Tom's Hardware Steam Giveaway: 'Skyrim: Special Edition'

[Guest]

Our latest Steam Giveaway for "Skyrim: Special Edition" is almost over. Be sure to head to our PC Gaming forum and enter the raffle to win one of 3 copies of the updated Bethesda classic.

Tom's Hardware Steam Giveaway: 'Skyrim: Special Edition' : Read more

 

[Jeff Fx]

Anyone who bought the original and all the DLC already has the special edition. It looks much better than the original release, but not as good as the original + 3rd party mods.

 

[Math Geek]

wouldn't mind having it to see what all the hubbub has been about all these years. never played it myself but would for free 😀

 

[RomeoReject]

My younger brother doesn't have this yet though, could be nice for him!

 

[alextheblue]

Anyone who bought the original and all the DLC already has the special edition. It looks much better than the original release, but not as good as the original + 3rd party mods.

I was missing one DLC and I didn't catch wind of the freebie option for DLC owners until it was too late.

Anyway, while what you say is true, I believe there is more potential in Skyrim SE - mods are free to consume a LOT more RAM for one thing. You can still mod away so if you want super realistic textures, I'm sure they're out there. It's built around DX11 instead of (I believe) DX9 in Skyrim. It also comes stock with some pretty-graphics extras like volumetric lighting (godrays), SSAO, lots of other shadow improvements like smoother shadows + shadow movement, temporal AA, rain occlusion, flowing water shaders, dynamic DoF, reduced pop-in when moving fast, and probably other tweaks. Some of that could be added with mods, but not all of it, and it's nice to have it baked in. It does require a beefy system to turn crank godrays up though.