We're back again with another "Staff Picks", the regular feature where we will spotlight some of the amazing work that can be found on Nexus Mods. These mods may be old or new, popular or unknown, serious or silly - anything goes!
Just remember that there are other mods on the site that may do roughly the same thing, so keep your eyes peeled and understand that these are just our own personal picks. That said, hopefully you'll find something you may not have seen before and who knows, maybe we'll even learn a little about each other along the way. ;)
We'd love to hear some of your mod picks, it's great to find something we haven't tried before and give it a whirl. If you have some ideas drop us an email at the address listed at the bottom of this post and we'll look to get it into a future article.
BlindJudge
Game: Borderlands 1&2
Mod: Borderlands Ultimate Mod
Author: CrunchyCat1
Borderlands is a series that brings back some very fond memories for me. The cell shading was a stroke of genius and gave the game real character and an unmistakable look that was one of the big reasons attributed to its success, team play and that incredible loot also increased the allure and longevity of the title.
I played co-op for many hours with friends of mine and it gave me a permanent smile each and every time I played it. Both Borderlands 1 and 2 had a story that was interesting to follow, comedic, full of funny and well thought out NPCs and just kept you and your team engrossed from start to end. I have the 'Pre-Sequel', but am yet to play it, though that is now most certainly on my list.
This ‘Borderlands Ultimate Mod’ does a few things to minimise distractions in the game, firstly it removes the annoying start-up logos (a pet peeve) allowing you to jump straight into the game. It also opens up a few console commands to allow you to play in third-person mode, play with the hud switched off (though picking up items doesn’t really work this way) and a lot more.
TerrorFox1234
Game: Dark Souls
Mod: Dark Souls Flora Overhaul
Author: Vurt
As much as I had fun with DS2 and DS3, there was something fresh and new about the first that absolutely captivated me. Perhaps I’m wearing nostalgia tinted glasses, but there is something about DS1 that its successors just didn’t capture in the same way.
That being said, when going back to Lordran after some time away, it quickly becomes apparent how dated the visuals feel. While there are a ton of retextures that exist for the game, it was exciting to see one of my favourite modders, Vurt, had made the crossover. No more pixelated leaves and paper cutout shrubs!
Seriously though, go look at the comparison shots.
SirSalami
Game: Witcher 3
Mod: Open menu during dialogues and cutscenes
Author: Fluffy82
The Witcher 3 is a masterpiece by almost all accounts and much of that is attributed to the amazingly written dialogue and cinematic in-game cutscenes. To help ensure that you miss as little of this amazing experience as possible, this mod allows the menu to be raised during dialogue and in-game cutscenes, effectively pausing the game in case you are distracted. Obviously, this also grants access to other features of the main menu such as graphics options as well, allowing you to make quick quality comparisons during in-game cutscenes (though they will restart from the beginning after the graphics changes are applied). Pre-rendered movies unfortunately cannot be paused but thankfully the menu is indeed made available during playback.
By default, this is intuitively accomplished by pressing 'ESC' but if you're a gamepad user like me (*gasp!*), be sure to read "Step 2" in the mod's description for notes on proper configuration.
A simple and elegant solution to an annoying problem that's easily installed and available for all current versions of the game. Lovely stuff!
Guest submission - Thandal
Game: Dragon Age
Mod: FtG Quickbar - Center and Multi Rows
Author: Fluffy82
The "FtG Quickbar", by FollowtheGourd, is one of several excellent improvements to the DAO user interface from this author. To quote from the mod Description, this provides "A quickbar modification that allows you to use up to all fifty quickslots at once, while also providing options to center the quickbar. It also fixes the game where the quickbar broke when expanded too far on very wide displays."
As someone who thoroughly enjoys the entire DA-series, (most recent save in over 20 DAO playthroughs was this September, not bad for an 8-year-old game) this is one of my must-have mods. It removes an extremely annoying aspect of the vanilla UI; having abilities but not being able to trigger them directly from the screen.
When playing as a Mage, who at the higher levels might have dozens of spells, having to pause the action and search through the lists for the specific one needed at the moment when a single mouse-click should be possible is... incredibly frustrating! With this mod, problem solved!
Thanks, FtG!
Every week, we feature a few mods that have caught our staff’s attention, as well as some that were submitted by you, the Nexus Mods community. If there is a mod you’d like to see on this list, send the name of the mod along with a brief (less than 200 words) description of why you like it to [email protected] and we’ll consider adding it to the list.
If you haven’t already, feel free to follow us on our social media channels where we'll keep you up to date with the latest site news, articles and much more.
Thanks, and have fun modding!
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A moderator has closed this comment topic for the time beingI can see the trend in later articles about Nexus wanting to expand from just modding side of things to bigger and broader, such as news, articles and the likes, but I feel as if the broader the strokes will get for Nexus, the less will be given to the specific areas. Games are becoming more and more hard to mod, except for a few developers who incorporate the values such as Bethesda, although you could also call it "lack of responsibility" by pushing the doing of fixes to the community in some cases. (I truly believe Bethesda should've contacted the authors of Unofficial Legendary Patch and SKSE to incorporate some of their work, even if for a fee, to make their game even better, but that is just me in my world of dreams I guess).
I understand the want for expansion in a company, to become bigger and better, and offer more services, but that usually comes at a cost to your core services with the broader audience. The content often become "bloated", as I fear with this site. It happens to many YouTubers (Including Gopher, I feel) where they go "all in" on YouTube and their content starts lacking with the increase of content. A quantity over quality. Using Gopher as an example, a quite upstanding internet persona (as I do not know the guy personally), the older series like Fallout 3 Will and earlier seasons of Skyrim with both Richard and Stiv are better than the later seasons of Richard and the New Vegas series Jack. It may not be visible, the technological side is quite better with the recording and the quality of the videos, but the feel of his content became lacking as it wasn't the thing he did with his spare time where he put not just effort, but also some of himself into it. Now it has become a job. Might be joyful, he might enjoy it (and more power to him), but as the viewer I felt a disconnect, a shift. More pushing on ads and Patreon, as he of course needs to feed his family. But that has impact, in my humble opinion.
And so I conclude this post. Personal apology for singling you out Gopher, but you are the one I recall watching and enjoying until the expansion of Twitch and full-time YouTubing, and after the shift in Googles policies to Google+ enforcement I fell off the YouTube wagon. In essence, the work and effort that the Nexus staff puts into it's content is good, but I feel as more effort has become focused on different areas, with the new site design being more oriented for a bigger stroke of content, rather than the simple site of Nexus we have today which is heavily onto modding and basically that.
Anyway, good riddance if you read all this.
I reckon the style of the "Staff Picks" so far is going to develop as they need to dig deeper to keep up the interest.
To me the "Staff Picks" are beautiful reminders of what is still possible to achieve - even after all these years of modding.
Though there are already several outlets that highlight mods, some dig deep and some find the featured. Guides written by the pages. This is like butter on fat really, though the argument for "it isn't hurting anything" comes to mind which is fair enough.
I look forward to seeing your recommendation(s) in our mail box, and in the news next week, jet4571!
One of the most intimidating things for a new modder can be the first time they open up one of the major pieces of software used. Or even the simpler ones, if they haven't found good documentation. Tutorials such as what I have on my YT page can help them in jump right in without trepidation.
That said, I look at this a little differently. It all strikes me as inevitable evolution with a dash of human resistance to change sprinkled in for good measure ... not necessarily a bad thing.
Considering Nexus, I think the emerging path forward is a good one. More diversification of content, new features etc ... to me signals that Dark0ne and his colleagues are seeking to deepen engagement with a growing audience. I trust that many new content elements will be tried in the future ... some will stick, some will not and hopefully all will consider our input ... all of us. Content forums that stagnate will die while those that try new things will continue to flourish.
As a quick aside to the "new features" discussion, I think Mr. Dave's idea for a "modding 101" content area is a fantastic one. I can even envision "modding university" with basic/beginner, intermediate and advanced content sections.
To the YouTube side of things ... perfect example of "environment shapes behavior". The Titanic shift in the rules of the game imposed by Google has shaped content creator behavior. But wasn't this also completely predictable and inevitable? Google is not a "bad guy" here either. At the end of the day YT is a business and had to be transitioned from the early "Wild West" days into an actual business. No different from Nexus ... the desire to grow membership means ongoing development of new and diverse content, which means more Nexus people needed, which means more mouths to feed, which means it needs to be operated as a business albeit a fun business.
Last, your example of Gopher is interesting ... I was a very early subscriber and he continues to be one of my top (probably #1) favorite YouTuber. His lets play style is the best in the business ... how could anyone not like Gopher. But interesting in the sense that if we focus on one aspect of YouTube behavioral shift ... let's say Patreon ... he illustrates that there is a very wide spectrum of new behavior. On the one hand there is Gopher representing the group that is evolving along a path of robust, up to date content with a respectful, understated Patreon approach all the way to the other side where the is a bunch of sites that have devolved into something that is tantamount to the digital equivalent of sitting on a street corner with a tin cup or worse yet, an out and out hustle.
To me all of the above evokes the image of a shark ... swim or drown
Also, appreciated the interview. It was very intuitive and inspiring. I think there are so many of us that would really like to learn more and teach others to be as creative as they can be.
Thank you.