Modders have put a lot of effort into making sure Skyrim has continually evolved and expanded in the eleven years since it was first released into the world.
A lot of these efforts have focused on making the game’s combat a lot more interesting and in-depth, with new weapons, spells and animations helping to spice things up and new enemies providing some fresh challenges for even the most hardened of warriors.
For those who’re looking to brush up on their fantasy fighting skills ahead of jumping back into The Witcher 3 when its next-gen update arrives in December, a new mod might provide exactly what you’re looking for.
Sick of having to pick arrows and blades out of your Dragonborn’s face after they failed to move out of the way fast enough?
The mod in question is called ‘Dynamic Dodge Animation’, and is the work of prolific modder skypia. A lot of their other previous work has also revolved around adding animations to Skyrim, having brought lots of For Honor’s thrusts and stabs to the game, as well as ensuring that you won’t drop your weapon whenever you unleash an unrelenting force shout.
This time, they’ve decided to help you dive around on the floor or engage your inner Neo from The Matrix to avoid getting slapped with swords or assaulted by axes, using animations that are specific to the kind of weapon you’re wielding.
As you can see in the video above, this means that things like having just cancelled an attack will also change the stance your character adopts when they slide out of harm’s way, seemingly making things feel a lot more dynamic than they do with the vanilla game’s simple hack-and-slash style.
There are three different versions of the mod, with each being built to work with a particular existing dodge mod, from distar66’s ‘(DMC) The Ultimate Dodge Mod Reanimated - TUDMR’, to maxsu2017’s ‘TK Dodge RE - Script Free’ and Ersh’s ‘Dodge MCO|DXP’.
Regardless of which of these versions best suits your game, grabbing alexsylex’s ‘Animation Motion Revolution’, ‘dTry's Key Utils’ and Felisky384’s ‘Dynamic Animation Replacer’ is a necessity for all of them.
Regardless of whether your character is now mouthing the lyrics to MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This at bandits, make sure to follow us for more updates on The Elder Scrolls 6, Skyrim modding and The Witcher 3’s next-gen update.