How beautiful can Skyrim look in the year 2021? The answer: pretty spiffy, especially with the vegetation. Only the performance becomes a sticking point.
Clearly, in the year 2021 Skyrim looks pretty sobering in its standard version. Thanks to modifications, however, a lot can still be tickled out of Bethesda’s role-playing heavyweight. The most recent example is dedicated to the forests of the edge of Heaven, which under certain circumstances can definitely keep up with modern competition.
Incidentally, the Anniversary Edition of Skyrim has been announced for this year, which could give Elder Scrolls 6 a run for its money:
Skyrim Anniversary Edition with 500 DLCs and NextGen upgrade announced
Fancy forests – low framerate
Reddit user ShoddyCover shows in a video how fantastic the vegetation can be spruced up with the help of mods. Fancy and high-resolution trees meet atmospheric lighting and dense grass shows up everywhere. But see for yourself:
Pushed Skyrim’s graphics so hard I could smell something burning from skyrim
As fancy as the graphics are in these scenes, the performance is weak: with the FPS, the role-playing game is barely playable. For this reason, the headline of the Reddit post sums it up well: “Skyrim’s graphics pushed so hard I could smell something burning.” Digital Dreams, on the other hand, has a different take: In an interview, he revealed the tools he uses to create his graphic splendour and how much time he puts into modifying games.
By the way,
ShoddyCover doesn’t necessarily rely on weak hardware: his laptop has an Intel i7 10870H CPU, 16 gigabytes of RAM and an Nvidia RTX 3070. Nevertheless, the many mods that are used pull enormously on the performance. At least: With depth of field and lens flares switched off, he was able to gain a good 15 FPS.
How your Skyrim can look like this
If you want to experience such fancy forests for yourself, you’re in for a bit of a mod marathon. ShoddyCover lists transparently in a ( picture gallery ) which mods he uses. Besides several 2K and 4K texture packages, the following modifications stand out:
- Vivid Weathers: Reworks the colours and weather of the game, completely without additional ENB shaders
- NAT – Natural and Atmospheric Tamriel: Complete visual overhaul of weather and lighting effects
- Enhanced Lights and FX: Implements “more dramatic and realistic” lighting effects
- Folkvangr – Grass and Landscape Overhaul: Adds fancier grass to landscapes
- Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants: Also an improvement to the vegetation of Skyrim
- Origins of Forest – 3D Forest Grass: Implements high resolution 3D grass
But maybe you see it differently or you know another video game forest that is also beautiful? Write us your opinion in the comments!
