Improved lighting, textures, and shorter loading times but is it worth buying the Skyrim Special Edition for the PC? Apparently yes because while console players never got to experience the better graphics, the PC players have been through mods. But the mods don’t look as better than what we have now.
Skyrim Special Edition on the PC is totally worth it
This is a huge graphical improvement to the original. We find it frustrating that people can’t see it. MUCH better shadows, that also reaches further, much better draw distance, no more flickering mountains or foliage. Better looking trees and foliage, much more foliage, Ambient Occlusion. Better textures (even better than the PC hi-res texture pack). Much more consistent lighting, everything fits much better together. The new atmospheric fog, is not screen space, and is not just coming from a light source. We have not seen fog like this in any other game, it’s absolutely stunning how they did this. Rain and snow occlusion, so it won’t fall through surfaces. The water shader, and even the water flow has been improved a lot. And this is just on top of our head of what we have seen so far.
In its core it is still a 5-year-old game but when all the details come together it creates a fantastic visual experience. And don’t forget the much shorter loading times, also a big point for us. The extremely stable fps is also a plus. The only real place we feel it’s falling behind, is the lack of physically based rendering, to make the materials look more real. And there’s the fact it now runs on a 64-bit engine allowing more mods and less crashing, more enemies fighting etc. In this SE we’re seeing effects and improvements that we haven’t seen in any mod yet. And yes, for modding, the special edition is a fantastic starting point compared to old Skyrim.
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