Making Skyrim Special Edition look next-gen with only 10 visual Mods

With the release of Skyrim Anniversary Edition, the game has successfully gone past the decade mark.

It is rare for a single-player RPG to still be relevant enough for a re-release ten years down the line even if you take into account Skyrim's caliber. Skyrim was a milestone success on release for various reasons, and for its own merits as a game you could play for years.

What really kept it alive through two entire generations of consoles, though, was its lively mod community. Thanks to their breakthroughs, a modded Skyrim can match the visual standards of 2022 releases.

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10 mods alone that can make Skyrim look like a 2022 game

1) SMIM (and High Poly Project)

The re-release's 64-bit engine comes with volumetric lighting and texture upscaling, but the models were left more or less untouched by Bethesda. SMIM, short for Static Mesh Improvement Mod, succeeds at revamping numerous notoriously low-poly objects in it.

Additionally, SMIM fixes gameplay issues by redoing the vertices and collision files of many objects - such as arrows failing to slip through openings that it should be able to.

High Poly Project is a newer, more modern complimentary mod that replaces objects like hay bales, wood piles, tents, sconces, stone walls, sacks and various other miscellanea with high-fidelity lifelike remodels. These two mods also added their own HD textures to the objects that they touch.

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2) Noble Skyrim HD2k + Skyrim 2020 Parallax

On the Nexus, one can find an array of texture replacements for all things from fort walls to garlic breads. But the inordinate busywork to replace them one by one is largely made unnecessary thanks to large-scale texture packs like Noble Skyrim. One of the community favorites in the category, Noble Skyrim covers roughly two-thirds of everything in the game within the span of its hand-made careful redisgn project.

Skyrim 2020 Parallax, Pfuscher's bespoke phtogrammetry texture replacers in 4K, is to be overwritten on top after one installs Noble Skyrim. With only a handful of exceptions, this will give everything within city walls and settlements a 2022 makeover.

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3) Tamrielic Textures - Landscapes + Tamrielic Grass

Pfuscher's Skyrim 2020 Parallax comes with its own set of terrain textures. If you are ooking for or a more specialized and consistent overhaul, Tamrielic Textures - Landscapes is among the newest options.

This mod covers not only all regions of exterior terrain, but all the roads, bridges, and DLCs, with integrated SMIM support. Tamrielic Grass, its companion mod, brings its set of custom groundcover, grass, and flora to match the new minty-fresh look of the sweeping meadows of northern Tamriel.

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4) Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants

The varied trees of the nine holds are an iconic component of their visual identity. But for our next-gen makeover, the right candidate to usurp the varied trees from The Reach to The Rift is Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants.

True to its name, this mod adds an unparalleled level of depth and detail to everything from the tallest of pines to the tiniest of thickets. The performance hit is noteworthy in the denser parts of Falkreath, but its quality far exceeds this cost.

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5) Cathedral Player and NPC Overhaul - HMB II

A careful compilation of individual mods from different authors, DrJacopo's Cathedral Player and NPC Overhaul is a convenient way to bring the NPC visuals up to modern standards. HMB in the title stands for Humans, Mer, and Beastfolk, as the mod covers all of the Elder Scrolls races with their unique skin tones and muscle definitions via normalmaps.

The NPC face geometries have also been altered, complete with tintmaps. While the previous iterations of the mod had compatibility hitches and required a facetint patch for mods that add new NPCs, it has since been reworked from scratch to eliminate these dependencies.

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6) Cathedral - Armory

In the same vein as the last mod, this one compiles quality texture and mesh replacement from around the Nexus community to make a one-in-all package for all things equippable. This alone covers all clothing, jewelry, weapons and armor classes, as well as unique Daedric artifacts included in both the base game and the DLCs.

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7) Cathedral Weathers

In 2022, Cathedral Weathers is considered to be the most modern, streamlined, and consistent weather overhaul. Based on Obsidian Weathers, which in its own right is an all-time favorite for the SSE modding scene, Cathedral Weathers brings its own clouds, volumetric lighting modifications, sunset variations, and rainstorm audio alongside bugfixes like JawZ's smooth sky meshes.

This is also one of the only two weather mods on the Nexus to carefully build around correct grass lighting, which can often make or break the look of a scenery. Obsidian's seasonal variations also make a return, with more focus on a more gradual but pronounced transition.

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8) Window Shadows RT + Tamriel Master Lights

Recreated from the HHaley's 'Shadows' mod for the original 2011 release of the game, Window Shadows uses simulated raytracing so that exterior lighting from windows shadow-casts light sources as it realistically should be. This is a unique selling point that other popular interior lighting solutions like ELFX or RLO do not possess. It also comes with its own remake of the interior lightbulb placements with logical tweaks and fixes to create a dramatic, consistent scene.

Tamriel Master Lights from WizKid34 does similar things to exterior light sources, adding yet more lights in cities and roads, and injecting another layer of modern aesthetic beauty in the process.

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9) Water for ENB

From mindflux, the author behind the essential Particle Patch for ENBs, Water for ENB is currently the favored suite for all things related to water. It has all the features of the other major water overhaul, Realistic Water 2, and even supersedes it in the way it interacts with ENB water displacement and caustics.

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10) Rudy ENB for Cathedral Weathers

All ENB enthusiasts swear by rudy102's mastery of his craft, and this probably shines best in Rudy's re-imagination of Cathedral Weathers. This is a heavyweight preset that draws all the glitz and modern effects of the current ENB binary, including wet terrain effects during rainy weather. Moreover, it works with Window Shadows RT, already included in this modlist, to give the interiors of Skyrim an unparalleled warmth, timber, and lighting effects almost the way it is found in modern engines like Unreal 5.