Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard opened the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit with his talk, titled "Why We Play, Why We Create." During the keynote, he revealed a startling figure: the average play time for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on Steam is 75 hours.
I didn't catch the entire talk, but there was one part everyone is rightly excited about. After completing Skyrim, the team was allowed a week to work on whatever they wanted and put it in the game. The results are terrific, ranging from a Skeletal Butler to Kinect-enabled shouts to a giant mud crab.
Even if some of this content doesn't go public directly from Bethesda, surely the community will be there to take on the job. More colossal enemies, please.
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now i feel like i got ripped off! i want all of this!!
unreal tournament 3 had pc to ps3 mods, why cant skyrim?
get on that shit Bethesda!
or i guess it could all be dlc somehow instead of an actual mod maybe?
What... why didn't they just delay the game a week and put most of this stuff on the disc??
I can understand the graphic enhancements not making it in, but the extra stuff like fire/ice arrows, spell combos, magic kill cams, high-level Draugr, giant enemy crab... HNGGGGGG whyyyyyyyyy
Just goes to show games turn out better when you aren't in "super serious mode" all the time. Its too bad they didn't add stuff like this to the actual game.
Some of the stuff (like spell combinations) are from their older games, like Morrowind. They just took it out to add accessibility to their newer games.
Hopefully they'll release a lot of this as a "hardcore Elder Scrolls gamer expansion pack" or something.
@Piggygamer - Probably because you don't know how games are made.
Todd explained in the keynote that when making the game there are certain things you want to put in the spotlight and there are things you don't want to to take away from what you're putting in the spotlight.
Obviously, fighting dragons is a highlight of the game and something you want to see shine and be interesting, as well as dungeons and various events within the game, so you want those things to fall under the spotlight, so to speak.
There are other awesome things you could do, but the question is whether it will detract and diminish what you want mainly in the spotlight. If dragon mounts were in Skyrim from the outset, everyone would be looking for ways to have a dragon mount rather than fight dragons, which is supposed to be the big deal.
Imagine if Mass Effect 2 hadn't hyped the suicide mission and focused on having all these other equally or more awesome things. Like what if you could cheat on Miranda with Jack and they ended up killing each other.
Sounds like a cool dynamic and consequence to add to ME2, but then you don't have two extra bodies you might need for the suicide mission, which is the feature of the game. This is also likely why ME2's cast is woefully underdeveloped in terms of character compared to other Bioware games. They have to be written enough to be somewhat interesting but written disposable enough to die... though Jack dying doesn't really ever make sense no matter how she goes.
So Skyrim features the dragons and the expansions make dragon mounts a feature so the expansion could have a highlight. By that time, dragon fights are pretty normal.
it's kind of annoying that stuff like footprints and the flow based water shader weren't included in the vanilla game, as people instantly and perhaps rightly pointed out their absence.
the only question now is why the hell have bethesda or even the developers that made these features released them as mods?
Yes, what you say makes sense. I can see why they wouldn't want to put dragon riding, flaming horses, playable vampire lords or werebears in the game at launch.
However, the enhanced dungeon elements, arrow types, and extra enemies would have improved parts of the game that, while by no means lacking, could have benefited from some added variety that still wouldn't have distracted from the major selling points.
But there's money and variety to be had in DLC, and I'm sure gonna buy it when it goes on sale.
I think the other issue is consoles vs. PC. Not all of those features might be possible to put on a console and so features that might have been plausible for PCs with room for hardware flexibility got axed because to try and optimize all of that into the console versions would have been too troublesome.
And this also leads into what Silent said in that you have to make sure that the features you absolutely need are there first and foremost. And while these were definitely made, there's no telling how bugging and what other bugs these additions might have added into the game code.
This also leads to why some of these won't get added to the game. Anything they officially release means they'll need to be officially supported which is resources that Bethesda might now have time to invest on this.
PiggyGamer, I would also imagine the logistics of getting the game certified, printing millions of discs, distributing them to stores across the world, etc. would prevent Bethesda from adding in last-minute stuff that wasn't planned well in advance. There are enormous business decisions that need to be made with these products.
It does annoy me greatly how they couldn't have waited a few months until the game was actually finished as opposed to releasing a incomplete game like they did.
Game companies should do this more often. This story reminds me of the time Double Fine did something similar (one week off for developers to pitch and prototype a game idea). Thanks to that, now we have Costume Quest and Stacking...
@whodatninja- Indeed why did they ever finish the game. Clearly they should have kept working on it before they added everything imaginable into the game.
If it were any other game, Id be disappointed we didnt get any of those features. But this is a TES game, all this shit and more is going to be modded in for free and they over at Bethesda know that lol.
Dear Todd Howard
My 75-80 hrs in Skyrim was terrible. Yes, people do spend long hours in your games but you cannot SPIN all of that into we enjoyed it. Not everyone does enjoy their time in your games...it’s not like the proverbial "The food is terrible, and there isn't enough of it" jape. For me, after the first 30 hours most I started to understand I was not having fun...so I spent the next forty hours confirming that "INDEED" I was not missing some part of it -- the game really did just suck and really was as broken as it appeared.
@BrowneyeWinkin
They did that stuff in a week. They did it when the game was completed and sent away to be published. Before the game was even released.
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Contest:
11:30 AM on 02.09.2012 | 
unreal tournament 3 had pc to ps3 mods, why cant skyrim?
get on that shit Bethesda!
or i guess it could all be dlc somehow instead of an actual mod maybe?
I can understand the graphic enhancements not making it in, but the extra stuff like fire/ice arrows, spell combos, magic kill cams, high-level Draugr, giant enemy crab... HNGGGGGG whyyyyyyyyy
Why wouldn't thye put a dragon mount into the game. THEY KNEW WE WANTED THAT!
Hopefully they'll release a lot of this as a "hardcore Elder Scrolls gamer expansion pack" or something.
Todd explained in the keynote that when making the game there are certain things you want to put in the spotlight and there are things you don't want to to take away from what you're putting in the spotlight.
Obviously, fighting dragons is a highlight of the game and something you want to see shine and be interesting, as well as dungeons and various events within the game, so you want those things to fall under the spotlight, so to speak.
There are other awesome things you could do, but the question is whether it will detract and diminish what you want mainly in the spotlight. If dragon mounts were in Skyrim from the outset, everyone would be looking for ways to have a dragon mount rather than fight dragons, which is supposed to be the big deal.
Imagine if Mass Effect 2 hadn't hyped the suicide mission and focused on having all these other equally or more awesome things. Like what if you could cheat on Miranda with Jack and they ended up killing each other.
Sounds like a cool dynamic and consequence to add to ME2, but then you don't have two extra bodies you might need for the suicide mission, which is the feature of the game. This is also likely why ME2's cast is woefully underdeveloped in terms of character compared to other Bioware games. They have to be written enough to be somewhat interesting but written disposable enough to die... though Jack dying doesn't really ever make sense no matter how she goes.
So Skyrim features the dragons and the expansions make dragon mounts a feature so the expansion could have a highlight. By that time, dragon fights are pretty normal.
the only question now is why the hell have bethesda or even the developers that made these features released them as mods?
Yes, what you say makes sense. I can see why they wouldn't want to put dragon riding, flaming horses, playable vampire lords or werebears in the game at launch.
However, the enhanced dungeon elements, arrow types, and extra enemies would have improved parts of the game that, while by no means lacking, could have benefited from some added variety that still wouldn't have distracted from the major selling points.
But there's money and variety to be had in DLC, and I'm sure gonna buy it when it goes on sale.
@psycho terror2
Probably because the console versions can't handle the water shader too well, but yeah, I call BS on that too.
Seen the crab. It's part of a quest where you fight animal spirits. Nowhere near that size, though.
I think the other issue is consoles vs. PC. Not all of those features might be possible to put on a console and so features that might have been plausible for PCs with room for hardware flexibility got axed because to try and optimize all of that into the console versions would have been too troublesome.
And this also leads into what Silent said in that you have to make sure that the features you absolutely need are there first and foremost. And while these were definitely made, there's no telling how bugging and what other bugs these additions might have added into the game code.
This also leads to why some of these won't get added to the game. Anything they officially release means they'll need to be officially supported which is resources that Bethesda might now have time to invest on this.
Im outraged and want my money back.
Yup, you fight its ghost. The quest has you killing a bunch of ghost creatures, and a giant mudcrab is one of them.
My 75-80 hrs in Skyrim was terrible. Yes, people do spend long hours in your games but you cannot SPIN all of that into we enjoyed it. Not everyone does enjoy their time in your games...it’s not like the proverbial "The food is terrible, and there isn't enough of it" jape. For me, after the first 30 hours most I started to understand I was not having fun...so I spent the next forty hours confirming that "INDEED" I was not missing some part of it -- the game really did just suck and really was as broken as it appeared.
instead of errr you know trying to fix ps3 version which they must have known was broken they where told to just dick around....
GIVE ME SPEARS,KILLCAM FOR ARROWS,THOSE DUNGEON VARIATIONS AND THAT VAMPIRE IMPROVEMENT
They did that stuff in a week. They did it when the game was completed and sent away to be published. Before the game was even released.
Bon appétit.
Last time I checked, a game that breaks before you can beat it isn't "completed"