Hey, guys, Sin speaking and welcome to a quick view over The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, The Special Edition.

So today marks another day with another "Special Edition" release, by which I mean, yet another way for companies to make money with little effort put into it.

Now to be fair, Bethesda offers the special edition for FREE, to anyone who already owned the game AND its 3 DLC's. Or the Legendary edition, which is the same thing. So if you were smart, you bought the legendary edition for around ten bucks and today you received your free copy of the Special Edition in your steam library.

Now if you haven't done that, then you'd have to pay a whopping 40 bucks today, to get the Special Edition.

Now the question, is it worth it? Short Answer, No, Long answer, probably not with a maybe attached to it.

But let me elaborate here a bit;
If you already own Skyrim AND liked it, chances are, that you also already owned the 3 DLC's or even the legendary edition and therefore the question to buy or not doesn't even comes up because you already got the Special Edition for free and all is fine. Not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

Now on the other hand, if you didn't own the game already or only the base game then chances are, that you aren't interested in the game or at least not anymore which is totally fine, considering the game came out in 2011! Now, I don't think of any case, where someone would pay 40 bucks for a game, that he never played in 5 years since its been out already or would pay 40 bucks for a game, that he already owns and paid money for it. Either case seems very unlikely to me, to be honest.

Also, it seems like the new hip thing to do. Already this year, we had the remaster of Divinity Original Sin 1 and then not long ago we had a "remaster" of sorts with Titan Quest Anniversary Edition, and I am most likely missing out several others.

Now I am not saying I don't like those remasters; I do, as long as I get them for free, if I already own the original (which applies to all three of my examples). But looking at it with the perspective of a new buyer, I just don't see the appeal of it?

I mean, if I wasn't interested in Skyrim for the last five years, why would I be now? Not to mention, that everything that they changed in the SE was already made possible with mods?

Ok, the game now uses a 64 bit executable, which is a great thing, no doubt, but people got Skyrim to run in High Definition and what not before and while it might have sometimes struggled, with more and more powerful PC's to take the workload, it gotten quite alright.

But again, the question isn't if people who already own the game would be positive about the Special Edition or not, because they wouldn't bring any new buys to the game, but if there would be a reason for new clients to purchase the game at a 40$ retail tag and why.

But now to the actual game itself. I played the first 60 minutes or so, and I cut off the intro scene from the clip, of course, because it simply is the most boring thing since the prison escape scene in Oblivion. I guess ...

So, of course, there isn't much action going on, since I am just running from Helgen to Winterfell and then to Whiterun. But it allows me to show the "new" visuals in the game.

Now to be fair, it looks mostly quite nice, but I haven't been playing Skyrim for a relatively long time so that I couldn't tell you the difference. Also, I think that with some mods, the game already looks like this or even better, but feel free to correct me on that one.

So, the game looks good, yes, it runs smooth, yes, so what else?

Now a big question is and will be, how compatible mods are and will be with this version. Now several mods have already been converted, but I didn't see a problem with smaller ones but how about the bigger Ones or better, those that maybe aren't supported anymore? Also, there is a Mod Shop in the game now, run by Bethesda, which seems quite odd and reminds me of the failed attempt of Steam to sell workshop mods for Skyrim a couple of years ago. Or maybe it was last year, again, a vague memory about all that.

Anyway, as anyone who ever played Skyrim knows, the game is rather bland and uninspiring, IF not paired with the proper mods, that improve the game by heaps. So I guess it is now a waiting game, to see if we will have the mods we want and even need, to be able to properly play the game the way it wasn't necessarily meant to be played.

That's all for now; I hope to see you back soon in another episode of:

"Sin plays ..."