Patch 1.2 for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is out, and our resident Bethesda fan is not happy with the things it fixes, and the many things it breaks...
All great empires fall. The Persians. The Romans. And now Bethesda, the once hallmark development studio responsible for Morrowind that set the standard for RPGs and reviving the post-apocalyptic genre with Fallout 3.
But Skyrim is a mixed bag. In some ways it improves on previous games, adopting as default features that modders used to add (suggesting Bethesda has been inspired by the modding community) and bringing some new ones to the table, but in other ways the more I delve into Skyrim the more I feel let down. Simplified character traits and the abolition of classes, removal of large swathes of spells and spell crafting itself, shadows that look like they're rendered on a Nintendo 64, broken interface on the PC, useless perk trees (lockpicking especially), broken skill scaling (smithing in particular), and of course the bugs. Oh, the bugs. And as gamers we can overlook the odd glitch; for better or for worse our passion gives us rose-coloured glasses (you know, to match our rose-tinted armour).
But one would think official patches are designed to fix bugs - not so at Bethesda.
After the shitstorm following the stealth DRM patch that broke LAA support - the one tweak that was allowing those with a constantly crashing game to play unfettered - the latest 1.2 patch that came out a few hours ago adds even more issues: corrupted savegames, broken elemental resistances for creatures and the player (Fire Atronach's no longer resistant to fire, elemental armour no longer protects you from elements) and the creme de-la fiery creme - backward flying dragons. Hilarious, if it wasn't so sad.
Wait, does the patch fix anything though? Of course! Guests may no longer turn up to your wedding dead (phew! glad that clearly critical glitch was nailed!). An NPC sleeping animation fix (because we spend so much time watching sleeping NPCs!). And, hey, you can press ESC to exit menus now!
Of the other issues that were addressed, they are classed as 'rare'. Nothing, then, about the dozens of common, sometimes game-breaking problems like CTDs (Bonechill Passage anyone?), lack of LAA support (again the only fix that works for those suffering engine-related CTDs), and the now close to 500 documented bugs pointed out by the community - reading through this list you would think Bethesda doesn't have a Q&A department. And now with the 1.2 patch and the new bugs it adds all doubt is removed: the company obviously doesn't.
No wait, it does! You are the Q&A team, and you pay for the privilege.
While not all of the community listed bugs are critical, and some are just cosmetic, they are bugs none the less and there's at least two or three dozen serious issues listed, many game-breaking (known and confirmed CTD triggers, and broken quests for example) and not a single one of these has been addressed by Bethesda, despite the list being maintained since the game was released.
Perhaps it just assumes modders will fix the majority of the issues (and they will, where they don't involve the engine). But this shouldn't be a method of business - to release a broken game and hope your customers will fix it for you. And it says nothing of those who purchased it on the XBox or PS3 and can't install mods.
And on top of it all, as with the stealth DRM patch, there's no news or official communication from Bethesda about any of this. Just a stonewall.
If you're reading this today, set Steam to disable updating Skyrim if you want to avoid further issues. And when the next Bethesda game comes, consider waiting six months before you buy it (if at all). As Bethesda seems to be ignoring its forums, perhaps it will listen to sales?
Issue: 137 | June, 2012