I didn't even know I was bothered by how bad Skyrim's NPCs look during the split second they're opening doors, and now a modder's pointed it out the mod to fix has become essential

2 hours ago 1

Skyrim Mod: No Load Door NPC Fade - YouTube

The way NPCs open doors in Skyrim has always been a bit silly. When they're crossing load screens they can't open them all the way—because then the other side would have to be rendered—and so they pop doors open a crack revealing a sliver of darkness, then fade out of existence like the guy in that one meme.

I remember looking for a mod to replace that with fuller animations back in the day and learning it would be completely impossible. (Deleting the door-opening animation altogether was on the table though, thanks to the Get On With It mod.) Given the whole process is necessarily artificial, it never struck me how bizarre it looks in the instant before the fade—when the NPC about to vanish lights up like they've just been plugged into the mains.

As well as all shadows on them disappearing their hair looks super weird, vanishing from their eyebrows, sideburns, and the nape of the neck as the transparencies suddenly fail. Watching the video by modder wSkeever really makes it impossible to ignore. They light up like Uncle Fester with a lightbulb in his mouth, which is why the No Load Door NPC Fade mod is such a blessing.

It's a one-kilobyte download, and immediately joins my list of Skyrim modding essentials along with a bunch of other mods by wSkeever (don't ask what the "w" stands for) like Lock Add-Ons, Dynamic Things Alternative, the questmod Belethor's Sister, and the one that adds the weeping angels from Doctor Who.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.