Hello everyone! Welcome to the main thread for the Narrative Overhaul series, where I will have links to each and explain a bit about the process and why I'm doing this at all! First, the links: Willy Narrative Overhaul Clint Narrative Overhaul Demetrius Narrative Overhaul Gus Narrative Overhaul Marnie Narrative Overhaul Dwarf and Krobus Narrative Overhaul Wizard Narrative Overhaul Linus Narrative Overhaul Pam Narrative Overhaul What is the Narrative Overhaul Series? The Narrative Overhaul series hopes to take what personality was already put into the game by Concerned Ape and amplify it, adding dialogue for every heart level of every day of every season. Before, characters said very rudimentary things. Their personalities were largely left up to your perception of their avatar. With the Narrative Overhauls, they have lots of stuff to talk about. On average, it's over 170+ lines of dialogue added to the game per character. Why are you doing this? I'm a huge fan of Harvest Moon, been playing it since the SNES when I would rent it out for months at the local grocery store. There's so much to love about the series, and one of my favorite aspect was the villagers. There was never enough time in the day to talk to them all, but they always had something weird to say that hinted at larger conversations going on that you weren't privy to. Stardew Valley is amazing and a step in the right direction in all aspects for the genre, except the characters. The characters in Stardew Valley say very little, stop talking for the whole day when they are done, and your reward for being their friend across the seasons is very little changes in the dialogue. I seek to change that. How do you approach each one? I want to work in the game industry as a Narrative Designer, so I approached each of these Narrative Overhauls with the dedication I would any professional project. I looked into what was known about each character to give myself a set of boundaries. Thanks to the great Stardew Wiki, I was able to get a feel for the characters down to their likes and dislikes and their events at each heart level. One of the most important aspects of these Narrative Overhauls to me was that they fit into the world of Stardew Valley. Would the characters really feel this way? How would they feel living in a town like Pelican Town? Could I imagine this dialogue being said to another character in game? It was crucial to me that each conversation felt like the most important piece of an implied longer talk between the player character and the person. That way, it feels like the characters really do want to talk with you, think about your conversations, and more. Another in-game boundary was that the in-game events were set of stone, and beyond the means of my modding capabilities. That means that, at the end of the day, the characters still need to fit the personalities seen in the events made by ConcernedApe. What is the goal here? The goal is to elevate the dialogue in Stardew Valley to be engaging with players, while keeping true to the years of work put in by Eric. It's the least I could do, as the game is so wonderful. It has been a lot of fun so far making all of these, and I'm still not sure how many more I'll make. I'm still looking for a job in the game industry, and I'm very broke, so it all depends on what happens. If you like these Narrative Overhauls, please let me know which aspects you enjoy, which you don't, and anything else that comes to mind. All the feedback I read is considered when making them, and it's great to hear from the people who use them!
You can technically modify the heart events through XNB editing. It's definitely not easy but it's completely possible. This looks really neat, and I'm sure it'll be really awesome when it's done! I'll be interested to see what you do for the more generic characters like Caroline and Jodi. Do you have plans to overhaul marriage dialogue as well?
I've been trying to figure out how expansive I can be with the After-Marriage Dialogue. Once I get a proper understanding, then there's one characters I'll be doing first.
You're able to do specific seasons and days, so that's a start. There's also options for "Good" (happy relationships), "Neutral" (relationship slightly failing), and "Bad" (relationship really failing), but I don't know if you can add those options. If you start with anyone, start with Leah. Her marriage dialogue is so generic.
Yeah it's strange. Apparently you can have up to 9 Good, Neutral, or bad Dialogue. If you've played my overhauls, you'll know I prefer the HUNDREDS!
I feel similarly. It was unfortunate to get attached to these characters and then exhaust everything they had to say. I've done some dialogue mods myself, starting with a marriage dialogue because... well, anyone who's been married for a long time in the game doesn't need me to say why. I've been using all of your overhauls so far! I just got Marnie's recently and I'm very much looking forward to hearing the in-law stuff because I'm married to Shane on my main save and it's just weird that families don't talk about your relationship. In fact I wish that all NPCs would at least occasionally say something like "So how's _______ adjusting to farm life?" You really put a lot of work in, thank you for that! As far as constructive criticism, the only thing I've noticed is that sometimes punctuation is missing or just little grammar things seem to be off. But that's all! I did some for Jodi and Kent if you're interested. Not nearly as much new content as haywrites, though, because I'm stretched pretty thin with modding commitments and IRL stuff.
The Linus Narrative Overhaul is now live! I still don't have a job, but I just couldn't help being away for TOO long! You all asked for it, and the overwhelming reply to the votes for poor Linus, it had to be done. Get it here!
This is by far one of my favourite mods. I remember getting so excited for Linus, one of my favourite NPCs, alongside Marnie and streaming and showing it off to all my followers It was exciting to see what Linus had to say, and the depth you put into his personality. Any personal gripes is mainly because I was so used to his more bland cereal like dialogue. he seemed so misunderstood, but an actual sweet heart. The ways you improved on him were so fresh and new at first I was excited, then I was worried, then I was excited again. I really do hope you'll do Maru one day. Shes an extremely bland character in my opinion, but she is my favourite in terms of characters. She has all this foundation for her character that seems so fun to play with dialogue wise. And I thought about attempting it myself, but I'm really not writer. I can't write like you or other mod authors, haha. But I remember back to one of your older uploads, you inspired me to try and write for characters, and I made a dialogue overhaul for Linus; though I never realeased that haha, too embarrassed. But basically, your work is inspirational, and amazing. Just know your work is extremely appreciated, I love what you do. You'll always be my favourite! Keep doing what you do, I'm rooting for you. and always looking forward to your superb updates! also you should totally open a patreon one day or accept donations! You do such amazing work for free and its a shame. I hope you get an awesome job with writing though, best of luck!
@SheepMilks Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback! Very nice to hear, and I hope I can continue to deliver! Also good news today: the Narrative Overhaul series has crossed 30,000 downloads! Thank you everyone for playing them!
Congratulations! Thats so much!! I hope you get even more downloads, and more endorsed people on Nexus <: !! Good luck to you!
Stardew Valley is out on Switch! Unfortunately, my mods can't be used with it. But that's ok: they still work for the PC! Now to see if I can get a copy of the Switch version!
Figured I'd post here, as a request for some help! As some of you know, I've been out of work for some time now, and have been looking for a job. Unfortunately, two of the job offers in October that looked promising fell through, leaving me high and dry. As such, rent is due, and I'm out of luck. If you're willing to help me, let me know in a private message! I have a paypal account. Rent is due in two days.
It's been a few months, so I hope everything turned out well for you. I only just now found this. I was wondering if I could use the Krobus overhaul as a jumping off point on my Krobus Marriage mod? I'd make sure to credit you.
Thanks! Currently working retail again. Definitely use my mod to help with yours! Let me know when it's done so I can check it out.
Just discovered this series. I took a couple of looks at the dialog after downloading and decided to download and install all of them, so Stardew Valley is about to get a lot more interesting. I appreciate that the writing is high-quality and consistent. As someone who's played a number of mods for different games, particularly Elder Scrolls, nothing quite takes me out of the experience like awful grammar and spelling, or even just poor writing with out-of-character moments. Haywrites, are there any high-quality bachelor/bachelorette dialog mods you recommend to go along with your narrative overhauls? I ask because I'm concerned that by comparison, the other villagers may well be more interesting after installing your mods. I've already settled on one for Penny, but I don't really know what to do about the rest of the characters. It looks like most dialog mods make the characters extremely flirty after a certain heart level, and I'm not interested in that. All of that said, as someone who enjoys writing, I'd like to try my hand at a couple of characters myself. Perhaps I'll attempt my own neutral bachelor/ette dialogue overhauls if there's a need for it.
Thank you for your nice words, Hanyou! I hope you enjoy the mods. Regarding the bachelors and bachelorettes, there are no mods I've come across that meet my standard. When it comes to rewriting them myself, I've found that the after marriage dialogue is a bit hard to predict what should be said when, and it's been my hope that it would be expanded on, but now that ConcernedApe is moving onto his next game, my hopes are fleeting. I do have a plan for one bachelor that I would like to get to, but to create what I imagine to be the correct way to do it will take some time. So we'll have to see. As to doing it yourself, please do! I'm thinking about making a guide to help and encourage others with my own process. If that's something you'd like to see, let me know.