Is Skyrim: Special Edition worth it? Depending on the strength of your memory and the ongoing quality of the mods, yes. Yes, it is. I say that having only played about five hours but, like you, it’s not that I don’t know how to Skyrim. That’s the problem, actually. I know how to Skyrim because I did it a LOT. I have hundreds of hours logged across the Xbox 360 and PC versions and felt fairly confident that I’d probably get bored quickly. I forgot how much I forgot.
For example, do you know who Hjalti is? Probably not. I might have, once. But that’s the name a ghost kept calling me. A ghost at an inn. An inn I wandered into and slept at for no reason other than trying to roleplay a bit and get a feel for the world again. I woke up to a ghost and a fetch quest and along the way stopped to enjoy a breathtaking sunset on a mountaintop that seemed to be all the gussied up graphical enhancements in one stunning vista. Skyrim: Special Edition, a remastered version of a five-year old game I’ve played and played and played across two platforms, managed to feel new to me. That in itself is a big reason why I feel Skyrim: Special Edition is worth it.
I have barely scratched the surface of what the mods have to offer. I will say, up front, Bethesda deserves a ton of credit for bringing mods to consoles in a user friendly way. Browsing mods in the in-game menu feels like shopping for free DLC. There’s already over 100 mods for Xbox One (about 40 for PS4), but be warned. While Bethesda made mods much easier to use they are not perfect. I picked six mods and couldn’t get my game to start until I reconfigured the loading order a few times. The way mods load is important, so if you’re new to using them and the game doesn’t work don’t panic. Play with the load order it’ll probably help. And a lot of modders take it very seriously and offer a lot of help if you contact them, too.
Although it nullifies achievements mods are what makes Skyrim: Special Edition absolutely worth it. I highly recommend the Alternate Start mod if you’re a Skyrim vet and aren’t a purist who needs to relive the Dragonborn lore beat by beat. It lets you skip over the Helgen intro sequence and start your own journey from a variety of locations. It was really refreshing to enter an open world game without a bunch of hand-holdy objectives to take me around. I started in an orc encampment, unwisely picked a fistfight with the leader, lost, and shuffled out into the world determined to better myself. Among the many things I forgot about Skyrim was that you don’t start out invincible, and the hours I spent as the post-campaign God of the Nords erased the memories of my grind to get there.
But now I’m rediscovering that grind with a solid mix of monotonous training tips and genuine exploration. Skyrim is a big, beautiful game worth revisiting. The commitment to mods now gives Xbox One and PS4 owners the same incentive to keep playing that helped keep the game a top 20 title on PC all these years. And the drastically reduced loading times and overhauled visuals make for an experience that feels objectively better, mods or not.
So, is Skyrim: Special Edition worth it? Is there $59.99 worth of goodness here? If you’ve got a PC version, then no. PC users got a free upgrade and if you have one you’ve been doing mods for a while now. But if you’re an Xbox One or Ps4 only gamer I’d recommend it. There’s a reason this game has an enduring and influential legacy. And Skyrim: Special Edition comes with the DLC too, so you’re looking at dozens if not hundreds of hours of gameplay. And an ongoing mod community that will keep it fresh for years to come. Which means this time it won’t be so easy to forget it, too.
