Modded Skyrim Saves Won’t Work With Special Edition

Are you a PC player of Skyrim, using mods, and eagerly awaiting the release of Skyrim: Special Edition? Bad news: the save from your modded version of the original Skyrim will not work with the new remastered version.

“Existing save games from the original PC game will work in the PC version of Skyrim Special Edition,” documentation included with a review version of Skyrim: Special Edition reads (via Eurogamer). “Simply copy your old saves from My Games/Skyrim to My Games/Skyrim Special Edition. Only use original saves that have never been used with mods. Do not use your original save game if this error appears when you load it in Skyrim Special Edition: ‘This save relies on content that is no longer present.'”

Already, news outlets in possession of the review copy of the game are investigating workarounds, though to no avail thus far. Some, however, are cautiously optimistic that the problem might not be permanent.

“[I]t’s not impossible that a fix might be found,” Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s Alec Meer writes. “There are two ways this could happen: 1) Bethesda manage to patch Skyrim SE so that it will have a good go at loading a modded save, in the way that Skyrim original often can even if the mods aren’t present. 2) Every mod you used gets updated and ported over to Skyrim SE, and the game then magically treats ’em as being the exact same content as the save requires.”

“I suspect there will be third-party savegame editing tools that will allow some data to be carried across before too long, but that will probably be all we get,” Meer adds.