Skyrim Modder Is Restoring the Game's Cut Content (2024)

A modder has created a series of mods that restores a huge amount of cut content to The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. The Skyrim mods bring back NPCs, housing items, objects, and areas that were, for whatever reason, removed from the base game before release.

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is one of the most heavily modded games around. The best Skyrim mods do everything from fixing some of the game's notorious bugs and technical faults to adding new quests, NPCs, items, and gameplay mechanics. Even without mods, the game remains a massive open-world RPG, with hundreds of hours of content keeping players engaged even years after its original release.

If the latest efforts of modder Unorthodogg are anything to go by, there could have been even more content in the base release of Skyrim. In July 2024, Unorthodogg released the first nine parts of their "Skyrim Re-Cut" mod series to Nexus Mods. With 13 planned installments in total, the mods restore many items, NPCs, and even locations that were removed by Bethesda during the game's development.

Skyrim Mod Series Restores Content Cut

Unorthodogg's mod series is organized by region, such as the areas of Skyrim's game world that contain Whiterun, Solitude, Morthal, Markarth, and more. The series is also mainly focused on restoring items, locations, NPCs, and structures that were determined to have been removed by Bethesda during development, rather than adding entirely new things. Quest lines and occurrences like a Skyrim mission involving Jarl Balgruuf that was cut from the game appear to be out of the mod series' scope for now.

The restoration significantly expands the scale and scope of the Skyrim base game, often adding structures and NPCs to areas of Skyrim that make the world feel more lived-in. For example, Nazeem, one of the least popular characters in Skyrim, originally did not have his own house, despite carrying the key to it and bragging constantly about his status. The mod restores the house, called Wintersand Manor, to Whiterun.

In an FAQ on the mod description page, Unorthodogg acknowledged that other "cut content" Skyrim mods exist that restore items removed from the game, including the aforementioned Wintersand Manor. However, they said that to their knowledge, no other cut content restoration quite matches the scale of the Skyrim Re-Cut project. Unorthodogg claims to have added "almost everything" they could find that wasn't broken outright or heavily reliant on a removed quest. That includes the cut town of Granite Hill, which connects Whiterun to the scenic Falkreath Hold. On that merit, the project's centralization of a large variety of content restorations is worth considering for the busy Skyrim player.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim is the fifth major game in the Elder Scrolls series. Considered one of the greatest games ever made, it has been released on several generations of consoles. Since its initial release over a decade ago, Skyrim has become one of the bestselling video games of all time.

Franchise

The Elder Scrolls

Platform(s)

PC , PlayStation 3 , PlayStation 4 , PlayStation 5 , Nintendo Switch , Xbox 360 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S

Released

November 11, 2011

Developer(s)

Bethesda Game Studios

Publisher(s)

Bethesda Softworks

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol

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