The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim officially turns ten years old in a matter of hours. For some fans, that’s an unfortunate reminder they haven’t gotten a main-series Elder Scrolls game in precisely a decade. For others, however, it’s a great time to look back at ten years of Skyrim.
To encourage the latter, Bethesda Softworks released a new trailer for Skyrim Anniversary Edition, releasing tomorrow. Just shy of two minutes long, the video offered players a quick sample of what Skyrim has to offer after a decade of DLC and Creation Club content.
The Skyrim Anniversary Edition trailer starts by touting the game’s many accolades. This includes mentioning Skyrim’s 200+ Game of the Year awards and quoting praise from publications like Giant Bomb, Destructoid, and Push Square. The trailer then invites players to “relive the experience,” showing off the graphical improvements brought by a decade of technological progress.
The trailer puts particular focus on Skyrim’s Creation Club content. For those who haven’t jumped into any Bethesda games recently, these are Bethesda-approved paid mods available on both PC and consoles. They’ve added everything from new quests, dungeons, and bosses to pets and a mechanical dwarven horse. In addition, four popular Creations come bundled with the Skyrim Anniversary Edition, making it in some ways a very different game from when Skyrim was first released ten years ago tomorrow.
The first of the four pieces of Skyrim’s Creation Club content, Survival Mode, does what it sounds like, giving the player the option to experience Skyrim as a hardcore survival game. Players will have to battle hunger, thirst, and the elements in addition to dragons, draugr, and trolls. It’s inclusion almost might make someone wonder if Bethesda isn’t helping to steal back some of Valheim’s player base. Meanwhile, players can acquire items from the Rare Curios pack by purchasing them from Khajit caravans.
There’s also Anniversary Edition’s much-touted Fishing Creation and the sizable Saints & Seducers pack. The latter includes multiple quests, items, and summonable followers inspired by Oblivion’s phenomenally popular Shivering Isles DLC. Players will also be able to download and play all Creations from Skyrim’s Special Edition in Anniversary Edition. Skyrim Anniversary Edition also includes all DLC for the original game.
Today’s trailer does an excellent job of reiterating these points and reminding everyone why they liked Skyrim in the first place. The real question is if it’s enough to make players buy the game for the third time.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition releases on November 11 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.