Fans can radically change the scope of some of their favorite games by creating mods. For instance, recently a player added firearms into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, giving Geralt of Rivia a new way to fight. Something similarly radical was created for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim with a mod that adds 62 fully-animated wings and allows players to fly.
The "Animated Wings Ultimate" mod for Skyrim was uploaded to Nexus Mods on June 20, compiling a number of different wing collections designed after feathered animals, dragons, and fairies for use with a built-in flying mod that has customizable controls. The wings also have configurable effects ranging from "being purely aesthetic to being delightfully overpowered," and can be bestowed upon NPCs using a new "Endowment of Wings" spell.
Players can acquire wings by crafting a new "Rite of Wings" spell tome, which opens up a menu that lists every wing with their required items — though these requirements can be disabled, according to the Nexus Mods post. Skyrim's popularity and numerous platform ports since it released in 2011 has made it a very popular modding title, with both ways of changing how the game can be played and the addition of enemies like Dungeons and Dragons' Gelatinous Cube.
Between these possible gameplay adjustments and aesthetic mods updating or replacing textures, Skyrim can become an entirely different game than Bethesda intended. That helps give the nearly-decade old game its longevity with fans, as one player uploaded a video this month showing off a version of Skyrim with more than 300 active mods.
Despite this continuing popularity, fans of the long-running fantasy franchise are still waiting to hear more about the upcoming Elder Scrolls 6, announced with a teaser in 2018. However, Bethesda's Pete Hines recently told fans it will be years before any news comes out for Elder Scrolls 6, not until after the release of Starfield at least.
Luckily, the Internet is stuffed to the brim with mods players can use to squeeze as much life out of Skyrim as possible, not the least of which being this all-encompassing wings collection. Whenever development really gets going on the next Elder Scrolls game, there are a lot of lessons Bethesda can take from Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available now on PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
Source: Nexus Mods