Skyrim Special Edition is a remaster of 2011s Skyrim It comes with all the content of the original and its expansions The visuals are updated, but still subpar in a lot of places.

Skyrim Remastered Pc Requirements

Skyrim’s remastered special edition has finally been released. Depending on which platform you purchase it on, you will have access to many mods (more are available on the Xbox One than PS4) which will change how you play the game. The big question however is: will it be worth it to drop another $60 for a five year old game?

When The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released on November 11, 2011, I got it for PC. At the time, my PC was more than capable of running the game at the highest level settings for this game. Within the first weekend, I sunk at least 30 hours into the game and I was very impressed with the graphics. The story line was pretty decent but it was the tons of side quests that kept one busy. The subsequent mod support for the PC game is what kept many of us playing well beyond 2 years after the game’s release. Skyrim set the bar for open world fantasy RPG games for last gen gaming while it looks like The Witcher III has done so for this generation. From a technical standpoint, Skyrim could not do a lot of the things that The Witcher III is doing now, but the game has aged well in some areas.

If you were really bored with vanilla Skyrim, the only console worth revisiting Skyrim on is xbone because it has access to real mods, unlike the ps4. If I were you I’d just upgrade my pc tbh. Predominantly a PC feature, the wide world of mods is coming to the Xbox One and PS4. All things considered, whether or not Skyrim: Special Edition is worth it for you depends on just how much. For the PC version, see our Skyrim Special Edition PC review. I spent the vast majority of my time with the PS4 version of Skyrim Special Edition, because who could forget how the PS3’s 2011. So, is Skyrim: Special Edition worth it? Is there $59.99 worth of goodness here? If you’ve got a PC version, then no. PC users got a free upgrade and if you have one you’ve been doing mods for a while now. But if you’re an Xbox One or Ps4 only gamer I’d recommend it.

Graphics
I think this is the primary area of what gamers would like to know if it’s worth getting the update. Since playing it on PC and actually running it again, I can say that there are certain nuances in which gamers will notice changes. There are areas in which the lighting has improved and some of the textures are sharper but, you can still tell it’s a last generation game. However, even then it was one of the best looking games in the past 5 years. Using a few of the mods however has slightly improved some of the faces of the NPCs as some tended to look ‘mushy’. One of the minuses is that in some of the conversations you have, there is a synchronization loss between the mouth movement and voice actors. One other minus is that occasionally you may get a loss of framerate if there are too many moving elements onscreen. The game may stutter a bit but, this is still a holdover from the previous generation. I still think that overall, the game still looks great but if you played it on PC with the highest of settings, you are only getting a slight improvement. There are still many places such as high vistas, crumbling castles and dank dungeons that still lend an otherworldly immersive feel that few games could reproduce.

Loading times
This was an area in which I had hoped was vastly improved and where games like TheWitcher III excels in. The biggest knock on this and many other Bethesda games is there are times when you enter a building, room or city, there are long loading times that break the immersive nature of the game. However, when it comes to the loading times for this remastered edition, it must be noted that it’s a really mixed bag. Some areas may load right up under 15 seconds while others may take as long as a minute. My hope for future Bethesda games is that they take cues from CD Project RED (the team that developed The Witcher III) and load an entire region all at once allowing players to enter buildings, settlements, etc. without breaking up the flow of the game. Again, this is a 5 year old game so it’s to be expected.

Mod Support
Mods for Skyrim are still being produced even 5 years after this game’s release. One of the best parts of owning this game on PC was after modding so much of this game many of us were playing this the way we really wanted to with improved graphics, gaming objectives, companions and so much more. While initially Sony stated that the PS4 would not support mods at all for Skyrim, they walked backed part of that decision and have allowed a few mods to come out for the game. At last check there were at least 75 mods for PS4 and well over 200 mods (as of 10/31/16) for the Xbox One and both could see substantial growth as time goes on.
If I could recommend at least 4 mods that you should immediately try out ( I am playing on the Xbox One and some mods may not be available for the PS4) I would say try the following:

ALTERNATE START – LIVE ANOTHER LIFE – This mod allows you to jump immediately into the game without having to go through the entire prison process. If you still want to get the main quest you still have to make your way back to Helgen to get the clues to begin.

THE FORGOTTEN CITY – This is a fan created expansion in which it gives players a few extra hours of play time, new story segments and multiple endings

RICH MERCHANTS OF SKYRIM – Finally a mod in which you can sell all of your junk and merchants won’t run out of money!

OPEN CITIES OF SKYRIM – This is a must have mod. Earlier when I discussed the load time issues, one of them happens to be when trying to walk into a new city and upon entering the gates you have to wait for the screen to load. This mod eliminates all of this.

Knowing that some mods may come along in the future, these are a few that I hope to see that are available only for PC at the present.

QUALITY WORLD MAP – This map mod improves the World Map and contains accurate hand drawn roads. It also works with the DLC on the PC version.

WARZONES CIVIL UNREST – Want to really make this game feel like a Civil War is happening? This mod will fix you up. There are skirmishes, ambushes and random encounters that gives Skyrim a feeling like it’s a truly unsafe place to be.

CLIMATES OF TAMRIEL – This mod actually gives life and breadth to the different areas of Skyrim. With this mod, different areas will have different weather and lighting aspects.

So as you can see, there still a lot of life left in this game after 5 years. I would say that if you are truly a fan of the game and can still overlook a few shortcomings, this is still worth getting. Although some will balk at the 60 dollar price tag, you have to consider that this game comes remastered with all of the DLC. So far, I am happy to go back to this world again and re-experience it again although I wonder what can be done with the next Elder Scrolls title.

Are you picking up this game? Have you already got it? How do you like it? Tell us in the comments.

One of the biggest Nintendo Switch surprises came in the form of a game that most people will be familiar with: Skyrim. From the very start, Nintendo has been advertising Skyrim on the Switch, and for good reason, as this is the first time we’ve seen Bethesda’s epic open-world Elder Scrolls series come to Nintendo consoles. As exciting as it may be, Skyrim has been available on various platforms for six years now, and many gamers have already seen what its frozen landscape has to offer. With that in mind, is Skyrim worth purchasing again just because it’s now available on the Switch?

Before we really dive in, let’s just get this out of the way first: if you’ve never played Skyrim, you enjoy RPGs, and you own a Switch, you should absolutely buy it. For seasoned RPG veterans, Skyrim has lost some of its luster over the past few years, but for those who have yet to see what it has to offer, it’s definitely worth a purchase. Any RPG fan should play an Elder Scrolls game at some point, and Skyrim is arguably as good as any of them.

But what if you’ve played Skyrim to death already? That’s the camp I fall into. Between PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 (yes, really – all three platforms), my time playing Skyrim totals somewhere in the multiple hundreds of hours. I’ve clocked 300 hours on PC alone, thanks in large part to a healthy mod scene that allows me to make each playthrough vastly different. In short, Skyrim is one of my favorite games of all time, as many Bethesda games eventually become.

On the other side of the coin, there’s a certain level of burnout that comes along with those almost obsessive Skyrim hot streaks that can last for weeks. I’ve seen the opening hours of Skyrim so many times that I’ve come to loathe them. At this point, I think I could put down Skyrim forever and be satisfied with the time I’ve spent with it.

It kind of took me by surprise, then, that I’ve been so eager to play Skyrim on Switch since downloading it a week ago. Make no mistake, this is vanilla Skyrim in all of its glory, so there’s nothing particularly special about it, save for the portability factor. As it turns out, that’s a bigger draw than I thought it would be.

The novelty of being able to play Skyrim whenever I happen to have my Switch on me is great. I don’t need to be tethered to my TV or my desk to continue my dragon-slaying adventures. I can be in bed, I can be traveling, or I can be in places decent people are uncomfortable talking about, and I’ve got Skyrim ready to go.

That is very cool, and I don’t know when that novelty is going to fizzle out, but it hasn’t yet. If anything, it’s helped me push through the opening hours I’m so tired of and get to the meat of the game, where you start to figure out your character and things begin to take off. For whatever it’s worth, that novelty has pushed me waist deep back into Skyrim, and I’m excited to keep playing.

If you’ve played Skyrim on consoles and the portability factor gets you excited to dive back in, then it’s definitely worth buying on the Switch. When held up against the PC, Xbox One, and PS4 releases, this will easily be the worst-looking version of Skyrim, but honestly, graphics fidelity shouldn’t be the reason you buy it. The game is six years old after all, so of course it’s going to be lackluster in the graphics department (nevermind the fact that it was a little underwhelming when it was brand new).

For those who’ve done most of their Skyrim adventuring on PC, making a positive recommendation isn’t quite as easy. After years of modding the ever-loving crap out of Skyrim (which is basically your duty as a PC player), it’s certainly somewhat jarring to return to vanilla Skyrim. Though this has all of the DLC Bethesda released for the game, there still isn’t a whole lot here for those who have spent the past six years modding Skyrim into their ideal game.

The new features in the Switch version are neat, but they aren’t game changing in any sense. Amiibo support is cool, and the ability to get Legend of Zelda-themed items by scanning one of the many Zelda amiibo is a nice little call out to the series. You can scan any amiibo figure you own once a day and receive a chest with (seemingly) leveled loot, so if you have a decent collection, scanning Amiibo could definitely give you a leg up when it comes to outfitting your hero in gear and growing your coin purse. They’ll offer a nice jump start for anyone who has already played Skyrim before, but beyond that, Amiibo support is just a little bonus that you can survive without.

Skyrim Remastered Pc Worth Itunes

Motion controls, on the other hand, aren’t anything worth getting excited about. I’m sure there are a few people out there who will really get into them, but to me, they feel worse in every way to traditional controls. This could very well be down to the fact that I simply don’t like motion controls, but regardless, they shouldn’t be a deciding factor in whether or not you play the game.

Portability is the biggest thing going for Skyrim on Switch. It’s great – really great – and I think it brings a fresh angle to a game that so many of us are already very familiar with. If the prospect of Skyrim on the go gets you just as excited as it got me, or if you’re far enough out from your last playthrough that you’re beginning to get that itch again, then Skyrim on Switch is worth diving into.

For everyone else – the people who are burned out entirely on Skyrim at this point or the players who have so many mods on their PC that it’s a wonder the game runs without crashing – I’d say Skyrim is still worth considering, but maybe after it goes on sale at some point down the road. Skyrim is great, but $60 is likely going to be too much for those who have had their fill elsewhere.

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