Stylized Skyrim - Bleak Falls Barrow WORD WALL

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WEARYHUNT

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Skyrim was such an amazing thing to me when It came out back in 2011. The visuals back then were so stunning and realistic - something that, at the time, was very VERY revolutionary and sparked my imagination with its rich immersion. Ironically, as the years passed and the video game standard became that of glossy realism, Skyrim became more and more frustrating to me. What once felt immersive became the very thing that removed me from the game. Instead of fueling my imagination, Skyrim's sullen color scheme and gritty aesthetic left me feeling drained. After all, I wasn't sinking hours into Blizzard's World of Warcraft or Arkane's Dishonored to experience how similar they were to real life - I was there to experience the fantastical magics, the dramatic tensions, and the looks and feelings of a world totally alien from mine. Their visuals didn't NEED to liken themselves to my reality to draw me in - they were simply a natural extension of the game's world. 

Sure, the world of Skyrim is a world that suffers from messy conflicts. But it's also a fantastical and magical land where you can spray frost out of your hands, crawl through ancient burrows in search of treasure, and make deals with powerful mythical beings. Why not let it look that way? 

(This is a sneak-peak of a personal project of mine, in which I took EVERY single texture in skyrim and sent it through the wonderful Octagon Textures Batch Tool with a G'MIC filter over it, and tweaked some textures by hand if needed! Of course, Reshade helps out a little too - I used Comic, Technicolor 2, and HDR (fake) to give it a final touch.)

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