Recently, an enthusiast showcased an Unreal Engine 5 rendering overhaul project for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, testing compatibility with a version featuring over 1,500 installed mods. This project does not migrate the entire game to Unreal Engine 5 and remains an early technical demonstration.
This approach retains Bethesda's original Creation Engine to handle game logic, user interface, NPC behavior, and scripting, while Unreal Engine 5 takes care of geometry rendering, shadows, and global illumination, with Lumen and Nanite handling lighting and geometry respectively. The project also plans to natively integrate DLSS and frame generation.
The author stated that maintaining the existing mod ecosystem is a key goal of the project. The test version had mods like Requiem, Frostfall, and SunHelm installed, and the MCM menus, dialogues, and quests shown in the demo still functioned because such mods' system scripts typically do not directly interfere with rendering.
According to the author, texture packs, 3D models, and lighting mods are also compatible. However, third-party DLLs like ENB and Community Shaders that directly modify the original rendering pipeline are expected to no longer work.
The current demo still has several issues, including unsynchronized loading screens, pink missing textures briefly appearing on vegetation and rocks, abnormal water transparency, and flickering shadows. Performance also drops significantly when characters enter Riverwood. The author plans to fix shaders and stabilize the frame rate before considering a public release.