Skyrim gets massive 16GB mod that fully transforms the game

A hefty 16GB mod for Skyrim that, quite literally, completely transforms the game just dropped over on Nexus Mods - and given what it’s offering, the massive file size seems pretty justified.

For a little bit of further context, the base version of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition over on Steam is only 12GB. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of perspective on what you can expect.

Shout out in advance to Gabriel Machado Pureza on Game Rant for originally covering the mod’s release!

“Skyrim Every Single Texture Upscaled and Reworked” by mod author M Waqas was released on Nexus Mods yesterday, and it’s already a big hit with the community.

As you probably already guessed from its name, the mod is a complete rework of every (no exaggeration) texture in the game.

According to the mod author, this means that a whopping 31,652 textures in Skyrim have been altered. They explain that this was achieved by upscaling all of the standard versions of the textures and then tweaking the results in Photoshop afterwards.

So how long did this take? Probably about as long as you’d assume. M Waqas stated they “spent [a] whole year starting from last year mid October” working on it, but thankfully concluded that they are “so happy with the results”.

The commenters on the mod have reported that the end result is certainly worth the 16GB install size, which isn’t a surprise given how incredible some of the screenshots look.

“I can't believe the amount of work you pulled off for this” commented user DannyBoBanny8D.

“You can really tell you put a lot of time checking and adjusting because from all the examples, the original style is kept intact and there's no visible oddities. This is the new gold standard for base game vanilla textures I feel.”

Pretty high praise. Alright, fine, you’ve convinced me, I’ll give the mod a go.

I’ll let you know how I get on in three months time, once it’s finished downloading.