Nonetheless, for fans who want access to all Skyrim's modding community has to offer, the PC version of the game remains the way to go. Some popular mods like Live Another Life - which allows players to skip the game's Helgen intro and choose from a variety of origins across Skyrim and its DLC areas - do still work. There are also a lot of classic mods which will still work on the Xbox Game Pass version and which do not require the Skyrim Script Extender. In theory, the Skyrim Script Extender could be patched to allow it to extend the scripting capabilities of the Xbox Game Pass' executable at some point in the future.
Not all hope is lost for Xbox fans who want to mod Skyrim, however. For now, there isn't a patch for the Skyrim Script Extender which works with the executable that Xbox Game Pass players will find in the game's folder after enabling mods on their console. Xbox players can't download a version of the Skyrim Script Extender for their version of the game. RELATED: Skyrim Mod Adds a Ton of Character Editing Options
Many mods for Fallout: New Vegas, for example, require a patch which allows the game to access 4GB of memory instead of its default 2GB. Mods like these often help extend the lifespan of Bethesda's open-world games significantly, expanding the capabilities of the games to allow for more extensive and demanding modding down the line. There are also other similar kinds of mods designed primarily to allow other mods to work. Many Bethesda games require script extenders for a lot of their mods to work. For PC modders, it is often considered an absolute essential. This mod hugely expands the capabilities of Skyrim by extending its scripting capacity, and without it many of the Skyrim mods made over the last decade simply will not work. Many mods on the PC rely on another mod called SKSE - the Skyrim Script Extender. In theory, this should allow players to mod Skyrim just as much as as PC players. There's one big limitation to modding the Xbox version of Skyrim, however. Skyrim on the Xbox Game Pass can be modded by hitting "enable mods" on the Game Pass app, which gives the player access to the Skyrim Special Edition folder and the game's executable.
Not only that, but the available collection of mods is also far more limited. For PC players who want to start modding, they need to download a mod manager like Vortex, follow a tutorial on getting started, and begin making changes to their version of the game. The process for downloading mods on the Xbox Game Pass version of Skyrim is slightly different to the process for modding on PC, however. Recent Xbox versions of Skyrim have allowed for some modding.