I have, once again, taken the bait. Along with the launch of Skyrim Anniversary Edition, Skyrim Special Edition received an update recently to celebrate the game's 10th birthday, and it introduced something rather important: Skyrim's first official fishing minigame. It's a Creation Club add-on complete with fishing mechanics, quests and special rewards. And so, with the promise of fantastical fish in mind, last weekend I found myself trundling down a mountain in the back of a familiar cart.

The reason I was so excited for this addition - beyond the mere appeal of something new being added to Skyrim - is that I'm an amateur angler myself. Ever since I was a tiddler I've been float fishing for pollock and bass: I've tried my hand at coarse fishing, spinning for trout in Scottish lochs, and even fly fishing (with varying degrees of success). Over the past year I had great success as a mackerel angler in Brighton, bringing in table fare for my extremely appreciative flatmates. All of which meant I was eager to see what Skyrim's mystical waters had to offer.

A vast number of games boast fishing minigames, of course, and there are equally myriad ways to implement the act of fishing. Some games opt for a more "arcadey", intense version of fishing - Animal Crossing: New Horizons makes little attempt to emulate real fishing techniques, but provides challenge through float placement and tricky timing windows for bites. Other games take a more peaceful approach, encouraging anglers to admire their surroundings. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a great example of this, as while its fishing minigame provides a fair bit of depth (including bait selection and reeling techniques), it's also not afraid to make the player wait and soak up the game's atmosphere.

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Skyrim morphs into its latest form next week - the Skyrim: Anniversary Edition - to mark ten years since the original's launch, and ahead of its arrival on 11th November, Bethesda has shared pricing details, alongside word on a free next-gen update for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

As revealed at QuakeCon back in August, Skyrim's Anniversary Edition bundles together 2016's Skyrim: Special Edition and all Creation Club content released at the time of the Anniversary Edition's launch - amounting to over 500 elements, including quests, dungeons, bosses, weapons, and spells. Creation Club, for those unfamiliar, is the name given to Bethesda's curated pool of officially sanctioned mods, with each item available for purchase using premium currency Credits in the Special Edition.

Bethesda has now revealed the entirely standalone version of Skyrim: Anniversary Edition will cost USD £47.99/€54.99/$49.99 USD when it comes to PlayStation, Xbox, and PC physically and digitally on 11th November. Owners of Skyrim's Special Edition will be able to upgrade to the Anniversary Edition for £15.99/€19.99/$19.99 at launch.

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The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition has new quests tapping into Morrowind and Oblivion, Bethesda has revealed.

Anniversary Edition, which is due out 11th November to tie in with Skyrim's 10th birthday, includes an all-new batch of creations, outlined in the video below.

This new batch includes new quests tapping into Tamriel's history, Bethesda said. One is Ghosts of the Tribunal. Here, you earn over a dozen new weapons and armours that were in The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.

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Skyrim is ten years old this November and, to celebrate, Bethesda is launching yet another version of its much-loved fantasy RPG - appropriately titled the Anniversary Edition - on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. Oh, and fishing's coming too.

Announced during QuakeCon's Skyrim panel, the Anniversary Edition arrives on 11th November - exactly ten years after the launch of the original version - and bundles together 2016's Skyrim Special Edition and a healthy chunk of additional content.

Specifically, it'll feature over 500 Creation Club elements - Creation Club being Bethesda's curated pool of officially sanctioned mods, which would usually need to be purchased with credits - including quests, dungeons, bosses, weapons, and spells.

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One of the most enduring myths about Skyrim is it contains treasure foxes.

Ever since Bethesda's open-world fantasy game came out in 2011, players have wondered whether the foxes lead players to treasure.

The myth of the treasure fox pops up online every now and then, with players debating whether it's true or false.

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Making games, we are often reminded, is hard, with development frequently being derailed by the most preposterously unpredictable things. Behold, for instance, the newly revealed story of Skyrim's iconic cart ride, and how it was, for a time before release, routinely thwarted by a particularly stubborn bee.

The full tale was recently recounted on Twitter by 14-year Bethesda veteran - and now solo indie developer - Nate Purkeypile, who served as senior world and lighting artist during the creation of Skyrim. "That intro is famous now," Purkeypile wrote, "but back then, it was just that one thing that we had to keep working and working on forever."

According to Purkeypile, the cart ride was particularly prone to mishaps during development because its bumps and bounces toward Helgen were physically simulated ("Why you ask?," he adds, "Good question.") - meaning environmental objects carelessly strewn about the place had a tendency to make the vehicle behave unpredictably, sometimes causing it to fly off the road. As the developer puts it, "The cart had a path it wanted to follow, but that doesn't mean it was a path it COULD follow."

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Back in January, we got a pretty extensive look at the remastered environments and quests being made for Skyblivion - a mod project seeking to remake Oblivion in the Skyrim engine. The team behind this ambitious project has continued making progress, and the latest mod development video focuses on some of the stunning landscapes that are now nearing completion.

According to the new video, the majority of Skyblivion's map is now in the final stages of development, and the work shown so far is seriously impressive. The video discusses how areas such as the forest surrounding the Orange Road have been adapted and improved for the remake. The team decided to make the forest "more lush and detailed than its original counterpart" and make it larger to give it a more prominent role in the game, citing the area's ambience and popularity with players as the reason for giving it more attention.

Blackwood, meanwhile, has been given more fortifications and border gates to add points of interest. The new boggy marsh at the centre of Blackwood, called Blackmarch, looks suitably horrifying and spooky - promising players a subregion full of ruins and decay. The city of Leyawiin has been redesigned from the ground up "referencing concept art from Oblivion that was likely discarded owing to technical and time limitations", with the city divided into three distinct sections. Boats are now able to sail right through the city, allowing them to go further inland.

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If you ever felt like Skyrim's third-person gameplay could do with an update to give it a more modern action-RPG feel, this could be just the ticket.

"True Directional Movement - Modernised Third Person Gameplay" is a mod by Ershin for Skyrim: Special Edition on PC that, well, does exactly what it says on the tin. The mod overhauls Skyrim's third-person gameplay to allow you to move and attack from any direction, while there's also a target lock component to help you keep track of enemies. This target lock comes with an animated health bar widget above enemies, with bosses getting their own (much larger) health bars.

Here's a demonstration of what all this looks like in practice:

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A Skyrim player has tried to kill everyone in the game.

"It is finished," redditor jaeinskyrim declared (thanks, PCGamesN). "2201 people/NPCs, plus over 2400 more various creatures. All gone. I am alone in Skyrim."

It was a monumental task. Bethesda's open-world fantasy adventure is huge and packed with NPCs - people, animals, creatures, undead, daedra, automatons... they all fell by the wayside amid jaeinskyrim's murderous rampage. They enlisted the help of a long list of mods, including Kill 'em All and Death Awaits Us All, which let you circumvent what are called "essential" NPCs, but generic characters may respawn.

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Shirley Curry, better known as the Skyrim Grandma, is now available as a follower in Skyrim via a mod.

Curry is available as a follower via the Shirley - A Skyrim Follower mod, which is now available to download from Nexus Mods for Skyrim Special Edition and Skyrim VR, and from Bethesda.net for PC and Xbox.

"She'll join you on your adventures, but don't expect her to simply carry your burdens!" reads the official blurb.

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