Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

by Bethesda

Product Features

• Features -
• Skyrim reimagines the open-world fantasy epic, pushing the game play and technology of a virtual world to new heights
• Play any type of character you can imagine, and do whatever you want; the legendary freedom of choice, storytelling
• Skyrim's new game engine brings to life a complete virtual world with rolling clouds, rugged mountains, bustling cities, lush fields.
• Choose from hundreds of weapons, spells, and abilities; the new character system allows you to play any way you want

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B004HYK8Y8
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches ; 5.4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: November 11, 2011
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (585 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #124 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #1 in Video Games > PlayStation 3 > Role-Playing
  • #16 in Video Games > PlayStation 3 > All Games

Product Description

Platform: PLAYSTATION 3 | Edition: Standard

From the Manufacturer

The next chapter in the highly anticipated Elder Scrolls saga arrives from the makers of the 2006 and 2008 Games of the Year, Bethesda Game Studios. Skyrim reimagines and revolutionizes the open-world fantasy epic, bringing to life a complete virtual world open for you to explore any way you choose.
PUBLISHER: Bethesda Softworks DEVELOPER: Bethesda Game Studios RELEASE DATE: 11/11/11 PLATFORMS: Xbox 360™ / PLAYSTATION®3 / Games for Windows GENRE: Role-Playing	Story: The Empire of Tamriel is on the edge. The High King of Skyrim has been murdered. Alliances form as claims to the throne are made. In the midst of this conflict, a far more dangerous, ancient evil is awakened. Dragons, long lost to the passages of the Elder Scrolls, have returned to Tamriel. The future of Skyrim, even the Empire itself, hangs in the balance as they wait for the prophesized Dragonborn to come; a hero born with the power of The Voice, and the only one who can stand amongst the dragons.
	KEY FEATURES: Epic Fantasy Reborn. Skyrim reimagines the open-world fantasy epic, pushing the gameplay and technology of a virtual world to new heights. Live another life, in another world. Play any type of character you can imagine, and do whatever you want; the legendary freedom of choice, storytelling, and adventure of The Elder Scrolls is realized like never before. All New Graphics and Gameplay Engine. Skyrim's new game engine brings to life a complete virtual world with rolling clouds, rugged mountains, bustling cities, lush fields, and ancient dungeons. You Are What You Play. Choose from hundreds of weapons, spells, and abilities. The new character system allows you to play any way you want and define yourself through your actions. Dragons Return. Battle ancient dragons like you've never seen. As Dragonborn, learn their secrets and harness their power for yourself.
images and screenshots © 2011 ZeniMax Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
About Bethesda Softworks About Bethesda Softworks: Bethesda Softworks, part of the ZeniMax Media Inc. family of companies, is a premier developer and worldwide publisher of interactive entertainment software. Titles from five of the world’s top development studios – Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, Arkane Studios, Tango Gameworks, and MachineGames – are featured under the Bethesda Softworks label and include such blockbuster franchises as DOOM®, QUAKE®, The Elder Scrolls®, Fallout®, Wolfenstein® and RAGE®. For more information on Bethesda Softworks’ products, visit www.bethsoft.com.

Product Description

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the next installment in the award-winning Elder Scrolls series. Skyrim is the follow up to the 2006 Game of the Year, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the next game from Bethesda Game Studios, creators of the 2008 Game of the Year, Fallout 3.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

457 of 518 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, December 5, 2011

By 

PS3cyclist (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Video Game)

I have never had such a love/hate relationship with a game before in my life. I feel like I could write 10 pages on this topic, but here is the most succinct version I can muster.

- First 40 hours are an incredible, immersive experience. The most complex and comprehensive RPG I've ever played. I wish it could have gone on forever, but...
- At a certain point (varies based on save game file size), the game starts to go horribly, horribly wrong.
- Frame rates drop drastically, making the game unplayable. A system reboot is required every 1-2 hours for this one issue.
- Game locks up the PS3 on loading screens, forcing a hard (and potentially damaging) reset to your console
- Quests do not complete / quest items do not go into the inventory / rewards are not properly assigned
- Enemies exhibit bizarre and unintended behavior that can create problems with quest completion (e.g. Dragon Souls not being absorbed properly)
- Game locks up the PS3 during random conversations with NPCs
- Game locks up the PS3 upon entering or during combat, especially missions with lots of followers

The worst part about all of this has been the response from Bethesda. After being "made aware of the frame rate problem" (assuming you believe they didn't know about this before), Bethesda issued a patch that solved the problem...for 3 days. All this patch does does is delay the onset of the exact same problem as before. What's worse is that it also introduces a huge set of new problems that weren't there before.

In my opinion, this colossal failure by Bethesda goes beyond incompetence. This was malicious, deceptive, misrepresentation of a product. Prior to the game's release, they withheld PS3 copies of the game from independent game review sites. However same review sites had access to both the XBox 360 and PC versions of the game. The only logical conclusion is that they were aware of the problem, and did not want game reviewers to have enough time with the game to figure it out and raise a flag. In addition, Bethesda negotiated a nice chunk of cash for a timed exclusive for the DLC in favor of Microsoft (PC,XBox 360). After all, the DLC is basically useless to anyone on the unplayable PS3 version, so might as well try to maximize profit by selling it to Microsoft under the guise of a competitive advantage.

Here is my advice:
- Do not under any circumstances buy this game for PS3
- If you own multiple consoles, CAUTIOUSLY spring for the PC or 360 version of the version of the game
- Know however, that there are reports circulating that speculate the XBox 360 version will experience the same problems as the PS3 once the player has racked up enough playing time.
- If you already own the PS3 version, bring it to GameStop for a guaranteed 30 bucks credit before the end of the year. Put the 30 bucks towards another game that actually works (Uncharted 3, MGS HD collection, Batman Arkham City, preorder of Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning)
- In the future, wait at least a couple of months before buying products from Bethesda. Treat this company with extreme caution.

196 of 228 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Consumers are NOT Beta-Testers !!! (updated), December 2, 2011

By 

The Reverend (USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Video Game)

*** please read the 12/9/11 update below this article ***
PS3 users:
Bad news: This is why you may want to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (protecting consumers):
A) the game came with game-breaking bugs that prevent users from finishing it
B) it was not stated on the retail-box that an internet connection is required to get the game to work properly in the first place (we're not talking patches/updates but major, crucial modifications necessary for an even adequately acceptable gameplay experience)
C) retailers won't give consumers a full refund if they choose to return this defective product (defective due to the publishers negligence)
D) Bethesda's latest patch (1.2) has done little to improve the issue and has, in fact, in most cases caused even more grief. Scaling down graphics detail (particuarly landscape-fade-in and dynamic lighting effects) to cover up memory leaks is poor programming and a slap in the face for every gamer who marveled at the (former!) graphical beauty of the game before installing the latest patch. Read the threads all over the WWW and Bethesda's own forum and you'll know just how poorly the game performs and negatively affects your PS3 hardware - if you're really unlucky.
E) Bethesda does not show enough of an effort to admit, address, pinpoint and fix the problems. The omission of minutely detailed changelogs of the recent patches and the silence on part of Moderators, the official web-page and Bethesda representatives regarding the issue have an unacceptable impact on the trust-relationship between the company, consumers and even its most loyal fans. Furthermore, the lack of transparency regarding the mountaineous issues at hand is professional negligence at best, willful ignoring of consumer-rights at worst.
F) the vast complexity and production value of the game is no excuse for glitches that undermine the overall gaming experience to a point where gamers spend more time on forums looking for help and support than using and enjoying the actual product! Most of the bugs could easily have been detected and fixed with another month or two of intense testing on all platforms. Again, we're NOT talking about minor quest glitches, but a game that stutters to a complete halt and becomes UNPLAYABLE after 15-20 hours or so!! Some dedicated fanboys keep defending Bethesda on forums, stating that their trailblazing in terms of complexity and quantity of a game's open-world-structure is an excuse for major bugs ("would you rather have progressive game-design or perfect stability?"). Then, how come ROCKSTAR can do it and Bethesda can't? How come all GRAND THEFT AUTO games and READ DEAD REDEMPTION were stable, playable and finishable from the get-go? The answer: ROCKSTAR actually cares for their customers enough to put their games through months of beta-testing before they release them. Bethesda apparently doesn't.

Enough is enough. Consumers should not function as cheap beta-testers who pay $60.00 only to end up helping the game-industry tidy up the mess they create by prematurely releasing products until the so-called "Special Edition" gets released. Consumers have every right to demand fully functional products for their hard-earned money.
If you buy a new car, you don't just sit still and bide your time, either, when the car-dealer keeps promising you that it might actually start working properly in a couple of weeks when they release a patch. According to the "lemon law" you are entitled to receive a car of the same make/model that works or a full refund.
If the retailers (understandably) refuse to give a full refund for a product that was malfunctioning before it shipped out to them, it is up to us consumers to hold the Publishers accountable.

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim COULD have been a great game. Maybe it will be a year from now by which time forum-geeks have helped the game-company fix it free of charge. As for me, I have paid my $60.00, I'm not on Bethesda's payroll and I'd like to be able to play the game now instead of feeling like I got robbed and lied to.

*** update 12/9/11 ***
- patch 1.3 has been issued, which reportedly will still not fix the issues for PS3 users that make the game unplayable/unfinishable after a certain amount of time. For the most part this patch seems to remedy the problems the previous patch caused. Congratulations!
- Bethesda's PR department have done their very best to minimalize and sugar-coat the issues, digging their grave deeper and deeper in the process. When the Titanic is already halfway sunk, why not admit that the ship isn't perfect instead of handing out cookies to the passengers and singing campfire songs pretending reality is just a matter of how you market it? Backwards flying Dragons, which cannot be defeated anymore are called "amazing". Users who spend over 80 of the (promised!) 120+ hours of game-play and then run into problems are labeled "excessive players". Constant slowdowns, freezes and hard-drive crashes are called "occasional frame-rate drops". And to toss some more salt into our wounds, Bethesda's advice to PS3 users is (among many others) to get a faster hard-drive or to never dispose of items outside buildings or chests or (here comes the fan-favorite) to skip in-game-time for 30 days until the save-file resets the item management aperture, freeing up memory so the game may start running a little smoother for a short period of time - or not. Nice going, Bethesda! Considering that you can only skip 12 hours ahead in a row and each *wait* takes about 30 seconds to complete. So let me get this straight: I, the player, am supposed to sit there, press the select button, adjust the wait time, press X, wait for 30 seconds, then do it again 60 times in a row??? Any other hoops you ask players to jump through to play this mess? We can balance a basketball on our nose, too, while we're playing, if it helps...
*** End of update ***

260 of 310 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A carelessly flawed, broken, and poor implementation on the PS3. The Lag problem will most likely NOT be fixed., November 18, 2011

By 

JCP - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Video Game)

First and foremost, I do not recommend getting this game (especially for the PS3) as there are too many problems. I do not want anyone feeling cheated as many have felt; therefore, I cannot recommend this game despite it being a great game. The game has too many broken quests, too many glitches, too many game freezes, too many concurrency issues, and too many other problems to be enjoyable. The game suffers from gameplay-crippling lag once the save file gets pretty large. Recently, a patch was released to address this; however, it didn't help that much--they only bandaged up the issue, not fixing the core problem. In fact, it has caused more frequent freezes and has caused certain game dynamics not to work properly. According to a recent interview with the Fallout: New Vegas developer, Joshua E. Sawyer, the lag issue is caused by the game engine's incompatibility with the PS3's divided memory pool, where 256MB is used for system resources and the other 256MB is reserved for game resources. This is not the PS3's fault at all... it is the poor implementation of the game engine. The game engine was designed for shared memory pools--that is why this problem does not exist on the Xbox 360, because it has 512 MB shared memory. In my opinion, Bethesda poorly implemented the engine to work on the PS3 and did not do much to optimize it--it's a lazy implementation practice. The game would run just as nice as the Xbox 360 version, and perhaps better, if only they would have taken their time to optimize the game engine for the PS3. Because this is an implementation issue, it will MOST LIKELY NOT BE FIXED. It was a problem for Fallout 3, Fallout NV, and now Skyrim. It hasn't been fixed in previous games, so why would it be fixed in Skyrim? I'm pretty sure Bethesda acknowledges this, but chooses not to even touch the engine on the PS3, as it will require a lot of time and resources.

I tried to give this game a chance despite the many glitches, including the notorious lag problem related to save file size, but now I've completely lost faith in the stability of this game. With over 100 hours logged into the game, the game froze on me yesterday, corrupting my save file. This is absolutely absurd how a game can be released in such an UNSTABLE condition. Believe me, the game is a wonderful game--while it is working.

I'm not going to try to ignore the issues anymore, and perhaps am going to seek a refund. I strongly do not recommend the PS3 version of Skyrim to anyone, as it is very broken and very flawed--with some issues I know won't be receiving a fix... Again, this is a very lazy practice on behalf of Bethesda. They should have never released this game in such a poor state. They should have fully tested the game, but even so, I'm sure they knew about the engine flaw well before it was released. I feel ripped off, cheated, and devastated by this... and I feel I won't be buying anymore Bethesda games in the future.

My heart goes out to those who don't have internet access for their PS3, because they are stuck with the original version of Skyrim , with even more broken quests than ever... Seriously, Bethesda, why release a game that one cannot complete, (instability and broken quest chains) when it should be fully tested and fixed BEFORE RELEASE.

**Update** (Thanks to user "The Reverend" for the information regarding the FTC)
If you feel cheated of receiving such a broken game and feel that Bethesda knew about these problems before the release of the game, please visit the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website to file a complaint. There have been suspicious business practices under Bethesda. For example, have you ever seen ANY official PS3 footage before the release of the game? Also, most reviewers, including IGN, only have received Xbox 360 copies of the game for review from Bethesda. IGN had to actually purchase the PS3 version on launch day to conduct their review. I'm not into conspiracy theories, but there are hints here and there that indicate Bethesda did not want the public to see the performance of the PS3 implementation of the game. It is possible that they most likely did not want the lag issue of the PS3 version affecting the overall average review score for Skyrim. While this is all speculation, as mentioned before, if you feel upset and/or cheated with
the state of your copy of Skyrim and believe that knowingly releasing a game in such a broken state isn't a good business practice, please file a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission.

Every consumer has the right to file a complaint if not satisfied. To file yours, google "FTC Complaint" and the first result is the official FTC complaint form.

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