Skyrim mod turns the game into a psychedelic nightmare to show you which textures are still vanilla

Modders have put an awful lot of effort into making sure Skyrim has continually evolved and expanded in the years since it was first released into the world.

Many have focused on changing the game by overhauling iconic quests, creating fresh mechanics or simply adding interesting details that can aid immersion to it, with a few even going as far as re-creating areas from previous Elder Scrolls games or giving players the ability to pretend they’re playing Dark Souls.

If you’re one of those players who loves to dive into mods of all stripes and regularly amasses a load order that’s more lengthy than Heimskr’s infamous sermon, a new mod, which aims to help you purge the last traces of vanilla Skyrim from your game, might be worth taking a look at.

Do you need help in your quest to completely rebuild Skyrim using mods?

The mod in question is called ‘Visualize Vanilla’, and is the work of prolific modder johnskyrim, whose previous work has given you the chance to shout apart skeletal foes and made NPCs clumsily drop their loose change every so often.

This time, at the request of fellow modder Lens, they’ve decided to make it easier than ever before to discern which textures within your version of Skyrim have been replaced by other mods.

As you can see in the video below, the mod accomplishes this by swapping all of the game’s vanilla textures out for a patchwork of multicoloured squares, making it incredibly easy to distinguish which areas/items you need to seek out if you’re hoping to completely transform the province into a modded paradise.

Naturally, if you aren’t currently playing with any other mods, the entire map will be turned into a psychedelically-tinged realm dominated by bright colours, which might be useful if you’re roleplaying as a tripping Skooma addict and don’t fancy inhaling a dose of pure, uncut Nazeem.

If you aren’t looking to replicate the trippy experience of certain characters in films like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, make sure you install the mod using a mod manager, as johnskyrim makes it pretty clear that manually extracting it into your game’s data folder will permanently remodel your version of Skyrim into “a bizzaro clown world”.

Regardless of whether you’re now putting together a massive revised mod list that’s sure to rid your game of any coloured patches, make sure to follow us for more updates on The Elder Scrolls 6 and the interesting world of Skyrim modding.

You can also check out our mods of the month for January 2023 or our new series where we ask an AI to answer some of the biggest ‘What-ifs’ in gaming, such as what would happen to the land of Skyrim if the Dragonborn was executed in Helgen, which you can watch below.