Skyrim is ten years old this November and, to celebrate, Bethesda is launching yet another version of its much-loved fantasy RPG - appropriately titled the Anniversary Edition - on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. Oh, and fishing's coming too.

Announced during QuakeCon's Skyrim panel, the Anniversary Edition arrives on 11th November - exactly ten years after the launch of the original version - and bundles together 2016's Skyrim Special Edition and a healthy chunk of additional content.

Specifically, it'll feature over 500 Creation Club elements - Creation Club being Bethesda's curated pool of officially sanctioned mods, which would usually need to be purchased with credits - including quests, dungeons, bosses, weapons, and spells.

Read more

One of the most enduring myths about Skyrim is it contains treasure foxes.

Ever since Bethesda's open-world fantasy game came out in 2011, players have wondered whether the foxes lead players to treasure.

The myth of the treasure fox pops up online every now and then, with players debating whether it's true or false.

Read more

Making games, we are often reminded, is hard, with development frequently being derailed by the most preposterously unpredictable things. Behold, for instance, the newly revealed story of Skyrim's iconic cart ride, and how it was, for a time before release, routinely thwarted by a particularly stubborn bee.

The full tale was recently recounted on Twitter by 14-year Bethesda veteran - and now solo indie developer - Nate Purkeypile, who served as senior world and lighting artist during the creation of Skyrim. "That intro is famous now," Purkeypile wrote, "but back then, it was just that one thing that we had to keep working and working on forever."

According to Purkeypile, the cart ride was particularly prone to mishaps during development because its bumps and bounces toward Helgen were physically simulated ("Why you ask?," he adds, "Good question.") - meaning environmental objects carelessly strewn about the place had a tendency to make the vehicle behave unpredictably, sometimes causing it to fly off the road. As the developer puts it, "The cart had a path it wanted to follow, but that doesn't mean it was a path it COULD follow."

Read more

Back in January, we got a pretty extensive look at the remastered environments and quests being made for Skyblivion - a mod project seeking to remake Oblivion in the Skyrim engine. The team behind this ambitious project has continued making progress, and the latest mod development video focuses on some of the stunning landscapes that are now nearing completion.

According to the new video, the majority of Skyblivion's map is now in the final stages of development, and the work shown so far is seriously impressive. The video discusses how areas such as the forest surrounding the Orange Road have been adapted and improved for the remake. The team decided to make the forest "more lush and detailed than its original counterpart" and make it larger to give it a more prominent role in the game, citing the area's ambience and popularity with players as the reason for giving it more attention.

Blackwood, meanwhile, has been given more fortifications and border gates to add points of interest. The new boggy marsh at the centre of Blackwood, called Blackmarch, looks suitably horrifying and spooky - promising players a subregion full of ruins and decay. The city of Leyawiin has been redesigned from the ground up "referencing concept art from Oblivion that was likely discarded owing to technical and time limitations", with the city divided into three distinct sections. Boats are now able to sail right through the city, allowing them to go further inland.

Read more

If you ever felt like Skyrim's third-person gameplay could do with an update to give it a more modern action-RPG feel, this could be just the ticket.

"True Directional Movement - Modernised Third Person Gameplay" is a mod by Ershin for Skyrim: Special Edition on PC that, well, does exactly what it says on the tin. The mod overhauls Skyrim's third-person gameplay to allow you to move and attack from any direction, while there's also a target lock component to help you keep track of enemies. This target lock comes with an animated health bar widget above enemies, with bosses getting their own (much larger) health bars.

Here's a demonstration of what all this looks like in practice:

Read more

A Skyrim player has tried to kill everyone in the game.

"It is finished," redditor jaeinskyrim declared (thanks, PCGamesN). "2201 people/NPCs, plus over 2400 more various creatures. All gone. I am alone in Skyrim."

It was a monumental task. Bethesda's open-world fantasy adventure is huge and packed with NPCs - people, animals, creatures, undead, daedra, automatons... they all fell by the wayside amid jaeinskyrim's murderous rampage. They enlisted the help of a long list of mods, including Kill 'em All and Death Awaits Us All, which let you circumvent what are called "essential" NPCs, but generic characters may respawn.

Read more

Shirley Curry, better known as the Skyrim Grandma, is now available as a follower in Skyrim via a mod.

Curry is available as a follower via the Shirley - A Skyrim Follower mod, which is now available to download from Nexus Mods for Skyrim Special Edition and Skyrim VR, and from Bethesda.net for PC and Xbox.

"She'll join you on your adventures, but don't expect her to simply carry your burdens!" reads the official blurb.

Read more

Enderal fans have converted the celebrated mod for Skyrim Special Edition. It's live now on NexusMods.

A standalone Steam release is set for March 2021.

Enderal: Forgotten Stories is perhaps the best Skyrim total conversion mod around (check out our Enderal impressions from 2016 here). It's set in its own world with its own landscape, lore and story, with overhauled skill systems and mechanics, and "a dark, psychological storyline with believable characters". Enderal proved so popular it got a Steam page and a DLC expansion pack of its own. The trailer is below:

Read more

It's Friday, and that means it's time for another Eurogamer next-gen news cast! In the video below, Eurogamer news editor Tom Phillips, reporter Emma Kent and me discuss the week's news, including the gameplay reveal of the promising Resident Evil: Village. Is its very tall lady a vampire? This is actually something we have thoughts about.

We're excited for Village, but we're not so pumped for multiplayer spin-off Re:Verse. Capcom's multiplayer Resident Evil offerings have been mixed at best, and we're not sure why Re:Verse, with its off-putting art style, even exists.

Elsewhere in next-gen news, PlayStation 5 scalpers are at it again - although GAME has played down the claims from some on social media who posted screenshots of scores of secured orders alongside a boast about making loads of money from them.

Read more