After not playing Skyrim for years, I’m back at it and having a great time, and it is all because of Skyrim VR. I bought Skyrim VR for my PSVR and think it is great fun (see previous comments about it)! After playing a good few hours of it, I realized that Skyrim VR is absolutely the best way to experience Skyrim, but it isn’t the best way to actually play Skyrim.
What the heck do I mean by that kind of crazy statement? Well, in Skyrim VR, the experience is top notch. Aiming and looking are perfect, and the visceral feeling of being there is completely engrossing. But, you’re playing with a scuba mask on your face, which gets uncomfortable after hours and hours. The scuba mask, err… VR headset, also interferes with some important things while playing Skyrim: you can’t see the wiki or game guide to help with the puzzles or some of the less-clear quests and choices. Having to remove the VR headset to check the wiki on an iPad is annoying (this could be solved by adding a context-sensitive lookup/hint capability in-game – and I know I can open a browser within the VR environment, but that’s unwieldy). The other thing the VR headset eliminates is snacking and drinking, which may be good for us slightly overweight gamers, but is annoying nonetheless.
So my thorough enjoyment of the first few hours of Skyrim VR prompted me to get Skyrim Special Edition working on my PC. I had bought all the DLCs for the original Skyrim, but stopped playing before they came out (I finished the main campaign, though). Then, because I bought it on Steam, I got Skyrim SE for free (which is still one of the coolest moves in the game industry, so thanks Bethesda and Valve). Now I’ve got my character storming through the Dawnguard quest line after finishing the Dragonborn DLC and having a great time. Since I’m on the PC, I’m using a few mods to: (1) keep my follower alive – I’m sick of having to reload after my follower gets killed, and (2) let me carry more weight, since I’m a loot-hound and want pick up anything worthwhile and sell it. Skyrim VR rekindled my love for Skyrim!
If you have a VR headset, I strongly recommend Skyrim VR – it is amazing. And Skyrim in general is such a lot of fun, so I’m glad I came back to it.