100% essential Skyrim mod lets you see yourself in the inventory menu

Show Yourself in Menus mod — (Image credit: myztikrice/Bethesda)

If you came to Skyrim via some of the older Elder Scrolls games, you were probably used to being able to see your character when you opened the inventory screen. It let you know what you'd look like as you tried out each new piece of equipment (a mismatched dweeb), and if you were one of those strict first-person-only players it was one of the few times you got to see your outfit.

While a mod for vanilla Skyrim called Oblivion Style Inventory Character View offered the chance to gawp at yourself in each new set of armor you looted from dead bandits, a bug would sometimes leave the camera stuck that way. Now, an updated version that's compatible with Skyrim Special Edition and Anniversary Edition called Show Player in Menus is out, and after a quick test on a couple of saves seems to be working just fine.

There are various options that can be tweaked, including one to turn off the camera movement during combat if you open your inventory to choke down a potion and three grilled leeks. If you still want to see any armor piece you select floating in the air that's an option too. Plus, while inspecting yourself like a dress-up doll, you can spin the player model on the spot with a right-click of the mouse or the right-stick on a gamepad.

Show Player in Menus is compatible with any UI replacement mod you may have, as well as several other mods that mess with the perspective like SmoothCam, Customizable Camera, ImprovedCameraSE, and more drastic overhauls like True Directional Movement – Modernized Third Person Gameplay and Skyrim Souls RE.

There's a little bit of homework to get it running if you don't already have the full suite of mods that help other mods installed. You'll first have to make sure you've got SKSE, Address Library for SKSE Plugins, and MCM Helper installed, as well as our favorite interface replacer SkyUI. Then download Show Player in Menus from Nexus Mods.

Our list of the best Skyrim Special Edition mods includes plenty of other recommendations if you're looking for quality-of-life improvements. And if you're a Skyrim VR player who wants to enjoy this as a discombobulating out-of-body experience, try an alternative called View Yourself VR.

PRODUCTS

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.