Skyrim Mod - Interesting NPCs

by **[PDE]PaulKersey** Tue Nov 12, 2013 7:29 pm

Description:

Interesting NPCs is a project to add color and life to Skyrim through three-dimensional characters. Each NPC is integrated into the world, with a backstory and an extensive dialogue tree to explore. Many of these characters are fully voiced by a talented team of over 80 voice actors. The dialogue choices allow you to role-play, providing humor and depth to each conversation. You can be a jerk or a jester, a white knight or an assassin, as the most important character is you.

With version 3, the mod is officially out of its beta stage. Most of the quests have been played and tested for months, but given the size of the mod, it's possible there are minor needles in the haystack, such as a missing audio file or typo. Any and all bugs should be reported in the separate discussion thread.

As the mod will likely continue to make future additions and improvements, it can still be classified as a WIP, but the existing content should see very little change.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, ACTOR INTERVIEWS, FULL SOUNDTRACK, CHARACTER PROFILES, AND BAD JOKES, VISIT THE MOD WEBSITE AT 3DNPC.COM

Special thanks to everyone who helped build this project. I still remember when it was just a couple NPCs hanging out in one place like a wax museum. Thanks to all the actors, composers, testers, blog contributors, and users who helped support the mod along the way. I've said my thanks once before, but I really can't stress it enough, without everyone's contribution none of this would be possible.

F E A T U R E S
• More than 150 Voiced NPCs
• Over 25,000 lines and over 500,000 words of Player and NPC Dialogue
• 45 Quests - 7-Part Main Questline, 6-part Miscellaneous Questline plus 18 Full and 14 Miscellaneous (Target Goal is 100 Quests so long as quality is maintained)
• Over 25 Followers with Location Based Commentary
• 10 Marriage NPCs
• For better control of which NPCs are in your game, non Quest-NPCs can have their base dialogue removed via "Questname setstage 500" console command. To obtain the quest name, type "HELP NPCname" in the console. Scenes, packages, and dialogue outside their base quest will remain.
• Unvoiced/Unfinished Dialogue can be enabled via the console by "setstage 3dnpcenable 1"

Originally, the goal was to expand 8 followers to include commentary on every quest and location in the game, including bonus conversations during or after major questlines. Currently, these followers, whom I have dubbed "Super Followers" because they fly and wear capes, have approximately 1000+ lines each. It may be unrealistic to meet this goal, however, as actor interest in performing slave labor can ebb and flow, and even a dozen new lines can often take months to get recorded.

The size of the mod is over 2GB, but 1.6GB compressed. Nexus has a 2GB limit, so after version 3 the mod will be available via virus and fileshare sites only unless the limit is raised.

T R A I L E R
This video highlights just a small portion of the features in this mod, including voice acting, followers with unique commentary, interconnected NPCs, unexpected encounters, bard music, and player role playing choices. This represents just a fraction of the overall content in Interesting NPCs.

I N S T A L L A T I O N

Manual installation is simple. Download the main version and drag and drop the contents into your Data folder. If your download interrupts, try the mirror links in the triangle looking tab above.

* BSA - This is the file that has all the textures, meshes, scripts and voice assets. If you don't have this, everyone will be mutes and have zombie skin and be generally unpleasant to talk to.
* SEQ file - This is to bypass the dialogue bug introduced by Bethesda's 1.77 patch. IF NPCs ARE REPEATING THEIR INTRO DIALOGUE, IT MIGHT BE BECAUSE YOU DELETED THIS FILE. DON'T DO THAT.
* ESP - The mod itself.

For most, this is the end of your installation odyssey. If you dislike silent NPCs, overwrite the main with the voiced only patch.

NOTE: Some lines/conversations in the voiced only patch are silent. These are either re-takes or new dialogue that hasn't been recorded. Most prefer to have these NPCs included given almost all the dialogue is voiced.

UPDATE INSTALLATION
I have decided against using loose file updates simply because they always overwrite the BSA. So, future updates simply require overwriting the existing BSA and ESP with the new one. Drag and drop.

NOTE: NMM may not work well with larger mods, so Christian Gaughf has kindly provided some detailed instructions for how to download this mod manually and still use NMM to install:

- Download the mod manually if NMM doesn’t work.
- Open NMM and click the “Add Mod from File” button located in your Mods tab.
- Select the 3DNPC 7zip file and click open. This may take some time.
- Once the load is complete, simply activate 3DNPC. This too may take some time.

UNINSTALLATION
The mod should be safe to uninstall via NMM or simple deletion of the esp and BSA. The mod is at its heart extremely simple, the size is mostly due to audio files. However, as with all mods, some things may linger in your save. Be sure to also delete the loose files such as the sound folders and textures such as the Mogo's Mead labels.

Starfis has also provided this handy list of things to do when uninstalling:

1. Dismiss all followers from this mod if you have any
2. Go to the location without any NPCs
3. Make a save to the new slot (just for sure, if something goes wrong), and uninstall the mod through NMM.
4. Possibly recreate all your patches like Bashed patch, Dual Sheath Redux patch, Merged patch, ReProcer patch... so any of these esps which could be dependent on this file can't cause any problems, or CTDs.

Get It Here: Interesting NPCs At The Nexus

Note: I did come across one quest that got bugged somehow called "Brother and Keeper" and I will let the author know about it if he doesn't already know, but there seems to be an issue with fast traveling and the particular NPCs involved in that quest not coming along. If its progress gets stuck and you don't have any other mods that may get in its way, you can go *here* and with a little know how, forward the quest a bit to move it along. It is also noted that: If this is the player’s first entry into Riften, the scene with Raynes and Keerava may get delayed as she is involved in another scene.

With that said, this is an excellent mod and the amount of work that went into this mod is huge. I may have seen this mod long ago and overlooked it, but I should've been tracking this one. It does more than just add NPCs, it's like adding the rest of what Skyrim, which is already a great game, could've had. It's great and major props to Kris Takahashi and all that are involved in the mod which credits can be found on the main page.