Sometimes Skyrim mods can be so delightfully mundane that you can’t help but wonder at the meticulous craft that has gone into them. What we have here is a perfect example of just such a phenomenon, with a mod that shows incredible dedication to the craft of improving one of the best open-world games of all time. Fans clearly agree, as it’s already proven one of the most popular mods for the Bethesda RPG since its release.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Northern Roads mod, by creator JPSteel2, does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a glorious overhaul to the entire infrastructure of Skyrim, removing every single one of the vanilla road chunks in the game and replacing them with more diverse designs. Small villages and the wilderness will sport dusty dirt tracks, major cities get stone pathways, colder mountainous areas feature mucky, snowy trails, and so on. There’s also plenty of new features such as unique bridge designs, wooden totems, runestones and more.
Things get even more exciting in the various Holds, with an emphasis placed on the cultural divide between the eastern towns, which draw from Scandinavian and Viking inspiration, and the western ones, which take from Celtic and Slavic cultures. Creator JPSteel2 says that the mod began its life as a “simple bridge replacer” but they just… kept on going until it was “something much, much bigger.” The final project has such a dramatic effect, in fact, that a separate collection of patches has been compiled to ensure most of the popular Skyrim mods will run alongside it, due to the way it alters a lot of the landscape records.
You can check out the mod in action for yourself below:
Sometimes it’s the seemingly simplest mods that can be the most intricately designed and beautiful. If you think you’re ready for this stunning infrastructure in your own version of Skyrim, you can download Northern Roads at Nexus Mods. Also highly recommended is the aforementioned Northern Roads patch collection to resolve any potential compatibility issues, if you’re someone who’s already done a fair amount of modding.
Honestly, given the hell that is the Skyrim economy, we’re wondering who’s funding this complete infrastructural rebuild. Nevertheless, it’s certainly spectacular. If you’re looking for more additions, why not add an entire Skyrim mage city with over 100 NPCs to your world? Or perhaps some new Skyrim Daedric DLC in the Shivering Isles sounds more up your alley? If you fancy changing things up even more, we’ve got some of the best games like Skyrim, because there’s plenty out there beyond the world of The Elder Scrolls.