It's 2023 And I'm Modding Skyrim - Again

mmorpg.com:

I have a weird history with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. When it was first released back in 2011, I played aton of it back on the Xbox 360, getting super deep into the lore, the world, and much more. I wanted to consume everything I could about this game, even going so far as to find podcasts about the RPG to stay in the world while I was at my day job. 

One can argue that my games journalism career really kicked off thanks to Skyrim as I joined one of the podcasts I listened to, Elder Scrolls Off The Record, to write about the game, and eventually expanded into more general games coverage at their now-defunct network (I was simultaneously writing about The Lord of the Rings Online at a sister site, Middle-earth News, so it's hard to say exactly which game really helped me get my start, really).

I ended up buying a gaming PC for Skyrim — more specifically, Skyrim modding, though. The first time I saw a modded version of Bethesda's RPG, I realized I couldn't go back to the Xbox 360 version anymore, despite having over a hundred hours suck in it at the time. 

Specifically, I wanted those sweet ENB mods. The harsh edges and cold lighting of Skyrim always looked a little too harsh for me, and quite a few ENB mods made the world look more realistic and more alive.

For the next few years, I'm not sure I really played Skyrim; instead, I found most of my time tweaking settings, enabling mods, and diving into the recently released (at the time) Steam Workshop to improve the game I'd fallen in love with.

Yet, after a few years of not actually playing, instead just modding, I stopped the cycle, moving on to other titles as I became increasingly invested in the world of MMORPGs for work.

At least, until now, when just last week, I started