The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
This video is from Todd Howard’s speech at the DICE 2012 keynote in Las Vegas, spotted on Eurogamer. It shows the results of a week-long Bethesda game jam, in which developers were given one task: “Do anything you want, and add it to the game.” The results were impressive. Enormous crab monsters, a lycanthrope skill tree, seasonal foliage, moving platforms, adoption and house building were just a few of the ideas the team came up with.
Our first reaction to most of them is “why didn’t you just PUT THIS IN THE GAME?” Watching spear-fighting work for five seconds on a demo reel doesn’t sum up the number of bugs that it might cause over the course of 50 hours, of course, but surely some of them could be slotted in without too much trouble.
Skyrim on PC got a major update today through Steam. The Creation Kit is available for modders to play around with, the Skyrim Workshop makes browsing, installing and updating mods incredibly easy, and for some reason a Portal 2 core be found near Whiterun.
Bethesda also released an official high resolution texture pack. If you haven't installed it yet, check out its effects in the screens below.
While the choice of scene here isn't particularly exciting, you do get a clear view of how the textures across the ground and stairs have been upgraded.
A tweet from Bethesda’s VP of PR, Pete Hines, on Friday announced that the long-awaited Skyrim Creation Kit will be out tomorrow. TOMORROW. The tools will let modders create their own campaigns using the same tools that Bethesda use to create their environments. Take a look at last week’s Creation Kit trailer for an idea of what’s included.
The tools will tie use the Steam workshop, which means the huge Skyrim community will be able to vote for their favourite mod creations, making it easier to sort through the many, many mods that are sure to be uploaded. The Steam Workshop will also make it easier to download and install mods directly through Steam without any need for .ini tweaks or a separate mod manager.
If you’re new to modding and fancy a meddle, Bethesda are releasing a wiki alongside the tools, written by developers. To top it all, Hines teased a “special surprise” to be released with the Creation Kit. In search of an answer, I headed over to Random Word Generator (PLUS!) which gave me these words: “turning Macintosh regret knife science.” I think the message there is clear. What do you think?
What we'd like to see when Bethesda adds more content to The Elder Scrolls V.
Many are still busy plowing through the insane amount of content included in Skyrim. Maybe you're not one of them. Maybe you've unlocked and spent every perk point, cleared every dungeon and punched every NPC in the nose. Maybe you've tried out every mod and are looking for more. Bethesda will release downloadable content at some point, and though hardly any specifics are known, Skyrim game director Todd Howard said of the DLC releases, "They won't be quick, and they'll have a lot of meat on them."
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the darling of critics and RPG-lovers. While the game is beautiful, involving, technically impressive, it's a long way away from being the perfect RPG. Indeed, developer Bethesda has a lot to learn from other RPGs and even action games, in terms of creating a convincing narrative experience, tweaking leveling mechanics and generating emotional pull.
Spoiler alert: This article contains some details about Skyrim’s Imperial-Stormcloak civil war quest line.
The other day I read an article on Motherboard, “Skyrim Should be a Game About Nothing”, where Joshua Kopstein claims that Skyrim should’ve been a game about nothing: “Of course I mean ‘nothing’ in the tabula rasa sense; a kind of videogaming zen that coaxes enlightenment from simplicity.” After admitting to being “spoiled” by games like Minecraft, he also says that Skyrim breaks his flow with “the fact that there is some grand quest I should be embarking on, some dragon I should be slaying or village I should be saving.”
Skyrim has received a rather hurried patch 1.3. How do I know this? Because my game of Skyrim just crashed to desktop for no given reason, and on trying to restart it, Steam’s patcher kicked in. Maybe it will fix random crashes to desktop?! It does offer “General stability improvements”, who coincidentally was a man I served under in the army in the 1940s. So have they addressed any of the litany of issues on everyone’s lists? Well, if the books not sitting correctly on the bookshelves was one of yours, then you’re a winner! If not, well, then maybe not so much.
It does, however, somewhat guardedly suggest it fixes the two new issues 1.2 introduced, if “Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly” means “Buffs work again”, and “Fixed dragon animation issues with saving and loading” means “The dragons no longer fly backward”.
Here’s the epic list in full:
- General stability improvements
- Optimize performance for Core 2 Duo CPUs
- Fixed Radiant Story incorrectly filling certain roles
- Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly
- Fixed issue with placing books on bookshelves inside player purchased homes
- Fixed dragon animation issues with saving and loading
- Fixed Y-look input to scale correctly with framerate
Yes. There’s a couple of other bits and pieces we can think of that might belong on that list. Roll on 1.4.
What a journey our first 200 hours in the world of Skyrim have been, a game that has changed the way we live each day since its release, and now find ourselves being pulled back to this world, which includes our virtual books, weapons and wife.
The review system we use is PlayStation 3, and the well documented framerate issues have caused us problems but did not stop the pulling power of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and we managed to spend many hours experiencing the game our other life. One quick restart solves the kind of lag that seems to happen high in the mountains when snowing and before the patch, almost anywhere. This issue is not acceptable but doesn’t stop the fun and addiction of Skyrim, although we understand each user has a different take on these problems.
We started Skyrim in the fighting frame of mind, killing almost everything and stealing their gold, weapons, lock picks and more. This helped us gather a nice collection of weapons and money, which also led us to the 100-skill level in one-handed combat, archery and blocking pretty fast.
Our focus then turned to making the weapons ourselves and selling them, and this itself has been such a learning experience. Trying to build up our Smithing, now at 100, and also increasing our speech to get better prices for the items we sell. Finding a balance here was tricky but fun along the way, and now being able to build and sell armor has brought the game into another dimension.
Free houses, infinite XP, unlimited magic…the list goes on. The Elder Scrolls titles are notorious for being overrun with bugs and glitches. Even the patch that was supposed to patch the game now needs its own patch. But not all of these imperfections are necessarily bad. In fact, a few can be quite humorous, or more importantly, allow the player to reach otherwise-insurmountable wealth and power. Plus, even as Bethesda continues to fix/break the game further, you can always delete the patch from your hard drive whenever you want to use a specific trick.
If you used to be a great adventurer before taking an arrow to the knee, these handy tips, secrets, and downright shameful exploits will get you back on your feet in no time.
Updated 12/6: While the 1.2 update fixed the long-term play issues for most PS3 users, we are aware that is not the case for some. We’ve been reaching out to a number of those users to collect save games, so we can take a look at their specific issues. Right now we know it’s not one thing, but a combination of smaller ones that some folks are seeing, but others are not. Some seem to be the PS3 autosaving in the background (you can turn that off), some may be SPU AI updates, and some may relate to dynamic system memory allocation. These fixes are not in the current 1.3 update that is in final testing, but will be in future ones. We understand how frustrating it can be when your game is having issues, and we thank all of you for your continued feedback and patience. Rest assured we take your gameplay experience seriously and will continue working on this until it’s resolved.
Original Post: As of today, it’s been three weeks since we released Skyrim worldwide. We’re simply blown away by the response, from new and old fans, and amazed by the sheer number of people playing the game. It’s been absolutely fantastic hearing your stories, seeing early mods, and watching fan videos (more live music ones please, we love those).