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The Forgotten Majesty of Vanilla Skyrim
Bethesda quietly buried the original release of their classic game
You’ve probably played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at some point between its original 2011 release and today. However, depending on how long you waited and which of its many platforms you played it on — you might not have experienced a faithful copy of the original version.
When it first launched, Skyrim pushed both its engine and the Xbox 360/PS3 era of hardware farther than I thought it would. Bethesda had made big tech promises when first showing their earlier title Oblivion, but the final game suffered numerous cuts due to an overambitious target compared to what the Xbox 360 and PC GPUs of the day could actually render. Texturing and particle effects were scaled back. Loading screens were more plentiful. And in a heartbreaking blow to my personal 2006 desires, the real-time shadow system that was supposed to give realistic light reactions to every object was cut entirely, leaving only a limited number of character shadows in-game.
Skyrim made fewer compromises, somehow achieving its promises on the same exact generation of hardware with key improvements to visual fidelity. It was a testament to the lessons learned from years of experience on a stable platform. The real-time shadows promised for Oblivion finally…
