Made an account on this forum just to see if there is going to be a future patch to fix this.

Brought this game a few days ago and it just doesn't sit well on my 40inch sdtv. I can see (but not read) the compass and the top left messages after I changed the xbox options to widescreen, but now the letters are all scrunched up. The sentences looks like its all written in lowercase L's and every character in the game looks like they're 6 foot tall with a case of anorexia. Its really hard to play as a mage on a sdtv when the cross hair is too small from the screen compressing.

Any news or rumors would be appreciated before my game return/trade-in policy runs out.

Back of the game states HDTV 720p/1080i/1080p nothing is guaranteed in stone for 480p or lower. it's hit or miss if it works or not and even if it does it still looks bad for a game made for widescreen playing on a squished up SDTV. Bethesda could fix this but i don't think people can hold it against them since it doesn't say anything about it on the game box about it supporting SDTV's. Some of the older Xbox games i remember them stating 480p and 480i but not seen none in a long time.

i got my statistics from the washington business journal actually. i'm not gonna go look it up again, you can do it yourself if you want to.

in any case, i don't plan to buy a brand new tv just to play skyrim, so i returned my game already. i will buy a new tv when my current one stops working properly, and i will probably give skyrim another try at that point since i was a fan of morrowind, but i will buy it used from a friend to make sure bethesda doesn't get any profit.

Makes sense to me.

I won't be returning mine but I am very sad.

I went out and found a temp job (I'm 16) dragging brush and putting it in a chipper for about 4 days (really hard work) a few hours a day for $10.00 an hour just so I can get this game! I got $120.00 from it but that was some incredibly hard work for this game then I find out it isn't even made for the average household television?

Not everybody is middle class! The average person now a days is considered to be poor by economical standards.

Disappointing.

This
PLEASE FIX IT BETHESDA!

I have an sdtv too and cant read the text. Also, everything is very pixelly in standard. When I switch to widescreen the resolution is better for some reason, but God does it look terrible with everything stretched like that. I'm considering getting a vga cable and hooking up to my monitor, but my monitor is a CRT non-widescreen. Do you guys think that I'll problems with things being cut off if my monitor is not widescreen? Thanks in advance.

I havent read all 8 pages, so im sorry if this has been brought up, but I can assume your all using a computer monitor since your on the forums. A cheap alternative to not having a hd tv is spending 50 bucks on the VGA cables for your xbox and using your monitor to play, you plug the sound right in the back of your computer or if you monitor has built in speakers plug it in there and viola.

Like I and many other people have already said a hundred times Forlani, we've read the back of the box!!! We know what it says!! But despite what it says, LOTS of games say the same damn thing and this problem has never occurred! It is JUST Skyrim! And just because they say that, doesn't mean they neglect to put in some kind of screen option for SD users!! I don't usually use caps lock but since you don't seem to be getting the message: WE ARE NOT GOING TO BUY A NEW TV JUST TO PLAY ONE GAME WHEN ALL OUR OTHER GAMES WORK FINE ON THE TVs WE HAVE NOW. THE XBOX 360 IS COMPATIBLE WITH SD, THEREFORE IT IS UP TO BETHESDA TO MAKE SURE THEIR GAMES RUN PROPERLY ON THE SYSTEM THEY WERE DESIGNED FOR. BETHESDA IS A GAME DEVELOPER, NOT A TV MANUFACTURER! They should be catering to their fans, not to some "standard" that ISN'T EVEN STANDARD YET!! Jesus [censored] christ, it seems like you're just ignoring everything we're saying and blindly sticking to your position of "well I have an HDTV so you should too. They're only a couple hundred dollars! No prob, bro!"
Like I said before, if it is so easy to buy an HDTV, WHY DON'T YOU DO IT FOR US?!
And no, the game doesn't look bad on an SDTV, it looks great actually. ASIDE from the screen cutoff. You wouldn't know since you're playing on an HDTV anyway. And yes, Bethesda COULD fix this, you're right!! And it wouldn't affect you at all if they did or not!! So why do you care?! GTFO and take your useless opinion with you, please.

Money doesn't grow on trees but bills do, buying skyrim was a hiccup in my budget but well worth it, your saying in order to see the tiny words right and not have the corned text cut off i have to invest 150-200 bucks in a tiny HD TV just for skyrim? no no no, how about a screen center in the options and a font size option, just makes sense, we aint all bawlin in our bedrooms, nor do i find it a requirment to, I dont own a GPS for my car either should i never find my destinations? I dont owned a Blu-Ray player should i not be able to watch movies? My cell phones not 4G can i not make calls? My point is not everyone runs to the next fad, or latest craze, some of us dont find it important to change at every whim of technology, its too expensive my friend, my TV is SD, my movies play on dvd's, my cell phones 3G, and my GPS is a paper map sorry dude, if your making a product to sell to the masses you need to have support for the masses.

P.S. I think Skyrim is beautiful on standard definition, and GOW3 and BF3, When i hook up my 360 to an HDTV with and HDMI cable i really dont see much difference, i agree its clearer and more vibrant on HD but is that worth the price tag for me? No, if i can get a 42'' 1080p HDTV for 200 bucks i might be sold, but instead 200 bucks gets me a 720p 19-22'' HDTV hell no to that.

Wow.

Well, at least one of you went right out and said it. Now the extreme financial arrogance of all the people telling us to buy HDTVs isn't subtext. It's just text.

As Verinon just said and as I've said repeatedly, this thread isn't for the discussion of finances. We have a tech problem. We're asking Bethesda for tech support. Your anolysis of our "woefully inadequate" budgets does not matter. Go to a soup kitchen and laugh at the homeless if you need your kicks, but get off this thread and quit wasting people's time.

Some of you are way too sensitive and shouldn't take your own personal context out of words that meant something else. Seriously, anger issues? I don't get it.

I live paycheck to paycheck. I learned a long time ago if you want something bad enough you will get it.

Wal-Mart has financing options. As long as you have no to good credit you can get a Wal-Mart card and get a currently on sale Vizio 32" for 300 bucks. That's amazingly cheap now considering they were double that on sale a few years ago. Then you can make minimum monthly payments that builds your credit score. That's what I did through Sears. I hardly ever have money just to throw down on something. Especially something that expensive.

You're reading these forums on a computer monitor. Hook up your 360 to that. Problem solved. If you have a half-decent monitor it would have come with an HDMI to Digital converter.

Apologies for the stupid question. I have seen people posting about this but the way I took it is that it should only be done on a computer monitor that is no longer used. I can use this computer to play Skyrim and have no consequences?

I don't have a computer monitor. I've been typing all this on my iPod. I have a laptop that I might be able to hook up to but it is crashed and I don't have the cable, nor would I be able to afford it at the moment anyway.

*sigh* I guess trying to convince you people that buying something expensive just for one game when my current TV works fine with everything else is just pointless.

Im the moment I am playing in my computer room, but my plan is to move to the living room where i have my dolby 5.1 system....but also a CRT.. so it means i cannot play? WTF BETHESDA? REALLY?

I think everyone gets that money is tight and that, in your mind, buying a TV for one game seems silly to you. I can relate, truly. The harsh truth remains, however, that SDTV is outdated and the Xbox is an HD gaming system, and that it says on the back of the Skyrim box what resolutions are supported. I'm sorry that you're having a rough time of it, but it's your responsibility as a consumer to pay attention to those little boxes and make an educated purchase. People with this issue are unfortunately in the minority now, and despite your claim that SDTV works "fine with everything else", there are several games just off the top of my head which say otherwise (Dead Rising, pretty much anything published by Bioware, Nier, Sacred 2, etc, etc). That you've managed to luck out and play games in which SD was considered is awesome, but understand that you're taking a gamble every time you buy one. Sadly, this time, it didn't pay off.

It svcks to have to hear, but you need to find a way to upgrade instead of expecting developers to cater to the (rapidly-growing) minority. 200 bucks seems like a lot when you're broke, I know, but it's doable in time and you'll be astonished at the difference in picture quality. Hell, hit a relative up for one for Christmas. Check Craigslist, see if anyone you know has monitors they want to get rid of and score a VGA cable, etc, etc. Some of the folks here are trying to offer advice in a constructive manner, it's just not the advice you'd like to hear. It's not "pointless" to get with the times, but it's almost certainly pointless to expect everyone else to appease you when it's not really prudent/logical to do so, whether or not your situation is beyond your control.

Edit: Also, by your own admission, you have an Internet-capable iPod, a laptop, an Xbox, and a brand new 60 dollar game. I'm just sayin'.

Mass effect 1 and 2, Bioshock 1 and 2, and dead island worked fine on my SDTV

Jesus. Please read my other posts for an explanation of why it is perfectly understandable to expect developers to give SOME kind of option for SDTVs.
I will most definitely ask my grandparents for a small HDTV for Christmas, but I doubt they will oblige, especially considering my current tv works just fine with everything BUT Skyrim.
And as I said in a previous post, I have these electronics in the first place because either A) I bought them when I had money to spend in the past or B ) they were gifts. And my laptop is broken so that is irrelevant. The only luxury item I've bought in the past year is Skyrim, because Oblivion is my favorite game of all time and because I saved up for a while, which makes it all the more dissapointing to discover on launch day that the game is practically unplayable, especially considering that no matter what the back of the box says, my previous games have all worked fine (and most of them had options for screen adjustment anyway. Why does Skyrim have to be any different?).

I honestly don't think everyone's problem is so much the fact that we simply don't want to buy a new TV, but rather the fact that Bethesda never publicly stated that SDTV owners will experience these problems. We had no way of knowing that the game would not work properly, since every other game works fine. Had I been told "Hey, Skyrim doesn't work so well on SDTVs, buy it at your own risk", then I would have been fine with that. But that Bethesda has not publicly let people know that there is an issue and they are or aren't fixing it, even after a week full of people making complaints, is just shady and unprofessional. So far, we have had mixed replies from tech support, and no real official response from Bethesda themselves. And even if I were to go sell it back to gamestop, I would end up losing money over Bethesda's screw up. I've learned to deal with some things, like using clairvoyance and the map instead of the compass, and just realizing that I don't have anymore magic/stamina when I can't cast spells or run anymore. But the fact remains that I am not able to play this game the way it was meant to be played (especially when I can't see the text in the top left of the screen, or how much weight or money I am carrying), and Bethesda never warned us that there would be an issue before the game came out (or even after the game came out). They should take responsibility as a company and make the issue known, publicly state whether or not they are going to fix it, and give people the full amount of money back that they paid for it should they choose to return it.

And regardless of what anyone says, this is a small issue that could very easily be fixed with an optional option that would only affect those players who choose to play it that way. Therefore, all of the other people in this thread have no need to be here when this issue and it's potential fix have absolutely nothing to do with them in any way, and they are not adding anything beneficial to this thread. We are not asking for the game to be overhauled, just for an option to adjust the HUD's boundaries and increase the text size a little. I can deal with glitches in Bethesda games, I've actually come to expect them. But this isn't a Bethesda glitch, this is something that is easy to target and easy to fix.

wut?

I've never played Dead Island, so I couldn't tell you if it works or not. I listed Dead Rising. And while the Mass Effects work (insomuch as you can see graphics on the screen), the second game also had an issue with small text when using SD, as did Dragon Age II (although small text is the least of that game's issues).

Honestly, I'm not meaning to come across as unsympathetic, and I think some of the comments towards people having the issue in this thread have been needlessly rude. My point is only that this is going to become more and more commonplace in the future, and that it's easier to simply save up the scratch and get with the times than fight the inevitable.

Wow.

You have worded this perfectly. Absolutely EVERYONE here should be able to agree with this statement.

100% true.

I'm not a programmer so obviously I can't comment on whether this is doable or not, but to my knowledge this either never or rarely happens on consoles. The answer from developers is almost always "we can't do anything about the text size". My guess would be that reducing the resolution from a minimum 720p down to 480i (SD res) when it's been coded with widescreen HD in mind means that fixing it would be substantially more complex than just "fixing the HUD and making the text larger". And even if you could adjust the HUD, something would still be missing or you'd only be seeing the tops/bottoms of the compass and various meters.

It's also odd that the HUD issue doesn't affect all SDTVs. We've got a Sony 32" Trinitron purchased back in 2001/02 that displays everything but the text perfectly (in a 4:3 aspect ratio, no less), and many others have reported similar results. To those of you having the worst issues, how old are your TVs? Are they component cable ready?

My SDTV is a Sony flat screen TV. It is really old though and VERY tiny. But I haven't had any issues on that or the other two tv's I've used it on (Panasonic non flat, and another one.... I don't remember the brand).

EDIT~~~~~~~~~


By no issues I mean that I can see the compass and the h, m, and f bars. But the text is basically unreadable.

Hmmm, so age and make don't seem to be a factor, then.