Today Paradox Interactive introduced the features of the upcoming Paradox Mods application for Colossal Order's city builder Cities: Skylines 2.
The feature will be introduced in beta on March 25, alongside the Beach Properties assets and an update to performance and general fixes and improvements.
It's the first implementation of mods for the game and it's a departure from the Steam Workshop used for the first game of the series, albeit fans of other Paradox games may already be familiar with it.
The Development Diary post explains that the feature will be directly accessible from inside the game. It won't just let you discover, search, and update mods, but it'll also have featured picks selected by the developer.
You can also create and manage playsets, which are basically collections of mods that you can toggle all at once. Quite interesting is the fact that you'll be asked if you want to add dependencies, and the playset will automatically add them all, which is very handy and superior to what is currently offered by Steam Workshop.
The feature also lets you access discussions about specific mods directly from inside the game, alongside links to other platforms related to the mod like Discord, YouTube, and GitHub.
Of course, you'll still be able to add mods manually of you so wish, but these won't be synced in the cloud as your playsets in Paradox Mods.
If you're a mod creator, the first iteration of mods in Cities Skylines 2 will let you create custom maps and mods that involve code. You can change a variety of parameters at any time including description, screenshots, dependencies, release notes, supported game version, and more.
There will be two more of these development diaries tomorrow and on Thursday focusing specifically on the Map Editor and Code modding. Of course, we'll keep you posted on whatever is shared.
Cities: Skylines 2 is currently available only for PC, but we already know that PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions are also coming, albeit we don't yet know when. They were supposed to launch at the same time as PC, but they have been (likely wisely) delayed.
The release of the PC version of the game was flawed by serious issues and mediocre performance, and it still managed to sell over a million copies.
To be fair, having played a build of the game at Gamescom, I found it very promising. I am still convinced that promise can be realized, but we don't yet know when the game will fully represent the developer's vision.
