» Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:59 pm . . .
Amassing and displaying trophies of my adventures has been an important aspect of Oblivion and Skyrim for me, so I really wanted Hearthfire even with all the bugs being reported here. I broke down and traded in some old games for a pre-owned Skyrim on the X-box (got it and another pre-owned game for under $20). Granted I'm only about 20 hours in, but here are my thoughts so far:
- The difference in draw depth is night and day. No more plants or trees popping up 20 feet away. No more static waterfalls, and I could even see the water spray without being right up next to it. Standing on top of Bleak Falls Barrow, it felt like I'd upgraded from an SDTV to HD.
- Sound effects are crisper and louder (I suppose it could have to do with the default settings, but I didn't touch those in either game).
- Shadows are much cleaner rather than looking like an 8 bit game.
- Colors look brighter. Everything looks more detailed and interesting. Of course this could be a placebo effect. At least it's not cloudy or raining every day.
- I've had one freeze, one issue of lag which cleared up after about 5 seconds of standing still, and it bugged when I killed the necromancer at the end of the Dawnbreaker quest (it didn't progress, and my quest arrow still pointed to him...reloaded the save I made right before entering that room, and it worked fine the 2nd time around).
- Haven't made it into any big city other than Whiterun. The Whiterun market has the same mess as with the PS3.
