5 reasons you should play Skyrim in 2022

A decade has gone by since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released. The game launched Bethesda into mainstream prominence in a way that Fallout 3 and other in-house Bethesda Softworks titles couldn't.

It is often regarded by the community as the most ground-breaking game of the 2010s and many credit it with having changed the RPG landscape forever. The fact that Skyrim remains relevant to this day, and warrants an Anniversary Edition — Skyrim's fourth re-release — stands testament to that.

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Whether you are a returning player or have missed the Skyrim boat altogether, there are numerous good reasons to jump back into its Nordic highlands and rolling tundras.

5 reasons Skyrim is still relevant today

1) Anniversary Edition content

For all owners of Skyrim Special Edition, the Anniversary Edition is a free universal upgrade that contains all of the creation club content released so far. The extra free content ranges from new gear and questlines to all-new gameplay mechanics, such as fishing.

Overall, it can easily add hours of playtime to your main Skyrim playthrough. Alternately, this can be complemented with some of the excellent community content mods such as Legacy of The Dragonborn for a fresh playthrough.

2) Modern combat mods

While the combat in Skyrim was a vast improvement over its precursor, Oblivion, it still felt dated and janky even by 2011 standards. Fast-forward to ten years later and the player has a whole array mods to bring the combat up to modern standards.

In the last year alone, the Skyrim modding community oversaw three of its most groundbreaking releases in terms of combat re-animation: Dynamic Animation Replacer, the SkySA framework, and True Directional Movement.

Dynamic Animation Replacer vastly expands the amount of animations that can be added based on different conditions. The other two can make for a suite that completely modernizes third-person gameplay, along with SmoothCam for a more flexible modern camera.

3) Requiem on Special Edition

Requiem - A Roleplay Overhaul is often heralded as the most comprehensive reconstruction, and covers the entire game's breadth of features. For the uninitiated, the easiest way to visualize Requiem is if Skyrim had stuck closer to its hardcore RPG roots in games such as Morrowind.

Although Requiem ramps up the difficulty compared to vanilla Skyrim, that is not its true purpose. It offers a completely new Skyrim experience, tailor-made to be the most memorable one you will have. And over eight years since it was released for the original Skyrim, Requiem has been officially ported over to the Special Edition.

4) Skyrim: Extended Cut

Skyrim: Extended Cut is a mod that rewrites and expands Skyrim's main questline, which, in many ways, had some jarring pacing issues. Many encounters, including the final confrontation with Alduin, left a lot to be desired.

While there are a few mods to address individual parts of it (Enhanced Skyrim Factions, Parthurnaax Dilemma, World Eater Beater), Extended Cut is the first of its kind to attempt a swing at the entire main quest. The mod has been delayed to sometime in late 2022 or 2023, but it's set to reinvigorate the Skyrim community whenever it drops.

5) Next-gen ENBs

Thanks to Boris Vorontsov's ENB (Enhanced Natural Beauty) and the numerous weather and lighting mods available, Skyrim can be visually customized to a great degree to suit the player's personal taste. There are also ways to make Skyrim look like a 2022 game - thanks to ray-tracing effects that some of these ENB presets implement.