Age of Empires 2 is a pretty old game now, and isn’t even the most recent game in the series. That doesn’t mean it’s community has scattered into the wind though, as you’ll still find many fans of the series creating impressive custom scenarios for fellow players to try out. It’s this system that has allowed one dedicated Skyrim fan to painstakingly recreate the entire game as one big Age of Empires 2 map.
First shared to the Skyrim subreddit by creator Grouchy_Bluejay4511, several images were shown off, each one depicting a few locations or one of the nine holds scattered across the region. Since Skyrim buildings obviously weren’t available to use when recreating the map, Grouchy_Bluejay4511 has cleverly used the Age of Empires equivalents to build each major city as they’re laid out in Skyrim, complete with forts, guilds, markets, shops, and much more.
Whiterun and Solitude are particualrly impressive, as they’ve managed to manipulate the enivronment and elevate the cities as they are in the game, and have even managed to recreate the massive stone arch underneath the latter. Given the scale that they’re working with, they’re obviously not 100 percent accurate to the actual holds in Skyrim, but they’re impressively close. Others holds such as Winterhold, and even a bit of Solstheim, have also been recreated, but weren’t shown off in this post.
To make things even more impressive, Grouchy_Bluejay4511 has even recreated the areas surrounding each hold to connect everything, essentially putting Skyrim’s entire map into Age of Empires 2. Since this was created via the custom scenario feature, they’ve even managed to include a bunch of quests, over 100 unique characters, and the ability to control one of the holds so you can pick a team and head out on your conquest of Skyrim.
If you’re impressed by this recreation and want to test it out for yourself, then you’re in luck. While the map isn’t available for download right now, Grouchy_Bluejay4511 has asusred those asking to play that it will be uploaded to the Steam workshop for the Definitive Edition of Age of Empires 2 soon, but they just need to do a couple of playtests to get rid of any nasty bugs.
Even if you’re not a huge fan of Age of Empires, this project has given us an idea of what a potential Elder Scrolls RTS could look like. Now I have that idea in my head, I’m not going to be happy until Bethesda immediately stops working on The Elder Scrolls 6 and starts making it. Hop to it, Todd!