I don't mean to complain about a free "gift," but I feel there are some things that SHOULD be said.

Many might state "the high res texture pack should've been in the game upon release," and in some ways, I think they're right. However, if Bethesda had simply said "we ran out of time, we'll release better textures for PC later," just so people would KNOW they were coming and why they were late, I think this would be a non-issue. I myself am quite laid-back with delays and I'm not a huge graphics-junkie, so I don't care nor mind.


And that's also not what this thread is about.

This thread is about the message the high-res texture pack sends to me.

Look at the game of Skyrim, and what's the first thing people will praise? The scenery. The landscape. And yes, while people will say the graphics are in some ways "outdated," I think everyone can agree that the overall presentation and the overall look of the landscape and scenery as a WHOLE is amazing.

Look at the game of Skyrim, and what's the first thing people will criticize? The NPC interactions, the lackluster storyline, the short faction quest chains, the lack of skill balance. Some of these are complex (fixing Destruction would require the proper equation so that the speed at which destruction gains power matches that of the game's difficulty curve within a reasonable amount), some are quite simple. For example, NPC's currently "bark" at you if you get within, what seems like, 15 feet of them. This is incredibly annoying and repetitive as many roads aren't even 15 feet wide, so you hear NPC commentary every time you pass one by. The fix for this would be incredibly simple: adjust the range and frequency of their commentary. Furthermore, every NPC seems to only have two lines of dialog, but based on the dialog of followers, there's got to be BASIC DIALOG PHRASES along the lines of "What is it" and "Need something" for practically every voice actor in the game. This means they have the tools and resources neccesary to, if they wanted to, go through and provide all those damned citizens of Whiterun with basic phrases in place of their more complicated ones. "I WORK FOR BELETHOR AT THE GENERAL GOODS STORE" every 20 seconds when you get within 15 feet of him could easily become "what is it" only once a day and only if you're within five feet of him, or even looking directly at him. "I don't claim to be better than Eurland Grey-Mane...." could become "Need Something?"

All of that is possible. All the tools are there, and this would do SOOOOOO much for immersion.
Could modders do this? Yes, yes they could, and to my knowledge, mods that do these things already exist.

So what's my point?

My point is that I have to ask myself, Bethesda, why the HELL are you focused on textures for the best PCs when there's so many other issues that could be fixed? Perhaps I'm interpreting this completely wrong, but I can't help but feel like, with the release of the high res texture packs, this is Bethesda basically saying "yes, we know we rushed and didn't have time to include everything, here it is now" OR at the very least "look we had some free time to fix some stuff." So why that of all things? I'm not saying it's not nice, I'm just saying the priorities seem a bit out of order.

The reason this bothers me is that it sends the message that at this point, Bethesda is basically ONLY focusing on the graphics and scenery, not on anything else. It's as if the 11.11.11 date meant that NPCs, the story, faction quest chains and skill balance were all released with 50-60% of them actually complete or completely beta/bug-tested. Graphics was the same, but at least it was released with 80-90% of the functionality they aimed for. Now they had free time or wanted to make up for what wasn't released, and what do they do? They turn the 90% into a 100%. For one of the three systems. (and just to clarify, yes I play this on PC) Meanwhile the others remain at 60% potential of what they could be, and they don't seem to notice an issue at all.

I guess it just bothers me because it sends a message that the developers at Bethesda have FAR different priorities than I do. I load up Skyrim and do I think "god, it really bothers me that random rock #467 is kinda blurry if you rub your nose right up against it?" No not at all, random rock #467 is acceptable in my book. But is the NPC dialog and the amount at which they spam it? Hell no, that's one of the main reasons I don't really pick up this game anymore.

So I guess what I'm saying is, while it's nice to see some effort given, for the love of god, put it to good use elsewhere please. Make a patch that tweaks the lines of dialog spammed by NPCs, the frequency at which they spam them and the conditions that need to be met for them to even say them to begin with. I'm sure such a patch would receive FAR more thanks and praise than a hi-res texture pack for PC users.