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Taking Screenshots is Making My 8th Attempt to Play Skyrim a Bit Better

18 April 2018

I’ve attempted Skyrim on three different platforms – Xbox 360, PS3, and PC – and I’ve never been able to get into it.

Whatever the platform, I’ve always found the combat mostly terrible, the engine dated, and the story excruciatingly dull. Sorry. Within my eight (yes, eight!) attempts at Skyrim, I’ve tried sword and shield, two-handed, dual-wielding, archery, and magic playthroughs in the hope one of them is fun and fluid. Alas, none were. Thankfully, with a couple of mods on PC, I’ve been able to get a bit more depth across the board. In this latest attempt I’ve opted for a sword and shield, and a bow and arrow for sneaky hidden crits.

Sweetroll justice!

An earlier attempt was fun for about two hours. I’d decided to go all-out with mods, run around summoning hellfire, shooting sweetrolls from my hands while shouting “sweetroll justice!”. Mods can both help and hinder Skyrim on PC. In this new attempt I was more conservative with what I put in; I went for a couple of graphical mods, a couple of unofficial patches, and some added depth to levelling. I also made sure to get SkyUI for significantly easier navigation within my inventory. Those graphical mods have summoned a need to take scenic screenshots in Skyrim.

A love of photo modes

My love of photo modes coupled with how pretty Skyrim can look with these mods led me into the console commands for free cam, UI hiding, and changing weather/time. I now have extra incentive to travel across Skyrim; I can now stop once in a while, marvel in the scenery, set up the free cam and weather, and take some screenshots.

That drive to screenshot more of Skyrim’s world means I’ll have to travel the length and breadth to showcase other environments. So far, for the purposes of this article, I’ve been riding to and from side quests and random locations taking screenshots there and back. As a result, I’ve already seen more of Skyrim than in my other seven attempts.

If you catch the right angle with dense fog, Skyrim looks grimly beautiful. The dulled colour palette, though, makes capturing colourful beauty difficult. This genuinely surprised me as I always felt the game was quite ugly; in some situations it still is, but the environments and scenery Bethesda have crafted, though drab, can be a sight to behold.

Below you can see more of places I went to and messed about with the weather to take screenshots of a nicely crafted world, let down by other aspects.

Click images to see them larger. Right click and save to your desktop to see in full resolution (1080p).