Most of us probably missed the news - I know I missed out - but a new
version of Skyrim was released early last month. "Skyrim: Anniversary
Edition" was an enhanced 'upgrade' to the "Special Edition" that had
been released in 2016, and it promised to add new quests, monsters,
spells and more. All for the low-low price of $20USD! What's not to
love?

Well, nothing except the fact that none of this is new Bethesda
content; it's all third-party mods of varying quality. Of course,
depending on how you feel about Bethesda's own content, that might not
be such a bad thing to you. What is more concerning is how this
upgrade is a backdoor to leveraging in a paid-mod marketplace,
something the community in general has been vehemently opposed to. Oh,
and the 'upgrade' part of the anniversary edition broke many existing
free mods too.

Fans of the game have, understandably, not taken to well to this
behavior, and it's currently reviewed as 'overwhelmingly negative'.
Some of the mods, it is agreed, are quite nice, but they aren't worth
the price - neither financial, nor morally, nor the cost to the Skyrim
modding ecosystem. It's a scummy move by a company that, though it
once was held amongst the best of PC gaming developers, has faltered
ever since its heyday back when Skyrim was first released in 2011.
Whether it was the continued re-releases of Skyrim, the flawed
"Fallout 4", the mostly unwanted "Fallout 76", or the tragically
underwhelming "Starfield", Bethesda has not been living up to its
potential, and the 'anniversary edition' is just another example of
how rudderless and out of touch the company has become over the past
decade.

On Mon, 08 Jan 2024 20:55:03 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>Most of us probably missed the news - I know I missed out - but a new
>version of Skyrim was released early last month. "Skyrim: Anniversary
>Edition" was an enhanced 'upgrade' to the "Special Edition" that had
>been released in 2016, and it promised to add new quests, monsters,
>spells and more. All for the low-low price of $20USD! What's not to
>love?
>
>Well, nothing except the fact that none of this is new Bethesda
>content; it's all third-party mods of varying quality. Of course,
>depending on how you feel about Bethesda's own content, that might not
>be such a bad thing to you. What is more concerning is how this
>upgrade is a backdoor to leveraging in a paid-mod marketplace,
>something the community in general has been vehemently opposed to. Oh,
>and the 'upgrade' part of the anniversary edition broke many existing
>free mods too.
>
>Fans of the game have, understandably, not taken to well to this
>behavior, and it's currently reviewed as 'overwhelmingly negative'.
>Some of the mods, it is agreed, are quite nice, but they aren't worth
>the price - neither financial, nor morally, nor the cost to the Skyrim
>modding ecosystem. It's a scummy move by a company that, though it
>once was held amongst the best of PC gaming developers, has faltered
>ever since its heyday back when Skyrim was first released in 2011.
>Whether it was the continued re-releases of Skyrim, the flawed
>"Fallout 4", the mostly unwanted "Fallout 76", or the tragically
>underwhelming "Starfield", Bethesda has not been living up to its
>potential, and the 'anniversary edition' is just another example of
>how rudderless and out of touch the company has become over the past
>decade.
>

*--

Thanks for the heads up Spalls. Really appreciate it.

My favorite Bethesda game besides the original Skyrim was a football
game for the Atari ST. Nothing but Xs and Os the screen on top of a
football field but I remember it being a blast.

-pw

On 1/9/2024 2:55 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Most of us probably missed the news - I know I missed out - but a new
> version of Skyrim was released early last month. "Skyrim: Anniversary
> Edition" was an enhanced 'upgrade' to the "Special Edition" that had
> been released in 2016, and it promised to add new quests, monsters,
> spells and more. All for the low-low price of $20USD! What's not to
> love?
>
> Well, nothing except the fact that none of this is new Bethesda
> content; it's all third-party mods of varying quality. Of course,
> depending on how you feel about Bethesda's own content, that might not
> be such a bad thing to you. What is more concerning is how this
> upgrade is a backdoor to leveraging in a paid-mod marketplace,
> something the community in general has been vehemently opposed to. Oh,
> and the 'upgrade' part of the anniversary edition broke many existing
> free mods too.
>
> Fans of the game have, understandably, not taken to well to this
> behavior, and it's currently reviewed as 'overwhelmingly negative'.
> Some of the mods, it is agreed, are quite nice, but they aren't worth
> the price - neither financial, nor morally, nor the cost to the Skyrim
> modding ecosystem. It's a scummy move by a company that, though it
> once was held amongst the best of PC gaming developers, has faltered
> ever since its heyday back when Skyrim was first released in 2011.
> Whether it was the continued re-releases of Skyrim, the flawed
> "Fallout 4", the mostly unwanted "Fallout 76", or the tragically
> underwhelming "Starfield", Bethesda has not been living up to its
> potential, and the 'anniversary edition' is just another example of
> how rudderless and out of touch the company has become over the past
> decade.
>
>

Yeah I was not sure what this was about. I have played Skyrim for a
while, but always lose interest a few dozen hours in. When I noticed the
Anniversary update I was slightly puzzled what made this different than
what I already had before.

On 1/8/24 19:55, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> Most of us probably missed the news - I know I missed out - but a new
> version of Skyrim was released early last month. "Skyrim: Anniversary
> Edition" was an enhanced 'upgrade' to the "Special Edition" that had
> been released in 2016, and it promised to add new quests, monsters,
> spells and more. All for the low-low price of $20USD! What's not to
> love?
>
> Well, nothing except the fact that none of this is new Bethesda
> content; it's all third-party mods of varying quality. Of course,
> depending on how you feel about Bethesda's own content, that might not
> be such a bad thing to you. What is more concerning is how this
> upgrade is a backdoor to leveraging in a paid-mod marketplace,
> something the community in general has been vehemently opposed to. Oh,
> and the 'upgrade' part of the anniversary edition broke many existing
> free mods too.
>
> Fans of the game have, understandably, not taken to well to this
> behavior, and it's currently reviewed as 'overwhelmingly negative'.
> Some of the mods, it is agreed, are quite nice, but they aren't worth
> the price - neither financial, nor morally, nor the cost to the Skyrim
> modding ecosystem. It's a scummy move by a company that, though it
> once was held amongst the best of PC gaming developers, has faltered
> ever since its heyday back when Skyrim was first released in 2011.
> Whether it was the continued re-releases of Skyrim, the flawed
> "Fallout 4", the mostly unwanted "Fallout 76", or the tragically
> underwhelming "Starfield", Bethesda has not been living up to its
> potential, and the 'anniversary edition' is just another example of
> how rudderless and out of touch the company has become over the past
> decade.

Love how the "Anniversary" version just outright steals content that
already existed. Ironically, it does show how the company has changed
over the years..
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

Anniversary has been out for 2 years, but yeah, a naked cashgrab. Did I buy
it? yeah lol. (but discounted <$10. You can get the full Anniversary game
at cdkey sites for $15 or so).

rms

On Mon, 08 Jan 2024 21:45:18 -0700, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 08 Jan 2024 20:55:03 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>My favorite Bethesda game besides the original Skyrim was a football
>game for the Atari ST. Nothing but Xs and Os the screen on top of a
>football field but I remember it being a blast.

Bethesda has a long history of making good (but not necessarily great)
games. They also have released quite a few stinkers too.

The first game I remember as playing as a Bethesda game* was
"Terminator 2029". I really liked that game. Sure, it used old-school
tile-based movement, and the respawning in that game was ridiculous.
But it well captured the feel of being in the future war of the
Terminator franchise. It's earlier "The Terminator" game wasn't quite
as much fun to play, but was quite advanced technologically, and
"Terminator: Future Shock" was great.

But between that was "Terminator: Rampage", a God-awful "Wolfenstein
3D" clone which I kept playing, not quite believing it could really be
as bad as it first appeared. Surely, I thought, there must be /some/
redeeming value to the game. But there wasn't.

The Elder Scrolls franchise was similar. There were some amazing
titles ("Skyrim" is my favorite), some games that werent' fun but were
impressive for what they attempted ("Daggerfall"), and at least one
awful game ("Battlespire"). You never knew what you were going to get
when you bought a Bethesda game!

But whatever the final quality of the product, you always got the
impression that Bethesda was /trying/ to create a good product. Sure,
they failed a few times, but there was... I dunno, 'heart' to their
attempts.

But that's slowly been changing. It started back in the "Oblivion"
days, when they first discovered paid DLC (remember the horse armor
DLC?) and it's slowly gotten worse over the years. The company has
ossified; too reliant on what once worked, too caught up in their
long-established development procedures, too used to using their aging
tech... they're pumping out the same product again and again and
wondering why people aren't getting excited about it. Then, floundered
by declining sales, they rush to plug the dike with poorly-received
DLC and re-releases.

It's sort of sad.

* not necessarily the first Bethesda game I'd played, just the first
one I was aware that Bethesda was the developer