Skyrim! Because all the really good stuff never actually leaves.

[wonko the sane?]

Today, on top of being a very important day for other reasons, is also the drop date for skyrim anniversary edition. I didn't see a thread for it, or a general bethesda thread, so here we are. Some of what you need to know if you still play.

And as an aside: ten years ago today, I walked into the local eb games, walked home with my copy for the xbox360, played through the intro and said "Whoa, I don't know if I like these hyper realistic graphics" and then proceeded to play for the next 8 hours.

There's two parts to this anniversary thing, so please pay some attention.

Part 1; The anniversary update. This is happening to ALL copies of skyrim special edition. Where there are engine level upgrades being applied. If you use the PC edition AND use mods: regardless of the mod: they will be broken. Most mods will get fixed, as their authors are still active in the various communities. But it will take time as this is not a basic bug fixing patch; This is an engine overhaul. You will also get the new fishing mechanic for free. If you do NOT want this: then you need to tell your game manager of choice to ignore updates for skyrim specifically, if you missed that chance... well, this is an opportunity to walk away for a few days, and maybe build a new mod list. Console users who also use mods: you're basically fine. Integration should be functionally seamless due to the limitations on mods imposed by the console.

Part 2; The anniversary edition. This is seperate from the update, costs 26.99 (canada and steam.) and is comprised of... literally every piece of creation club content AND 26 new pieces of DLC. Now, I'm not gonna deliberately shill for beth, but that's actually a pretty good price considering what some of the existing stuff cost, and how much on top you're also getting. Still on the fence about it myself, but... not like it's going anywhere. This is skyrim now...

On the one hand: it's nice to see a game title get ongoing attention after a FULL DECADE of release. On the other: the stewardship of the game has largely been taken up by the mod community, and while a bedrock update was needed (which is why stuff like SKSE, the unofficial patch project, the static mesh improvement project, skyui, and a dozen others exist in the first place.) it's very annoying as the only reason they went on to do this was to continue to monetize the game itself.

While I appreciate the effort they put in: this hasn't, as a whole, done anything to change my opinion of bethesda as a company.

 

[Caldwin]

Oh for hugs sake! Another Skyrim release? *snore*

 

[Pocket]

I remember all the post-release hype, and adding it to my wishlist... but then deciding to buy and play Morrowind and Oblivion first since they were on sale super-cheap. I... still never got around to playing either of those. Though I was recently inspired to read through Prequel and it did such a great job of making the Elder Scrolls 'verse look probably way more interesting than it really is, I'm getting the itch again and might finally get around to it.

 

[Dekafox]

Elder Scrolls Lore can get quite esoteric and quite meta, depending on how you interpret it. From things like a monkey man dancing on the White-Gold tower breaking time for a thousand years, to a soul powered giant robot created by elves-called-dwarves who vanished themselves out of known existence making it. There's even things that -could- be interpreted as referances to access to the game console, or that certain characters may know they're effectively characters in a game and only the Prisoner(aka the player) has true free will. But it's never stated outright anywhere so there are other valid interpretations too if you don't want to go that meta. And most of the lore that we don't experiance ourselves comes from documents written in-world so it's all delivered via unreliable narrators with their own biases, so there's no One Truth.

 

[Kup]

Had Skyrim on the 360, got it on the Switch when it first came out and never played it. Not sure if I can revisit it again. I have fond memories of the game though so who knows.

 

[Caldwin]

I had it on PS3. It's one of two games I point to for bricking the console and making me lose all my game saves when I had it repaired. I played it again on PS4 and then again on Switch.

I think I've given enough of my money to Bethesda for the same game. It was fun the first couple times, but other games have done it better since then and I just can't stomach giving Howard more money so that he can rest on his laurels.

 

[Rust]

ME: Pfft, I already bought Skyrim once. Why would I buy it again?
Anniversary Edition drops as a $20 DLC
ME:

 

[wonko the sane?]

Agreed.

*quietly pays off credit card*

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I've never played Skyrim... and it's just occurred to me that I don't know what the unmodded game looks like.

 

[Caldwin]

If you've never played it, it may be worth playing, keeping in mind it's a 10 year old game...a ten year old Todd Howard game.

I mean, I am a self-professed retro-gamer, so being an old game isn't bad in itself. But it does irk me that Skyrim has had so many re-releases.

I mean, yeah, I just bought a Zelda Game & Watch which makes my ## time getting the original Zeldas and Links Awakening. And sure I just recently started yet another playthrough of Ocarina of Time. So you think I wouldn't have much place to talk about Skyrim being re-released so much.

But the thing is, OoT was put on a service with a bunch of other games. The Zelda's on the Game & Watch are 3 games plus other language versions on a single portable thing. And oh yeah...THEY'VE MADE ZELDA GAMES SINCE THEN!!!!

Meanwhile they still want to re-package the same Skyrim +/- a few community made mods...okay, sure, $20 for an upgrade, but still full price for the full game? Never mind the fact that they're re-releasing Skyrim yet again...we haven't seen an actual new Elder Scrolls game in 10 years!

At least when Nintendo re-released Skyward Sword for full price they had the decency to completely revamp the controls and do some cleaning up. This is the same old Skyrim with the same old DLC. Okay, yeah, it also includes community made mods. But how the hell is it a feather in Bethesda's cap to include community made mods? Gah!

Yeah if you've never played Skyrim before, hell I don't know if I can suggest paying full price for it. It's a 10-year-old game. But if you can find it cheap at Disc Replay or something, yeah, it's a decent enough game. The engine it's built on really shows its age. Like, seriously, the engine was old when it first came out. But it has a sandbox open world that I did find worth playing through 3 times start to finish.

But I sure as hell ain't buying it again, not even the upgrade.

 

[Dekafox]

All that is why I hopped on ESO originally 3-4 years ago. It may not officially be a mainline game, but until we actually get something more than a 30 second generic preview, ESO is my TES 6.

 

[Rust]

I've tried multiple times to get into ESO and I just can't. Nothing negative to say about the game itself either - Warden's a lot of fun - it's just I think me and MMOs just don't gel any longer.

As for Skyrim - it's a ten year old game yeah but it's a hell of a sandbox. Crap, my latest character just discovered a quest attached to the smith in Windhelm I'd never encountered before in ten years of playing.

 

[wonko the sane?]

I've never played Skyrim... and it's just occurred to me that I don't know what the unmodded game looks like.

Make the females less curvy, and remove detail from the armor and weapons. And that's pretty much it.

 

[Caldwin]

You see, the thing is, I see my posts are rather negative about this game, but it is a game I used to love. It used to be a game I would play all the time even after having beaten it.

It's just the fact that Bethesda can't seem to get past the success of this game and move on to newer things and I've just gotten to the point of "move the hug on!"

Not sure, I get the feeling I may just be saying the same thing over again in a different way. It's just, damn! This hugging game!

 

[wonko the sane?]

It's not so much that they can't get past this game. Beth was never quick on development to begin with: and in the last few years zenimax has been absolutely just abusing their properties for monetization.

Combined with a mod community which has existed for longer than most game companies have, or will, they saw an opportunity to exploit what was already happening to their games.

 

[Caldwin]

Though that is another thing. The modding community for Skyrim probably did more for the game than even Bethesda. It's probably because of them that it's lasted as long as it has. But the latest update (and I did update last night) makes all of the mods no longer workable,

Way to go, Todd!

 

[wonko the sane?]

It was a known thing, and known well in advance. The majority of the mod makers for skyrim are still active in the community, and the mods will get fixed. It won't be a quick fix by any stretch, but everything will be back to status quo by christmas at the worst.

 

[Zephyr]

Maybe I'll finally go back and finish Dragonborn sometime...

Or, more accurately, start it again and finish it, since I'm reasonably sure those old saves are long gone, and were on the vanilla version anyway, not SE.

 

[abates]

I've been playing the Anniversary Edition, which has been going about as well as expected so far: The Dawnbreaker quest bugged out when I got to the end, and I had to reload back a save to complete it.

But I am confused by something - from when I played it way back, I recall when I took a cart, I would hop in and the cart would start moving to the destination in real time, with an option to fast travel to the end of the journey. Now when I hop into the cart, the screen automatically fades to black and I end up at the end of the journey. Am I misremembering that you could ride the cart all the way through Skyrim, or did it get changed at some point? Or am I remembering this mechanic from an entire other video game?

 

[Zephyr]

You're misremembering, it always faded out with the driver making some offhand comment - you might be conflating it with the need to manually travel to some of the secondary cities on foot before you could use their carts, though.