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Skyrim - How Not to Make a PC Game

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Skyrim - How Not to Make a PC Game

Game News - posted by Jaesun on Sat 12 November 2011, 16:19:21

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Eric Schwarz; The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

 
Gamasutra is featuring an article by Eric Schwarz examining many of the PC issues with Skyrim:
 


Unfortunately, Skyrim's PC user interface is quite possibly the clunkiest and most difficult I have ever seen in a game made after the DOS era.  I have played games from 1985 that were infinitely more usable than Skyrim; that a modern game makes so many elementary mistakes suggests a certain kind of malevolence, not simple laziness.
 
Heavily tied to the horrendous UI design in Skyrim's PC port is the incredible lack of foresight demonstrated in the game's various customization options.  Some of these things, such as the inability to change certain game settings in-game, are unfortunate, but predictable considering previous Bethesda games.  There are, however, yet more problems which are clearly the result of extreme incompetence, ineptitude, or laziness, which extend to the most basic functions of the game.
 
Key remapping is something that you'd think would be a standard feature in a game, and that would work.  Bethesda, it seems, have decided that getting such a feature working isn't critical to releasing a triple-A product. 
 
One final damning point about Skyrim's PC port - it's horribly, pathetically optimized, and has major compatibility issues.  Right from the bat, I knew that something was wrong when my high-end system was getting framerates in the low 20s from time to time, and when performance did not improve upon lowering the graphics options.  Things became even more suspicious when I realized that there was no rhyme or reason for any of the framerate drops - whether I was outside in the overworld, the terrain stretching into the distance, or inside a tiny shop the size of a prison cell, the game's framerate fluctuates all over the place.  There's no question about this: Skyrim is badly optimized.
 
You can read the full article here.
 
Spotted at: Gamasutra

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