Since the release of Skyrim back in 2011, The Elder Scrolls franchise has gone from strength to strength. There are countless ports of Skyrim across various platforms, and The Elder Scrolls Online proves to be continually popular among fans of the series. Not only that, Bethesda confirmed The Elder Scrolls 6 will be the most ambitious in the series yet, using an entirely new engine and extensive procedural generation in its worldbuilding. Skyrim is still the standout game in the series in terms of popularity. It has been purchased over 30 million times, according to Bethesda.
These sales will only increase in the coming year, with the Skyrim Anniversary Edition rerelease launching later this year. That is just to comment on the official releases of The Elder Scrolls 5. One of the inarguable parts of Skyrim's success is its impassioned modding community. In this decade of modding, some amazing experiences have popped up. Be it the time-traveling shenanigans of The Forgotten City, the complete menu overhauls of SkyUI, or the magical remasters of mods like Apocalypse, the community has had some amazing ideas of how to transform the base game. Several of these completely alter the game and have a collective 1.8 billion downloads through Nexus Mods.
Modders do not limit themselves to adding new content to Skyrim, however. One of the earlier high-profile mods for The Elder Scrolls 5 was called Skyblivion. As the name might suggest, this mod blends two incredibly popular Elder Scrolls games, one of which is Oblivion. Rebelzize, the YouTube channel of the modding collective TESRenewal, hosts the announcement trailers for Skyblivion. This channel boasts over 14 million views at the time of writing, demonstrating just how many people really want to visit a spruced-up version of old Elder Scrolls worlds. Currently, Skyrim is the only game in the franchise with a more modern remaster, but Skyblivion proves that with enough ambition and effort, fans can create compelling remasters of their own.
A Time Before Skyrim: Morroblivion and TESRenewal
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Before Skyblivion, Skywind, and even Skyrim itself, there was Morroblivion. Game recreation mods are a time-honored tradition, and in 2008 the modding collective TESRenewal released its Morrowind remaster in the Oblivion base game. This project started in the Morroblivion fan forum and was also largely coordinated using this platform. The forum itself has very distinct sections for FAQs, including comments on the legality of fan mods like it.
Of course, the recreation was limited by Oblivion's engine, so the recreation was of a much smaller scale than the upcoming Skyblivion mod. Interestingly, the forum was also integral for every TESRenewal project since, including Skyblivion. The Morrowind remaster mod was fully feature-complete within two years of Oblivion's release. Modders are undeniably devoted to the games they love, even with projects like the Thomas the Tank Engine mod, and Morroblivion demonstrates that devotion brilliantly.
Skyblivion's Beginnings
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Skyblivion began life as a simple test: could Oblivion assets be loaded in Skyrim? In 2012, a modder called Zilav figured out a technique that would become essential to the future of both Skywind and Skyblivion. This tool of Zilav's converted Oblivion data into a format that Skyrim's Creation engine could load. In a sense, that was the first, essential step that the Skyblivion mod needed. This mod could only convert specific parts of the game, however, and Zilav was working on the project mostly alone. As is often the case with mods for big games, another contributor quickly got involved, volunteering to write extra code for the game. What was originally a standalone proof-of-concept tool is now known as version 0.1 of Skyblivion.
Although at the time, this was one of the most interesting Skyrim mods, it had a long way to go. Cyrodiil looked nothing like the original Oblivion, with large swathes of the map left entirely empty (due to badly converted or incompatible files). Besides that, there were constant crashes and bugs that would break the game. The two modders, Zilav and Monocleus, finally created a stable build in 2014. This was down to the help of many passionate volunteers. While this 2014 build was by no means feature-complete, it was in a state to be iterated upon by others.
The 2016 Skyblivion Trailer
Although there would be the occasional bit of good press for the project in the following years, the mod didn't properly take off until 2016. 2016 saw the release of the first official Skyblivion trailer. Of the 14 million YouTube views the project has accrued since 2011, 1.3 million came from this initial trailer. Skyblivion: Return to Cyrodiil was released on December 9, 2016, and led to a massive increase in interest.
With this newfound interest came a lot more volunteers. The development team of Skyblivion subsequently skyrocketed, which led to the pace of the project's creation increasing exponentially as well. This was really important for the mod, as pretty much every component was remade from scratch for Skyrim's engine. While this approach cemented Skyblivion as one of the best Skyrim mods out there, it also meant it needed a lot of labor power behind it.
Skyblivion Today
On August 11, 2021, the Skyblivion team dropped its third Development Diary, updating players on the progress so far. Skyblivion currently has over 50 members of its development team, which is why the updates have been so prolific recently. Since Skyrim's release 10 years ago, the 2016 Skyrim: Special Edition has come out too. Skyblivion will support both versions of the game. On August 15, a 3.5-hour gameplay demonstration of the game was released on the Rebelzize channel. In the video, which racked up 250,000 views in five days, the TESRenewal team showed off NPC interactions, quests, and exploration segments galore. However, for fans of the series who still want to contribute to the project, the opportunity is still available. Skyblivion's team currently wants volunteers to help finish up the project as soon as possible.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - Anniversary Edition is set to launch on November 11, 2021, on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Skyblivion is still in development.