The still growing future of Skyrim: Huge mods.

Future in the roots.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a game that is over 11 years old at this point, but for fans of the action RPG franchise, Skyrim is all we have to keep us going because the next main-line Elder Scrolls game probably isn't heading our way until the late 2020's. The Elder Scrolls Online makes for a half-decent stop gap; but there's so much potential in a brand new entry to innovate, improve, expand, and then be thoroughly disparaged by a bundle of folk who'll crawl out from under the furniture to serendipitously declare that Skyrim's systems were oh-so more complex and the new game is pathetically watered down by comparison. Because such is just the cycle of things. (I just can't understand Oblivion supremacists, I really can't.) As such, it becomes important for us fans to seek our comforts in the here and now, or 'coming and soon', to fuel our hobby until such a time that Bethesda gets bored of occasionally breaking entire load orders in order to add extra language options to their Creation Content mods, (I'm not joking, that was literally the reason for the last update) and gets to work making the new game.

To that end there's no shortage of mod creators dedicating their free time to crafting absolute wonders of creation of a high enough quality to actually be sold as full games. I know they're of that quality, because some of these mods end up getting key staff members head-hunted off the project by Bethesda themselves. (They don't even wait for the mod release most of the time. Imagine if they did that for the Fallout Frontiers devs! Yikes!)  Modding is, of course, a big part of Bethesda's identity, and there's decent evidence to suggest that Skyrim is going to, in the year of the Divines 2023, be the staging ground for yet another paid mods rollout attempt. As such, we should start to take the last few major unpaid mods seriously whilst they're still around to enjoy. In that vein; have you ever heard of Beyond Skyrim?

Beyond Skyrim is one of those projects that, when I first heard of it many years ago, I waxed lyrical about how cool it would be if anything ever actually came of it, and they shrugged my shoulders and assumed it would end up a dead-end pipe dream. Not to put too fine a point on it, but many ambitious mod projects do end up going nowhere because you're asking a plethora of random creatives to collaborate on a passion project that might not end up going anywhere for no greater guaranteed prize than the adoration of fans. And in the case of some collaboration mods (Fallout: Frontiers) not even that much. Beyond Skyrim just seemed ambitious beyond reason, pardon the half-pun. Expanding the borders of Skyrim to eventually cover every province on Tamriel and some further places besides? It seemed farcical to consider. But the projects have persisted.

In many ways it's nice just to see the incredible work that goes into bringing Vvardenfell to life in the creation engine, or remaster key locations of Oblivion's Cyrodill with that same architectural design but an improved overall fidelity. But then we start to see projects that envision lands that, when many of these projects first started, had no fixed reference material to draw from; Such as Eleswyr. Of course in the time since, Elder Scrolls Online has brought players to every individual province, but there's still a level of independent personality and driven creative passion sticking up the spine of these vast mew worlds mods being brought to the Skyrim world- most of which blossom into things that no Bethesda game has ever seen before. And with the scale of all of these expansions, all being worked on or at least planned on, simultaneously; it's all quite impressive to witness from the outside. I can only imagine the chaos from the inside.

Bringing the past games back to life has always been something of a dream for the Fallout modding community, and it's a dream that has really come to life in the ten year gap between the last main line entry and now. People tried to port Morrowind into Oblivion, and now the same is being done for Skyrim, as well as an 'Oblivion in Skyrim' project. Additionally, some truly pioneering individuals have gone that extra step to also port the storyline of Daggerfall into Skyrim, resulting in one of the most flat-looking, but still ambitious feeling port mods to ever grace the modding scene. For those who really want to replay those old Bethesda games but can't stand Morrowind's bad combat, Daggerfall's general antiquated presentation or Oblivion's... everything; these are promising, if largely ongoing and in development, propositions.

And then there are the wild total conversion mods that spark into attention every now and then. I talked about it a while ago, but the Westeros conversion for Skyrim based on Game of Thrones is still ongoing, probably revitalised in passion by a new show which wipes some of the distaste that Season 8 left in a lot of the fandom's mouths. Out of every mod project I've seen, and that covers a vast array of ground, I think the character models that the team have proposed to try and match the faces of the actors from the show are truly unparalleled. That and the architectural work going into to building tile-sets that match the buildings and interiors of the show with added inspiration from the book, all gives the impression that the passionate part-time developers of this mod have the spring-board for their own new style of game ontop of Skyrim's base to mind. The promise on top of that of branching quests are the only part where I draw some serious raised eyebrows. (We saw what happened the last time someone tried to play 'fan fiction' with this lore, afterall...)

All of what I've described so far have been mods that are in some way based on some sort of property, be it foreign to The Elder Scrolls or past games, drawing from that inspiration to form a baseline. But there has been one largely original 'new lands' mod that has swam into my viewfinders. Thras, promises to take players to the largely discussed by never visited coral home of the Sload slug people, a race that has only shown up in Elder Scrolls Online and Elder Scrolls Redgaurd at this point. Just the preview screens of some of the environments, and especially the animals, that the team has envisioned strikes with a creativity I haven't noticed in the modding world since I explored the incredible new lands Morrowind mods. The actual fauna in particular reminds me of the wild ingenuity behind the various species design in 'Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets'; a movie that was fun to look at if nothing else.

Bethesda's best ideas to support Skyrim in the many years between now and TES VI is to support modders, meaning that everything I'm describing is pretty much as good as the new 'DLC's of Skyrim's coming years. For some big mod teams out there, these multiyear projects is essentially their submission for gaming industry jobs, and Bethesda have expressed time and again how happy they are to accept such submissions with gusto. It's so amazing to get a chance to explore the best foot forward of creative fans across the whole of Bethesda's modable game library, and I've only touched on some of the dozens of really exciting projects being worked on simultaneously. Many internet communities claim theirs to be the best, but with the self-renewing and constantly developing nature of Bethesda's, I'd say this one has a strong foot forward in that regard.