Oh, Bethesda.
No one expected The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to come out of the gate perfect, as the kinds of games Bethesda crafts are prone to having what might call...jank. Fortunately, the games themselves are so terrific that it’s (mostly) excusable. It’s when the company goes to address the remaining issues and makes things worse that causes the real headaches.
Version 1.2 arrived this week, addressing texture issues on Xbox 360, save problems on PlayStation 3 and other miscellaneous problems on those platforms, plus PC. It also broke a bunch of things, including making dragons fly backward and eliminating magic resistances.
You’ll be waiting another week or so until those things are addressed, as revealed on the official Bethsda blog. The fix will come to PC first, then arrive on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as the manufacturers approve it.
“We want to thank everyone reading this for playing our game and supporting all it tries to do,” said the company.
Bethesda is promising “regular” updates to the game in the coming months, both to address glitches and reported balance problems and exploits. There will apparently be “a lot” of these.
“We’ve also realized that with the millions upon millions of people playing Skyrim, we need to treat our updates with greater care,” added the company. “If we get too aggressive trying to fix a minor issue, we run a risk of breaking something larger in a game like this.”
One of the rubs there is how Bethesda is sorting what issues are being addressed immediately. “Quest and balance” issues are data, not code, and those will be “rolling out in a huge way” in...er, January. Patience?
Also coming in January, however, are the official modification tools.