Do Mods Ruin Games?

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 with my friends recently and, as there are 4 of us, I installed a mod to be able to still take along companions. This has lead to a really interesting experience that's broadly enjoyable. Then, I've also been playing my own playthrough as well and, as I both never finished the game back when it came out and a lot has changed, I've installed a ton of mods to make the game extra interesting and fun (I do plan to review it, or at least put out an article about my thoughts. even if the only part I never did was most of Act 3).

But all of this has brought me to a really interesting moment with one of my friends, who might theoretically be reading this right now (this isn't meant as a slight against you dude). He doesn't want me to mod our shared game too much because it might change or ruin his own single player run through he's actively doing. He's the kind of guy who hasn't ever really engaged with mods for most games and it's lead me to some thinking about what is the point of mods, are they worth installing, do they "ruin" a game, do they enhance the experience, and most importantly, are they easy to install?

So today we are talking about all of this. I want to first go over talking about installing mods for those of you who don't know how (if you have any questions about this section please comment so I can address them as best I can, I'll try to be more active in responding), go over how I think mods enhance the experience, and how I think everyone should mod their games and all games should have the ability to mod on PC and Console. Hope this one's fun (and again if you're reading this dude, let's talk about it when we play Baldur's Gate 3 next, I love a good conversation)!

Installing Mods

Installing mods for PC (I’m only covering PC because Consoles rely on in-game mod managers) is far less complicated than it used to be, especially on Windows. Nexus Mods has a great app called Vortex that allows you to select a game and download and install mods right there with the click of a couple buttons. It’s not like the old days for most games, where you had to edit some files to be able install the mods, now you just install with Vortex.

Of course there are also more and more games that have in-game mod managers that allow you to install mods while playing the game and take care of everything you could possibly need.

Personally though, with games that don't have in-game mod managers, I go to the Nexus Mod page, download the mods I want, download the mod manager that the mods say they rely on, drag those mods into the mod manager, then install it through that. Vortex is great, don't get me wrong, but it does come with some overhead and not everyone wants to have another app they have to install and run in order to find some mods. Although this ability might be changing soon because Nexus is talking about how they're pushing to just do Vortex going forward. To be honest this is something I'm not super knowledgeable on so you might just have to use Vortex, hopefully they make it better.

There’s also plenty of tutorials out there for how to mod your specific game. Plus, the mods on Nexus Mods basically all have an install section where they tell you the ways you can install it, even some have multiple ways you can. It’s much less intimidating than it used to be. Plus some games even have Steam Workshop nowadays which is literally integrated into Steam and is easy to download and not have to worry.

Why mod?

I've actually talked about modding before, particularly in my Hollow Knight Silksong review and a little bit in my Difficulty Accessibility article, both from last year. The amazing thing about mods is how they can do so much for the game. From making it just flat out run better to introducing entire new systems to deal with, brand new stories to play, just small character design or character customization adjustments, or making the game just feel better to play. Mods are there to help for almost all problems that really bug you in a game that you come across.

For instance, Baldur's Gate 3 has a great vanilla experience, but if you add in mods you can do things like remove weight limits, up your XP multiplier, unlock levels 13-20, allow people to play with all of the companions in your party so that you can have better roleplay opportunities and so that you can have an easier time in combat, introduce more spells that weren't able to be included in the original game but are in DnD 5e, introduce more classes and races and backgrounds, and even allow you to Wild Shape into a car. There's some nuts stuff in there. It's awesome and many of them just enhance the experience, making it all around more fun and enjoyable.

Then there's the Mass Effect Trilogy Legendary edition which has a bunch of fantastic mods that make for an even better game. You can get rid of those damn repetitive hacking mini games, you can make it so you have an infinite run, you can remove restrictions on what weapons you can use, you can make the Citadel DLC in ME3 happen after the final mission functioning as a post game epilogue instead of a last hurrah before the end, you can remake the dream sequences from ME3 to be showing people that have died or might die during your trilogy run through instead of that dumb kid, you can even remove the Starchild selection for the ending entirely and just default into the destroy ending after you sit down to chill with Anderson, and best of all, you can make the material collection in ME2 go from staring at a planet for 5 minutes at a time trying to collect everything to going into orbit and shooting off one probe and harvesting all of the materials. These mods make the game less annoying to play, especially on replays, and it just makes it feel like an experience that doesn't drag as much as the vanilla experience did. That's a massive improvement.

Or there's Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game with a lot of great things in it that locks you out of continuing on in your main quest until you do meaningless collecting and other BS MMO like quests and such. Each of which award you these stupid points that, once you have gotten enough, finally allow you to continue in the part of the story that matters. This is a BS mechanic that's all about extending the amount of time you put into playing the game. But with a mod, you can literally eliminate this issue. All of a sudden you can choose to do the MMO shit because you want to or can choose to ignore it because you don't find it fun. That choice is what mods can offer you.

But do these things ruin the experience? It's certainly different than the developers intended, but does what they intend really matter? Not to say that it's not well intentioned but once you own a game you are now in control of what is the intended experience, no one else can decide how you play it, at least in many, many PC games. With Baldur's Gate 3 it often can fuck with the balance of the game but is that such a problem when the game is already rather difficult even on the easiest difficulty? With the Mass Effect Trilogy it can get rid of some of the more monotonous moments in some of the games and make it more of an smooth experience, even enhancing it by making things make more sense (those dream sequences). And with Dragon Age Inquisition it can remove the most BS shit in that game that forces you to engage in the MMO aspects in a game that is not, in fact, an MMO.

These are all different than the original intentions but they're also just all around better. Sometimes developers make decisions for their development because of genuine artistic beliefs and sometimes they make decisions because of limitations, be they time or budget or capabilities. But none of those decisions are inherently gospel. None of them are things you should just accept as the way things have to be. Which leads me to my next point...

Everyone should do it!

I'm serious here. If you have something small that annoys you in a PC game, see if there's a mod. It's not sacrilegious to make changes to a game. If there's not a mod for it maybe take some time to learn how to make one because I doubt you're the only person who has had issues with that one thing.

And if you're a developer, you should both make mods easier to develop by creating mod tools but also allow console players to mod things as well with an integrated mod marketplace. Baldur's Gate 3 does it well of course, but let's go back to my friend for a moment (hi again). He loves Skyrim and Oblivion, has replayed Skyrim so many times he's having to find new ways to make the game feel fresh with every playthrough. But there's a way he could help make the game feel fresh, by installing mods. There's tons of mods out there for Skyrim and Oblivion (I don't think the remaster has a mod manager like the Special Edition of Skyrim so modding on console is impossible) that add content, massive improvements to gameplay, and just make the games all around better. In-game Mod Managers are required to allow people like my friend, a console player, to be able to have the option to mod.

Whether or not he mods the game is irrelevant (based on Baldur's Gate 3, he wouldn't), the point is he, and all console players should have the chance to mod their games to make said games into something that has a more tailored experience just for them as players too. I know this can be a decent amount of work for developers to implement so I'm not expecting it to be something that becomes standard. Yet, there's tons of big devs out there that could do this, but just haven't. We need more in-game mod managers like in Baldur's Gate 3, and yes, technically Skyrim Special Edition (although that has a whole other controversy behind it with the fact it supports Paid Mods).

The Conclusion

I guess my point is that I don't think Mods can ruin a game. Mods are meant to give you options, to allow you to make changes to a game that has real annoyances that the developers couldn't possibly have provided options for in some kind of menu system, to allow you to have brand new stories made by community members, to allow you to even turn the game into something completely unique. The Idea that mods might ruin an experience of a game is kinda baffling to me, games are works of art that can be changed and augmented, that's a part of the charm.

As I've made clear in many of my articles criticizing game development decisions or talking about mods (including this one), game developers decisions about certain things in their games is not dogma that you have to follow religiously. It's okay to make changes, it's okay to give Withers Big Naturals a try, it's okay to remove busy work from games, it's okay to take a game that is fundamentally broken and fix it with mods instead of waiting for developers to do it.

Mods are great, people should use them, I use them all the time to make games more interesting especially on replays. If there's anything I can leave you with it's just this: the only thing that matters about how you play a game is how you want to play that game. Break the balance if you want, wild shape into a car, and don't let people who tell you that you "didn't really experience the game" or that you "played it wrong" get to you. They're wrong, you decide how to play the game, not even the developers can change that.

Meow,

Cat