It's 2023 And I'm Modding Skyrim

I have a weird history with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. When it was first released back in 2011, I played a ton of it back on the Xbox 360, getting super deep into the lore, the world, and much more. I wanted to consume everything I could about this game, even going so far as to find podcasts about the RPG to stay in the world while I was at my day job. 

One can argue that my games journalism career really kicked off thanks to Skyrim as I joined one of the podcasts I listened to, Elder Scrolls Off The Record, to write about the game, and eventually expanded into more general games coverage at their now-defunct network (I was simultaneously writing about The Lord of the Rings Online at a sister site, Middle-earth News, so it’s hard to say exactly which game really helped me get my start, really).

I ended up buying a gaming PC for Skyrim – more specifically, Skyrim modding, though. The first time I saw a modded version of Bethesda’s RPG, I realized I couldn’t go back to the Xbox 360 version anymore, despite having over a hundred hours suck in it at the time. 

Specifically, I wanted those sweet ENB mods. The harsh edges and cold lighting of Skyrim always looked a little too harsh for me, and quite a few ENB mods made the world look more realistic and more alive.

For the next few years, I’m not sure I really played Skyrim; instead, I found most of my time tweaking settings, enabling mods, and diving into the recently released (at the time) Steam Workshop to improve the game I’d fallen in love with.

Yet, after a few years of not actually playing, instead just modding, I stopped the cycle, moving on to other titles as I became increasingly invested in the world of MMORPGs for work.

At least, until now, when just last week, I started modding Skyrim again, for some reason.

Transforming Skyrim

It wasn’t simply on a whim that I even thought about modding Skyrim again. It actually came about in a conversation with our old associate editor (and the first to arrive), Shank. We were actually talking about Cyberpunk 2077, and he expressed his astonishment that I play CDPR’s epic RPG without any mods. My response was simple: I didn’t want to fall into the same rabbit hole I did with Skyrim. I was afraid if I modded Cyberpunk, I would never actually play Cyberpunk, repeating what happened ten years earlier.

A few days later, Shank mentioned he was modding Skyrim using what can only be described as a mod super pack, NOLVUS Ascension. It lit the spark in me, the desire to mod Skyrim grew once again, especially if it was as easy as Shank made it sound.

A mod pack that jams over 2000 mods into an easy installer that completely transforms almost every aspect of the Skyrim experience. Everything from ENB presets that change how the world looks, to parallax mods that add so much depth to everything from the brick walls to cobblestone roads are present, as well as changes to combat, character models, immersion, new quests, and more. 

Some of the more impactful mods in the pack right away are the combat mods, completely transforming Skyrim from its floaty combat to a more action RPG, with parries, dash attacks, and even more execution animations. It feels closer to a Soulslike or what we saw in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (which is fitting since one of the mods is called Valhalla Combat) than a Bethesda game now, with improved animation work to make it all feel seamless. 

UI mods (not just the incredible SkyUI), from A Matter of Time, which adds a clock to the HUD to show the time of day, Nordic UI to clean up the original UI, make Skyrim’s menus feel better to navigate, especially on PC. Mods that build out the world of Skyrim, from Open Cities to environment mods such as mods that completely transform Skyrim’s night sky to simply More Trees in Cities, which, you know, add more trees in cities, transform the experience.

Over 2000 mods are at work here, and thankfully, Nolvus has a rather easy-to-use installer to get you up and running.

Beefy Requirements

One of the truly transformative aspects of Nolvus Ascension is how it adds software-simulated ray-traced lighting to the aged RPG. While it’s not leveraging any actual RT cores on an Nvidia or AMD GPU, it’s an incredibly beefy requirement that, if enabled, will need an exceptionally powerful card to run. Even using our test bench combined with the RTX 4090, I’m finding myself struggling to maintain 60fps with everything turned on. It’s heavy but worth the trouble.

This isn’t to say that you need an RTX 4090 card to use Nolvus. Thankfully, there are graphic variants you can choose from – from the Redux Variant that uses less heavy vegetation and cities overhauls to eke out performance (and requires an older GTX 1080 to power), to the Ultra Variant that can take advantage of a beefy RTX 3080 Ti – there are options here. The RTX 4090 is recommended for a native 4K output here (especially if you want to take advantage of DLAA to smooth out those rough edges). 

It also requires an eye-watering 392GB of SSD space – and the SSD is required to make it all run smoothly. Considering it’s running over 2000 individual mods on top of the Skyrim install, it’s not too shocking, but yea, almost 400GB for one game’s mods alone is pretty wild.

Nolvus Ascension thankfully takes a lot of the guesswork out of it for you, should you decide to install the mod, thanks to its auto-installer option. It isn’t completely hands-off – you’ll still need to make some decisions such as whether you want the vanilla starting experience or enable an alternate start mod, add fantasy-style acrobatics that make Skyrim play more like an Action JRPG than anything else, and it’s here you’ll also set up which ENB preset you want to use (Rudy is my recommendation).

Since it pulls from Nexus for many of the mods, it’s really recommended you grab a premium sub to the site to speed things along – though I’m not sure it’s required. Just know if you’re on the free account, the download speed of the mods might be much slower.

But How Is It To Play?

In one word: Transformative. I found myself sucked back into the world Bethesda created in a way I haven’t felt in a decade. It took a while to decide on a character model, what with the over a thousand hair options alone, but after going with my standard Imperial character, I opted for the vanilla starting experience to relive the glory days of the dragon attack in Helgen. 

The first thing I noticed was the music, though. Nolvus Ascension adds new music to the already iconic soundtrack, expanding on the themes and motifs Soule wrote over a decade ago, and bringing new life into the soundscape of The Elder Scrolls. Personally, I do find myself missing those familiar tracks that filtered through my headphones during those long play sessions years ago, but the new music isn’t unwelcome. And those older tracks are still there – they just don’t loop as frequently now.

Wandering around Skryim, the new environmental mods were really front and center. Traditionally barren hillsides were teeming with life, from new vegetation and trees, right down to the wildlife itself. The roads leading to Whiterun from Riverwood felt bumpy, almost cobbled together with, you know, cobble stones – the new parallax occlusion mapping working wonders here. 

And the sky! The first time night fell while I was outside exploring, the stars shone above with bands of the galaxy Nirn sits within ribboning across the skyline. The brilliant colors of the Northern Lights were out, while the giant moon cast its light across the world – and at times was shadowed by the nearby mountains casting a pall of darkness over the landscape in a realistic way. Thankfully, the Lantern mod allowed me to add a splash of light so I wouldn’t lose my footing.

Combat is by far the most transformative of the experience. The normally floaty combat of vanilla Skyrim has been replaced with meaty, crunchy and reactive combat more akin to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or a Soulslike than anything Bethesda has ever made. Sword swings feel precise and impactful, while the first time I parried with my shield I laughed like a little kid, excited to have this new dimension in my arsenal. Dash attacks and dodge attacks fill out the repertoire, while new spell effects make slinging Fire and Ice feel like new. 

It’s still a little jank – these mods are transforming an existing combat model and tacking new animation work on top of what is already there – but it’s so much better than what it’s replacing that I’m not sure I can ever go back.

I’m still early going in Skyrim as I spent way too much time creating my character – then remaking it when I realized I made a Nord and not my standard Imperial. But I’m about to venture into Bleak Falls Barrow for the first time in over five years, and I need to seek out the Companions so I can join their ranks and work alongside everyone’s favorite Huntress, Aela. I’m deep in the rabbit hole, modding and playing Skyrim in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-three, and I can’t stop.