Narrative and Structure
Crucially, a big focus for us at the moment is the implementation of story elements and quests. A lot of behind the scenes efforts are underway in building the main quest, and side quests, along with their interconnections. Apotheosis involves a sprawling main quest and side quests with dynamic elements, which means a large portion of content can change depending on the player's choices, in turn requiring a great degree of testing and revision to make sure things connect correctly. Luckily, modern tools exist to help smoothen out this process and help better visualize and track this story branching.
Throughout your journey through the Dreamsleeve and Oblivion, you'll encounter many characters on their own journeys, with their own hopes, fears and goals. The player will be able to interact with these characters, engaging them in conversation, helping them or opposing them at important junctions, and generally influencing their journeys with key decisions. Some may even join your side if they like you enough.
Moreover, a number of characters can be saved and helped back to the Cathedral of the Final Hour, a hub area for Apotheosis at the center of the Dreamsleeve, and your home for the duration of your travels throughout the planes. The more characters you rescue, the more services you'll be able to gain access to around the Cathedral, from Blacksmiths to Traders, Alchemists, fabled Warriors, Mages and more.
Undead from all corners of the Dreamsleeve flock to the Cathedral, you'll be able to meet many characters here as time goes by. And these too, may be willing to involve you in their struggles and journeys. Keep an eye out and make friends. It is much harder to go alone.
Narrative content will be the primary focus moving on, but it will take some more time to fully realize the vision we have.
Level Design
In terms of level design, a lot of iterative work has gone into most of our levels, from balance, creature and enemy positioning, patrols, pacing, navmesh optimization, level clarity, lighting, to aesthetics and more. You'll be able to catch some of that iterative work that's been done in the video above, Body of Nir. Most notably, Sanguine's Realms of Revelry, Dagon's Chimera of Desolation, The Spiral Skein, Moonshadow, Scuttling Void, and many numerous areas of the Dreamsleeve itself were a heavy focus for me.
A number of bossfight encounters were built or revised, and many others received further gameplay polish passes, key among them are Azura, Mephala, Namira, and a number of local bosses specific only to the Dreamsleeve itself.
Oblivion: Mephala's Spiral Skein (Apotheosis, 2021)
A lot of work was done to provide Spiral Skein with a unique tileset, clutter, creatures and rewards. It involves a biome spanning deep underground cavernous areas, a swampy surface area, and Mephala's very own Pillar Palace, menacingly towering over her realm. Alongside environment art, work was completed on the Gaping Spider, from sculpting to texturing to skinning to in game implementation. This is a variant of the Frostbite Spider, unique only to the Skein. There are more creatures in stock that we haven't shown, but which I hope you'll be able to discover yourself in game.
Dreamsleeve, Nightmare Expanse (Apotheosis, 2021)
The Dreamsleeve itself has had an entirely new area added, The Nightmare Expanse; an area of overgrown archtrees that dot the sky, a cold, unforgiving deathly hollow, mired in endless night. A lot of new kit pieces were made to flesh out this area, animated environmental pieces, trees of all sizes, many new locations, points of interest and interiors. Dreamsleeve still requires one more dungeon type/tileset to be completed, and a number of locations to be built, and then we can call it complete it as well.
Every single Daedric Realm is now in a fully/almost fully playable state. Work is still underway on Vaermina's Quagmire, and Sanguine's Realms of Revelry, particularly, building up their bossfight mechanics, as well as completing work on a number of areas within their realms.
Music
Several new pieces of the Apotheosis original ost have been completed, and many more are underway.
These range from bombastic epics, used in signature moments, particularly when facing down a dangerous enemy such as a Daedric Prince, to more laid back somber tones, as well as atmospheric, mood and environmental pieces. Here's a teaser of what's in store, a piece by StanL composed for the Leaper Demon King himself ;)
Art
Many unique art assets, from Tilesets to Armors, Artifacts and Creatures, which you'll be able to catch below have been completed. Work was done on many numerous environmental art and tileset pieces you'll be able to spot in our level design screenshots. That's aside from several new armor sets, 4 of which are shown below, more than a dozen new individual shield pieces, and several new creatures, many of which you've been able to see posted in our #updates and #announcements Discord channels, as well as our ModDB.
Several Daedric Princes also received new and updated art to better suit their stature and self-importance as well, otherwise I'd risk their wrath. You'll be able to spot a glimpse of the Prince of Fate himself, Hermaeus Mora in the video above, and more of his friends below as well. So keep an eye out ;)
Checkout the rest of this post below for a visual demonstration of a portion of the work that's been done since our latest update!
As always, be sure to follow us on here using the ModDB button below or banner above, our Discord and Youtube to get all updates as they come in!
Oblivion: Azura's Moonshadow (Apotheosis, 2021)
Dreamsleeve, Nightmare Expanse (Apotheosis, 2021)
Thank you, Kentaro Miura
You really outdid yourself with this announcement, with the trailer, the small videos showing armors and creatures etc...
Amazing work !
This is going to be one of the best if not THE best Skyrim mod of all time. This honestly looks to be the size of a new game, and I’m all here for it. This mod should be getting more hype than it is.
Awesome job guys, thanks for making these amazing adventures for us!!
Thanks for the kind words!
It's been a true rollercoaster following this project, and I'm excited to see what the future holds! When this comes out, it might be one of my favourite addons to any game ever!
Happy to hear you feel that way!
Hype!
by the eight i think im fainting, this is so good
Thank you! Everyone worked really hard to get us here.
Very much looking forward to this
Very cool Todd
16 times the Daedra!
Goosebumps, and absolutely thrilled
The song for the Demon King is totally epic and evocative
One againa congratulations for a long way of hard and well done job creating this masterpiece mod that will remain as the best mod of all times
Props to StanL who composed it!
Considering the name of the soundtrack "Leaper Demon King", does that mean a certain Daedric Prince might make reference to Alduin?
He is quite angry about that specific incident.
Very impressive, many professional games don't reach this quality!
Glad you like it :)
Looks absolutely fantastic! Can't wait to see the beauty of these level designs!
And from what I understood, the base game will have an effect on the mod. I guess that means the daedric quests? I'm kinda trying to decide with what kind of character to play the mod- one that worships the daedra or a paladin that seeks to destroy them.
Correct! Your interactions with the Daedric Princes in the vanilla Daedric Quests will affect your starting disposition with them, and in turn, your interactions with them.
Amazing work with Apotheosis so far but i do have a question, Who is Nir i never heard of this "God?" "Primordial Spirit?" but again this is outstanding work coming from you and your team.
Thx! Lookup the Annotated Anuad.
En.uesp.net
Ugh, I want so bad! Give us more!
First of all: AMAZING! So much work and beautiful design deserves a price. Is there any information about Implementation into skyrim or is this like Enderal? Are there plans to connect this with other mods like legacy of the dragonborn or did you test compatibility within a heavily modded skyrim such as NOLVUS. Sorry for my stupid questions but i saw the Trailer on Youtube and was instantly hyped.
Thank u!
1- It'll be expanding upon the base game like Dragonborn or Dawnguard. So you'll be able to use your existing character in Apotheosis, and even be able to travel back forth at a later point if you want to.
2- No plans for patches right now as all focus is on the actual project itself, after release, its possible, but I need to see.
Thank you, Miura :(
I have seen it but never bothered to read it, Ty for the Info.
Just found this, following now. Looks amazing and love the dark theme.
Cheers :)
This is pretty epic
Yaaay iget to meet azura!! Is Azura going to sound like the vanilla quest? i loved the voice for her.
This mod looks amazing i can't wait for this!!! AMAZING job on this!! :D
How can I play it
holy **** I did not expected this level of detail and dedication, thanks! will wait patiently for this mod
Just wanted to say that you all are badass for taking the time to make this! We really don't deserve you! So excited for this!
The mod looks AMAZING! Will it be released this year ?
We'll see. We'll announce a release date that can be counted on when we're ready.
will this be available on nexus ?
Yes
Really excited for this mod. Will it require a new game?
Not at all. Apotheosis is built around using your current character. So it will function like Dawnguard/Dragonborn.
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The HYPE is only getting bigger. Ahh!
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