TESVHRTP

Along with Tuesday's hype-heralded Steam release of the SCK (which I hear Bethesda is already releasing patches for) Bethesda also released the "free bonus gift" of a Skyrim high-res texture pack weighing in at over 3 GB. Not one to pass up any free gifts, I decided I should check it out.

Below are a few before-and-after screenshots all taken at 1600x900 resolution. I had a few settings switched off (like FXAA effects, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, water reflections, et cetera) but all the images were taken at the same resolution with the same settings and at the highest texture detail setting so they should still serve as accurate comparisons as far as the textures themselves are concerned.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

If you ask me (which nobody did of course), there's really not much difference to be seen here. I've also read reports that the only real differences are reduced framerates and increased loading times. In my opinion, this is just Bethesda releasing as a DLC something that should have been in the game to begin with and trying to make themselves look generous by calling it a "free bonus gift".

What do you think?

Oh... and before anyone asks... yes, I checked to be certain that the thing installed itself correctly. I even made sure that the BSAs were both registered in both my .ini files:


[Archive]
sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa, Skyrim - HighResTexturePack01.bsa, Skyrim - HighResTexturePack02.bsa

...so, if this is a case of the textures for some reason not showing up in my game, we can give Bethesda another gold star for their fine craftsmanship, excellent customer service and their wise decision to distribute all their products through Steam...

The only real good news here is that the textures are in fact all contained in two tidy BSA files, so if it turns out that they don't work well for anyone, they can easily be deleted...

STEAM SALE

No, I haven't suddenly become a flag-waving Steam patriot. But even I have to admit that one of the easiest ways to legally acquire almost all of the games I've ever discussed here is to download them from Steam. Thus I thought it would be worth mentioning that the internet gaming icon is having its usual holiday sale, which includes some good prices on just about everything ever published by id. So if there are any holes in your collection that you've been looking to fill, this could be a good opportunity. In my case the sale is too late to be of any benefit; I bought the id Super Pack almost two years ago when it was $69.99. While I've been a collector of all things Doom for quite some time, I realized that I didn't own a single Quake game and thus made my first ever Steam purchase. But if you're like me and are fairly certain that all the "Santas" in your life have absolutely no clue what you'd actually want for a gift this year, now might be the time to do some shopping for a gift or two for yourself.

Speculations (?) From The Community

I know some of my readership might not care too much about gaming forums, but in light of recent developments regarding the revelation of Bethesda's plans for Skyrim modding I thought that you all might be interested in browsing this Nexus Forum thread, particularly the first post by the famous Robin "Dark0ne" Scott.

In my honest opinion, I think this might be the beginning of the end of game modding being any fun at all.

EDIT:

(Sorry. Yes, the thread is in the modder's forum, meaning that you have to have a Nexus upload that has been downloaded like 1000 times. It was only a month ago that I realized that I meet that criteria.)

STEAM Mods?

As my friend Nos has opined on his blog, everything is pretty much going to hell in a hand-basket this time around.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. If anyone needs me, I'll be here playing and modding games from 1995 that weren't built entirely around DRM in an attempt to control every aspect of my leisure activities and to suck the money directly from my coin-purse...