Eventually, I started to use these mind-numbing gaps to do something productive. If I loaded my save out into the main open world, it was usually a 90 second wait minimum with another 30 or so seconds after loading before the game recovered from its 20 fps startup. At around the 100 hour mark, my load times started to get long-like, really long. Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I originally played Skyrim on my PS3, which came with some interesting consequences the longer you played it. Genuinely remember that more than anything that happened in the game. Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor: I was in university when Skyrim came out, and my only real memory of that hazy time was having a 'we bought Skyrim' party. Nat Clayton, Features Producer: I don't have that many Skyrim memories, but I once sneezed (read: Fus Ro Dah'd) at a polar bear so hard its ragdoll entered some kind of ragdoll feedback loop and span infinitely into orbit. I Benny Hilled it up a mountain being chased by Smaug and his 50 little helpers thinking "this is what I love about Bethesda games." This property damage resulted in every inhabitant of the town rotating on the spot to face me before charging forwards, pitchforks at the ready.
Rich Stanton, News Editor: The one I'll never forget is a dragon landing near a town to attack me, and in doing so destroying a fence. I know this seems like a blatant opportunity to repromote my old diaries, but these are genuinely fond memories of mine and I love that Skyrim is such a flexible, open-ended sandbox that it makes silly and unpredictable adventures like this possible. The stealth part didn't go so well, as at one point I accidentally paralyzed myself, fell down frozen in the snow, and she walked right by me. So it's a little funny.Īnd speaking of Mjoll, I grew curious about her inner life so I took her all the way across the map, dismissed her, then stealthily followed her for days to see where she went. It doesn't sound funny, I guess, but it turned out I didn't even need the axe. Mjoll, seeing me attack Sigurd, went apeshit and killed him, which lead to utter chaos, battles with city guards, dragon summoning, and lots of murder. Finally I saw an NPC named Sigurd using one, so I froze him in ice, hoping to take it from him. I was trying to build a house in the Hearthfire expansion, and got frustrated that I couldn't find a woodcutter's axe anywhere. The other two have to do with my other character's wife, Mjoll the Lioness. It's recorded here for posterity and embarrassment. By the time I made it outside, she was gone and I never saw her again. I trudged to Riften, the ceremony began, as soon as she said "I do" she walked out of the church. I'd finally proposed marriage to Ysolda by handing her a chunk of dead mammoth.
Chris Livingston, Features Producer: I have quite a few, but if I were to narrow it to my top three, one would be spending weeks walking around Skyrim (I mean literally walking, because I was roleplaying an NPC in this 10-part series I wrote called The Elder Strolls).