Skyrim lands immersive new feature on PC that I've waited 15 years for

Skyrim finally gets an immersive new feature that Bethesda never included, 15 years after its original release, thanks to this new PC mod.

No matter the entry in Bethesda’s ever-popular The Elder Scrolls series, each game is packed with so much lore that authors could write epic stories for generations to come, and Skyrim is no exception.

The game is filled with lore books and letters detailing the history of Tamriel, much of which can go unnoticed even by players who love exploring every corner of the map and delving into its crumbling tombs.

However, there’s one issue with Skyrim’s written lore: there’s so much to read. Some of us feel more immersed hearing these stories rather than reading them, and if that sounds like you, you’ll want to check out this new Skyrim mod.

Immersively Voiced Books of Skyrim is the Audible of Tamriel

‘Immersively Voiced Books of Skyrim’ is a mod that adds narrators to the novels and letters that you read in Skyrim. So, if you’ve wished for this feature to be included in Skyrim since it was first released in 2011, well, today is your lucky day.

The mod was created by AuctorLucan and is available now via Nexusmods. The NPC dialogue is AI-generated, but considering this is a huge one-person project, hiring voice actors would be costly and a massive undertaking with no financial return.

“In movies and television, when the protagonist reads a letter, we often hear the writer's voice speaking the words. IVBOS brings that same storytelling technique to Skyrim,” explains AuctorLucan. “When you find a letter, journal or note written by a Vanilla-voiced NPC, you can hear that character's voice, turning something you would normally read silently into another piece of the world's dialogue.

“This also elevates quest pacing, as you can close the Book UI in the game and still hear the written content while you set out towards the next quest objective. This means you get to enjoy whole in-game audiobooks while you explore, or when you fight the very enemies you are learning about.”

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Immersively Voiced Books of Skyrim available on consoles?

Sadly not. Like most mods, ‘Immersively Voiced Books of Skyrim’ is not available on any console versions of the game. While PlayStation has limited mod access for Skyrim via the Creation Club, the Nintendo Switch versions have no mod support whatsoever.

Xbox, on the other hand, has a greater depth of mod support compared to its console counterparts, but it pales in comparison to what’s available and possible on PC. Who knows, considering how long it’s been in development, maybe Bethesda could add this feature natively to The Elder Scrolls VI.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is out now on just about every platform imaginable. It’s also included with an Xbox Game Pass subscription, as well as PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium.