The online community Deck16 has announced their work on a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that will allow players to add Karl Pilkington to their party.

Pilkington is known for his educated commentary on various shows and podcasts by Ricky Gervais. Inspired by Karl’s own series, An Idiot Abroad, the “Idiot in Skyrim” mod will place the man “with a head like a f*cking orange” as a potential follower in the game.

The in-game character will be voiced with the help of audio samples from the various radio shows, podcasts and television appearances Pilkington has had. As a follower he will not add any notable gameplay alterations in combat or equipment management. However “what makes him unique is that, like his real-world namesake, Karl will spontaneously offer you his strange thoughts”. Sadly, Karl will not be available for marriage.

In a brief rundown of what is been done to the mod so far, the developers have posted:

✔ Implemented (but potentially might be improved over time)
✘ Not implemented
► Partially implemented

Actor Functionality
✔ Custom appearance that tries to match the real man.
✔ Levels with the player.
✔ Possesses useful and balanced combat skills.

Follower Functionality
✔ Able to join and leave as a follower.
✘ Expresses inability to join a player who has a current follower.
✔ Able to trade items with player.
✔ Able to follow custom orders.
✔ Exhibits appropriate AI behaviour in combat (at least comparable to generic followers).
✘ Confirm that asking about Karl joining the Blades isn’t buggy. (Doesn’t really matter if he’s able to join or not, as long as it works.)

Custom Speech
✔ Combat grunts, groans and taunts are voiced.
✔ Core follower functionality is voiced.
► Random remarks based on location, weather, player condition, etc etc. (This is by far the biggest task.)

Other Tasks
✘ Normalise volumes so all samples have similar in-game loudness.
✘ Compress samples to FUZ/XWM files to save space.

If anybody has general feedback or would like to assist in the creation of the Skyrim Karl, Deck16 is calling out for potential audio samples which might be relatable to the game or improved facial work done in the Creation Kit.

The mod is not available to download at this point in time, but players should “check back soon”.