Fallout 4's best modder is bringing Doom to Starfield and bards to Skyrim

An orc playing a lute while adventurer's watch — (Image credit: Bethesda)

As QuakeCon kicked off yesterday I was surprised and delighted to see a familiar name pop up repeatedly in Bethesda's stream. No, not Todd Howard. Not Marty Stratton. Not Doom Guy or John Starfield or Beth Esda (the reclusive and rarely-seen 106-year-old owner of Bethesda Game Studios).

It was Kinggath! Kinggath is a modder I associate so strongly with Fallout 4 that, as far as I'm concerned, he invented it. The Sim Settlements and Sim Settlements 2 mods Kinggath built are so essential to Fallout 4 that the game might as well not even exist without them. I won't go into a 10-paragraph sales pitch because I've already done that: here's why you should never play Fallout 4 without Sim Settlements 2.

The first few minutes of the QuakeCon livestream were packed with Kinggath name-drops because he's now working on official Creations (mods) for Bethesda. The first Kinggath project we saw yesterday is for Skyrim, an expansion of the disappointing vanilla Bard's College. Yes, Bethesda put a Bard's College in Skyrim, put in a bunch of quests for it, and yet… didn't let you become a bard. I agree, it was either an act of madness or one of cruelty, like a sanitation truck driver broadcasting ice cream man music just to see the disappointment on kids' faces when they run outside with a few dollars eagerly clutched in their hands.

That unforgivable wrong will be righted at last. The Bard's College expansion adds a "major" storyline for the musical faction, and get this, it lets you become a proper bard. "The mountains will come alive as you play your instruments on the open road. Use them to earn coin by playing for an audience or to inspire your allies in combat."

You're not the only bard in Skyrim, naturally. "Learn insults and retorts as you battle other Bards in games of wordplay that can earn you coin and prestige." There's also a "new type of weapon to string your Shouts together to compose a devastating Chant," and a ballad can be crafted to sing about your exploits to the world. The Bard's College Expansion isn't free: it'll cost 1,000 "Creation Credits," which works out to $10 on Steam. Find out more here, and check out the the trailer:

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If you're looking for a Kinggath joint you can play for free, you'll have to fire up Starfield, and then shut it back off immediately because this Creation isn't out yet. It's a "Doom-inspired miniquest" from Kinggath, and you can catch a few quick glimpses of it below. Doom Guy armor: check. That iconic shotgun? Check. A space station that looks like it's been orbiting hell? Big check. "At Hell's Gate" doesn't have a release date yet, but we'll update you when we get one.

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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.