Winke talks like a politician there. Talks a lot without saying much. No DM tool is plain enough but the 'we will support modding', 'there will be a lot of support for modding', 'Not right away'' is all a bit vague and non-specific.
Swen was pretty clear in both statements. The tl;dr is
"We won't do DM mode because it was never planned and it'd be too much work implementing it into a now finished game" and "We will support making custom environments like dungeons it'll just be a lot of work on the modder's part to do it". Which if you've used DOS2's toolset it does have a learning curve but it's completely usable.
I had to paraphrase but even at this point I would take both my and his statements as unreliable until we get an update from them on what they are thinking modding will look like. They already left out the creation of Custom Campaigns AND DM mode in the most recent statement they made.
I do agree it's vague but I'd argue there is enough to piece together a reasonable expectation of what's coming.
"Together with the platform holders, we are working on making this a reality, and are forming a team to support mod curation. We’re aiming to offer modding support for things like classes, UI, customisation, spells, and certain assets and game mechanics."
So I stand by my paraphrase, he was too wishy washy to about it to give an affirmative on that, BUT I HOPE I AM WRONG!!
With this I think Salo wasn't talking about what the tools they're making will allow for. I think she was talking about what mods will be available via the cross platform mod support. It's mentioned right there with "Together with platform holders". The reason I think this is because one major issue with cross platform mod support is platform holders have different rules around it. Sony infamously requires that any mods not feature custom assets. Which is an immediate limitation you'll notice if you play Skyrim on PS4/PS5 and check what mods are available and compare it to the Xbox version.
Salo's message is also very carefully worded. They say.
classes, UI, customisation, spells, and certain assets and game mechanics
Those are all theoretically things that wouldn't violate Sony's policy. Mentioning "certain assets" implies that they're going to be very rigid with what will be allowed and not allowed. This would also obviously exclude custom environments as that would rely on custom assets. They also don't mention much more basic things like custom armor, weapons and races which we can do right now without tools. It goes without saying that the cross platform mod curation wouldn't apply to the PC platform and Valves Steam Workshop which has no limitations.
I fully believe that they will release an environment editor I just wish they'd give us peace of mind finally and say "yep. It's coming"
