Beyond Reach in 2024: A Review

Just finished another play through of Beyond Reach, and figured I’d share my thoughts since I’ve seen a lot of conflicting opinions on it.

For those unfamiliar, whether or not you should play it is up to you. I generally recommend it, but it may not be for everyone. It’s a large DLC-sized quest mod, roughly a third of the size of Skyrim’s map, taking you to Western High Rock. Which isn’t exactly the nicest of places.

Starting off with one of the things I think this mod pulls off well, is the landscape design. The different biomes of the area are reminiscent of Skyrim while still being unique, which makes sense as it’s close enough geographically to have similarities in the landscapes, especially to the bit of the Reach we see in Skyrim, though imo it’s less annoying to traverse. What really stands out to me, though, is the dreary-at-best, ominous-at-worse atmosphere. Barring Evermore itself, the spots of civilization feel desolate, like you can honestly taste the poverty. And the wilds and roads, especially in the less friendly-looking places, have that “oh boy I’m boutta get jumped” feeling to them.

Which brings me to my second point, in that if you feel like you’re about to get jumped, you probably are. The Witchmen are currently a massive problem for the Western Reach, more violent than ever recently for some reason (read: Namira’s influence) and also happen to be like, kind of everywhere that isn’t a town or city (not really, but there is a lot of them). They’re like the Forsworn on steroids and also way more creepy and disgusting, and I love that.

Arnima sucks. And everyone knows it. It’s basically the Detroit of the Reach, and at first glance the Lord, Mortifayne, seems to be your typical unconcerned selfish dickweed. Your introduction to all of this is offering to help the Reachmen with some of these problems, most especially Mortifayne who is becoming a growing thorn in everyone’s side.

Now, the story as a whole I think is good on its own, but to feel more immersed in the “what the actual fuck is wrong with this place”-ness, I recommend investing time into exploring and doing more side quests. Often they’re very mercenary or fetch-type quests, but they do give a lot of insight into the general state of the Reach. At the very least, though, A Wish For Wings is easy to come across and probably the best example of that I can think of, and it’s an omen of what’s to come in Act 2.

The storyline of this mod is what makes it shine, by far. It’s extremely grim, and a lot of people don’t like that which is understandable, but the mod isn’t just dark to be edgy and cool, though the author wrote it when he was in a pretty bad place, and you can tell. But every time I get into kinda roleplaying my character, they basically have to quit the whole adventuring thing for a few weeks after that shit fest. It’s also more akin to playing through a novel rather than getting to influence the state of the world, except for where it branches a bit at the end. If you’re looking for a mod where you can “fix” things, this isn’t it.

Spoilers for the questline ahead!

Things start to take their dark turn when you and the others finally take the plunge to confront Mortifayne and tell him to knock it the fuck off with his tyranny, or else he’ll be dethroned. You have the authority of the realm backing you here, what could possibly go wrong? Fucking everything, apparently, because it turns out Mortifayne isn’t just an apathetic dickweed, he’s an actively malevolent dickweed, and proceeds to sic Namira and her forces on Arnima, and you along with everyone with you jump into the Scuttling Void, her Daedric realm.

It’s a shithole, to say the least. But at least you make it out alive, and get the accolades you deserve, right? …Right?

Here is where Act 2 begins. You gain official access to Evermore, and are a lauded Knight. The threat is gone, now you just have to clean up the aftermath then go home happy. Not.

In Evermore, everything has a glamorous surface with a rotten core underneath. Even your fancy Knight title is no good. But the citizens would rather ignore all of that, because at least they aren’t among the riff-raff outside the walls. Ignorance is bliss, after all. And those within Evermore have a whole lot of ignorance.

I think the themes of this mod are just excellent, with how they get pulled off. The Scuttling Void, nasty as it is, isn’t any better than the Reach right now. Hell, in a way, you could say it’s better. At least there, nothing hides its true nature. And that’s what Act 2 is all about. You may have saved the world from an outside threat, but the rot goes so deep it may not have been worth it, honestly. It’s like a decayed tooth. You can brush it, but if the decay is already at the nerve, the pain won’t stop until you get a root canal.

While I do wish the quests were more fleshed out, and the whole “Interloper” segment longer (even if the Wayward Brother is pants-shitting material), I think it’s great for what it is. And that’s not even getting into the deeper lore involved behind the scenes here. The mod author has his own takes on TES lore present in the mod that is technically not entirely accurate, but forgivable to me because it’s sick as fuck regardless. Namira’s whole thing and the Wayward Husk took me a few playthroughs to understand, but how it goes is more or less this: - No, the Husk is not Sithis/Padomay, he brings up that story because of its relevance through the concept of an Enantiomorph, a TES metaphysical concept where 3 ‘actors’ mirror the events of the original Children’s Annuad. - So what is Namira’s motivation behind the invasion? To gain the love of her deadbeat dad Sithis, basically. She feeds him a bunch of souls through the Scuttling Void and he still doesn’t care for anything except the destruction of Mundus, so her plan is to desecrate Direnni Tower to corrupt the world in her image. And this is the first Enantiomorph, here Sithis is the observer, Mundus— as it is being challenged— is the king, and Namira is the rebel doing said challenging. - But the Prince Damian himself is another Enantiomorph, the Ego pretending to be him is why the Husk brings this up, and this is also what the Husk means when you speak to it outside of the labor camp. “Damian,” the original being the Husk and Ego make up, was born as a half-orc bastard between a noble and an orc slave. This would have destroyed his reputation if it got out for racial/political reasons, and possibly get him killed too, but luckily his Orc features did not express themselves, until adolescence. To protect himself and continue his life as a noble, he sacrificed his crippled brother in a pact with a witch of Namira, removing his skin and becoming ‘Bretonian.’ Later, his anxiety grew about being discovered, so he became a eunuch and joined the Ustase. But when Wayrest invaded, this poor dude got flayed. However the witch ‘saved’ him again, making him into what he is now. He was split into the Ego, which after you freed from Subject Realm 137 proceeded to assume the skin and identity of Prince Damian, and the Husk. Ego, his will and ambition, and Husk, the remains of his conscience and his trauma. In this, another enantiomorph, Ego as the king, Brother as the observer, and Husk as the defeated rebel. - The final reason behind the Wayward Husk’s talk about Padomay is the third enantiomorph. You are the outsider tipping the scales and assume the role of the Rebel from Husk, the Husk is now the observer, and Damian, the king with the order of this society depending on what you do with him.

And that brings us to the endings. They felt unfulfilling to me first, but with further play throughs and retrospection, I’ve honestly come to appreciate them. The ‘darker’ ending in which you side with Damian is left unfinished and open-ended, which I don’t entirely like but I also get the feeling there was meant to be more coming after it. But the gist of it is that rather than cutting away the rot, you instead choose to keep building on top of it to prevent the chaos that would surely unfold otherwise. And while Damian spouts ideals of a better future, you and he both know it would be built on a crumbling foundation.

Remember how I compared the state of the Reach’s society to a tooth earlier? Well, the other endings are the root canal. You cut away the rot for good. It can go wrong, yes, but unless everyone dies you can get people out, and although you leave the Reach in a state of anarchy, in the absence of the old order there is at least room for the growth of a better one.

That’s more or less what I think the mod does right in particular. Now for my personal nitpicks.

The mod isn’t perfect. It’s incredibly unpolished. I don’t recommend it for console players just because they can’t use console commands to get past a broken part, which is in all likelihood probably going to happen somewhere. The voice acting also isn’t the best, with spotty quality overall. It’s still playable and forgivable, though.

Another thing is, how I mentioned it took me multiple playthroughs to fully understand what the fuck was going on with the Husk. Don’t get me wrong, replay value is a plus the mod has, I actually didn’t realize you could get into Evermore through the front gate instead of the cistern if you do a side quest until my second playthrough. But the Husk is kinda incomprehensible. I find that I honestly don’t mind that, it’d be a lot worse if you had everything just dumped on you straight. But it does require knowing a good bit of lore going in. Overall though, it’s really confusing and I had to read through razorkid’s discord a bit to understand it completely. I think this is less of a fault on his part though, since it depends on prequel material that was intended and exists in his head but never ended up making.

On that train of thought, though, for some reason, everyone is so obscenely verbose. I mean, surely Arnima isn’t so bad that the peasants don’t have anything to do but read a thesaurus in their spare time? I’d get the Evermore snobs talking like that, but everyone in the mod talks very different. The tonal shift is a little hard to parse at first coming straight from Skyrim.

The Wayward Brother stuff is… interesting. I personally like the horror aspect of having to run from an unkillable, strong, and obscenely fast entity, and honestly that whole section as a whole, except for when bugs break it. But some don’t like it and prefer to TGM or TCL their ways tf out.

As for the shock horror bit with the kids, I can get how that’s a turnoff. But in my view, it isn’t completely pointless. It is, after all, possibly the most striking example of how horrendously fucked to the core the kingdom is. Even the nobility, and the King entrusted with the wellbeing of the people, can’t be counted on. And the opportunity to kill him after is pretty damn cathartic, too.

Overall, if you can look past some flaws and are into stories with a darker tone, it is in my opinion possibly one of the best quest mods out there, and definitely worth the time investment.