The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls are literally creation on a piece of paper. It may seem insignificant to you because our characters aren't capable of reading them, and within the main story can only tap into one small facet of their power (which is quite frankly still incredibly impressive) when .

They're rare, and likely there's only the one in Skyrim. Most of the Elder Scrolls are kept in the library of White Gold Tower.

I just hope there's a greater expansion upon the existing guilds like The Companions, Dark Brotherhood, Thieve's Guild and Mage College.

Some of them would require some major creative thinking based on how the initial ones ended, but since you sort of, it would be cool to have you move the direction of where the guild goes, or even simply give you a new set of missions and trials that await you.

As far as expanding the main storyline and whatnot, they should keep dragons as a looming threat, but focus primarily on the war between the Empire and the Thalmor.

I seriously wanna kick some Elf butt, or even join the dominion and rule the world with an iron firey fist.

Patch notes:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/327696/skyrim-update-12-patch-notes-released/

PC and XBox patches will be out on wed.

Don't get super excited, not too much there really. Just some rare outstanding issues fixed.

Seems they addressed 99% of the problems people have had with the game.
Everything else just seems extremely rare and obscure; nothing a restart shouldn't be able to fix.

Oh good so it took them a week and a half to make a patch that doesn't fix a single major issue for the PC version of the game. CTDs will remain to be frequent until they let Skyrim use more than 2GB of RAM.

Where's my LAA? Where's my HD textures that were promised? Where's my fixed shadow mapping?

At least nVidia is on top of their ***.

Driver notes

Ambient Occlusion Screenshots

I am just trying to marry the High Queen and take over lol....

It's probably been answered many times over, but I figured I'd ask one more time:

Assuming I had 100 Enchanting and all the proper perks and whatnot, could I put Fortify (Magic skill) beyond the usual capped 25% magicka reduction? I recall others saying they got as high as 29% when they made fairly potent fortify enchanting potions via Alchemy.

Glad I'm a console gamer. Insert disc, play game. That's really as far as I want to worry when it comes to 'escapism gaming'. I can't be bothered with more settings than 'brightness' and 'control sensitivity' before I want to start killing things and gaining loot.

Just got done reading the entirety of the 12-page thread on the update in the Bethesda forums.

And the verdict: who *** knows.

Some are saying its 100% better, that its just like it was before the 6mb save file and up, others are saying its better at first but gets just as bad after 2-3 hours, and even others are saying it makes the game completely worse from the get-go.

As someone with 95 hours in and a 14mb save file...I really hope the patch fixes it, if not, maybe starting fresh will be the best solution, but all that is yet to be seen.

Patch needs to come out here first, and I need to get off work. :/

Bethesda needs to optimize their games before they release them. Has it been like five years or something since Oblivion came out? That game is still full of bugs and crashes to desktop every 5-10 minutes on PC without the assistance of performance enhancing mods. Thankfully, even on my shitty-by-today's-standards computer, Skyrim didn't CTD once, but it still ran like ***, even with everything turned down to the lowest settings... when frankly, my computer can run that ***. Not to mention the game would freeze for about five seconds every 2 minutes when traveling outside.

For that reason, console gaming will be kings of the industry.
They get the job done, offer great functionality for a fair price compared to top line PC rigs and the hardware therein.

However, if you have the patience and level of immersion in the game, taking the time to tweek and adjust settings in the game, it adds a whole new level of immersion and awe to what had already blown you out of the water.

A good example was playing FFXI after installing the Draw Distance plugin. My jaw dropped when I could see all the sand dunes to the horizon including the ocean when I rode in Altep on my chocobo when using it for the first time. And draw distance is one very simple aspect compared to the things you can adjust in a game.

my shitty PC plays things better than console though :(

I won't dare get Skyrim on PC until I've upgrade my rig.
Really need to get myself an i7 and GTX 550+ or so.
Luckily Christmas and holiday pay is coming up.

i7 isn't absolutely needed. TBH for any gaming you'd be set with the i5 2500. It's quite a good chip.

I suppose I was going under the assumption that with introduction of hex and oct-cores coming out and the whole black friday ordeal I could get an i7 for relatively cheap. But you're right, the performance margin between those two are minimal and I would get the most bang for my buck with the i5.

You won't because it's intel.
The 2600k really wont drop much.
And even then if it does drop then you'd have to assume the 2500k would drop to making it an even better value. :/
Although I do expect some good GPU deals over the next couple months.

On one hand, I understand that with a game like Skyrim its hard to test every little situation, especially when you're dealing with fairly unpredictable users (hoarding bodies in buildings, etc.).

As long as they fix it, idgaf. But...the patch notes say that its fixed, so if they say its fixed and then its not...thats when I start to raise an eyebrow.

It isn't even about tweaking settings. The game does not function properly on any PC. CTDs will happen no matter what as Skyrim does not manage RAM properly, once it uses up the 2GB that it's confined to it will crash.

The textures are horrible console-style low-res affairs. PC version was promised to come packaged with HD textures from release, this did not and has not happened yet.

Neither of these issues require tinkering with any settings.

Here, have a gander at this:

1.2 Patch Notes

Known Bugs List

Took roughly 3 weeks to fix 15 bugs. At this rate we're looking at 71 weeks for them to fix all 500.

Considering the scale of the game and the level of playability out of the box, I am relatively satisfied. However, there is a laundry list of crippling bugs and flaws within the programming that requires addressing across all platforms, and frankly as much as one can optimize and test bugs within a set deadline and small margin of testing compared to international release, it would be ideal to address the problems as they emerge. The most dire of issues taking up top priority of course, and consequently taking the most time.

Hopefully the small isolated rare glitches and whatnot will be patched up relatively soon as long as Bethesda takes heed to their forums and isolate the problem to ideal or known solutions.

As for the promised HD textures and whatnot for PC... We'll just have to cross our fingers for now. Fixing the game comes first before adding makeup.

I really don't understand why they didn't have someone test 100 hours on all three platforms. We all know the game was done weeks before release date, they were just holding out for that 11/11/11.

Most of the bugs were noticed by gamers on day one. The PS3 lag is really unexcusable, if they would have played at least 60-70 hours they would have had to have known about it, which means more than likely they knowingly released a relatively broken product. (Not that that's stopped me from enjoying the ***out of it though.)

But that's sort of the problem, I feel a little, idk, used? They knew PS3 users would buy their game regardless, and even still play it through the terrible framerate, but that's shitty.

I believe a game should be tested for at least three times as long as someone plays it. Which means Bethesda should have put at least 900 real playtime hours into the game, documented every flaw they could find, then worked on fixing it. And honesty, I don't feel like they did that at all.

Eh, not so sure on the "done weeks before 11/11/11" thing. Bethesda's blog had a post a week before release saying it was done.

Bethblog post.

Some of the bugs are happening to some people, some to others. The console bugs, I can't speak for as I don't own a 360 or PS3, but those issues probably would have been fixed by release had they not finished a week before.

They could have play tested it for that long; I would imagine that there were probably a lot more bugs before it was released that were addressed by whatever team they have working on playtesting.

I take that to mean "completely" done, like ready for shelves. When I said done weeks before I mean probably ready for extensive testing. If they had finished it in several languages a week before release then it isn't a stretch to assume that the English language version was probably finished a while before that.

I was just going off the fact that they were showing off tons of it a month before release. Letting review sites have hours of hands on at conventions, and I think review copies even went out over a week before release, although I'm not 100% on that.

EDIT: Post 1000 :D

It's a business move. It was cool and symbolic to release it on 11/11/11 as that only comes once a century.
However, it was probably known that these bugs were existing and would not be able to be resolved prior to launch time.
As long as they were issues that could be addressed at a later date, they would have no problem hitting their release date deadline and keeping sales up.

What they essentially did was pull a FFXIV, but luckily on a much smaller and fixable scale that was addressed rather quickly and is continually addressed. Also it helps that the game is single player as not to alienate the entire playerbase where first impressions are your make or break sales point. With this, people would buy a ton on release, and will continue to despite the issues that exist because they're subjective and continuously being tested for pending patches.

Plus knowing problems as they emerge help pave the road for future expansion packs and DLC.

I'm sorry but I disagree. The amount of bugs in this game surpasses any that I've ever played, and I played Two Worlds. There's absolutely no excuse for having so many game breaking bugs and engine issues across all three platforms, and there's even less excuse for allowing them to persist for three weeks and even beyond the second patch for the game.

They haven't even come close to addressing or fixing anything quickly or continually. There have been two patches in three weeks, both constitute a small hotfix for other games. That is not an acceptable amount.

Three patches if you count the PC patch that added a forced DRM and broke a player-made patch that made the game playable.

I'm on PS3, 105 hours, 11MB file size. This patch did not fix my framerate issues, it actually made it worse. Dragons I kill no longer get absorbed, Every time i move to a new area (loading screen) my damage is not displayed properly until i remove my weapon and re equip it. The textures look worse. I'm quite pissed off. If Bungie released a game in this bad of shape the fans would riot. This game is now in worse shape than before they "fixed" it. I wish I could get my money back or at least exchange it for a free 360 copy.

And that's all fine and dandy...as long as it does get fixed. I'll wait until I have some hands on with the patch. If it fixes it, fine, no harm no foul, and I'll stfu about Bethesda until the next game. :D

I main fear though, is that the patch won't do ***or will only be a temporary fix.

Here's the deal, if the game had known issues, but they released it anyway to hit an iconic release date knowing that they could get everything up to date within a month...that's fine, I suppose. Still a shitty business move, but I can handle that. But if it takes months to get the game up to speed, then a line has been crossed. Does that make sense? Like "Yeah I'll take your 60 bucks now...and you play the game...later."

Is it live in North America yet?

Unfortunately I cannot vouch for you as I only have the PS3 version, and bugs I have seen are minimal in terms of being playable and vexing. Again, many of these bugs and problems seem subjective per platform and in game variables and conditions, which I may or may not have met.

I'm simply saying for what came out of the box (for my version), I am relatively satisfied, but acknowledge that there are big problems that require addressing. As to how well they're patched and in what manner they're timely released, I can only cross my fingers for.

As long as they can and are being fixed; I'll give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt, as patching hemorrhaging issues that you've noted would require extensive testing and code monkeying to fix if I even have a remote insight as to what bug patchers go through.

Without looking at that ginormous list in that official thread, would you care to list some immediate and severe problems that linger on the PC version? I'm curious as to what is directly and noticeably wrong with it that would prevent me from playing or enjoying myself throughout the game