The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Everyone should know what Skyrim is by now, it is ... was ... a decent enough RPG that managed to inspire a gigantic following giving it fame and glory to a level far beyond what it actually deserved, but it's still a good enough game. It amassed a ludicrously enormous community of selfless, dedicated modders who pumped out vast amounts of game modifications many of which were of superb quality. Devoted Skyrim enthusiasts embraced hard learning curves, mastery of many third-party utilities and managers, all so they could create wonderfully modded installations. They would invest hundreds of hours into this hobby. Unfortunately Bethesda was disinclined to leave modding enthusiasts to simply enjoy their hobby, but instead worked to mandate frequent updates and new releases which would break all that hard work. Over and over and over again. Pushing their alternative "Creation Club" in hopes of monetizing mods. They are still doing it now, even though the game is 12 years old. I don't think they'll ever stop. Currently the GOG version can only accept Creation Club content and minimal modding that doesn't require plugins. Whatever little attention remains in the modding community focuses on the Steam version. If you want to mod, don't buy it here.

It is Skyrim on GOG. Skyrim on GOG! :D Now we need Fallout 4.

You can totally skip on this content. It just adds the notorious Creation Club Content to Skyrim. The CreationClub was introduced by Bethesda to market mod items or quest mods done by Bethesda themselves (seldom) or approved external creators (usually) for money that are usually available for free through Nexus Mods anyways. Plus it often breaks your modlist and messes up your mods when you already run a modded version of Skyrim SE. And the items included with this pack? Totally not worth it. You can either get them for free and if not, you don't need them anyways. Everything you want is done by fans for free. So you really don't need this money extortion store to access the content that is worth it. Get the base game that includes all AddOns already, get the mods you like. Have fun.

Finally a DRM free play any time I want. Played the original on Steam and put too many hours to count. Looks like its time after all these years to return to the game that made me laugh non stop at the bugs and yet the fun I was having playing it.

Okay so most modern gamers have played Skyrim in some form or another. This is Skyrim SE (Special Edition) which includes a lot of bugfixes and texture replacement over the original version. There's the Anniversary edition which includes Creation Club content, and the SE, which is included in both versions. So if you're wondering, SID, can Skyrim be modded in the GOG version? What good is it if I can't mod it? Simple: Yes it can, but as of this review, outside of a handful of mods you can brute into working, you *must use Vortex from Nexusmods* to get mods to work properly. The main issue is that the GOG build, which is a separate, unique build from Skyrim available elsewhere, saves its files in a location that is different from its competitor's savefile location. Why is this important? A lot of mods are based around have a static file location for the game and its libraries. Not a huge deal with Vortex because I believe as long as it saves to the same hard drive you have Skyrim installed to, you're good, but a lot of the mods are having to be updated to work with this build. Doesn't mean they'll never work, just means a lot of them are being updated as you read this. Unless you're a time traveler from the year 2024, in which case GOG should have already released its mod solution it talked about in the announcement thread. Just get it, on sale if you prefer, and hopefully we'll see more love from Microsoft and Bethesda.