This week we’re chatting with Sherri-Lyn (aka Shezrie) from Oblivion’s Real Estate . Shezrie lives in beautiful Bermuda, where she works in legal administration and management. When she’s not working or modding she spends her time working out, belly dancing, poi or staff fire dancing, fencing and riding her motorbike all over the island.

Sounds like quite the adventurous life!

What got you started with modding the Elder Scrolls games? Do you remember your first project?
I first started modding because I wanted to change some homes I had downloaded. The CS was this really intimidating thing when I started, but I slowly taught myself by dissecting other people’s mods to figure out how everything fits together. My first mod was a house for Morrowind called Hideaway Cottage — located south of Pelagiad. It was a quaint little home with balconies that took advantage of the views. After that another five houses and a hotel followed for Morrowind. For Oblivion I have released six houses and three complete villages.

Your site, Oblivion Real Estate, has plenty of cool house mods. If you could move into just one of the homes, which would it be?

It would probably be Woodland Lodge by Tefle Huden. A remarkable exterior home built entirely with vanilla items. It takes full advantage of the views across the waters from the balconies. Other works that I really like are anything by Bond, I really like his more modern approach to décor and that his houses are entirely custom made.

What’s your inspiration for some of your projects like various “Village” mods?
I get most of my inspiration from my own surroundings or places I have traveled to. One of the countries that has influenced my modding the most is France, more specifically southern France. I was enchanted with the quaint, tiny medieval villages that had so much atmosphere and character.

Woodland Village shown in the video below was built specifically because I felt that the reason Cyrodiil felt so empty was because you never actually walk through any towns as you travel along the main roads. So Woodland Village is built over a main road, you walk through the center of the town as you travel the main road. You can also see Imperial Legion soldiers and NPCs pass through the town on their way to the Imperial City or Skingrad. All of my villages can be found here.

Your site recently returned after a brief hiatus. Do you have any cool new plans for the site?
I have many plans for Oblivion’s Real Estate. Definitely need to add more sections like a Modded Vanilla Homes section. I would also like to add a section that lists homes in cities so that if someone were searching for a home in a particular city, for example Cheydinhal, then all the homes in that city are listed in one place. We need to have more and larger challenges; I would like to get more participants in our challenges by offering better prizes for the winners. There are going to be different events throughout the year and fun holiday celebrations, new mods and videos added all the time and much going on.

What aspects of modding do you like best? Worst?
One of the best aspects is creating an NPC and adding AI. That is the point that my project comes alive. I love going in game and seeing my NPC come to life and carry out its AI packages, I still get a kick out of that after all this time.

One of the most frustrating aspects is having to be aware of FPS. It is really limiting and frustrating not being able to place as much clutter in my villages as I would like to. Or only being able to place a limited number of buildings because of the inevitable slow down users of the mod will experience if I am not careful. FPS really limits creativity.

If you could ask the community to make a specific mod for Oblivion, what would it be? Why?
Definitely more building exteriors and matching interiors in all different styles, or at least the tile sets to create our own custom interiors. This would enable me to make more unique villages using architecture other than the few vanilla styles.

What’s with Princess Stomper and her hugs?
According to her, she is an affectionate little hugger and as she says, according to Wikipedia, a hug may be a sign of support and comfort. A hug can be a demonstration of emotional warmth, sometimes arising out of joy or happiness at meeting someone. If she gives you a hug, it’s merely a symptom of how utterly delighted she is that you exist.

Personally I think it is just the bunny instincts in her, though I do worry when her avatar suddenly grows those ferocious teeth.

Outside of the Elder Scrolls games, what else do you play?
Not a lot outside the Elder Scrolls. I sometimes play the Sims 2 and I got Guild Wars recently, so have been trying that out. But generally I spend most of my time modding and looking after my sites, so there is not much time for playing other games. I am going to buy Fallout 3 and play that when it comes out. I actually had no intention of getting it as it is generally not the sort of game I like, but it is sounding more and more intriguing as more information is revealed.

What are your top 5 games of all-time?
Oblivion is at the top of my all-time top 5 games, the incredible graphics, immersive world, fun quests and endless possibilities of modding.

Morrowind with mods is a very strong second if not equal to Oblivion. I love the fantasy world and atmosphere, the incredible quests and the role-play.

Ultima Underworld is third. This was just the most fantastic old game ever. I spent so many hours wandering those dark halls.

Ultima 6 is fourth. I just loved exploring Britannia and being able to recruit companions with different personalities. In fact I love all the Ultima’s, six and up. I really wish they were still making the Ultima series. *sigh*

The Sims is fifth. Living all the most boring aspects of real life through small sim people is for some reason really fun and addictive.

Imagine Todd Howard just hired you to help develop our next project. What ideas would you pitch?
More realism and role-play. In other words the player character needs to have more interaction with the surrounding world, in order to make the whole game experience more immersive. In Oblivion we got the ability to sit and to move some items around. In the next game this needs to be taken further, the player character should be able to cook over a fire, bake bread, draw water from wells, turn lamps and candles off and on, carry and set up a tent and camp fire in the wilderness and perform a multitude of interactions with objects in the game.

NPCs need more depth and differing personalities. They need to have more to say about their own opinions, circumstances and backgrounds. Granted this is not so easy when you are talking hundreds of NPCs with voice overs, but even some expansion on Oblivion NPCs would make a big difference.

Fast travel should be something that is acquired late in the game when the main quest is completed or during the main quest. Most of the fun is through exploration of the world and people should be forced to go out and experience it, fast travel is just a too readily accessible cheat.

More and better ‘tools of the trade’. The role-play for characters such as a thief or assassin needs to be improved over the last two games. These are both roles that require the utmost stealth. There needs to be better and more interesting tools of the trade that can be gained as the character advances in rank, such as working rope ladders to scale walls, the ability to knock enemies unconscious, diversion tools. More hidden areas to skulk in and hidden access to towns, cities and castles. Really make thieving, assassinating and general skulking much more involved, rewarding and fun.

There needs to be more of an unsavory section to society. Cities and towns would benefit from more lower class, dangerous sections that are not safe to travel through at night. Where skooma addicts, dealers, assassins for hire and gangs lurk. Also more Dark Brotherhood, there should be Dark Brotherhood presence in every city and town.

Posted by gstaff on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 1:14 pm.

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