Rock, Paper, Shotgun

“Time Went Mad”: Elder Scrolls IV: Andoran

By Jim Rossignol on July 6th, 2011 at 5:08 pm.


Crikey, The Elder Scrolls IV: Andoran, which is a Russian-language Oblivion mod, is looking splendid and, more importantly, a bit mad. Spotted by the chaps at PC Gamer, the mod’s trailer (which you can see below) reveals a more visually interesting world, and the game’s site boasts that it has a “non-linear plot”.

It also says this: “What would it be, if the time went mad? Meeting your own self, talking rats, intertaining fleas, live cheese and horses walking on the sea is what a player will face in the Axis, one of the games areas. But things are not as they seem, the matters will become clear after a while and logic, though unusual, will replace the madness.” I don’t know what that means, but it sounds AWESOME. Go watch the trailer. I mean it.


The game is apparently “slated for the second half of 2011.” But it’s not clear if that will just be in Russian.

I rather like the Russian voiceover, though, so it might be cool to play with subtitles, as I did with The Witcher 2.

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92 Comments »

  1. 06/07/2011 at 17:10 Pijama says:

    Mother Russia – the heralds of a new PC gaming.

  2. 06/07/2011 at 17:14 Scatterbrainpaul says:

    The horses walking on water…… nice

  3. 06/07/2011 at 17:15 Aluschaaf says:

    WANT! Any idea whether there’ll be an english translation / subtitles?

  4. 06/07/2011 at 17:15 KauhuK says:

    Russians have made many interesting games though many of them are buggy they arent lacking in ambition and imagination. Also I hate myself now for not getting oblivion from steam sale (I had a copy of Oblivion but I traded it away long time ago)

  5. 06/07/2011 at 17:17 Acosta says:

    This thing is one of the most amazing stuff I have watched lately, I don’t know if it will turn out in a great game, but the trailer alone is good enough to show there is a crazy and untapped world for videogames to explore.

  6. 06/07/2011 at 17:21 Batolemaeus says:

    Those are some incredible production values.
    Sadly, the engine is horrible. Easy to do modding with, but absolutely horrendous when it comes to running. I’m playing some Oblivion now and then, not because, but despite the engine.

    • 06/07/2011 at 20:32 Wulf says:

      I can’t help but agree. I recently compared Morrowind, with the Morrowind Graphics Extender (and sea foam!) versus Oblivion with similar things going on, and high res texture packs for both.

      I was amazed at how much better looking Morrowind came out.

      In Oblivion, the graphics tend to be chunky. Comparing Morrowind and Oblivion is like comparing an Amiga with a C-64. And the people are… pug ugly, even face-modded. And the excessive use of bloom and normal-mapping (PLASTIC, ALL IS PLASTIC, EVERYTHING SHALL BE PLASTIC) make it even worse.

      So I agree. It’s a fantastic little mod, but the engine holds it back.

    • 06/07/2011 at 21:02 ChromeBallz says:

      @Wulf

      Morrowind and Oblivion run on the same engine. NetImmerse and GameBryo are the same engine, the latter is simply the “new” name for the former.

      That said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and i wouldn’t really want to go without displacement mapping at least. Morrowind and Oblivion have very different styles aswell.

    • 06/07/2011 at 23:51 Petethegoat says:

      Exactly, Wulf. I can’t play Oblivion any more. I’m not one to care about graphics, but dear god, it really is horrendous looking.
      The mod looks incredible. Absolutely ridiculously good.
      The Morrowind parts look amazing, and I’m very glad to see them.

      I will play this in Russian if I have to.

  7. 06/07/2011 at 17:25 WMain00 says:

    Well….it would certainly make me consider installing it again.

  8. 06/07/2011 at 17:29 Coins says:

    Well, this is worth learning Russian for, I suppose.

    • 06/07/2011 at 17:45 Lukasz says:

      also for pathalogic

    • 06/07/2011 at 17:55 Coins says:

      I think I like pathologic the broken way more.

    • 06/07/2011 at 21:07 CaspianRoach says:

      Hah, russian is a trainwreck to learn as a second language, the amount of rules, exception to the rules and just bits that don’t make any sense is obscenely absurd. I should know, it’s my first language.

    • 06/07/2011 at 21:44 Doesntmeananything says:

      There go our plans of making Russian the global language. Well done, CaspianRoach.

    • 06/07/2011 at 23:52 Petethegoat says:

      Yes, I would love to learn Russian for the same reason.
      Shame it’s a bitch to learn though. You should set up an RPS “learn Russian” club.
      Then I could play Metro and Stalker in Russian, and I might have a chance of knowing what’s going on in Pathologic.

    • 07/07/2011 at 05:11 Papageno says:

      What I’ve learned of Russian makes it seem rather complicated. More cases than German, and to top it off you have to learn all the case declensions for every noun. Yikes. German only has a bit of that, and keeps the declensions restricted to the articles and adjectives.

    • 07/07/2011 at 13:01 Corrupt_Tiki says:

      But the typography is so pretty!

  9. 06/07/2011 at 17:29 kikito says:

    mmnnnnnn

    I want to speak elvish like these guys.

  10. 06/07/2011 at 17:38 kyrieee says:

    I heard the Morrowind music and saw mushroom trees!

  11. 06/07/2011 at 17:39 TheLaquidara says:

    Looks fantastic. It’s neat that there are people out there going this far with modding. Especially when there’s little to no profit from it… in fact, they probably lose money from projects this large.

    The interesting thing is that this almost looks as good as Skyrim, though I’m sure there are some serious performance hits, and it’s hard to say how open the world is just from the trailer. Honestly, it’s amazing what you can get from just throwing a few shaders into the mix

    Edit: Dwemer Ruins at 1:13.

  12. 06/07/2011 at 17:40 Gnoupi says:

    “I rather like the Russian voiceover, though, so it might be cool to play with subtitles, as I did with The Witcher 2.”

    I sure hope you didn’t play The Witcher 2 in russian, though.

  13. 06/07/2011 at 17:40 Tretiak says:

    In Soviet Oblivion… :(

  14. 06/07/2011 at 18:02 tameimpala says:

    Surreal Russian trippyness aside, this looks pretty mega. The production values are bang tidy and I love the Morrowind vibe to it!

  15. 06/07/2011 at 18:11 Moonracer says:

    This looks great. Looks like a well thought out project.

    I still feel guilty for not having played Nehrim yet. It’s been sitting on my HD waiting for me.

  16. 06/07/2011 at 18:12 Fumarole says:

    Could this be the first video game appearance of Horace the Cheese?

  17. 06/07/2011 at 18:20 Devan says:

    Looks great. This should definitely be worth trying out as long as there’s subtitles available. I’d prefer that to an English dub, I think.

  18. 06/07/2011 at 18:45 McCool says:

    Yes, this, utterly this. It’s what the Elder Scrolls Construction Set has been crying out for. Ten bravos in a row.

    • 06/07/2011 at 19:54 Kent says:

      I’ve been doing some minor mods in CS. You can’t do shit like this in it. Just the limitation of the function calling in vanilla CS is bloody horrendous. And the engine cannot do the things displayed in the trailer. Obviously they have tweaked some of the source code of the game.

    • 06/07/2011 at 20:30 Buttless Boy says:

      Kent, have you installed the script extender (don’t remember the name of the Oblivion one, but a bit of Googling should bring you to it)? It adds a lot of basic scripting functionality missing from the vanilla CS.

      I think it’s hilarious that even Bethesda’s modding tools have to be modded before they’re up to par. Gotta love ‘em, though.

    • 06/07/2011 at 21:27 McCool says:

      Not so much the prettiness, which is impressive, or, say, the animations, or the amount of NPCs on screen, its the inventiveness, the architecture, the design of the landscape. Its just dripping with imagination, kind of exactly what Oblivion was lacking.

    • 07/07/2011 at 01:40 soldant says:

      Actually I somewhat agree with Kent, when I was watching some of the sequences it seemed pretty unlikely that the Gamebryo engine would be able to do some of this at an acceptable framerate. I have a suspicion that some elements are pre-rendered, the lighting looks far too good and the animation far too fluid in some sections. Pretty sure the environments are all in-game though.Scripting sure extends a lot of core functionality, but it doesn’t fix problems inherent with the engine itself.

  19. 06/07/2011 at 18:52 Urthman says:

    Reckon I know what I’ll be playing while waiting for the price of Skyrim to fall.

  20. 06/07/2011 at 18:52 Text_Fish says:

    Like.

  21. 06/07/2011 at 18:55 Carra says:

    First watched the clip and then read the text.

    I thought this was an official addon. Heck, it looks better than I’d expect of an official addon.

  22. 06/07/2011 at 18:57 rareh says:

    I am looking more forward to this then skyrim.

    • 06/07/2011 at 21:52 Balobam says:

      The more and more I hear about Skyrim, the more it causes my opinion of the game to fluctuate. This just looks straight up awesome. And I so want Skyrim to succeed, but the more they say about it it sounds like they’re removing features to accommodate for the consoles restrictions, like no armour customisation etc.

      I’m not angry about the whole thing, but these would be nice features and it’s a shame they’ll be missing

    • 07/07/2011 at 03:23 Burning Man says:

      They just made the hauberk and greaves into one big piece. How that helps ‘accessibility’, I don’t know, but hey. that’s what they did. And no, everything else is the same.

      My personal feeling is that Bethesda is treading the line between simplification and oversimplification very very carefully. They’ve seen/know what can happen when the hardcore crowd feels alienated, so they do not want to do that. But at the same time they know a lot of ‘casual’ gamers played Oblivion, so they want to make it as freshman friendly as they can. Hopefully they’ve done a good job.

  23. 06/07/2011 at 19:01 ArcaneSaint says:

    From the official website “In Andoran you can bind and carry away almost every character after having him knocked senseless or paralized.”

    So that’s the game anti-gaming senator Leland Yee was talking about. That makes his argument even less valid though, as this isn’t really a game, but more of a very complex, total-conversion mod with tons of additional content.
    But still, glad that’s finally been cleared up.

  24. 06/07/2011 at 19:03 Koshzor says:

    Let me try to translate it for you, guys. I’m not sure, if it is absolutely correct, so please, tell me, if i wrong.

    - Empire of Tamriel falls.
    - Old rulers, who are still loyal, dies. And new ones, who are not always pleased with state of things, comes to their place.
    - Their displeasure doesen’t matter. In Breach of the Dragon even time lose it’s importance.
    - Empire mages lost control. And this failure can cost us too much. As we haven’t enough problems…
    - Vampire hunters want to make money on our problems. Lets see, if they can hold rivers of blood. Immortality on the stakes.
    - Immortality?
    - Not only vampires. Some of dunmers believe that their gods aren’t gone and still has their power. And they will fight
    - And what’s in the end?
    - I don’t know. There are many variants. Too much.

  25. 06/07/2011 at 19:05 geldonyetich says:

    It’s always a little embarrassing when the fans manage to make a better game than the original with the mod tools. Although these guys went a bit further than that: they appear to have imported and improved the Morrowind assets.

  26. 06/07/2011 at 19:28 Xercies says:

    Looks really good, definitely getting a Morrowind vibe, why aren’t these guys just making a proper payab;e game then a mod. I would bloody buy it!

  27. 06/07/2011 at 19:30 Stuart Walton says:

    Nehrim was pretty good. This looks better. Definitely going to give it a shot.

  28. 06/07/2011 at 19:46 Metonymy says:

    I don’t see any gameplay demonstration, just a bunch of cinematic story stuff.

    Maybe you’ve grown accustomed to seeing a lot of movie+story stuff and thinking ‘game,’ but that isn’t what a game is.

    • 06/07/2011 at 20:26 Buttless Boy says:

      There are quite a few shots of gameplay, but since this is an Oblivion mod you should probably already know how it plays.

  29. 06/07/2011 at 19:55 Stevostin says:

    I said today I wouldn’t pay €5 for Deus Ex 3. OTOH, I could pay €40 for that one. This is so inspired and exciting !

  30. 06/07/2011 at 20:10 gritz says:

    Looks great but I’d be very surprised if there weren’t tons of assets taken from other people’s mods.

  31. 06/07/2011 at 20:27 Buttless Boy says:

    Is it just me, or does this look prettier than Skyrim?

  32. 06/07/2011 at 20:32 razgon says:

    Looks awesome!

    Btw, in the slight off chance that people don’t know about it, but likes mods for Oblivion, check out Nehrim, which is possibly better than the original Obilvion (Once you get out of the starter dungeon, that is)

    http://www.nehrim.de/indexEV.html

  33. 06/07/2011 at 20:38 Stijn says:

    I wonder how much post-processing the trailer got, since a lot of this stuff just isn’t possible via the ordinary modding process through which most mods are made. I at least saw several new animations and probably some advanced new shaders. I’d be pretty excited if they implemented all that in the original game… and are not having it crash every 5 minutes as usual with this kind of modification.

    • 06/07/2011 at 23:52 macaronisalive says:

      I can almost guarantee you that they were using Oblivion Graphics Extender and various shaders in that trailer. The water, SSAO and sunshafts are all a part of that. Most likely a texture pack as well. Qarl’s Texture Pack III in all likelihood. The Indoril Armor near the end is from another mod.

      This is also part two of a mod trilogy. Part 1 “Axis” is already available. They added some beautifying mods to make it all look better in the trailer. Everyone can do that to Oblivion right now. So don’t be blown away with the graphics and think that all of that’s only possible because of their mod.

      Still this mod does look very interesting.

  34. 06/07/2011 at 21:06 CaspianRoach says:

    This russian voiceover is so overly dramatic it’s even kinda good.

  35. 06/07/2011 at 21:14 Squishpoke says:

    I might just play this instead of Oblivion. I kinda liked Morrowind, bought Oblivion on a recent sale, and I guess it seems that Oblivion isn’t as… imaginative or something.

  36. 06/07/2011 at 21:14 Eversor says:

    Oh… oh god. Those crazy russians, they’re really something. Expanding on the fantastic concept of “Dragon Break”, the idea that all various twists in Tamriel’s history all can happen at the same time, that the timeline eventually vows all of them together… the amazing paradoxes.

    Ordinators and Dwemer ruins, FUCK YEAH! This mod looks ridiculously amazing.

  37. 06/07/2011 at 21:18 Nick says:

    Russian modders making Bethesda look bad.

  38. 06/07/2011 at 21:29 bluebogle says:

    Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.

  39. 06/07/2011 at 22:21 groghog says:

    Never got Nehrim working, but I’ll definitely give this a look. Wouldn’t mind playing in russian, as long as I can get subtitles.

    Also just read you can knock people out with unarmed? Finally, a use for that skill!

  40. 06/07/2011 at 22:22 Jason Moyer says:

    I rarely bother with mods for anything, but I’ve wanted an Elder Scrolls game set in the Black Marsh for a long time. Looks awesome.

  41. 06/07/2011 at 23:02 DBG says:

    Забавно, что я узнаю о русском моде с нерусского сайта :) Но спасибо за новость

  42. 07/07/2011 at 01:04 Nameless1 says:

    Incredibly interesting, you can also find an interview here: http://www.rpgitalia.net/news/oblivion/andoran-the-interview/

  43. 07/07/2011 at 03:01 Daiv says:

    It’s too far fetched. The made-up language, the craziness, I don’t believe in these “Russians” you speak of. Such a land as this “Russia” could never exist, and the technology to create it in a game doesn’t yet exist.

  44. 07/07/2011 at 03:45 DOLBYdigital says:

    Sweet! Give me some English subs and I’m ready. Like the sound of the Russian voices

  45. 07/07/2011 at 04:18 famousright says:

    Since I know Russian, I can say that it sounds and looks impressive, but a little vague. Empire collapses again. Mages are out of control. Vampires are seeking for immortality. And Dunmers believe that their gods are still full of energy. “And how can it all end?” – asks the voice at the final of the video. “I do not know. A lot of options.” – In response.

    As for me the appearance of this mod is brilliant. I confess, I think Morrowind one of the best games ever existed. I am glad that someone took the trouble to give us another ticket to the wonderful world of Tamriel. Oh, Bethesda, I beg you to turn to Morrowind ways and forget the Oblivion ones.

  46. 07/07/2011 at 05:39 thebigJ_A says:

    IDK. It looks great, but then so did Nehrim. Nehrim’s poor translation (and, in certain parts like books, lack of translation) ruined it for me. I couldn’t get invested in the world, and gave up after five or six hours.

  47. 07/07/2011 at 09:37 Uglycat says:

    So it’s Oblivion with Russians?

  48. 07/07/2011 at 10:51 SanguineAngel says:

    So…. based purely on this trailer and the skyrim trailers…. I have more faith in these guys than bethesda. I mean I am excited about skyrim a lot but this was exciting, fresh and interesting. And the aesthetic style was what I was basically expecting oblivion to look like before it came out. They’ve done an incredible job by the looks of it. If there are subtitles I will definitely get it!

  49. 07/07/2011 at 13:18 Po0py says:

    Can I just say this about the original Oblivion: I have been replaying it again and all I can say is that it is a completely and utterly awesome game. It takes a lot to hold my interest in a game these days but Oblivion is just outrageously addictive. I say this and I’ve still yet to touch the main campaign missions beyond closing the Kvatch gate at the beginning. I don’t know when I’ll have the time to try out these mods because I have yet to set foot in the Shivering Isles or try out the Knights of the Nine expansions.

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