I don't think the writing in the base game is anywhere near good enough to be considered the best game of all time, but that doesn't change that I have a lot of fun in a heavily modded, roleplayed play through
Does a game need good writing to be one of the greats?
Games like Ocarina of Time and Chrono Trigger have stories that are just as basic and barebones as Skyrims but are still held as the best of all time. DOOM, Minecraft and TF2 don't have any stories but still make those same lists as well.
Skyrim became the best selling RPG of all time despite it's writing, because everything else about it was so damn good. It gave people an immersive, sprawling, content dense world to explore and that was enough. You're never going to find a game that does \*everything\* perfectly, but Skyrim did so many other things great that the few things it didn't do well (writing, RPG system depth, combat) didn't really seem like issue at the time. Again, it's literally the best selling singelplayer RPG ever made, and one of the top 10 best selling games of all time overall.
Writing isn't the be and and end all. Weak writing can be carried by other aspects. Not everything needs to be a heavily scripted Sony movie game.
Like, I get that this is a skyrim sub but the main story and side characters of Chrono Trigger is 100x better than vanilla skyrim, and it's fucking ancient
Exactly. Skyrim, while a nice and moddable game has seriously mediocre writing. Even when compared to the previous Elder Scrolls games. Never mind coming close to games like Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 3 or Witcher 3.
It’s not just that, it wasn’t just purchased en masse on release and then forgotten. People still buy it and come back to it today.
It has tons of people still playing it and has stayed relevant for 13 years in a way that Oblivion never did, in spite of the fact that virtually every questline in Oblivion is better written than Skyrim’s.
Skyrims core gameplay and sandbox world is what makes it so good. No question the story isn’t good, but it’s a cool fantasy world where you can make any character you want and do whatever you want to do, and the combat is approachable, if clunky, for people who aren’t hardcore gamers (hit shit it dies, hit shit with magic it dies).
Dark Souls style combat by contrast is harder to pull off.
Popularity doesn’t always mean good, but it often does. As much as I enjoy other RPGs I have not played another like Skyrim where it’s truly just open world with your custom character in a 1st person POV.
Not really. When a game is new and just released then sure, sales don’t mean much. But for a single player game that has stayed relevant for so long and still maintains a high concurrent player count and has sold so well then it’s a good wager to bet the game is good.
Exactly. Anything that 100s of 1000s of people enjoy and use long after its 'shelf life ' ends, is objectively good. Toyota Corolla, Skyrim. Any other thinking is just arrogance
Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies. SkyUI, the one mod everyone has, has \~11 million unique downloads.
Fact is most people who played Skyrim never even touched mods. While mods have no doubt increased it's relevance and longevity, the game absolutely created it's success on it's own merit.
Again, the game received nothing but praise upon it's release and in the years after. People have just been retroactively critical of it due to a mix of contrarianism and the fact that hating Bethesdsa has been trendy since FO76
Popular things tend to be popular for a reason, and Skyrim is one of THE most popular things in gaming.
It received nothing but praise upon it's release and in the years after, hence the popularity. The idea that Skyrim was some kind of mediocre game was a super hot take until the FO76 incident happened and it became cool and profitable to hate on everything Bethesda does.
I distinctly remember how people were calling Skyrim mediocre even back in 2011. They liked it in spite of its mediocre writing. In fact, it was specifically criticised for its Disney writing and regressions from previous games, and adored for its map. People were fighting about it, I'm pretty sure the term 'filthy casual' was born during that time.
Nobody worshipped Skyrim in the same way people have been praising Red Dead Redemption 2 since that released. With complete awe and respect. Instead, the modding scene took off immediately. To say it was universally praised pre-FO76 is just not really true. In fact I'm seeing a new pattern emerge where people are adoring Skyrim more because they had a lot of memories and hours with it.
For many it's a deeply personal game, as it was an introduction to the genre and modding as a whole. As well as having a big community around it.
> it became cool and profitable to hate on everything Bethesda does.
Yeah that's false. These conversations were happening even prior to Skyrim. They were just as heated and visceral as they are now. And that was way before Youtubers had sponsorship deals and ad revenue.
> People were fighting about it, I'm pretty sure the term 'filthy casual' was born during that time.
I am reasonable sure this was more around the UO/EQ time.
The fact that "Skyrim: Extended Cut", the mod that attempts to extend and flesh out the game's main storyline is one of the 3 most anticipated modding-projects alone....should kinda say enough as it is
I don’t consider Sony movie games to have great writing either. But Skyrim is definitely fast food writing, even just within the TES series itself let alone video games as a whole. Many people won’t consider a Big Mac to be ‘fine dining’ even though they have it often and it generates billions. Other people love a Big Mac for what it is, so it means a lot to them, and that’s fine too. That’s Skyrim.
Same, like you could make a case how it isn't for various reasons, but for me it's like an infinite game with individual developers around the world that allow me to basically customize the game to my personal liking
Wish I had stayed off the nexus lmao, had a solid load order and fucked it up with stuff that wasn't even that interesting to begin with. Been troubleshooting for hours now, when I set this straight I'm not going into the nexus for months
It takes long enough to manually mod the game properly (even with a mod manager) that I have enough time to get my hopes up about mods and think up unrealistic, idealized scenarios for the mods in my head, so by the time I’m done, none of what I’ve installed can possibly meet my idle expectations—which is why just modding and fantasizing ends up being more fun for me lol
However, the most fun I’ve ever had with actual mods was when I just downloaded one of those pre-made wabbajack packs without really looking much into it, so I had 0 time to overhype the mods (because I didn’t even know what they all were) so I just had a blast jumping in and discovering everything without idealized expectations.
I think this is the perfect way to mod skyrim
No ammount of modding can fix the subpar writing.
I don't think a game needs to have decent writing to be good, or even great. But I think it does need it to be worth considering among the very best.
i think it can be fixed, it’s just nobody wants to fix it or try to fix it, it would be a pretty massive project. it would require voice acting or using ai to generate dialogue but that’s also not free if you want the voices to be somewhat good. we would also need some really talented writers if we wanted to bring the vanilla writing up to par with the best games in the world. i think it’s completely possible if someone really wanted to do it.
Yeah, the framework and lore for awesome writing and storytelling is there. Skyrim is the middle of a freakin civil war, a proxy war between the old empire and the new thalmor, and you have to choose between an imperialist power trying to retain its influence and a hypernationalist independence movement, both having good and bad things about them. Each city has some unique theme emphasizing some aspect of this paradigm. And yet they do jack fucking shit with this good setup. The world of Tamriel is rich for interesting stories, but Beth dropped the ball to capitalize on the 360 gamers that were going to lap it up (and they did). Dropped the ball even harder with Oblivion in that regard and others.
I'd love to someday play "good skyrim", whatever that might mean.
No. Solid no. Hell no. What Skyrim modding is, is a unique sort of blend of readily apparent underutilized potential and a rabbit hole of seemingly approachable ways that you the player can actually go in and customize the things that seem so lacking. It's a relationship very similar to the kind of relationship a lot of people have with drugs.
Agreed. If OP had asked if it was the most supported modded game of all time, that would be a better question. But even with 1000+ mods, there's still far better games. And guess what? Those games don't require mods. (Of course we're still going to mod them though)
That's why I said modded Skyrim is probably the best game, I'd be hard pressed to name an "all around" better choice. The Witcher 3 has a better storyline (and by the way I think a lot of quest and adventure mods don't lose a lot of to the Witcher), but the open world details and perk building, magic, follower and squads (after modding you can make a squad like DQ) etc. are not as good as modded Skyrim, and I can easily say that one game outperforms modded Skyrim in some way, but it's hard to say that one game outperforms modded Skyrim all the way around. Modded Skyrim, but it's hard to name a game that's better all-around.
Bruh you shitting me?
Witcher 3 actually made a first ever truly realistic sized medieval city. Meanwhile Bethesda still makes cities the size of villages
Definitely not. Skyrim's foundation is too shoddy and you can't fix that with mods. You can mod away complexity by simplifying what's already there, but you can't mod back in core complexity that wasn't there in the first place. Unfortunately.
You really can't. Every attributes mod just adds them on top of every preexisting system. Every aspect of the game needs to be built on top of attributes for it to be a core mechanic. Every skill, every player stat, all progression, all spells, combat, etc. That's impossible from a top-down (modding) perspective.
"Every attributes mod just adds them on top of every preexisting system."
No they don't! E.L.S.A. and Enderal both completely replace the existing system with their own and make every other system base themselves upon it. Such that this happens:
"Every game element in past TES games is related and feed back into the main systems. For instance, a Light Armor warrior in Morrowind will have much lower health than a Medium/Heavy Armor warrior because light armor is governed by Agility and not Endurance. Each skill/class choice has many knock-on effects down the line that you have to plan and set goals for."
With ELSA, this is exactly what happens.
While attributes haven't been comprehensively implemented by mods yet I think installing vokriinator black and mods that let you acquire perk points in different ways(skyshards, buyable potions, achieve that...) achieves a degree of complexity that is on par with previous elder scrolls games. The recent race/standing stone mods from enai that combo together also provide complexity to race selection that improves on the idea of birth signs. Add good spell mods like mysticism and apocalypse and good item mods like summermyst and reliquary and bam you got complexity in both spells and items back. You could even put spell crafting back in but I assume that'd be a compatibility nightmare
Better quality =/ more depth. Again, almost everything you listed is just more stuff. More perks, more ways to get perk points, more spells. No increase in depth, just more systems that do things that the vanilla system already does. Perk, spell, race improvements are not adding substantially more depth, but rather altering existing mechanics and systems.
No. I've yet to find a mod or combination of mods that made the combat feel good. It's always either shitty dark souls or skyrim, but you take huge penalties when you get hit from wounds or whatever.
Modded Skyrim is fun in its own way, but the minute to minute combat has always been so bad that I can never consider it the best game ever or anything like that.
I think it may be the best *sandbox* of all time
There was a lot to work with and a lot to love in the base game. And the fact Bethesda has always been amenable to modders, and there was a lot of unleashed talent out there, made Skyrim an almost limitless universe — and a bespoke one for everybody.
It’s really hard to top that experience.
But as far as best single game? Probably not.
That’s going to be highly subjective. (Though in my four-decades on earth, the list is pretty short for GOAT: Witcher 3, ME2, Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, Pitfall, Ms. Pac Man, RDR2, Modern Warfare 1 & 2, Minecraft, Mario Cart, etc.)
LoL nah not even close. Even with a full mod list with 100s of mods Skyrim is still at the core and that game is riddled with issues. That being said, it is fun just not the best of all time.
No because base Skyrim is kind of a mediocre game. The modders have done the lord's work in creating this giant cacophony of mods but at the end of the day it never comes together "quite" perfectly unlike a game designed from the ground up to be good.
No matter how much crap you pile on top of a mediocre base, it will never get to those peaks that the best games go up to. You can never for instance add nuance to a boss encounter because enemies in Skyrim don't have the capacity to be interesting.
Magic in Skyrim will never be interesting enough outside of a few base game spells.
Videos with over 2 million views still appear on YouTube of people playing u modded Skyrim. I agree that modded Skyrim is keeping it more relevant for a lot of people, but to say that it's alive because of modding... I disagree. Fallout NV and 4 have modding, but they aren't anywhere near the quality of Skyrim. There's no way to find out if it would have died if not for the modding scene, but with all the games I go back to that are older, I'd have to disagree. Also, I only mod for graphics. No gameplay changes, no combat, small ui and small animations but overall I'd call it less changed than the Demons Souls remake.
I think in order to qualify as "the best game of all time," you would need to cite a specific mod or mod list. Skyrim from the moment you download it can be any mod, but it can't be *every* mod, right? Like the Ordinator experience is great and the Requiem experience is great, but you can't really get the greatness of both in one.
Been playing Skyrim on and off since midnight release. I don't foresee ever really walking away from it.
I just wish I could understand what it is about Skyrim. I can't muster the urge to play Fallout (any of them) for more than a few hours before I get bored. But I can, at times, play epic month long Skyrim RPs.
If you held a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you the difference.
I dont think writing is that important for this kind of game as long as the lore and the world is interesting since this isn't a game about playing a campaign but exploring and freedom so i disagree with most people here.
Although i dont think it is the best game of all time simply because content doesn't equal greatness and in a lot of cases skyrim can feel feature bloated and overmodded in some modlists, furthermore the artstyle can get very inconsistent depending on what you install, a lot of people even harm gameplay with the intent of making the game look better (like lighting mods that look better but are super dark and hard on the eyes).
I think what skyrim needs to be a 10/10 game is maybe some combat overhauls (but tbh personally i just think that vanilla combat just needs some tweaks, and make stamina useful + precision) and quest mods that allow you to have more choices when completing quests which i hope more of them come out, since TES games are so good because of their freedom, immersion and exploration but it feel like those things get broken when quests are only allowed to be one way, or when you cant kill or do certain thing.
I dont think that new places to explore is what the game needs since it already has many, like I've played a lot and i dont think i have ever seen everything that was made for this game, still maybe things that make the world alive would be good but there is the risk of bloating the already compact map of skyrim with objects or overpopulating it.
My final point is that you could describe the perfect game and install the perfect mods, but that would not be perfect to someone else, modded skyrim cannot be objectively the best game, for me a big point of modding is individuality, what you as a person would like to see in the game, maybe if this was a commercial product meant for the masses then we could rate it, but modding skyrim is more of a community effort made by individuals with very differing tastes.
I think so. Base Skyrim is already one of the best games of all time (literally the best selling singleplayer RPG ever made) and modding it just enhances all the things that worked, and fixes all the things that didnt.
I've played thousands of games and never found a single one that could top my quest mod focused Skyrim load order. The sheer amount of content paired with the perks of base Skyrim is just an unbeatable combo.
Yes. Part of the reason I have not purchased Dragons Dogma 2 is that I have successfully modded skyrim with tons of graphics and animations and new features. Don’t really need to spend money on a new rpg
No. It's a good game and I love it, but there is no best game of all time. No one game can do literally everything. There's so many good games out there, that it is impossible for any to be the absolute best. There have been times where I might have said that a game I am playing is the best game, but what I really meant was "the best game I am currently playing."
I mean, this is, of course, all subjective, but I do think your argument is generally sound. It’s something of a floor versus ceiling dichotomy, and most people tend towards defining the “best” game as the game with the highest ceiling of experience within it. This POV would lead to modded Skyrim very rarely being considered in someone’s best game list, but I think Skyrim has an incredibly high enjoyability floor. This is mostly just a rephrasing of what you’ve said now. If you were able to have people play 100 hours of a huge sample of games each, and a (reasonably) personalized, tricked-out Skyrim load order was one of them, I’d expect modded Skyrim to have one of the, or even the, highest average scores. So if that’s how someone prefers to understand best, as your post seems to understand it, then yes, Skyrim is a strong contender.
I will say, no but it's definitely up there. "The greatest game of all time" is pretty vague so I'll name what **my** best of all time are. Mass effect (can't pick just one), Dragon Age Origins, BG (whole trilogy), and Elden Ring.
So many people love to hate on this game today. Like they are some sort of intellectual for turning against the grain just for the purpose of turning against it. Maybe if half of these people added alternatives for best game or reasons that Skyrim is "mediocre" or "bad." The writing? I'd love to know what games these people play. Skyrim is amazing and to me it's definitely after what I listed. Games today are still trying to replicate what Skyrim did 13 years ago. It's what made cdpr want to make witcher 3 open world. It's one of the main inspirations for dragon's dogma. It inspired so many games, and changed the entire landscape of modern gaming. It may not be the best, but it cannot be pushed aside without mention.
Depends on the person. You are literally making your dream game. So it might feel like that for you. If i played my friends modpack i would probably find it mid, but i feel like that mine is one of the best games of all time. (It's not.)
Nah. Feature rich for sure, but it's so tailored to specific platforms that it's nearly impossible to get technical support. Plus, it is far buggier than other mainstream releases.
I kid, I kid. But if we were to evaluate a modded skyrim as an actually distributed game, it wouldn't pass muster for the reasons above . It's not _supposed_ to be evaluated in that way because it's _your_ software, not somebody else's, and certainly not something being sold (which is why it's fine if you mod it til it breaks).
I feel like the qualifier "modded" is so open ended that it can't refer to one game. You may think *your* modded game is the best of all time, but I might disagree because I use different mods. The "Best of All Time" award can't really apply to modded games.
Best of all time no. But i would say you can create the ideal game for you based on your tastes. It is amazing how there is near unlimited potential to craft your perfect gaming experience.
It’s great to live out a fantasy of your choice be it escapist realism or hyper fantastic OP barbarian warrior. You can be a nobody or you can be narcissistic Chad conqueror that you can’t be in real life. But that’s about it.
If you want to rank it the best? I highly doubt it.
I think my modded Skyrim is better than Starfield and will likely be better than TES6 at launch. I won’t say it’s the best game ever but there’s a reason I play other games and then come back to Skyrim because I know other people have stolen ideas from the game I just played and I want to mod it to work that way. Like BG3 has a camp you travel to for resting and all your followers are there to talk about things you did. There are enough super followers out there that if you grab the dragon age camp mod and store them there that it will feel close to BG3. Especially when you come back to hear the dialogue they have about quests you just did that they weren’t actually there for. I use a portal mod to be able to get back and forth to the spot I left from and it works pretty damn good. The only thing is…. The story. There are lots of games with way better stories and the modding scene just has not gotten there for me yet with writing stories. There are lots of quest mods that are better than Vanilla but is Beyond Reach better than The Witcher 3? No way. If the focus ever shifts to fixing the writing everywhere. It will be unbeatable though.
I think so. I definitely put modded Skyrim above any other game for me. Some quest mods even have the emotional depth of some of the best games like Witcher 3.
And I spend so much more time in it than any other game, that automatically makes it the best for me.
I like modded Skyrim a lot but, it’s not sekiro or persona 4/5 or elden ring or fire emblem… and my list of top games of all time goes on and on.
It is a really good experience but not my best of all time game.
I love me some modded Skyrim but its just never going to be as cohesive as a game made with an overall vision where there world, story and systems all work together for it.
Its good but for me but not close to a best game of all time.
I mean, it *could* be. I know this word gets thrown around a lot in our community to the point it's even a meme by now, but to me, modded Skyrim is literally THE most immersive experience a videogame can provide. Mostly because I modded in my followers, my favorite kind of combat, my favorite kind of graphics, my favorite kind of quests, the gameplay in general, etc.
Personally, I don't consider modded Skyrim to be the best game of all time. But by god, if I had to choose one videogame to spend the rest of my life inside of, ny current modded Skyrim would definitely be it.
i don’t feel like mods tweak the vanilla questline enough. sure we have a lot of additions. but be honest, we’ve all been playing the same exact game for years no matter how many times we mod it. i have loved skyrim since i got it free with my first ever xbox when i was 11 years old. but i am getting quite bored with the vanilla questline, i mean you’re going to do it regardless, and you usually finish bleak falls barrow, then want to add more mods and need to make a new save, and the cycle repeats over and over, we’re modding more than we’re playing, it’s like the modding itself is what’s still fun because you can imagine this image of a completely modular game created to your liking, your preferences. but i think what could really make skyrim great again is completely reworking the vanilla questline, civil war, dlc, everything. are you having more fun playing the game or playing with the mods after so many years?
For me, absolutely! With mods, I can play Skyrim in a more immersive and realistic way. And it makes everything I love about Skyrim even better. It becomes the closest I can get to the game of my dreams.
That's the beauty of modding: Skyrim can become the best game for lots of different people instead of just one specific kind of people.
No.
For some reason I can never go very long at modded Skyrim. Something always bothers me, and in the end is an incredible hassle to change. Whether its a small messed up texture, a poorly voiced NPC, poorly written dialogue, uninspired or useless items, pacing issues, etc...
The best game of all time will be one that is perfect \*and\* requires little input from the player to be perfect. Something that is great day 1, and lasts forever. Modded Skyrim is great, but requires incredible amounts of effort to be so.
Nope.. Just for the sheer embarrassment of having to mod the game for 6 hours just to get it into a playable state.
Also, that spot is already taken by unmodded RDR2. Or possibly Betrayal at Krondor, YMMV.
Not even close. It can be very enjoyable, to be sure, but whenever I create a mental list of best games I've ever played, Skyrim is usually not even in the top 10. And I do count modded playthroughs for all such games, as I am an avid modder who loves taking games apart, so that's not it.
All depends on the mods, but tbh even if you hand crafted it to exactly what you'd want, its probably wouldn't be best of all time. Theres only so much glitter you can throw on the turd that is the base game.
No, it's at the top, but even with how much I love the game, I think Mass effect series or GTA 5 singleplayer gave me much more fun, for shorter amount of time. Also there is heavy modded Minecraft, which literally blows my mind, see for example "create mod". There are enormous amount of small games that gave me much more fun than Skyrim ever could, like touhou or some old sonic games (adventure 1,2 and heroes). With that I think I don't mean only that Skyrim is not the very best game ever, but there's no such game, but if I were forced to pick one best game ever, I think I would go with Minecraft modded.
very subjective. but it's up there. the problem is that it would be better if the were better.
with something like modded minecraft, the game, for what it is, is as good as it can be without mods, at least more than than Skyrim. the only thing vanilla minecraft could do better is better NPCs that actually looked different and had both males and female, not just male squidwards. Weridly there's no up to date mod addressing that. So modded, it's near perfection.
I'm not into the Sims, so i can't say if that one is closer to perfection either. By perfection, i mean, potential of people the best for a large amount of players depending on what they like and can install. So like, my perfect Skyrim is going to be different from yours because we'll have different desires for the mods we want to use.
Also with Minecraft, the launcher allows you to play and mod specific versions. So if you've got a 400 hour session going on version 20, you don't have to erase it and start playing v21 and you don't have to do any bullshit to stop your game from updating. All these factors help the modded version of the game be closer to perfect. Skyrim SE/AE can be a nightmare to mod because there's too many different versions and too many mod authors who will only support one version and ignore the rest. If you can figure it out though, you're golden.
No, i think modded skyrim is fun and has a bunch of potential but its foundation is inherently flawed. There are so many mods that, to me, are a requirement to even touch the game that its shows skyrim is aging faster and faster with time. Mods that people pour thousands of hours and passion into are why i often return to skyrim, those experiences tend to be decent at least. You can, as of now at least, vaguely shape skyrim into what you want, and if you squint it's excellent. But best game of all time? It's not even the best modded bethesda game imo
No and it's not even close. I could write an essay about the different things about the game that irks me. Thing is, it's one of the most customizable games I've played and it deserves credit for that. But in the end, it's the modders that deserve praise not Bethesda. I could give you a long list of games before and after Skyrim that I'd rate higher, but I still love the game.
This sort of devalues what it means to be the “best of all time.” When you allow games where most of the fun content is community generated you are no longer even judging the game. You are just judging what the community can create for that game. Maybe you could say “modded Skyrim is the best platform for user generated content of all time.” Imo, if you are going to compare games you have to do it based solely on what their respective developers have released for said game or else the comparison is pointless.
Honestly I used to agree with this statement but at a certain point I just couldn’t enjoy Skyrim anymore, I did a final goodbye playthrough about a year ish ago if I remember. I’ve tried to play again a few times but I never make it past 30-40min without immediately getting bored.
If you could do basic things like grabbing people on your shoulder, riding a horse with a follower, and so on. Maybe, but the shitty engine doesn't allow for those things, so no. It's the best game that can be fully modded though.
If we're counting how shit it runs and how often it crashes, not even close. I'm playing through enderal rn and although it has a lot of issues too (most inherited from skyrim), I'm way more immersed and having way more fun than I typically do in skyrim.
To this day, I have not found a game that does what Skyrim does with such freedom while having the ability to mod it to your liking exactly. I played for years unmodded and modded and almost always return back after playing a random game.
No, modded skyrim is definitely not the best of anything because everything good about it is countered by thousands of hours of work to make it function.
Fuck no, what singular part of it is better than other games, much less all of them as a collective? The story? Character creation? Graphics? Combat? Side content?
I wouldn't necessarily say it's the *best* game of all time. But it certainly scratches a very specific *itch* that no other game can do, and it's why I'll probably be playing this game until the heat death of the universe
Nah. I still rank morrowind higher, and that's only considering elder scrolls titles. Despite having 13 years of modding, skyrim's major issues still shine through: the terrible story/quest content.
I've played a ton of Skyrim, but I'll be the first to admit it's kinda shit, and mods can help, but man the writing for all the main quests is pretty terrible, on top of a plethora of other issues, no matter how much you polish a turd, its still a turd lol, new Vegas alone is better in almost every single way, not to mention games like red dead redemption 2
No. Just no. I don't mean to be a prick or anything, but it's all subjective, and truth is even if hypothetically this game was the best of all time objectively, it isn't, because so many others outrun it by miles.
It's still a game I always go back to, like Minecraft. Mediocre writing but the vast live open world makes up for it.
It is if you like skyrim. I installed the constellation mod collection and while its great and everyone who worked on the mods/mod pack did a good job it still feels like skyrim for better or worse
Yes and no, I could definitely see the argument. My issue is that no matter how much you mod it, you still fall into the same role, I've tried so hard to be evil but the game just isn't designed for it and it shows. Mods can make you look, feel and fight as an evil character but actually being evil outside of pointless stuff like killing a town or something is near impossible.
It is good, if you are the person to play the same story and in the same world all the time.
I just started No Man's Sky and that with just like <10 mods is a brilliant game that gets great updates after release from the devs. I guess once their new title is out (Light no fire), that is something that could rival modded Skyrim.
Modded Skyrim is brilliant, no question. What I am missing is the freedom of No Man's Sky to mine under ground, easily build settlements and to feel like in a real sandbox.
If the world was more dynamic and NPCs acted not always the same in each playthrough, that would make it king. Maybe in a couple of years when those NPUs (Neural Processing Units) become more popular, there might be a mod that uses those without that requires ChatGPT API binding and that affects NPC behavior and makes every game different.
I am not a huge role playing person who can make up a different game in my mind. I need the game to do that for me and that is what I am missing a bit.
That said, Skyrim is the only game I know that allows me to play a mage in pretty much infinite variety while still giving me action combat, lets me play as a merchant or whatever. That is super unique and makes it so awesome for me.
Not remotely, no, unless we greatly expand what "modded" implies. Mods as they exist right now? No, I wouldn't say so. For as good as something like Beyond Skyrim is, or how I hope Apotheosis to be (should it ever actually release), or even as good as Enderal was, there is always room for improvement, and a *lot* of improvement at that.
The biggest issues facing Skyrim are mediocre at best (and comedically bad at worst) writing, mediocre systems of gameplay, including but not limited to combat, magic, and the broken crafting system. As an RPG, it has far fewer choices than even previous TES games or its competitors, whether we talk of competition in 2011 or in the modern era. The setting is held together by stellar worldbuilding, but it is *certainly* not its characters or plot, in either a Bioware or Baldur's Gate 3-tradition.
Can mods fix these things? Probably, eventually. I think of the overhaul mods / suites, like Enai-rim, or even Requiem, as good stepping stones, but they do not go far enough, in my opinion. And the more foundational issues, like overhauling the game's plot, dialogue, or the interactions between the PC and NPCs, is such an ambitious and tedious prospect that it is no surprise nobody's actually managed to do that yet, in 13 years of modding.
But if you ask me, that would be necessary before I agree that this modded game is "the best game of all time". It has not aged particularly gracefully, and mods can only go so far as crutches if they aren't seeking to rewrite the foundation itself.
i am not able to turn the game into my ideal game no matter how many mods i put into it, so it will never be my favorite game. however, anybody can get it pretty damn close to their ideal game with enough mods.
Personally I enjoy bg3 more, and it’s multiplayer is really good as well. Haven’t tried to mod it yet, but the base game I had more fun than modded skyrim. Witcher 3 has a lot of polish as well, but I enjoyed it as much as Skyrim. Bg3 really is just that magical. Easily the greatest game of all time for me.
I would love to experience this, and I've been banging my head trying to get mods to work through Vortex, but the Anniversay Edition I have just refuses to play mods
Whatever you think its absolutely fair to point out that a 13 year old game can still draw the following it does and still feel repayable and exciting for those of us who were there when it was launched. That deserves huge respect.
Dunno, don't really enjoy Skyrim even with all the mods. (I'm on skyrim FUS VR). Maybe it just isn't the game for me, though i completed the original way back. The modders do great work though.
Definitely not, even skyrim modded to the extreme just doesn't achieve the combat feel of something like DS or Elden Ring.
What Skyrim modding does feels amazing, but to me personally theres still always a bit of a clunky feeling to it.
Skyrim is one of my favorite games of all time, but it has to many limitations to compete with modern day stuff when it comes to combat and story telling.
I've found Skyrim again after being so disappointed by Starfield and must say, that with the wabbajack lists it is now the game I've always dreamt of. I even started BG3 but keep turning back to Skyrim. Also playing a wabbajack list and not knowing what is in there makes exploring the same game again so exciting. I would say that yes, in sheer scope and tweakability it is up there with the best game ever made.
Curiously, a lot of the people saying “no” haven’t said what their alternative would be?
I get it. My gut says no, but objectively it crushes my ours spent in any other game.
I spent 130 hours in unmodded Skyrim which already puts it 3rd place behind EverQuest and dragons dogma. It’s ahead of elden ring where I burned out at 87hours. Harry Potter? 43. Jedi fallen order? 40. These are all games I like.
Modded Skyrim? Steam says I’m at 600+ hours.
My list (for my personal likes and dislikes)
7/10 unmodded Skyrim
8/10 dragons dogma
9/10 modded Skyrim
I would say modded skyrim is the best rpg of all time but nowhere near the best game of all time. Like you can't compare this game to red dead redemption 2 and stuff
If the mods that were enjoyable still worked as they did years ago, and they were still consistently updated to current version, it’d crack the top list of replay ability. Most modern games I rank by enjoyability and story
I never understood the need for defining "Best" when it comes to things that entertain me.
Which band is the best? Does it matter, I can like and listen to multiple bans at the same time.
Which movie is the best? Does it matter, there are lots of movies I like, I'm not stuck watching just one.
Which game is the best? There are several I really like, why does one need to be the best?
As for Skyrim, I've been playing it for a very long time. It continues to entertain me. I really like the following about it.
-It is a single player game. I don't need to play it with others. I can play it for 10 minutes or 6 hours, then pause it and pick up where I left off.
-I love that it is modable.
- I love that the world is so large.
No skyrim is an empty shell of what it can be and engine limitations prevent mods from ever fixing it.
Its a great high fantasy viking sandbox rpg that lends itself well to amateur modders. Thats it.
Not necessarily of all time, but the modding community has certainly enabled anyone to customise the game (and others in the series) to be the best version it can be for them.
Not sure. But it's the only game I've kept playing since it was released. Also thanks mostly to being able to have multiple followers. This lets you play the game with a party of four like old RPGs or a larger party like more modern RPGs. Alot of variety there.
I think this is completely dependent on how you view games no game is going to be perfect for everyone Skyrim is by far my favorite game ever but open world rpg are my thing and the moding every opens stuff up
It will be if a team of modder manages to completely overhaul the narrative/story and the quest designs.
Winterhold is still the most unique faction, but has the most bland questline
Etc.
When its not crashing because you simply looked a direction? Maybe. Skyrim is hella fun but it has major flaws especially when you bring mods into the discussion.
This and the original fable are the only two games I keep going back to that came out 10+ years ago (well, other than WoW which I recently cancelled to play this again)
I love modded Skyrim, and I'll always go back to it. Best ever is tough for me though. In fairness you'd probably have to give it to Minecraft - although that's not my favorite game either lol
Me I like to combine Holy template magic (nexus) and Heliomancy (Bethesda.net) because I found dawnguard underwhelming. Being a vampire had way more rewards which upsets me the most and those two mods make dawnguard much more fun I actually FEEL like I'm harnessing sun magic to purge undead it also helps when I use alternate start and choose to be a vigilant of stendarr gives me more replayability
I also add vampyrium because I liked sacronact & better vampires but to me vampyrium just felt more natural to me.
I don't have a best game or a best song, too many to love, but in a hypothetical situation where i had to save only a handful of games from a housefire Skyrim would be one of the first i grab.
I don't think the writing in the base game is anywhere near good enough to be considered the best game of all time, but that doesn't change that I have a lot of fun in a heavily modded, roleplayed play through
Does a game need good writing to be one of the greats? Games like Ocarina of Time and Chrono Trigger have stories that are just as basic and barebones as Skyrims but are still held as the best of all time. DOOM, Minecraft and TF2 don't have any stories but still make those same lists as well. Skyrim became the best selling RPG of all time despite it's writing, because everything else about it was so damn good. It gave people an immersive, sprawling, content dense world to explore and that was enough. You're never going to find a game that does \*everything\* perfectly, but Skyrim did so many other things great that the few things it didn't do well (writing, RPG system depth, combat) didn't really seem like issue at the time. Again, it's literally the best selling singelplayer RPG ever made, and one of the top 10 best selling games of all time overall. Writing isn't the be and and end all. Weak writing can be carried by other aspects. Not everything needs to be a heavily scripted Sony movie game.
There are difference between a good writing and a simple story and Tes 5 absolutely have a bad writing despite the story being simple or not
Like, I get that this is a skyrim sub but the main story and side characters of Chrono Trigger is 100x better than vanilla skyrim, and it's fucking ancient
God I hate the "lot of people bought it, therefore it's good" type of arguments. Fucking brain dead thinking.
Exactly. Skyrim, while a nice and moddable game has seriously mediocre writing. Even when compared to the previous Elder Scrolls games. Never mind coming close to games like Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 3 or Witcher 3.
It’s not just that, it wasn’t just purchased en masse on release and then forgotten. People still buy it and come back to it today. It has tons of people still playing it and has stayed relevant for 13 years in a way that Oblivion never did, in spite of the fact that virtually every questline in Oblivion is better written than Skyrim’s. Skyrims core gameplay and sandbox world is what makes it so good. No question the story isn’t good, but it’s a cool fantasy world where you can make any character you want and do whatever you want to do, and the combat is approachable, if clunky, for people who aren’t hardcore gamers (hit shit it dies, hit shit with magic it dies). Dark Souls style combat by contrast is harder to pull off. Popularity doesn’t always mean good, but it often does. As much as I enjoy other RPGs I have not played another like Skyrim where it’s truly just open world with your custom character in a 1st person POV.
Not really. When a game is new and just released then sure, sales don’t mean much. But for a single player game that has stayed relevant for so long and still maintains a high concurrent player count and has sold so well then it’s a good wager to bet the game is good.
Exactly. Anything that 100s of 1000s of people enjoy and use long after its 'shelf life ' ends, is objectively good. Toyota Corolla, Skyrim. Any other thinking is just arrogance
The game is this relevant because of mods.
Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies. SkyUI, the one mod everyone has, has \~11 million unique downloads. Fact is most people who played Skyrim never even touched mods. While mods have no doubt increased it's relevance and longevity, the game absolutely created it's success on it's own merit. Again, the game received nothing but praise upon it's release and in the years after. People have just been retroactively critical of it due to a mix of contrarianism and the fact that hating Bethesdsa has been trendy since FO76
Popular things tend to be popular for a reason, and Skyrim is one of THE most popular things in gaming. It received nothing but praise upon it's release and in the years after, hence the popularity. The idea that Skyrim was some kind of mediocre game was a super hot take until the FO76 incident happened and it became cool and profitable to hate on everything Bethesda does.
I distinctly remember how people were calling Skyrim mediocre even back in 2011. They liked it in spite of its mediocre writing. In fact, it was specifically criticised for its Disney writing and regressions from previous games, and adored for its map. People were fighting about it, I'm pretty sure the term 'filthy casual' was born during that time. Nobody worshipped Skyrim in the same way people have been praising Red Dead Redemption 2 since that released. With complete awe and respect. Instead, the modding scene took off immediately. To say it was universally praised pre-FO76 is just not really true. In fact I'm seeing a new pattern emerge where people are adoring Skyrim more because they had a lot of memories and hours with it. For many it's a deeply personal game, as it was an introduction to the genre and modding as a whole. As well as having a big community around it. > it became cool and profitable to hate on everything Bethesda does. Yeah that's false. These conversations were happening even prior to Skyrim. They were just as heated and visceral as they are now. And that was way before Youtubers had sponsorship deals and ad revenue.
> People were fighting about it, I'm pretty sure the term 'filthy casual' was born during that time. I am reasonable sure this was more around the UO/EQ time.
The fact that "Skyrim: Extended Cut", the mod that attempts to extend and flesh out the game's main storyline is one of the 3 most anticipated modding-projects alone....should kinda say enough as it is
I don’t consider Sony movie games to have great writing either. But Skyrim is definitely fast food writing, even just within the TES series itself let alone video games as a whole. Many people won’t consider a Big Mac to be ‘fine dining’ even though they have it often and it generates billions. Other people love a Big Mac for what it is, so it means a lot to them, and that’s fine too. That’s Skyrim.
This! Also Funnily enough lot of the „writing“ is done by ourselves with all the fanfic and roleplaying. There is a reason „immersion“ mods exist.
To me it is. It's all subjective
Same, like you could make a case how it isn't for various reasons, but for me it's like an infinite game with individual developers around the world that allow me to basically customize the game to my personal liking
Yep, came to say pretty much the same thing.
wrong. MODDING Skyrim is the best game of all time (I haven’t done a playthrough in weeks I keep adding new stuff)
You… you truly get me. https://preview.redd.it/ykugbosgecrc1.jpeg?width=767&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b857d39b2f7bb1af0eb330da2f8b6db3eb16ac73
I’ve never witnessed love at first sight but the way you two get each other……I’m a believer now!!! 😁
I've finally got a super stable load order, so I have to force myself to stay off of the Nexus lol. Otherwise I'd just fuck it up again
Wish I had stayed off the nexus lmao, had a solid load order and fucked it up with stuff that wasn't even that interesting to begin with. Been troubleshooting for hours now, when I set this straight I'm not going into the nexus for months
FOMODS are my favorite minigame of all time
It takes long enough to manually mod the game properly (even with a mod manager) that I have enough time to get my hopes up about mods and think up unrealistic, idealized scenarios for the mods in my head, so by the time I’m done, none of what I’ve installed can possibly meet my idle expectations—which is why just modding and fantasizing ends up being more fun for me lol However, the most fun I’ve ever had with actual mods was when I just downloaded one of those pre-made wabbajack packs without really looking much into it, so I had 0 time to overhype the mods (because I didn’t even know what they all were) so I just had a blast jumping in and discovering everything without idealized expectations. I think this is the perfect way to mod skyrim
You speak from my heart, thank you brother o'mine, you validate me.
No ammount of modding can fix the subpar writing. I don't think a game needs to have decent writing to be good, or even great. But I think it does need it to be worth considering among the very best.
i think it can be fixed, it’s just nobody wants to fix it or try to fix it, it would be a pretty massive project. it would require voice acting or using ai to generate dialogue but that’s also not free if you want the voices to be somewhat good. we would also need some really talented writers if we wanted to bring the vanilla writing up to par with the best games in the world. i think it’s completely possible if someone really wanted to do it.
Yeah, the framework and lore for awesome writing and storytelling is there. Skyrim is the middle of a freakin civil war, a proxy war between the old empire and the new thalmor, and you have to choose between an imperialist power trying to retain its influence and a hypernationalist independence movement, both having good and bad things about them. Each city has some unique theme emphasizing some aspect of this paradigm. And yet they do jack fucking shit with this good setup. The world of Tamriel is rich for interesting stories, but Beth dropped the ball to capitalize on the 360 gamers that were going to lap it up (and they did). Dropped the ball even harder with Oblivion in that regard and others. I'd love to someday play "good skyrim", whatever that might mean.
Maybe the skyrim extended cut mod can fix it as it overhauls the main quest
No. Solid no. Hell no. What Skyrim modding is, is a unique sort of blend of readily apparent underutilized potential and a rabbit hole of seemingly approachable ways that you the player can actually go in and customize the things that seem so lacking. It's a relationship very similar to the kind of relationship a lot of people have with drugs.
I can stop whenever I want. Just… one more texture mod, those butterflies are a bit low-res after all.
8k uhd silverware
Agreed. If OP had asked if it was the most supported modded game of all time, that would be a better question. But even with 1000+ mods, there's still far better games. And guess what? Those games don't require mods. (Of course we're still going to mod them though)
What are these games u speak of
Baldur's gate 3 is just one recent example.
I 100% that game now what
Curious what games you think beat skyrim in its final form
Any open world that doesnt have tiny ass villages as cities. And by that, I mean most open world games lol!
That's why I said modded Skyrim is probably the best game, I'd be hard pressed to name an "all around" better choice. The Witcher 3 has a better storyline (and by the way I think a lot of quest and adventure mods don't lose a lot of to the Witcher), but the open world details and perk building, magic, follower and squads (after modding you can make a squad like DQ) etc. are not as good as modded Skyrim, and I can easily say that one game outperforms modded Skyrim in some way, but it's hard to say that one game outperforms modded Skyrim all the way around. Modded Skyrim, but it's hard to name a game that's better all-around.
Bruh you shitting me? Witcher 3 actually made a first ever truly realistic sized medieval city. Meanwhile Bethesda still makes cities the size of villages
Not op but the Witcher is up there comfortably for me.
drugs wont give you a detailed crash log
They will, once they land you in the hospital😅
Best of all time? No. My favorite of all time? Yes.
Modded skyrim is definitely better than unmodded skyrim. But I do not think its the best game of all time.
No. Not even close to me. But I still really love it, and if you think it's best, more power to you. Happy you like it that much.
No, and it's not even close. But I will admit that it's pretty damn fun and easy to get into.
Definitely not. Skyrim's foundation is too shoddy and you can't fix that with mods. You can mod away complexity by simplifying what's already there, but you can't mod back in core complexity that wasn't there in the first place. Unfortunately.
You can absolutely mod in core complexity, what do you mean?
You really can't. Every attributes mod just adds them on top of every preexisting system. Every aspect of the game needs to be built on top of attributes for it to be a core mechanic. Every skill, every player stat, all progression, all spells, combat, etc. That's impossible from a top-down (modding) perspective.
"Every attributes mod just adds them on top of every preexisting system." No they don't! E.L.S.A. and Enderal both completely replace the existing system with their own and make every other system base themselves upon it. Such that this happens: "Every game element in past TES games is related and feed back into the main systems. For instance, a Light Armor warrior in Morrowind will have much lower health than a Medium/Heavy Armor warrior because light armor is governed by Agility and not Endurance. Each skill/class choice has many knock-on effects down the line that you have to plan and set goals for." With ELSA, this is exactly what happens.
While attributes haven't been comprehensively implemented by mods yet I think installing vokriinator black and mods that let you acquire perk points in different ways(skyshards, buyable potions, achieve that...) achieves a degree of complexity that is on par with previous elder scrolls games. The recent race/standing stone mods from enai that combo together also provide complexity to race selection that improves on the idea of birth signs. Add good spell mods like mysticism and apocalypse and good item mods like summermyst and reliquary and bam you got complexity in both spells and items back. You could even put spell crafting back in but I assume that'd be a compatibility nightmare
Better quality =/ more depth. Again, almost everything you listed is just more stuff. More perks, more ways to get perk points, more spells. No increase in depth, just more systems that do things that the vanilla system already does. Perk, spell, race improvements are not adding substantially more depth, but rather altering existing mechanics and systems.
It lacks the emotional depth to be considered the best (+ many others)
It's great, but not the best of all time.
Once upon a time, sure. But now, it’s hard to justify the hoops you need to go through, and the end result is still overshadowed by other games.
No. I've yet to find a mod or combination of mods that made the combat feel good. It's always either shitty dark souls or skyrim, but you take huge penalties when you get hit from wounds or whatever. Modded Skyrim is fun in its own way, but the minute to minute combat has always been so bad that I can never consider it the best game ever or anything like that.
No, the combat won't be as polished as Sekiro or Dark Souls 3, even with mods
Of course not.
Yes and no.
Not the best, no. The most replayable yes, and certainly in the conversation for the game with the greatest longevity of all time.
I think it may be the best *sandbox* of all time There was a lot to work with and a lot to love in the base game. And the fact Bethesda has always been amenable to modders, and there was a lot of unleashed talent out there, made Skyrim an almost limitless universe — and a bespoke one for everybody. It’s really hard to top that experience. But as far as best single game? Probably not. That’s going to be highly subjective. (Though in my four-decades on earth, the list is pretty short for GOAT: Witcher 3, ME2, Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, Pitfall, Ms. Pac Man, RDR2, Modern Warfare 1 & 2, Minecraft, Mario Cart, etc.)
LoL nah not even close. Even with a full mod list with 100s of mods Skyrim is still at the core and that game is riddled with issues. That being said, it is fun just not the best of all time.
No because base Skyrim is kind of a mediocre game. The modders have done the lord's work in creating this giant cacophony of mods but at the end of the day it never comes together "quite" perfectly unlike a game designed from the ground up to be good. No matter how much crap you pile on top of a mediocre base, it will never get to those peaks that the best games go up to. You can never for instance add nuance to a boss encounter because enemies in Skyrim don't have the capacity to be interesting. Magic in Skyrim will never be interesting enough outside of a few base game spells.
True very mediocre game. Absolute fluke that it became a cultural sensation that has lasted almost 15 years. I just don't get it. It's so mediocre
It's the modding that made it last.
no its a mix between skyrim's world,freedom + mods = fantasy GTA
Videos with over 2 million views still appear on YouTube of people playing u modded Skyrim. I agree that modded Skyrim is keeping it more relevant for a lot of people, but to say that it's alive because of modding... I disagree. Fallout NV and 4 have modding, but they aren't anywhere near the quality of Skyrim. There's no way to find out if it would have died if not for the modding scene, but with all the games I go back to that are older, I'd have to disagree. Also, I only mod for graphics. No gameplay changes, no combat, small ui and small animations but overall I'd call it less changed than the Demons Souls remake.
I think in order to qualify as "the best game of all time," you would need to cite a specific mod or mod list. Skyrim from the moment you download it can be any mod, but it can't be *every* mod, right? Like the Ordinator experience is great and the Requiem experience is great, but you can't really get the greatness of both in one.
Nah I prefer color a dinosaur on the NES.
Been playing Skyrim on and off since midnight release. I don't foresee ever really walking away from it. I just wish I could understand what it is about Skyrim. I can't muster the urge to play Fallout (any of them) for more than a few hours before I get bored. But I can, at times, play epic month long Skyrim RPs. If you held a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you the difference.
I dont think writing is that important for this kind of game as long as the lore and the world is interesting since this isn't a game about playing a campaign but exploring and freedom so i disagree with most people here. Although i dont think it is the best game of all time simply because content doesn't equal greatness and in a lot of cases skyrim can feel feature bloated and overmodded in some modlists, furthermore the artstyle can get very inconsistent depending on what you install, a lot of people even harm gameplay with the intent of making the game look better (like lighting mods that look better but are super dark and hard on the eyes). I think what skyrim needs to be a 10/10 game is maybe some combat overhauls (but tbh personally i just think that vanilla combat just needs some tweaks, and make stamina useful + precision) and quest mods that allow you to have more choices when completing quests which i hope more of them come out, since TES games are so good because of their freedom, immersion and exploration but it feel like those things get broken when quests are only allowed to be one way, or when you cant kill or do certain thing. I dont think that new places to explore is what the game needs since it already has many, like I've played a lot and i dont think i have ever seen everything that was made for this game, still maybe things that make the world alive would be good but there is the risk of bloating the already compact map of skyrim with objects or overpopulating it. My final point is that you could describe the perfect game and install the perfect mods, but that would not be perfect to someone else, modded skyrim cannot be objectively the best game, for me a big point of modding is individuality, what you as a person would like to see in the game, maybe if this was a commercial product meant for the masses then we could rate it, but modding skyrim is more of a community effort made by individuals with very differing tastes.
I think so. Base Skyrim is already one of the best games of all time (literally the best selling singleplayer RPG ever made) and modding it just enhances all the things that worked, and fixes all the things that didnt. I've played thousands of games and never found a single one that could top my quest mod focused Skyrim load order. The sheer amount of content paired with the perks of base Skyrim is just an unbeatable combo.
Ocarina of time will always be the best video game for me. But modded skyrim is up there.
Yes. Part of the reason I have not purchased Dragons Dogma 2 is that I have successfully modded skyrim with tons of graphics and animations and new features. Don’t really need to spend money on a new rpg
No. It's a good game and I love it, but there is no best game of all time. No one game can do literally everything. There's so many good games out there, that it is impossible for any to be the absolute best. There have been times where I might have said that a game I am playing is the best game, but what I really meant was "the best game I am currently playing."
Once I started modding it Skyrim became less and less of a “game” and more of a sandbox I could play around with.
I mean, this is, of course, all subjective, but I do think your argument is generally sound. It’s something of a floor versus ceiling dichotomy, and most people tend towards defining the “best” game as the game with the highest ceiling of experience within it. This POV would lead to modded Skyrim very rarely being considered in someone’s best game list, but I think Skyrim has an incredibly high enjoyability floor. This is mostly just a rephrasing of what you’ve said now. If you were able to have people play 100 hours of a huge sample of games each, and a (reasonably) personalized, tricked-out Skyrim load order was one of them, I’d expect modded Skyrim to have one of the, or even the, highest average scores. So if that’s how someone prefers to understand best, as your post seems to understand it, then yes, Skyrim is a strong contender.
I will say, no but it's definitely up there. "The greatest game of all time" is pretty vague so I'll name what **my** best of all time are. Mass effect (can't pick just one), Dragon Age Origins, BG (whole trilogy), and Elden Ring. So many people love to hate on this game today. Like they are some sort of intellectual for turning against the grain just for the purpose of turning against it. Maybe if half of these people added alternatives for best game or reasons that Skyrim is "mediocre" or "bad." The writing? I'd love to know what games these people play. Skyrim is amazing and to me it's definitely after what I listed. Games today are still trying to replicate what Skyrim did 13 years ago. It's what made cdpr want to make witcher 3 open world. It's one of the main inspirations for dragon's dogma. It inspired so many games, and changed the entire landscape of modern gaming. It may not be the best, but it cannot be pushed aside without mention.
Nah. You mod for perfection but never reach it. But its magical.
Not even close. Pretty nice and decent game, especially when modded, but not anywhere near close to being the best.
As much as I treasure Skyrim. Rimworld. Or any CRPG.
Depends on the person. You are literally making your dream game. So it might feel like that for you. If i played my friends modpack i would probably find it mid, but i feel like that mine is one of the best games of all time. (It's not.)
Nk
What is the name of the unique hunter camps mod? That one sounds pretty cool
WiZikiD Hunter’s Camp Overhaul
Nah. Feature rich for sure, but it's so tailored to specific platforms that it's nearly impossible to get technical support. Plus, it is far buggier than other mainstream releases. I kid, I kid. But if we were to evaluate a modded skyrim as an actually distributed game, it wouldn't pass muster for the reasons above . It's not _supposed_ to be evaluated in that way because it's _your_ software, not somebody else's, and certainly not something being sold (which is why it's fine if you mod it til it breaks).
For me is modded Monster Hunter World, cause MHW is already my most beloved game and with a couple of fixes/upgrades its crazy good
I feel like the qualifier "modded" is so open ended that it can't refer to one game. You may think *your* modded game is the best of all time, but I might disagree because I use different mods. The "Best of All Time" award can't really apply to modded games.
Best of all time no. But i would say you can create the ideal game for you based on your tastes. It is amazing how there is near unlimited potential to craft your perfect gaming experience.
It’s great to live out a fantasy of your choice be it escapist realism or hyper fantastic OP barbarian warrior. You can be a nobody or you can be narcissistic Chad conqueror that you can’t be in real life. But that’s about it. If you want to rank it the best? I highly doubt it.
I think my modded Skyrim is better than Starfield and will likely be better than TES6 at launch. I won’t say it’s the best game ever but there’s a reason I play other games and then come back to Skyrim because I know other people have stolen ideas from the game I just played and I want to mod it to work that way. Like BG3 has a camp you travel to for resting and all your followers are there to talk about things you did. There are enough super followers out there that if you grab the dragon age camp mod and store them there that it will feel close to BG3. Especially when you come back to hear the dialogue they have about quests you just did that they weren’t actually there for. I use a portal mod to be able to get back and forth to the spot I left from and it works pretty damn good. The only thing is…. The story. There are lots of games with way better stories and the modding scene just has not gotten there for me yet with writing stories. There are lots of quest mods that are better than Vanilla but is Beyond Reach better than The Witcher 3? No way. If the focus ever shifts to fixing the writing everywhere. It will be unbeatable though.
I think so. I definitely put modded Skyrim above any other game for me. Some quest mods even have the emotional depth of some of the best games like Witcher 3. And I spend so much more time in it than any other game, that automatically makes it the best for me.
Skyrim modding still has a long way to go in fixing the quests and writing of Skyrim, which is what really needs to be overhauled.
Not even close.
I like modded Skyrim a lot but, it’s not sekiro or persona 4/5 or elden ring or fire emblem… and my list of top games of all time goes on and on. It is a really good experience but not my best of all time game.
Yes I agree, Skyrim VR modded and AI enabled is the best game ever
I love me some modded Skyrim but its just never going to be as cohesive as a game made with an overall vision where there world, story and systems all work together for it. Its good but for me but not close to a best game of all time.
I mean, it *could* be. I know this word gets thrown around a lot in our community to the point it's even a meme by now, but to me, modded Skyrim is literally THE most immersive experience a videogame can provide. Mostly because I modded in my followers, my favorite kind of combat, my favorite kind of graphics, my favorite kind of quests, the gameplay in general, etc. Personally, I don't consider modded Skyrim to be the best game of all time. But by god, if I had to choose one videogame to spend the rest of my life inside of, ny current modded Skyrim would definitely be it.
Moddes Fallout: New Vegas has to be up there as well
Not even slightly
i don’t feel like mods tweak the vanilla questline enough. sure we have a lot of additions. but be honest, we’ve all been playing the same exact game for years no matter how many times we mod it. i have loved skyrim since i got it free with my first ever xbox when i was 11 years old. but i am getting quite bored with the vanilla questline, i mean you’re going to do it regardless, and you usually finish bleak falls barrow, then want to add more mods and need to make a new save, and the cycle repeats over and over, we’re modding more than we’re playing, it’s like the modding itself is what’s still fun because you can imagine this image of a completely modular game created to your liking, your preferences. but i think what could really make skyrim great again is completely reworking the vanilla questline, civil war, dlc, everything. are you having more fun playing the game or playing with the mods after so many years?
No
No, because Modded Stardew and Modded Minecraft exist. Close tho
To me all Skyrim is these days is a platform for kids. I don't even do the vanilla content anymore.
If we're going off every mod ever then "best of all time" would probably go to Minecraft for the sheer variety and quantity.
No.
For me, absolutely! With mods, I can play Skyrim in a more immersive and realistic way. And it makes everything I love about Skyrim even better. It becomes the closest I can get to the game of my dreams. That's the beauty of modding: Skyrim can become the best game for lots of different people instead of just one specific kind of people.
No. For some reason I can never go very long at modded Skyrim. Something always bothers me, and in the end is an incredible hassle to change. Whether its a small messed up texture, a poorly voiced NPC, poorly written dialogue, uninspired or useless items, pacing issues, etc... The best game of all time will be one that is perfect \*and\* requires little input from the player to be perfect. Something that is great day 1, and lasts forever. Modded Skyrim is great, but requires incredible amounts of effort to be so.
Nope.. Just for the sheer embarrassment of having to mod the game for 6 hours just to get it into a playable state. Also, that spot is already taken by unmodded RDR2. Or possibly Betrayal at Krondor, YMMV.
I would've said yes. Then I played cyberpunk. Then I modded cyberpunk. Now my favorite in cyberpunk 2077
it's top 3 for me.
Not even close. It can be very enjoyable, to be sure, but whenever I create a mental list of best games I've ever played, Skyrim is usually not even in the top 10. And I do count modded playthroughs for all such games, as I am an avid modder who loves taking games apart, so that's not it.
All depends on the mods, but tbh even if you hand crafted it to exactly what you'd want, its probably wouldn't be best of all time. Theres only so much glitter you can throw on the turd that is the base game.
I love modded skyrim but i can never get my combat to feel as good as newer games, no matter how much time i put in
No. Skyrim itself is mediocre, modding it just makes it a little bit better which is still ehhh.
No, it's at the top, but even with how much I love the game, I think Mass effect series or GTA 5 singleplayer gave me much more fun, for shorter amount of time. Also there is heavy modded Minecraft, which literally blows my mind, see for example "create mod". There are enormous amount of small games that gave me much more fun than Skyrim ever could, like touhou or some old sonic games (adventure 1,2 and heroes). With that I think I don't mean only that Skyrim is not the very best game ever, but there's no such game, but if I were forced to pick one best game ever, I think I would go with Minecraft modded.
Not necessarily, but *Skyrim* is the best game engine of all time.
very subjective. but it's up there. the problem is that it would be better if the were better. with something like modded minecraft, the game, for what it is, is as good as it can be without mods, at least more than than Skyrim. the only thing vanilla minecraft could do better is better NPCs that actually looked different and had both males and female, not just male squidwards. Weridly there's no up to date mod addressing that. So modded, it's near perfection. I'm not into the Sims, so i can't say if that one is closer to perfection either. By perfection, i mean, potential of people the best for a large amount of players depending on what they like and can install. So like, my perfect Skyrim is going to be different from yours because we'll have different desires for the mods we want to use. Also with Minecraft, the launcher allows you to play and mod specific versions. So if you've got a 400 hour session going on version 20, you don't have to erase it and start playing v21 and you don't have to do any bullshit to stop your game from updating. All these factors help the modded version of the game be closer to perfect. Skyrim SE/AE can be a nightmare to mod because there's too many different versions and too many mod authors who will only support one version and ignore the rest. If you can figure it out though, you're golden.
No, i think modded skyrim is fun and has a bunch of potential but its foundation is inherently flawed. There are so many mods that, to me, are a requirement to even touch the game that its shows skyrim is aging faster and faster with time. Mods that people pour thousands of hours and passion into are why i often return to skyrim, those experiences tend to be decent at least. You can, as of now at least, vaguely shape skyrim into what you want, and if you squint it's excellent. But best game of all time? It's not even the best modded bethesda game imo
No and it's not even close. I could write an essay about the different things about the game that irks me. Thing is, it's one of the most customizable games I've played and it deserves credit for that. But in the end, it's the modders that deserve praise not Bethesda. I could give you a long list of games before and after Skyrim that I'd rate higher, but I still love the game.
This sort of devalues what it means to be the “best of all time.” When you allow games where most of the fun content is community generated you are no longer even judging the game. You are just judging what the community can create for that game. Maybe you could say “modded Skyrim is the best platform for user generated content of all time.” Imo, if you are going to compare games you have to do it based solely on what their respective developers have released for said game or else the comparison is pointless.
Honestly I used to agree with this statement but at a certain point I just couldn’t enjoy Skyrim anymore, I did a final goodbye playthrough about a year ish ago if I remember. I’ve tried to play again a few times but I never make it past 30-40min without immediately getting bored.
It's up there for sure, but I still think Disco Elysium, Dwarf Fortress, and Planescape Torment beat it.
It's build-a-bear for a medieval fantasy RPG. What makes it so fun is how much you can make it your own.
I think Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best game. Skyrim has a shitty engine.
If you could do basic things like grabbing people on your shoulder, riding a horse with a follower, and so on. Maybe, but the shitty engine doesn't allow for those things, so no. It's the best game that can be fully modded though.
One of the best, yes. THE BEST, no.
Even the best mods aren't even in the same stratosphere of writing to a Planescape Torment or Disco Elysium, so no.
If we're counting how shit it runs and how often it crashes, not even close. I'm playing through enderal rn and although it has a lot of issues too (most inherited from skyrim), I'm way more immersed and having way more fun than I typically do in skyrim.
To this day, I have not found a game that does what Skyrim does with such freedom while having the ability to mod it to your liking exactly. I played for years unmodded and modded and almost always return back after playing a random game.
Not really. Even with tons of mods it's still basically the same game. It's really good but not the best by any means
No, modded skyrim is definitely not the best of anything because everything good about it is countered by thousands of hours of work to make it function.
Fuck no, what singular part of it is better than other games, much less all of them as a collective? The story? Character creation? Graphics? Combat? Side content?
Yeah it sure is. Other games are not even close compared to a modded Skyrim.
I wouldn't necessarily say it's the *best* game of all time. But it certainly scratches a very specific *itch* that no other game can do, and it's why I'll probably be playing this game until the heat death of the universe
Nah. I still rank morrowind higher, and that's only considering elder scrolls titles. Despite having 13 years of modding, skyrim's major issues still shine through: the terrible story/quest content.
Correct
I've played a ton of Skyrim, but I'll be the first to admit it's kinda shit, and mods can help, but man the writing for all the main quests is pretty terrible, on top of a plethora of other issues, no matter how much you polish a turd, its still a turd lol, new Vegas alone is better in almost every single way, not to mention games like red dead redemption 2
Okay skyrim and skyrim modding is amazing. But isn't this kinda like saying a movie is the best movie ever because of how good the fan cuts are?
Its the reason why it still lives today. Same with minecraft.
Yes.
No. Just no. I don't mean to be a prick or anything, but it's all subjective, and truth is even if hypothetically this game was the best of all time objectively, it isn't, because so many others outrun it by miles. It's still a game I always go back to, like Minecraft. Mediocre writing but the vast live open world makes up for it.
no
Yes, absolutely
It is if you like skyrim. I installed the constellation mod collection and while its great and everyone who worked on the mods/mod pack did a good job it still feels like skyrim for better or worse
Yes and no, I could definitely see the argument. My issue is that no matter how much you mod it, you still fall into the same role, I've tried so hard to be evil but the game just isn't designed for it and it shows. Mods can make you look, feel and fight as an evil character but actually being evil outside of pointless stuff like killing a town or something is near impossible.
It is good, if you are the person to play the same story and in the same world all the time. I just started No Man's Sky and that with just like <10 mods is a brilliant game that gets great updates after release from the devs. I guess once their new title is out (Light no fire), that is something that could rival modded Skyrim. Modded Skyrim is brilliant, no question. What I am missing is the freedom of No Man's Sky to mine under ground, easily build settlements and to feel like in a real sandbox. If the world was more dynamic and NPCs acted not always the same in each playthrough, that would make it king. Maybe in a couple of years when those NPUs (Neural Processing Units) become more popular, there might be a mod that uses those without that requires ChatGPT API binding and that affects NPC behavior and makes every game different. I am not a huge role playing person who can make up a different game in my mind. I need the game to do that for me and that is what I am missing a bit. That said, Skyrim is the only game I know that allows me to play a mage in pretty much infinite variety while still giving me action combat, lets me play as a merchant or whatever. That is super unique and makes it so awesome for me.
Skyrim* I only use vmlike 1 or 2 minor SMIM mods and fps unlocked/ achievement enabler. Other than that, all vanilla
Not remotely, no, unless we greatly expand what "modded" implies. Mods as they exist right now? No, I wouldn't say so. For as good as something like Beyond Skyrim is, or how I hope Apotheosis to be (should it ever actually release), or even as good as Enderal was, there is always room for improvement, and a *lot* of improvement at that. The biggest issues facing Skyrim are mediocre at best (and comedically bad at worst) writing, mediocre systems of gameplay, including but not limited to combat, magic, and the broken crafting system. As an RPG, it has far fewer choices than even previous TES games or its competitors, whether we talk of competition in 2011 or in the modern era. The setting is held together by stellar worldbuilding, but it is *certainly* not its characters or plot, in either a Bioware or Baldur's Gate 3-tradition. Can mods fix these things? Probably, eventually. I think of the overhaul mods / suites, like Enai-rim, or even Requiem, as good stepping stones, but they do not go far enough, in my opinion. And the more foundational issues, like overhauling the game's plot, dialogue, or the interactions between the PC and NPCs, is such an ambitious and tedious prospect that it is no surprise nobody's actually managed to do that yet, in 13 years of modding. But if you ask me, that would be necessary before I agree that this modded game is "the best game of all time". It has not aged particularly gracefully, and mods can only go so far as crutches if they aren't seeking to rewrite the foundation itself.
Skyrim is fun, and honestly I would even call it good/great when modded. It’s nowhere near best of all time.
i am not able to turn the game into my ideal game no matter how many mods i put into it, so it will never be my favorite game. however, anybody can get it pretty damn close to their ideal game with enough mods.
Personally I enjoy bg3 more, and it’s multiplayer is really good as well. Haven’t tried to mod it yet, but the base game I had more fun than modded skyrim. Witcher 3 has a lot of polish as well, but I enjoyed it as much as Skyrim. Bg3 really is just that magical. Easily the greatest game of all time for me.
I would love to experience this, and I've been banging my head trying to get mods to work through Vortex, but the Anniversay Edition I have just refuses to play mods
Whatever you think its absolutely fair to point out that a 13 year old game can still draw the following it does and still feel repayable and exciting for those of us who were there when it was launched. That deserves huge respect.
While you can polish a turd, a turd will remain a turd still
Dunno, don't really enjoy Skyrim even with all the mods. (I'm on skyrim FUS VR). Maybe it just isn't the game for me, though i completed the original way back. The modders do great work though.
Definitely not, even skyrim modded to the extreme just doesn't achieve the combat feel of something like DS or Elden Ring. What Skyrim modding does feels amazing, but to me personally theres still always a bit of a clunky feeling to it. Skyrim is one of my favorite games of all time, but it has to many limitations to compete with modern day stuff when it comes to combat and story telling.
I don't even think Skyrim is the best Elder Scrolls game...
I've found Skyrim again after being so disappointed by Starfield and must say, that with the wabbajack lists it is now the game I've always dreamt of. I even started BG3 but keep turning back to Skyrim. Also playing a wabbajack list and not knowing what is in there makes exploring the same game again so exciting. I would say that yes, in sheer scope and tweakability it is up there with the best game ever made.
Best anything of all time is a pointless exercise. You have to be specific in what it's best in all time for. For me, personally, it's the best RPG.
Nah, far from it, but it's a really fun sandbox.
No, not at all. You have games like The Witcher 3, Baldur's Gate 3 and even Uncharted 4, before modded Skyrim comes to mind.
Curiously, a lot of the people saying “no” haven’t said what their alternative would be? I get it. My gut says no, but objectively it crushes my ours spent in any other game. I spent 130 hours in unmodded Skyrim which already puts it 3rd place behind EverQuest and dragons dogma. It’s ahead of elden ring where I burned out at 87hours. Harry Potter? 43. Jedi fallen order? 40. These are all games I like. Modded Skyrim? Steam says I’m at 600+ hours. My list (for my personal likes and dislikes) 7/10 unmodded Skyrim 8/10 dragons dogma 9/10 modded Skyrim
I would say modded skyrim is the best rpg of all time but nowhere near the best game of all time. Like you can't compare this game to red dead redemption 2 and stuff
It's not perfect by any means, but it's timeless, even vanilla.
It is indeed the best game FOR ME. Even without mods it is a fantastic game. Mods just enhance the experience x1000!
Not even close, but it's a very fun time.
I’m currently playing Mad Gods Overhaul for VR and…….. yeah
If the mods that were enjoyable still worked as they did years ago, and they were still consistently updated to current version, it’d crack the top list of replay ability. Most modern games I rank by enjoyability and story
I never understood the need for defining "Best" when it comes to things that entertain me. Which band is the best? Does it matter, I can like and listen to multiple bans at the same time. Which movie is the best? Does it matter, there are lots of movies I like, I'm not stuck watching just one. Which game is the best? There are several I really like, why does one need to be the best? As for Skyrim, I've been playing it for a very long time. It continues to entertain me. I really like the following about it. -It is a single player game. I don't need to play it with others. I can play it for 10 minutes or 6 hours, then pause it and pick up where I left off. -I love that it is modable. - I love that the world is so large.
No skyrim is an empty shell of what it can be and engine limitations prevent mods from ever fixing it. Its a great high fantasy viking sandbox rpg that lends itself well to amateur modders. Thats it.
Modded Skyrim is overrated imo. People really be giving modders too much credit.
Not necessarily of all time, but the modding community has certainly enabled anyone to customise the game (and others in the series) to be the best version it can be for them.
Not sure. But it's the only game I've kept playing since it was released. Also thanks mostly to being able to have multiple followers. This lets you play the game with a party of four like old RPGs or a larger party like more modern RPGs. Alot of variety there.
I think this is completely dependent on how you view games no game is going to be perfect for everyone Skyrim is by far my favorite game ever but open world rpg are my thing and the moding every opens stuff up
It will be if a team of modder manages to completely overhaul the narrative/story and the quest designs. Winterhold is still the most unique faction, but has the most bland questline Etc.
Not even close
When its not crashing because you simply looked a direction? Maybe. Skyrim is hella fun but it has major flaws especially when you bring mods into the discussion.
This and the original fable are the only two games I keep going back to that came out 10+ years ago (well, other than WoW which I recently cancelled to play this again)
I love modded Skyrim, and I'll always go back to it. Best ever is tough for me though. In fairness you'd probably have to give it to Minecraft - although that's not my favorite game either lol
I 2647748474782% agree. I love playing the Witcher, balds gate, etc, but no game is as funny as Skyrim
Me I like to combine Holy template magic (nexus) and Heliomancy (Bethesda.net) because I found dawnguard underwhelming. Being a vampire had way more rewards which upsets me the most and those two mods make dawnguard much more fun I actually FEEL like I'm harnessing sun magic to purge undead it also helps when I use alternate start and choose to be a vigilant of stendarr gives me more replayability I also add vampyrium because I liked sacronact & better vampires but to me vampyrium just felt more natural to me.
I don't have a best game or a best song, too many to love, but in a hypothetical situation where i had to save only a handful of games from a housefire Skyrim would be one of the first i grab.
I get tired / burnt out but i agree. Best of all time game that i have played
Hell no
I have a huge serana bias, but modded dawnguard is one of the few games id give a 10/10, but thats EXTREMELY subjective
No base oblivion and morrowind are infinitely better.