A word about the upcoming Skyrim Special Release

UPDATE:

As thought, there will be conflicts with mods and the Skyrim Special Edition.

The Nexus has decided, in order to accommodate both the current and upcoming Special Edition, they will be opening a new section of Nexus Mods specifically geared towards those made for the Special Edition.

Here is the most recent article/release from The Nexus on their plans: Preparing for the Skyrim Special Edition

So, I think this pretty much proves out the point I was making in the original posting below. If you want to keep playing Skyrim with your current mods, but feel that you must have the Special Edition, wait to install it until they work out the rough edges. If you're playing vanilla Skyrim and feel gutsy, then go for it and report back to us what you think

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This is specifically targeted to the following gamers:

1. Those who game primarily on PC
2. Those who currently use and would like to continue to use Nexus mods for Skyrim

Caveat: The following is conjecture on my part based on a variety of Internet sources (and we all know how accurate the Internet can be) and in no way represents the opinion of Gameboomers as an entity.

While the upcoming Skyrim Special Release will be freely offered to those who already have the game and all DLC, I would advise caution before downloading that version and here's why:

1. The new version will have all the previous DLC integrated into the download. While this sounds similar to the Legendary Edition, we don't yet know all the technical in's and out's or how this will impact any Unofficial Patches

2. According to Bethesda's Tod Howard, current save games should work with the new edition. The key word here is "should," meaning in Bethesda-Speak there is no guarantee they will work with the Special Edition. This indicates to me that sufficient changes have been made that could impact them

3. The Special Edition will leverage the new Skyrim Creation Kit for Mod attributes. This means that there is potential for mods not adjusted for the new release to malfunction. Again, this is conjecture, but has been the source of some lively discussions at various forums

4. Other than batching the DLC, the other changes are primarily aesthetic and those that will most likely gain from them are consoles. There are already a number of existing PC modifications available to improve the graphic quality/appearance of the game

My main message here is to wait - Keep an eye and ear on the forums to see what shakes out from Early Adopters, Mod Authors and Users on the performance of the Special Edition.

Please understand that I am a great fan of the Elder Scrolls games (restating the obvious here,) but past history shows that new releases tend to be fraught with troubles. Also, Bethesda's current trend towards mod control is a somewhat odd departure from their previous "hands-off" attitude. In my opinion, this is another reason to sit back and see how the new version integrates and if Bethesda collaborates with the modding community.

Thanks, Trail

Yep, wait and see sounds like a good policy. My game already looks awesome with everything turned up to High, so I'm not too concerned with that at the moment.

Thanks very much for the update, Trail. Seriously considering going back to 'vanilla' and waiting for the patches to catch up.

If you keep the current edition, you can still use your mods.

Also, rumor has it that the Special Edition will be a separate instance of Skyrim, so we may be able to run both versions. I'll update this post if/when I can confirm.

Thank you Trail I'll be waiting for further information about this as Skyrim is my fall back RPG and I've played it through a couple of PC's and have no idea how many hours I have logged in but it's in the thousands.

I like the idea that it's a separate instance because if it's an upgrade and Steam automatically updates it and I don't like what it does then I'm stuck with it. I'm pretty comf0rtable with the mods that I now have and I'm not sure from what I've been reading that it will be improved all that much.

OK, so now I know where the "rumor" about the Special Edition being separate from the current version came from and it seems like a pretty good source.

Back in June a twitter follower asked Pete Hines, the VP of Marketing at Bethesda, if the Special Edition would be a patch or a separate entry in your Steam Library. Pete Hines answer was a straight forward tweet of "New Entry."

Here's the Tweet.

I'll still keep my eyes and ears open for any other updates.

Special edition was loaded in my Steam menu today and is in fact separate from the original version. Interestingly enough though, I also received a 66mb update to my current edition. Not sure what that carried... I'll sneak around the Bethesda sites and see if I can figure it out.

Also, per the Gaming Site; Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the Elder Scrolls Edition is an "underwhelming" upgrade for PC and actually a step down from some of the graphic improvement mods that already exist.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun Article

They and several other sites have confirmed that saves from games that contain mods for the original version will not work with the Special Edition.

Thanks, Trail.

I'll continue on with my current game, I think.

Just a quick update on The Skyrim Nexus site.

The folks over at Nexus did a great job prepping for Mods that will run with the Special Edition, but the demand for said mods has exponentially increased.

This increase is causing some strain on the web site and management of the Nexus Mod Manager. As a result, you might see slow response times from The Nexus or failure of NMM to login to the website. Due to the high traffic, it's become necessary to "shut down" NMM for short periods of time in order to keep other website traffic running relatively smooth. The issues should taper off eventually, but the Nexus admins are also looking at ways to relieve the throttling and traffic gluts. In the mean time, if you want to download mods or updates, it's best to do it early or late evening on weekdays if possible.

During whose 'early or late evening on weekdays'? US? Australian? or European?

How un-global of me

Good point. I believe they have servers in the UK and US, so those would be the time zone, spans to leverage.

That said, at 6:24pm CT U.S.A. the servers have been taken down for maintenance. So...there's that.

Hi everyone. I just saw the post and wanted to write, just to see if anyone else might feel the same way that I do. I LOVE Bethesda and all of the Elder Scrolls games. But while I'm grateful for their efforts on games like Elder Scrolls online and the updated Skyrim game, I would rather have had a brand-new Elder Scrolls single-player game instead of either of these.

Not knocking them, just remembering how excited I felt when I first found Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind and would SO love one day to have a new game like that to fall in love with!

Tracy, sharing her two cents

Another Elder Scrolls game is in development, but it's still a long way off from release.

Elder Scrolls 6

The title of that article is somewhat click bait, because really, it's not in development yet. That said, they may be in a writing phase.

Bethesda hasn't even decided what graphic's engine they plan on using. They don't want to get dinged, like they did for Skyrim when they stated they had built "a completely new graphic's engine" when in reality they had just made improvements, no doubt major ones, to the engine they've used for years (Bethesda Creation Engine = Gambryo Engine on steroids)

Howard stated way back when no one knew about Skyrim, that their goal is to exponentially top each Elder Scrolls release from a production perspective. There are some big shoes to fill with Skyrim's fan reception and with the success of Tamriel-Online, the Wolfenstein Series and more recently the new Doom release, Bethesda isn't in any hurry to release an Elder Scrolls game. That's one of the reasons they did the Skyrim Special Edition release. They wanted to keep Elder Scrolls relevant and in the minds of those that would prefer single player.

Not to be a negative-nellie , but I'll be surprised if we see a new Elder Scrolls title before 2020.

2020 sounds about right to me.

I'd be very disappointed by having to wait until 2020, but if Bethesda do manage to 'exponentially top' Skyrim, I think I'll be able to forgive them

I tried ES Online, and found it disappointingly like WoW, so didn't hang around. Not sure what I was expecting to be different given that they're both MMORPG's in a middle-ages fantasy setting, and ESO had to be something like WoW to meet people's expectations of the genre.