(Wow, I disappeared for a while, didn't I? That's okay, no one but me knows this blog exists anyway.)
(This has been updated 11/18915 for a lot of fixes and corrections. Thanks, non-existent people who hopefully don't know this blog exists yet!)
Skyrim came out in 2011. I built my computer long before that, although I've upgraded my graphics card just last year and made a few other minor updates. I'd like to think it's a pretty good computer: I can run Dragon Age: Inquisition on the highest settings with quite a few mods, and we know that game isn't optimized well. (I need a new core for Fallout 4, though.)
Skyrim can still make it choke, though.
Why? The main thing is, Skyrim just isn't optimized that well. I mean, it will at least use 4G (unless certain other games Bethseda released I could bitch about), but that's about the best you can say about it. There are memory leaks. There is script bloat (god, there is script bloat). There is the game just plain going "AH THIS IS TOO MUCH CRASHHHH" just (??) because you're using 200 mods and it hates you.
Why am I talking about this now?
Because we're at the MAKE THE GAME PRETTY section. And, honestly, in this section you sort of have a choice. Are you going to make the game the most gorgeous thing that's ever touched your computer's screen, or are you going to add five million script mods? Because you can rarely do both because SKYRIM CHOKES BECAUSE IT IS NOT OPTIMIZED.
I compromise to myself on this. I make my world look 'okay', a few things that are important to me look really 'nice' (I install pretty weather and pretty sky, because why not), and my character herself and her weapons and armor and clothes look bangin'... and then leave it like that. But I'm going to recommend some high quality graphic options I have used in the past, too, in case you're more of the 'I think Skyrim's gameplay is fine, but the graphics are fugly' (while I'm more like 'Graphics fine SAVE FOR THE FEET WHY THOSE FEET OMG THOSE FEET, must CHANGE GAMEPLAYYY').
Right. One of those cuts goes here, huh?
This is an extremely long post with a lot of detail. I should cut it up further, one day...
