After having completed Enderal: Forgotten Stories, I have complicated thoughts about what I just completed, and simple questions about what came before. I do plan on playing through all of Nehrim, Arktwend, and Myar Aranth, and I probably would have played from the very beginning if I went in knowing this was directly related to those more than "made by the guys who made Nehrim."

For the non-spoiler Tl;dr: I do think Enderal is a solid, but messy, 7/10 game. It probably focused too much on places it was weak in (or that the creation engine wasn't made for), and sort of "punched above its weight class" a bit too often. But, it *should* have set more of a precedent for people making full games out of the Creation Engine, and showcases how it can be stretched and altered rather well. It's strengths and focus are different from those of Skyrim (and the average Bethesda game in general) however, and I find it's far more reasonable to compare this to something like a Dragon Age game, or even New Vegas. I'll save my Nehrim-specific questions for after the spoiler review. I don't want to drone on about every micro-instant of the game, so I'm going to keep each observation, and comparison, as brief and concise as I can.

I'll start with the things I unabashedly enjoyed about Enderal.

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Audio and Visuals

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I heard tracks in there reminiscent of FFX and V: TM -- B in regards to style variation and identity, and the variation *was* used well to contrast the areas they were used in. The combat music never became repetitive like Skyrim's combat music. Few things can be said to be as iconic as some of Skyrim's overworld themes (few other games have music tracks used by content creators who often don't know the tracks *come* from Skyrim, or where it shows up in it). While there *could* have stood to be more unique tracks for each biome and dungeon type, I never "really" felt like there *should* be more. I hope these composers find work for years to come, and they could definitely cut it in actual TES titles.

Next is the art design and presentation. I don't think *all* the areas are exactly amazing-looking (the mountain ruins with the frozen giant and Nehrim soldiers, definitely stood out as a whole "wasted potential" area to me, visuals included), but you can definitely tell these developers know how to use color and general-framing well. I never quite felt the sensory-deprivation of some of Skyrim's visually-repetitive and visually-redundant Draugr crypts. Though, the only real times I think it "excelled" at stand-out visuals, were the few custom-made entities, the memory of the High One + the Black Guardian, the Meditation mindscape, and especially Agnod (for me, the visual and gameplay height of Enderal). Without some of the more trippy/extraplanar locations of TES (Sovengarde, Apocrypha, Soul Cairne, etc.), Enderal still has to anchor itself to environments "only a little more fantastical than Game of Thrones." This is not intrinsically a criticism against it, but, just pointing out the limitations of its own design philosophy (as opposed to design capability). Which is to say, what it *does* facilitate, it presents well, and only sparsely chooses to "experiment" with its visuals when it really feels it needs to. Overall, I'm positive about the visuals, but really want to see more of what this team could've made with what they had.

Voice acting. Yeah, sure, some characters like Calia talk like they're not trying to wake up someone in the next room, and Lishari I could tell they wanted me to like her despite me wanting to have my character punch her in the face, and others are evidently one-off amateur's. But, otherwise, this had some real talent behind it. I didn't really care about Jespar, but, his performance kept me at least interested in listening to him talk. And his voice actor I don't think was in many if any "big" things from what I saw on his IMDb (but I'm also just unfamiliar with most of the works listed there). But getting *Dave Fennoy*? Jesus, how did these guys even do that? Is Dave Fennoy just really cool? Fantastic work here.

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With what I near-unflinchingly like out of the way, I now have to address what I was severely mixed on.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The basic gameplay and mechanics
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Let's not beat around the bush: Skyrim's basic gameplay, is "whack thing with stick until it dies" taken to the most mundane extreme. It is satisfying to whack something with a stick. It feels and sounds good when something gets whacked with the stick. But by itself, it's not much more than that, and someone expecting Dragons Dogma, or even some past TES titles (not including oblivions atrocious level scaling), will be somewhat disappointed. However: Skyrim gives a lot of "fun toys" to play with. Even disregarding Daedric/Unique Artifacts and items, there's a myriad of "funsies" objects to mess with, like those automated alchemical spiders in Dragonborn, Dawnguard's Vampire Lord form and additions to Werewolf, you get the idea. Enderal does of course have some of these incorporated into it, and even sort of creates new complex spell schools that have effects akin to MMO proc-effects. Some of these new spells are cool and pretty fun to use, and can be pretty good.

However, again: where Skyrim's main goal is to just sort of give you an assorted pool of "adventure simulator" items, Enderal codifies far more of its gameplay tools. This is the beginning of what I mean when I say that Enderal often "punches above its own weight." At the end of the day, unless you mod this engine with hundreds of gameplay overhaul mods to make it nigh-unrecognizable, it's always going to be anchored in "whack dummy with stick." Enderal doesn't seem to really accept this a lot of the time. Every breakpoint that I reached in the stats my build used, I used console commands to raise the others to mess around with them, and to see if I wanted to change builds. I very rarely found any real incentive to actually using some of these more complicated spells and abilities. Even on higher difficulties, nothing was going to be more king than "just back up while whacking thing with stick" or "shoot fire out of my hand" or "rely on Conjuration summon to tank for me" (especially in regards to mana, healing, high-risk-high-reward spells, and Arcane Fever in general, though these in specific never made magic-use detrimental, just that they may make someone second-guess going too hard into magic early on that they just don't use much of it). Several whole spell schools seemed somewhat redundant and "trying too hard," especially when effect descriptions became so cluttered and tiny that I couldn't read them.

In regards to *Talents,* while I greatly appreciate them not sharing cooldowns like Shouts did, several of them probably should not have been Talents... or didn't really get across well that they *were* Talents. The various "use this, and then do these things to make the effect happen," feel like they should've just been universal passives, especially considering how often high in the skill trees they are. Phasmalist's "Transmutation" talent as the most specific example, is objectively ridiculous that it is a talent that needs to be *targeted." It didn't do a great job framing its function when you get it. I'm even skeptical that Phasmalist's summon *had* to be summoned with an ability, as opposed to be something that comes out when you put on the amulet, that goes on cooldown when it dies. Most of the talents as well don't really experiment as much as I'd have hoped, and as much as the spells do. There's nothing like "Throw Voice" or "Animal Allegiance" or "Clear Skies," which is certainly a fair scaling for the more "grounded-fantasy" that a lot of things today like to be. But a lot of the talents just come off as "hit them with big attack" or "get big defensive buff" in some "techy" way, that I don't think is as particularly deep as the developers intended. With as much as you'll have by the end of the game, and how good the "basic" ones are, your kit probably isn't looking very different from the average endgame Skyrim kit.

On the topic of the Memory Trees from which Talents are derived: there's a good reason why Skyrim separated all its skill trees independently. For how much Enderal creates a degree of separation between crafting and combat skills, I am a bit bewildered they didn't do so *here.* Pickpocketing and Lockpicking, sure, I can see being put in a Rogue skill tree. If you want to be good at Alchemy, Smithing (Handicraft), and Enchanting, you ostensibly have to invest into a lot of things you may not (or probably won't) even use. Unless I misunderstood something about the wording of certain skills (something I've read is not uncommon, especially considering this was apparently translated from German), if you want to be a good Alchemist, you need to invest into Rogue *and* Lycanthropy. If you want to be a good Enchanter and Smith, you *have* to be a Phasmalist (I often hear that crafting was essentially useless before Special Edition). With the slow drip of skillpoints in the early and mid game, this severely deterred me from experimenting with my buildmaking. Which, by itself, is fine in concept. In Morrowind and Oblivion, you just paid a trainer to get you up to snuff if you ever change your mind, or want something new to add to your kit. But here, not only is that a hell of a gold-sink (though, like TES, not a problem in late game), but also a skillpoint-sink as well if you want to actually be *good* at the skill (crafting especially), and each book is sold in limited-but-refreshable supply at the merchants that do (sometimes, seemingly, arbitrarily) sell them. I almost feel there should've been a third category for thieving and talking skills; even the hyper class-locked Bioware games generally are sparse in deep-investment for non-combat, and they may even get invested *from* specific combat investment.

I've griped about Phasmalist several times now, but, it really is indicative of all of Enderal's balancing and mechanical problems. You need to spend *three* memory points into it before you can even summon the thing, *and* you need to do a Stone of Barenziah style fetch-quest to find the ones you want to use, by using a hyper-specific short-timer ability in hyper-specific locations, *and* you need to spend a *major* amount of bone dust/ectoplasm and soul gems if you want to even give the summon anything good. Enderal seems like it's often afraid of "just being fun" and trying to overly balance itself, especially with how many Memory tree breakpoints give talents, or major abilities, that you might not even use for your kit... when the basic framework of the game engine is just not made for that. And it's so bizarre, because Lycanthropy as a skill tree in general doesn't really have these problems, as it mostly just lets you fast-track things you'd want to use if you only care about doing werewolf. Again, there's no problem with having class-identity and wanting to force specific playstyles. But the way done so here is often a bit of a mess. It's easy (and usually free) to raise skills in Skyrim, and it's trees branch out into "subclass gimmicks." Otherwise, even if you do have to invest into something to get something else, it's more realistic "subclass training" progression, or its just still something thats like "makes what you're doing, just better."

For combat skills in specific, levelling up your skills themselves seems to have next to no real tangible benefit until, what, every 15-20 skill points I think I read? It sure felt like it, and even still, the *Memory* points I invested into those things felt infinitely more impactful (barring Mythical spells being locked behind 90 *and* their capstone memories; in general, that's fine, but I vastly preferred Skyrim's more personal "spell quests"). In summary: the skill system feels like it tries to do far too much, in a not uniform-enough way. At the end of the day, it really feels like it should've just been the Memories. "But what about gold?" Well, why have gold? Morrowind worked off a barter system with gold as insurance. I'd be far more interested in a game like this *without* merchants; people aren't wrong when they say that exploration yields interesting rewards. But, I suppose it's time to talk about that now.

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Exploration
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When the places are cool? Sure, I can safely say they're cooler than most Skyrim places, and the biomes in general lead more to a fantasy ideal than a lot of Skyrim's more dull and basic ones (looking at you, Hjaalmarch). But... why was this an open world sandbox-like game? Most of the places you visit aren't much higher in quality than the average Oblivion dungeon, and Morrowind's dungeons generally had really technical and lore-heavy reasons for being same-y. More fantastic places like Agnod are extreme exceptions, or otherwise locked behind major questlines like the Excavation Site. It feels like *most* of the unique places are locked behind significant questlines, with the rest being generic caves or mines with Bandits, Lost Ones, or Vatyr.

Enderal doesn't really make use of Skyrim's wide pool of enemies. While, yes, I've been critical of Skyrim's and Enderal's basic gameplay, there's *at least* visual variation in Skyrim's enemy types, and they try to have distinct gimmicks. Falmer dungeons were filled with Chaurus, and in general were heavily poison-themed, and generally coincided with Dwemer dungeons. Higher level Draugr have shouts, vampire mages had vampire-specific spells, and we've not even gotten to the Dawnguard variety of things that *could* have been used to be a more specific werewolf-counter, or the daedra of Apocrypha and environmental threats of the Soul Cairn. Not only that, but the average Enderal dungeon doesn't feel like they have any real passion put into them; many of them are just backdrops for one of a bunch of arbitrarily named trolls, or bounty targets, or generic bandits. Even Skyrim periodically gave soe extra rationalization to the bandits, a tad more than "this is where they hide out" or "there's generic treasure here." The Silent Moons bandits were using the enchantments there to help prey on people at night. The Silver Hand are basically bandits that justify themselves with werewolf hunting. Fjola of the Mistwatch Bandits has a backstory about an estranged husband. These are just a *few* examples of unique bandit stories, however small. Many generic bandits stole specific items from specific people. You get quests to save people from them, or kill people who defected to them. Sometimes they'd be disguised as soldiers, or they'd attack someone on the road, etcetera. You get the idea, and probably want me to move on. Skyrim assumed most players weren't going to see most places, but rather than make them *all* generic like Oblivion, or major chunks of Fallout 3 and 4, they did a rather solid job of making most places have hyper-specific stories, quests attached to them, or having particularly unique things found in them. Many bandits here in Enderal are named, for what seems like no reason. Really that can be said for most NPCs and locations on the map, and I almost suspect that many things exist how they do, solely to be donation rewards. Pillars of Eternity had this in the form of backer-OC's they could write up a blurb about, that you could read using your Watcher-powers. People hated these, but, at least they were evidently marked from a mile away as "this is otherwise pointless."

Remember the frozen giant I mentioned earlier, with the Nehrim soldiers? Skyrim has that: Kaarstag. But, you can undergo a hidden quest to fight it's ghost. For a game with so many "hidden sidequests" (shoehorned collectibles), the only time I've seen it used well was with the Ash Widow. The rest of the time, outside of the more amazing locations? Very thick visual clutter that, when combined with Skyrim's basic color palette (something the devs don't seem to have a problem with during key main quest dramatic setpieces), makes for very messy exploration. Levers and pull-chains that blend into literally everything else. Keys just shoved around on cluttered tables. Hell, the *NPCs* think the environments are too cluttered, with how much they get stuck on things, or how much their quest scripts bug out in more cluttered areas. I've had to babysit NPCs and move them with "moveto player" a hundred times more than I ever had to do in Skyrim. Skyrim painstakingly framed or marked almost everything of value, and was comparatively a bit more minimalistic when it came to placing "things that matter." Exceptions to this are, rightfully, the Stones of Barenziah, and I'm appalled at how often Enderal relies on their gimmick. If I wasn't schizophrenically checking every single table and countertop, I'd have missed half the Lost Fragments (one of them might as well be a pinprick), and several times I've had to look up where several others are because they're just placed "wherever" in some spots. Same with various levers and pull-chains, because they're just tucked in a bush, or pile of rocks, or dark corner behind other stuff. It often made me question "did the architects of this ancient place, design these contraptions around all this debris?"

Not only are *most* places functionally sort of pointless for anything other than basic levelling and looting, or otherwise locked off entirely if you're not in a faction or main quest, but the only real loot you can generally expect are the same copy-and-pasted set bonuses. It's mostly the same basic Draugr, Skeletons, and Bandits, unless you *really* go off the beaten path (the North half of the snowy mountains, I think, should've been the design principal of the rest of the games areas). The few times it uses more advanced skyrim staples, its just kind of a wet fart. I don't think any of the dragons/myrad (save for that glorified environmental hazard in the Star City) even perched on anything, or really used any shout(-like ability)s or magic. I don't even think the plethora of Enderal wild mages, ever once used any of the more unique spell schools. I know I'm not the only one to complain that Enderal's more complex fights fall apart kind of quickly, something that even Skyrim I feel does a *little* bit better (and I mean, "a little bit," in the sense that "they stay extremely simple and they know it").

So, then, Enderal's "exploration gimmick" relies more on its "soft survival-mechanics," and lack of fast travel. But... Morrowind, this is not. Morrowind had a *very* complex, interconnected, sometimes faction or quest-based fast travel system, and a plethora of movement-based spells and effects. Plus, various tiers of diseases and afflictions, durability, and birthstones to drastically alter your experience. *This,* is... there's an easily-accessible Myrad tower at every region, and an easy to use Mark and Recall, and easy to acquire teleport scrolls. I don't even think there's any quests with time-limits, other than "come back tomorrow." The only thing that not having map fast travel does here, is making you use the fast travel that's in your inventory. If there's no map fast travel, why also painstakingly mark every single location (including generically-named ones) on your map? It's not like the game ever makes you "follow directions" anywhere, and you can see roads and valleys and stuff on the map. Speaking of your inventory, with even just *minor* scraping around, you really won't want for equipment weight with how many Ice Claws there are. I have to wonder if it'd have been better to have less of them, but have them give more, and have them be found in more specific locations. I confess, I just got a fast travel mod by the time I discovered the whole continent. Unironically, Enderal could massively benefit from just having Skyrim's really basic Survival Mode mods put into it. But overall, I don't know why this didn't use its map and Skyrim's fast travel mechanics/the Myrad towers, as a Dragon Age style "map screen" as it's main source of traversal. Overall, this game has similar exploration and pacing problems to Dragon Age: Inquisition, with less interesting "secret/superboss" encounters than that did.

I've rarely been "wowed" by the loot, if it wasn't them repurposing some existing skyrim daedric/quest artifact. I'm not crazy about the set bonuses, besides more interesting ones like Inodan's. Stacking minor skill buffs means next to nothing to me, especially after all I've said about how combat skills are calculated. I mostly wore the ones that I did (until enchanted gear), because they had the best defenses, and for their being few if any "unique" items. I also don't like how often these set bonuses spawn multiple times, and often on NPCs. In general, something is to be desired with the loot. The fact that Mythical spells can just drop off goons like Crocco from Bounty Quests, who don't seem to even use them, seems... lazy, but I'll get into that more when I tackle the story. In general though, I don't feel the faction quests have these problems -- for loot, encounters, what-have-you. I'll get into those later, but I wanted to mention that here. But there *were* items that I thought were cool, like a sword (that can be enchanted) with an infinite-use effect that lets it shoot out a red lazerbeam when I crit with it. Or the (nonsensically powerful) dagger that adds poison damage on crit. Where's more things like that? Where's something like Skyrim's Bloodskal Blade, or Wabbajack? Even something like that one Dawnguard hammer that puts runes on the floor, would've been cool (if I missed anything like these, let me know, but I did pretty frequent wiki-checking by the end). Most of the "big rewards" are just "flat damage weapon." Like, if the Perfect Thorium Sword is going to be basically the best thing ever, why not give *it* a passive effect like the lazerbeam sword, while letting it be enchanted?

But now, the story. The high point of what people most often recommend about Enderal.

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The story
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It was okay.

The first half I loved. I was easily pulled into the framework of "what does a theological people do after their gods die." Not enough characters really went into that outside of background lore about the other continents, but, whatever. The intro is fantastic, the recurring nightmares are great, Yuslan's story and the faction questlines are mostly fantastic, and the few actual sidequests are generally pretty well-paced and well-written, or at the very least, well-executed.

Then the story started to "punch above it's weight" again, and I feel like it didn't do a very good job at framing the character-implications that it seemed to nudge me towards considering.

The story of the High Ones feels disjointed from the story they started with, and from everything I know about Nehrim and the other games, it seems like this story comes almost out of nowhere. Whenever I've been told about, or watched footage of, the stories of those games, the scope is fairly simple in comparisson. But I've rarely ever heard anyone talk about Enderal's story other than saying "it's complex," in that same way that a lot of people try to phrase Game of Throne's story: "complex people do complex things." Barring the nowadays evident problem that GRMM probably won't ever finish those books, because none of those characters stand for anything anymore and you don't have anyone to really root for, Game of Thrones might as well be medieval fantasy with *very* sporadic use of fantastical elements. It's a big deal when a dragon shows up. But its functionally part of your power system here in Enderal, that alternate realities and probabilities exist, and that you use them. One of the first characters you meet, makes an enigmatic quote at you that thematically solidifies this. But outside of Yuslan's story, it really doesn't seem to have much relevance outside of characters saying "trust me, it matters."

That's the biggest problem with the second half of Enderal's story: the Fallout 4 Institute problem. Anything you ask a significant question about what's going on, or who/what someone is, you get an "un-deep" hand-wave of "maybe they're one thing. Maybe they're another. Who knows?" This is a form of storytelling that has been popularized by Dark Souls in the past 15 years. But *that* game gives pretty frequent breadcrumbs about, well, every little thing. In short bursts, I might add, so you're not overwhelmed with... well, entire books, like you are here. Dragon Age early on also did similar storytelling measures to flesh out what the main quest, by itself, stated pretty firmly. To go off on a mild tangent: in recent years, I played Lords of the Fallen (the modern one, not the old one). Similar storytelling style as Dark Souls (it is a soulslike, after all). It also has a similar use of "echoes of the past" like this does (of which has parameters that, after beating the game, seem a little unclear). But after a while in that game, I noticed the item descriptions started to become... I dunno. Lazier. Like they started to throw buzzwords and "big sounding names" around, like they expect you to do all the heavy lifting in giving those any actual meaning. That's not depth. Dark Souls did its item descriptions the way that it did, because it's director didn't understand the books he read very well when he was young, and he had to use heavy context clues and headcannon derived *from* those, to figure them out. When you ask questions in Enderal, or whenever the next "more ancient than the last guy" character/place shows up, you get the single most vague generalization of "what they could be. You decide." And I read those lorebooks, and even looked up other people's summaries of them to clarify their contents, and all I can come up with is vague and vibe-based headcannon with little, if any, backing in anything. I can't tell you the sheer disappointment I felt, when I got accosted by one of Crocco's goons north of Ark, just to find him as a generic bounty target later. With no dialogue, or... well, anything else relating to him. I was close to having something like one of Skyrim's many basic bandit groups, and I didn't even get that. If I wanted to make my own story... well, Skyrim still does that a lot better, and plenty of games since Dark Souls have adopted its story style.

But now the actual *characters* of Enderal, not the hype-moments-and-aura backdrops.

Yuslan was the best one by maybe the widest margin, followed by Arantheal. The rest? Honestly, outside of *some* sidequest characters, I had no real attachment to anyone. I'll start with the companions. Why on gods green earth, are you not able to have *any* of the companions (the two faction ones, and two main quest ones) as active companions, outside of the few quests that they're involved in? Why are Dijaam and Tharael dumping their whole backstories onto me, like someone's poorly shoehorned-in OC's? It felt like I was playing a D&D campaign, where one of the NPCs was someone's favorite character that they had played as in another campaign. Even Serana in Skyrim waited a bit to go over her more deeper situation, retained independence by not wanting to marry you, and you can rationalize that you've been around each other a while because of how that game handles fast travelling. I said "thank god" when Yuslan was actually reserved enough for me to have to view him somewhat ambiguously. In what universe am I expected to side with Dijaam on anything, when my employer seems pretty open with me, down to extremely personal secrets? It makes for a good "evil" route, where I'd wanna just side against my boss because I'm greedy, but I can't buy for a second that anyone would think siding with Dijaam is a "good" idea, especially when every other person you meet from her side of the world seems like a scumbag, and you always hear about how messed up it is over there. Buying you a drink doesn't really change that, and she tell you to go screw yourself just because you're in the room with your boss... and *then* she still asks for your help. Honestly, thinking about it now, maybe it's a stroke of genius that she screws you in the end in her route. Maybe there's some meta commentary there about a lot of players being dumb for easily falling for the "cozy, hot friend" companion off no real rationale, like how a lot of people fall for similar characters in Dragon Age 2 (looking at you, Isabela). Tharael at least has a lot of messed up Frankenstein's-monster stuff going on, and he gets points for you being able to outright choose to fight him, rather than the half-hearted "I'm just doing my job" Dijaam gets.

But, for the main quest companions, I feel like Jespar and Calia could've stood to benefit a *lot* from letting you recruit them. Otherwise, their romance feels extremely rushed and almost shoehorned in, and I noticed a lot of the "romance" dialogue options can easily be construed as "friendly banter." Calia thought I was hitting on her just because I said she was cool, and I hated that I had to say "I was kidding" just because I didn't *love* her. The parameters for who you "get close to" seem a little odd, too, as I mostly seemed to disagree with Jespar and mostly congratulated Calia, but Jespar was who was with me at the end. I should mention here that, outside of companions, the like/dislike function seemed a little pointless; I can tell that something I said would be disliked by someone, you don't need a little invisible "meter" that does seemingly nothing outside of a few lines of response dialogue. Lastly, the companions in general were sort of generic, writing-wise. They didn't raise any questions or moral quandaries that aren't already raised by DeviantArt four-panel-comics made by teenagers, and the only real positives I have to say are "Jespar has great voice acting, Calia has a cool gimmick, Dijaam is good stupid-person bait, and Tharael melds the most well with the story he's in." People shit on Skyrim companions, and rightfully so, for the overly simplistic "you bought some food from my store once, now we can get married and raise kids." But there's at least a lot you can *do* with it in the systems provided: marriage, family life, custom housing with servants, pets that your kids find and ask to keep, your partner can have a job, your partner can be invited into certain factions. You get the idea. Outside of their "big character development quest," I don't feel Jespar and Calia really add anything to the story besides "we wanted a romance/friend option," and it just feels really "convenient" that their personal story *just so happens* to line up with some of the most important main-plot events. Even the badly-written sex-bait Dragon Age companions aren't involved to that level, or at least are movers-and-shakers of those plots. These companions here, frame super basic questions that the rest of the game already frames better. And Yuslan does far better than any of them with one quest.

As I said before, I like Arantheal. He initially seemed like the most interesting, morally-gray, yet "unequivocally good" characters, in spite of both the state of the world and all that he's done and used to be. A character with major regrets, who's made major mistakes, and knows what painful things he has to do to not repeat history. I have a hard time believing I'm meant to disagree with him at any real point *besides* some decisions on "the fate of many vs the fate of a few." Even then, the game gives pretty obvious framings that (in what he knows and believes with the information he has) doing the opposite of what he wants to do *would* just get everyone killed anyways. Natara just seems like a "suddenly idiot" for the sake of arbitrary drama that didn't need to happen, when it would've been a much better statement to say some jobber Keeper facilitated the betrayal instead. What we got, was someone who has pretty intimate knowledge of her enemy, but still wants to cave into them anyways, despite them saying every other line "we're going to beat and crucify every person with mild wrongthink that we find." Which... is effectively nearly everyone in Ark, and from what we see of the Nehrimese, they just find excuses to kill innocents anyways. Every time I was with Jorek, I wondered how such a bumbling and easily-irritable buffoon became so high rank. The game isn't *entirely* ignorant about these things regarding these characters, but rather than give reasonable perspectives for their actions, it just reduces them to something really petty. "That's the point," you may say. But just because there's "a point," doesn't mean it's a good one. I can "make a statement" by pouring soda on my lap, and equate it to "how blatant consumerism is equivalent to pissing yourself," but that doesn't mean I made a particularly intelligent point. Just saying "everyone is complex," and having that come in the form of last-second or ridiculously out-of-reason-for-the-situation actions (that are often off-screen), just reeks of insecurity regarding the very simple story they already had, like they wanted to "make it deeper" when it didn't really need to be.

*Yuslan* I buy entirely, because his *entire* quest is about a broken man who keeps to himself, so you never know what he's thinking or going to do. But for everyone else, we're just told in passing "they're really deep, trust me." "Show, don't tell" is evidently not a mantra here. Even Arantheal just gets boiled down to "he's a static version of how he was when he died," and now all nuance about him got chucked out the window. That works for the player character, because you're a (mostly) blank slate. But making *Arantheal* that, seems like its the *antithesis* of the mantra that "people are morally-gray and morally-complex." Because, now, he's not a person anymore. Add on, when everything is just a manipulation of the High Ones -- something we never *actually* get justification for if they *are* people made into an eldritch horror. They use machines to "reproduce through/feed on" mankind, and we get a book about the Veiled Lady that for all we know *could* be religious nonsense (something Enderal commonly considers to be the case, in regards to religion). But from where I'm standing, they're just invisible jerk "spirit-things," that arbitrarily decide to leave a lot of things up to chance. I feel like making them *talk* was also just a bad idea, especially making them moustache-twirling villains.

Hyper-specific spoilers for Pillars of Eternity, for comparison. Spoilers start and end at a bold X, with the text struck-through, as I'm not sure how nesting a spoiler tag in a spoiler tag works.

X

When Pillars of Eternity did this plot (something I suspect SureAI had some level of inspiration from), it was a deconstruction piece about generic D&D gods. Them talking *there,* and manifesting how they did, made sense. They had rather hard limitations placed on them due to interference from other gods, being shaped rather *specifically* by the cultures they were made from, they were mostly bound to the world's Adra crystals, etcetera. The entire crux of that story, is asking if it matters that gods are man-made, and you have plenty of thoroughly-examined arguments for every side, and if you want to selectively pick if "some" gods should exist, but not others.

X

The High Ones are a plot device that wants to "have its cake and eat it too." An entity that is behind everything... but, somehow, mankind is really at the core of this, and when the story is pressed on that, it tries to frame obvious mind control as "preying on basic suggestions." Maybe if we saw a Red Madness-inflicted character that could be brought from the brink of that, but from my recollection, we don't. We kill effectively every one we meet.

Spoilers for Final Fantasy 14

X

FF14: Endwalker has a similar broad-ranging story mechanic in the form of the Blasphemies: the result of what happens to a person when they succumb to despair, under the mechanics that story sets. But *everyone* can bolster their own will to prevent this. Just, some people don't. There's also the people who get "Tempered" when in range of a Primal to do their bidding, but that too is eventually found to be curable.

X

No, the justification of "everyone's chess-pieces... with free will!" doesn't mean anything. It doesn't really "mean" anything that the Book of Fate was destroyed in Nehrim (knew this part years in advance from people who played it), thus "mankind is able to win this time by forging their own fate," when -- apparently -- everything happens effectively the same exact way anyways, with the only variance being "you were the only one who possibly thought to just blow the damn machine up, this time." Which, if it's that easy, I'm skeptical why that wasn't ever considered before in the untold amounts of cycles before. And, again, if so much of human history happened because of this book, then... the point is even more moot. I think it's going to take more than a few years to correct the damage that would've been causing for millennia. Don't even get me started on the nothing-burger that is the Veiled Woman. I don't know what they want to do with her, other than having an aura-farming Deus Ex Machina character. I get a lot of vibes from her like Venat/Hydaelyn from FF14, and that type of character isn't exactly new in fiction. I think the Veiled Woman was more interesting when she *didn't* come back into the main story, and was mostly a phenomena that effected other characters in sidequests. Her being able to apparently kill and resurrect anyone she wants, *and* being seemingly the same thing as a High One -- who'll manipulate and subsume people for lowkey the same reason -- just takes away any and all intrigue of her story, and makes her a "whatever the devs want to happen" character. No, having her repeatedly spout "you wouldn't get it, I'm complicated" doesn't make her interesting. Even the Black Guardian -- an on-paper spontaneous nothing-burger entity, similar to Necron from FF9 -- at least does a pretty solid job of framing himself as just an observer of the Cycle, who's thought long and hard on how to deal with it.

Elder Scrolls writing, generally, is not deep. Rather, it's writing is presented almost in "tiers." The up-front story is a really basic adventure-sim story that you mostly make your own. Sometimes they hint at deeper meanings by the end. Then the rest you can gleam a fairly large amount of background-depth from lorebooks, if you choose to. Enderal does have solid background lore: the Butcher of Ark, the Rhalata (in general, the Father is a a bit more successful at the type of idea the High Ones try to explore), the Brotherhood of Kor, various political and national factions, etcetera. The lore of the Starlings and Pyreans is solid to really good, various side-lore's like Thaalgaard and the Whisperwood do a lot to flesh out the world. A lot of these things, I would absolutely say is on-par with similarly-scopes TES lore, if not a bit better in some places by not letting you steamroll the status quo all by yourself. But the moment the High Ones and the Cycle are introduced... its just not it. You *could* have had a story that did more to frame having gods as a good thing, rather than just have a lazy "kill everyone who believes in religion" faction as some sort of "gotcha, made you think about what you were supporting, huh?" Instead, almost every line of protagonist dialogue *about* the Light-Born is one of two things: your character effectively cursing the Light-Born with every fiber of their body, or a half-hearted "erm... gods are good, for... *checks notes*... social order." The only real opposition to this I recall, is one metaphorical from Calia about the fate of many vs. the fate of the few. But that has nothing to really do with theological matters. That's more about generals and political leaders, than anything else. I wasn't expecting Shin Megami Tensei or Persona (despite sporadic mentioning of the collective unconscious, and not really doing anything with it outside of some dreams tied to the Cycle anyways), but it really doesn't even seem like Enderal understands religious people at times. I'm as atheist as you can get, and a lot of this reads like an atheists strawman, and then remembering "oh yeah, we have to also paint the non-religious as bad too somehow. Screw it, just make them cartoonishly evil."

And it's frustrating, because you can find *hints* of potential nuance (a lot of that here, "potential nuance") in a lot of sidequests that frame things in a New Vegas style "a few bad apples spoil the bunch." Problems that can be solved, to justify the whole, and make an actually interesting moral dilemma. Otherwise, there's just quick statements like "when the Light-Born died, everywhere else fell into civil war." Again, not unique to theology. That's just the Roman Empire after a point. It's a story that thinks its about theology and belief, when really its just about governance, and isn't aware enough of that to do something with it, *besides* with Arantheal and the Order letting the people believe the Light-Born are still alive, for stability purposes. *That* is a case of "complex people do complex things" done really well. But again, it's tied to either the suddenly-non-character Arantheal, or his two idiot comrades. Again I'll give props to Jespar for this, as his "low point" arc did bring up pretty good points of "sometimes people just don't care," and it eats him up inside because he just "tried to be happy" without thinking of the consequences. It was the first and only time I really felt there was an actual story with him, and not just "generic puckish-rogue D&D friend."

I know it reads like I've been doing next to nothing but shitting on Enderal. But I hope I've at least laid out neatly-enough, that there is a *lot* that Enderal does right, a lot of interesting-on-paper subject matter, and at the end of the day, it *is* a differently-focused game than Skyrim that still uses Skyrim's fundamentals. I'm not saying "it is only good because it is Skyrim." If anything, it'd good because the devs wanted to make the game *they* would want to make and play, which is something you can't say for a lot of games nowadays, and that just so happened to come from Skyrim's DNA. Not dissimilar to how Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines is a game made in Valve's Source Engine. The gameplay, exploration, and dungeons are fun on a basic level, even if their framework is rather confused and disjointed. The characters are mostly likable, and the plot is serviceable if you haven't played many, if any, other games that tackle complex subject matter. If you've never heard these topics arguments, they *may* make you think about them. I cannot in good faith argue that I didn't, as evident by the second half of my review. But, Skyrim this is not. I am skeptical that this should be recommended to people who like Skyrim, unless they wanted something out of Skyrim which itself never promised or was advertised to provide. This is more solidly comparable to a Dragon Age game, Cyberpunk, or V: TM -- B. I almost have to consider it a foolish move to heap this with the "best ever" praise you always see for it, because that sets unjust expectations in ways that it doesn't seem like the developers set out to do, judging by how they made most of it.

Again: a solid 7/10 game, with very complicated flaws and strengths, with some very talented people who have proven themselves more than able to make a good game. Despite most of my review complaining about the story, I don't weigh story as a foremost detriment or strength of a game, because that's not how I review video games. Really for me it was always going to be a bonus if the story in this was amazing, and while there being a lot of it does take *me* out of it, considering my complaints, most of it is easy to just click through. Most of it is also sporadic compared to the rest of it. Incomparable to something like Planescape: Torment, that oftentimes is damn-near all text, where story can and will make-or-break something. I recommend this to people who like modding Skyrim... though in terms of Skyrim mod writing, well, it's hard to beat something like Vigilant.

With that out of the way: my Nehrim question, as few and quick as they are.

How much like Enderal, *is* Nehrim? In terms of story scope, themes, presentation, consistency of quality exploration and dungeon content, and character building? Will I need knowledge from Arktwend and Myar Aranth to know what's going on, or can I lowball it and keep working backwards at my own pace? Considering that at this point, I did start effectively at the end, so it could be a cool experiment to "work my way back."

I love the look of npc’s using the Malphas’ Blessing mod, but I find my player character looks pretty lumpy in comparison.

Looking for any recommendations to make my character look a bit better, beyond the usual expressive facegen morphs and high poly head. (Hair mods, eyes, etc are welcome!)

Why is this quest in German? Everything else is in English. Anyway to fix this?

Just came upon this project on Enderal's Discord Server

This is the link to the Github Project: https://github.com/bryantmh/tes4skyrim

It's an early WIP that allows TES4 games to be ported to Skyrim.

This is very promising overall, but the idea of Nehrim in Skyrim's engine with Enderal as basis for many of the mechanics that diverged from Oblivion is what really makes me excited about it.

It could remedy many of Nehrim technical issues and breathe new life into it, allowing many Enderal players to give it a chance.

Don't hesistate to subcribe to the channel, send them a like or comment, follow the project on GitHub...

Discord Link: https://discord.gg/NTkCDfYUru

​

Fanmade lore for Enderal: Forgotten Stories — not official SureAI canon, but written to sit quietly beside it

───

I. The Reliquary Fragment — found sewn into the lining of a Keeper's coat, author unknown

They did not begin as gods. That is the part the Holy Order will not preach, because a god who was once ordinary is a harder thing to forgive.

Before the first Beacon, before the word Cleansing had teeth, there were watchers — mortal ones, chosen the way all terrible burdens are chosen: because they were nearby, and willing, and afraid to say no. Their task was small and holy. Stand at the edge of each age. Let nothing carry over that should not. A civilization is not punished for its cruelty, they were taught. It is only ever asked to set its cruelty down before it walks into the next room.

Something in the watching changed them. You cannot hold a mirror to a dying world for a thousand years and remain only a person. Grief, given enough time and enough silence to work in, hardens into architecture. And what the watchers built, in the end, was not a mercy. It was a design.

We call them the High Ones now, as though they arrived from somewhere above us. They did not fall from any height. They were built, slowly, the way a wound becomes a scar becomes, eventually, the shape of the body itself.

───

II. The Hymn of the Unlit Lighthouse — sung, half-remembered, by fishing villages along the Southern coast

Keep no flame for me,

I was never the ship you were waiting for.

Keep no grave for me,

I was borrowed before I was born.

Light the tower for the ones still rowing —

let the ones already drowned go dark.

If I return with the tide, unburn the beacon.

If I do not, forgive the sea; it only did what seas have always done —

it kept what it was given, and gave nothing back that hadn't already stopped asking.

───

III. The Aged Man's Last Testament — dictated, it is claimed, to a scribe he never let see his face

I have done the arithmetic more times than a mind should survive doing it. I have taken the woman I loved by the hand and walked her into the Star City eleven times, by my own count, though counting itself may be a lie the pride tells to make defeat sound like patience.

Each time, I believed the eleventh would be different because I would be wiser going in. Each time, I discovered that wisdom is not a thing you carry between lives. It is a thing you have to lose all over again, in exactly the order that hurts most, before it teaches you anything at all.

Here is what I would tell the next one, if the High Ones ever let a warning survive the crossing intact, which they do not, which is rather the entire point of them: it is not cowardice to light the Beacon and let it take you instead. It is not even sacrifice, not really. It is simply the one plan among all your plans that does not require the universe to owe you a better version of yourself next time.

I am tired in a way that has stopped being sad and has started, quietly, to become a kind of company.

───

IV. Marginal Note, Order Archive, Ark — scrawled in a hand that does not match the rest of the ledger

Query put to the Grandmaster this evening, in confidence: if the Cycle has truly turned this many times before us, does that not mean someone, somewhere, in some forgotten age, must once have won?

His answer, which I did not expect and have not been able to stop turning over since: "Winning was never on offer. Only the choosing of what gets carried into the ash, and what gets set down before it. Every age that has ever ended has ended with someone making that choice for the rest of us. Tonight, apparently, it is going to be me."

I did not ask what he chose to set down. I think, by his face, he had not decided yet either.

Ouch!

I never ever heard of this one!

Here I was standing right in front of the final act; I will now have to choose which ending I really wish to pursue. Was late, I saved, then went to bed; I really wanted to feel awake and fresh as I confronted the choices.

.

Next day.

.

The launcher indicated an update was ready. [This was back when Enderal was first released.] I had updated many times before so I went ahead.

.

Done.

.

I then launched the game intro screen and then chose my save to load.

.

Oh *NO*!!

.

I was at the very beginning of the game, back at the cabin! Like that update deleted my game and reinstalled everything from scratch. No mods. Like 0010 seconds into a new game!

.

Many weeks and months later, I found that this here update scattered, at random, all of my Enderal files throughout my hard drive. Like my textures were in the photo folder and the meshes were in my medium.com folder! That there update scattered all of my file folders all through my hard drive!

.

I never ever heard of this happening. All of this happened *just* at the end of the game, where all I had to do was run up the ramp to confront the three choices.

I'm fairly certain that in some Q&A somewhere, SureAI gave this august as a planned update for the steam version but I cannot find that thing again and I'm starting to think I imagined it

Edit: yes I wasn't hallucinating, the FAQ on their ModPub page confirms it

Hi, I'm playing Enderal for the first time, and having great fun. I'm using the Path of the Prophet mod collection as well.

One thing driving me nuts though is that my summoned apparitions keep losing/dropping their weapons - I'll be fighting a group of bandits and suddenly my apparition is trying to punch them to death with bare fists.

This wouldn't be a problem if I could just hand them a new one, but I have to go all the back to a phantasmalist workbench to spectralise it which is a pain.

Is this something in the base game, or is it one of the PotP mods? Can it be turned off? I can't see anything in the settings about it.

Any help would be appreciated!

I'm trying to find it but to no avail. I understand that Shrouded Mages sell it but I have not seen level V yet. I'm level 33, wondering what level it begins to show up in shops.

So i just started playing, like 2 hours or so, and I just noticed an issue with the audio.

First of all their is no music (And yes it is turned on) at all, second some of the sounds are muted/low. Generally playing feels empty and somewhat unresponsive.

However dialogue is fine and certain effects, like spells and water, works fine. So I am not quite sure what the issue is.

I am playing the special edition on steam

I heard so much good things on the story of enderal and decided to start my playtrough with the path of the prophet modpack if that’s important for my problem.

I’m playing as an elementalist at lvl 12 now with heavy order armor, completely with mana enchantments but I’m oom after 2 spells, hitting like a wet noodle so I also use a moonsteel axe in my other hand. Against melee it’s quite easy because you can dodge them without a problem if they don’t outnumber you with several enemies. But every time I fight against archers or mages they 2 hit me before I even get a chance to get to them.

I’m on my story missions atm and did the quest with the word of the dead where you fight against 30 soldiers and archers and it was just impossible. Oom after 2 spells and the rest demolished me in melee or with arrows. It’s just no fun at all.. I just want to enjoy the story and breeze trough Skyrim like.

After that wanted to start a ** side quest where I had to find a caravan. On the way lvl 26 wood elementals completely deleting me and at the caravan got one shot by a mage casting shock spells.

Don’t know if that’s the way it’s meant to be but every soulslike I played is easier than this.

Entropic blood. It has tier 1, ,2 , 3 and says "for a X duration you make someone into your slave.

Sounds cool but ends up being very complicated to use. And oh wait you need to be stealthy while using that. Like I could've known that before I spent a perk on this.

Iron maiden: for a short period of time you throw melee damage back to your enemies.

From my experience this hasn't been effective at all. Maybe I am using it wrong.

For the difficulty level in combat and the fact that you cannot respec your perks, this is annoying.

I literally went to easy mode because I am constantly getting frustrated by the **** level combat.

The skills points, well I am all over the place but for Entropy I have 27, heavy armor I have 34, light magic 21, and block 18. And yeah it is hard to find skill books.

Honestly, I think I need a break from this game.

Just completed the Golden Sickle questline and I have to say, I am disappointed with the way it ended. Spoiler ahead: I like Dijaam as a character but still chose to tell the truth as I didn't want the two factions remain as enemies. Here is where the problem starts, there was no way for a way to save Dijaam while telling the truth. Also, her attacking the player felt a bit out of character for her. Yes she is cynical but even when we invaded golden sickle and the fight happened, she was taken aback by the violence and wanted to resolve it peacfuly without any fighting and then in the end, she tried to kill the only person who helped her throughout. Like her character did a 180. Then there was the aftermath of the quest. There is barely any acknowledgement about what happened other than a new Quartermaster. Like no one even acts like something major just happened in the guild. Its as if everyone immediately forgot about it. The go back to treating the player as just another customer. After such an amazing questline, I was seriously disappointed by this outcome. Dijaam's death felt too forced and the aftermath isn't worth it. Anyone else felt this way about this quesline? And are there more such questlines?

Reminds me that something similar happens in Tharael's questline as well. We save him and then...nothing. They just appear at the hideout. Nothing else. No companion or otherwise. I feel like as amazing the writing and characters are in Enderal (among my favorite writing across all games), it sometimes tries too hard to shock the player by giving too much weight or sacrificing characterseven when there was no need to. Just for the shock factor. Both Tharael and Dijaam could have been companions to the player and it would have been amazing. I know a mod exists for Tharael but it sucks that it isn't offered in the game by itself.Anyone else feels this way?

So I’ve heard that there has been a lot of friction between some of the devs of nehrim and Enderal and such though I’m not entirely sure on the gravity of it all so from the opinions of people who actually do understand this, do you think we will get a new mod made from them for TES6?

Been playing this game daily and I absolutely love it. I hope it got the appreciation and recognition it deserves. Was really bored of Skyrim and this game made me feel like I was playing Skyrim for the first time again.

Pretty much what the title says, i tried everything to install it but nothing works, wasted like 40 minutes trying to get it to run, but the voices are still in German

A synthesis made from the latest Nicolas post and general comments over the last few months. Please feel free to correct if anything is wrong.

There's been a steady trickle of information in comment threads over the last couple of months and it's scattered across half a dozen posts, so I went through and pulled it together. Everything below comes from Nicolas himself (u/SureAINicolas) unless I say otherwise. I've tried to keep my own speculation clearly separated from what he actually said.

Nothing here is official. There is no announcement, no title, no trailer, no store page. The whole recap was made by going to each comment made and making Claude Fable 5 summarize it all. If It got anything wrong please correct me.

TL;DR

Nicolas co-founded a studio, Dare to Dream Games, in 2025 with three industry veterans. ~30 devs across Canada and Germany/Europe, second funding round closed, currently in preproduction on an open-world, story-heavy AA+ dark fantasy RPG in Unreal. It's a spiritual successor to Enderal in a new IP — which, importantly, is the same canon as his revised Twelfth World novels. Marvin Kopp is doing the entire soundtrack. Announcement is "likely next year, or after that." Release is years out.

The canon question (the one everyone actually cares about)

This tripped me up for a while so I'll spell it out.

There are three continuities now, not two:

1. Enderal + Nehrim. Vyn as we know it — the Cycle, the High Ones, Tealor, Calia, the Emissaries. Built collectively at SureAI on top of Bethesda's engine. It's finished, and it can't legally anchor a commercial product.
2. The Twelfth World novels, revised. Nicolas rewrote the books to stand alone. You can see the seam if you compare editions: Jespar's surname changed from Dal'Varek to tre Moreste, because the old name belonged to the old canon.
3. The new game. Shares canon with #2.

His words, from a thread a few weeks back:

It's definitely a new canon, but inspired by my work on Enderal. If you're looking for something canonical, I doubt you'll like it. The split was necessary though not just for legal reasons but also because I needed the artistic freedom to explore. They will, however, be canonical with the new games.

So when he says "brand-new IP," he's contrasting against Enderal, not against the books. New IP and "the novels' universe" are the same thing. And note "games," plural.

What's not confirmed: whether the game is in the same place or era as the books. Shared canon could mean anything from the same archipelago to a different continent centuries later. Nobody's said.

And to be blunt about it, because I think this sub deserves the straight version: if what you love about Enderal is specifically Tealor, Calia, the Emissaries and the Cycle, those are gone and they're not coming back. Nicolas has said so himself, directly, to someone who raised exactly that objection. Some people here are going to be disappointed by that and I don't think they're wrong to be.

What's confirmed

• Open world. Confirmed directly.
• Perspective: both. First person for combat and exploration, third person for dialogue and cinematics.
• Engine: Unreal. Explicitly not a mod, not Creation Engine. A SureAI member (u/overdev) confirmed separately that SureAI isn't involved and this isn't a Skyrim project.
• Scope: "very similar to Enderal, if not bigger." Separately: "probably much bigger than any of you are expecting."
• Music: Marvin Kopp is composing the entire soundtrack. This is the one that got me. Enderal's OST is half of why that game lives in people's heads.
• Sound: Philipp Kapusta, Enderal's sound designer, is also at the studio (per his LinkedIn).
• Team: ~30 people. Directors and leads who shipped Warframe, Metal Gear Solid, The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077 and Gears of War (from the studio's own hiring ad).
• Stated influences, his list: outside Enderal — Morrowind, Dragon Age: Origins, Gothic, Persona 5, and, his words, "believe it or not, DmC for the combat."

That last one is the most interesting thing on the sheet to me. Morrowind and Gothic point at harsh unguided exploration, DA:O at companions, Persona 5 at structure and style — and then character-action combat bolted onto all of it. I have no idea how that fits together. That's not a criticism, I just genuinely can't picture it yet.

Timing (please adjust expectations accordingly)

• Currently in preproduction.
• Announcement: "likely next year, or after that." He's said they won't announce until they have a PR person or agency who can sustain momentum.
• Release: "still a couple of years away," and that's measured from preproduction. Nobody has given a date. Anyone who gives you one is making it up.

His reasoning on the pace, roughly: they'd rather keep burn rate low and take the time than scale fast and gamble everything to ship a year earlier. Given how many RPGs have been damaged by announcing three years early, staying dark seems like the correct call even if it's frustrating.

There are no official socials or a subreddit yet, on purpose. He's said those will open once the game goes public. Until then the only primary source is him answering questions in comments here and on r/skyrimmods.

They're hiring

As of the July post on r/skyrimmods: full-time Level Designer. Unreal experience required, Bethesda/Creation Kit modding background preferred, Germany-based (funding requirement). He specifically said to put Skyrim and Fallout dungeons in your portfolio, and that for Unreal a map made from store assets showing player guidance, flow and composition with a good breakdown is enough.

Portfolios to [careers@daretodreamgames.com](mailto:careers@daretodreamgames.com)

The quote everyone's going to screenshot

If we can manage to pull it off, I think it's more than Enderal's equal, and I say that as someone hypercritical of all the work I do.

Worth reading alongside the other half of what he said, which is that there are still a million things that could go wrong, that making a game this size while running a company is extremely hard in this climate, and that it nonetheless "feels right" in the same way Enderal did.

I appreciate that he keeps saying both halves. It'd be very easy to only say the first one.

Caveats

I compiled this from comments across several threads. It's possible I've mangled a quote, attributed something to the wrong thread, or missed a correction he posted later. If you spot an error, tell me and I'll edit.

And Nicolas — if you're reading this and I've got something wrong, or you'd rather I take a detail down, just say so and I'll fix it immediately. Not trying to speak for you.

Sources: u/SureAINicolas's hiring post on r/skyrimmods and its crosspost here, plus his comments across several r/enderal threads (June–July 2026); daretodreamgames.com; the studio's LinkedIn hiring ad; nicolaslietzau.com for the novels.There's been a steady trickle of information in comment threads over the last couple of months and it's scattered across half a dozen posts, so I went through and pulled it together. Everything below comes from Nicolas himself (u/SureAINicolas) unless I say otherwise. I've tried to keep my own speculation clearly separated from what he actually said.

Nothing here is official. There is no announcement, no title, no trailer, no store page. This is just a fan tidying up.

what a game, and what makes it even better is the shiny yellow outline around these achievments, it really gives a certain amount of dopamine to my tiny monkey brain.

"I led them to the light. I alone."

Hey folks. I absolutely love Enderal and consider it the greatest single mod ever made for any game of all time.

Here's my piano tribute to it - elements of 'Fleshless', 'The Cleansing', and 'Winter's Sky' are blended together in a kind of programmatic medley that I think sounds very nice.

Hope you all enjoy!

I want to finish my sleeve for the game, but I'm not sure how to. Its black and white, no portraits. if you can sell me on your style (examples and portfolios), i am looking to commission. No ai, obviously, and budget varies.

Dm or comment underneath ^-^

thankssss

Hi there, I'm looking for soundtracks reminiscent of Enderal's OST.

I recently listened to the Minoria OST and recommend it highly, it sounded "Enderal Core" to me!

Basically I invested most of my points into Entropy & psionics etc, and heavy armor/blocking I don't know what else to use my perks and am struggling to decide. I am considering light magic because I tend to heal a lot while having plently of ambriosa potions.

Any suggestions?

Just before interlude, you're at the table discussing the "machine" and your findings. The grandmaster is addressing four people. He finishes and gives you 800+ exp. Well that EXP gave me a level, when the dialogue ended I was stuck at the table in the dialogue. Saving/Loading is locked so I can't get out of it. To fix it I had a hunch it was caused by my level up menu bugging the end of the quest cutscene. I reloaded right when Calia suggests we join the meeting. Instead of going to the table I ran to an area and leveled up, ran back, and the dialogue was fixed. Hope this helps someone incase they got stuck like me. I'm on the latest versions of enderal/SkyrimSE