It’s also very clearly wrong, with something uncanny about the whole scene lurking just below the surface. It’s idyllic, pushing the graphics of both the base game and the included ENBoost and graphical mods to the max.

The opening scene is a gorgeous, sun-baked vista of a lush garden near sunset.

Skyrim: New VegasĮnderal takes absolutely no time in laying its cards on the table for you. This is something special, and the SureAI team deserves the attention and spotlight. In fact, it’s comprehensive enough to have its own mods also! Go there now, pick it up, and see for yourself. It’s comprehensive enough to have its own standalone Steam page and installer, with many Skyrim mods that are considered “mandatory” baked into it already. In the interim, I urge you to go and check out Enderal: Forgotten Stories at your earliest convenience if any of this has sounded slightly appealing to you. Having finished it recently, I now find myself thinking of Enderal not as just a Skyrim mod, nor even its own standalone game and RPG. It easily transcends the boundaries of Skyrim, overcoming many of the gameplay issues and lacking elements of its source material. That story, world, the characters contained within, and the full span of Enderal’s adventure? Those are so fantastically realized that it feels disingenuous to call Enderal a mere mod.

There’s less reliance on scaling enemies, and more on not reaching into areas beyond your means, as the story will nudge you there when you’re ready. It is less the freeform “do whatever you want” simulator that Skyrim quickly becomes Enderal is instead a focused, story-driven RPG with a splash of open-world content that better utilizes the space. Skyrim’s general DNA is still inevitably present in movement and systems, but the way it works is wholly redone. This mod completely replaces the landmass and setting of Skyrim with an original one, and overhauls most of the gameplay systems as well. It’s the definitive and complete version of the tale, and is worth playing again if you’ve only dabbled in the original previously. The updated Forgotten Stories expansion from 2019 saw a number of additions to quests and content, as well as a standalone release on Steam. Developed by a dedicated team of German modders by the name of SureAI, the first version of Enderal was released back in 2016. Enderal: Forgotten Stories is a total conversion mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Better with mods arcane scroll