If you ever want an understanding of how Skyrim has managed to stay alive these past 12 years, just look to the modding community. There are tons of ways to tweak The Elder Scrolls 5, and a new one has recently come out that takes cues from one of Rockstar’s most critically acclaimed releases.
Over on Nexus Mods, veteran modder JaySerpa has been at it once again. This time, they’ve brought the sport of hunting to the chilly world of Skyrim. Called “Simple Hunting Overhaul,” it gives the Dragonborn the ability to take time out from all that hero questing and dragon slaying.
You can skin the corpses of animals that have been killed, which you can then sell to vendors in a nearby town or city. Typical with JaySerpa’s projects, this mod also incorporates NPC reactions to your hunting, making for a more immersive experience.
The creator says this Skyrim hunting mod of theirs was inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2. No prizes for guessing which particular aspect of the game.
Who even plays vanilla Skyrim these days?
If you play the game on PC, you’ll already be very familiar with the near-countless ways you can mess with Bethesda’s epic 2011 RPG. Because, let’s face it: after well over a decade, the cracks in Skyrim are more than showing.
The vanilla experience is still fun, but there’s no sense in pretending that it’s not aged quite significantly. This is where modding comes to the rescue, and people like JaySerpa are responsible for keeping TES5 very much in the limelight. That, and Bethesda wouldn’t stop re-releasing the damn thing.
We can’t say for certain whether The Elder Scrolls 6 will ever be able to live up to such a legacy. In fact, we can’t even say for certain at what stage of development it’s currently at. But Bethesda’s next big RPG, Starfield, is due out in less than a month.
