Skyrim Special Edition PC Comparison
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition released today for PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One. Any PC players of the 2011 release of the game who are also owners of the games's three DLC packs: Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn (or alternatively, the bundled Legendary Edition) will be able to download the remaster of the game for free. But is it worth checking out? We've taken a quick look for you.
Skyrim Graphic Options
The original release was no slouch for configuration options, though still with some limitations. MSAA, AF, and FXAA options are present, as well as sliders for various detail fade distances, shadow quality, texture filtering. The usual, stuff you'd expect.
The original release did also have an option for a separately downloaded High Resolution Texture Pack, which was treated like DLC when attached to the game.
Skyrim Special Edition Graphic Options
Special Edition has, expectedly, a few more knobs to turn compared to its 2011 counterpart. There is now support for borderless windowed mode as well as TAA antialiasing, ambient occlusion, godrays, and screen space reflections. However, there no longer seems to be any options for MSAA sampling or anisotropic filtering. FXAA and TAA are your only options (outside of using your graphics driver to force a specific type of AA).
Some notable omissions from the configuration tools include any sort of FOV slider or V-sync / Triple Buffering options. FOV can be adjusted by using the in game console by pressing ` and entering "FOV 90" or whatever number you like. V-sync can be disabled by going into SkyrimPrefs.ini, finding "iVSyncPresentInterval=1" and changing it to 0. While not tested, you could then likely use your gpu drivers to put any v-sync option in place of your preference.
Personally, I would have expected a 5 year update to such a big game to have kept many or all of these knobs in place.
Check out some new screenshots in the gallery below.
