When Skyrim first launched in 2011, it became an overnight phenomenon. Like it or not, it’s one of the seminal examples of the fantasy RPG. I played it to death across the Xbox 360, PC, and PS3, racking up hundreds of hours of thrilling Viking dragon adventures and tens of hours of hitting zombies in caves with various axes.
A current generation re-release was inevitable, considering Skyrim’s rampant sales success, and sure enough the game launched on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2016 in a new “Special Edition.” At the time, both consoles ran the game at a rock solid 30 frames per second in standard HD resolutions and brought along new volumetric lighting inherited from Fallout 4, new textures and materials, and newly enhanced shadows and visual effects.
The PS4 release had some obvious sound bugs, though. The surround sound mix and channel placement wasn’t right for any sound effect in the game, most notably voices. They sounded fine if they were in front of you, but the second a character’s voice panned out of the center channel, it became omnipresent in all the other speakers, as if they were a mythical god shouting at you from all directions.
