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Originally launching in 2011, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim needs no introduction. The quintessential open-world RPG from Bethesda Softworks has achieved something resembling legendary status at this point, selling over thirty million copies and being released and re-released on a plethora of devices. A large part of Skyrim's longevity and popularity has come from its extensive modding support which allows players to alter and add to the game as they see fit.
From UI changes to make the game’s HUD more legible to entirely new game worlds to explore, Skyrim’s mod availability is as vast as it is impressive. Skyrim's graphical mods are particularly numerous as well, allowing players to improve the game’s visuals. In contrast to these hyper-fidelity graphic mods, there are also alterations that decrease the title’s image quality, too.
A TikTok user who goes by the name joov_yt has added one of these graphical downgrade mods to get his Skyrim game resembling the classic MMORPG RuneScape. In the TikTok video, joov_yt uses the “Terrible Textures for Weak Computers” mod. Created by gutlessVader on popular Skyrim mod site Nexus Mods, this mod replaces every texture in the game with ridiculously small files, leaving the game looking like it has no textures at all. On top of that, Joov has also inserted classic RuneScape-style fonts into the video, mimicking chat behavior from that title for added nostalgia.
Developed by Jagex, RuneScape was first released in 2001 on PC. Being a browser-based title built with the Java programming language, RuneScape was never known for its visual prowess. As such, to see Skyrim downgraded to match the classic MMORPG is quite startling. The video has been a hit on joov_yt’s TikTok account, racking up over twenty thousand likes and over two hundred comments. A longer version of the video can also be found on joov_yt’s youtube channel, Joov.
Mod support is a fantastic way for developers to give power to players to express themselves within the game. Fans are able to make alterations to a game like Skyrim to better suit how they want it to play, and the game is given a longer lifespan simply by having more content for players to pick through.
While many titles have mod support, it is quite often difficult for the average user to add mods into their game and things can break if certain mods conflict with each other. To combat this, Bethesda Softworks added mod support directly into the Skyrim client to make it as easy as possible for players to have access to the numerous mods available for the title. As The Elder Scrolls 6 still has no release date set, fans will have to keep playing Skyrim and its many mods to get their fix for the series.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available on PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.