Dear Bethesda, This is What is what meant to look like

[Rooker75]

I have a GTX 465 w AMD quad core that runs Skyrim beautifully on Ultra, except inside certain fortress interiors. The Helgen Keep, especially near that drawbridge where the keep meets the cave, really bogs down my PC. I don't know if it's the dust floating around or what, but most of that interior runs at 15-30fps when most everything else is above 70FPS. It's really painful in there.

 

One thing I really regret is not spending the extra for solid state hard drives. I simply can't do large texture mods because it stutters horribly with really big mods. 7200RPM just isn't fast enough.

 

@shuriken88

LOL

[Stemin]

Anyway, jokes aside, why dont people just release games that DIFFER slightly between platforms, instead of making straight up ports. GTA IV, Saints Row 2 etc, they were some of the WORST ports ever to grace the face of PC gaming. If developers sat back and decided to do some extra groundwork rather than just changing a bit of code to facilitate the port, maybe things wouldn't be the way they are. When you think about it logically, theres NO reason the PC version of a game should be constricted by the performance limitations of the current gen of consoles. so I think if ANYBODY, we should be blaming the developers for being lazy and simply rushing things onto the shelves, NOT the systems their games appear on.

 

It's not cost effective to create 3 totally different versions of a game. Regardless of the fanatics, PC gaming has taken a huge hit over the years in terms of popularity. Probably due to the popularity of big MMO's and online games, but also because the consoles have gotten so much better. If games didn't have multi ports its entirely conceivable you'd see the end of PC gaming as you know it now because the big developers would probably just stop making games for PC.

 

Developing a game for a console is just plain smart money wise. There's more console gamers, and it's easier and cheaper to develop a game for one set of hardware, vs. trying to write scripts for a game that will be played on PC's where everyone has a different hardware setup.

 

A lot of the flack you're hearing about Bethesda and their PS3 port of the game is because of the fact that the XBox is basically made from PC parts. Back in the day developers had to learn a console system in order to write games for it. Now anyone out of college can use Microsoft's software and write an xbox game. It makes it a lot easier to develop for that console.

 

You're going to see a continuing trend of console gaming, so people might as well live with it. The next generation of consoles are going to be pretty much on par with the PC versions we have now, if not better. It's going to be interesting to see how it develops. Skyrim is already easier to play with an xbox controller, IMO.

[Karasuman]

You're going to see a continuing trend of console gaming, so people might as well live with it. The next generation of consoles are going to be pretty much on par with the PC versions we have now, if not better. It's going to be interesting to see how it develops. Skyrim is already easier to play with an xbox controller, IMO.

 

Yes, but then those new consoles will still be behind the PC's we'll have then. Therein is my problem with consoles. It is very true what you say, that they aren't going anywhere, but my main issue with them is that they will always be anywhere from slightly to quite a bit behind a concurrent PC, and so most games from here on will not realize their full potential because they're going to be written for an inferior piece of technology.

 

Consoles are great if all you want to do is make money (which of course that's all anyone really wants), but they're also restrictive from a creativity standpoint. I realize no one in business cares about creativity vs the bottom line these days (Bethesda made that clear with Skyrm), and that's unfortunate, because regardless of how many dollars are being made, it contributes to a never-ending downward spiral in the quality of the games themselves.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Karasuman

[worldofscotty]

And in 5 years time you'll still have those consoles and we will have cyborgs

[Rennn]

 

Yes, but then those new consoles will still be behind the PC's we'll have then. Therein is my problem with consoles. It is very true what you say, that they aren't going anywhere, but my main issue with them is that they will always be anywhere from slightly to quite a bit behind a concurrent PC, and so most games from here on will not realize their full potential because they're going to be written for an inferior piece of technology.

 

Consoles are great if all you want to do is make money (which of course that's all anyone really wants), but they're also restrictive from a creativity standpoint. I realize no one in business cares about creativity vs the bottom line these days (Bethesda made that clear with Skyrm), and that's unfortunate, because regardless of how many dollars are being made, it contributes to a never-ending downward spiral in the quality of the games themselves.

 

Not only that, but there's talk that the next-gen consoles won't be backwards compatible, especially if Sony moves away from Cell technology so soon, so chances are high that Skyrim and Oblivion won't even run on the next generation of consoles. I mostly agree with what you said (although you're going to get flamed by console gamers for being "elitist"), but thankfully not all the devs have fallen into the trap of making games like movies at the expense of everything else. FROM Software especially, with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, have made some excellent games, the latter of which is being [directly] ported to PC this year. As a person who gamed on consoles for most of my life, I really got sick of the backwards compatibility thing, and I ended up buying most of my favorite PS2 games for my PC.

 

The difference in our opinions is that I also think Bethesda pulled off Skyrim pretty nicely. They added features that nobody would be able to mod, like dynamic snow and tighter gameplay, and the only features they cut can probably be modded back in with time since those are mostly scripting things that don't require access to source code. It was probably a good decision on Bethesda's part, though obviously I wish they'd kept spellmaking.

Edited April 30, 2012 by Rennn

[Karasuman]

 

The difference in our opinions is that I also think Bethesda pulled off Skyrim pretty nicely. They added features that nobody would be able to mod, like dynamic snow and tighter gameplay, and the only features they cut can probably be modded back in with time since those are mostly scripting things that don't require access to source code. It was probably a good decision on Bethesda's part, though obviously I wish they'd kept spellmaking.

 

I agree that Skyrim does do some things right for sure. I just felt that it was a bit lacking in the creativity department as compared to some of Bethesda's other games, i.e. Fallout and Morrowind. Also, I wasn't aware that Dark Souls is being released for the PC, but now that you've mentioned it, I'm pretty stoked about it. I keep hearing how awesome (and tough) that game is, and it does look intriguing.

[Rennn]

I agree that Skyrim does do some things right for sure. I just felt that it was a bit lacking in the creativity department as compared to some of Bethesda's other games, i.e. Fallout and Morrowind. Also, I wasn't aware that Dark Souls is being released for the PC, but now that you've mentioned it, I'm pretty stoked about it. I keep hearing how awesome (and tough) that game is, and it does look intriguing.

 

Dark Souls is pretty epic. Every time I think I've seen all the game has to offer I see something else remarkable. I have no idea how they managed to program a game of that scale and detail in 1.5 years. They plan to release it for GFWL, which I don't really like. It seems like my ping is usually 200+ in GFWL games. Despite my earlier misgivings about the petition to get GFWL removed in favor of Steam, it seems like it caught FROM Software's attention, so that's good. I'll buy it either way, but hopefully GFWL gets replaced.

 

@OP

You would probably like this mod if you can run the mod in that picture, but sadly I can't run it and maintain high framerates without stutter.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13601

 

There are a couple rough edges, but it looks very impressive as a whole.

 

One thing I wish Bethesda had done was add dynamic attacks on villages (other than dragons). For example, I'd like to one day come across a village that's being beseiged by trolls from a nearby cave, or a village that gets pillaged by bandits once in a while.

Edited April 30, 2012 by Rennn

[nosisab]

All I want is a good enjoyable game, it may even look graphically perfect but that's not the primary concern to me.

[ProjectVRD]

It's actually about 12 square miles, but yeah, still unreasonable. We can blame the consoles for the small towns.

 

Imperial City in Oblivion felt about a quarter the size of all of Skyrim, so not sure if consoles were responsible, plus the city in Crysis 2 was pretty big and the consoles handled that pretty well.

 

I just think they spent so much time with ruins and caves that it meant the cities had to take a hit.

[wfalgui]

Probably in the future, when most PCs can handle it :D