So I preloaded Skyrim off Steam overnight, got up, had my coffee.

And then I thought, why not open up the BSA files and have a snoop around? See if I can find out what kind of monsters and armour/weapon styles there are that haven't been confirmed.

"File is not a valid BSA archive."

LOLWUT?

I can open Fallout 3 BSA files with the Oblivion Mod Manager, but I can't open the Skyrim files with the Fallout Mod Manager?

So now I have to wait 16 hours like some kind of animal.

Bethesda's way of not letting every single bit of your gameplay spoiled!

It's called Encryption, and until Skyrim is officially released you will not be able to 'look' at or edit any files until steam releases the decryption keys needed.

Aren't the files encrypted ? Like it's full of gibberish.

Encryption

You can be my pet donkey.

Plus, you cannot open, say, Oblivion BSAs using Morrowind BSA editing tools.

Very likely that the file has changed somewhat, which would also mean why we can't load them.

Go try and open any of the simple little .ini files. It should be easily read with notepad. Nope! It's all garbage until decrypted.

It's still the right format, though.

Wouldn't it just be the files INSIDE the BSAs that are encypted?

That was my understanding, anyway.

Either way, it's sitting there, tormenting me.

So you want to ruin your surprises? Why?

Nope every part of every byte in every file is encrypted.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 are using the Gamebryo engine, which is probably why they're interchangeable with the mod managers.
Skyrim uses the Creation engine.

Because I want to know.

Argh, this is lame.

I've waited 5 years, this last day is just killing me.

You hear me, Todd Howard? My blood is on your hands! :shakefist:

I've never seen such a quite rudely moderated forum such as this. It makes me sad ;(
Y U HATE US SO MUCH!?

No it isn't. The program even told you that when it said it wasn't valid. The entire archive is encrypted.

11.11.11. Deal with it.

Because you're unable to spell simple words like "why" and "you"?

NO U