When I had turned on my Xbox 360 last night to play some more of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I really was not expecting much out of the ordinary. Sure, I had heard the news that the recent patch for the game was doing some…bizarre…things to the game, but that must be rare right? What were the actual chances that something that weird would happen in my game? The update happened upon starting the game, and about five seconds in I noticed some things.
Last I had played, I was in the town of Riften. I was walking through the main circle of the town, minding my own business, when I saw a dead NPC (non playable character). A bit unusual, for sure, but it was probably just a dragon attack or bar fight that was to blame, right? He had a good amount of expensive loot on him, and my character isn’t picky, so I picked him clean and went on my way. A short walk later, and I find a dead body of the same type of NPC also on the ground. Although his loot was a bit different, it was too similar to pass up as mere coincidence. This was definitely one of those major patch malfunctions all the cool kids were talking about. This was not the only location I found dead NPCs scattered around on the ground, like some sort of sick horror movie.
It did not stop there. Although my play time was short last night, I noticed a problem with the rain frequently. Traveling through a cave, I noticed that the ground was “rippling”. Looking closer, it appeared that there was a spot on the ground rippling in the same way it would if it were raining. One problem: it wasn’t raining. A similar glitch was found in another cave; there was rain, but no puddles on the ground, and it was only in one spot in the area (rain sounds and all).
Bethesda has noticed the vast amount of gaming media coverage that their blunder-patch has created, and is quickly (and hopefully effectively) throwing together a supplemental patch to accompany it. “This week we released update 1.2 across all platforms, and 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.”
Bethesda has also said that they will continue to update the game as they find more things wrong with it, which was kind of expected. The good news is, if you liked the backwards flying dragons or any of the awesome glitches that you read about here today, the patch for Xbox 360 and PS3 will not be available til probably about a week after the PC’s patch. So, you know, go nuts.
[Source: Bethblog]
