I’m probably going to pick up Skyrim pretty soon. I own all three platforms for the game… does anyone have any opinion on which would be the best to play it on?
For what it’s worth, my computer plays Oblivion effortlessly.
Thanks.
PC, all the way. Half the appeal of the game for me is the mod community. It massively extends the playability.
Do I need to tweak my PC any for Skyrim if it plays Oblivion fine?
Edit: Also, didn’t the first patch effectively neutralize all mods?
There are some things you can do to make it better, but it should run just fine. They did a really good job optimizing it.
Not that I noticed, no. I’m not running too many mods right now, 'cause I’m waiting for the release of the editor. There’s some cool stuff coming soon, though, even without the editor: my favorite has to be the mod that adds in bear, sabrecat, mammoth, and *dragon *mounts.
One major reason for going for the PC is the developer console. You can use it for minor tweaks to the game without resorting to mods, and for undoing mistakes. You earn and allocate perk points as you level up, but there’s no way to “respec” your talents in the official game. You can, however, use the console commands to add or remove perks at will (IMO you still qualify as “not cheating” if you swap then on a one-for-one basis).
There have been reports of “clipping” problems leading to important NPCs falling through the ground and effectively disappearing from the game world. I haven’t experienced this in about 115 hours of play, but it can happen. PC users can use the developer console to bring missing NPCs back into the world, while PS3 and 360 users aren’t so lucky.
This question should not exist OP!
PC of course. Not only does the game look and run much better than on the consoles, the mods are part of the experience. AND they’re going to be integrated into Steam for easy browsing/installation come January when the official toolset comes out. Not that that’s stopping hundreds of moddders from releasing a boat load of them already.
Finally console commands can get you through some buggy moments (where as the consolers are stuck until/if Beth fixes a particular problem).
Like everyone else, I’m going to say that PC will most likely give you the best gaming experience, if you have a decent machine.
That said, I still bought Skyrim for a console, only because I want to sit comfortably on my couch for the 100+ hours that an Elder Scrolls game provides. I’ll miss the mods, console commands, fun stuff like 2,500 cheese wheels rolling down a mountain, but depending on your gaming setup, a console might have one advantage over the typical PC.
There’s no advantage to going console over PC, and many advantages the other way. If anything, the Elder Scrolls games are the prime example of the difference between the platforms - the PC versions of these games absolutely crush the console ones.
(Which also proves that the game rating industry is bullshit - if these games have the same meta rating on all platforms, which such a massive difference in quality, they’re being rated on hype and nothing else)
I have 2 copies of Fallout 3 for the same reason, but Skyrim is so good that I think I’m going to invest in a wireless keyboard and a recliner to put in front of my PC instead :D.
Regarding the OP, I’d suggest the PC version for all the reasons already listed. Another bonus for me is that I don’t share my PC with anyone, so I don’t have to stop playing the game because my husband wants to watch American Pickers.
The Cheese Shout; “Speak, and let your Thu’um become Cheese.”
If it helps, I’m sure it’s an amazing game wherever you get it. I’m currently playing it on the 360 and having a helluva time. I think I’m going to buy it on PC and give it to my dad for the holidays.
Fus Ro-quefort!
At this point, as much as I prefer PC gaming in general, I do think I’ll be going with XBox for Mass Effect 3 – because I have friends with whom I can do the cooperative parts and I won’t be missing out on any significant mod community action. Consoles are nicely set up out of the box for co-op gaming with things that don’t require complicated controls. But for a game like Skyrim, where you don’t even get that, why give up the access to mods?
Actually there ARE mods for ME2. Though not stuff with the substance that Skyrim mods will have once the toolkit is released. Mostly textures, dialogue tweaks, model changes.
For me, the gamepad is the killer for anything with this type of camera control/shooting.
On the consoles EVERY such game plays like a tank simulator.
Well that and the performance/jaggies are deal breakers.
Now now. A good tank simulator would use one stick for each tread!
In my game Lucien Lachance fell halfway into the ground and is buried up to his waist just outside of Whiterun Stables. I can still talk to him, but he’s stuck there.
Im getting it on 360 for xmas. I’ve read reports that the PS3 version reaches unplayable levels of lag the further you get into the game due to the way the save game files grow to massive proportions or something.
If you factor out the couch and giant HDTV I imagine it probably best on a PC.
Can someone explain to me the appeal of a giant HDTV for playing a game by yourself? It literally makes no sense to me, just as a simple matter of optics and eyesight.
Big TVs are good for if you need several people to view them over a wide area. But if it’s just one person, you get far more visual information from a 24" monitor in your face than even a 60" TV across the room. Which is the whole point in terms of how good the visual experience is. On top of this, monitors are manufactured to higher standards of sharpness, color accuracy, light levels, etc.
There’s this weird “bigger is better” mentality when the reality is that it’s simple optics that dictates that the closer object fills up more of your field of view in this case, also presenting a greater density of information with greater resolution.
If you could fit a postage stamp high res display right onto your eye’s lens somehow, it’d be better than watching the jumbotron from Cowboys stadium.
From an article on the PS3 save file size causing crashes:
The Xbox 360 has a unified memory pool: 512 megs of RAM usable as system memory or graphics memory. The PS3 has a divided memory pool: 256 megs for system, 256 for graphics. It’s the same total amount of memory, but not as flexible for a developer to make use of. It’s not like someone wrote a function and put a decimal point in the wrong place or declared something as a float when it should have been an int. We’re talking about how the engine fundamentally saves off and references data at run time. Restructuring how that works would require a large time commitment.
SenorBeef you make good points. I currently play sitting three feet from a 24 inch monitor, but plan to upgrade from XBox to PC this spring when I get back home. I’m still working out how to set up the hardware to allow me to play on PC from the comfort of a recliner. I’m leaning toward sending the signal to my big TV and using a wireless keyboard and mouse when needed, but also an XBox style controller for most of the playing. Yeah, the big screen TV wasn’t as sharp for Fallout 3, but kicking my feet up was worth the trade off. I’ve seen some setup where virtual airplane cockpits used multiple monitors to give wider fields of view. Does anyone know if Skyrim would support this?