Highlights
- Skyrim’s lore-accurate cities are significantly larger than their in-game counterparts, and artist Leo Torres has recreated Winterhold in Unreal Engine 5 with 16 times more detail.
- The lore-accurate Winterhold looks like a cozy winter village, with snow-covered roofs and bright torches, and features the imposing College of Winterhold.
- While fans may hope for lore-accurate cities in future Elder Scrolls games, such a massive undertaking is unlikely to happen.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim fan Leo Torres has created a lore-accurate version of Winterhold using Unreal Engine 5. One of the reasons why Skyrim is still so popular to this day is because of its massive, engrossing open world, filled with interesting locations and cities for players to visit and explore. But in order to create a more streamlined and convenient gaming experience, Skyrim‘s cities aren’t their true scale in the game.
Lore-accurate Skyrim cities are significantly larger than their game counterparts. Having these cities stay true to their lore-accurate sizes would potentially create problems from a gameplay perspective, but it is still interesting to see what the cities would look like if they were true to scale. To that end, artist Leo Torres has been using Unreal Engine 5 to show fans what famous Skyrim cities would look like if they were lore-accurate, with previous projects showcasing Whiterun, Dawnstar, and Solitude.
Torres’ latest project sees the snowy city of Winterhold remade with “sixteen times” the detail found in the game. The recreation is absolutely stunning, especially at night. It looks like a huge, cozy winter village, with snow-covered roofs and bright torches lighting each house. Fans can also get a look at the imposing College of Winterhold, with the massive structure looming over the village just like it does in the game.
It’s worth pointing out that this is a cinematic and not a playable mod. It would be interesting to see lore-accurate Skyrim cities that players could actually explore, but fans shouldn’t hold their breath. Such an undertaking would be truly massive, but perhaps the upcoming Elder Scrolls 6 will have lore-accurate cities, or at least, cities that are larger and more detailed than the ones found in Skyrim.
As it stands, very little is known about The Elder Scrolls 6 beyond its logo. Bethesda announced the game at E3 2018 and updates have been slow since then. Official court statements suggest that The Elder Scrolls 6 release date will be 2026 at the earliest, and so it will likely be years before fans learn anything substantial about the game.
Franchise fans have a long wait ahead of them when it comes to The Elder Scrolls 6, but there is some hope that a new Elder Scrolls release will happen between now and then. While Bethesda is busying updating Starfield and working on DLC for its open world sci-fi RPG, leaks have suggested that another studio is working on an Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remaster. Whether there’s any truth to those leaks remains to be seen, but hopefully fans get some kind of Elder Scrolls release while they wait for ES6.
Skyrim
- Franchise
- The Elder Scrolls
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, PS4, PS5, Switch
- Released
- November 11, 2011
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda