A patch for fixes to Skyrim Special Edition's audio problems leads to even more technical issues on PC and consoles, including crashing and freezing in the game.
Letting newcomers and returning fans alike take on dragons, install impressive mods and, of course, take an arrow to the knee, Skyrim Special Edition has been met with mostly positive reviews. There are some teething issues with the game, though, including audio quality problems that saw the game's sound seem a little less clear on PC and Xbox One. Although developer Bethesda Game Studios released a patch to fix this issue (among other problems), players are now reporting that this patch has introduced new problems of its own.
According to players, the problem patch is 1.1 on PC and 1.03 on consoles. The biggest problem that players are reporting is game crashes, with those playing both modded and non-modded versions of Skyrim Special Edition saying that after loading a save file, the game will freeze. Additionally, some players are saying that the patches, which were also meant to fix a problem with NPCs not showing up in the right places, has led to further problems with NPCs. Frame rate issues, texturing troubles and problems with quests have also been reported.
Hours after players began to make complaints across Steam and social media, Bethesda released beta patch 1.2 on PC. The update fixes "noted concerns," according to Bethesda, and includes fixes for an "issue related to using alt-tab while playing the game," an "issue with water flow not rendering properly," and crashes related to turning into a human from werewolf form and reloading after "changing the Load Order of mods" too.
While many PC players have praised the developer for acting so quickly to fix the problems, others continue to have concerns, pointing to Bethesda's controversial new review policy. The publisher no longer makes review copies available to the media until one day before launch and the argument from some gamers is that critics should have earlier access to the release version of a game in order to highlight bugs like this.
Bugs — whether small or game-breaking — can affect someone's purchase decision, and there are also additional fears that Bethesda has put this policy in place in order to lessen the damage of reviews that highlight bugs. This fear was exacerbated earlier today in fact, when it appeared that Dishonored 2 PC has major issues too, as discovered by one person with a review copy.
It may well be some unfortunate timing for the company to have two high profile releases with technical issues out around the same time. However, the fact that these issues weren't fixed prior to release is a cause of concern on its own.
Skyrim Special Edition is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.