sea's (Mostly Technical) Skyrim Initial Impressions

[Satori (original)]

Are you victim of a 7 second freeze?

Processor: Intel® Pentium® Dual CPU E2160 @ 1.80GHz (2 CPUs)
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Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GT 430

It's not all that spastic, Witcher 2 ran fine on my Dual Core 3.2ghz but Skyrim with everything on low with the objects and actor distance upped a bit (which has no correlation on the freezing problem), turning off my antivirus helped somewhat but the problem is still there although lessened. For some reason Bethesda have put GPU tasks onto the CPU (with Skyrim still only optimised for 2 cores hurr); big fuck up on their part basically.

 

[Raghar]

For some reason Bethesda have put GPU tasks onto the CPU (with Skyrim still only optimised for 2 cores hurr); big fuck up on their part basically.

I don't complain. My computer can run it at full speed with shadows enabled. And it looks better than witcher 2 on 800x600.

They just completely screwed up the medium setting, like they had only console retards, or people who were too rich to have medium/low end GFX card.

The 7 second freeze is caused by some fuck up in the engine, not by lack of CPU or GFX power. It also mainly affects XP. Basically when they are loading a new patch they have some miscommunication somewhere, and some rather brutal memory leak. (Perhaps even in GPU memory.)

 

[Stabwound]

It's not all that spastic, Witcher 2 ran fine on my Dual Core 3.2ghz but Skyrim with everything on low with the objects and actor distance upped a bit (which has no correlation on the freezing problem), turning off my antivirus helped somewhat but the problem is still there although lessened. For some reason Bethesda have put GPU tasks onto the CPU (with Skyrim still only optimised for 2 cores hurr); big fuck up on their part basically.

Weird - Skyrim runs much better on my PC than Witcher 2. In fact, I couldn't even use anti aliasing at all on W2, but when playing Skyrim, 4x AA and almost all settings at ultra works excellent, and this is at 1920x1080. I haven't checked the framerate, but it feels like 60fps almost everywhere - the interior of the mage college being one of the exceptions.

I don't understand the bitching about the game running poorly. Maybe I'm just lucky. I've had 2 CTDs, though, and the problem where textures fail to load, leaving you with NPCs without faces or see through walls.

 

[Satori (original)]

Aye for me it runs as smooth as silk on all settings, except for that 3 second freeze every 10-20 seconds.

 

[Nael]

I had the CTD crash at the Main Menu when i first started the game and fixed it by setting my sound to 24bit 44.1khz. I cannot run the game on Ultra. It runs about 35fps outdoors but about 5fps indoors. What i am thinking is that the two issues could be related to the fact that i am using my onboard soundcard instead of a peripheral soundcard. Dunno. I might pick up a Soundblaster this weekend.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[sea]

Since I am apparently now a giant whore...

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchw ... Skyrim.php

I did another one of these "everything about Skyrim sucks" articles even though I in fact enjoy the game quite a bit. Funny how that works.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I HIT THINGS WITH HAMMER AND TAKE POTATO I'M HAVING A GREAT TIME

 

[Xi]

I had the CTD crash at the Main Menu when i first started the game and fixed it by setting my sound to 24bit 44.1khz. I cannot run the game on Ultra. It runs about 35fps outdoors but about 5fps indoors. What i am thinking is that the two issues could be related to the fact that i am using my onboard soundcard instead of a peripheral soundcard. Dunno. I might pick up a Soundblaster this weekend.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Sounds like a driver problem, or even a problem with sound codecs. I'd uninstall/reinstall and tweak it. There's zero gain in performance from a soundcard (for the most part). Sound quality aside, it would be a waste of money, imho.

Latest DX runtime:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35

 

[Comrade Goby]

OMG BROS NUDE MODS ARE OUT

Majestic?

 

[Nael]

I had the CTD crash at the Main Menu when i first started the game and fixed it by setting my sound to 24bit 44.1khz. I cannot run the game on Ultra. It runs about 35fps outdoors but about 5fps indoors. What i am thinking is that the two issues could be related to the fact that i am using my onboard soundcard instead of a peripheral soundcard. Dunno. I might pick up a Soundblaster this weekend.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Sounds like a driver problem, or even a problem with sound codecs. I'd uninstall/reinstall and tweak it. There's zero gain in performance from a soundcard (for the most part). Sound quality aside, it would be a waste of money, imho.

Latest DX runtime:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35

I would think that as well if not from previous experience. I had problems running Crysis when it first came out because it would intermittently freeze and there would be this "white noise" to accompany said freezes. I replaced my soundcard and it fixed the problems. You're probably right though. I'll do a complete driver update first and see if that doesn't resolve my issues.

 

[commie]

I've a Core2 2.13ghz, ATI 4770 512mb, 3gb ram and I ran the game on ultra, max LOD, 4xAA, 16xAF, 1600x1200 and it ran fine. Only concessions were the shadows(always a bane in Fagbryo and it's derivatives). Was pleasantly surprised and overall the game looks nice despite the usual LOD scaling popups(even with the settings on ultra) and texture shifts(again a staple of this shitty engine). Beth didn't do much with their re-written Fagbryo but at least they optimised it a bit so that it runs well on ancient systems.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Are you victim of a 7 second freeze?

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... -outdoors/

Ah, I wondered if someone else was experiencing this. I just thought I'd been too ambitious with settings and was slowly scaling back.

 

[Ulminati]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI3_y_V4bpA

I always felt Skyrim needed to look more like WoW

 

[villain of the story]

There are .dll files for improved performance for both ATI & nVidia at Nexus. Give it a try.

I played some more yesterday. It's lovely that game world reacts to little things you do. Like wearing any kind of armor. Stealing stuff. Especially the latter seems to be handled very sensibly. You can steal

It's also VERY refreshing that bandits won't attack you on sight. They will track your movement as you get close, draw weapons and give you the sign that you're on their turf and should leave and will only attack when you get very close.

A moment of extreme lulz: I stole a horse. When I got off the horse, it literally flied away (or more like got "pulled") to its original position far away right before my eyes. Gave me a WTF moment.

 

[Metro]

Since I am apparently now a giant whore...

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchw ... Skyrim.php

I did another one of these "everything about Skyrim sucks" articles even though I in fact enjoy the game quite a bit. Funny how that works.

Clearly you enjoy games where everything sucks!

 

[JrK]

Since I am apparently now a giant whore...

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchw ... Skyrim.php

I did another one of these "everything about Skyrim sucks" articles even though I in fact enjoy the game quite a bit. Funny how that works.

Man what a bunch of retards replying to it. Did that guy seriously say something along the lines of "It doesn't matter if the menu is totally unusable, as long as it looks great!".

 

[Pelvis Knot]

Man what a bunch of retards replying to it. Did that guy seriously say something along the lines of "It doesn't matter if the menu is totally unusable, as long as it looks great!".

I like this best:

Remember, Skyrim is ultimately about exploring. The menu is part of that; navigating the star chart is part of playing the game. You don't have to like it or appreciate it, but you should at least recognize that if you want to have a meaningful discussion about the menu's merits as a UI.

Also, the delivery service should not bring the game to your door, but throw it somewhere along the way.
Skyrim is ultimately about exploring. Navigating the neighbourhood searching for the box is playing the game. You don't have to like it or appreciate it, but you should at least recognize that.

 

[Gord]

Also, the delivery service should not bring the game to your door, but throw it somewhere along the way.
Skyrim is ultimately about exploring. Navigating the neighbourhood searching for the box is playing the game. You don't have to like it or appreciate it, but you should at least recognize that.

 

[torpid]

What about the dragons? Seems like a decent concept, but from what I've seen it's an ez mode fight, apart from their bloated HP. They don't do anything while circling in the air, and when they land they go through a lengthy animation that really telegraphs their attack, so you have all the time to dodge or find cover. It looks like they're the quintessential epic (majestic?) enemy: very showy but no real threat.

Also, what kind of new enemies/creatures are there, aside from the ubiquitous bandits and wolves?

 

[hoopy]

Also, what kind of new enemies/creatures are there, aside from the ubiquitous bandits and wolves?

The physics engine.

Even seemingly ordinary and harmless everyday objects can strike you down without warning. It's just like House.

 

[kris]

What about the dragons? Seems like a decent concept, but from what I've seen it's an ez mode fight, apart from their bloated HP. They don't do anything while circling in the air, and when they land they go through a lengthy animation that really telegraphs their attack, so you have all the time to dodge or find cover. It looks like they're the quintessential epic (majestic?) enemy: very showy but no real threat.

Also, what kind of new enemies/creatures are there, aside from the ubiquitous bandits and wolves?

While you mostly can find a good place to get out of harm, what you said is not entirerly true. The dragons have done sweeps against me were they blow fire on me, which will make it impossible to see and retaliate properly. But they don't do that often enough, so it is easy to just heal between attacks like that.

 

[Secretninja]

likely that the PC version fell by the wayside in order to hit that majestic "11/11/11" shipping date.

 

[Gerrard]

As it turns out, dragons aren't that good at flying after all.

 

[Surf Solar]

I noticed there are some points of interest on the map where a dragon would spawn once per day, each time you fast travel to this location. Makes it easy to farm those dragon bones.
Last time I got attacked by 2 dragons at once and I saw a third circling on the horizon, it was pretty derpy since they still couldn't manage to kill me, but some random Draugr can. Worst is when they spawn at the mage academy, because that place is so cramped. And believe me, it happens very often.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Worst guards ever.