On 12/16, I gave myself a lil birthday present and fired up Dragonborn. So ready (and very excited) to fatten up my almost 500 hours with at least another 8. It had been almost 2 weeks since I bought it. Time I spent playing a few hours here and there, preparing. Day off work, kids in school, wifey at her sisters. Just me and that fool with a bad ass mask that I WILL add to my trophy room !

I played for maybe 20 min. Most of which was waiting to be attacked. Got off the boat, started trekking through town and the game just loses it. Frame rates hit the floor and my 360 locks right up, Force it off, hit the net and there it is... 2 weeks of posts on how broken DB is.

I tried... At first, at least twice every day. About a week of re-downloading, re-installing, cache clearing. All with the same results. I'd get about 20 minutes and It would lock my system. From Dec 16th to Feb 2nd, I managed to put just under 2 hours onto my game. I gave up.

Next day I started a new character. Mostly outta curiosity. Obliterated all traces of Skyrim from my console and started from scratch. Downloaded everything in order of release. Threw the disc in to prompt the update and let that install. Then I decided to try something that was necessary for FO3 and the (exact same) issues I had (after add-ons) on my PS3... I killed my internet connection.

Over the past 5 days I've put almost 30 hours into my new character. During that time I had one freeze , seemingly no frame rate loss / lag and zero texture issues.

The freeze was into 'bout a 6 hr session and the console responded after I ejected the disk. No lock-up. Once and a while the game does feel "sluggish" in areas and in some combat, but certainly limited instances after at least a 90 min session. The hot-swaps (d-pad items) take a second, always, and there's some dialogue looping. The only other issue is the game "spewing things up" when I walk into a room. The Frozen Hearth, for example, is going to kill someone with a pine thrush egg someday. There's way too much "stuff" lying around... Basically Skyrim is playing the way it was on Dec. 15th. And every day before then. Everyday before Dragonborn.

Haven't been to Solstheim yet. I'm afraid to go.

I'm posting this for a few reasons. One, I'm pretty pissed. I just dropped another 20 on this game for an addition. The character I'd been looking to add to has effectively been killed by the "add-on". That was my guy... He was not issue free either. I assure you. That 500 hours would easily be doubled when factoring all the times I ate some ridiculous amount of progress to get around a game breaker. Journal was a mess, inventory even more so and there were tons of things I did (Thieves Guild) just cause "Bethesda says so". But that was my guy. My day one, thick and thin, been through tons of [censored] together, guy. Whatever.

Another reason is I love Skyrim. And the fact that I can start a new game and, in a ton of ways, it really will be new. Skyrim is an amazing piece of art and I'm honored that it was created for us. So I will start a new game. I will do a bunch of tricks to make sure it works. I will, for just a lil while longer, maintain faith that you, Bethesda, know this is what I'm doing, what WE'RE doing, and you will help us. Please do something. I know the scale of things here, and I do not envy you, but this game is falling apart.

Lastly, I guess, to anyone who's been through the hoops with the cache and installs... Try taking your internet out of the picture. There's nothing good on that [censored] anyway.
;-)