Considering the timeline's about done I guess I can throw some thoughts on this. Granted, the
Hearts of Iron IV modding scene is somewhat niche especially outside of alternate history circles and there's no guarantee that the development cycles that Paradox Interactive finds itself in ITTL brings about HoI4 as we know it (but I'll at least headcanon that TTL gets a facsimile of a geopolitical/war game set around WWII), but with that said, I'll bite but I'll try not to derail the thread too much.
Originally I had a huge post planned for alt-TNO in this universe I worked with @AeroTheZealousOne on a long time ago, but seeing that the thread has long died down, I will more put some ideas about how the HOI4 modding scene:
2021 was two years ago? I feel old. I could go on about how 2021 and at least a non-consecutive half of 2022 was personally a complete and utter waste in my personal life but I'm not going to, I can vent somewhere else about that. But yeah, I take credit for some of the results of this brainstorming for better or worse. In hindsight I probably would've made edits but in the short term I've moved on from some of these mods and am focused on both personal stuff and indie JRPGs.
Kaiserreich is mostly the same, except we have a 5-way civil war and paths similar to the Home of the Brave submod that got folded into Kaiserredux. Also Canada will have a national populist path of revanchist ultranationalist British exiles seeking to take back their homeland at all costs. The reworks still reshape China and give the Mad Baron the demoted to extra treatment.
Interesting. I know
Kaiserreich started development in the mid-2000s IOTL on another game so TTL might get it in a form that OTL somewhat recognizes.
There is going to be a large scale Nazi victory mod, however the circumstances with it has changed.
TTL's relative radicalization (read: the general lack thereof) in politics and socioeconomic discourse, especially in the United States as of 2020, helps tremendously in avoiding the worst excesses of toxicity and controversy here.
Darkness Over Europa sounds like something I might play, but if I developed or wrote it, it would resemble
Thousand Week Reich somewhat more than
The New Order. It's definitely less wacky given... well... *gestures towards the last eight years*, but that's fine by me, I'm a stickler for plausibility, that gray area between realism and utilization of artistic license. Aesthetically speaking I imagine it's more in line with the '60s rather than the '80s (for some reason)? Not don't get me wrong I love me some good old fashioned cassette futurism but still.
I'm not going to analyze the specifics other than the fact that Britain not getting subjected to a successful Unspeakable Water Mammal is very much a good thing, but otherwise it definitely looks less meme-y and as much as I love memes I enjoy tasteful ones more.
Red World is mostly the same but with far different and less out there leaders for some of the US breakaway states and maybe a different leader for the plot twist for a certain route that I can't discuss too much as the rise of the figure is very recent relies on stuff that mostly would be on chat. Also Kaiser1871 survives his car crash and we have at least gotten the USSR rework for RW by alt-2023.
Sounds awesome, honestly. Yeah, political butterflies mean [REDACTED] doing [REDACTED] would be seen as borderline ASB (at best) or in poor taste (at worst). The dev surviving (or at least being nowhere near the crash site, like Stephen King ITTL) is a nice touch too.
Old World Blues comes out much later with a fully playable United States map and many factions from the TTL-Fallout games showing up. There will also be a Enclave/Pre-War USA Redemption path of sorts(Bonus points if Douglas Granite leads such a path!) despite the OTL opposition of OWB devs to such a path. In a world where the far-right isn't a issue, the "liking specific villains or hoping for the best for them is Fascism" remains in the deep fringes of tumblr, the existence of LOGH as a video game(which allows Reinhard to reform the Fascistic eugenicist Galactic Empire), and the GOP is run by saner heads AND the Enclave is apparently already a joinable faction in alt-Fallout, I feel there would be less stigma against Enclave fans or people that want to see a non-genocidal Enclave, and Fallout's anti-militarist/anti-consumerist satire would have been seen as less relevant if America was on saner political footing.
How cool! Haven't really followed
Fallout recently though I am looking forward to the fan project
Fallout: London (a mod for OTL
Fallout 4) which is set to drop later this year. Back on course, haven't paid much attention to OWB personally, but I think your synopsis for the Fallout world in the P2S trilogy being set into a popular map game is spot-on.
Final Fantasy meets grimdark political dark fantasy.
If anyone tried to sell to me something with this description I think I'd buy it. Not well versed in ASOIAF or derivative works other than people getting kicked for arguments over it in Shared Worlds, so I can't really comment on this otherwise, but it sounds interesting at least.
Millennium Dawn would be OTL Millennium Dawn molded to fit the geopolitical situations of Battle Royale, but much less laggy. Includes more pop culture flavor than OTL, especially for the United States, Japan, and certain countries in Europe. The major differences are significantly less lag, more of a focus on diplomacy than politics, more and different focus trees for various nations, and Corpus Christi in Texas having a higher Victory Point value given
Selena's expanded popularity ITTL and a pop music boom and whatnot. There is also no merging with the "realism" modern day mod and scuttling of many of the more out there ideas, which in general leads to less stigma against reworks.
That's how I'd go about it too. I mean, if I had coding knowledge I'd consider making something like this as a submod or total conversion of sorts as a tribute to the Player Two Start trilogy but that probably won't happen. If I wrote this my only major change is that I'd have 9/11 be preventable but I don't know where I'd go from there.
Game Over: A Millennium Dawn Overhaul Submod
This is probably my favorite part of all this. The basis of our modern world being reduced to a simulation of sorts where someone on the other end of the computer chooses whether or not we suffer for their own humor. I could debate the ethics and weird sentiment for "the little people in my computer" but I'll withhold that for today, and there was something else I was going to say but I'm starting to fall asleep at the computer typing this. I also find it hilarious that everything about OTL from TTL's perspective is seen as not necessarily different, but overall worse.
That aside, I need to ask the important question that some of us might have had burning in our minds but never did ask, or were oitherwise too afraid to ask: If TTL's RySenkari writing or having already written OTL, Is he therefore acting as our God? Because, and if this is the case please take no offense, I'm not sure what we did to deserve every leap year being a bad year and/or the craziness and occasional agony of the last decade or so. Furthermore, I'm almost scared to ask for mercy. All that said, thanks for giving us My Chemical Romance and that one Green Day album. And the occasional good heartwarming fanfics that exist. That said there are things about my personal life that I'd like rewritten or otherwise fixed, but I don't want to be too greedy now...
Lastly, I too was wondering where the heck this fits in with this work, but then I kinda shrugged that thought away. Besides, this work's effectively wrapped up and has been that way for the last year and a half, and I really should take some time to re-read it again, really take in the humanity of the characters and see what else I missed because my young impressionable mind was more focused on politics than pop culture at a certain point. Also to try and get all existential again even through my constant dissociation. Maybe compile a list of games I'd want to buy and play. Probably not make any fan art since I'm no good at art. I could employ an AI to attempt to generate songs original to TTL but the spirit of John Connor is reaching out to me and telling me I really shouldn't.
But that's just my thoughts for what they're worth.