This week on the Mod Roundup, the dormant and mysterious portal structures in No Man's Sky have finally been given some interactivity. Meanwhile, Nvidia's lighting mod for Fallout 4 turns out to provide a worthwhile and creepy exploration of a mysterious vault, and a mod for Skyrim adds tons of NPC dialogue and greater control over your followers.
Here are the most promising mods we've seen this week.
Portals, for No Man's Sky
The purpose and function of portal stones is one of No Man's Sky's greater mysteries, though that mystery may have morphed from "What do portals do?" to "Do portals do anything at all?" in recent days. No amount of player experimentation has managed to activate one (yet) so one modder decided to activate them himself by tinkering with game files. Now you can interact with portals, which will ask you lore-based questions and reward you with an Atlas stone. You can also apparently use them as black hole warp jumps upon returning to your ship.
Vault 1080, for Fallout 4
This mod was created by Nvidia to show off their volumetric lighting effects, and that it does, though not with a heck of a lot of subtlety. On the other hand, it's still an enjoyable extra hour of play, as you explore a legitimately creepy new (well, old, really) vault filled with monsters and a little bit of additional story in the form of terminal diaries and logs. Come for the god rays, but stay for the ghouls.
Relationship Dialogue Overhaul
In addition to restoring lines of dialogue to Skyrim's NPCs (and creating new ones by editing multiple lines together), it makes dialogue more logical, so if your spouse is a follower they won't speak to you as a generic follower would, and NPCs who don't like you will hurl more insults and possibly even completely ignore you. This also mod has a host of NPC management features, like being able to make nearly any voiced NPC a follower, and allowing you to shush those those followers who are a bit too chatty.
A unique aspect of Japanese architecture turned out to be a key reason the Like a Dragon games can reuse assets so effectively—and deliver more compact, memorable open worlds than western cities
Ubisoft says don't compare Assassin's Creed Shadows' success to Valhalla: The latter launched in Covid's 'perfect storm' and feedback on platforms 'less affected by review bombing' is stellar
