I really think Skyrim is something I would enjoy. I love Game of Thrones and other things of the sort. HOWEVER, I am not too familiar with technology. I have no idea if my laptop can support the game. How do I find out? I don't want to buy the game and then find out I can't use it. Also I hear a lot about STEAM and mods...are these a must to use the game? Are there walkthroughs for mods?

If I have the requirements, would you buy a hard copy or download?

Any help would be amazing!

There is a website called "can I run it". I think its pretty good at determining if Skyrim can run on your machine. There is always the nice folks in the Skyrim PC section and in the technology thread in Community Discussion.

Skyrim is run through Steam, but many don't like it. The majority of people use digital copies. Many people also get their mods through the Skyrim Nexus.

Thanks for the quick response! I'm don't know much about mods or steam so the last sentence flew over my head. But i'll check out "can I run it."

Just make sure you got more than the minimun specs and you should be alright.

Check this thread -

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1472493-unofficial-will-my-pc-run-skyrim-thread-63/

Post a Dxdiag to it and we can look it over and see if your laptop meets the requirements.

If you don't know how to post a Dxdiag, http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1122570-how-to-dxdiag/.

Thank you, checking right now. It's not a very expensive laptop....so needless to say...fingers are crossed.

Your laptop MIGHT be able to run Skyrim, but if you plan on using mods then you will need a stronger machine if you laptop barely makes the cut. I played Skyrim on my 360 for a year before building a gaming PC and Skyrim with mods is SOOOOOO much better.

I got a pretty decent laptop as well. Using the website I mentioned, I found I was able to run Skyrim at the recommended settings. Only the graphics card is keeping me back.

I got a fail

it won't let me paste the picture here. But it looks like the only issue is the video card. I assume that's a major issue though...I didn't even reach minimum requirements.

Oh well, it looks like my laptop should play Oblivion...does anyone recommend that on PC? Is there an archer character in Oblivion?

You can also get a game console, like the Xbox, hook it up to your TV (preferably a wide-screen, high definition one) and not worry about the PC stuff. Unfortunately, Xbox doesn't support the mods so you'll be limited to the basic game and the three official expansion packs: Hearthfire, Dragonborn, and Dawnguard.

You can create ANY type of character that you want.

awesome! I guess I'm probably going to have to play Oblivion then. Thanks everyone!

i wanted to see dragons though

Dragons is vanilla Skyrim are awesome... at first, and then they become extremely boring since they are easy to kill.

Any character you like. Two mods you may need, not graphics so won't hurt performance: Oblivion has two major flaws, universal scaling (when you are level ten, all enemies everywhere are level ten), so an overhaul mod like OOO will make it so some areas are easy, some are hard; secondly, the levelling of your character is weird, you actually get punished for sticking to your class, so something like Realistic Leveling is a vast improvement.

You'll get to see the realm of the Mad God instead. I hope you like cheese. Just don't stay too long or he might get into your head... Or you into his?

360 vanilla... yum.

I don't think you should worry too much. My gf bought a laptop few years ago for a bit over $600, it's got AMD's dual core 2GHz processor, 4 gigs of ram, and some crappy originally built in graphics card (since PC was's intended to be used for gaming) and I actually run Skyrim on it between mid and high settings (though without the grass), and I don't really use graphics mods but I do have HD wwater texture replacer and there aren't any fps drops.

Also, to actually answer the questions. You do have to use Steam, but it's easy to use, when you install Skyrim it'll install Steam for you and all you gotta do is make an account for it as if you're making an account for Facebook, Myspace or anything like that (it those would have to be installed on your PC). Also note that Steam is to be used online, so when you're playing Skyrim you're basically streaming part of info over to your account. But Steam can be set to work offline.

Mods are copletely optional and you don't have to use them, ever. Many mods are on Steam Workshop, but Skyrim Nexus is much more known and used site. Complexity of installing mods depends greatly on what the mod does. It goes from simple texture replacers where you just copy the files over to your Skyrim directory (not even if you use Nexus Mod Manager, software that helps you install mods with ease), from mods that require a whole separate software installed 1st in order to add support for some new features, and then installing the mod itself after which you then need to set it up over added option in the game's UI etc.

If it's just a basic laptop not designed to run games, then it probably has an Intel integrated graphics chipset. Skyrim needs a computer with a dedicated video card, and if it runs at all on Intel graphics, even an unmodded game is probably not going to run well at all. You may get lucky and get somewhat acceptable performance, but it's really a crap shoot.