It’s a golden age for many platforms that are opening their doors to modding anything and everything about titles, and the more that happens the better the outlook is for future PC titles being brought into new directions by their community.
Skyrim is still going strong almost entirely off the back of mods that were once PC exclusive; Microsoft and Sony both allowed mods to be brought to their platform to encourage more content in titles such as the most recent Elder Scrolls iteration. Granted, I’m guessing it’s off the backs of mods, but who’d want to play through that title entirely vanilla?
There are two massive modding communities; ModDB and NexusMods. Three, if you’re willing to count Steam’s Workshop that enables blissfully simple modding with a simple click. NexusMods has released a tool called Vortex that scans for Vortex-supported games, and it makes modding infinitely easier than it has been in the ages past. You find the mood you want, send it to Vortex, and the rest is handled.
It’s a far cry from the days where a user would have to back up their entire folder, store the back-up somewhere, and then begin overwriting files in order to mod it. If a mod was broken or had a conflict that produced a crash, you would start again. I fondly recall having multiple backups of Oblivion with various mods iteratively added to the folders.
Now that Vortex has added support for Star Wars Jedi: The Fallen Order, it’s likely that the community will band together to bring even more content and mechanics than what is already featured.
Granted, it’s not entirely as though the mod scene was dire for the popular Electronic Arts title, as it currently sits at 63 various mods that contain everything from reskins of characters to speeding the start-up of the title.
What really begins modding in earnest, however, is when entire mechanics are tweaked or added; currently, the title only hosts mods that offer re-shades and skins. It may be a bit more difficult to mod in new mechanics in titles such as Fallen Order just based off of how linear the progression is through the levels. While there are facets of player agency throughout the popular hit, it’s nowhere near what modders prefer to get their hands into.
In the past, titles receiving Vortex support bodes well for the modding community at large, and it’s likely that this pattern will stay true with Fallen Order. What isn’t currently clear is what the community will begin developing.
