Hi everyone. As much as it embarrasses me, I've never actually bought the PC version of Skyrim. I've library shared my friends original version with some dlc but I changed pc a few years ago and never got round to buying it. I've seen posts from a few years back talking about the special edition. But is it actually worth the extra cash now? Is it worth the sale price when on? I might just better buying a key for the original? Also would a gtx970 be able to run it well?
I think legendary edition includes all the paid for DLC. Don't pay extra for the special edition enhancement, it was offered as a free download. You should be able to buy the lot for less than a tenner, go for it! Edit: A GTX970 is plenty at 1080p and useable at 1440p, based on my experience.
Can confirm GTX970 is fine for both the original and special edition at 1080p. Only real difference I noticed between the two versions was better stock textures in the SE. Both versions can be easily improved through mods though. You'll only have to start dropping settings if you start modding too heavily, specifically with mods that increase the GPU load, (More objects, static mesh improvements, LoD increases etc).
My personal take on this, having played both, is that SE is a pile of poo. They reduced the FOV, upgraded the textures, lighting and particle effects slightly, added god rays, and it somehow tanked performance relative to what mods could achieve on the vanilla game with similar or better visual improvements. It's also hugely bloated in size. It is part of a wider trend of crap, lazy remasters that smack of developers trying to jump on and monetize the 'overhaul' bandwagon modders have been pushing for years and turning out to be drastically incompetent at overhauls compared to the modders. It's the pinnacle of laziness and greed and in Bethesda's case that was cemented by their decision to remove vanilla Skyrim from the Steam store when they released SE. Think about that. That is a dev actively discontinuing availability of a beloved, award-winning and bestselling title, one which has already paid for itself a million times over in its first incarnation and in the form of countless lazy ports, one which has been endlessly sustained and extended in its lifecycle and appeal by volunteer modders - and the purpose of the discontinuation was to literally force customers to purchase the remastered version, a version which represents the publisher's best effort to make those modders redundant by duplicating and profiting from their overhaul efforts, a version which requires vastly more powerful hardware and takes up exponentially more disk space and which retains countless bugs and glitches, known and unfixed since the original release years ago. They removed the vanilla version to force all future customers to buy that instead, something they could only do at all because modders have kept the base game alive and playable despite developer indifference to its half-finished state. Many developers release remasters for a nominal or DLC-like price; SE was priced near enough like a full new release, despite just having what amounts to a few visual tweaks and despite not incorprating the countless well documented bugfixes carried out by the modding community over the years. They did give it to people who own the existing game, in fairness, but I think that was just to pad out the reviews with play stats and positive feedback. They could have let it stand on the Steam store as a separate product alongside vanilla, but they didn't - either because they didn't trust it to win the popularity contest, or because they wanted to artificially inflate its sales figures. At base, it was a spite move, an attempt to cash in on all the ongoing high player count Skyrim has, something Todd has openly stated he resents not being able to monetize. Either way, it's grotesque, and was one of the final nails in the Bethesda coffin for me. I consider it morally grey to purchase SE at all (I got it for free as an existing Skyrim owner). That money doesn't go towards supporting the developers who made the game; doesn't reallt support many people at all, judging by the lack of effort put into SE, and really just pads their quarterlies. If I needed to repurchase it now I'd use a horrible dirty key selling site to buy the vanilla one if possible, or pirate the vanilla one if not. Yeah I know it's against forum rules to advocate piracy, that's why I'm not. Don't do this. It's just what I would do. Because screw Bethesda at this point, especially where Skyrim is concerned. They don't deserve to make another cent on it.
LE has a much more significant modding community. Go LE. You'll be amazed how good it can look with some choice mods, plenty of guides around.
LE has more mods, but I gather that the bigger mods that are in SE are much more stable. New mods, also, tend to be developed for SE. I recently did a LE playthrough with https://www.ultimateskyrim.com, which makes the game much more role-play-y. I'm keen to try an illusion assassin once the update to SE is completed (which is ongoing, but might not be ready for a fair few months yet).
SE is also 64bit over the LE original 32bit FWIW. By now most imcompatible mods between the two are available on SE as well now AFAIK. I'd go SE if you intend to add mods or not TBH. SE also includes the dlc like LE.
There are also a number of immersion-breaking bugs in LE - the one that springs to mind is that there is a small limit on the number of light sources that can be rendered at once, so complex modded interiors are prone to flickering. Also expanding on UltSky - it takes the game quite a long way away from the "do whatever you want whenever you want" philosophy of the modern Bethesda games - so you get a more thematically coherent experience (that is much harder, in places) at the cost of it being a narrower experience for each character you play as. For example, your thief isn't going to be able to whip out some sick destruction spells. For me, Skyrim is a beautiful world that you can really get lost in, so this kind of mod really plays in to what I am after because it helps this immersion. This kind of experience of escape is something I have really enjoyed a lot more during these covid times (for obvious reasons), and I've found the more freeform play of e.g. Skyrim much preferable to more guided experiences like RDR2 (although I have many other issues with that game as well).
