Very few games can rival Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim in terms of modding. With over 2 billion mods downloaded across its 13-year lifespan, Skyrim truly stands in a league of its own.
These mods enhance various elements of the RPG, with one particular mod enhancing the visuals with path tracing. Improving the visuals further, a new video shows just how incredible Skyrim can look with a whopping 3,000 mods installed.
Why it matters: Modding continues to be one of PC gaming’s biggest strengths and videos like these highlight exactly why the PC community appreciates mods so much.
A recent video from Digital Dreams puts Nvidia’s flagship RTX 5090 to good use in Skyrim. Pushing this GPU to its limits, the YouTube channel demonstrates Skyrim’s next-gen visuals when combined with 3,500 mods.
These mods enhance the game’s textures, lighting, cloth surfaces, and more. The foliage also appears to be a far cry from anything possible on the officially released versions of Skyrim across all platforms.
Digital Dreams showcases various environments and terrains to drive the point home. Whether it be a sense of serenity conveyed by clear skies or the dullness exuded by deciduous trees, these mods bring the RPG’s open-world atmosphere to life like never before.
Smoke effects and reflective water surfaces are also impressive, making a blissful experience, particulalry for those who have a history with Skyrim. It goes without saying, but these visual upgrades come at a cost.
Only those with the best PC hardware can add this many bells and whistles to Skyrim, but there are still plenty of other alternatives for those hoping to achieve similar overhauls on more modest hardware.
With The Elder Scrolls 6 currently in development, it will be interesting to see whether Bethesda can achieve similar visuals with its next official release.
The team has certainly set its sights on an ambitious RPG, but it will likely have no option but to push the Creation Engine to its limits if it hopes to rival the best of modern gaming. Meanwhile, those interested in this specific mod can check the YouTube video’s description for additional details.
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