14 DAY TRIAL // Gamers might have blamed the problems that affected the PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim on the large amount of save data the game uses, but the man who lead the creation process for the game says that is just a simplification of a complex game development reality.
Speaking to Kotaku, Todd Howard, the executive producer working on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, said, “We did a ton more testing this time around, so the game is definitely our most solid release regardless of platform. The way our dynamic stuff and our scripting works, it’s obvious it gets in situations where it taxes the PS3. And we felt we had a lot of it under control.”
The developer says that much of how the game reacts depends on minute players actions like using a certain spell or entering a building.
He added, “It’s literally the things you’ve done in what order and what’s running. Some of the things are literally what spells do you have hot-keyed? Because, as you switch to them, they handle memory differently. The 1.2 patch took care of a lot of it, there were clearly some people. We didn’t know why. So they sent us their saved games.”
Skyrim recently received the 1.4 patch on all platform and Howard believes that most gamers now have a solid game, although the team is ready to take care of any other bugs that are confirmed.
The latest Elder Scrolls video game is incredibly complex, allowing players to explore a huge game world and tackle large numbers of quests in pretty much any order they like.
This degree of ambition and complexity is something that players clearly loved, driving up sales of the game, but it also lead to a number of issues on launch.
Recently, Bethesda suggested that significant downloadable content could be launched for Skyrim in the coming months.