Older 'Skyrim' mods will work with 'Special Edition,' but there's a catch
Good news, Skyrim fans. Bethesda's upcoming "Special Edition" remaster of the 2011 Elder Scrolls game will support the earlier version's mods with only minimal hassle.
It's mostly a question of the import process changing. That's because the 2016 Skyrim is an entirely new game rather than an update to the old one.
"There will be a new Creation Kit" -- that's what Bethesda calls its mod tools -- "that you'll download from Bethesda," game director Todd Howard told Mashable.
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"So you'll download new Creation Kit and then upload your mods," he continued. "Even if you've already created them, you use this Creation Kit to upload them to Bethesda.net."
The key here is Bethesda.net, since the publisher's game mods now live there. Prior to that, Valve's Steam Workshop was the most centralized home for Bethesda mods.
Workshop launched just a few months after Skyrim and was designed to give PC game developers an easy method of letting users add mods to their games. You'd go into an App Store-like interface, find the mod(s) you liked and add with a click.
"So they can still have all the other Skyrim stuff that works with Steam Workshop, and they can have the new one," Howard said.
"For our PC audience that's supported us, we want to make that path easy."
Similarly, mods in the remastered version of the game will work the same as they do on consoles, which in turn will mirror the mod interface in Fallout 4.
"The majority of PC users still don't use mods," Howard said. "Having that built into the game just on PC is, we think, a big win for bringing that to everybody playing the game."
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Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
