Tom Lieber

ALT screenshot from tes iv: oblivion showing a nord woman called vilja

ALT "The first letter from Terry arrived in March 2010, only three months after the original release," Emma told Eurogamer. In this message, Pratchett mentioned how enamoured he had become with Vilja, specifically mentioning his appreciation for the way in which she would acknowledge small gifts such as strawberries. "He also praised the modding community as a whole, mentioning how impressed he was by the effort put into mods, and how much he enjoyed using them." Emma didn't know if this was the real Terry Pratchett, but she responded anyway and the two struck up a regular correspondence. Pratchett gradually started to make small suggestions of his own based on his experience with Vilja. "He described how he had been exploring goblin caves with Vilja, and how he wished that he could study the goblins without having to kill them," Emma said. "The day after, I made him a 'goblin peace amulet' to make the goblins non-hostile and allow him to explore their dungeons without having to kill anyo

ALT Eventually, Pratchett even started to write dialogue for Vilja based on his exploration of the goblin dungeons of Oblivion. This led to a regular contribution of voice lines for Vilja from Pratchett, to the extent that the majority of Vilja's Thieves Guild dialogue can be attributed to him. "Terry always had a very humble and polite way of suggesting things for Vilja," Emma said. "I always felt that I was in charge and never that he was taking over. I always felt inspired by his ideas and loved to try to make them come true." Together with Charles, the three worked on the "Packdonkeys" mod, which allowed players to purchase up to four packdonkeys from the Chorrol Stables. Pratchett delighted in the fact that his donkey, Chico, kept stealing carrots and getting him and Vilja into trouble with the Imperial Guard. The more involved he got, the more invested he was becoming. Vilja was no longer just a companion mod - she was a person who kept growing as he, Emma, and Charles worked on he

ALT One of the most important features that was added to Vilja was the lead-the-way function, which Pratchett had specifically requested to help with his Alzheimer's. "By that point Terry was already having serious trouble with his memory," Charles told Eurogamer. "The sort of short-term memory functioning needed to navigate the game world was a particular problem for him." Charles and Emma worked particularly hard on implementing this function, which enabled Vilja to lead the player out of the dungeon they were in. However, this wasn't an easy task. "Since I knew there was a real need behind that request I kept thinking about it," Charles said. "Eventually, I realised that another Vilja feature moved a special marker around to track when she changed locations. Once I had that insight, combining the two features at the technical level was fairly easy." Once the function was operating properly, Pratchett could simply turn to Vilja and select the "I'm lost!" option whenever he got stuck in