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Snap into a Skyrim with the 'Macho Men' mod
We had to watch the above video a couple of times to make sure we weren't having some sort of fantastical dream, but we are apparently awake: the late "Macho Man" Randy Savage has made his way into Skyrim, and he's bringin' the pain. Ohhhhhh yeah!
Synchronized Skyrim light show knows the reason for the season
We're rarely brought to tears by displays of holiday-themed lighting strewn across the face of a residential building. Then again, most holiday lights aren't synchronized to the totally radical theme to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Fortunately, some are -- like the one seen in the video above.
Skyrim PC patched, can now claim 4GB RAM
Skyrim has become just a little more cognizant of the money you spent on extra RAM, and the teeny bit of blood lost when you pushed the modules in with enough enthusiasm to cut your fingers. A new incremental patch, bringing the PC version of Skyrim up to 1.3.10, lets the game address up to 4 gigabytes of RAM. A similar performance fix was issued by the modding community shortly after the RPG's launch, but was rendered incompatible by an official patch. Now, modders and developers agree that Skyrim should take advantage of the extra space afforded on PC.
Skyrim is 2011's most-played game, according to Raptr
Popular game-tracking service Raptr recently published its list of top-performing games of 2011, a roster entirely decided by the amount of man hours (and woman hours) its gaming community poured into them. The list isn't terribly surprising: Skyrim was the most-played RPG (beating out Dragon Age 2 by a factor of six), Modern Warfare 3 was the most-played shooter and FIFA Soccer 12 was the most-played sports game, because, you know, Europe. Here's a surprise, though: According to Raptr, the most played game of the year was Skyrim. Crazy, right? We thought for sure that Modern Warfare 3 and the siren call of its quintuple prestiges would take the cake. We admit this tendency could have possibly been surpassed by infinite dragons and somehow-even-more-infinite adventure.
Explore Skyrim's other epic settings with PC tweak guide
Nvidia has published an extensive optimization guide -- written by TweakGuides creator Koroush Ghazi -- for Skyrim. It explains and advises on the PC game's standard settings (anisotropic filtering, motion blur, etc.), as well as more granular modifications involving console commands and custom initialization files. It should be immensely helpful in getting Bethesda's sprawling game looking and running as good as your system allows. Be attentive while following the guide, though. Our game used to run so well, but we took an error to the INI.
Report: Skyrim PS3 still problematic post-patch
Stuttering, unwieldy exploration in the PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim may be a symptom of the game's design and its consumption. Players report dramatically impeded performance creeping into the frigid realm, as save files grow and in-game clocks count down to the imminent death of a social life. The problem, while particular to the game's complexity and duration, may be rooted in memory management, according to pixel counting pros Digital Foundry. "The bottom line is that Skyrim is an unbounded game world running on a space-constricted system - and this applies regardless of the platform you play it on, hence reports of the PC version running out of address space and displaying solid colours instead of textures," says Tom Morgan. "The PlayStation 3 is unfortunate in that it's the platform with the most oppressive RAM issues (in addition to the split-pool set-up of the memory, the OS has a larger footprint than its 360 equivalent) so it makes sense that it has the most noticeable issues." Said issues led to some disastrous framerate hiccups in Digital Foundry's 65-hour game ("It's the first time our performance analysis tools have ever recorded a 0FPS reading.") and inspired a warning to consumers from CVG. The latest Skyrim patch reportedly brings improvements, but DF suggests it may still become "unplayable for those with a huge time investment in the game - unless you're only willing to play Skyrim in half-hour bursts, saving and restarting the game." We'd advise you to take regular breaks anyway, though we'd prefer if they were less motivated by the game breaking down. As usual, we'll keep you updated as Bethesda issues further updates to all versions of Skyrim.
Shinji Mikami's studio gets Skyrim shipment, may never get any work done now
Former Capcom superstar Shinji Mikami formed the development studio Tango last year, and it has yet to produce a tangible product -- and after this generous gift from sibling company Bethesda Game Studios, we shouldn't expect any progress for another year or so. Bethesda, part of the Zenimax Group with Tango, sent one Skyrim collector's edition for every employee at Mikami's studio, which, as we can see in the photo, is more than two. Tango is based in Tokyo, but Bethesda sent over English versions of Skyrim because there is no collector's edition for the Japanese version, and because people in countries that aren't the U.S. generally know more than one language. They call it globalization. Weird.
Bethesda teaching dragons to fly correctly in Skyrim's next patch
So, about Bethesda's latest Skyrim patch. There were, you see, some issues. Issues, like, say, dragons that flew backwards (hilarious!), and the game no longer recognizing some folks' active magic powers (significantly less hilarious!). Thankfully, Bethesda is all over it. The publisher today announced on its blog that a patch ... for the 1.2 patch that caused these issues in the first place, will arrive on PC first at some point next week, with Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 flavors to follow "later in the week." Bethesda specifically calls out the aforementioned issues, and ambiguously adds that "other things" will get patched (no word on the VOIP issue for PS3 users, unfortunately). Patch notes will further detail the update when it arrives next week, apparently. The publisher also promises to continue updating the game in the coming months, with PC getting updates first "as that's a process we control." As always, the console patches need to go through certification with Microsoft and Sony before ending up on your box at home. Additionally, PC users will be getting even more love in the coming months, with a promised January release of the game's dev kit (read: mod tools), as well as Steam Workshop integration, which should make finding said mods easier. No word is given yet on upcoming context expansions for the game, but, well, we've still got so much left of Skyrim that we're not really complaining.
Prepare to be psychologically overburdened by Skyrim's fully detailed locations map
We forgive you if you're already overwhelmed by Skyrim's ongoing notifications of new discoveries -- there's kind of a lot of stuff to do in Bethesda's latest Elder Scrolls realm. But for the rest of you fearless wanderers, the un-overwhelmable, Gamebanshee.com has put together this highly detailed, totally printable map of Skyrim's many, many locations. And if you should be so inclined to, say, print out a giant version of said map and adorn your wall with it, the cartographers responsible also have you covered (.ZIP link). If it weren't already clear that you've still got plenty left to explore in Skyrim, this map should handily clarify that. Just look at all that tiny writing! Those are all places!
The most impressive Skyrim trailer wasn't made by Bethesda
It was made by YouTube user "Wren the Reaper," and it features dozens of hours of footage, timelapsed and cut together for maximum efficacy. To say this is an impressive glimpse into the world of Skyrim would be selling Mr. The Reaper rather short, so we'll just let the video do the talking.
Wanted: Buckets, accomplices to theft and murder in Skyrim
Whether it's post-Oblivion or post-apocalypse, the humble bucket remains an insidious tool for the despicable. Be on the lookout for the voluminous accomplice to all manner of crimes, and remember that no ill deed is truly beyond the pail!
Bethesda's Pete Hines on Skyrim, sports, and specialization
With the video game industry seemingly headed toward smaller, cheaper, more casual and less complex game experiences, it's somewhat of an anomaly to see Bethesda Game Studios continuing to hit the ball out of the park with games that are the exact opposite: long, expensive and incredibly dense. Starting with the 2002 release of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Bethesda has focused almost exclusively on lavish RPG experiences. Ten years later, Skyrim looks to continue that trend to a round decade and beyond. I recently spoke with Bethesda VP of Marketing Pete Hines about what makes the developer's RPGs "bulletproof" against gaming's current "less is more" trend. "We do what we do best," said Hines. "We make big, crazy RPGs, and fortunately for us the previous ones have done really well so there's no reason for us not to keep making them. If that's what we loved doing and nobody wanted to play them, we'd have a problem on our hands."
Watch the sounds of Skyrim get made, pre-order the four-disc soundtrack
We appreciate all the work that went into the sounds of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as seen in the developer diary posted above. It seems a bit excessive though -- the only sounds and music we need are ones to accompany us breaking into every house, and stealing every pair of pants. Regardless, if you want the powerful hymns of a barbarian choir to make your working day that much more enthralling, you can pre-order the four-disc Skyrim soundtrack through DirectSong right now, for $29.99. That's a lot to pay for a soundtrack, but just imagine how great you'll feel as you fold your laundry as ninety dudes shout "DOVAHKIIN! DOVAHKIIN! DOVAHKIIIIIIN!" at you.
Brink patch scheduled for next week, addresses lag
If you're still having trouble keeping a smooth connection to Brink's class-based skirmishes, you may have better luck after an update launches for all three of the game's platforms next week. Bethesda's blog outlines the changes included in each version, including a few graphical glitches in the PC version of the game, and a bizarre freezing issue reported only by German players. The blog post says Bethesda expects to launch all three patches sometime next week, so keep an eye out for the automatic update over the next few days. The post also has some helpful tips for avoiding lag until the patches go live. Let's see: "Sacrifice a small animal on your console of choice, as if said console were some kind of pagan altar." Whoa! That's ... no. Don't do that.
New Skyrim screens show off ugly beasts and not-ugly humans
We've had to suffer four whole iterations of the Elder Scrolls franchise featuring characters with gaunt and terrifying faces. However, a recent flood of screens from OXM UK and PCGames.de give us hope that Skyrim's NPCs won't be quite as upsetting to gaze upon. Check out the new Skyrimages below.
"Fallout belongs to us": Bethesda lays claim to Fallout MMO
We may as well call it The NeverEnding Story 4: The Battle for Fallout. The ongoing legal struggle and corporate posturing between Bethesda and Interplay took a new turn today as Bethesda declared its biggest claim yet to the entire franchise -- including a Fallout MMO. According to Gamesindustry.biz, vg247, and Eurogamer, Bethesda's Pete Hines couldn't make it clearer: "We own the rights to the MMO. We own the rights to everything Fallout. The license is ours. Fallout belongs to us." Earlier this month, Interplay called such claims "absurd." This is troublesome for Interplay, as the studio has been hard at work on a Fallout MMO of its own, scheduled for a 2012 release. Both companies claim that they have the right to develop an online version of the hit franchise: Interplay because it retained the rights to do so when it sold the franchise to Bethesda, and Bethesda because the company claims Interplay failed to live up to the contract and forfeited its claim. While the lawyers continue to plow through this legal morass, this statement by Bethesda shows that the studio has no intention of giving up the rights to a Fallout MMO without a fight. [Update: We've clarified Gamesindustry's sources.]
'Morrowind 2011' mod done, gorgeous, now available [update]
It's funny, no matter how hard you try, there always seems to be a "new year" adjustment period. Just today, we were buying groceries and we put "The Year Before The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Came Out" as the date! Can you imagine? The clerk looked at us like we were crazy, and who can blame her? Though it is, in fact, the year that Skyrim is set to arrive, we've still got a touch over 10 months of waiting ahead of us. In the interim, we're going to be biding our time with modder Warwon's "Morrowind 2011" mod compendium (which you can see in action just after the break). That is, we would be, if Warwon weren't still in the process of looking for a host for the 4GB pack, which overhauls the environments in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind with beautifully modern graphics. Great, so now we're waiting for both of them. Double waiting. Could The Year that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Comes Out Barring Any Delays possibly be off to a worse start? Update: You can follow along with the project at the official site here. And it's live there right now!
Rumor: Elder Scrolls MMO in the works?
Just about every MMO player has an IP he'd like to see undergo the MMO treatment. For some of us here at Massively, that IP is Bethesda's long-running Elder Scrolls series. Due to a deep reservoir of lore and the fact that earlier games in the series (notably Morrowind and Daggerfall) were more MMO-like than many modern MMOs, we'd love to see what Bethesda would do with such a beast. Apparently we're not the only ones, as SystemLink has posted a bit of speculation on a possible The Elder Scrolls V, highlighting a few job postings as evidence in support of its theory. While we're not completely sold on the author's conclusions -- mainly due to Bethesda's plainly articulated stance on the massive genre -- we suspect this won't be the last we hear of an Elder Scrolls MMORPG..
All Fallout 3 DLC half off this week on Xbox Live Marketplace
As the Bethesda blog conveniently points out, the entirety of Fallout 3's downloadable addendums -- from forays into virtual Alaska to intergalactic excursions -- are half off their normal asking price this week. At 400 MS Points ($5) a pop, you'll only be $25 less prepared for Fallout: New Vegas. No worries, though -- we're pretty sure the employees at your local GameStop will happily accept Nuka Cola bottlecaps in place of US currency should you be a few pennies short come October 19. Xbox.com: Fallout 3 DLC on Xbox Live Marketplace
Interview: Josh Sawyer on Fallout: New Vegas
Imagine going to work on "Van Buren," the original Fallout 3, as a designer for Black Isle Studios, only to see the title canceled due to parent company Interplay's financial problems. Then, imagine Bethesda buying the Fallout 3 license and developing an entirely different game, which goes on to win multiple awards and accolades. Now, imagine you're brought back into the franchise, as a designer for Obsidian Entertainment, to create a sequel to Bethesda's popular title. Preposterous, you say? Josh Sawyer is the lead designer on Fallout: New Vegas and, after having the rug yanked from under him on the original Fallout 3, he's happy to be working on the latest new Fallout project -- one that will be released later this year. Read on for our conversation with Sawyer. Joystiq: What's your history with the Fallout franchise? Josh Sawyer: I worked on what's called "Van Buren," which was the codename when Black Isle started to work on what would have been Fallout 3, and we had worked on it for maybe half a year, and then it was canceled because Interplay had a lot of financial problems.
