Top Fallout 4 Modder Brings Doom to Starfield and Bards to Skyrim

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

It was Kinggath! Kinggath is a modder I associate so much with Fallout 4 that, to me, he invented it. The Sim Settlements and Sim Settlements 2 mods that Kinggath created are so essential to Fallout 4 that the game might as well not exist without them. I’m not going to get 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 filled with mentions of Kinggath, as he’s now working on official mods for Bethesda. The first Kinggath project we saw yesterday was for Skyrim, an expansion to the vanilla version’s disappointing Bard’s College. Yes, Bethesda put a Bard’s College in Skyrim, implemented a bunch of quests for it, and yet… I didn’t let you become a bard. I agree, it was either an act of insanity or an act of cruelty, like a sanitation truck driver blasting ice cream parlor music just to see the disappointment on the kids’ faces when they run outside with a few dollars clutched in their hands.

This unforgivable wrong will finally be righted. The Bard’s College expansion adds a “major” storyline for the music faction, allowing you to become a true bard. “The mountains will come alive as you play your instruments on the road. Use them to earn money by performing for an audience or to inspire your allies in battle.”

You’re not the only bard in Skyrim, of course. “Learn insults and one-liners by competing against other bards in word games that can earn you currency and prestige.” There’s also a “new weapon type to string together your shouts into a devastating chant,” and a ballad can be created to sing your exploits to the world. The Bard’s College expansion isn’t free: it’ll cost 1,000 “Creation Credits,” which is $10 on Steam. Find out more here and watch the trailer:

Skyrim: Bards College Expansion – Trailer – YouTube

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If you’re looking for a Kinggath game that you can play for free, you’ll have to launch Starfield and then immediately shut it down, because that creation hasn’t been released yet. It’s called a “Doom-inspired mini-quest” by Kinggath, and you can get a few quick glimpses of it below. Doom Guy’s armor: Yes. That iconic shotgun? Yes. A space station that looks like it’s orbited Hell? Yes, yes. “At Hell’s Gate” doesn’t have a release date yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as we have one.