fit for a queen

fit for a queen

BioWare's bland clothing re-emphasizes Anora so she doesn't look like some random NPC (.daimod only).

[I always lack inspiration when it comes to naming my stuff, so please ignore this stupid title]



*Read the entire description if you don't want your NPCs to wear weird looking outfits*

The fact that some random Fereldan NPC looked better than poor Anora bothered me so much that I decided to redesign the clothes BioWare forced her to wear. Of course the goal was to make it look more like something I could see her wearing since I'm pretty sure Anora from DA :O wouldn't be caught in a burlap dress. I originally wanted to blend her earthy feel from the tarot cards with the vague inspiration of her DA:O dress (so a mix of pattern, fabric that looked like silk, gold accents and boots that no one was even going to look at), but due to the lights at Redcliffe Castle I had to do some color changes.

I doubt many people will be interested in this, but I thought I'd share it anyway just in case anyone else thinks Anora's Inquisition look should be given more consideration.

On a more technical note, I blew the diffuse, gauge and normal maps to 4K and scaled down the (now empty) tone map to 8 x 8. I didn't notice myself having any major performance impact, but it's something since most files are larger in size. Also, DXT1 compression completely ruined my spec picture, so I went for DXT5. I really recommend making a hard save before facing Alexius; I installed my mod without experiencing any crashes, but you're better safe than sorry.

Please note that this mod is not perfect by any means:

As you can see in my screenshot, the dress looks a lot better when viewed from behind due to the lighting in that particular scene (it's really unfortunate, but I tried my best to make it not look like a black blob and I'm really tired of adjusting it over and over again.

The gold stitching on the velvet jacket (or whatever it's called) looks a little wonky in a couple of ways. The only way to fix this is to edit the mesh or its UV map, I cannot import the edited .obj file back into Mod Maker.

These shoes are difficult to paint; I tried my best, but depending on the angle, the laces may look a little funky. However, you don't really see her feet, so you shouldn't notice it during normal gameplay.

Since I can't make her outfit unique, this mod can only be enabled during the In Hushed Whispers mission (that's if you decide to get help from a mage). This dress shares its texture map with some other models, and since I only edited the parts used for Anora's dress, some of the NPC's outfits will look mismatched if you leave them enabled throughout the game (plus, you'll see other women wearing the same outfit as her, which defeats the purpose of the mod).

Please note that the last 4 screenshots do not show the final version; this is because I was unable to capture the exact same lighting when testing the final version. In any case, the difference is hardly noticeable.

BioWare's choice of hair for Anora also doesn't make any sense, so I highly recommend pairing my mod with Eleonora0's bread replacement. Everything I've tried to give her with her actual hairstyle (i.e. Calpernia's hair) has resulted in either a severely messed up mesh or a hairless Anora, so I'm glad this mod exists. I'll try to make that mod with Frosty once I finish switching, so keep an eye out for updates if you're interested!

(Please note that I will not be accepting requests.)

(Also, I would appreciate it if the comments section could be kept free of character hate - that's not what comment sections are for.)

Install

For all the above reasons, I recommend that you only install/enable it when you are ready to launch In Hushed Whispers.

Open the .zip file (duh), place the .daimod file into the mod directory and install it using DAI Mod Manager. More detailed instructions can be found here.

After completing the task, disable the mod (or just delete it from th …