Not only has the Creation Kit been released, but Bethesda have also released a High-Resolution Texture Pack for download which makes the game look…better! If your PC can handle the texture pack then I recommend this as a download to make your Skyrim experience look even more gorgeous.

For more information on the Skyrim Creation Kit check out this post. Hopefully I’ll be able to check out some of the great mods that have been released so far. (apparently there is a Wheatley from Portal 2 mod that makes a floating Wheatley follow you around Skyrim, awesome right?).

DOOM was originally released for XBLA in September of 2006, and was published by Activision, but when Bethesda bought iD Software, it had to be taken down. The publishing is now being done by Bethesda itself.

Remember that while the game is old, this port has online Deathmatch and Co-Op, which I personally think is a complete blast to play and certainly makes the game worth its 400msp ($5) asking price.

The 1993 classic was one of the first first-person-shooter games ever and inspired years of DOOM-Clones until the modern FPS design came about.  The game is rated M for Mature, though its violence hardly compares to most other current games.

Bethesda and their parent company Zenimax Media have announced that a settlement has been reached in their ongoing court case against Interplay over the rights to make a Fallout MMO.  Bethesda have essentially won the case, with Interplay losing the right to develop an MMO or anything else that uses the license. Presumably the MMO they were making is now dead too.

However Interplay are still permitted to sell the original two Fallout games along with Fallout Tactics until December 31st 2013, additionally Zenimax is to pay Interplay $2 million as part of the settlement, so they won’t quite be walking away empty handed.

Part of me feels sorry for Interplay in this whole affair since it was their IP to begin with and the terms of their license agreement with Bethesda never seemed very fair to me (you can make a Fallout MMO but not use any copyrighted content from the Fallout universe!?). But then again the talent behind the original Fallout’s was largely absent from the MMO, so it’s unlikely that it would have done the name much justice anyway.

Source: Bethblog.com

I don’t think I need to say why.

Given my polarizing experiences with the two main entries into the Dragon Age franchise, the rhetorical question posed by BioWare CEO and co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka to Wired writer Jason Schreier concerned me greatly: “How do we combine the innovations we brought in Dragon Age II with the experience people were looking for in Dragon Age: Origins?” Hopefully, it’s all Origins.

BioWare may, however, be bringing more to the table than just Dragon Age. “[The next Dragon Age is] also gonna have a lot of things I think players are gonna find compelling from some of the games that are out right now that are doing really well with more of an open world feel.” Which games in particular? “We’re checking [Skyrim] out aggressively.”

It’s fairly clear that given the success of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, BioWare is looking to capture some of the magic that Bethesda brought to the fantasy RPG table. It’s not entirely clear at this point which parts of Skyrim Muzyka is talking about, but this definitely seems like a good thing to me. They recognized DA2 failed where Origins succeeded, so I have a feeling they just might also be able to suss out where Skyrim succeeded and failed as well and mix the proper ingredients into the Dragon Age pot.

BioWare VP and other co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk might have already spilled the beans, though: “the most realistic beards ever in video games.”

Source: Wired

As we reported last week, the new patch’s release wasn’t without a few wrinkles (detailed here), including dragons-in-reverse. Bethesda, via their blog, reassured fans that they’re fervently working on a patch to fix the, well…patch.

[...] we’ll be releasing an incremental update next week. We anticipate it will be up on PC first, and then hit PS3 and Xbox 360 later in the week. Among other things, the update will fix issues like magic resistance not calculating properly and the rare, amazing backwards flying dragon. Once the update is released, we’ll share the full release notes.

In summary, look for fewer physics-defying dragons in the next update — sometime later this week, since Bethesda’s blog went up prior to the weekend. Until then, Skyrim still functions — more or less — so keep plugging away at it and enjoy the magic of flawed programming while it lasts.

Some players have reported on dragons flying backwards, lowered texture resolution, broken bookshelves and armor racks, disappearing furniture, improper save loading, and so much more. I’ve already taken a hiatus from Skyrim to finish up Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Rayman Origins, but does this mean I should continue to abstain from playing it? It sounds like this patch could possibly do more harm than good.

To be fair, though, just about every patch for any piece of software in the history of patches and software has caused problems for at least some subset of users, and given the immense number of people playing Skyrim and the incredibly unpredictable nature of its game states, I’m not surprised a lot of people are reporting problems. Are these horror stories enough to discourage you from updating?

Source: Kotaku, Bethesda forums

Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim! It has pretty much consumed gamers since its release a couple of weeks back — myself included. But, while it’s pretty unanimous that the game is awesome, it isn’t without a few bugs. For instance, I myself have had my wedding put on hold because a particular wedding crasher (i.e. my dead companion) keeps ruining things.

Today, Bethesda issued a statement on their upcoming — or recently released, if you’re on PS3 — patch:

Today we’ve begun rolling out Skyrim’s 1.2 update for PlayStation 3 (labeled 2.01 on PSN). The update is already available for users in Europe and we will let you know as soon as it’s up in North America. Our current ETA for Xbox 360 and PC players is this Wednesday, November 30th.

So what does the new update cover? Details below…

UPDATE 1.2 NOTES (all platforms unless specified)

Improved occasional performance issues resulting from long term play (PlayStation 3)
Fixed issue where textures would not properly upgrade when installed to drive (Xbox 360)
Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz (PC)
Fixed issue where projectiles did not properly fade away
Fixed occasional issue where a guest would arrive to the player’s wedding dead
Dragon corpses now clean up properly
Fixed rare issue where dragons would not attack
Fixed rare NPC sleeping animation bug
Fixed rare issue with dead corpses being cleared up prematurely
Skeleton Key will now work properly if player has no lockpicks in their inventory
Fixed rare issue with renaming enchanted weapons and armor
Fixed rare issue with dragons not properly giving souls after death
ESC button can now be used to exit menus (PC)
Fixed occasional mouse sensitivity issues (PC)
General functionality fixes related to remapping buttons and controls (PC)

Thanks to Bethesda’s hard work, it looks like I might finally get that knot tied. And, for anyone who actually had the willpower to stop and wait for the graphical bug to get fixed — it’s time to get back on the horse, Dovahkiin.

Quite a lot of scratch for a single-player game with absolutely no online or multiplayer components. If you recall, Battlefield 3 shipped 10 million and sold 5 million (the trend seems to be ship twice as many as you sell) and that is a game and genre generally lauded for its replayability. Is this a sign that gamers are willing to pay for and play a singular gaming experience if it is topnotch? Does it turn out that online passes and multiplayer modes aren’t the end-all, be-all of successful video game franchises?

I don’t really know. In fact, I’ll be honest; I’m kind of distracted playing Skyrim.

Also, this Skyrim rap is too good for its own good.

via Joystiq

But, like all of Bethesda’s open-world games, there are a few bugs. One seems fairly unique, though: apparently the 360 version has an issue with streaming textures. In layman’s terms, some of the low quality textures aren’t being replaced as they should. Oh, and did I mention that this issue only arises when the game has been installed? Do you run Skyrim of the disc and suffer through longer load times, or do you install it and suffer through low-res textures? Decisions, decisions.

Fear not, Bethesda is well aware of the situation:

Skyrim uses a lot of dynamic streaming systems, including textures. We’ve seen a few reports of certain textures temporarily scaling down on the Xbox 360, and not scaling back up. We have verified that this issue does not occur when playing off the disk and when the game is fully cached (not installed). Skyrim makes heavy use of the Xbox 360 caching system, and caches over the normal course of play while in menus or interiors. This cache can be wiped when other games are played or when the user manually removes it. We’re working on a solution in the next title update for those who have installed the game.

There is a patch in the works, but when it will hit has yet to be determined.

I, personally, have not noticed this — but I am admittedly infatuated with Skyrim so maybe I’m subconsciously blocking this little bug.

Source:  GiantBomb

I don’t know if it’s even humanly possible to have beaten The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a mere two days after its release, but hey if you’re yearning for some new content in the frosty north of Tamriel (and you’re playing on the Xbox), Bethesda has you covered. The developer sent out a press release confirming Microsoft’s console would receive the first two DLC packs for Skyrim a whole 30 days before it landed on any other platform. When, you ask, will that be? Well, unless you speak ambiguous-press-speak and know “when the last dragon has been slayed” will occur, I think we’ll all have to take a wait-and-see approach. Check out a quote from the press release below, and then get back to killing dragons. Hey, maybe it’ll make the DLC come out sooner!

“When the last dragon has been slayed and the last book opened, Xbox LIVE will be your destination for exclusive access to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim add-on content. 30 days before you find it anywhere else, the first two content drops for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be available exclusively on Xbox LIVE.”

Source: g4tv.com