Look at you, hackers. Rummaging through Skyrim’s files and turning up references to what might – but only might – be the game’s next and perhaps most ambitious DLC. If the details revealed and shared hold weight, the next pack could be called Dragonborn, and could include FLYING ON THE BACK OF DRAGONS plus new locations that fall tantalisingly close to the hallowed province of Morrowind on the atlas of Tamriel. (more…)

Bethesda send word that the latest Skyrim DLC, Hearthfire, arrives on PC today, after its pointless period of exclusivity on whichever console it was. It costs $5. The DLC will enable Skyrimfolk to build their own home – rather than simply buying an existing one – and then furnish it with “an armory, alchemy laboratory, stable, garden” and, as I understand it, adopted children. There’s some more craft stuff in there, too, with workbenches for the fashioning of things from wood and clay. Despite this healthy-sounding shopping list I understand that’s not particularly in-depth, so don’t expect The Sims with cat people.

The trailer lurks below. (more…)

Remember Morrowind Overhaul 3.0, the mega-graphical mod intended to make the bestest of the Elder Scrolls bester still? Of course you don’t, because of all those drugs you took when you were young. That’s why you can never go into politics. That and all the embezzling you did.

Look, Mister/Mrs/Ms Short-Term Memory Loss, here’s the last time we posted about it, so go read that, watch the trailer and remind yourself, then you can report back and be given your download link for the mod, which is now out at last. (more…)

“A People’s History” is a three part essay series that argues for a long-standing but suppressed tradition of non-industry involvement in the first person genre. This is part three. [Part one. Part two.] (more…)

Here’s official news on the second Skyrim expansion, Hearthfire. The hook here is that you get to build yourself a home from the ground up, which involves finding yourself a patch of land then building and expanding a building appropriate to your tastes/budget upon it. It’s the Sims in dragon-addled Scandinavia, essentially. Apparently you can also adopt children, but hopefully not by abducting them from happy NPC families.Take a look below. (more…)

After a couple of months spent kneeling at the altar of Microsoft exclusivity, Skyrim’s first expansion Dawnguard has made its expensive way to the admirably-supported PC version. It brings vampires and it brings vampire hunters – but will it bring the game-changing of Bloodmoon or the deflation of Shivering Isles? Gaze into my proud undead eyes, human cattle, and allow me to seduce you into reading on.> (more…)

Bethesda are saying (at QuakeCon) that Dawnguard PC is out at last right now, but I can’t get it come up on Steam just yet. But oh well, I’m sure it’s either a caching thing or it’ll be there any moment – me, I’ve just got to postpostpost and then sleepsleepsleep. Here’s the official word though. I’m hearing it’s $20 for the long-awaited, Vampire-centric Skyrim add-on. Now I’m off to clean my teeth. Good luck, enjoy, and see you tomorrow.

Update: and here it is on Steam to buy now. $20/£14 to you, sir or madam. That is not> cheap as DLC goes, and the reviews were mixed, but I’ve not played it yet so don’t look to me for answers. Unless they’re about cats or Transformers, anyway.

That’s not to say that it’s not coming out, just that there’s no announcement, and that we should therefore not expect its imminent release – which was something we wondered about with the advent of the recent patch. Pete Hines, who tweeted the news of the non-announcement, followed up by saying “I was simply stating that expecting/demanding something today is unfounded. Not that news is never coming.” SO MAYBE IT WILL BE ANNOUNCED. IT’S ANYONE’S GUESS.

Oh well, anyway, that’s a shame. We’d just imagined it had been announced. I’m going to pass the time waiting for announcement by installing one bajillion mods from Skyrim’s Steam Workshop and seeing what happens. Crabs wearing monocles, probably.

It’s odd to look back to the many frustrations of Skyrim’s launch, all those PC-specific oversights and technical flaws that drove us spare, and how so many (but not all, I know – modding the UI is still all but vital, for instance) of them have since been addressed. New textures, 2GB RAM cap lifted, sound quality bug sorted, mounted combat added… What seemed to be a fairly perfunctory PC version has been nurtured to fuller health in the days since launch, and that continues with patch 1.7, now in beta on Steam. There isn’t much in the way of big revelations, but “General memory and stability optimizations” is the kind of thing that’s always good to hear. I wish someone would optimise my> stability. (more…)

When Skyrim’s Dawnguard DLC was announced, we were worried it might end up just being a pair of equippable contact lenses. A new prE3 trailer shows that it’s actually some manner of major expansion with attempts to blot out the sun being made and all sorts. What seems clear is that players will be faced with a choice; do you wish to live in a graveyard and eat people, all supernatural-like, or would you rather have a pair of equippable contact lenses? See for yourself.

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