realm of Molag Bal, the Elder Scrolls' version of Satan. Well, one of several as there's a pantheon of both good and evil gods. The creator of the Vigilant mod, Vicn, shows a lot of fidelity to the established lore of the series, though many reviewers say the Coldharbour section is strongly reminiscent of Dark Souls.

As I mentioned before, the modder is Japanese and I found myself thinking a lot of Final Fantasy games. It has a similar rambling plot with lots and lots of flashbacks. It occurs to me memory tends to be a more prominent topic in Japanese fantasy fiction than it tends to be in western fantasy. Much of Kimetsu no Yaiba is flashbacks, more than necessary to provide backstories and motivations for the characters. There's a clear pleasure taken in dwelling in memory for a long time. In Vigilant's Coldharbour, you encounter a series of damned knights whose memories of misdeeds you can enter and alter to absolve them. Though whether time is actually altered isn't clear.

The only area in which the modder seems not to have made everything himself is in animations. Many of the monsters reuse animations from vanilla Skyrim enemies--the giant scorpions are clearly using the animations of the vanilla game's giant spiders and so on. But otherwise, it's a herculean effort for one modder. There seems to be no end of the custom made armours and weapons I encounter, all of exceptional quality which is boosted by a texture upgrade mod from another modder. The dungeon maps are pretty good, too, though they tend to feature puzzles, which I tend not to like. Video game puzzles often seem more about trying to figure out the thought process of their creators than actually trying to overcome an obstacle in a realistic manner. For example, sometimes it takes some time for me to figure out that I'm suppose to find some special switch or key rather than simply going around a certain obstacle. I've found that by doing the latter I've gotten to areas of Coldharbour before I'm meant to, which makes things more confusing.

I'm basically using the same character I was using last time I wrote about this mod though technically she died at the end of an effectively creepy haunted house act. At the end of that plotline, you get the choice to either accept Molag Bal's assistance or martyr yourself. I chose martyrdom which sends you back to the Vigilant headquarters and opens the custom character menu--the implication being that you're now a different person following in the footsteps of your previous character. I thought this was a bold choice though the player really has to make an effort to go along with it because you still have all the same gear in your inventory, all the same quests. I decided to play along and left all my gear in a trunk and changed my character's face and name. Most of my followers are gone and I don't know if I'll ever get them back (except for two followers connected to vanilla quests, which highlights a flaw in the implementation of this idea).

If you want to see the mod in all its splendour without playing it yourself, there are several YouTubers with playthroughs. I recommend the one below though I haven't watched it all the way through myself because I don't want spoilers.

X Sonnet 1963

The rusty metal skins patrol the waste.
Undulled are blades they drag across the dust.
The skulls within now lack both smell and taste.
Above there looms a ghastly bovine bust.
A bull beholds a petty, pricking creep.
But one of many hordes who grind the stones.
They carry ore to fill the devil's keep.
Let none now envy gold that laces bones.
Arrayed about the wall are archers primed.
No respite halts their day and nightly watch.
A wayward mortal up the mountain climbed.
A withered sun becomes a bloody blotch.
The grinning guard await your errant sword.
The rotting ship departs with fools aboard.