When I woke up this morning, I didn’t expect to write about a new Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim mod starring Matt Berry as a talking Ikea shelf. And yet, here we are, folks. And while I fully understand that this is just a silly marketing stunt by everyone’s favorite cheap furniture store, I can’t help but find this all so well done that I don’t mind.
On September 9, Ikea released a trailer for a new Skyrim Creations mod titled “KALLAX STORAGEBORN.” The mod adds the store’s famous Kallax shelf to Skyrim. But this isn’t just a simple mod that adds a shelf and calls it a day. No, instead, Ikea spent real money on making something far more elaborate than I expected.
The new Ikea mod is out today and is free to download through Bethesda’s Creations system on Xbox and PC.
It adds a whole questline that activates once players become overencumbered. At that point, you are instructed to visit an ancient dungeon and begin collecting the pieces needed to build the Kallax shelf. Once built and blessed with a magical Allen wrench weapon, the shelf comes to life and Matt Berry starts talking at you.
And this isn’t just some small cameo. No, he has many, many voiced lines in the mod and a whole questline dedicated to helping him collect heirlooms to rekindle his past memories. You can see this all in action in this hour-long playthrough of the Ikea mod from YouTuber ESO.
So what does this shelf do? Well, it follows you around Skyrim with some delightfully silly animations. The shelf can also help you declutter your inventory by letting you store your extra junk on it. And these items actually appear on the shelf in in the world, an added touch I appreciate quite a bit. Kallax can be called whenever you need him once you access a new shout spell added via the mod, too. When you shout for the shelf to appear, your character yells “IKEA!”
I’m not sure I’ll reinstall Skyrim just to hear Matt Berry talk about Elder Scrolls lore as a shelf. But I will definitely watch more footage of this silly marketing stunt on YouTube while I look over at the many Kallax shelves I own in real life and wonder if, one day, they too will start talking like a cast member from What We Do In The Shadows.