Shirley Curry, aka the "Skyrim Grandma", is no longer posting gaming videos, she's told her viewers. An upcoming eye surgery is going to leave her recovering for some weeks and (more importantly to her) she is simply tired of playing games for an audience.
"It isn't fun anymore," she says in a video. "I'm tired of it. I'm bored with it, bored to death with it. So I am making the decision now - totally, finally - I am not going to be making any more gaming videos and uploading them."
]]>There's no genre like the open world for inducing choice paralysis, so it's fitting that I've been agonising over how to begin this irregular article series on open world games for months. I have a lot of material, oodles of interviews with developers of all shapes and sizes - big shops like Remedy and CD Projekt, smaller studios like Ace Team and Awaceb, all holding forth on such topics as whether Elden Ring or Zelda did bandit camps better, and how you make a forest feel endless. There is so much you could talk about, so many trails heading off in all directions, but perhaps it's best to begin with the more personal and superficial question that inspired this investigation: how did the open world game get so boring?
]]>With the Fallout live-action show now out and honestly far better than I was expecting, are Bethesda also brewing an adaptation of their other big RPG series, The Elder Scrolls? Not at present, according to Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard, and he says he'd "probably say no" if approached. Mind you, that was the stance he had until Fallout finally fell into place.
]]>When Bethesda was working out how to turn their popular Elder Scrolls RPGs into an online behemoth to rival World Of Warcraft back in the late 00s, the initial pitch was "Elder Scrolls with friends," creative director Rich Lambert tells me. A simple idea on paper, perhaps, but one that proved to be a lot more complicated in the realisation of it. Zenimax Online Studios was founded in 2007, a year after The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion landed to universal critical praise, but it wasn't until seven years later that The Elder Scrolls Online finally released for PC in 2014. At launch "we were walking this weird line between 'online game' and 'Elder Scrolls game'," Lambert says. "We didn't do either of them particularly well."
Ten years later, though, The Elder Scrolls Online is thriving. At last count, the game has over 24 million players galloping about the plains of Tamriel, and later this June, it will receive its eighth major Chapter expansion, Gold Road, which adds Oblivion's West Weald to the game and wraps up the mystery of the new Daedric Prince that arrived at the end of the previous expansion, Necrom. But the path ESO has taken to get here hasn't been nearly as glittering, with its PC launch in particular generating "a lot of feedback", as studio director Matt Firor told press at the game's tenth anniversary event last week. In fact, it wasn't until ESO came to consoles in 2015 that the game really found its voice, says Lambert. "We had to really figure out what we wanted to be, and we chose 'Elder Scrolls'. As soon as we hit that core pillar of 'It's Elder Scrolls first, online second,' then it really just helped inform everything we've done since." Trouble is, when the thrust of ESO's development straddled the launch of two very different Elder Scrolls games, even nailing down that first part of the pillar proved to be more challenging than expected.
]]>A new update for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition has introduced "Creations", a method through which community modders can sign up to the "Bethesda Game Studios Verified Creator Program" and then sell their work through the platform to receive royalties.
It's "paid mods", in other words, and a revival of an idea Bethesda launched and abandoned in 2015. The same update also broke existing mods dependent on Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE), a commonly used community-made modding toolkit.
]]>The number of people playing Starfield on Steam has slipped under the concurrent player count for the 12-year-old The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, just two months after Bethesda proclaimed the sci-fi exploration epic as their biggest game launch to date.
]]>The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be a mixture of new ideas and RPG systems that go all the way back to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, according to Bethesda's former design director Bruce Nesmith, who was lead designer on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and senior designer on Starfield. In particular, Nesmith reckons it will "absolutely" continue with Skyrim's approach to levelling and progression, whereby you improved skills by performing the associated actions. He also thinks the game will "probably" retain elements of the magic system he designed for Skyrim, which broke away from Oblivion and Morrowind in being simpler to understand and more immediately powerful, at the price of flexibility and inventiveness.
]]>Pete Hines, head of publishing at Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Starfield studio Bethesda, is retiring. One of the most public faces at the developer behind perhaps only Toddy H himself, Hines has played a prominent role in the release of their biggest games for close to the last quarter-of-a-century - but says that the “time is right” to move on to “an exciting new chapter of my life”.
]]>If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it's that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
]]>Having already surpassed Skyrim and Fallout by becoming Bethesda’s biggest launch to date - with over six million players, according to the developer - Starfield has now smashed another of its predecessor’s records.
]]>You may have noticed a mounting squabble between Starfield fans and detractors concerning the game's planetary maps, triggered by some leaks or fake leaks over the past week. Said skirmish has now escalated to "-gate" status, with "Tilegate" doing the rounds on forums and even creeping into search results, presumably much to the alarm of innocent, unaligned ceramics company Tilegate Trading Llc in Florida. The nub of the dispute seems to be thus: some people claim the procedurally generated tiles that comprise many Starfield environments actually glue together into complete globes, so that you can see and walk from one to the other and, indeed, all around the equator, while others claim they're discrete maps with invisible walls, similar to those of the astonishing "dreamable" space sim Noctis.
Who knows, we might have an under-embargo Starfield review in the works that will lay matters to rest. In the short term, the uncertainty about whether Starfield's planets are actually planets puts me in mind of comparable celestial angst in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games, where planets are more properly described as planes of existence, conjured by immortal beings, which sort of orbit the mortal world of Tamriel. I've been revisiting how Bethesda's mainstay fantasy games thought about outer space in the run-up to Starfield, and while I'm intrigued by the new game's portrayals of celestial mechanics (latest discovery: the Starfield starmap represents stellar and planetary gravity as dimples on a kind of galactic tarpaulin, as in old Stephen Hawking documentaries), I'll be very surprised if it offers anything quite as wonderfully bizarre.
]]>According to testimony delivered by Microsoft's Phil Spencer in court, Elder Scrolls VI is still "five-plus years away."
Spencer had been speaking about what platforms the next Elder Scrolls game might appear on during day two of hearings as the FTC seek an injunction to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
]]>Look at any image of heavy metal horror game The Axis Unseen and you’ll recognise an archetype: the stealth archer. For a certain sort of Elder Scrolls player, it’s the only way to travel through a fantasy open world - perma-crouched, bow stretched lazily across the lower third of the screen. And it’s an appeal that creator Nate Purkeypile understands perfectly, having spent the larger portion of his career working on Bethesda’s RPGs, from Fallout 3 and Skyrim all the way through to Fallout 76.
“It’s probably not the best idea for most people to do a solo open world,” he says. “But at the same time, this is like my sixth one. I’m pretty sure what goes into these.”
]]>When Avowed was announced three years ago, the comparisons to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were everywhere and inevitable. Skip forward three years to its latest gameplay trailer at this year's Xbox Games Showcase, and Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart has confirmed the game was initially supposed to be the studio's attempt at making their own version of Skyrim.
]]>And just like that, Summer Games Done Quick 2023 is over. The summer segment of the speedrunning celebration wrapped up last weekend, having this year taken place slightly before summer for some reason. The event raised over $2 million for Doctors Without Borders, while also spawning an excellent Ratatouille speedrun/audition for award-winning chef drama The Bear.
]]>For the last six years, my Skyrim wood elf has been stuck in some godforsaken cave in goodness knows what corner of Tamriel. I don't remember why they were there, or what goal they were trying to achieve. It was just 'one of those caves' that looked cool and interesting when I came across it and I thought, 'Yeah, all right, let's have a go then, shall we?' But while other Skyrim caves I'd come across could be easily polished off in an office lunch-time - as that was often how I played Skyrim back then - this one was different somehow. It was so large and twisty, so infinitely befuddling, that I seemed to be trapped down there forever. Sure, I could have probably turned back, but I'd been down there for ages, and felt like I'd come too far to simply not see it all through to the bitter end. But the end never came, and I eventually abandoned my save as a result, whisked off by the prospect of newer, more exciting games that didn't involve trying to figure out how to escape its narrow, bioluminescent hellscape.
Worse still, this disastrous feat of orienteering has now become my overriding memory of Skyrim. For all its great sidequests and its ever-increasing number of excellent mods, all I ever think about are its damn caves. Just the thought of loading up that save file again makes me grimace, and I'm starting to dread the thought of getting stuck in another one whenever the heck The Elder Scrolls 6 comes out. But I've been playing a lot of The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom this past week, and cor, I'm immediately jealous of Link's Ascend ability. As part of his new slate of powers, Ascend lets him instantly woosh through almost any ceiling as long as there's a traversable bit of terrain above it. That kind of power wouldn't have been half handy for my poor old wood elf, and it's precisely what makes exploring Tears Of The Kingdom's caves so enjoyable. So if there's one thing The Elder Scrolls 6 should steal take note of, please let it be this.
]]>We've been writing about Skywind for nine years. The ambitious modding project aims to import the entirety of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim engine. To celebrate the 21st anniversary of Morrowind, the Skywind team have released a 21 minute video of a single quest in Skywind.
]]>Summer Games Done Quick is coming back for its annual speedrunning charity event. Like previous years, SGDQ will be raising money for Doctors Without Borders, an NGO that provides medical care to those affected by disease, disasters, and conflicts. An Elden Ring double bill closed last year’s event - which managed to raise more than $3 million for charity - and FromSoftware’s juggernaut is once again featured at 2023’s SGDQ.
]]>When The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out I was a student, and I worked in Gamestation (RIP) to help pay for chicken noodles. I remember the hype around it very clearly because Gamestation had a deal where you could buy it for like £22, and I had a sideline going when the stock was low to keep some back for my friends. Apols if you were caught in the crossfire for that, but dragon fever was running high off the back of a still very cool trailer, and shouting Fus Ro Dah was the only cure.
In the years since, Skyrim has been released and re-released many times, on every conceivable platform. "Arrow to the knee" jokes became de rigueur and hacky almost overnight, and at this point might have horse-shoed back around to being funny again. There are many examples of unrelated games or videos that cut to black fading back up into the opening of Skyrim, in a kind of sub-genre of rickroll. Does it hold up now? Kind of. It's a really fun, ambitious RPG, with faults - but if the faults didn't exist maybe it wouldn't have been as popular as it was.
]]>I’m a sucker for well-hidden video game easter eggs, from Psychonauts 2’s strange mpreg cutscene to the ability to play as a baby in Mount & Blade 2, they're all great they’re great. But it’s all too easy to walk past easter eggs without knowing they were even there. I’ve probably waved off multiple fun secrets, mistaking them for lore I didn’t understand or a questline I haven’t gotten to. So, my pea-sized brain enjoyed this video of game designer Steve Lee interviewing the devs behind The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout as they reveal some dev secrets behind those games - including a cool egg.
]]>The team of modders working to bring The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion into Skyrim has updated us with a new trailer, announcing that they’re targeting 2025 to launch the Skyblivion project. By that point, volunteers will have been hammering away on Skyblivion for 13 years. If you remember what you were doing 13 years ago then you’ve got a better memory than I do. Watch the latest and rather snazzy trailer for Skyblivion below, and wonder whether Emperor Uriel Septim VII sounds more like Patrick Stewart or Sean Connery.
]]>As anyone who’s played Bethesda’s fantasy RPG might tell you, it can get lonely being the only Dragonborn in Skyrim. How wonderful, then, that one modder has bestowed upon the denizens of Tamriel’s chillest, chilliest province the ability to use their very own Dragon Shouts. Now any speaking NPC in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim can let rip with a big old Fus Ro Dah and fire you straight into the sky, thanks to the Everyone Is The Dragonborn mod. Truly, egalitarianism in action.
]]>Halo Infinite Forge mode users were already creating some wild maps on launch day, so it shouldn’t be surprising to see some The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim locales appear in-game too. If you’re unfamiliar, Forge is a long-time Halo mode that allows players to create their own custom maps and modes. In the past, players used Forge to remake classic maps or remix existing ones. But Infinite’s take on Forge is more robust, allowing forgers to create maps that don’t look like they belong in Halo. No, seriously, what is Whiterun doing in Infinite?
]]>Starfield’s lead quest designer Will Shen has fielded some questions from players in a second video in Bethesda’s Constellation Questions series. Among the morsels that Shen reveals about the upcoming sci-fi RPG were some details about how the game’s faction system will work compared to Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. You can watch Shen talk about Starfield’s factions, companions, and quests in the video below.
]]>Romance has never been Bethesda's strong suit, from Skyrim's barebones marriage system to Fallout 4's bonus-XP-granting fade-to-black cutscenes. Starfield will be a little more nuanced than that, suggests executive producer Todd Howard, offering more complex romance options than Fallout's.
That's just one detail from a nearly 3 hour-long interview Howard gave on the Lex Fridman podcast, where he also talks scrapping space strandings, and (gasp) why he prefers to play on consoles to PC.
]]>Canny members of the The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim modding community are working on a plugin to enable support for DLSS, FSR2, and XeSS upscaling in the Special and Anniversary Editions of Bethesda's sprawling RPG. Modder PureDark is working together with a small team on the unofficial plugin, called Skyrim-Upscaler, and it should help bump up those frame rates somewhat. It's available to download now from Github if you want to give it a go yourself, but there’s no plan to release the plugin publicly until the modders sort out VR compatibility.
]]>Being a Dragonborn in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim might have its privileges and accompanying superhuman abilities, but precognitive avoidance of incoming projectiles does not rank among them. Until now, thanks to a Special Edition mod that slows down time when arrows are flying towards your mightily voiced fantasy warrior. Enabling the Projectile Sense – Incoming Arrow & Magic Slows Time mod should give you just enough advance warning to hotfoot it out of the path of any pointy ended sticks that have been loosed and are heading your way.
]]>It’s fair to say that melee combat’s a crucial part of Bethesda’s ageing but beloved fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Flailing wildly at enemies with a big sword, axe, or warhammer, jostling them about with your implement of doom like armour-clad sausages frying in a pan, never seems to get old. What if you could do that while being more ethically sound, in a non-lethal way? Hold onto your butts because vanilla Skyrim modder drumfire has come up with the solution. It’s a mace that’s, well, Mace.
]]>It’s been months since we’ve heard much from Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi RPG Starfield, but studio director Todd Howard has been answering some questions about the game in a new video series. You can watch Howard chatting about the make-believe space programme below, where he covers if Starfield is hard sci-fi (not really), the game's traits system, and dialogue. It seems that Starfield RPG's are incredibly chatty, with many times more dialogue than Fallout 4 and Skyrim.
]]>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an increasingly ancient beast, gnarled and twisted over the past decade-and-a-bit by many, many mods that sometimes conflict with one another. That’s why Tyler Hallada put together Modmapper, a free tool released earlier this year that shows which of the mods hosted at NexusMods affect which areas of Skyrim. Now, Hallada’s written about the experience of creating the tool in a blog post, and the reasons for taking on the project.
]]>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been released and re-released several times and is available for almost anything that plays games at this point. As of two days ago, it's even now available DRM-free from digital retailer GOG.com. The GOG release is "entirely playable offline" and includes all the Anniversary Edition content "without the need for Creation Club access."
]]>Every corner of Skyrim houses a locked chest, but where are all the keys? Only a handful actually have keys to open them. So do the chest's owners lockpick them every time they want an apple or knife? Are these chests merely decorative, their contents deemed inaccessible and long forgotten? A new mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition answers this playfully by adding a load of hidden keys to unlock these chests. Some of the keys look quite well hidden in this object hunt, so you'll need to poke around, rummage, and turn things over.
]]>A new mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim draws inspiration from the Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor series by turning regular enemies into powerful Nemesis versions if they kill you. Rather than simply die and reload a save, you'll respawn elsewhere in the world, ready to hunt down your new named Nemesis. They might even loot your gear and use it against you.
]]>The revamped co-op mod for Bethesda's classic fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim only launched on Friday, but it’s already been downloaded more than 59,000 times. The past three days have been very kind to Skyrim Together Reborn, which has been put together by mostly student modders in their spare time. They’ve even made a video guide on how to install, create a server and start playing with your Dragonborn mates, which you can watch below.
]]>A revamped version of the Skyrim Together mod allowing co-op for Bethesda’s classic fantasy RPG is finally available to download from NexusMods today. Dubbed The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Together Reborn, the mod's developers say this version is a significant improvement over the previous version. Witness players tackling some main quests together in Together Team’s video below.
]]>The house cat. Felis destructus. Humankind's absolute best mate and undisputed master. Some upcoming video games are planning to examine the motives behind these enigmatic creatures, whose origins remain unknown. Stray will put you in the paws of a street cat finding their way home in a cyberpunk city. Little Kitty Big City will see you wearing the whiskers of a cat less concerned with going home than it is with wreaking urban havoc. But what if you don't want to wait for these games? Well, you have options. Here are 10 of the best cats in PC games.
]]>Shirley Curry, aka the wonderful The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Grandma, doesn't mess about. When asked by a fan (who we've since identified as YouTuber damarcodude) during her recent PAX East 2022 Q&A panel about what she'd like to say to Elder Scrolls head honcho Todd Howard if he were here in person, she had one answer: "Hurry up and finish The Elder Scrolls 6." All right, she technically would have said hello first, but the point still stands.
]]>One of my biggest highlights from PAX East a couple of weeks ago was attending Shirley Curry, aka: Skyrim Grandma's panel about her roleplaying adventures in Bethesda's enormous RPG. Despite suffering a stroke just a couple of months beforehand, the 85-year-old YouTuber was on fine form during her PAX East panel, speaking to a packed out theatre of fans and viewers who have spent the better part of six years following her various playthroughs through Skyrim as a multitude of different characters. She talked briefly about her writing and character creation process for her Let's Play-style videos, before spending a whopping 45 minutes answering questions from the audience. These covered everything from her favourite things in Skyrim to her favourite, real-life candy, and also included a surprising number of horror game recommendations. In her own words, she loves stuff that's "weird and creepy", and has recently been looking for something new to play. "I’d really like to play a dark, scary game," she said, and the audience were only too happy to oblige.
It was a truly wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and as soon as it was over, both Liam and I knew it was too good not to share. Here's a written transcript of the entire audience Q&A in full, plus a summary of her opening speech, for your reading pleasure.
]]>Skyblivion has been in development for ten years and still isn't done, but work continues on the mod project remaking Oblivion inside The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The latest video is impressive, too, taking a 15 minute tour of areas, enemies, weapons and more that have been rebuilt, while outlining the work still to be done. Watch it below.
]]>This week the Electronic Wireless Show podcast discusses some of our favourite (and least favourite) inventory configurations. A humble beast, the inventory, yet a feature of many games - sometimes even a necessity. Often we only notice one if it's terrible. But boy, a good inventory is worth a dozen mules. So lets talk about them today!
In other news this week, Nate thinks he has come up with an original premise for a Pixar film, only to discover he has invented Seth Rogan's nightmare film Sausage Party, and we are officially starting our campaign to get Henry 'Vitamin H' Cavill on the show. We will be mentioning him every week from now on. Plus: what we like doing on our birthdays, school plays, and pro-wrestling adaptations of Dickens.
]]>Ever wanted to stick your pick deep into the centre of an octopus? How about a bug or a barnacle? If none of that tickles your pick(le)s you could try a keyhole which twists dimensions? Or perhaps one with a steampunk or frost-bitten feel? If literally any of that got your immersion senses tingling then three The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim modders have something for you. Creating a cache of realistic looking catches, they have brought the Dragonborn what they've been desperate for; a more riveting lockpicking experience.
]]>Ahead of Skyrim Anniversary Edition's launch, a developer behind a vital modding tool warned that the release might also break mods for Skyrim Special Edition, badly. Well, Skyrim Anniversary Edition is out now, and as expected it has broken many mods. But, good news: the person who warned of this is making better progress on fixes than expected.
]]>It's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's 10th birthday today, so Bethesda have released yet another version of their epic fantasy RPG to celebrate. Skyrim: Anniversary Edition is out now, adding a bunch of Creation Club content, like fishing, aquariums and more. Plus, owners of the game's Special Edition will get a handful of freebies too. It's no Elder Scrolls 6, but hey, fish are nice. So, how many copies of Skyrim will you own after today?
]]>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition was announced just a couple of months ago and is due to launch next week on November 11th, Skyrim's 10th birthday. Ahead of the release, Bethesda have parped out an FAQ including its launch price: £48/$50/€55.
]]>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition comes out next month, and it's quickly becoming the fishiest version of the RPG yet. Bethesda have announced it will let you add aquariums to your Skyrim homes. We already know this edition will let us go fishing too, so I'm hoping we'll be able to yank those suckers straight out of the sea to put on display in our homes. Can't believe I'm going to buy yet another version of Skyrim just to have pet fish.
]]>November may bring an unpleasant surprise for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim players, as one prolific modder has warned that changes in an update will mean a large part of Skyrim modding "is going to be broken for an unknown length of time". While it's common for updates to break mods, supposedly this will require a whole lot more work than usual to get back on track. And there's a risk some will never be fixed.
]]>Ten years after the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda will revisit their fantasy RPG series with... another edition of Skyrim. Yep, still no Elder Scrolls 6 news. But at QuakeCon yesterday, Bethesda did announce a new 'Anniversary Edition' crammed with hundreds of wee bits and pieces of extra content from their Creation Club store. Perhaps more interesting than that, they also revealed that they're adding fishing to Special Edition, in a slightly fiddly way.
]]>"Hey you, you're finally awake", are words that so often come a moment before disaster. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it's supposed to be scripted disaster, of course - a cart ride followed by an axe that very nearly frees your head from your body, and a close-shave with a dragon. But for many players, they don't make it off the cart before the damn thing becomes possessed, spinning endlessly and throwing it's passengers away. There are a lot of reasons for why this on-rails sequence sometimes goes awry, but it turns out it was a problem during development too, when a single bee derailed the whole thing.
]]>You’re going to have to burn your cloth map if you want to return to Skyblivion’s Cyrodiil. The latest update on the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake in Skyrim shows they’re not afraid to make huge changes to the world, building a bigger and bolder looking remake. Let’s take a walk.
]]>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is more than the sum of its parts, which is another way of saying that many of Skyrim's parts are janky. High on the list is its third-person camera, which was rough around the edges in 2011 and feels extremely old fashioned here in 2021.
Enter, as always, the modders. The True Directional Movement mod available from Nexus Mods offers "modernized third person gameplay", and it looks like a huge improvement.
]]>For a while last year, I started following a long modding guide to update The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to a more modern standard. Then I lost my place and gave up. I’m not joking. The thing is huge, and I forgot what I was doing. That’s why I wear my Skywind badge with pride. The dedicated modders working to bring TES III over to the Skyrim engine are still beavering away at it, and have released an update on their progress. Spoilers: you still can’t play it.
]]>Popular "Skyrim grandma" YouTuber Shirley Curry has become a bit of a fixture in The Elder Scrolls fan circles thanks to her super sweet and chill Skyrim playthroughs. So much so that Bethesda are putting her in The Elder Scrolls 6 thanks to a fan petition. Fans also started working on a Skyrim follower mod dedicated to Curry a while back. It's finally arrived, complete with voice acting by Curry herself, so you can bring your favorite warrior grandma along on your next adventure.
]]>The Oxford English dictionary describes a bug as: "a sort of computer oops". It is the result of errant coding, mismatched texture, wonky physics or (sometimes) a briefcase. Developers must fight bugs day and night to safeguard the digital realms we call our playgrounds. Sometimes they lose that battle and a bug comes stomping ravenously into our game, ready to upset us. But sometimes that bug is not an annoyance or a game-breaker, but instead the funniest thing to ever happen. Here are 9 of the best bugs in PC gaming.
]]>A question that crosses my mind from time to time is why there aren’t more horror RPGs. Certainly, RPGs are more than capable of generating psychological terrors, and horror games are as popular as they’ve ever been. But outside of a handful of classics like Sweet Home, System Shock 2, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, it remains a fairly under-developed area within the genre.
I posed this question to veteran developer Brian Mitsoda, who has a long history of working on unique RPGs like Alpha Protocol, having most recently been the narrative designer for the seemingly ill-fated Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Mitsoda replied. “When it comes to RPGs, [executives] are going to look at what is the most popular genre for RPGs. And what is the most popular genre for RPGs? It’s fantasy. [...] If your RPG is just focused on horror, it’s probably going to turn off a lot of RPG fans. They’re going to go back to something that’s more comfortable.”
]]>Thanks to the endless work of prolific modders, is there anything you can't do in Skyrim? Not anymore, no. You can have Half-Life's gravity gloves. You can create new voice lines. Now, at last, you can also pet the dog. Even the Dragonborn's best friend deserves a few good pats on the head between biting skeevers and fighting vampires.
]]>Valheim, which is Old Norse for "Valerie is home", came out in early access last month to the roars of Viking-likers everywhere. It is a survival game about building a hut in the woods and then protecting that hut from friends who want to erect a gaudy temple next door, totally ruining the rustic ambience of the whole glade. I guess there's some monsters to fight too. But will any of this matter if you do not make it through cold nights full of dangers, and lean days without food? Just where does your Valheim viking fall on the bar chart of survivability? Here are the 8 toughest Vikings in PC games, a healthy exercise in comparison and shame.
]]>Bethesda's games are beginning to arrive on Xbox Game Pass tomorrow. Microsoft made the announcement in a blog post, and there are 18 of them coming to Xbox Game Pass For PC.
]]>The giant overhaul mod that creates a new RPG within Skyrim's engine now has its own Special Edition upgrade. Enderal's creators have moved on to a new project, but fans of the mod have created a version that will work with Skyrim Special Edition if you're avoiding going back to oldrim for your modding needs.
]]>Giant modding project Skyblivion, the one that's recreating all of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as a Skyrim mod, is beginning to look like a game you can actually play. The team plugging away at this huge overhaul have released another progress video showing that Skyblivion doesn't just look the part, it now plays it too. Quests are being implemented at last and they've proven it by hacking and slashing their way through one.
]]>Half-Life: Alyx's gravity gloves ruined a lot of other virtual reality games for me, because being able to point and flip objects into my hands solved a lot of awkward manoeuvring problems common in other games. It's hard, after the elegance of Half-Life's system, to go back to bending, sidestepping, and grasping at the air to pick up items - or worse, having your hands lack any and all collision with the world around you.
Enter the modders. Specifically, enter modder FlyingParticle, who has released HIGGS VR for Skyrim VR. It's a mod that adds gravity glove-style interaction to Skyrim, and it looks like it works beautifully.
]]>When you want to marry an NPC in Skyrim, you propose using an Amulet of Mara. In real life, you can now buy an official 10-karat gold ring based on the amulet's design. For $1000, you can make your proposal hella Skyrim. I have previously heard of at least one person proposing with a custom ring based on the amulet, and one who proposed with an actual replica amulet.
]]>The magic of AI-powered text to speech continues as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim modders get their hands on an application that generates speech from text based on voice samples from Bethesda games. It's already inspired a trailer with AI-only voice acting and a new mod that gives Skyrim characters lines to compliment your dragonborn's naked figure. Oh, the things modders will do.
]]>The final update arrived for the huge (and hugely impressive) free Skyrim total conversion mod Enderal yesterday. It's a small patch but does bring a bit tease that the developers are now working on a new commercial project. They don't give any hint as to what that might be, but considering the years they've spent with Enderal as well as Oblivion mod Nehrim, it's hard not to assume/hope it might be some fantasy RPG dealio. Fingers crossed?
]]>Wake up and slap on your lore caps, Elder Scrolls fans. The Elder Scrolls VI may be quite a ways off yet, but that sure hasn't ever stopped anyone from trying to divine details about where and when it might be set. The game's afoot once again thanks to a map that Bethesda have posted with a message that seems like it could definitely possibly maybe be a hint that ES6 will head to Hammerfell. Maybe.
]]>Get your speedrunning shoes on and prepare your glitches: Awesome Games Done Quick has arrived for its yearly speedrunning extravaganza. As with previous years, the charity event is raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It's been live since yesterday evening and runs until this Sunday, and there are already some fab runs in the likes of Mirror's Edge and Dragon Age: Origins to catch up on.
]]>Many of you are by now bathing in twinkling neon ravelights and swooning into the metal arms of Cyberpunk 2077's humourless unhunks, who stalk the streets of Night City like animatronic pizza restaurant mascots gone feral. That is fine. There are worse places to find oneself in the labyrinthine hell of video games. Places such as these. Here are 9 neighbourhoods you wouldn't want to bring up your children in.
]]>Whether you prefer wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>Yes, Skyblivion is still going folks. A team of volunteers are still plugging away at remaking The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in Skyrim as a mod. Will it ever come to a close? Well, in a new developer diary, we got an insight into how it's looking and where it's headed. In among all the details surrounding UI and clothes and objects, I found one thing really stood out to me. They've nearly completed the 'first pass' of the overworld, and they're injecting some extra flavour into many of the original's dull, empty spaces.
]]>Update: Microsoft say they'll "keep the commitment" to bring Bethesda's Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo to PS5 as timed exclusives. More below.
Microsoft just announced they've bought ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda. The developers of games such as Skyrim, Fallout, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake and all those classics are now technically Xbox Game Studios. Xbox boss Phil Spencer made a post welcoming the developers, in what he calls a "landmark step" for both Microsoft and Bethesda.
What a year.
]]>Regicide is once again a topic at dinner, thanks to the release of Crusader Kings III. Your aunt passes you the gravy, and asks about council matters. Your mother comments on the rise in guillotine stocks. Your father, the king, chews his mutton with a rueful and distant glare, probably thinking about war. A cloaked advisor enters and hands you a note on parchment. “The ten worft kingf and queenf in gamef,” it reads. You cough politely, put it in your pocket for later, and continue pushing poisoned food around as if you are eating it.
]]>What's your favourite Fall Guys minigame? See Saw? Door Dash? That weird thing with the eggs? I, for one, prefer the one where your merry band of tic-tacs slay the elder dragon Alduin. Now I understand that's not a very "official" route to claiming a crown or two - but thanks to modder m150, you can now traipse around The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition with a rabble of ravenous Fall Guys at your side.
]]>Nowadays, I’m a The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim watcher and not a Skyrim doer. I used to be a doer, but that involved more than just installing the game. I'd start modding, and I wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop. I’d spend more time looking for lore appropriate coin distribution than shouting at dragons. Eventually, something would break, and I'd uninstall it, promising that I wouldn't fall into that hole again.
It's been a long struggle, but when I stumbled upon YouTube compilations of heavily-modded Elder Scrolls, I finally broke the curse. Some brave souls do the hard work for me, turning the nine-year-old RPG (or four-year-old remaster, or two-year-old VR remake) into PC melting 4K thirst traps. I don't have time for that. Nor the PC.
]]>Crikey, it's been a hot minute since we last heard anything about Skywind, hasn't it? Nevertheless, the colossal task of bringing all of Morrowind into Skyrim is still well underway, with the modders behind the project releasing our first look at the ambitious mod in over a year, by way of a spruced-up return to The Battle at Nchurdamz. Hope your arachnophobia doesn't extend to mechanical spiders, readers.
]]>It's the banner that did it.
Drag... god. Jesus christ. Dwagonbown Goes UwU (or, more correctly, dwagonbown goes uwu) is an overhaul mod that turns you into the worst person in Skyrim.
]]>Ages ago I learned how to lockpick in real life, and ever since I've been so impressed at how video games emulate the feeling of managing to crack a lock open. I think maybe it's the noise, that signature *clunk* that makes it so satisfying. It's a staple of RPGs like Skyrim, where lockpicking is literally a skill you can level up. But loads of games have introduced their own unique minigames to let you unlock things, and now you can see most of them in one place thanks to the museum of lockpicking mechanics.
]]>All dogs go to heaven, we have heard it said. But what about videogame dogs? By the virtue of their non-existence you may suspect they are refused entry. However, after contemplating the issue for some time, our finest minds in the listicle archives have concluded that, yes, even videogame dogs go to heaven. What a relief. Here are the 10 goodest boys in PC games, all approved for divine ascendence.
]]>Hubbish bubbish, rhymes are rubbish, eye of newt and blah blah blah. Gosh, magic is a chore. If only we had a catalyst to... Oh, hello reader, what are you doing here? Well, as it happens, yes, you can help me out. Just stand over here while I scratch these runes around you. I’m trying to summon the 9 best magic spells in PC games, you see. Stand still, please. You won’t feel a thing.
]]>I once worked in an archive that included a heap of medieval herbals. In some form or another, they were a huge part of our culture and inherited knowledge for thousands of years, and while The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim does have a few compendium and guide books, there's nothing in them that really fits that bill.
But one talented player has recently taken to drawing and painting their own compendium of grumpy Nordland's flora. Even in its earliest days, it's got me excited and tempted to dive back into the alchemy game all over again.
]]>There's a new gameplay trailer out for The Forgotten City, the game that started life as an award-winning Skyrim mod. It's set in a cursed ancient Roman city where if one person sins, everyone dies. It's a Groundhog Day kind of scenario where you have to figure out the city's mysteries in order to break a time loop. In this new preview of one of the game's quests, we get a great look at how far The Forgotten City has come since its Skyrim days, and dare I say it looks better than Skyrim ever could.
]]>Down it, down it, dowwwn it, yeeaahhh! Nice one, you skulled that pint of fizzy water and lemon like an absolute legend, mate, well done. I always knew you were a top enjoyer of a wild night on the tiles, on the rip, on the slosh, on the tear, on the floor, on the bathroom floor, no listen you’re on the bathroom floor mate, for real, get up. I think that San Pelegrino went straight to your head. Maybe just go home, lie down, and play some RPGs. You can always simulate the reckless abandon of a big night in one of these, the 9 best nights out in PC games.
]]>Truly, Skyrim never dies. Its memes, one liners, and in-jokes are probably destined to plague our vocabulary until the end of time. Here's a deep cut for you all the way back from the annals of 2012. It's been reshared on Reddit once again because you can't really beat the silly friends reenact video games vibe. So I'm resharing it too and Fus Ro Dah to anyone who minds.
]]>"Skyrim Grandma" Shirley Curry has drastically cut back on her videos for the sake of her health and enjoyment of the game.
The 84 year old started sharing her Skyrim games in 2015, and her warm, joyful videos made her famous enough to get her own mod, and even a role in the next Elder Scrolls game. She's racked up over 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, but only a tiny percentage are active viewers, and the work and pressure involved are affecting her health.
]]>It’s Friday the 13th, the day of Saint Badluck, patron saint of ladders and casinos. And it is a fabulous holiday. Out there, parades are getting ready to be rained on, and children are looking forward to tonight’s shenanigans, when they will dress up as mirrors and knock on doors, declaring: “sweets or I’ll smash myself”. I love Friday the 13th. So many cherished memories. So many splinters of reflective glass.
So, Happy Bad Luck Day. Here’s a list of the 9 unluckiest characters in videogames. Spoilers for pretty much every game mentioned. So, watch out.
]]>This axe.
]]>Skyrim is now over twelve years old, but its modding community remains as vibrant as ever. Whether you want to overhaul the fantasy RPG's graphics, add new companions to carry your burdens, or pursue adventures on all-new terrain, generous creators have built something that will satisfy. The only thing that's changed is that, as more have been released, it's become harder to find the very best Skyrim mods. Thankfully, we've picked the best for you.
]]>The greasy realm of the videogame is not always the best place to look for good writing. For every Disco Elysium there are roughly 800 Detroit: Beyond Humans. But it is a good place to look for wondrous, over-the-top nonsense. I’m talking about character dialogue so flamboyant and exaggerated, you could insert some line breaks and it would instantly become a verse in a glam rock anthem. Here are the 12 most extravagant, exuberant, and intense lines of dialogue. In games, subtext is just whatever’s written on the side of the nuclear submarine.
]]>When Skyrim NPCs absolutely will not stop standing on chairs, walking into walls, and getting generally confused about pathfinding their way around one loose cobblestone in the road, I usually just sigh and roll my eyes. They don't know any better and they never will, I remind myself.
Turns out, it's a lot damn funnier when an actual human being does the same things with some panache and commitment to the role. This guy on TikTok (also on YouTube if you're an Old like me) has a whole series of "Skyrim IRL" videos where he replicates the ridiculous habits of Skyrim's less-sentient inhabitants.
]]>For several years now, a group of volunteer modders called The Elder Scrolls Renewal Project have been working on Skywind, a standalone mod recreating Morrowind using Skyrim's Creation Kit. The Skywind team posted a rare development video today giving a status update on the project wrapped in a callout for new volunteers in several disciplines with all levels of experience.
]]>I have spent the winter holidays making a list, checking it twice, trying to find who is naughty on ice. But unlike the popular red-clad demon of the north, my list is reserved for terrors, demons and critters larger than 4 feet tall. I’m talking about cold monsters. They’re very chic this week. You see, while Nic has been battering majestic species of endangered giganto-moose in our Monster Hunter World: Iceborne review, I have been working hard to catalogue the frostiest freaks this side of video gaming. Here you go, the 8 coldest monsters in PC games.
]]>Shirley Curry is better known online as the "Skyrim grandma" who begins her YouTube videos with a genial "good morning grandkids" before setting out on adventures in Tamriel. Curry has become dear to enough of her fans that a petition to have her added to The Elder Scrolls 6 helped prompt Bethesda to announce they would do just that. A new Elder Scrolls game is still well past the horizon though and in the meantime fans and modders have decided to add her to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim instead.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>Like any big daft fantasy blockbuster, The Elder Scrolls needs war. Unfortunately, Bethesda's open-world games have never been too great at the whole mass battle thing. Even Skyrim's nation-rending civil war never amounted to much more than a gathering of drunk LARPers waving sharp sticks at each other in the snow. The Elder Scrolls: Total War - a complete overhaul to Medieval 2: Total War - launched this week, bringing some proper bombast to battlefields across Tamriel.
]]>Allegations of abuse have been made against multiple games industry figures in the past 24 hours. On Monday afternoon Nathalie Lawhead, developer of the IGF-winning Tetrageddon Games, wrote a post on her website alleging that Jeremy Soule, the composer of Skyrim, raped her while she was working for an unnamed Vancouver-based games studio. Seven hours later, comics writer and indie developer Zoë Quinn posted tweets alleging that Alec Holowka, co-creator of Aquaria and Night In The Woods, sexually assaulted them. Later that same night, Adelaide Gardner posted a series of tweets alleging that Splash Damage tools programmer Luc Shelton sexually assaulted and gaslit her.
(CW: rape, sexual assault, gaslighting, emotional abuse)
]]>Fan project Skyblivion has been rumbling along under the radar for a while, and now it's resurfaced with a new trailer to show off its voice acting and a slew of other changes. The ambitious mod that aims to recreate Oblivion entirely within its successor Skyrim is “finally shaping up to what we can call a proper video game,” say its creators. You can see it for yourself below.
]]>It’s International Cat Day! You know, one of those days reportedly invented by a charity, spread by the internet without question, and propagated by the scoundrel media because quite simply we are desperate to post pictures of cats, big cats, fluffy cats, kitten cats, any cat, any excuse for any cat, please, just let me have this day, please, I don't care if it's a fake day, please, I need this.
Here are some good videogame cats for International Cat Day.
]]>When Bethesda released the first three Doom games on modern consoles last week, they added (by accident?) a requirement for players to register and sign into into their Bethesda.net doodad before playing these decades-old games. What does that have to do with PC? Well! Continuing the fine PC gaming tradition of pulling the pisser of modern big-budget games with their modern ways, a new Skyrim mod has added the thrilling experience of failing to connect to login servers and being kicked to the main menu. PC gaming: making daffy jokes playable since 1873.
]]>It's never a good sign when Skyrim's back in the Charts. It means mischief is afoot. And not the good kind. In this case, it's Bethesda's Quakecon sale, meaning a whole bunch of the dreariest of usual suspects return to droop our eyelids and weary our souls. And Nier and Flibble Glibble Pants are both on sale yet again. In fact, this week's top 10 features precisely one game released in the last TWO YEARS.
So this week I think I shall describe to you the feelings I feel when I see these games appearing once more.
]]>Continuing to impress with a commitment to fanciness and authenticity in remaking The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as a Skyrim mod, a new Skywind trailer has drafted an actual Skyrim voice actor to natter while we see how it's shaping up. Spears are in, levitation is go, and oh god go away cliff racers. Azura there is played by Lani Minella, whose voice spilled forth from the digifaces of Skyrim characters including The Night Mother and several Dunmer folks. Fancy! Authentic! The devs also send word that they're now making it for the fancier Skyrim Special Edition, so it won't hit ye olde originale Skryime.
]]>The organisers of speedrunning marathon Games Done Quick have breezed past their previous charity fundraising record, gathering $3,003,889 (£2.4m) across the week-long event. They’d already set their own speed record by hitting $1 million on Thursday – the biggest rush of donations always comes at the end – so it’s a multi-record setting event and all in order to give people medical care. Everyone bask in the feel-good glow for a minute.
]]>To this day, the jaunty static of the opening jingle to Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town brings me back to a simpler time. Summer evenings spent hunched over my Game Boy SP, a pane of glass between me and nature’s suburban bounty as I tilled my little squares of land, pet my happy little chickens, and bribed a town’s worth of reticent heartthrobs into falling for my little blonde avatar, Pepper, with an onslaught of ores, animal products, and various culinary delights (but never cucumbers, ya’ gummy-mouthed fish-man).
Harvest Moon was about as wholesome as wholesome gets, my first videogame love, but as the days turned to years, we grew apart. Since then, I’ve filled the hole in my heart with the usual suspects, (Stardew Valley, Rune Factory, and so on) until there was only one thing left to do: make my own Harvest Moon. And so began my ongoing personal quest to turn every game I own that is unfortunate enough to not be Harvest Moon into the farming simulation game they were always meant to be. Here, in true naturalist fashion, I present my field notes in the hope that we may go on to tame this new frontier together.
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