The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim town Riften looks incredible in Unreal Engine 5

Leo Torres is a creator who uses the power of Unreal Engine 5 to present the various cities and locations in The Elder Scrolls with a "realistic and lore-accurate scale." Their laster creation, Riften, is widely remembered as the home of the Thieves Guild in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, where autumnal colors meet stone buildings, housing, and a waterway that gives the city character.

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This isn't a mod or one of those videos that demonstrates what Skyrim might look like running on Unreal Engine 5; we have some incredible gameplay from versions of the game running with thousands of mods. Instead, this is a tech demo or interactive work of art meant to showcase what it might look like and feel like to walk around Riften at scale.

The results are undoubtedly impressive, capturing the tone and feel of exploring the location within Skyrim. Riften was always one of the most remarkable locations in the game due to how built-up and modern it felt compared to towns like Whiterun.

The video is divided into two parts: one showcasing a bird' s-eye view of Riften and one walking through the city's piers and waterways. As a tech demo, the presentation has no characters, just the city itself.

Okay, even though this isn't a mod or meant to be a playable game, the use of Unreal Engine 5 tech like Lumen and Nanite presents an impressive rendition of Tamriel. With the recent news that Microsft and the Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) would be switching to Unreal for future Halo games, it showcased some footage of what that might look like. This has sparked a broader conversation within the gaming community regarding Bethesda Game Studios and its use of the Creation Engine for Skyrim, Fallout, and Starfield.

The Creation Engine might be janky and a step or two behind the competition when it comes to visual fidelity, but it does things that no other game does - like being able to track the specific location of countless objects. A switch to Unreal Engine 5 for The Elder Scrolls 6 would be a significant change for the studio, but if the game looks like what we see here, then the long wait between Skyrim and what comes next would look like a massive leap forward.

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