When we showed off The Forgotten City last year, it looked almost good enough to be a release from Bethesda themselves. It’s basically one big giant murder mystery set underground, complete with lateral thinking puzzles, an original soundtrack, multiple endings and interrogations.
It’s an exceptional piece of work. And it’s now a culturally recognised piece of work, after its Australian creator won a national screenwriting award.
Every year, the Australian Writers’ Guild recognise the best writing in television, film and interactive media through their annual AWGIE awards. Last Friday they announced the winners of their 49th awards, and while most of the winners were for work on television episodes, telemovies, theatre and more, one award also went to a Skyrim mod.
Nick Pearce spent more than 1700 hours putting The Forgotten City together, and told Stevivor last year that the gargantuan mod was his first sincere attempt at game development.
The mod has been downloaded more than 166,000 times on Nexus Mods alone, and the Steam Workshop listing has more than 100,000 subscribers. Pearce also posted on Facebook that it was “probably the first time a Writers’ Guild anywhere in the world has acknowledged that a humble mod can be an art form, just the same as a stage or screenplay”.
If you want to check out the mod for yourself — particularly with Skyrim Remastered just around the corner — you can do so here.
Comments
One response to “An Australian Skyrim Mod Has Won A Screenwriting Award”
Most polished, complex, innovative, and epic mod ive seen apart from Nehrim and Enderal
Great leap forward for open mindedness tbh. For a profession that’s looked down upon by the university educated artistic mainstream, awards like this really mean a lot to people.
Very deserving.
“with lateral thinking puzzles” – fortunately, not true. Great mod btw.