This mod aims to insert the music of The Witcher 3 into Skyrim, while still trying to stay true to Skyrim's setting. This music overhaul promises many features, which you can read about below. Allyour favourite tracks from the game have been implemented in a meaningful way, so it's very fit for those who do not want to role-play as Geralt too!

The witcher craze has died down a little but I got infected when I saw mwjr’s  "the witcher 3 music overhaul" mod and tried it out myself. It is a very well made mod, but when using it I felt there were a few minor letdowns. 

What started as a way to fix a mod for purely personal reasons turned into the development of an entirely new mod altogether. This mod aims to increase the scope of music in the game and to truly make the most out of the music system Bethesda has set up. Mwjr’s music mod claims to be the best, and that may be true but mine will certainly give theirs a run for its money.


This mod has a few new complex functionalities that are not being used in vanilla Skyrim, and strives to further enhance your experience by providing fitting music. Emphasis on fitting.

• Regional exploration music
• Regional combat music
• Layered Exploration Music
• Different combat tracks for creatures and humans
• All palettes have been changed and fitting background ambients will be played.
• Combat music loops (until combat ends of course)
• Almost all areas or music tracks have more music to choose from.
• High quality audio tracks: no more muddy 48kb/s but instead clear 192kb/s
  

Just install it using your favourite method. NMM or manual users need to install this mod after Skyrim High quality music, and MO users will need to drag this mod to a higher priority than the aforementioned mod. This way you get the witcher music, and the files that are not replaced (sovngarde chants for example) will still have their high quality versions untouched. Other mods such as fantasy music overhaul or personalized music are incompatible, although you can always replace loose files but I don’t recommend doing that unless you know what you’re doing. 


The way the music is implemented is directly copied from The Witcher 3. While its music system is a bit more complex than Skyrim’s the effective difference is that combat music does not change when fighting weaker foes. Mainly combat music has been overhauled; a track now loops instead of switching to a new track every two minutes, breaking the flow of the combat setting when playing. This looping feature is not perfect, that’s completely engine-related. When selecting a loop the modder must specify the start point (in seconds) of the loop and the end point(in seconds) of the loop, as well as the times the designated segment has to be looped. There are two quirks to this:

• The game counts along with the music track to eventually determine when to start or end the loop, but it does so while dependent on framerate. I’ve discovered this during testing that I’d sometimes get a perfect unnoticeable loop while at other times it was a bit off, mostly by a millisecond, but it is noticeable. This is not something I can fix ever but it’s a very, very small portion of the combat music and looping it enhanced the experience so that’s why I decided to leave it in. UPDATE: My suspicions were correct: after upgrading my system and getting higher framerates in general the cutoffs disappeared alomost completely. You should aim for a constant 60fps, as then the engine counts along the best.
• When thegame is done with its final loop of the music track and it wants to play a new track, the music ends abruptly instead of finishing the track. I do not know why this happens but I fixed this by making the tracks loop around 25 times. You’ll only notice it if you have a fight with an enemy that takes about 45 minutes and you don’t die or quit the game out of boredom in the process.
  

Concerning the taverns not all music has been implemented, for a thematic reason. In the Witcher 3 many taverns are filled with people and are generally very busy, while those in Skyrim are mostly empty with only two or three individuals inside. Accompanying them with very upbeat and busy music would obviously not fit this setting, so I opted for calmer tracks that have a style that’s more true to vanilla Skyrim. Do note that this mod still has more tavern tracks than vanilla Skyrim. Some tracks are varied themselves. There are multiple layers of the same track, like in The Witcher 3, that sometimes play and sometimes don’t. This means that one track can have two or three different variations. Not all exploration tracks have been replaced this way, as it would make the mod size enormous. For example, the “Whispers of Oxenfurt” track, which plays in cities at night, has a 1/3 chance for the Vocal track to also play. Otherwise, it’s instrumental only.

The music incorporated is from the main game (Velen, Skellige, Novigrad) a few tracks from Hearts of Stone and the whole Blood and Wine DLC.
The reason why I did not include Hearts of Stone fully is because most tracks are either completely cinematic , unfit for background exploration or are so obviously themed that it would most likely pull the player out of the game because of the memories that are connected to the music playing during the moment in the Witcher 3. This last way of reasoning is also why I decided to keep out some tracks of the vanilla witcher game, for example the major themes of the Ladies of the Wood. You’re playing Skyrim after all and not the Witcher.

Themes

The foresty areas have music and ambient sounds from Toussaint. During the day you’ll be greeted by calm choirs, harps and strings or a beautiful maiden singing with an accordion in the background. Truly, Toussaint has come to Skyrim. During the night the forest spirits come to life, providing you with fairytale-esque tunes that you’ll never forget!

The snowy areas house the burly chants and strong instruments of Skellige. Skyrim is home of the Nords and Nords are strong and burly and have bagpipes and cellos and very loud drums and whatnot. Did I mention chanting? Do not fret though, because when exploring the snowy wastes sometimes you could hear a siren singing about a boatman or a flute playing a very, very familiar tune. The white snow has a very peaceful side as well though and the symphonies of Skellige reflect that too.

The tundra and reach areas are home to bandits and forsworn, respectively. They are vast, open and very mountainous. The ominous Slavic tunes you heard back in Velen will be played here, but this does not mean the entirety of the region has a dreary setting: the Slavic compositions also have lots of room for more upbeat melodies.

Oh yeah and then there's the cities.

Solstheim is mostly unedited as you’re adventuring in morrowind, not Skyrim. Mostly there were simply no tracks available I deemed fitting for a setting so alien and I decided to leave the island alone. Same goes for Sovngarde: it’s the afterlife of the Nords and no grey-haired swordsman has any business plucking his strings there. The level-up sounds aren't replaced either, nor are the discovery jingles. They fit the atmosphere I was trying to create
which was one that would strive to complement the setting Bethesda has crafted.

I will not make a version that will have vanilla music and Witcher music play together, as that would break atmosphere completely and it would force me to rebuild the mod in its entirety, which is something I’m not going to do.

If you’ve read thisfar, thank you. I hope this mod will be able to quench your thirst of a music mod that incorporates the Witcher music into Skyrim.


This mod is licensed under: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0