Almost 3 months after the release of Skyrim, the Creation Kit will finally be made available tomorrow. The Creation Kit has shifted from "on launch day" to "very close to launch" to "beginning in January" to its final deadline of January 38th. As usual, believing anything Todd Howard says is a quick path to disappointment. Presumably much of the delay was due to the Steam Workshop integration; that did involve Valve, after all. Bethesda has also uploaded a "first look" video of the new Creation Kit showing off some improvements: new dialog display, render window controls that may not be awful, the new scripting language (Papyrus, no relation to the font, hopefully), and of course the Steam Workshop. Since the kit is coming tomorrow, the "second look" will be the Creation Kit itself. On the other hand, Bethesda and Valve have still given almost no information about the Steam Workshop for Skyrim. We know it will allow one-click mod downloads/subscriptions and have some sort of upload method available through the Creation Kit, and we got a quick look at the interface in the first look video. Mods with nudity, sexual content, excessive violence, child killing, drug use, etc. will all probably be banned from the Workshop if Bethesda's past behavior is any indication. Beyond that, everything is up in the air. Will there be any conflict detection or management? Will Bethesda's provided launcher still be entirely useless for any serious mod use? How will mod subscriptions work? Can mods only be uploaded through the Creation Kit? How will mod requirements be handled with the "one-click installs?" How will the Workshop work with 3rd-party tools (Nexus Mod Manager, Wrye Smash, BOSS, etc.)? How will the Workshop be moderated? What level of user/community participation is there? What are the terms of use/service? How much control do modders have over their mods and mod pages once uploaded? All these questions (and more) will be answered once the Workshop is open, of course, but it would have been nice if at least some answers had been provided ahead of time. But neither Valve nor Bethesda typically work that way, so it isn't too surprising. The official Creation Kit "information" thread on the official forums doesn't even have the latest information about the Tuesday release. One good bit of information did come out, though: Bethesda asked a group of veteran modders to test out the new Creation Kit (and the Steam Workshop too, I imagine) ahead of the release. Whether their feedback will be addressed is another matter, but at least this time we may get a kit where lip-sync actually works, the script editor isn't missing functionality, and entering an .ESP description without risking a crash is possible. Along with Pete Hines' random reveal of that Tuesday release on Twitter, he also teased a "special surprise" would be coming alongside the Creation Kit. 59 minutes passed before someone discovered that the special surprise is probably an official "HighRes" Texture Pack. So much for a surprise?

read more: Skyrim Creation Kit and Special Surprise "On Track for Tuesday"