Shoving Skyrim on PS3 was a “Herculean Effort” for Bethesda as devs worked tirelessly

Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith looks back at the game's often unplayable PlayStation 3 port and its difficult development.

[jjb1981]

I remember having to save every time I found something or every minute, whichever came first.

[OtterX]

I Platinumed the game on the PS3 within the first few months of release. That was a Herculean Effort in and of itself. I do remember straightup freezes, crashes in addition to just glitches, but I kept at it bc I had a holy mission-like determination to Plat it.

[meatnormous]

I did as well. Proud of that one.

[franwex]

One of my trophies glitched. Otherwise I would’ve platinum it too :(

[just_looken]

Remember fallout 3?

For me it was always back/forth skyrim or fallout 3 for the most crashes/freezes and dat fallout 3 dlc framerate

[Popsicle]

Same. Not only do I remember all you just mentioned, but the long loading screens also made an impression. The further I made it in the game, the less I wanted to move shift any objects out of there place for fear it would add to the loading time. I don’t think I could sit and stare at a single movable object in 2024 for as long as I did, and as many times as I did in 2012.

[Friendlygamer]

Both fallouts were also absolutely horrible on the ps3

[walken7]

I actually played the hell out of Fallout 3 on PS3. I must've been lucky because I didn't have too many issues. Platinumed it even.
Bought Skyrim for my gf at the time, and yeah that was a disaster.

[JEECE]

I seem to remember there being a bug in New Vegas on PS3 where you could basically break the game by wearing a particular piece of gear in a certain location but I don't remember the exact details.

I actually didn't have too much trouble with Fallout 3 on PS3. I mean it was janky but no more so than a lot of games with more ambitious worlds were on console during that generation.

[ZeekQuattro]

To this day I'm sure FO3 GOTY killed my fat 80gb PS3. After playing it and NV on a modern console I don't know how younger me put up with that shit.

[just_looken]

Dat flashing yellow light sucked so much

[franwex]

Found it for like $10 on PS3 and put 180 hours (probably 1/2 of that time loading). I had to stop due to it becoming a slideshow.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

I can imagine lol

[SlothLordPootus]

Honestly didn't have that many issues with it on PS3 and i played 150+ hours. I know thats not the norm though.

[franwex]

Go back and try your old save file if you still have it. Haha.

[lucasnooker]

Well let’s hope these same efforts are put into elder scrolls VI because I have my doubts… lol

[Pedantic91]

Gee, if only your engine wasn't such a steaming pile of s*#@, can't wait to hear about the heruclean efforts in having ESVI not crash due to having all items available at all times, placed somewhere random in the map or that you attempted to add a ladder in current gen consoles.

[aaronaton]

Coding for the CELL was alien for alot of devs, but if you fast forward to the mess that was Starfield, you can see how Bethesda struggled for sure.

[-Foxtrot]

It's weird because the excuse Bethesda used at the time was "The CELL is the issue, not us, it's so anti-developer friendly" and yet when Sony gave them the PS4 which first priority was to make it super developer friendly the excuses shifted and they still had bad issues at launch with their future games.

[ocelot07]

Put me off playing Skyrim for along time. I remember the save issue in the first few days. If it reached a certain size it would crash your game.

[Popsicle]

Game crashed my console so hard one time after 100+ hours (and not finished) I thought the console was dead. I’ll never forget the thought that I lost that save file literally made me nervous my stomach hurt and I immediately had to run to the bathroom. Once I got the console running again I immediately put all my save files on a USB and felt much better. Lol!

[Demetrius]

Bethesda big as rockstar or atleast one of the call of duty companies gaming wise. Skyrim played like a late gen ps2/ early ps3 title compared to games before. GTA 4 for example, gears of war, Mass effect etc. Idk how tf they were overworking wtf they had them folks doing lol. I tried Skyrim before and I was like umm no. The main game I been enjoying is fallout 4, the gameplay is more fluid and fun.

[Limbrick]

FO3 an my Phat and slim, 2009, worked well compared to what I read about that game on other platforms. The crashing was random, some times happening twice in the first hour of play, while other times I could play for 8-10 hours without crashing, The frame rates were OK and only nosedived drastically at the Wheaton Armory.

FO3 Goty: purchased week of release and it flat out was broken. It crashed often and tanked the frame rates. Dlc's were unplayable. I returned that game for full credit towards Borderlands. Later in 2011 I downloaded the dlc and all were playable except Broken Steel. The problem was more than the frame rates and crashing at the airbase, the problem was how adding that dlc affected the game and other dlc with erratic frames, longer loading times, and crashes. So my future replays were without Broken Steel downloaded. Broken Steel first came to the 360 and had to be recalled and replaced Like the FO4 Far Harbor dlc on PS4. However Broken Steel never was fixed, at least on my PS3.

New Vegas and dlc worked less well than FO3. A big culprit was memory management and save file size. The more played the larger the files became and then frame rates tanked, frame hitching and stuttering, and crashes increased. Then too to avoid crashing when loading into the airbase or outer Vegas I would save quit and restart and reload the save which would refresh the memory pool. Patches somewhat fixed that issue but not the save file size issue.

There was a strange early bug at least on PS3 where when loading into the strip from outer Vegas the player would enter an infinite loading cycle and have to reload the last save. That was patched quickly, but until patched the work around was to wear the item 'Old Cowboy Hat' that was sold at the vender in outer Vegas.

Skyrim; I image only those few with a magic PS3 enjoyed that mess on a PS3. After playing FO3, and New Vegas on a PS3 and then reading the reports of Skyrim I decided to pass on playing it on a PS3. Now on my PS4 Pro with some basic make the game look better mods it plays and looks great. I wish FO3 and New Vegas had received updates for PS4 like the excellent update Skyrim received.

[anast]

People want to know why Bethesda can't make a good game now. This company's philosophy seems to live and die by a 13 years old game. It's a problem when they ask for full price for their products in 2024.

[gold_drake]

it was a horrendous experience tbh, constantly saving, falling through the ground, things glitching out, my character randomly disappearing etc ha

save crashes my god.

[XBManiac]

256MB + 256MB instead of unified RAM or NVIDIA not adding 512MB VRAM for a reasonable price was the problem

[FPS_D3TH]

It’s entirely how Sony allocated its RAM. PS3 had significantly less while Xbox 360 had more. The games engine relies on RAM to save interacted items placements and the more you interacted with the game world the more RAM it needed and save files would increase. The same problems existed on Xbox but much later on. Most ps3 playthroughs would crash around 60-100 hours. I played mine up to 550 on the 360 before running into the same crashes and freezes. Same game engine for fallout which is why fallout 3 and NV were also abysmal on the PS3.