19-year old spends a year to create massive Skyrim mod

Behind Falskaar, a massive new Skyrim
mod, and the 19-year-old who spent a
year building it

A new mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,
Falskaar, was released over the weekend, and
it is quite a doozy. Falskaar adds almost 25
hours of content, a land mass a third the size
of the original game, new characters, new
voices, and dozens of quests. As impressive as
it is, though, it’s nowhere near as impressive
as the creative force behind it: Alexander J.
Velicky, a 19-year-old gunning for a job with
Bethesda with his first try at modding Skyrim.
“I organized everyone involved, but the voice
actors themselves recorded all the dialogue
and submitted it to me,” Velicky told me.
Though over 100 people contributed in some
way, including composing an original
soundtrack , Velicky took their contributions
and plugged them into Falskaar himself. “I
had some people help me out with a few
models and textures, someone wrote a book
or two for me… But otherwise all content was
implemented, written and developed by me.”
So how does a 19-year-old take the helm of a
creative project of this size? Velicky wants a
job. He graduated from high school over a
year ago, and instead of finding a design
school, he turned Bethesda’s Creation Kit into
his classroom, spending 2,000 hours over the
last year building Falskaar.
“My dad was incredibly supportive and
allowed me to live here, paying for living
expenses and charging no rent,” Velicky says.
“I was able to not go to school and not have
a day job. Meaning, more or less, that
Falskaar was my day job.”
The mod is fully voice-acted by 29 voice
actors playing 54 characters and the quality
is much higher than most community-made
content. “I’m still kind of shocked at some of
the talent I got on the project… and every
single one of them surpassed my expectations
by leaps and bounds.”
A massive dungeon, “Watervine Chasm,” may
be Falskaar’s crowning achievement. It took
Velicky three weeks to build and players
report it takes an hour or two to complete.
The community response has been
overwhelmingly positive.
“Falskaar isn’t perfect,” Velicky says. “I’m not
an expert who’s been crafting game
experiences for the last 20 years, so I
certainly still have a lot to learn, and I always
will. I’m always looking to learn and improve,
and Falskaar was a huge chance for me to do
this.”
According to Velicky, Bethesda is aware that
he’s out there, and he isn’t shy about putting
his goals right out on the table. “The best way
to show Bethesda Game Studios that I want a
job there and should be hired is to create
content that meets the standards of their
incredible development team.”
Falskaar is available now on Skyrim Nexus,
and I encourage you to check it out.

pcgamer.com