I can’t express how happy and excited I am for this mod’s release…even if it is two full years away. Skyrim mod Skyblivion has made massive news as it has unveiled a 2025 release date in its latest trailer, making it the first major Skyrim mod to do so.
This is kind of a niche topic, so bear with me if you aren’t really interested or into the vast, funny, intriguing, and rather complex world of modding for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
As one of my favorite games of all-time, coming back to play another playthrough of Skyrim is like seeing an old friend after a 3–6-month layoff. Unfortunately, given that Skyrim is 11 years old, and I must have played through the game at least 10 times, the main story, DLCs, and many, many side quests can get a little repetitive. Especially the fetch quests.
Yet, with the many follower, quest, land/world space, player home, environmental, gameplay, weapon, armor, animation, etc. mods, that problem is rendered void as the mods give me hundreds of hours of fresh, unique, and innovative experiences my Dragonborn characters can have in Skyrim.
Quest and New Location mods like The Forgotten City (which is actually a standalone game now given how successful and popular it was as a mod), Legacy of The Dragonborn, Vigilant, Moon and Star, Helgen Reborn, Beyond Skyrim: Bruma, and Falskaar can easily add hundreds of hours to a playthrough (which is already built upon hundreds of hours from the vanilla game), while follower mods like Sofia, Inigo, Serena Dialogue Add-On, and Lucien can spice up every adventure with new facts, lines, and comments about the places you explore.
However, unlike all of these mods, Skyblivion stands to change the very fabric of how one views The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim…literally.
As the name suggests, Skyblivion is an overhaul mod for Skyrim that aims to transform the game into the world of The Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion using the Skyrim engine. So, in other words, once the mod is released and fully patched and bug tested, you can play the main story and hundreds of side quests that are featured in 3rd Era Cyrodiil during the Oblivion Crisis that the fourth Elder Scrolls game showcases in Skyrim.
It is truly a revolutionary mod that now has a realistic, hardline release date of 2025. And that’s what I’m so excited about.
Obviously, there have already been major land overhaul mods that the modding community has released, such as Beyond Skyrim: Bruma, Beyond Reach (the two are not affiliated), Falskaar, Vigilant, etc., and there have even been game-level overhauls of Skyrim, such as Enderal, but there has never been a project that has taken the events, characters, setting, etc. of a past, graphical and mechanical outdated Elder Scrolls game (yes, I know about Skywind but it isn’t nearly as advanced) and “put them” into Skyrim.
And neither has there been such a concrete release date.
That’s what has gotten me most excited about this project as there is a tangible deadline to expect its release. I get that these modders are working solely out of their love for The Elder Scrolls and video game development, but the major thing that turns me (and I’m sure many others) away from Skyrim and towards new games it is the fact that these mods have no deadline or date to expect its completion.
Like many others, I get extremely excited and invested in these modding projects, but soon fall into cynicism when literal years go by without any major deadline updates other than the usual “it’s done when it’s done” response.
Again, I respect the fact that the modders don’t want to establish unrealistic expectations with deadlines and that they are working for free, but they must also see how frustration these responses can be when years pass between major updates.
Not to pick on a project, but the last (and only) Beyond Skyrim project to release was Beyond Skyrim: Bruma in 2016. Yes, Beyond Skyrim: Bruma came out in 2016!
That mod is going to be seven years old this summer and there hasn’t been any other releases or even a deadline given for anyone of the 7-8 Beyond Skyrim projects (Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil, Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind + Teaser Provence, Beyond Skyrim: Illiac Bay + Teaser Province, Beyond Skyrim: Elsweyr +Teaser Project, Beyond Skyrim: Roscrea, Beyond Skyrim: Atmora, Beyond Skyrim: Valenwood, Beyond Skyrim: Argonia).
Anyway, I’m probably being too harsh on these teams as I know all of the modders are giving their sweat and tears to make these projects of even better quality than the base game Bethesda created. I’m just glad we’ll be able to play Skyblivion in the near future!
Images Source: Featured Image: (Rebelzize YouTube Channel/Bethesda Softworks) (The Elder Scrolls Skyblivion | Official Release Year Announcement Trailer – YouTube)
