Finally our prayers have been answered, Skyrim shall have a great story. Let’s face the truth, Skyrim – and Bethesda games in general – never delivered a good story line; all we were getting was mehs and half-assed stories, so it was up to the modders to fix this and they did.

Enderal is a total conversion mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which means that you are not going to adventure in Tamrial this time around; instead you will be set in a new world with its own new lore, history, races and creatures. You should forget about the snow and the cold nights as Enderal has different climate zones. This mod was made by SureAI – a German non-commercial game studio – and was the result of four and half years of hard work. They are the same guys that gave us Nehrim for Oblivion, which was awarded mod of the year for 2010 by the community. Enderal is not a new game by itself as it uses Skyrim engine and some of its content and mechanics, but it offers 30-120 hours of gameplay with a new experience for you.

The story takes place a few years after the events of Nehrim – don’t worry they summarize it at the beginning. The opening of Enderal is fantastically stunning and creepy, you have to experience it yourself. You are fleeing the war back in your homeland to Enderal, sneaking on-board a trading ship where the most unexpected thing happens – you get caught, thrown in the sea and you wake up in Enderal ready to begin a new adventure. Keep in mind that Enderal is a story driven game with a very well written main story and some of the side quests, so you better play it with the main story line in your sight.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as Skyrim – duh – with a few differences like the skills system, no recharging health bar, oh and no fast travel too. The mod is considered to be much harder than Skyrim especially since you have to feed and rest your character in order to keep it in shape, which is pretty good. You have to use your mind to survive and you should fear every encounter as every enemy is able to tear you apart.

From a technical aspect, this is a mod with new models and features that weren’t in the original game so there will be some bugs here and there. I have heard about bugs and crashes but I haven’t seen any so far and you shouldn’t worry about that as they are continuously updating it so it should be fine.

The world is beautifully designed and everything from the smallest village to the largest town has a huge amount of attention to detail. Do you get bored from Skyrim dungeons and undead? Well, this will not be the case here as every place you visit is unique which makes exploration extremely fun and rewarding with a lot of fascinating views that will attract your attention.

The soundtrack is solid and suitable to the different situations. Whenever you are fighting or exploring you will enjoy listening to it and admiring its beauty. It is also fully voice-acted with dozens of voice actors – in both English and German- to perform the different characters. The voice acting is very good and they make a lot of effort to make every character unique with its own motives and ambitions.

Enderal has two available versions of it: German (Deutsch) and English so bear in mind to pick the right one when you are downloading it.

It is simply one of the greatest RPGs to be released this year and it is completely free, and with The Elder Scrolls VI not being out for at least a decade, Enderal will do just fine in filling this gap for you – at least for now. All you need is a Steam version of Skyrim and off you go!