This is probably the first review I've ever written but I'm doing so to express my frustration with people's opinions of this remastered version. I feel like in the 5 years that this game has been out, people have just gotten lazy and don't do their own research on what's actually being delivered in a game and instead rely on hype and hearsay instead of finding out the details themselves. Secondly, for anyone that has a pair of working eyes (or even one eye), there are a TON of visual changes here and I'm very surprised so many people have not noticed these. I think people just expect to be blown out of their chairs because it's called a "remaster" and as such, they develop their own opinions on what it should be and this is wrong.

First, Bethesda never promised that the game was going to "look better" than your mods. If you watch interviews with Todd Howard and others from the company, you will see that the very reason why they even thought to do a second pass at Skyrim was due to them trying out the Xbox One development kits and needing a game to "stress" the system to see what was possible and Skyrim was the game they chose. Liking the results, they decided to make some changes (a complete overhaul was NOT mentioned) and release it as a 64 bit game.

This is an incredibly important change. Making a game 64 bit allows the game to exceed the 3.5 gigs of RAM allowed for it. This means the world to the game as a large number of its bugs are due to memory related issues. This also means that when all of your treasured mods are ported over to 64 bit, they will run much better and more stable that they ever have. Lastly, this means that the "sky" is the limit (pun) for modders. No longer will memory restrictions be an issue for this game going forward. In my opinion, this is worth the price of admission alone.

Now that my rant is over, here is a short list of some of the visual changes I've noticed within my first few hours of play:

- Right from the intro scene you can tell that the rock textures on the cliffs have been completely redone. There are much more crags, shadows and details on each one. Cliffs "feel" like cliffs now instead of tightly knit triangles they once appeared like. Compare them to the originals yourself if you don't believe me.
- Rock textures in caves much clearer.
- There is much more ground clutter and the ground textures are sharper.
- The foliage is now full and lush and sharper than its ever been. It works very well with the ground clutter to help with the sense of immersion.
- Pine tree branches don't seem to have an uprade but the tree trunks most definitely do.
- The new depth of field effect looks great and puts a "focus" on the object you are closest to and looking at. This looks fantastic with a tree trunk in focus and trees behind appearing soft in the background.
- Weather seems to have more frequent changes and I've seen snow in areas I've never seen snow before (Ex: Riverwood).
- Rain droplets actually bounce on the water now, a very beautiful effect.
- Water shaders have been redone...they aren't amazing but they are definitely an improvement and look great in the distance instead of flat like they used to be.
- New shadows...no more striping!!! This is a vast improvement and is something no mod I found every really truly fixed.
- The new shadows make interiors look great.
- The new lighting, though a bit too bright at times for my tastes, really helps "morning feel like morning". Nights are still not as dark as I'd prefer but I know that people will be releasing their own mods for this in the coming months.
- The new lighting works very well with the shadows on interiors, however.
- Some textures appear to be completely replaced. Ex: Riverwood fencing now appears to be "weaved" instead of being made of wood beams like the previous version of the game.
- Due to some of the texture changes, the world map now looks different and more detailed.
- Anywhere you find text in the game has been drastically improved.
- The game is much smoother all around than the previous version and as others have pointed out, the draw distance is great. No doubt that this is due to it being now 64 bit and the memory constraints being lifted.

Issues:
I've only encoutered two issues in the 11 hours I've played so far and they haven flickering on roofs:
- Whiterun's Dragonsreach
- the roof of a Honningbrew Meadery location near Whiterun.

Closing:
I think all of you that are complaining about this version should look a little deeper and stop expecting so much. The very fact that this game is 64 bit means the world to modders and to performance in general. Second, many of you out there got this version for free because you owned the previous one and yet you still complain. People are never happy. I for one am very happy with this version and I can't wait to see what kinds of awesome things modders will come up with in the coming months. Thanks, Bethesda!