At Fate's Edge

October 7, 2010 11:48 PM

Nehrim is atotal conversion of the Oblivion engine by the German amateur team at SureAI. Four years in the making and one of the largest mod projects ever completed, it features a massive new hand-crafted world, an elaborate and compelling main quest, dozens of side-quests, over 50 professional voice actors, a reworked leveling and crafting system, new spells, new items, new enemies and an original score of over 50 songs. Those who persevere through the prologue into this open world will be rewarded with a truly brilliant classical RPG.

You will need a copy of Oblivion, although you do not need any of the expansion packs. It does work with the Steam version of the game, but you will need to replace your existing Oblivion "Data" directory with the Nehrim "Data" directory. Then unselect all files in your launcher except for the Nehrim files.. Caveat: while all game text, menus and books have been translated into English, the character voices are still in German.

From the devs:
555840 objects in 9622 loading areas (levels) and is inhabited by 1285 non-player characters, some of them friendly, others hostile.. 1616 scripts take care of offering the players enough variety in the 35-part main quest as well as in the about 30 side quests. ... Referring to the testers, the game can hold you busy for about 40-50 hours.

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Review
Walkthrough

posted by sophist (17 comments total)

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I started playing it and quit as soon as I got to the crate-stacking puzzle in the prologue mine. Crate-stacking puzzles are fucking stupid in general, and the Oblivion engine doesn't handle them at all. I think the designers were just showing off or something for no good reason.
posted by nasreddin at 11:56 PM on October 7, 2010

I am very sad and very glad I don't have a PC any more.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:16 AM on October 8, 2010

I will definitely be giving this a shot sometime soon. Loving the mods and conversions these days.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:41 AM on October 8, 2010

Ooh, that makes me happy. Morrowwind was my favourite game ever, but I never finished Oblivion. I found all the hints and tips and maps too condescending. Hopefully Nehrim doesn't suffer from that...?
posted by lollusc at 3:49 AM on October 8, 2010

Downloading the torrent right now and it looks like I'll have it in about 10 minutes. I'll have to dig my Oblivion install discs out of the closet this weekend while the wife is out of town.

But for the love of god, someone with a moddb account please leave a comment to the reviewer that 'forest' is spelled with one 'r'.
posted by daHIFI at 5:54 AM on October 8, 2010

I hope you can upgrade from paper pants.
posted by thylacine at 6:18 AM on October 8, 2010

This looks excellent, particularly since I've been trending in my video game buying toward "Is it anything like Oblivion?"
posted by grabbingsand at 6:50 AM on October 8, 2010

Yay, I was looking forward to this and didn't know it was out.

BTW, I played through the whole prologue and didn't stack a single crate.
posted by zompist at 7:02 AM on October 8, 2010

I've recently rediscovered the joys of the Elder Scrolls universe after downloading some mods that fix that ugly problem that you need to spend a lot of time failing at low-level skills in order to match NPC and monster leveling. I like the games much better now that I'm no longer having stealth and magic characters impotently wearing heavy armor and swinging battle axes for endurance and strength.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:49 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

I was playing Nehrim quite a bit (before Minecraft took over my life). It's quite good. Thoroughly in the German tradition. My main problem with it is that roaming around the world is much more constrained than I'd like it to be. One of the last things I did before Minecraft made its fateful entrance was to fight my way through a disused mountainpass. When I got to the land on the other side there were even more monsters who were even more dangerous, so I had to turn back. At least the monsters don't respawn (as far as I've been able to tell). I really liked being able to wander around in Oblivion, which Nehrim doesn't offer.

That said, Nehrim is very good.
posted by Kattullus at 8:05 AM on October 8, 2010

Word on the street is that it seems inspired by the good stuff from the Gothic games, particularly the spectacular terrain/town/dungeon level design.
posted by straight at 8:50 AM on October 8, 2010

Is this similar to Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul? Or does it change the game more fundamentally?
posted by jeff-o-matic at 9:22 AM on October 8, 2010

I forgot that mods like these are still possible after all these years.
posted by TwelveTwo at 9:36 AM on October 8, 2010

If my videocard wasn't dead, then I would definitely give this a shot.
posted by codacorolla at 9:51 AM on October 8, 2010

Forrest's.
Forrest's.
Forrest's.
My Brian's hurt.

The mind boggles at their ability to hold together a team of world builders to produce what are essentially entirely new games... and then give them away. Just building a single reasonably good looking island for a mod is really fricking hard.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:58 AM on October 8, 2010

Or does it change the game more fundamentally?

It is a completely new game. The only thing in common is the engine and many of the models. Other than that, the entire Oblivion world has been replaced by a different world, with different npcs, different quests, different buildings, etc.

Kattullus: I had a really hard time deciding on whether to post this or just a collection of awesome Minecraft videos.
posted by sophist at 12:31 PM on October 8, 2010

I bought the PS3 version but ragequit very early in the game because of the ridiculous leveling system. I wish folks could mod console games.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 5:29 PM on October 8, 2010