Skyrim is quickly approaching its ten year anniversary, but with almost no news from Bethesda about The Elder Scrolls 6 since its trailer was released in 2018, many fans still find themselves returning to the game to try and capture the magic of playing it for the first time.
The Skyrim modding scene has been a huge boon to the game’s longevity. While some mods are intentionally ridiculous and immersion breaking, there are many that help recreate that experience of playing for the first time, even for Skyrim veterans. Here are the top 5 essential mods to make Skyrim feel like new.
Opening Scene Overhaul
Skyrim’s iconic opening scene has a bunch of cut dialog that was never used in the name of simplicity and clarity. Opening Scene Overhaul is a mod that does fantastic work towards restoring that cut content, and the effect is incredible.
The introduction is far longer, with way more dialog, including a longer conversation in the cart, more conversation the player can overhear between Tulius and the Thalmor, and best of all, a completely restored Ulfric Stormcloak, who will now follow the player and Ralof all the way until the cave collapses between the members of the party right near the exit to Skyrim itself. Every little change makes the experience feel uncannily unfamiliar, making it really feel like experiencing the sequence for the first time.
Frostfall
The Frostfall mod for Skyrim is one of the game's most popular mods, and no top mod list would be complete without it. Players who know every inch of Skyrim will now find it inhospitable and intimidating once again, as survival mechanics like cold, exposure, wetness, and camping are all introduced to the game with incredible elegance. Skyrim, as a setting, has always been the main character of the game, and Frostfall restores the snow-peaked mountains to their rightful awe-inspiring place in any Skyrim playthrough.
 JK’s Skyrim
JK’s Skyrim overhauls almost every major location in Skyrim. Cities are made far denser, with some even gaining second levels, like the passageways in the slums over Windhelm’s Grey quarter. The best thing about JK’s Skyrim, however, is that it hugely disguises just how small Skyrim’s world can be. In the base game Falkreath is so small it houses just 20 NPCs, but JK’s version fills its streets with dense detail, including hanging lines, pig-pens, and trinkets and decorations to give every city a unique flavor, subtly making the world feel far bigger.
Relationship/Guard Dialog Overhaul
Relationship Dialog Overhaul and Guard Dialog Overhaul are mods that take the huge amount of dialog in Skyrim and put it to better use. Since Skyrim has relatively few voice actors, modders were able to give the player far more dialog options in the game, mixing and matching different NPC answers with the same voices. Relationship Dialog Overhaul does this with a focus on the NPC’s relationship with the player, while Guard Dialog Overhaul means guards will actually react properly to the player’s deeds. They’re both a must-have for diving back into Tamriel.
Interesting NPCS
Interesting NPCs adds more than 250 new fully voiced NPCs to the game, all with their own unique personalities and fantastic voice acting. The mod adds more than 25 new followers, all of whom have a lot more to say than most followers in Skyrim. This mod is fantastic for any replay, because it does what all good mods for a Skyrim replay should: it adds an element of surprise for players who thought they’d explored every crack and crevice of Tamriel's most northern province.
Skyrim is available now on all major platforms.