The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an RPG with deep lore surrounding dragons and their history in its land of Tamriel. Despite the player's legendary status as Dragonborn, however, the game does a very poor job at making them feel as such during gameplay. Luckily, there are mods to fix that.
Throughout Skyrim's story, Bethesda tries very hard to convince the player that Dragon Shouts - and their coinciding philosophy, the Way of the Voice - are deep, nuanced skills that few creatures (even Dragonborn) can truly master. The problem is that the power of Skyrim's Dragonborn, the Thu'um, is not properly represented in anything but the game's story elements, despite the fact that it's a unique feature and core selling point. Skyrim's dialogue, books, and world all suggest something deeper, but the gameplay only reflects this at the surface level by providing abilities that accentuate the series' core skills like swordplay and spellcasting. It hardly makes one feel like a Dragonborn, a legendary fighter with the soul and voice of a dragon.
For instance, if the player wanted to roleplay as a student of the Way of the Voice - as they might in an RPG about using dragon shouts - they only have a limited number of ways to explore this in their character's build. There is very little room for growth in the shouting system, and it is much too easy to rely on Skyrim's bread-and-butter shouts, like Unrelenting Force, Slow Time, and Marked for Death no matter what the player's intended strategy is. Even talking to Arngeir, collecting all of the shouts, and meditating on them with Paarthurnax rewards players with relatively minor boosts that don't fundamentally change shouts. Thankfully, Skyrim's modding community has created ways of alleviating this. With the right mods (all of which are available via the Skyrim Mod Nexus), Skyrim's shouting mechanic can have a sense of progression and make the player feel as if they are a Thu'um master.
Really, Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim should almost be a standard for any modded Skyrim playthrough. This mod reworks the game's entire perk and skill systems from the ground up. It is lauded through the Skyrim community as a mod that adds many more hours to the game by offering new, creative Skyrim builds and playstyles with added depth over many in the vanilla game. Among the mod's many changes are alterations to the speech skill tree that actually affect the damage and capabilities of the player's shouts. One of the mod's lowest level speech perks even allows the leveling of the speech skill when a shout is used. By the end of the tree, players will have access to reduced shout cooldowns, staggering effects, and the ability to use multiple shouts at once via the Merciless Storm power. It's one of the simplest ways to make a shout-based build take on a sense of progression.
Few mods give shouting a sense of progression as well as Thunderchild. This mod is something like a Thu'um expansion pack, adding a new location called the High Hrothgar Library. There, players can learn up to 29 new shouts by meditating in front of a statue of Kyne, the Elder Scrolls goddess who originally gave humans the ability to use the Thu'um. Afterwards, the player can improve their new shouts by finding Pillars of the Voice and completing special side quests to earn greater favor with Kyne.
Thunderchild is possibly the best mod for roleplaying a shout-based character because of how it allows the player to gradually improve their Thu'um by way of lore-friendly activities. The in-universe Dragonborn is no longer simply memorizing vocabulary, they're ruminating on shouts to find new meanings and form a greater understanding of the Voice and its patron goddess. From both mechanical and narrative perspectives, that's a much deeper interaction with shouting than Skyrim's base shout progression, which functions as a reward for exploration rather than roleplay. The mod also adds a variety of new color schemes for the Greybeards' robes, truly allowing them to look like Masters of the Voice.
For many people, the vanilla shout sound effects in Skyrim are perfectly fine. But for anyone who wants to give the game's shouts a little more "oomph," Thundering Shouts is an excellent choice. By adding a bit of echo and fiddling with the pitch, more body and vigor are added to the shout sound effects in a way that doesn't overly intrude on gameplay. It might not be the most game-changing mod given that it doesn't alter how shouts fundamentally operate, but it does add another little layer of immersion that serves as icing on the cake. Someone dedicated to the idea of roleplay might even decide to install this mod mid-way through a playthrough to give the impression that their shouts have grown more powerful.
It's hard to deny that Skyrim's Dragonborn don't often seem especially dragon-like. Other than the Dragonborn's inborn shouting talents, they don't share many qualities with their namesake. Dragonfire - Tactically Enhanced Dragon Shouts works to correct this to some extent by making the player character's shout more like a dragon's might be, specifically providing more control over the game's two elemental shouts, Fire and Frost Breath. Depending on how many words of each shout the player commits to, the effect will be different. Most strikingly, the full-strength variant of Fire and Frost Breath become continuous streams exactly like those spewed by the game's dragon enemies. In terms of making a Thu'um look and feel more like a dragon's, Dragonfire comes second to none.
Perhaps what the player really needs to make their shouts more immersive is to take a more active role in the process. ThuuMic gives the player this opportunity by tying shouts to their mic. In other words, say the shout in real life and the player's character will perform it in the game. The player can even switch between shout powers without any menus by using the appropriate dragon shout word combinations, rewarding players for their knowledge of the game's lore. The mod also allows the activation of certain powers, such as werewolf transformation, with key phrases. Followers can even be ordered around with commands like "follow me" or "wait there." In terms of sheer interactivity, ThuuMic might be the ultimate immersive shouting mod. The only downside is that it may not be completely compatible with some of the other mods on this list, particularly ones that add new shouts to the game.
However, immersion and enjoyment are in the eye of the beholder. The advantage of mods lies in how they allow an experience to be tweaked according to preference, and players can experiment with any combination of these mods that appeals to them. There's no shortage of shout-centric mod content available on Nexus Mods, the Steam Workshop, or Bethesda's Creation Club. But these are a solid place to start if one wants to truly feel like a Dragonborn and make the Skyrim shouting experience a little bit more substantial.
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