Dark Brotherhood Chronicles: Awakening

Yes, we're still here. For those of you unfamiliar with the Dark Brotherhood Chronicles, it is a large mod project that was started in the fall of 2006. Yes, just a few months after the release of Oblivion in North America. No doubt one of the founding members played through the Dark Brotherhood questline and said "You can't leave it like that!" just like many others have. And that started one of the most ambitious modding projects ever. Unfortunately it turned out to be too ambitious, because while the first two teams had a lot of grand ideas, they didn't have the skills to implement them. Many individuals had the technical skills but the project lacked the management skills to lead a large team. The Dark Brotherhood Chronicles is actually meant to be a three part mod project. Part one is called Awakening, part two is called Consequences and part three is as yet unnamed.

tDBC has been plagued by many failed attempts to complete the mod. We are actually the third team that has worked on this. The only person who has been a member since the original team is Amadaun and it was her persistence that has gotten us to this point. We believe we finally have a team in place with the technical modding and management skills to finish the work that was started so long ago.


Introduction

Once upon a time, our name was whispered in the dark corners of the deepest caves and feared in the highest towers. Once upon a time, we bore the blood of emperors on our hands. Once upon a time, we were mystery, and secret, and the greatest in the Empire would gather our rituals to be allowed to grovel at our feet. Once upon a time, we scorned Mephala Herself, stole Her treasures, and found a master far beyond what She ever was.

But now...

Now, we are scattered, the Sanctuaries sealed. Now, the blood you have on your hands is that of your own family. Now, our secrets are broken, for we never saw the traitor in our midst. Now, the body of your master and mentor hangs in Applewatch, and the Night Mother herself scorns us for our failure.

Where is the power of Sithis now?


In the aftermath of the traitor's destruction, the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood now faces new challenges. Shadowy threats from without and little trust from within. The Sanctuaries have been locked, the Dark Family hidden. But still, someone has found them. Someone seeks to wipe the weakened assassins from the face of Tamriel.

The greatest secrets of the Black Hand must be unearthed if the Listener is to save the Dark Brotherhood from extinction.

The Dark Brotherhood Chronicles is a large-scale, multi-part mod. It boasts many new NPCs, locations, and both a large main questline and sidequests, delving deep into the shadowed history of the Dark Brotherhood.

Over the span of its development, the Dark Brotherhood Chronicles has been anticipated, talked about, and even featured in PC Gamer UK, and it is our intent to complete and share the work of the many, many modders who have contributed.


Past Progress

For those of you who have been around long enough, you will probably recall several reports on the progress of tDBC. I believe at one point, it was reported that all level design had been completed and scripting had started. Well those reports were actually true, as far as the team at that time understood. Unfortunately much of the work had been poorly done.

I joined the Dark Brotherhood Chronicles about a year ago, in October of 2010. A few months later, I started to go through the work that had been completed and realized that much of it had to be redone. The general dungeon layout was very innovative, but the level design had a lot of mismatched pieces, poor lighting and other technical issues. So we asked that the WIP thread here be closed, we stopped posting progress reports and Amadaun and I went off to learn level design. We both went through the tutorials on TES Alliance and the CS Wiki. And then we started rebuilding everything. There were only a couple of locations that didn't need redoing, but even they lacked path grids, north markers and the lighting need fixing. Similarly there were a few scattered scripts here and there and even some of the quests had been coded up, but we have discarded most of that work.

We are finally at the point where we are confident that we can say the Dark Brotherhood Chronicles: Awakening will be completed and we can give a real progress report. We've gotten some experienced and talented people who have joined the team or are acting as consultants, and now the quests are being built. We had a bit of a setback recently when we were forced to find a new host for the project, so I set up a new site called Dark Creations to host tDBC. But we are back up and running now and work has resumed.

Current Progress

The Dark Brotherhood Chronicles: Awakening is comprised of an 11 part main quest and 10 side quests. We have gotten three side quests finished but we are focussing all our efforts on the main quest in the hope that we can get Awakening released before Skyrim. Basically we will release Awakening without all the side quests completed if necessary. It takes about 5 days to complete a quest, so if we can maintain that pace, we have about 30 days of development left. We still have a couple of areas that need to be rebuilt. And while all the scripts (as in story writing) are done, we still have to go through the remaining scripts and make adjustments according to what's feasible to actually accomplish with the Oblivion engine.

Main Quest: 5 quests completed = 45%
Side Quests: 3 quests completed = 30%
Level Design: 80%*
Modelling: 85%**
Writing: 100%
Voice Acting: ?

We have 449 MB of archived voice acting! We still have to go through and sort it all. Some of the voice acting has been pulled into the plugin, so a couple of our quests are voiced. We believe we have a few more quests that have been done but we will still need more voice acting for the mod to be completely voiced.

*This is a guess. All the areas are done, but two need to be rebuilt. There is also a dungeon that I have to place in Cyrodiil and I haven't gone through and checked the quality of the work. It's for a side quest though, so it could be left out if necessary.

**All the major modelling is completed. We do have some custom armour that needs fixing and a few minor cluttering models that need to be done, like banners and paintings.

Future Plans

Obviously our main priority at this point is to get Awakening completed. We have part of the script for Consequences written and would like to release it, but it really has to be set in Cyrodiil, so we will have re-evaluate those plans with the release of Skyrim. We would like to have part 3 take place in Skyrim and will probably do something along those lines.

Team Members

Amadaun - Team Lead, Modelling, Texturing, Level Design, Site Administration
AndalayBay - Team Lead, Scripting, Quest Building, Level Design, Site Owner
Xae (Xaeaix) - Sound Engineering, Soundtrack, Site Administration and Design
fg109 (RandomNoob) - Scripting, Quest Building
Morrigain - Writing
Rahvin - Writing
Lareneg - Writing, Beta Testing
'Drea - Writing, Beta Testing
omeletted - Texturing, Beta Testing
Elec0 - Beta Testing
Koniption - Modelling, Texturing
Ibsen's Ghost (Ibsen3) - Voice Acting
Silver - Modelling
Silencer (Cotillion) - Site Administration
Siulil - Beta Testing
theinfamouskat (thechickwhopwn3dyou) - Writing

Arthmoor - Technical Consultant

Project Site

The project is being hosted at http://darkcreations.arthmoor.com/forums/.

Gallery

We are still in the process of restoring the gallery, but some screenshots and concept drawings for the project have been posted: http://darkcreations.arthmoor.com/forums/index.php?/gallery/album/2-dark-brotherhood-chronicles/