I’m not good at modding Serious Sam or modding in general, since I lack the coding experience. However, I’m fully committed to balancing and adding things to the games I like, and it’s something I would like to do in the future: Serious Sam is just one of those beloved franchise that I’d like to customize to my likings. So I’m not a modder, but I’d like some mods done, so I wanted to present my projects in video and text form, hoping some of you watching or reading are interested into these ideas. Today, I wanted to present my concepts for a Legend of the Beast DLC reworked, arguably the worst inclusion in the franchise that could in fact enrich the experience of TFE if done properly.

(As soon as it's ready, I'll make a YouTube video with these suggestions and I'll post the link in this discussion)

What doesn’t work with LotB?

We need to understand what doesn’t work in the DLC in order to fix it:
THE CONCEPT = The idea of this mod was to re-implement the first three levels ever created by Croteam for the alpha build and then scrapped from the project. The layouts are way too big for such a small variety of enemies, mostly beheaded variants with terribly placed medium-sized threats like the Arachnoids. All rooms feel the same, poorly designed and all shaped like a square or rectangle, making this DLC annoying and slow paced. Since there’s a pickup, a weapon and an enemy from TSE, this DLC requires you to have that game to play what is essentially an extention of TFE, confusing the player even more with the blue HUD of the sequel.

THE STORY = The DLC tries to convince you that Sam didn’t find the Amon Ra amulet despite clearly visible in the ending cutscene of Metropolis, so this detour takes us to a Khnum which serves as a bridge from the classics to Sam 3. Since those levels were supposed to be an entirely different city from Memphis and were the very first three levels of the game, we start without weapons, despite having a full arsenal at the end of the Metropolis, preventing this level from being properly introduced in the main campaign.

THE GAMEPLAY = Everything looks and play like an obsolete version of the original game, since almost everything was directly imported from the alpha build. Pickups are scattered in weird patterns, beheadeads appear guarding doors or patrolling the area and the pace of the game is so slow that half of the experience consist in shooting unfair threats with dual colts. The last level was indeed reused for the Tower of Babel in TSE, with many improvements in the layout and enemy spawns: this basically tells you that you’re playing a worst version of a beloved classic, which surely doesn’t work in the DLC’s favor. The levels are long and repetitive, new weapons are rare and they are limited to the basic arsenal, which isn’t even fitted to fight the enemies properly. Dual Colts will be used extensively to shoot down Arachnoids, Reptiloids and Zumb-uls until you get your hands on the Tommygun, which still has to deal with these guys before you get the rocket launcher, which is given to you too late into the DLC, right before a boss that’s ironically immune to weaponry.

The initial thought process

I wanted to work on this levels since the developers were too lazy to work on this project, they just sold it using scrapped ideas, hoping that people will still appreciate them.
I wanted to move the weapons earlier so that they could fit the enemy waves, add a grenade launcher and even considering the Sniper Rifle at some point to justify Arachnoids and Zumb-uls. I realized that this wasn’t fixing the lack of weapons in the first place so I’ve reconsider my ideas.

My second draft wanted to rework the levels with a full arsenal already available from the start, except the cannon which was only a secret in Metropolis. This idea is the first step to take and could be his own mod with new enemy waves, changing one detail from the story as well: the Amon Ra amulet in the temple of Ptah was a fake and Sam has to find the real one.

We can do more though, by extending the mod to be an entire campaign of TFE that would include the DLC levels as a secret by providing an Egyptian Scroll telling you about this large structure towering the city: After the Metropolis fight, the main gate will open but the doors on your left will unlock, revealing the secret exit to the DLC levels. In this case, the story will be modified accordingly, saying that Metal hordes had secured the Amon Ra amulet while Sam was exploring the city and he now has to retrieve it. This idea could work, but people downloading this mod is most likely going to play this level, so why give making them a secret? Also the story might be a little bit to much of a stretch, so in the end, I made a decision.

The mod

The final idea for this mod would be to have a full custom TFE campaign, which includes the DLC between Metropolis and Alley of Sphinxes, including the modified NETRICSA story about the Amon Ra being a fake, instead of missing. All levels will be available to play upon downloading the mod, so that you can easily experience only the modified DLC instead of the entire campaign. Since recreating the levels without the TSE assets would be too much work, you still need to own the game: however these assets will be used more extensively throughout the campaign. The new 18 levels story will have +5 armor pickups, the Zumb-ul enemy and the Chainsaw, being given to you the same way the Xbox version does, in the first level, moving the Colt in the next room.

Having three levels in between the story creates a pacing problem, something new has to be implemented to justify their presence: so this mod will have some Serious Bombs implemented, and the Cannon (with his one-liner “look at the size of that thing”) will be moved from Alley of Sphinxes to The Grand Obelisk, as soon as we cross the first perimetral door. Speaking of Alley of Sphinxes, you won’t lose neither the Chainsaw nor any Serious Bomb collected prior to this level. My intended locations for the Serious Bomb are: Moon Mountains (in the Highlander secret), Dunes (at the beginning, next to the ammo pack), Children of the Amon Ra (in the secretr with the shotgun, that will be replaced), The Grand Obelisk (at the beginning), Luxor (before the final fight) and Sacred Yards (in one of the corners of the pyramid secret) for a total of three campaign bombs, and three secret bombs (two of them being secrets inside secret levels). With these changes, some extra enemies will spawn during TFE campaign, mostly taken from the ones already added into the co-op campaign so that they won’t feel too artificial, plus the Zumb-uls placed here and there as well.

Now that the campaign has been giving this new fresh air, the biggest changes would be in the three DLC levels. We’ll naturally go in those levels after Metropolis and we’ll carry health, armor, weapons and ammo with us, including the secret Cannon in case we collected it in Metropolis. Starting the level from the menù will let you start with 100 health and the full cannon-less arsenal with decent starting ammo. The crux of this mod would be rework the fights and make levels like Holy Spirits fun to play and not a tedious room after room kinda of experience. I can accept small layout changes for that level, but the focus will still be on enemies.

The Mod will start taking shape with the DLC levels, reworking enemies and ammo, while starting with all weapons you would get from the campaign until Metropolis and keeping the rest as faithful as possible, including the blue HUD. This version could be released as Redux version, for those who are only interested in the LotB changes. After that, we can start working of implementing the TSE assets into the main campaign and the DLC levels will also be slightly different from the Redux version: the HUD will be green, we will already have the chainsaw in our inventory and we can also modify parts of the DLC like the layout of the final boss if it deemed necessary

Conclusions

At this point, I’ve said the basics of what I want to be done, without specifying which online enemies to bring to the campaign in order to balance the chainsaw and the serious bombs, where to place Zumb-uls and especially all the inclusion in the DLC levels regarding layout modifications and the entire reworking of the enemies. I will keep this details vague because this project cannot be done alone by myself, and I still need a team, so those things should be up for debate.

In sum, this mod will feature: a custom TFE campaign that includes the three DLC levels of Legend of the Beast and every level will be available from the menù. The campaign will have the chainsaw, the +5 armor pickup and the Zumb-Ul enemy, as well as serious bombs and extra enemies to justify this powerful inclusion. The changes won’t be too big, except for the DLC levels which will be completely different with better enemies in terms of placement, number and variety and a full arsenal to deal with them, using the naturally big rooms of these levels, that needs to be reworked in some degrees for the Holy Spirits level.

This finally brings me to ask you properly if anyone watching this video or reading this post right now is even remotely interested into creating this mod. I don’t even need to be credited as the creator, I only what to see it done, and feel free to get these ideas for your own mod if you want, just tell me when it’s done so that I can actually play it. I’m available for ideas, balance suggestions and play testing, but I don’t know how to mod Serious Sam games. I’m also interested into tutorials or anything that can teach me the basics, so that I might attempt smaller mods on my own in the future.

I know that usually people either creates mod or don’t, and probably a fan proposing ideas through a YouTube video/Steam Community discussions section to present the project and looking for modders might be unprecedented, but as Sam itself would say: “Unconventional, but it will do.”