InAComaDial999

I've played for several hours with no problems. I never ran 1.2 so I never saw any of the bugs that introduced. I think maybe 1.3 fixed a couple of weird book cover glitches I had noticed - the book on the Talos altar by the statue south of Windhelm was warped and about 6 feet long, but I went there again last night and it was fine. The game always ran well for me on 1.1, the only CTDs I had were when I tried out the ATI Catalyst 11.11b drivers, I reverted to 11.11a and no problems since.

I am not talking about the Thalmor Embassy. I am talking about Northwatch Keep, an actual fort garrisoned by the Thalmor military where they keep Nord prisoners. Right, because the Empire is a Thalmor puppet state. You can tart it up by saying it's treaty stipulations, but what it comes down to is the Thalmor have control over internal affairs in the Empire. Being "allowed" to worship in secret is not something any self-respecting Nord would stand. There's a reason so many Nords are willing to die for this cause, and it isn't simply because Ulfric is a good orator.

What peace? He's busy fighting a war in Skyrim. He's not rebuilding, he's throwing money and lives away. And with each Nord that is killed in battle or publicly executed he drives the wedge deeper between Cyrodiil and Skyrim. The best thing that can happen is for the Empire to leave Skyrim, and let both truly have peace and truly rebuild.

Again: Thalmor forts in Skyrim, going to war to enforce the Talos prohibition, etc. He's doing exactly what the Thalmor want, and getting nothing in return.

Hah! That was really well done. Reminds me of something Larry Blamire would do (Lost Skeleton of Cadavra etc).

From what I understand, Beth is gonna be doing the DLC more quality over quantity. What the DLC is going to be though is still not known... Horse armor, obviously. J/K. The DLC for FO3 has been pretty good, expanding the world and continuing the main questline (e.g. the war against the Enclave). Hopefully we'll see content along those lines.

It keeps being brought up because people are referring to the fact that the Empire is no longer ruled by the Tiber Septim bloodline (Talos). They consider the Mede bloodline illegitimate. Do they? Seems like the province is still pretty split about the whole issue. Still, to return to the earlier example, how many people in New York do you think think Obama is an 'illigitimate' presedent? Disslike of the leadership of your nation doesn't make said nations capital an 'foreign government' and 'foreign occupation' or anything else of the sort. But that's not a good analogy. Titus Mede isn't just an unpopular elected leader, he is effectively a puppet of the enemy that a lot of Nords died fighting during the Great War, and he is actively enforcing Thalmor laws that go to the core of Nord beliefs. So to the Nords it really is a foreign occupation; the fact that there are signs of Thalmor influence everywhere, from their presence at your near-execution at the beginning of the game to their having a fort of their own in Haafingar, only reinforces that.

Came here to say exactly that. Oblivion was pretty fun because it was a great modding engine - stuff like The Lost Spires, Arthmoor's villages, Werewolf - Legends, etc, kept me interested in it and gave me way more replay value than any of the game's own content ever did. It was a reasonably good generic medieval/fantasy setting, but it wasn't a good Elder Scrolls game, and now that Skyrim is here I look back on Oblivion and just can't take it seriously at all. What Skyrim does right is to feel like Morrowind did, it looks and feels and sounds like the same world. Where it can't compete with Morrowind is in terms of sheer scale. Morrowind had huge questlines for all the guilds, religions, Houses, etc. There were large and interesting communities, like the Imperials, the Houses, the Ashlanders; each region of Vvardenfell was completely distinct in geography and culture. There was much more variety in what to wear, how to fight, what to create, etc. There were three separate vampire clans with their own quest lines. The list goes on. Skyrim does feel like it's in the same universe, but a lot of what made Morrowind great seems to appear as easter eggs or vignettes rather than fully fleshed-out parts of the world. It's still a great game, but it's never going to have the same replay value or be as memorable because it just isn't as rich and multidimensional.

Ditto. Had same problem when I first installed Skyrim. I discovered that disabling normal AA and enabling FXAA got rid of the problem. Then I messed around with the AA settings and discovered the same thing, putting it on performance AA (multisample and box) fixed the problem. I'm now playing with 4xAA/8xAF and no FXAA and no texture issues at all.

I've been running the original 1.1 without Steam until today. Had no problem updating to 1.3. And yes, I kept a backup of my 1.1 folder just in case ;)

Same here. I installed the patch, played for about an hour, no problems. Fought a dragon, no wonky animation, got its soul when it died. Fast travel works, etc. Haven't tried the bookshelf thing yet. This is with a i7 920, HD5870 1GB, 6GB RAM, nothing overclocked, no mods, High settings at 1920x1080 with 4xAA/8xAF.

Go into CCC and hit the "Reset to Defaults" button in the 3D settings. I have a 5870, had the same problem and that cured it for me.

That would not be legal, and it wouldn't work in any case because all of the patches after 11/11 change TESV.exe so that it requires Steam to run.

So I just loaded a save that had me outside Whiterun, and when I walk northeast along the river a dragon comes by and attacks. The dragon did everything it was supposed to do, with no glitches, and when I killed it I got its soul. So at first glance it seems OK.

Question: what files have been changed by the patches since 11/11? For me, the only files that are not dated 11/11 are: installscript.vdf readme.txt TESV.exe Data\Skyrim - Interface.bsa The game displays version 1.3.7.0.

Kept my original 1.1 folder with no-Steam exe as a backup, but went ahead and downloaded this. Version says 1.3.7.0, everything loads fine, now to give it a spin...

Are you running any mods? I'd suggest resetting your drivers to their default configuration in the nvidia app. I would also delete (or rename) your skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini, so that the game recreates them.

Currently it is a 3v3 war going on, so to speak. If the Stormcloak with it is a 1v3, 3 times. The Thalmor would have no problems sweeping over the primitive Nords in Skyrim. So far the only people that have had a chance to repel tha Thalmor is the Redguard with help of a lot of veteran Legions. The Thalmor haven't attacked Hammerfell in 25 years, and there's no reason to think they would immediately attack Skyrim if it threw the Empire out. And Skyrim is a whole lot harder to reach, both by land and by sea, than Hammerfell. The Thalmor would have to march forces and establish supply lines all the way through Cyrodiil to get to Skyrim. If anything that looks like a great way to get a large chunk of Thalmor forces tied down with their flank open to the Imperials. Anyway, bottom line is it doesn't matter which side the Dovahkin picks, because the Empire and the Nords will unite against the Thalmor, whether it happens under a united Empire or as an alliance.

Oh look, another "I run around naked at Master and kill dragons with my fists. You people complaining just aren't good at games, I've been playing video games since I programmed my PDP-8 to play Tennis with an oscilloscope" post. TL;DR congratulations about your gaming prowess; sorry about your hair.

Ending the war is what's key, whether the Stormcloaks or the Imperials win. The Thalmor want to perpetuate the war to keep the Empire's forces divided and drain its coffers. IMO ending the war in Skyrim's favor will hurt the Thalmor the most, since the Empire won't keep occupying forces in Skyrim and can focus on rebuilding its army. Meanwhile, I'm not so sure that rushing to reunite all of the provinces under the banner of the current Empire is necessarily the best policy; a unified command makes it much easier for the Thalmor to find out what they are plotting, and the tensions caused by the ban on Talos and other restrictions makes it harder to avoid internal conflict. And ultimately, there's nothing to stop Skyrim, Hammerfell, and the Empire from forming an alliance against the Thalmor once all three have had a chance to rebuild. As far as the "But Ulfric is Racist!" thing, I'm not so sure the Imperials are much better. I don't see the Khajiit caravans being warmly welcomed inside the walls of Solitude, or Argonians in Imperial uniforms. The Empire wasn't exactly treating the Dunmer well in TESIII, and there was plenty of racial tension in TESIV (e.g. Countess Alessia Caro in Leyawiin). Beyond that, if the attitude in places like Windhelm bothers you, the game actually allows you to do something about it: there are a number of quests where you do things like help the Argonians get better pay, stop raids on Dunmer caravans when Ulfric ignores them, etc. You get to make a difference, make life better for those people and/or show the Nords that they can all work side by side. IMO fixing the problem from the inside is a lot better than just taking your ball and going home.

That's really not true. Packaging up and distributing assets from a game is a copyright violation. But creating a mod for one game, that uses assets from another game installed on your PC, is not "illegal". It may be a EULA violation, but that is hardly the same thing.

The elves look exactly like I wanted them to -- they look like elves did in Morrowind. For me, the elves in Oblivion mostly looked silly, with soft, bloated features, short foreheads, and blunt jaws. That's not what elves in TES ever looked like before, and I'm glad Skyrim returned them to the way they are supposed to look. It isn't impossible to make elves in Skyrim that are pretty in a human-like way, but that's not how most of them are and that's not how most of them were in previous TES games either. This page shows the evolution of the various races throughout the Elder Scrolls series. I think it's pretty instructive.

I play females probably more often than not, but it depends on the character and the game. My current Skyrim toon is a female Nord sneak/archer, to me she fits in the world perfectly. If I play a sword-wielding type next it will almost certainly be a male. I liked the response earlier about there being a "playing with dolls" element to it. In my case that's fairly accurate, as one of my other hobbies is collecting and customizing 1/6 action figures. About 2/3 of my figures are male - Soldier Story, ACE Works, Hot Toys, and other modern soldier types. But the other 1/3 are female, mostly Cy Girls sci-fi ninja types, female soldiers and pilots, and movie characters like Deunan from Appleseed. I like them because they look cool and kickass, not because I want to be one or have sex with them. So there's certainly that element as well - I want my characters to look cool, and all else being equal I'll play whichever sex looks cooler in a particular role. All that being said, one thing I never do is play female characters in online games. At that point IMO you're adding an element of deception to it, which I find super creepy.

There are several, including Tamriel NPCs Revamped (TNR) and Beautiful Women. Note - do a search on those names, there are multiple versions of each of these mods available on Nexus.

FWIW I was able to restore the original version of TESV.exe by right-clicking the exe and selecting properties->previous versions. The old one still works fine and lets me run without Steam. I will keep using it for now. This is on Win 7 64-bit. I had left my PC on and unattended since Friday, and Steam was running in the background. I just got home, exited Steam, and restored the old executable. The patch did not touch any other files, just tesv.exe.