I've been trying to play Skyrim as well, with a mod pack that fits my needs. But each time I still get shocked that all the decent mod packs are like 150GB (and needing 300GB free space for download and setup)
I haven't played since release, so really I just want to get all the bug fixes plus maybe expand followers to be a bit more consistent.
But that's at least 30 different mods right there.
And then you look at the sizes of things if you start thinking "hmmm maybe I'll upscale everything a bit" and realize you can't afford another SSD just for this one game.