Nehrim: Fate’s Edge Review

By

John Wood

Pros: Unique world, epic plot,

all-around superior game.

Cons: Some inevitable yet

surprisingly negligible crashing errors.

WTF: How can a mod this good exist?

Nehrim Release Trailer (German, but Higher Quality)

Nehrim Release Trailer (English Subtitles, but Lower Quality)

http://www.battlereports.com/submitreport_step2.php

There is no doubt in the minds of everyone who has played it that Oblivion is a great game. Its

release marked not only the pinnacle but also the end of an era of Western

RPG's, as it paved the way for games that we still play today such as Mass

Effect and Fallout 3.

Oblivion's biggest calling card at the time of its release was endless hours of beautiful gameplay. And great

gameplay it is. Oblivion's combat system is an example of apparent simplicity

marked only by the depth of the skill system, particularly the spell mechanics.

And there are many, many ways to play the game. The quests are all extremely

interesting with thousands of expertly written dialogue. For the first time in

an RPG, the world actually felt like one people could live in. Even the grass

behaved like the grass outside your window. Instead of just standing around,

the AI simulated a realistic schedule. It woke up, ate, and went to sleep at

the correct times. Simply put, the towns felt… alive.

In Oblivion, Everything is oh-so-cheery.

In Nehrim, things are usually this forboding…

Despite its plethora of strengths, most noticed the game’s flaws. The graphics, while

intricately styled and weaned of each spark of beauty, look generally primitive

to the new graphical and engine improvements apparent in the games released

from 2007 and onwards. The dungeons and Oblivion gates were algorithmically

generated, causing the large amount of gameplay to occasionally feel repetitive,

and the weapons and armor system allowed large abuses through enchantments such

as 100% Chameleon (complete invisibility) as the price of variety.

Some veteran gamers of the series raised different concerns. They opposed changes to some of

the mechanics they loved in Morrowind, such as the elimination of teleportation

in lieu of fast travel, the removal of certain RPG elements from the game such

as full armor sets, and the notable scarcity of environmental puzzles (Oblivion

had no more than a single puzzle quest: Through a Nightmare, Darkly).

In general, these veterans bemoaned that, due to these unnecessary changes, Oblivion fell short

of its true potential. They believed Oblivion could have been not just great,

but a landmark title up there with Ocarina of Time and the like.

A certain group of German Elder Scrolls enthusiasts, SureAI, decided to fix Oblivion’s missteps.

They took advantage of the modding tools good old Bethesda had made available,

little bit of creature and environment mods, and went to work. Now, SureAI is certainly

no stranger to modding Elder Scrolls games. They are veterans of two total

conversion Morrowind expansions, Arktwend and Myar Aranath. (neither of which

has been translated from German). As they have explained in numerous

interviews, working on these two long projects gave them plenty of experience

in time-management and game design, the latter of which can be strongly felt in

Nehrim.

(Left) Arktwend Vets will see familiar areas…

Gameplay:

Nehrim’s main focus is where the focus of every action based game should lie: the combat

system. The great thing about Nehrim’s game design is how it simplicity and

uniqueness into a ball of fun. Instead of completely replacing Oblivion’s

mechanics, it simply augments them, building more complexity into the spell and

combat system. As Paul Barnett from EA Mythic says, you know something’s a

great idea when you ask yourself, “why wasn’t this thought of before?” I asked

myself this same question many times while playing Nehrim, simply because the

tweaks and new ideas are so great that they feel like they should have been in

Oblivion to begin with. My favorite new mechanic idea is the freezing effect. In

Nehrim, frost spells have a small chance to freeze your opponent in place for a

couple of seconds, a rather useful effect that gives them that little extra

oomph that fire and shock spells have always had. However, it’s not just frost

spells that have become more powerful; now, every spell packs more of a punch,

without being overpowered. Nehrim recognized the strengths of Oblivion’s spell

system and capitalized upon it by focusing the core gameplay around magic. But

soldiers and rangers shouldn’t feel left out, as hand to hand weapons have

significantly more variety and length, while bows have received a significant

damage boost, making them worthwhile to use.

Plus, bows and swords have been

visually upgraded with cool looking skins brought over from weapon pack mods.

Speaking of classes, Nehrim is a bit more open in terms of class choice.

Specializations aren’t chosen until about midway through the first chapter,

which means that you will get a lot of time to experiment with the game before

deciding your play style. The specialization choices are quite broad: Mage,

Ranger, or Fighter, meaning that you have a lot of room explore inside each

class as the game progresses. This choice does have some effect on your

gameplay, as you’ll get two special powers for each class.

I chose the mage specialization, which gave me two different magic stances. One of these stances

strengthened the more passive spells schools such as Alteration at the expense

of more aggressive schools such as destruction, while the other stance was

vice-versa. My third choice was to switch both stances off and receive no

benefits or penalties. Choosing the Ranger class, for example, would have given

me different stance choices related to archery. Just having this extra layer of

choice made Nehrim’s combat significantly more tactical than Oblivion’s.

Regardless of the class you choose, your character’s stats are going to be dependent upon where

you place both your attribute and skill points when you level up. These systems

are huge improvements over the major and minor skill sets in Oblivion. When it

comes to your main attributes (such as endurance and intelligence), the skills

you’ve actually been using have less effect upon which skills you can level up.

Certain tweaks upon how the attributes affect your character have made the

system a whole lot more interesting and balanced, rewarding players who take

the time out to plan their skill progression.

Nehrim is torn apart by civil war

Your individual skills, such as destruction, light armor, and illusion, also level up a bit

differently than they do in Oblivion. While your skills do improve as you use

them in the field, a lot of your skill improvement has to do with how you spend

your learning points. Learning points are a currency you use to help level your

skills. While using your skills in the field will level them up, you can also

level whichever skills you like by spending learning points along with a

certain amount of gold on trainers. This ability to level up whatever skill you

like eliminates grinding, and gives you much more choice in how you want to

play the game. If the criticisms about Fable III have taught me anything, it’s

that money becomes worthless when you have nothing to spend it on. In Nehrim, the

fact that you have to constantly spend money on skill advances ensures that you

are always cash strapped. Nehrim allows you further strategic choice in how you

spend your money by instituting a bank that pays you interest, the same way a

bank would in real life. Spend it now on a nice piece of armor and a batch of

potions, or save it up for later? No other game has made economics so much fun!

On the RPG side of things, having a bank in the capital city does make it more

realistic, setting it apart from the dirt poor towns you may encounter. But I

digress.

            If you get the feeling you haven’t maximized your character’s potential, more

specialization choices are available further down the road, even very late into

the main quest! You’ll get to specialize in a very innovative way…

Of course, the combat wouldn’t be any fun without good enemy design. The first improvement

about your enemies that you’ll notice is their appearance. Like all things in

Nehrim, the new monster skins (some of which are brought over from other mods)

are pretty sweet, and you get a lot of monster variety to boot. Remember how,

in Oblivion, you’d fight Stunted Scamps at levels 1-5, and Scamps at levels

5-12? Well, that’s gone. The monsters you fight are no longer tweaked versions

of the ones you fought in the last zone. And each zone has unique monsters to

go along with the habitat.

(Left) Before he got set on fire, his skin was a clammy yellow

Giants!

The second thing you’ll notice, and notice very quickly, is that enemies are tough. Very tough. I wouldn’t call

them tough enough to have been pulled straight out of Demon’s Souls, but the

monsters in Nehrim can be rather nasty.

One of the problems with Oblivion’s enemies was that they could be easily defeated once

you deciphered their rather predictable attack patterns. Nehrim avoids this

pitfall by giving enemy monsters more advanced attacks and vague weapon lengths.

While being unable to guess a weapon’s actual reach from its apparent length might

usually be a sign of bad design, in this case it actually cuts a lot of

repetition that existed in Oblivion’s battle system. That’s because the

difference between the weapon’s actual reach and the weapon’s apparent length

strikes a balance by being quite minimal. This only keeps you on your toes,

instead of allowing your opponents to take cheap shots.

The toughest monsters to fight are the ones that use their bare hands or paws for fighting.

Wolves, for instance, get an attack that allows them to put up a continuous

wall of pain for a couple seconds, and then pounce on you in the next second.

You really do have to work your way around the wolf’s defenses and deadly

attacks using your armory of spells and swords to the best degree. The

challenge makes combat rewarding.

What you can't see are the fifteen zombies standing behind this guy

Even with its focus on combat, Nehrim doesn’t neglect RPG elements by any means. It further

enhances the combat system with a great equipment system tied directly to

dungeon exploring. Gone with the spell crafting altars are the weapons

enchanting altars, and good riddance too. Enchanting in Nehrim is limited to

minimal stat boosts only useful in the earlier levels, but can conveniently be

performed anywhere. Enchanting, however, isn’t the mainstay of the game. For

most of the game, you’ll be using armor sets, which can be found at the end of

dungeons. If the idea of a new piece of shiny armor isn’t enough to incentivize

you into exploring dungeons, magic symbols can also be found in every dungeon

in order to further tempt the completionist inside of you.

The armor sets themselves are authentic and thematic, but also provide some badly needed

variety in addition to useful stat boosts. There’s nothing better than collecting

the entirety of an armor set, whether it be for the attribute bonuses or the complete

look. Acquiring a set of armor can be fairly essential to surviving in the

upper tiers where you’ll need every additional point you can get. Me, I spent

hours just raiding dungeons to get these armor sets.

But getting the armor sets wasn’t just a chore, as the dungeons that house these excellent

pieces of armor are extremely thematic and lovingly hand crafted. Gone are the

algorithms that made Oblivion’s dungeons boring and predictable. Monsters are

well placed, so making good use of the organically developed environments can

be key to surviving against particularly nasty foes. It never got boring,

because I never really felt like I was invading the same place over and over

again.

Each and every place appeared to have its own little story, be it a

demonic cultist opening a portal to another world or a group of looters being

picked off one by one as they advance further into a crypt. At the end of every

large dungeon, usually guarding the treasure, is a unique boss with his own

backstory and flavor. You can discover this backstory by reading the letters

and scripts that abound in every dungeon. It’s well worth your time.

Unfortunately, not all of the notes have been translated from German, so we

Anglos do get a bit lost in translation.

(Left) What could be so bad about that dungeon?

Your introduction to the game!

Regardless, every dungeon possesses a dark and menacing tone that will keep you on your toes. The

best dungeons in the game can be truly terrifying. But not all in Nehrim is

drab and dry. The SureAI team drops a lot of Easter Eggs that help to alleviate

the game’s dark and desperate feel. I found myself laughing quite a bit at all

the witty humor scattered about.

Nehrim makes these dungeons even more interesting by saturating them with numerous environmental

puzzles. These puzzles strike the right balance between ingenuity and trial and

error; they’re not so hard to where you have to forums to figure them out,

neither are they so easy that you could solve them whilst heavily inebriated.

And to solve these puzzles, you’ll need plenty of light, making torches

actually worthwhile. Nehrim is such a hardcore RPG to where the torches even

come in three flavors.

(Left) Save Often!

Try jumping on top of the walls if you suck at mazes as much as I do

That’s not all you can do; you can gain a set of abilities such as forging, skinning, and even

heart removal. At the time of playing, forging and armor crafting were still in

development. The armor sets were good enough for me anyways, so I never really found

myself wanting to make my own armor.

Tying all these gameplay threads together are the quests. Nehrim has fewer side quests than

Oblivion, but the ones in Nehrim burst at the seams with originality and

excitement, where as the side quests in Oblivion were the only way you could

find an interesting, hand-crafted dungeon. Since Nehrim’s dungeons themselves

are all original with their own backstories, it’s almost as if every dungeon is

an Oblivion side quest in itself. As such, I don’t really mind not having all

that many side quests in the game. Were the modders actually paid for their

work, I daresay the actual side quests would be more plentiful. Sadly, some of

the side quests, one in particular, are incomplete, and could be as good as the

existing ones if the modding team had the time to finish them. But it is

important to keep in perspective the fact that Nehrim is just a mod, something

its polished and enjoyable gameplay may make you forget.

Presentation:

Partly there to lead you throughout the world, partly to give you one of the best stories to be

found in a computer game, is the main quest. It’s nice that it’s more like a

train that drops you off at locations throughout the world, 

Ghost Train!

so that you take your time to explore the entirety of Nehrim. Once you finish the main quest, you

will still be able to go back and finish whatever it is you want to. In terms

of the quest structure, it initially feels similar to Oblivion’s main quest, but

is superior in most ways. You’re more than just a dungeon postal boy who

fetches items for Sean Bean; instead, you are quite an active player in a very

believable and realistically populated world. For instance, you get to instigate a                                                                                       revolution, the climax of which, unlike the one in Fable III, is rather epic.

Nehrim is beautiful…

As you advance along the main storyline, you will be faced with some tough choices. Not all of them

dramatically affect the game, but they will force you to think deeply about

philosophy whilst playing. Fate, predestination, independence, representation,

monarchy, what do you think about them? You will constantly suspect each and every

character as you are tricked into judging the morality of their actions. It

feels a lot like Bioshock, really. As Bioshock showed us, a great story is one

thing, but add to that great presentation and even the most mystical of realms

can come alive in front of your very eyes. Nehrim definitely has good

presentation, as it uses a lot of cinematic moments to advance the plot, all of

which are enjoyable to watch. Oblivion’s main quest simply lacked any of these

moral ponderings and cinematic moments.

(Left) Speaking of Bioshock…

Nehrim is not always a nice place

Sound:

There to make these cinematic moments and the rest of the dialogue savourable is a host of

German voice actors. (way more than Oblivion’s measly six…) I really wish I was

the game developer, because I also would like a ton of voice actors willing to

volunteer their services to me free of charge. As an Anglo-speaker, I still

enjoyed the eloquently acted German, though the well-translated subtitles at

the bottom definitely helped. And the words that come out of the voice actors’

mouths are scripted as thoughtfully as the dialogue in Oblivion.

In addition to original and all-around excellent voice acting, Nehrim also boasts a nice

soundtrack. One of the two lead designers on the project orchestrated the sound

for Nehrim, so the sound was designed with the rest of the game in mind. And

it’s good, as it manages to catch the idea of the minimalist soundtrack rather

deftly. However, compared to Oblivion’s excellent soundtrack, it doesn’t stand

a chance. Sure, Nehrim’s soundtrack sets the tone well, but it feels slightly

derivative of Oblivion’s at points and doesn’t really stand out like some of

the stanzas in Oblivion’s Reign of the Septims track. Most mods aren’t even good enough to have their own

soundtrack, but I’m not sure whether or not I would have preferred the original

Oblivion one. In the sound design department, not much has changed, as all the

effects are largely the same. The new sound effects are also well chosen and

designed.

Graphics:

While Nehrim is a mod that uses Oblivion’s engine, the Nehrim team really does a great job

artistically. Along the main quest, you will experience some very beautiful

scenes. There’s a certain point in the main quest where you look up at the sky

and think: “wow…”Actually, there are a couple of points like that. Just climb

up to the top of a mountain, and you’ll find yourself looking down upon a

beautifully carved vista.

Wow…

As you descend to enter the different cities, be they

a feudal village, nothing but burned ruins, a mercenary camp, or a theocratic

kingdom, you will be amazed at the distinct artistic feel that embodies and

identifies each. I really, really, loved Nehrim’s sense of place. It really

felt like the world of Nehrim could actually exist, the characters and towns

were designed so realistically. Special kudos goes to the awesome weapons,

monsters, and even plants that made Nehrim feel like a totally separate game

instead of an Oblivion mod. The lack of fast travel in lieu of teleportation

helps here, as it allows you to truly appreciate the world around you.

A Concealed Jungle City

Ancient ruins crawling with ethereal creatures. Not my favorite place to hang out.

Technical Issues:

Despite its excellent gameplay, Nehrim has a few inevitable technical issues. Since SureAI

is only a modding group and not a professional game developing company, they

don’t exactly possess the resources necessary to maximize the in-game loading

sequences nor fix all system problems. The loading screens, however, were

thankfully just as short as Oblivion’s. While my computer could easily run

Oblivion on highest settings with only brief hiccups during in-game loading

areas, I had to cut the draw distance in half in order to stop Nehrim from

freezing upon me. It wasn’t a big issue, though, so long as I kept the draw

distance at a reasonable level. Furthermore, I found that if I had too many

saved game files still around from Oblivion, Nehrim would occasionally crash. Thank

god, though, that the crashes are not bad in the least, as it doesn’t take long

at all to restart your game. To combat these crashes, I had to consistently

alternate between two regular save files in addition to my quick save, and make

sure that I didn’t have too many Oblivion save files. If I did this, I found

myself to be okay for periods of up to four hours or so straight. And yes,

Nehrim can be that addicting at times. It may have just had something to do

with Windows Vista; perhaps it will run better on XP. I was also running a high

level graphics card, an i7 620 processor, and plenty of other high end stuff

besides.

In terms of bugs, Nehrim is completely free of all major ones. There are a couple of little

problems that occasionally crop up here and there, but they are only

forgettable ones that never kill the experience. SureAI has consistently been

adding patches to the English and German versions, so those little annoyances

continue to be steamrolled into Oblivion. (pun not intended)

In summary, Nehrim has a couple of technical issues that may appear game-breaking, but in reality

aren’t very annoying at all.

Far Cry?

Lasting Appeal:

Whereas Vanilla Oblivion had enough content to satiate me for sixty hours in total, Nehrim

clocks in at about twenty-four hours. Sure, there’s more that I could possibly

do, but I’ve exhausted all of the quests and most of the other interesting

stuff to do. While twenty-four hours is not a lot in comparison to sixty, one

thing to keep in mind is that each and every single dungeon in Nehrim is completely

unique and never a chore, as opposed to most of the dungeons in Oblivion. Furthermore,

SureAI has consistently been fixing bugs and adding and finishing the side quests.

In Summary:

Each and every single piece of Nehrim is simply just amazing through and through. What’s

amazing is that the people making this were Elder Scrolls enthusiasts doing

this in their spare time for zero pay. There are so many games out there made

by professional companies that just don’t even come close to the quality that

Nehrim consistently and effortlessly evokes. While Nehrim is certainly an

amazing enough mod to have deservedly won 6^th place in ModDB’s

reader’s choice contest and the highly coveted Editor’s Choice award, it is

good enough to be one of the best games to be released in 2010. Period. It

soars far above many of the full-priced games released today. I would even

recommend buying the Oblivion GotY edition for the PC just to play Nehrim. It

really is that good. And if you have a PC and haven’t played Oblivion, no more

excuses. Go get 100 hours out of Oblivion GotY and another 25 out of Nehrim.

You won’t be disappointed, unless of course your computer sucks and can’t

handle the Oblivion engine.

Regardless, Nehrim represents the pinnacle of modding and is a clear embodiment of the strengths

and depth of PC gaming. It’s obvious from every beautiful cut scene to each and

every last spell statistic that SureAI loved what they were doing. The game

just… exudes excellence. Like Oblivion, this is a huge world to explore, as is

immediately evident from the time you step outside in the beginning till the

ending where you watch a friend walk slowly back into his hut, the sunlight

gleaming off the nearby cliff. Nehrim truly is the RPG that Oblivion should

have been, but never was. Come, enter a world where destiny is balanced upon a

knife’s edge, where all is certain and uncertain. Enter the world of Nehrim:

Fate’s Edge.

Begin your journey…

Points are awarded using the Angry Joe scoring system, with a 5/10 being a merely average game.

Presentation: 10/10 Awesome, functional story with a great ending, nice plot twists.

Graphics: 10/10 Beautiful settings, unique artistic design.

Sound: 9/10 Nice to see that they even have a strong, unique soundtrack, but it can't help but constantly remind you of Oblivion's better soudntrack.

Technical Issues: 9/10 Some slightly irritating crashing issues, but impressively more bug free than most premium games released these days. SureAI is still working on fixing the remaining kinks.

Gameplay: 10/10 SureAI managed to

not only vastly improve Oblivion’s combat system, but also add a lot of RPG

elements that Oblivion was sorely lacking.

Lasting Appeal: 10/10 It has an

outrageous amount of content for a mod, with new content still being added. You

won’t forget the plot anytime soon.

Total: 10/10 AMAZING! Go download

it!

Bethesda should cut a deal with SureAI

Don’t forget to check out SureAI’s

homepage (http://www.sureai.de/) or the

Nehrim Wiki that other community members and I have been working on. (http://nehrim.wikia.com/wiki/Nehrim_Wiki)

Oliphants!

If you want a sneak peek of the gameplay footage, check out this video. This part highlights one of the many cool moments throughout Nehrim.