Opinions on a Skyrim Remaster?

[opsguy27]

If they've got time for a remaster of Skyrim, they've got time to do some extra DLC. Seriously, you can't have a Dragonborn running around Skyrim without someone in Cyrodiil taking notice, can you? Septim blood or not, a living Dragonborn is a direct threat to the Mede Dynasty...see what I'm getting at? Citizens challenging Mede authority while a dragonborn is alive and fighting dragons and the Thalmor in Skyrim, Legionnaires questioning their own personal allegiance to either the Medes or the Dragonborn, political turmoil, etc. It would even throw some weight behind the Blades' significance...much more than what they had previously. A bonafide coup d'etat to set the stage for the next war with the Aldmeri Dominion. Well, most of this is just one individual's lost hope on something more for Skyrim instead of simply being Hermaeus Mora's waterboy. I can dream.

[avallanche]

Weighing in on this discussion with my own opinions here, but they're in line with some of what I've seen here, plus things I feel need to be addressed.

 

Personally, I don't want a remaster of Skyrim on PC. If anything, what I'd want to see is Bethesda focusing on TES VI. If they were going to do something for Skyrim, I'd love to see it get a 64-bit update. Even better if they gave it to everyone who already had Skyrim (I know a lot of Steam games can do dual-mode. Kerbal Space Program is one I play a good bit of where you right-click and launch in 64-bit instead of 32-bit.), but I doubt they'd do that.

 

If they were going to remaster Skyrim, I think a graphical console reboot makes sense. Skyrim was launched in 2011, and the xBox 360 was kinda, well... It was old even then. The PS3, from what little I've heard about, was a total pain in the butt to work with, delayed the DLC's enough that we never got our rumored 4th DLC, and left things in the main engine broken until someone fixed some of it with SKSE. So bringing it up to the PS4 and xBox One makes sense. It's an easy cash-grab with little risk. Fallout 4's Creation Engine, the same base engine Skyrim was built on (it's just like Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas all over again. The older will run in the newer's engine), would give all the minor boost Skyrim needs on consoles.

 

However, I think the problem is that if they re-release Skyrim now, and then turn around sometime late this year, early next year, or late next year, and release the latest game, they're going to run into a big problem: Skyrim, unless you blitz through the main quest in 10 hours flat (granted, that's doable. Especially if the Unofficial Patches were ported to a console to allow a bug-reduced game), is a fairly big game. There's a decent amount of replay value. Re-releasing Skyrim on the modern consoles might stifle sales down the road of TES 6.

 

At the same time, a console remastering could backlash pretty hard. Let's all remember, just for a brief moment, the whole paid mods fiasco. Now, let's make this rumored Skyrim Remastered a Console Only Exclusive, but requiring PC gamers to make mods for improved content and a more stable engine that we don't benefit from. I could see that backlashing pretty harshly and tearing apart the community, one which is still barely recovering from the paid mods experiment.

 

On the flipside of that, let's say they do remaster Skyrim and they do include the PC, with all 3 DLC's. And let's say, just because this is what a game company would do, they set the release price at $105. Oh, and even though you've already bought Skyrim, you'll have to buy it again, at $105. And your mods, the ones created for Skyrim Original Edition, won't work. Because reasons. (We'll just assume some form of code has changed between the game engines, and now old mods don't work at all, even though they could be rewritten, at great time and expense, by the mod authors.)

 

How many of you would buy Skyrim all over again, knowing your old mods won't work, and knowing you'll have to wait, again, for the CK to be released for it, and knowing you'll pay full release price and price of the DLCs all over again? How many of you would, like me, just ignore it and keep playing with what we've already got?

 

Now, if I wanted them to remaster anything, I'd love to see Morrowind brought into the more modern engine. Sure, some of the RPG elements would need to be tamed (I am not a fan of RNG dice rolls, especially when I swear the one in Morrowind is stuck permanently rolling 1's.) and the whole game redone because it's ancient, but I'd play a Morrowind Remastered.

 

Oblivion's still okay enough. The graphics are a bit clunky and the leveling system kinda sucks, but with the right combination of mods, it can look decent and play well enough to be enjoyable.

 

If we look outside of Elder Scrolls, though, I could see a viable remastering of Fallout 3 / Fallout New Vegas. Let's face it, Fallout 4 is much the same genre of game. They've got their biggest sales done, and now they're waiting on sale-jumpers to do their thing. Reviews have kinda said it's not as good as it could have been, and FO3 / FNV are both more RPG driven games (at least, from what I've heard. I've not played FO4, and I'm not sure I'll ever really intend to.), so they'd be interesting with an updated engine behind them.

 

FO3 stands a better chance, honestly, because it's nearly unplayable with how many bugs were left behind. FNV is stable-ish, although it does flip out, puke, then crash hard occasionally.

 

So... My guess is that if they do remaster a game, it'll be Fallout 3. (trying to bring in easy money using assets they literally have laying around by bringing a classic back from the dead, and in the process, appealing 100% to the fans who all seem to say 'Fallout 4 just kinda sucks' for one reason or another.) It makes the most sense from a business standpoint. (Nothing to lose - FO3 is a good game stuck with a buggy first-rendition engine, saddled with hours of DLC and a good time sink. It also won't step on the toes of any upcoming releases in a different genre, and the only toes it trods upon are the ones who won't care anyway, because they'll still be playing FO4. At the same time, the assets from FO4 could be used to make FO3, I'm sure.)

 

The game that, to me, makes the least sense to remaster is Skyrim. It's the most recent Elder Scrolls title, they'd annoy too many fans of the game who still play the game, they'd possibly drive another wedge in the modding community (which isn't a good thing if they want people making mods for the Consoles, after all), the only thing they could offer to the PC users is an updated 64-bit engine, and they'd have to do all the assets from scratch because the old ones were... well, we'll just say they're not pretty. Not to mention the fact that if they charged for what amounts to the exact same game + DLC on PC with a moderately updated engine, they'd tick off everyone who's playing Skyrim. (or modding it. Imagine the troubleshooting hell soon to come: "Which version of Skyrim do you have, original or remastered?" "I dunno, I bought it from Steam.") If they chose not to release it on PC, you've now given PC users a reason to hate consoles and we're the ones with the modding tools, thereby allowing the community to tear itself apart between consoles (Gimme mods naow!), PC elitists (We didn't get any updates, you don't get any mods!), and PC neutrals, who would end up being the guys trying to make mods for consoles, getting called sell-outs and getting all manner of spite from both sides, until they gave up modding entirely. (Sound familiar? Paid Mods all over again, with a third side tacked on.)

 

In the end, I don't see this being a good idea. Maybe, just maybe, if they hadn't tried the Paid Modding Experiment last year, I could see it going over smoother, but not after we nearly shattered the community.

 

So to answer my opinion, and as a TL;DR for anyone who skipped my wall of text:

I don't think Skyrim Remastered is a good idea.

If I were to want a Remaster of a Bethesda game, I'd want Fallout 3.

However, I'd prefer they focus their efforts on making TES 6.

 

But then again, when did Bethesda really thought about consequences before doing something? With paid mods and now with the stolen mods, they are just trying new stuff without a second tought about it... I doubt they considered any of the points you make... If experience serve us well, Skyrim is the choice because it's the best, more rentable and successful game they have.

[LegoManIAm94]

I hope for PC users that there will be a free piece of DLC on Steam that will be the remastered content (textures, shaders, etc) that you can choose to download.

[LordNyron]

I hope for PC users that there will be a free piece of DLC on Steam that will be the remastered content (textures, shaders, etc) that you can choose to download.

Anyone who owns Skyrim base + all the mods or the Legendary Edition on Steam will get the Special Edition free on launch day. Not sure if its optional though.

[AgamemnonTWC]

I don't think Skyrim needs a remaster at all, and considering that it's likely to be an entirely separate game that isn't compatible with mods for the original, I doubt I'll be playing it for a good year or two after release (I'll be waiting for the mods to be ported, if they ever are).

 

Honestly though, at least on PC I don't see any reason to "upgrade." It looks like all they did was put FO4's lighting effects in and make the HD texture DLC part of the base game. Considering my Skyrim doesn't use any of Beth's textures anyway at this point and Skyrim ENB does a much better job of handling visual effects than FO4's lighting engine does, I don't see why I shouldn't stick with the original.

 

As far as I'm concerned, this is purely a bone tossed out for consoles so they can make more money. I highly doubt there was a ton of work involved in porting the old one to consoles with better lighting, so they did it in the hopes of making more money off them. I'm fairly certain the one and only reason it's even being released on PC is so we'll make mods for console players to use.

 

I'll be pleasantly surprised if they fix any of the memory issues or make the game 64-bit. If they do, I'll happily eat half of these words and upgrade, but I'm not seeing it.

 

EDIT: @LordNyron: On the Steam store, the remaster is listed as a separate game. I've never heard of any precedent for Steam taking away a game you own, so even if it's something like the Portal release where it just shows up in your library without a choice, you'll still be able to choose whether or not to install it and you can still play the old one. Heck, you can probably run both at the same time if you want.

Edited June 13, 2016 by AgamemnonTWC

[ThalmorHighKingQueenDLC]

If they've got time for a remaster of Skyrim, they've got time to do some extra DLC. Seriously, you can't have a Dragonborn running around Skyrim without someone in Cyrodiil taking notice, can you? Septim blood or not, a living Dragonborn is a direct threat to the Mede Dynasty...see what I'm getting at? Citizens challenging Mede authority while a dragonborn is alive and fighting dragons and the Thalmor in Skyrim, Legionnaires questioning their own personal allegiance to either the Medes or the Dragonborn, political turmoil, etc. It would even throw some weight behind the Blades' significance...much more than what they had previously. A bonafide coup d'etat to set the stage for the next war with the Aldmeri Dominion. Well, most of this is just one individual's lost hope on something more for Skyrim instead of simply being Hermaeus Mora's waterboy. I can dream.

 

Spot on! Skyrim needs one final DLC to finish a story aka Thalmor/HighKing-Queen DLC. Also adding an option to cleanse Riften from corruption/Destorying TG & that b!tch Maven!

Edited June 13, 2016 by ThalmorHighKingQueenDLC

[NismoMan]

I don't think Skyrim needs a remaster at all, and considering that it's likely to be an entirely separate game that isn't compatible with mods for the original, I doubt I'll be playing it for a good year or two after release (I'll be waiting for the mods to be ported, if they ever are).

 

Honestly though, at least on PC I don't see any reason to "upgrade." It looks like all they did was put FO4's lighting effects in and make the HD texture DLC part of the base game. Considering my Skyrim doesn't use any of Beth's textures anyway at this point and Skyrim ENB does a much better job of handling visual effects than FO4's lighting engine does, I don't see why I shouldn't stick with the original.

 

As far as I'm concerned, this is purely a bone tossed out for consoles so they can make more money. I highly doubt there was a ton of work involved in porting the old one to consoles with better lighting, so they did it in the hopes of making more money off them. I'm fairly certain the one and only reason it's even being released on PC is so we'll make mods for console players to use.

 

I'll be pleasantly surprised if they fix any of the memory issues or make the game 64-bit. If they do, I'll happily eat half of these words and upgrade, but I'm not seeing it.

It *will* be a 64-bit game running on DX11. I'm just wondering if the engine is the same or not because if they ported Skyrim to the newer FO4 creation kit engine, all the current roster of mods will be broken. I'll go out on a limb and say that they did not touch the current game code/scripts *because* they want mods to keep working on Skyrim SE.

[AgamemnonTWC]

I have a very, very hard time believing that anything at all will be compatible with the new one. It is good to hear it'll be 64 bit and dx11 (thankfully not dx12 yet, I'm not ready to be locked out of all my favorite games). I'm still likely going to wait until we have an SKSE and an ENB, and I dearly hope that it doesn't suffer from the same bugs FO4 does (LOD bugs galore, lighting glitches, aliasing, and generally very poor optimization), but I have hope that it'll be worthwhile if it's x64.

[Rigmor]

A 64bit upgrade and rolling all the DLC's into one would solve a lot of issues. Battles could actually be battles with lots of soldiers and would be the first thing I would test. Hopefully a new updated Creation Kit which would have access to superior scripts? I don't know, but most mods, including SKSE and ENB required ones, could be updated and I am sure those teams are already looking into it.

Personally it's an exiting time, Beth never bothered with Morrowind or Oblivion, but a major engine upgrade will ensure all fans of the game that they haven't been forgotten by Beth and I would gladly pay for the upgrade which we won't have to so anyway.

 

Read what an expert modder has to say here on reddit:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ElderScrolls/comments/4n8nt5/putting_skyrim_remaster_misconceptions_to_rest/

[Signette]

Lol, confirmed Skyrim Remaster for PC... now that's just greedy.