The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is celebrating its tenth anniversary on November 11, 2021, and with it comes another re-release to mark the occasion. Skyrim has been around in several forms for the past decade, appearing on nearly every major gaming platform. Skyrim is even playable on the Amazon Echo device. It's undeniably an iconic game for both Bethesda Softworks and the RPG genre as a whole, so it's unsurprising the company wants to celebrate its tenth year since release.
However, the upcoming re-release titled The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition has created a lot of confusion about what exactly is different from the most recent release, Skyrim Special Edition. With less than three weeks before release, many fans of Skyrim are curious if the Anniversary Edition is worth spending some extra money on for the eighth time. There are subtle but important differences between the Special and Anniversary Editions worth discussing as well as whether or not there will be upgrade paths for existing owners. As Skyrim is among the most successful games of all time, there are bound to be more people who currently own a copy than those who do not.
Skyrim Special Edition
In 2016, Bethesda released Skyrim Special Edition for the then-current consoles of PS4 and Xbox One. A year later, the company created and launched the very divisive Creation Club program in which Bethesda would hire and pay well-known modders to create small pieces of downloadable content alongside the developers. One of the reasons Skyrim has been so consistently popular for the past decade is because of the extensive and passionate modding community. The Creation Club caused a small panic that Bethesda would make its otherwise free mods cost money. However, nothing really changed afterward but it is notable that the console versions of Skyrim Special Edition now had access to both free and paid mods for the first time which gave console players a reason to purchase the Special Edition.
In the years following the release of Skyrim Special Edition, the Creation Club has received numerous pieces of DLC ranging from weapons and cosmetics to a survival mode and short questlines. The best thing about the Creation Club has is its stability. That is when viewing Creation Club content, the player knows exactly what they're getting and that it will work flawlessly within Skyrim Special Edition. This is compared to the sometimes spotty guesswork associated with less experienced modders which can cause crashes and break game mechanics if implemented incorrectly.
Skyrim Anniversary Edition
There are, essentially, two versions of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition based on what is currently known. There is the free upgrade path for owners of the aforementioned Skyrim Special Edition and there is the paid version which includes every piece of Creation Club content as well as new pieces. The price of the latter is currently unknown, however, Bethesda has quietly been raising the price of Skyrim Special Edition across its stores to $39.99. The Skyrim Anniversary Edition is essentially a large update to the Special Edition, not its own separate download like the Special Edition was for the original Skyrim. Somewhere around that $39.99 figure seems appropriate for the paid version as it is just higher than Alan Wake Remastered, for example.
Gamers that have Skyrim Special Edition on their next-gen console will receive an enhanced version of Skyrim Anniversary Edition that includes some next-gen visual and performance overhauls. Furthermore, the free upgrade path includes a small taster of some of the best Creation Club offerings. All Skyrim players will receive the fishing gameplay mechanic which is entirely new, as well as the Survival Mode and Saint and Seducers questline. These selections should do a good enough job of highlighting the possibilities of Creation Club mods and might entice players to fully upgrade to experience everything.
How Much is Skyrim's Creation Club Worth?
Given that the only difference between the free update and the paid version is the number of Creation Club mods players have access to, that is likely to be the deciding factor for whether or not gamers purchase it. In total, to purchase every piece of individual content for Skyrim Special Edition, players will need 15,850 credits. Due to the payment structure, that is always $120 and players will have roughly 700 credits left over that they can't spend on anything else. There are also several bundles available but due to the fleeting nature of these, it's generally advised to not purchase any, especially after owning one or more items in a bundle.
It should be pretty clear that Skyrim Anniversary Edition won't be sold for $120 even though it has that amount of content. This calculation also does not include the two dozen new pieces of Creation Club content so that figure would actually be even higher. Whether or not the Anniversary Edition upgrade is worth it depends on how much value is placed on all the Creation Club content and how much of it has been experienced already. It's unclear whether Bethesda will provide a discount from the Anniversary Edition if some of the Creation Club content has already been purchased. It would not be a very good situation if someone who spent $40 on the Creation Club would have to spend another $40 to get the remaining pieces of content where everyone else simply has to spend $40 once.
There is a lot of confusion surrounding the upcoming Skyrim 10th anniversary, and Bethesda's silence on key issues such as pricing does not help the situation. The Skyrim Anniversary Edition revolves around the Creation Club which was introduced nearly five years ago with the Special Edition. Previous owners of Skyrim Special Edition seem to be able to upgrade to a visually enhanced version of the Anniversary Edition, alongside three pieces of Creation Club content including the entirely new fishing mechanic. The quiet raising of Skyrim Special Edition to $39.99 seems to indicate that number will be the price of the upgrade to access all Creation Club content. As of writing, it's also unclear what the new pieces of content will be aside from fishing, but with less than three weeks until release, Bethesda is running out of time.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition is releasing November 11, 2021 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.