Different Ways to Play Skyrim

At the base of it all, Skyrim isn’t really that amazing a game. On release, it was filled with billions of bugs, and to this day through not only the normal version but also Skyrim Special Edition, there’s a ton of bugs that need community patches to fix. Most of Skyrim’s fame comes from its accessibility and good looks, but also because it’s an Elder Scrolls game that finally has actual dragons in it. Let’s face it, those dragons are cool. Frankly though, Skyrim hasn’t aged that well, despite being ported into a 64 bit version and for newer consoles like the Nintendo Switch. What HAS kept Skyrim alive all this time is the vast number of mods that let you play Skyrim in hundreds of different ways.

And that’s excluding all the vanilla ways of playing Skyrim. Even vanilla Skyrim included sneak thieves, whacking things with massive weapons, sword and board combat, magic combat and even the fun route of summoning and necromancy. Sure, Skyrim itself is pretty plain and simple but there’s always been a lot you can do with it.

Mods just increase what you can do with Skyrim to absurd levels.

Seriously, there are mods for so many things.

For example, if you want to turn Skyrim into a tough, semi-realistic survival game where you have to eat and drink and occasionally fight through blizzards as you struggle to get from town to town; or whether you want to have to stop and camp, then there are loads of mods for that. Everything from Frostfall which is a complete package, to more streamlined things like iNeed or Campfire.

Or how about wanting to play a really crazy wizard or sorcerer character? There are hundreds, if not thousands of mods that add new spells to Skyrim. Apocalypse Magic is one of the bigger mods, but there’s something for pretty much every school. There’s even mods that let you turn into other creatures, although I’m personally a fan of Spells as Lesser Powers, because this means you can free up your hands and use weapons at the same time.

Speaking of weapons, there are more weapon and armour mods than you can shake a stick at. Want weapons from Lord of the Rings? You got it. Want weapons from the Witcher series? Of course. Want a Light sabre in Skyrim? SURE WHY NOT?

Frankly, if it’s a popular thing then there’s probably a mod for replicating said thing in Skyrim. After all, there are My Little Pony mods AND a very popular mod that turns dragons into trains.

And then there’s the houses. There are so many really nice house mods. Too many to list. And too many to actually recommend because I went and built my own home in the Creation Kit which I use for my dragon. But you don’t even need the Creation Kit, there are tools where you can build or edit your own homes yourself in-game, like Cobb Positioner, which lets you move items around.

There’s even a whole insanely… risque side of things. More than just the hundreds of sexy female skins (and lack of sexy male skins and looks) that plague both Nexus Mods and the Skyrim workshop. In fact, there’s something for most more commonplace kinks. The only problem is that they can be a bit script-heavy, as I found out while trying to run the mod Defeat, which I literally only wanted for a less murdery Skyrim campaign. But even if you ignore Lovers Lab, there are simpler sexy mods on Nexus Mods that have less, uh, functionality. And there are plenty of nude mods too, as aabicus will attest.

Or you could do what I did and turn Skyrim into some sort of weird dragon simulator. I spend my time flying around as a dragon, burning down cities.

But what makes this even crazier is that, well, I could combine all of these things if I wanted to. I could change Skyrim so I can run around fighting werewolves and My Little Pony bandits while using a light sabre and turning into a dragon, all the while trying not to starve to death and having to bunker down in next to a campfire at night so I don’t freeze in the Skyrim tundra, just so I can return to one of the many fancy mansions I own so I can sleep with a big-titted waifu.

I mean, I COULD feasibly make a mod list like that and have a perfectly playable (albeit weird) version of Skyrim. I don’t want to, but I could.

And that is why Skyrim is so magical. While normal Skyrim is a good game, Skyrim with mods is whatever the fuck you want it to be.