While we’re all waiting for The Elder Scrolls VI to rear its ugly head, Skyrim modded playthroughs are still going strong in 2026.
With the power of PC hardware nowadays, it’s pretty easy to start remastering your own Skyrim installs to introduce better graphics, enhanced effects, and new features.
I mean, I’ve been doing that for the better part of a decade, to the point where I can’t even remember what the base game version of Skyrim looks like.
However, I can’t even dream of my Skyrim install looking like this video demonstrated by YouTuber Digital Dreams, a digital artist who specialises in remastering older games.
As seen in the video, Skyrim mods have now reached the point where the game can rival modern AAA games released on current-gen systems.
You can view the video below, where Digital Dreams shows off the new graphics, textures, combat animations, and other effects.
Jump to 3:17 to see my favourite bit – The Rift sunny weather.
Not only are Skyrim’s base textures improved, but it also looks like lighting and volumetric effects have been upgraded, and brand new assets have been added to flesh out the game’s various environments too. Check out my favourite screenshots below!
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Has Never Looked Better
Frankly, it looks absolutely gorgeous. Just look at the new foliage effects in Whiterun at the start of the video. They look like real plants that you can reach out and touch.
The same goes for the rocky path surfaces and wooden textures on the buildings. This is probably the closest Skyrim has gotten to resembling real life.
Similarly, the new combat animations also look massively improved over the ones in the base game, and I’d love to see more of this stuff implemented into future Elder Scrolls games rather than the rather stiff animations Bethesda has used in the past.
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As is usually the case with Digital Dreams’ projects, the modded games are running on extremely powerful hardware.
For example, they’re running the game on an RTX 5090 graphics card, as well as a Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor and 64GB of 6000MHz RAM.
We’re already talking about a PC that costs thousands of dollars to build.
Still, if you’d like to try and install these mods for yourself, Digital Dreams has linked the modlist in the video description. It includes over 3,500 mods to bring it up to the quality the video has.
Could this be close to what The Elder Scrolls VI will look like? I certainly hope so, though Bethesda is still keeping it behind closed doors for now.
