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Skyrim’s Backwards Dragons Should Disappear Next Week

Patch will roll out on PC first, and mod tools are coming in January.

Soon, Skyrim will no longer face the lingering threat of dangerous, backwards dragons.
Soon, Skyrim will no longer face the lingering threat of dangerous, backwards dragons.

Oh, Bethesda.

No one expected The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to come out of the gate perfect, as the kinds of games Bethesda crafts are prone to having what might call...jank. Fortunately, the games themselves are so terrific that it’s (mostly) excusable. It’s when the company goes to address the remaining issues and makes things worse that causes the real headaches.

Version 1.2 arrived this week, addressing texture issues on Xbox 360, save problems on PlayStation 3 and other miscellaneous problems on those platforms, plus PC. It also broke a bunch of things, including making dragons fly backward and eliminating magic resistances.

You’ll be waiting another week or so until those things are addressed, as revealed on the official Bethsda blog. The fix will come to PC first, then arrive on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as the manufacturers approve it.

“We want to thank everyone reading this for playing our game and supporting all it tries to do,” said the company.

Bethesda is promising “regular” updates to the game in the coming months, both to address glitches and reported balance problems and exploits. There will apparently be “a lot” of these.

“We’ve also realized that with the millions upon millions of people playing Skyrim, we need to treat our updates with greater care,” added the company. “If we get too aggressive trying to fix a minor issue, we run a risk of breaking something larger in a game like this.”

One of the rubs there is how Bethesda is sorting what issues are being addressed immediately. “Quest and balance” issues are data, not code, and those will be “rolling out in a huge way” in...er, January. Patience?

Also coming in January, however, are the official modification tools.

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165 Comments

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sfighter21

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Edited By sfighter21

@MB: The magic resistance bug is def. present. I tested it out on day one... made me sad... But, I haven't played since then cuz I've been waiting for the fix, so I can't confirm or deny backward dragons on my end.

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blueinferno

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Edited By blueinferno

So I was near Winterhold in the 360 version a few days ago and ran into Farkas, one of the companions. He tagged along with me after I accepted the quest Dragon Seekers, where you're supposed to bring him with you to kill a dragon. So I get to the place where the dragon is, and it's incredibly glitchy and impossible to kill. And because I can't kill the dragon, I can't finish the quest, and thus I'm stuck with Farkas for good. Has this happened to anyone else? And does this fall into the category of backwards dragons? Because I'm kind of tired of Farkas repeating the same three lines over and over.

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Arlowa

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Edited By Arlowa

I've only had one major glitch with a quest about a guy not giving me the dialogue I need for his quest but... that's not too big a problem...

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algertman

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Edited By algertman

@Splodge said:

Bethesda create some of the largest worlds in Video game land world. Of course there are going to be bugs. More bugs than any other game. The sheer scale of what they do is mindblowing and it is a miracle that this game even exists. I have had various problems on the Pc version, but I dont care all that much because I am a patient person and I absolutely love Skyrim. The amount of fun I have been having vastly outweighs any annoyance with bugs etc.

You are what is wrong with the industry.

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BlinkyTM

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Edited By BlinkyTM

It won't let me get a shout and its 3 levels and the Dremora Lord won't come out of his tomb. I also saw A dragon fly underground...under me...and he came back out in the middle of a mountain. Also having some major framerate issues in some spots, especially Irkngthand: http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Irkngthand

Playing on 360.

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xyzygy

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Edited By xyzygy
@bearshamanbro said:

This seems like a bigger deal than is being reported. Browsing through GAF (and reading this story) there are some serious issues with the PS3 version that start in around 60 hours or so and it is game-breaking unless you like playing a slideshow. I may be misinterpreting, but it's probable that a patch may not be able to fix this issue. IMO this game should never have made it to press for PS3 (which I'm playing). To make matters worse the same issue is supposedly still present in the PS3 version of F3:NV, so they probably knew the issue existed within the engine and released anyways. I hope the press keeps the heat on Bethesda and doesn't let this fade away because this goes way beyond being just a bad port.

F:NV and Skyrim have different engines. It's not the engine, the developers just don't know how to code for the PS3.
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TheHT

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Edited By TheHT

I got a disease as a werewolf. That's fucked up.

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bearshamanbro

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Edited By bearshamanbro

@xyzygy: You're right, they use different engines. I've just seen some correlations between the two since the Creation engine is a heavily modified Gamebryo engine and some base level things are the same. The more I read I think you're right, they just didn't code the engine to work with PS3. There are no engine bugs causing this, the engine just has issues with the PS3 memory architecture. Their followup story has better details. Sounds like a patch to solve some of the issues is wishful thinking.

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TheHT

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Edited By TheHT

Good lord, now something is apparently making my two-handed skill 15 instead of 73. But I cured my diseases (the one I got while a werewolf regardless of my 100% disease resist) and removed any equipment that affected my two-handed skill in case it was messing with the number and nothing. Still 15 and showing up in red.

Besides that I've noticed some weird issues with NPCs saying their lines without interaction and then immediately repeating them after I interact with them. No issues before the patch though, save for one dragon that didn't give up it's soul. Bah.

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algertman

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Edited By algertman

@xyzygy said:

@bearshamanbro said:

This seems like a bigger deal than is being reported. Browsing through GAF (and reading this story) there are some serious issues with the PS3 version that start in around 60 hours or so and it is game-breaking unless you like playing a slideshow. I may be misinterpreting, but it's probable that a patch may not be able to fix this issue. IMO this game should never have made it to press for PS3 (which I'm playing). To make matters worse the same issue is supposedly still present in the PS3 version of F3:NV, so they probably knew the issue existed within the engine and released anyways. I hope the press keeps the heat on Bethesda and doesn't let this fade away because this goes way beyond being just a bad port.

F:NV and Skyrim have different engines. It's not the engine, the developers just don't know how to code for the PS3.

Same engine. they just screwed around with it a little and changed the name.

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strainedeyes

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Edited By strainedeyes

I am at 77 hours with the Ps3 version. I definitely had a lot of framerate issues before the patch, much less now but it still happens occasionally. I haven't gotten to a "this is unplayable" point yet, but I can feel it starting to get worse again.

Also the load times seem to have gotten a lot worse since the patch.

Huge bummer that there are issues like these, and that they may not be fixable because it's a inherent problem with the engine.

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landhawk

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Edited By landhawk

@TheHT said:

I got a disease as a werewolf. That's fucked up.

Did you go to the vet for your shots this year?

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xymox

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Edited By xymox

Hmm. Isn't vampirism a disease? Does this mean you can become a vampirewerewolf like in morrowind if you hit some weakness to disease potions? If so, I'll do so before they patch it... That way it's totally legit. True story.

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DemiG0D

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Edited By DemiG0D

I havent seen any of these issues.... utterly in love with this game!

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blueinferno

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Edited By blueinferno

@DemiG0D: Consider yourself lucky, I've been getting these issues and they've really hindered my enjoyment of this game.