Akavir. The curse of the immortals by stalker992 is a massive new land and quest mod, taking the Dovahkiin well outside the known territory of Skyrim. I have written this after I have just finished playing the mod, but because of the burnout this text ended up on the digital shelve collecting digital dust. With some alterations, I am publishing it now
According to the wiki, Akavir is a continent lying to the east of Tamriel, separated by the Padomaic Ocean. It is the homeland of four seemingly unrelated races collectively referred to as the "Akaviri." These races are composed of the Demons of Kamal, the serpent-men of Tsaesci, the Monkey People of Tang Mo, and the Tiger Dragons of Ka'Po'Tun. Some sources talk of other races, which and may be extinct.
In the mod you primarily deal with the Tsaesci, the snake people, who are in charge of most of the island, and you briefly meet several other races. I have to say I am not a lore buff, so I'm not here to judge the lore accuracy. Regardless, it's still mod author's headcanon, essentially, and they had a good amount of creative freedom here.
So let's start with the obvious: the mod is absolutely massive. It adds three new world maps: the introduction area, the main map, and the additional small map of the place high up in the mountains.
Landscaping 10/10
The landscaping is absolutely excellent:
there are breathtaking views, with lots of new architecture pieces—houses, statues, and new trees, all with premade LOD for your convenience
many different settlements, farms, estates, and cities to explore
in different regions you will find different biomes with different flora and fauna
there is a good variety of monsters who want to kill you: my least favorite were the crow people, however they were called, because they liked to hang out in the elevated areas and spam fireballs down at you, although the close second would be the sea monsters, because of their paralyzing ability (if you played Maslea, they seem to use the same model); and my most favorite were the rot people, because I got to quote this nonsensical monologue from the good ol' Helgen Reborn
the land is fully navmeshed, and it is pretty convenient, for the most part, to go around without fast traveling; although at least in one situation you must use it; and there some quests that take you back and forth
as a small negative, some of the new architecture pieces don't have accessible floors or ladders, extremely low ceiling, or very low resolution or tiling textures.
Interiors 9/10
the majority of the interiors are custom made, not copied from existent cells. I think there only one or two locations that were copied from Skyrim
once again, it's fully navmeshed
there are a lot of unique furniture, statues, levers, miscellaneous items that you can take with you—ancient vases in particular are very beautiful
the attention to detail in interiors and exteriors both is really great. I'm a big sucker for domestic details: there are bedrolls, kettles, new food, random junk thrown around, skeletons of previous adventurers, this mod has it all
unfortunately, not all the decoration is necessarily mindful, and sometimes there probably was no hidden meaning behind a certain clutter arrangement, but sometimes there was
when it comes to balance, in most caves and similar interiors you'll find that enemies are pretty well spread out. That does not, however, apply to the local civil war questline, but I would not call it balanced in general—more about that later
the one thing that was bugging me the most about caves and ruins in this mod was the lack of back exits. This is something I have grown to love in Skyrim, and came to expect now from a good dungeon. I know it's not probably not something old school RPG fans would approve of, but it is simply my personal preference
another thing bumming me was the occasional drops with no way out. In some cases there were trigger boxes there to kill the player instantly, but in others I would have to reload the game or console command my way out of there myself, which was a bit inconvenient
and one last thing—the player house was just... sad.
Dialogues 4/10
Speaking of sad things... To be fair, the original mod was made in Russian, so a lot of it is just poor translation. But it's not just that.
severe cringe: both the NPCs' dialogues and player lines—which is the most offensive
it is hard to follow at times
there are very few choices for the player to make
on the plus side, there is occasional sarcasm.
Books and journals 4/10
there was an interesting moment there from a story telling prospective, when the main character had to actually learn the local language. Ironically enough, if you clicked on objects in game that require that knowledge, before your character would have finished that quest—you would get a message box saying something like "I don't know how to read". The message was in Russian (I was playing the English translation of the mod). I don't think this meta effect was intentional, because quite a few notifications and message boxes were also left untranslated in the version I was playing (1.4.1)
but even after you do learn how to read, you still cannot read books. I think I only found one book that you can actually read, and it was quest related
there are, however, notes, journals, bounty missives. Some notes are funny. And the journals are 90% water.
Quests ?/10
There were quite a lot of them. There is the main questline, which has sort of a spiritual part and a civil war like part—mimicking Skyrim, there are a few meta jokes like that. There are miscellaneous quests, some of them are actually connected to the main one. And there are some small hidden quests.
Scripting is done wonderfully, I would assume, because it does work. The issues I had were caused by compatibility problems, as far as I could tell. In one cave, as soon as I killed all the enemies, the game would crash, which was probably because of Experience mod—it tracks whether or not the cell is cleared. And there was something wrong with that cell's parameters, probably. And the other conflict was Skyrim Souls, because a few quests were tied to you reading a note, and some of them refused to trigger or triggered weirdly because for me time kept passing as I was reading (just disable books in the config).
The most unfortunate thing about quests in this mod is inconsistency in the level of guidance. There were several times when there was no organic way for me to find out what to do in order to progress the quest. Thankfully, I found the FAQ—I made a rough translation of it—and was able to go from there. Some quests would hold your hand so tight you stop feeling it, and others would throw you in at the deep end and expect you to become a psychic or scour the land—did I mention the land was huge—to overhear the right conversation.
Roleplaying Opportunities and Build Limitations
Would it work for non-Dragonborn playthrough? No, you are directly addressed as a Dragonborn in the main quest.
Would it work for No Magic playthrough? No, not exactly. There is a part of the main quest when you are forced to learn and use a new spell, specific for that quest stage too. Egh...
Can you go there with followers? Yes. But they will be getting lost sometimes. So I'd recommend Tag and Track mod or any other mod to teleport your followers to you.
Do you get to be evil or kind in the mod? Well... Not really. As I've mentioned, you are barely given any choices, so there is hardly room for moral decision of any kind. Except for about three occasions. Which kind of leads to the The Plot. Because it is scrambled and I'm afraid to say, not particularly impressive.
The Storyline and What the Heck is going on
The main quest starts off with the Dragonborn having a dream, which as we find out later, was actually a vision sent to them by a supposedly long dead monk.
A murderous monk too, who was a part of the cult of Longwang, the local baddy, an evil spirit who pretty much just wants to kill everybody. To then supposedly rebuild the world with more moral clarity. For some reason. Which is it odd because by its own admission, it is actually the "bad" side of human psyche—the entropy, the hatred, the destruction, what have you. So you'd think purifying the world would subsequently destroy it as well. And why would it care for rebuilding at all. But the characters spewing all that at me were more concerned with preaching rather than actually having any logic to it.
Unlike Enderal's antagonists, to which, I feel like, it is aspiring, Longwang isn't interested in eradication, it seeks reincarnation—and by mixing up myths, it loses a whole lot of sense.
Another side of the main quest, and in fact the main goal you have when set out to Akavir, is to liberate people from slavery. Which seems like a good cause, white savior trope aside, we are talking about Skyrim, heroic fantasy, after all.
But this cause gets abandoned for a long while, as you have to cooperate with slavers. And many different slaves and former slaves that you get to meet, are either nameless or unimportant, and worst of all, all slaves seems to be filled with hatred towards themselves and one another, literally saying that they deserved it. That is a thought that has been repeated so many times by so many different characters, that it became genuinely concerning. In a society with extreme inequality on a breach of a revolution (according to the plot itself!) you would expect a bit more class consciousness.
But much like with the pseudo philosophical side of the main quest, the idea of this internalized self-hatred doesn't actually go anywhere. And since at some point you even get an optional quest to recruit several slaves for the rebellion—slaves remaining largely amorphous makes even less sense. The rebellious army consists mostly of troops of some vague origin who happened to sneak by the Thaeski, somehow, for some vague reason of wanting to kill them and conquer the country. And they are largely disconnected from the slaves themselves.
Unless, of course, you count the mission when I had to steal a concubine from one of the Tsaesci masters to make her a free nanny for one of the lead rebels. Anyway, I would not count that for anything other than a weird and humiliating experience. Especially since immediately after that same rebel ends up sheltering a second prostitute. Did I mention the lack of women who aren't someone's love interest?.. Anyway...
Gameplay wise, this is the time when the overall more or less balanced experience becomes almost punishing. The mod does not utilize Skyrim civil war scripts with respawning allies and enemies, but instead just throws a huge crowd of enemies at you. All at once. While you allies quickly die or become incapacitated. If your character is at near end game level, you should be able to enjoy the battles though. The scenery is to die for, after all.
In the end it all comes down to a betrayal. Or a series of them, I guess. Turns out that this is actually another story about Cyrodiil versus Thalmor. A long time ago Cyrodilic Empire recruited a Tsaesci thug, and hired him to kill and replace Akaviri emperor, which he did easily, somehow, idk. And since then they were pulling the strings, destroying Akavir from within. Until recently, when the fake emperor uncovered a coup against him and while doing so accidentally killed a couple of imperial agents. The Empire threw a hissy fit and send an assassin after him—which happened to be the very person you sailed to Akavir with.
And if this got you excited, hold your horses, because all the interesting stuff happens off screen. In reality you just get to finish off that weird failed assassin and save the Emperor for once. Or allow the assassin to do his job.
This is where you get to choose between the four endings: depending on whether or not you chose to save the emperor and sacrifice yourself by reading the Elder Scroll afterwards.
The latter is hardly a choice in an open world videogame narrative, more of a ham-fisted attempt to assign some guilt to the player. While you could use that from a role playing prospective, a much more interesting thing would be making a choice that impact the world AND allows you to continue playing the game, thus including the player on the consequences of their actions.
So you can be a dead hero, having saved the Emperor or not —this leads you to the best and the second best ending, or you can, you know, not sacrifice yourself, like a normal person, and get the medium bad or the definitely bad ending.
Considering that the good endings push you out into the main menu, chances are even if you did decide to be a hero, right after that you jump back in and select a reasonable option of continuing to play the game. And in this case you get yourself a cutscene shamelessly trying to guilt you for it.
*Images taken from the mod's page, and from its translation page
**Thank you, young scrolls, for the fitting soundtrack