Bethesda announced Skyrim: Special Edition at E3 this year; a remastered version of the game running on a 64-bit version of the creation engine with upgraded visuals, performance, and most importantly mod support for consoles.
Skyrim is one of my all-time favorite games, raptr having clocked me in at over 1200 hours on just the vanilla 360 version, the amount of enjoyment and time spent in the game is unprecedented even for a hardcore gamer like myself. But like all good things my time with the game came to an eventual end when I burned myself out on it after playing it almost exclusively for four years.
I’d love nothing more than to start fresh with Skyrim, and the best way to do that would be with fresh content, which is where the mods come in. With Skyrim SE having just gone gold and scheduled to release in just a couple weeks, mods are already starting to crop up on Bethesda.net, but there are certain mods that are an absolute necessity, and I’ll be covering what I think those are here.
Unfortunately Sony, being the communists that they are, have allowed mods for both Skyrim and Fallout 4 onto the PS4, but only under the condition that they don’t use assets not already present in the game files. This means my PS4 friends won’t be getting Macho Man Randy Savage or Thomas the Tank Engine dragons, which is a magnitude of suckage. Considering Sony hasn’t exactly been keeping up good relations recently, what with throwing Hello Games under the bus over the backlash No Man’s Sky recieved and now this whole mod debacle, they’re not exactly making me want to be their valued customer.
Not to fret though, there will still be plenty of great mods available to those of you who prefer gaming on PS4, and I intend to try making as many of my suggestions here PS4 friendly if possible, though this is a personal list and I prefer gaming on Xbox, so you should still expect to see Xbox-only mods here. And for those of you on PC, if you own Skyrim and its DLCs through Steam, you’ll recieve the remaster for free, so you can stop complaining about cash grabs and filthy casuals.
With that said, let’s move on to what we’re all here for; the mods! Keep in mind I may not always use the full or accurate names for these mods, because it’s been some time since I last watched a mod video or browsed the Nexus.
Alternate Start: Live Another Life
I’ll never forget the first time I lived through Alduin’s attack on Helgen, running for my life with my hands tied as firey death rained down all around me, and it would certainly be great to live through it again. If you’re like me, though, you can get your money’s worth in RPGs like Skyrim just by creating characters and as a result you’ve played through that opening so many times from both Ralof and Hadvar’s perspectives that you’ve memorized all the dialogue by heart.
That’s where alternate start comes in. You begin the game locked in a dungeon cell with little more than a statue of Mara for company. Create you character and then pray to the statue of Mara. The goddess of compassion with have pity for you and grand you a new start in a new life. From here you may choose one of dozens of possible scenarios, from simply getting the key to the cell you’re in to being a member of the Thalmor. You’ll even have the option to begin with the vanilla opening should it fit what you’ve come up with for your character.
I’m not sure how strictly Sony will enforce their asset rule, but I do think ASLAL should be PS4 compatible.
Craftable Clothing
A pretty self explainatory one. I’m a magic guy by heart and one thing I never liked about Skyrim is how mages always seemed to be so much of an afterthought. Granted all the marketing does feature a burly blond man in iron armor with a sword and shield, but some options for us finger wigglers would be nice. Even rogue characters had crafting options at the blacksmith’s forge, but if you were a mage you had to basically steal the clothes off the back of a corpse or drop coin for something at Radiant Raiment and hope it looked as good as it did in the shop menu. You’d think a mage would know how to knit a robe or at least enchant a needle to do it for them.
Craftable Clothing simply lets us craft our own unenchanted vanilla robes and clothing, allowing us to better customize and distinguish our mage characters. Something Skyrim was always sorely lacking in my honest opinion.
Khajiit Speak - Complete Dialogue Overhaul
So, Khajiit are awesome. Who doesn’t love cats? What’s more, who doesn’t love cat men with a sexy ‘purrsian’ accent who snort coke as part of their religion? The Khajiit are one of the best things about the TES series, but playing as one can be pretty underwhelming. For starters all the player dialogue in Skyrim is written in the accent of the average American citizen and treats the player character as... well a gamer experiencing the world for the first time instead of a citizen of Tamriel. Playing as a Nord Warrior having the option to ask multiple people ‘Who’s Talos’ is laughable.
This mod fixes this issue for the Khajiit, completely rewriting all the player’s dialogue to fit the Khajiiti accent. Now playing as a Khajiit is just a little more immersive experience. This one can has moon sugar, yes?
Marriable Khajiit and Wood Elves
On the note of Khajiit, there are some great and lovable characters in this game. The only annoying thing is that there are zero marriable Khajiit or Wood Elves in the game, which again seems like a huge afterthought, and even then there are only 3 options available for argonians. Did you develop feelings for J’Zargo after studying with him at the College of Winterhold? Well, have fun staying in the friend zone. Faendal is the first Wood Elf you ever see in Skyrim, it would be great to get to know him better wouldn’t it? Welp, he’s smitten with Camilla Valarius and again you’re stuck in the friend zone.
This mod fixes this problem, opening up characters like Kharjo, J’Zargo and Faendal to marriage.
Helmet Toggle - Show Hide
So, Skyrim is kind of annoying in this aspect. Spend a couple hours making a badass argonian shadowscale? Well all that work is pretty much pointless since you’ll be slapping a helmet/hood over his face after a few minutes. This mods fixes that by letting you take the helmet off while still keeping the desired effect!
Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim
Continuing the running theme of magical afterthought, there were actually a lot of really awesome spells. Telekinesis was great for grabbing items out of reach, Mayhem was great for causing complete anarchy, but the overall selection of spells was underwhelming and there were no offensive Restoration spells so a restoration mage basically was either forced to learn destruction magic or hire a bodyguard and let them do all the fighting. How incredibly dull!
Apocalypse broadens the options of the aspiring arcanist, giving us new destruction spells based on other elements like earth, offensive restoration spells, and there is even a spell that let’s the player summon meteor showers! This mod offers variety and fresh content for mage characters.
Winterhold Rebuild
Let’s be honest, Winterhold sucks. It’s a frigid ghost town and there would be absolutely zero reason to even go there if not for the College of Wintehold. This mod offers a new quest in which you oversee the town’s construction and even allows non-mage characters to have a player home there. For mage characters though, this mod would go well with Immersive College of Winterhold.
Legendary Cities - Tes Arena - Skyrim Frontier Fortress
One thing that is unfortunate is that Skyrim is a country, and lorewise it’s supposed to have nearly double the towns and cities it does in the game, but hardware limitations suck. A lot. This mod adds these towns back into the game and fills them with NPCs, offering new places to explore!
Sell Unusual Gems - Stones of Barenziah and Stone of Barenziah Map Markers
Don’t want to be a thief character? Don’t pick one of these up then, lest in be in your inventory for the rest of eternity. Or just download this mod so you can sell the bloody things. Alternatively if you are a thief character and want to go for this quest, having map markers makes it decidedly less frustrating.
The Choice is Yours - Fewer Forced Quests - Improved Dialogue Options
Skyrim can get ridiculous with how it handle’s its quests. The first time you enter Riften, the moment you step into the marketplace Brynjolf is on you like flies on feces, boom, new quest added! It can be pretty frustrating when you just want to explore but everytime you breathe a new quest gets added to your journal until it’s assumingly at the thickness of a college text book or religious anthology. This quest seeks to remedy that issue.
Acquisitive Soul Gems
Enchanting in Skyrim is great. The means to fuel it are not. It always sucked having grand soul gems in your inventory and then killing a bunny rabbit and have one of those grand soul gems aborb the petty soul. This mod serves to make sure souls go into their respective gem size or not at all. Very useful!
OBIS - Organized Bandits in Skyrim
The enemy variety in Skyrim was always lacking and generic, with your options typically being skeevers, wolves, skeletons, draugr, bandits and dragons. This mod seeks to make the bandits more interesting to fight by adding dozens of bandit factions into the game with different themes, weapons and the like.
Guard Dialogue Overhaul
“Go fiddling with any locks around here and we’re going to have a problem!” he says to the seven foot tall muscular blond man in full dragonbone armor carrying a battleaxe. Yeah, the guards in Skyrim have always been lovabll stupid, it’s like if every cop in Medieval Norway was Officer Barbrady. But when you’ve saved the world from certain destruction and become the leader of the companions you deserve a little more respect. No Jenkins, nobody stole my gotdang sweetroll, now push off! I was even tossing fireballs at Dragonsreach once, only to have a guard walk up to be and disingenuously grumble “No lollygaggin’.” It was funny, but this mod seeks to make the guards of Skyrim a little less... aloof, and thank God for that.
Lakeview Extended - Hearthfire
Lakeview Manor is arguably the best home available in Hearthfire. Temporate location, next to a large body of water, next to a road, remote. It’s the perfect summer cabin. This mod ups it to Eleven and basically turns it into an estate with merchants and a pool! Worth it if playing as a wealthy snobbish character.
Tel Avius and Tel Nalta II
From the same mod author as Lakeview Extended, Tel Avius and Tel Nalta II are Telvani mushroom tower player home settlements in the same vein as Tel Mythrin in the Dragonborn expansion. Perfect for dark elf wizard characters!
When Vampires Attack and/or Run For Your Lives
The NPCs in Skyrim are about as intelligent as lemmings. If a dragon attacks Whiterun all the non-essential NPCs will charge at it suicidally with bare fists shouting ‘SKYRIM BELONGS TO THE NORDS’ before the giant overgrown space lizard then barbeques and eats them. Same thing with vampires. Vampires are attacking? Let’s leap into their arms! And then you lose the town’s only blacksmith, which is bollocks. This mod makes the NPCs intelligent enough to RUN AWAY when the town is attacked, leaving guards as the only guarenteed casualties. Thank Christ for that.
The Paarthurnax Dillema
Dunno about you guys but I liked Paarthurnax, he’s my mentor and my friend. He’s also a much better ally than the two dipshits who claim to serve you as Dragonborn yet refuse to do so until you murder Paarthurnax for crimes he commited and atoned for millenia ago. This mods lets you rightfully put the Blades in their place and tell them to like it or lump it because you’re in charge an fuck you Paarthurnax is my homie. If only Baurus and Jauffre could see these twats now.
Timing is Everything - Quest Delay and Timing Control
Basically what it says on the tin, this mod allows you to control when and how certain quests activate. For example, don’t want Dawnguard to activate at level 10? Set it to activate at 30, once you start the Companion questline or whatever suits your fancy! Another useful mod for letting you have control over your quest journal without letting it become cluttered and forced.
Helgen Reborn
This mod, much like Winterhold Rebuild, puts you in charge of rebuilding Helgen and turning it into a thriving settlement again.
Skyrim Coin Replacer Redeux
Ever wondered why you find Imperial Septims buried deep in Ancient Nord
barrows or Dwemer ruins? Why are the coins in Skyrim named “Gold”
instead of “Septim” as in previous Elder Scrolls titles? This mod aims
to remedy these issues. SCRR adds unique and lore-friendly ancient coins to nordic and dwemer ruins. They can be traded for septims at any general trader or blacksmith.
Cheat Mods
A lot of people think cheating is vile and for kids or pussies and that it’s absolutely abhorrent, but honestly if you’re like me and you’ve played through the vanilla game bleventeen times for 1200 hours and unlocked the majority of the achievements fairly, you’ve earned the right to just dick around without all the auxillary nonsense. Whenever I start up a new game, I want to start with a book in my inventory that I can just open up, choose my starting gear, set my desired health, magicka, stamina, starting weapons and enchantments and all that stuff, allowing me to define my character at the start rather than 30 levels in after I’ve become the dragonborn and the leader of a few guilds. It’s more just a quality of life thing for me at this point. Will I still do one legit vanilla playthrough though? Probably.
I could keep going, but we’d be here for months. Skyrim’s modding community is damned amazing and there is so much useful and great content out there, a lot of which I pray comes to both Xbox and PS4 gamers. These are just the ones I really want to see (there are more but, again, we’d be here for weeks). What about everyone else? What are some of the mods you personally hope make it over to console?
I hope to hear from you, and thanks for reading.