How to get Dark Souls-like animations in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Only a few open-world fantasy role-playing games have come close to the popularity of Bethesda Softworks' The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Despite being more than a decade old, the title remains one of the most-played games in the genre.

Among the factors that contribute to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's seemingly ever-lasting popularity and player count is modding. While the vanilla Skyrim experience is nothing to scoff at, featuring gameplay that can last over a hundred hours, it is the community-made mods that have kept the title alive for so long.

Skyrim with mods can be turned into a unique experience that is seldom possible in most modern open-world games, complete with new animations, weapons, and even questlines.

Some mods allow Skyrim players to experience the methodical and nuanced combat of FromSoftware's Dark Souls games without the overarching difficulty that they entail.

Here's how players can get Dark Souls-like combat animations in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

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Mods that introduce Dark Souls-like animations in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Mod creator Miken1ke has created an excellent mod that adds new animations for battle axes and war hammers. It is directly inspired by FromSoftware's notoriously difficult souls-like titles.

The mod gives weapons an entirely new moveset, with more nuanced and longer animations, bringing them closer to mimicking the weapons in the Dark Souls Trilogy.

In vanilla Skyrim, the weapon animations are somewhat clunky, with single strikes that can feel awkward, especially while playing from a third-person perspective.

Miken1ke's mod aims to add the necessary weight, longer swing animations, and combo chaining on multiple swings. It basically turns the awkward and clunky melee combat of the game into a rather fun combat system.

Another mod that players can use to further enhance the Dark Souls-like animations in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the "Elder Souls" collection of mods.

The collection was created in collaboration with well-known modder Distar66, who helped create the SkySA animation framework that these animation-enhancing mods use.

The Elder Souls mods also bring the sweep attacks, allowing players to sweep multiple enemies off their feet with just one attack, much like the Ultra Greatsword attacks in Dark Souls.

Installing these mods is a fairly simple and straightforward process. To get these mods up and working on your system, follow these steps:

• Go to the Nexus Mods website.
• Search for the mod (in this case, the ones by Miken1ke and Distar66) using the search bar at the top of Nexus Mods' web page.
• Download the mod file.
• Drag and drop the file into the game's installation directory. You have now successfully installed the Dark Souls animation mods for Skyrim.
• Launch the game and enjoy the more nuanced and fun combat animations.

Bethesda Softworks' games, like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the Fallout series, are immortal video games. Part of the reason for their ever-lasting popularity is the mod support and the very passionate modding community.

The studio's upcoming role-playing title, Starfield, is inching ever closer. It remains to be seen if it receives similar modding support as previous projects.