Tag Archives: The Elder Scrolls V

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For on the field of battle they are put to the test (Skyrim Legendary Edition and additional mods, 2011-2013)

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Two years ago, I posted an article about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. With the release of several DLCs and a legendary edition containing them all on sale due to the Quakecon, I thought I could post new comments about this game, since I’m replaying it – and so far, I played something like 57 hours according to Steam.

Back with a bang! (or not)

Do I own the legendary edition? No, actually, I got only the Dragonborn and Dawnguard (and the free HD texture pack) DLC. I skipped the Hearthfire DLC described as follows: “you can purchase land and build your own home from the ground up – from a simple one-room cottage to a sprawling compound complete with an armory, alchemy laboratory, stable, garden, and more”. Come on, I’m fighting for world survival, would I really care about owning my little cottage? Not to mention mods are already providing this, if want be.

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Mods. Yeah, lot of mods were published since 2011. I decided to improve the replay by getting a lot of them through the convenient steam workshop. Some of them improve visuals, some other the user interface (the one I insulted in my original post), some the overall gameplay. But none of these bring phony gear or anything that fundamentaly change the game experience.

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First, there is this SKSE that is required but is not available from steam. Now all of the following mods are compatible between each others, several of them requires the DLCs I mentioned before and you should be provided with a subscribe button if you open this page in steam (on the main steam page, you may not be able to browse whatever page you want, be within the steam overlay inside Skyrim, you can). Note than once you subscribed the items on the workshop, you have to exit the game, wait for steam to download the necessary stuff, then start the Skyrim launcher and go to data files, wait for the list of items to be downloaded and appear with a ticked checkbox. Then you have to exit the launcher completely and start Skyrim with the specific launcher provided by SKSE that you installed in first place. Sounds complicated written like this, but really it isn’t.

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There are only cosmetics mods. Here’s the list, I wont give any details about them, their name are usually self-explanatory; I tested and like what they provide and they works well without causing my setup any framerate drop (with every settings set to high – I skipped Dat Grass cool mod because of that), so you should get them:

There are interface changes mods. The original interface is shitty so you must have these:

These are gameplay changes, this, in my opinion, improve the game experience:

Notes: You may also want to use the console command fov 87 if you have a widescreen. If the Skyrim sound volume of the game is too low, know bug, you may use additional software from your soundcard to fix it, I’m using the dolby home theatre thing of mine.

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So at this point, do you still wonder whether I recommend you to play Skyrim? Yes, as I did in the past, I do. The followers are still annoyingly silent, not properly sexable, they have no opinion about anything, especially not on the civil war that everybody is so focused on, not even when they’re nords. Neither do they have enemies, foes or friends. But apart from that obvious defect, I still am captivated by the game. First time I played, I wanted to have it all, doing whatever subsidiary quests, even the very-FedEx ones. At some point, I felt like a cook/miner/smith/alchemist more than a true warrior of the north, every peasant was asking me to run errands like fetching some cabbages and stuff like that. NERD!  So for this replay, I’ve gone very evil, disregarding many quests or resolving them by killing everyone on the spot (yeah, especially peasants asking me to go on a cabbage-run). And I focused on the main quest. I’m still not bored, Never admit to your own defeat!