We first laid eyes upon Enderal: The Shards of Order, a total conversion for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, all the way back in early 2013. There have been some very nice-looking trailers since then and we took a look at the making of the mod last year, and in June developer SureAI said the English edition (its native language is German) was likely to ship next month, which at the time meant July. Obviously that didn't work out. But today the team promised that it's close. Very close indeed.
@SM_Jericho Next week :)August 4, 2016
The launch trailer is still in German, with English subtitles, but SureAI said in a separate tweet that the English release will be a “full translation” of the original. It also bears repeating that, while this is technically a Skyrim mod, Enderal is an entirely stand-alone, full-sized RPG experience. The main quest will offer an estimated 30 hours of playtime—more if you dawdle—set across five unique biomes, telling “an unconventional story with psychological and philosophical undercurrents.”
“While the game world of Enderal is smaller than Skyrim's and the quests are fewer, we believe that the depth of our story and the complexity of our characters both surpass those in recent Elder Scrolls games,” the Enderal website says. “Enderal also differs in its game mechanics: While some have been taken over from Skyrim unchanged, others have been refined (for example, some armor sets in Enderal give set bonuses when several pieces are worn), and yet others (such as leveling up and the raising of skills) have been overhauled so greatly that they hardly resemble Skyrim mechanics any more.”
It sounds pretty fantastic, and if you're concerned that the developers might be overreaching, fret not: As long as you own a copy of Skyrim, Enderal will be free.
