Ambitious New Skyrim Mod Overhauls Cities

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Mod That Expands The Cities Of Skyrim Took 3 Years To Complete

By Elise Favis



Skyrim released five years ago, but the mod community is still going strong. One of the newest mods, Holds: The City Overhaul, adds a plethora of new updates focusing particularly on architecture and expanding many of the cities' histories, books, character backgrounds, and outfits, along with entirely new settlements.

Areas such as Falkreath, Winterhold, and Dawnstar have all been rebuilt with new designs, and two new settlements, Amber Guard and Black Moor, have been added in. Mod creator Galandil explains in his post on Nexus Mods that the ambitious project took him over three years to finish. He hopes to make each place feel more "realistic and natural." He wrote, "The aim of all of this is to create a more memorable and diverse experience, making the cities actually feel like cities hopefully without ruining the natural and realistic design of the vanilla game."

The new books added to the game were written by creator Galandil and fellow modder Alfredasl, and these texts can be found in book stores in surrounding areas such as Falkreath, Solitude, and Windhelm.

For the full description of the mod and its installation instructions, go here. You can read our review from 2011 on Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim here.

Source: Nexus Mods via EuroGamer

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By Robert Purchese

A big (4GB) fan-made modification for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, that overhauls cities and even adds new settlements, has arrived after nearly three and a half years' work.

Holds: The City Overhaul rebuilds Falkreath, Winterhold and Dawnstar from scratch, fleshing out the cities with more buildings, more people, and more background and history - more personality, in other words. The other holds, such as Whiterun and Solitude, have also had work done to them.

"The aim of all of this is to create a more memorable and diverse experience," wrote the mod's author, Galandil, on Nexus Mods, "making the cities actually feel like cities hopefully without ruining the natural and realistic design of the vanilla game.

"This is not a botanical garden mod, nor is it a beautification mod. Holds aims to stay as lore-friendly as possible and at the same time expand on the backgrounds and stories for its locations."

Reddit user Thallassa offered a comprehensive, two-part review of the Holds mod, if you're interested. It talks about compatibility with other mods, which is useful.

There's a good, long look at the overhauled areas in the videos below.

Hats off to Galandil!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UztnB91xaWg