It has been five years since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim originally launched. In a post-The Witcher 3 world, some may question how well a game like Skyrim can hold up on consoles. And it does so surprisingly well with Skyrim: Special Edition. It’s not as visually stunning in comparison to The Witcher 3, I wasn’t blown away by the graphical upgrades or its increased stability, but there is just something about the universe and its charm that keeps pulling me back in.
The story is still the same so you won’t find anything that surprises you. In fact, you may get bored by it. As anyone who has played Skyrim before can say, the main story isn’t that great. Where Skyrim shines are its side quests, characters, and lore surrounding the universe in-game.
Just like the story, the gameplay also remains unchanged. Combat still feels a bit weightless and floaty for some reason, with awkward animations that don’t help. All of the controls should be familiar to previous players, and you can individually map each one in the game’s settings.
Featuring updated art and textures, Skyrim looks a lot prettier now with gorgeous vistas that make for perfect screenshots. The volumetric lighting does wonders for the atmosphere at different times during the day like dawn and dusk. Draw distances are increased and there is more foliage so the ground doesn’t just look like a brown muddled mess in the distance. Everything just looks much more vibrant and colorful. Certain areas have textures that are strangely low resolution, specifically the ground, but it’s never a huge problem as much of it is covered with snow or plants anyway. That said, it can sometimes look rough up-close compared to a modern game in 2016.
Skyrim: Special Edition runs much better on Xbox One than it did on Xbox 360. For the most part it maintains 30 FPS fairly easily as opposed to on Xbox 360 where I had constant issues with lag, stuttering, and freezing. It also hasn’t crashed my Xbox One like it did my 360. Unfortunately, it still isn’t perfect. After playing for about fifteen hours, I encountered my first instance of noticeable lag. This happened maybe one or two more times in the hours following, but they were few and far between, and it has been running fine since. Oddly enough, I had issues with texture pop-in where large chunks of the ground wouldn’t load their textures for a solid thirty seconds or so. Speaking of load times, I am very happy to say that the load times overall have been dramatically reduced, with times varying between two to fifteen seconds when entering larger areas or fast traveling.
Another aspect that I noticed while playing is that Bethesda did not fix most of the bugs and glitches that plagued Skyrim on the Xbox 360. Dead bodies still randomly flail uncontrollably, character models clip in and out of objects or get stuck altogether, you can still glitch underneath Whiterun by walking into the corner of a building in just the right way, and at one point a dragon even froze in midair off in the distance. The usual trademark Bethesda bugs. None of these were game-breaking and some were actually funny, but it demonstrates a lack of polish. If you don’t care about having your achievements disabled, I recommend downloading the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch mod. It fixes many of these problems because, I’ll be honest, some of the issues are very annoying like quests not registering as completed.
The most notable addition to Skyrim: Special Edition are the mods. The ability to mod your game can drastically affect how much time you spend in it. Mods undeniably add new life to the title, especially for people who could not experience them the first time around on PC. On Xbox One, users are able to utilize up to 5 GB of mods which is more than enough space for most. They still work much like in Fallout 4 where a save file is automatically created specifically for your modded game without interfering in your non-modded saves. Mods are by far the best addition to Skyrim on Xbox One.
While there is no doubt a lot of value in the package, I’m not sure that the full retail price of $60 is worth it to some people. If you have already played Skyrim and its expansions on Xbox 360, there is nothing new here for you in the Special Edition besides the mods. The performance and graphical enhancements are nice, but some may not find them enough to warrant this purchase. The difference between the remastered version and regular Skyrim is definitely noticeable on Xbox One, however it’s not the huge leap forward that many may want. If you’re tight on money or have already played it, I would wait until this is on sale near Christmas. If you’re a brand new player eager to jump into the world of Skyrim on consoles, this is the best version for you.
Summary
Bethesda put so much effort into creating Skyrim’s world the first time that even though it still has numerous issues, it’s also incredibly addictive and fun. Exploring ancient Dwemer ruins and vast cave systems never gets old considering how many dungeons are in the game.
When The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim launched almost five years ago, it was heralded as one of the best games, if not the best, of its generation. Skyrim: Special Edition does nothing to change its formula, yet it still stands as a fantastic game even today. I put a lot of time into Skyrim on my Xbox 360 and I can see myself spending hundreds of hours in it on my Xbox One now. As far as remasters go, it’s not exactly the most impressive, but Skyrim itself is such an amazing game to begin with that anything done to enhance it is a welcome change, which is a testament to how well it was created originally.
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.