Skyrim gets astounding Unreal Engine 5 graphics overhaul

If you’re a Bethesda fan, you may want to temporarily step away from Starfield and your Constellation endeavors in order to check out this incredible Skyrim Unreal Engine 5 graphics overhaul.

For many, Skyrim remains the jewel in Bethesda’s crown - although I’m confident that with some tweaks to navigation, Starfield will undergo a renaissance and claim the top spot. Despite releasing all the way back in 2011, Skyrim continues to be a firm favourite of many and it’s easy to see why. Its lore and well designed world is a delight to spend time in. In fact, it’s so easy to get lost in Skyrim that you may temporarily forget just how much we’ve moved on graphically since the game was released. One creator has imagined what it would look like though if Skyrim was indeed made today.

Speaking of Starfield, take a look at some of our favourite wins and fails below.

As reported by DSOGaming, YouTube creator Leo Torres has imagined what Skyrim would look like if it was made in Unreal Engine 5 - and rather unsurprisingly, the results are stunning. Describing the project, Leo wrote, “Part of an ongoing project to visualise a more realistic and lore accurate scale to Tamriel’s cities – so here’s Solitude, capital of Skyrim – now with sixteen times the detail.” As you may have guessed, this is just one part of Leo’s project with other videos focusing on Whiterun and Dawnstar.

He continued, “I tried to keep to the overall mood and feeling of the original Solitude. [...] From a playability standpoint, I’m not sure that you’d actually want something this big – it’s a lot of work for the artists and you run the risk of making a big, empty world with not much to do. But for lore visualisations like this – not really an issue. Rendered out in Unreal Engine 5.3.1 on a 3060ti. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled in Blender, textured in Mixer. Nanite was used for all models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections.” Take a look at the video below.

Plenty were impressed with the creation. “This is your best work by far,” read one comment, while another said, “Truly amazing. We can only hope to replay Skyrim on this scale one day.” We can’t wait to see the project continue to grow.