Today I am a Skyrim Guardian and not a Skyrim Poet. I used to be a doer, but that meant more than just installing the game. I would start modding, and I would not stop. Could not stop. I would spend more time looking for suitable coin distribution than shaking for dragons. Eventually something would break, and I would remove it, and promise that I would not fall into that hole again.
It’s been a long battle, but when I stumbled upon YouTube compilations of half-modded Elder Scrolls, I finally broke the curse. Some brave souls do the hard work for me, and turn the nine-year-old RPG (as a four-year-old remaster, as a two-year-old VR remake) into PC that melts 4K thirst quenches. I do not have time for that. Neither does the PC.
My dalliances with modding have given me a basic appreciation of the mental state needed to run Skyrim with mods. There is no art darker than working out the sequence for mod and ini file tweaks needed to get 180 mods to pull in the same direction. I’m not exaggerating. That’s what “Toxic Gaming” does to make it look like a shiny running simulator.
The stars of that video are the houses and inns. There is not a single mod that does all this. They have adjusted the gloss of ovens, improved torch shadow edges, and replaced so many models that technically it may no longer be Skyrim. It’s Trigger’s broom all over again.
There are more specific changes highlighted in some videos, such as a parallax texture pack containing more than 1300 files. This right here is the good shit.
“Digital Dreams” has given the world a livelier take. When the rain and storms enter this collection, there is a submerged, almost stalkery, atmosphere. But some areas look a bit like Alice in Wonderland. There are more than 200 mods, including one made from photogrammetry tree trunks and mushrooms.
200 mods not enough for you? Fine, here is 300. It’s not perfect. There are things in all these videos that I could not follow when they were in my game, such as the excessive use of Bloom, but this is not my game, so I do not have to worry.
I’m glad I’m out of this game. I spent a weekend last year trying to follow a guide for remaster Skyrim VR. All I had to show for was a lot of Google tabs open when I chased a stack of bugs. I spent two days loading up with mods and only got an hour out of the game before it broke. I am now content to sit, dim the lights and relax when someone is doing the hard work, just like watching Bob Ross.
