Player Runs Skyrim On A 2012 Laptop - And It's Basically RuneScape
Considering Skyrim has been poked, prodded, and modded to within an inch of its life, it's hard to remember what it looked like in the early days. A whole decade after the fifth entry in The Elder Scrolls franchise drew its sword, there's no escaping Skyrim's legacy as one of the greatest games of all time.
Still, some miss the title's heyday when we didn't know what we were getting ourselves in for. Before we knew you could shout butterflies from the sky, rogue werewolves were keeping us busy, or we were playing bowling in VR, Skyrim and its many mysteries remained untapped. Let's head back to those days.
What does Skyrim look like on a 2012 laptop?
A post on the Skyrim subreddit has been popping off, with u/SomberKlepto claiming they're running the 2011 classic on a 2012 laptop. Remembering how far laptops have come in the past few years, it's crazy to think someone is still running the game on a system from nine years ago. Gaming laptops are all the rage these days, and with souped-up graphics cards challenging high-end consoles, modern versions of Skyrim looks pretty damn fine.
The OP showed off their round-faced NPCs and low-poly Tamriel - which would even give even the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone game a run for its money.
There were also plenty of comparisons to Jagex's RuneScape - which came out in 2001. One fan wrote, "What is this, RuneScape in first person? Those graphics are rough, but awesome that it’ll run it". Someone else said, "lmao my first thought was 'man, RuneScape really stepping it up this year'. Nope. just Skyrim on an old laptop. It's real cool that it'll run the game at all, really."
Is this really Skyrim on a 2012 laptop?
Not everyone was convinced though. Remembering that Skyrim came out the year before this laptop was supposedly released, critics said they've never seen it look this rough. Some claim the poster was using the Skyrim demade mod for the clout.
One critic wrote, "I remember running this program that would graphically gimp oblivion so i could run it on my dad's ibm thinkpad back in 2006". Another added, "Skyrim is older than the laptop. It just must be a low-end laptop from that year".
A third questioned, "I get that this is a humorous post but if I may ask, didn't this game come out in 2011? How is a laptop that came out a year later only able to run the game with 2007scape graphics? But then the sky still looks normal and it can run bird physics? Is this just a joke graphics mod?"
Aiming to prove their credentials, u/SomberKlepto said they're using a Pavilion x360 AMD A8 with integrated Radeon R5 graphics and 6 gigs of RAM. Astonished by how things look, another made a good point as they concluded, "it actually doesn't look terrible in terms of frame rate. I'd rather play something like this that runs smoothly with potato graphics than the other way around."
When asked what FPS they're getting, the author simply joked, "Some". Whether you believe the OP or not, seeing retro Potato Skyrim play out like a cross between RuneScape and Capcom's OG Resident Evil is a lot of fun.
Check out everything we know about The Elder Scrolls 6 here.
