Skyrim is getting a day one patch, more DLC than you can shake a giant sword at

by Ben Gilbert on Nov 8th 2011 1:07PM

For those of us currently slaying dragons in the frigid realm of Skyrim, pushing ever towards the review embargo this Thursday and launch thereafter, a game patch was spotted upon initial startup. Bethesda reps tell reviewers that the patch "fixes some minor stability and quest progression issues," and that it will be received automatically by players on day one.

If fixes to "minor stability and quest progression issues" don't get you excited, perhaps the prospect of "bigger and more substantial" downloadable content will, as teased by Bethesda creative lead Todd Howard earlier this week. "We're not going to do be doing a lot of it. Our high-level thinking is that there'll be not as many," he told Wired, before he explained the company's Fallout-esque approach to Skyrim's DLC. "We'll start hitting on everything after vacation," Howard added. Looks like we'll just have to busy ourselves with infinite dragons in the meantime. Darn.

Source: Wired

Tags: bethesda, bethesda-softworks, day-one-patch, dlc, downloadable-content, elder-scrolls-5, microsoft, patch, pc, playstation, ps3, skyrim, the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim, xbox

Reader Comments (119)

They patched the minor stability issues, but they decided to leave the major ones in, just to remind us that it’s a bethesda game.

@SpacePenguinBot

and we are done here. Last person out of the thread, turn off the lights.

@SpacePenguinBot

Well the game's got 16 square miles of fully explorable space, and its graphics engine is top quality. Also tons of games have bugs, it;s just a part of programming. it would take them years to sit and try to debug every tiny bug before release. just be grateful there's a patch available from day one .

@SpacePenguinBot I can't remember which philosopher said it first but "Haters gonna hate"

@SpacePenguinBot
10/10
I love me some Bethesda, but goddam if they don't have more bugs and optimization issues than any other major dev.

@NickCanDigIt potatoes gonna potate
-Terry Crews-

@soapmanone
"and its graphics engine is top quality"

Gamebryo is top quality like McDonalds is fine cuisine.

@soapmanone

Shenanigans on your comment. New Vegas took a year before the thing was actually stable and playable.

I love Bethesda's games but I'm worried about the quality of Skyrim after New Vegas which was bug ridden and broken upon release. That was Obsidian of course but still, people being concerned and calling Bethesda out for their QA is spot on.

@soapmanone Having seen this amazing graphics first hand on the 360... I think we have different definitions.

It's got classic Elder Scrolls blurry textures and stop-go animations :l

@OnToGloryReturns New Vegas was made by a different team and Skyrim uses a different engine. Not to mention that New Vegas was playable quite fast if you were on PC and just used fan patches. It's pretty obvious that they just didn't allocate the resources to fix the bugs as this is a secondary team and they're going to get the shaft on things like this.

@Haizeus Specially when it is NOT gamebryo; it is the Creation engine.

Derp.

@DustbinK

"Different" engine is a bit of a misnomer. It's Gamebryo 2. How much is new is still left to be seen.

@DustbinK

New Vegas wasn't made by a different team, it was made by a different company.

@DustbinK

And that's acceptable for a $60 product?

No, it is not.

@Meldrich They just re-named their version of Gamebryo to Creation. I'm hoping the improvements they've made to Gamebryo actually warrant a name change though and they didn't do it simply for public relations reasons.

@Zelnick The Creation Engine was created in-house; Gamebryo is a third-party engine used in several other games. Like Ego Draconis, Bully, Catherine etc. So totallly NOT gamebryo 2.

@SpacePenguinBot

Well this was fun. In case anyone was wondering Skyrim is a day one purchase for me, but I expect the game to stay in ‘beta' until around xmas.

@OnToGloryReturns
Are people like you still making these silly claims. Fallout was playable from day one. There was only one game breaking bug while I agree this is not acceptable it doesn't make a game unplayable when 1% of people run into a game breaking bug. That bug was also fixed very quickly.

There were plenty of other bugs but graphical bugs or bugs that you might run into but can easily be worked around don't equal unplayable.

@soapmanone 10/10, would rage again.
So what happened to games before the age of post-release patching? Keep in mind, games existed in bug-free, playable states before internet connectivity in consoles. Did no one ever play working games before patches became a scapegoat for lazy programming?

Confirmed: I'm waiting for the full GOTY edition next year.

@Undulation

I'm waiting for a GOTY, and for the modding community to fix the game, before I buy this one. I love Elder Scrolls games, but Elder Scrolls games where they chose to make them more like Fallout? I dunno.

@Undulation
Yeah. This just confirmed it for me too.

@Undulation

Same here, anyone that have played a Bethesda game must know that already, I probably wait for the low prices of the standard edition when the GOTY is released

@Undulation
But...but Skyrim is so close! I know there are lots of other games this season, but...Skyrim, guys! Maybe you can live for the GOTY edition, but is that really living!?
Skyrim!

@Ravenok

I dunno why people got so tricked by the hype, but even Morrowind wasn't that good until people modded it; simply because of all the bugs Bethesda had in it.

Skyrim will be NO DIFFERENT. It needs mods, it needs a GOTY, and until then, it's as bad as New Vegas.

@Undulation

Well said. You were voted down for being a thrifty consumer. Gotta love that logic gets frowned upon.

Hey, when everyone else will be spending at least $120 to get the game, DLC, or the game and then the Game of the Year Edition, you'll be spending $50, you'll get all of the DLC and you won't have to wait for issues to be fixed because you didn't buy in early.

Wise man.

@Copybass Ah jeez zombies

I hope it's as bad as New Vegas. That's one of my favorite games this gen.

@Copybass Ah jeez zombies
Oh. Oh, I see. I guess I never realized that Bethesda was incapable of making a good game; they've just been taking credit for the masterpieces their fans produce. Shame on them for creating an awesome experience and allowing fans to collectively improve upon it.

If you don't want to support them, I'm dumbfounded, but I guess that's your choice. I'm going to vote with my money, because--Holy crap! Skyrim is out Friday!

Heck, I still haven't finished New Vegas!
I can wait for the cheaper, patched version with plenty of nice community mods (even if half of them are going to be slutwear for high-res fashion-model reskin characters).

@KungFuChaosNinja
I can afford it. Don't worry about my finances. thanks.

@Undulation

Theres always the chance that in one years time any of us could be dead. Why take the chance, enjoy the game once we can.

@That One Guy

Listen, their games are amazing in their scope, systems and ambitions but to deny that they don't have major issues upon release is just blind. New Vegas, which I've played enough of to know that I love, was a bug ridden, broken mess upon release. So much so that it barely qualified as a legitimate commercial release and not a beta build.

I learned my lesson from that fiasco and I refuse to reward devs for that kind of shitty QA. I know I want to play it and I sure it'll be great but I have no problem waiting for the GOTY edition w/ a lower price and the proper patches in place - PLENTY of games to play in the meantime.

Fool me once, shame on Bethesda
Fool me twice, shame on me

@Copybass Ah jeez zombies So the hype is a trick, the game will be broken and filled with major bugs, it will be "as bad as New Vegas", and it will require work from the mod community...

...so you're going to wait for the **GAME OF THE YEAR** edition before buying it?

Epic, epic, epic logic fail.

@basgamer

Everyone gets a GOTY version; even those who DEFINITELY aren't Game of the Year. All it means in this day and age is that you're getting a pack with the game and all the DLC.

@Copybass Ah jeez zombies Seriously, why the hell are gamers so whiny and ADD these days. Call of Duty 4 ver. 5 will go to sell billions (the game, the DLC, and Elite) despite being basically the same thing we played in '07, yet all these people trash Bioware and Bethesda, two of the best developers out there, just because they produced 1 game that didn't live up to the stellar quality of their previous work. I played the hell out of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 (hundreds of hours each), plus all the DLC for each, all on the Xbox, and had little to no problems with any of them, and the only thing that happened in New Vegas was a single quest i had to reset once. The reason I didn't like NV I don't even know, it just didn't hook me like the others did, not sure why. And honestly, the previously mentioned games are some of the most complex, content-packed, amazing games out there, it would take an act of god for anyone to release something as complex as a Bethesda game without bugs.

@CLIFTRON

It's cool how people still think that Skyrim's going to be complex, when they're removing all stats aside from Mana, Stamina, and Health, and removing three more skills.

I hope they have the time to do an a proper expansion ala Shivering Isles. Yes, they'll do DLC less frequent than Fallout 3/NV, but as big as SI? Hopefully yes. That expansion in scope and quality was nothing short of fantastic.

But will it have horse armor?!?!

@mcnerven

Even better. Mammoth armor.

PC Gamer's back page predicted Mudcrab Armor.

@stiqlol
Dont talk about my Mom like that.

Fallout like DLC? I'll wait for the ultimate or GOTY edition next november for $50.

Glad they are pushing the patch out day one, shows they at least checked everything out after going gold just this week. Sure there will still be bugs in a game this big, but I'm excited either way.

@Guzzy2792
Actually it doesn't. Most of the time what it means is that they knew there were issues that they wouldn't be able to address by go live so they start working on the first update as the GM is wrapping up.

I dont see the big deal here, it happens all the time.

I'm on the fence about this one....Is this game hack n slash?

@Timjoy

There is more than enough info on it out there. Read up.

ST

@Timjoy

No, it has some hack n slash type game-play... but it also has magic and bows and many many skills like Smithing. It's a big open world, where you basically do whatever you want.

@That One Guy

Why is this shocking to you?

@Timjoy

It is a strategy game. You strategically work out how you will skip school/work for a week and strategically decide how you will make it up to your significant other for disappearing for a month.

Why do a lot of people seem to feel the need to let everyone know they are going to wait for the GOTY version? It's as though they are so insecure with their decision that they need to broadcast their it to everyone around them (and lets be honest, themselves) in order to justify it.

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim is getting a day one patch, more DLC than you can shake a giant sword at

Reader Comments (119)

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:14PM SpacePenguinBot said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 2:47PM mrantimatter said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 2:49PM soapmanone said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 2:58PM NickCanDigIt said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:11PM Cave Johnson said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:43PM penetraitor said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:49PM Haizeus said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:54PM OnToGloryReturns said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:54PM jynxycat said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 5:27PM DustbinK said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 5:59PM Meldrich said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 6:09PM Haizeus said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 6:10PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 7:24PM OnToGloryReturns said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 8:08PM Zelnick said

Posted: Nov 9th 2011 7:24AM Meldrich said

Posted: Nov 9th 2011 9:32AM SpacePenguinBot said

Posted: Nov 9th 2011 12:57PM thenutman69321 said

Posted: Nov 10th 2011 4:14PM igasagu said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:15PM Undulation said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:25PM Copybass Ah jeez zombies said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:30PM making11s said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:31PM robmv said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:36PM Ravenok said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:48PM Copybass Ah jeez zombies said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:54PM KungFuChaosNinja said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 2:00PM Bumper said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 2:13PM Ravenok said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 2:35PM StClair said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:24PM Klearwater Killer said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:38PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 4:00PM OnToGloryReturns said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 5:31PM basgamer said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 5:34PM Copybass Ah jeez zombies said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 6:34PM CLIFTRON said

Posted: Nov 9th 2011 9:43AM Copybass Ah jeez zombies said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:18PM PointlessPuppies said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:20PM mcnerven said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 2:00PM Bumper said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 2:36PM StClair said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:26PM Klearwater Killer said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:21PM SuperAnthony64 said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:21PM Guzzy2792 said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 3:02PM XLM said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:23PM Timjoy said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:27PM Steel Toad said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:29PM CoolBreeze221 said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 5:26PM Vidikron said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 6:02PM LazerCharging said

Posted: Nov 8th 2011 1:26PM xyloPhipps said

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