Yet Another Skyrim Fix List

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a pretty amazing experience on several levels, but anyone who has clocked a significant number of hours into it is well aware of the issues that continue to plague it. I suppose that’s why we’re continually seeing lists of fixes that people want to bring to Bethesda’s attention, such as this one on Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

‘¢ When something is new in the inventory, tell me. It’s already strange enough that Skyrim’s inventory is a series of alphabetical lists of words, scrolling from the bottom third of the screen downward. It’s perhaps not how anyone alive would ever have thought to arrange an inventory, even if given four hundred years to craft the most impossibly stupid idea imaginable. But with this mad idea in place, it is bewildering that no one within the company thought it important to highlight new inventory items. Pick up a (Note from Rdypfyxll) before getting involved in a big fight, and you’ve then got to remember a) that it was a note you picked up, rather than a book, diary, etc, then b) try to remember which collection of consonants it came from, having to read through a (Note from Rttplkss), (Note from Rwssqplp) and (Note from Rxxclpt). Each of which says, (Meet me at the tree) or something equally unhelpful. I’m fairly sure a (new) highlight has been the norm in games since the 1980s. And that’s in inventories that aren’t madder than a sack of shrews.

‘¢ Just let me run the game in a borderless window. Since the game can’t really cope with task-switching, which is pretty embarrassing on its own, at least offer a viable way to have it running not at the exclusivity of the rest of my PC. There are hacks that work for this, but they’re clunky and unreliable, and an option like that would demonstrate some degree of recognition that the game’s running on a PC, and was ever intended to be.

‘¢ Please give shopkeepers more money. It’s great that it’s realistic, to a degree. But right now I could run a bank in Skyrim. It’s ridiculous that someone would be running a store selling multiple items that cost over 1000 gold, and only have 368 gold in their till. How do they even give change? But most of all, it’s infuriating not being able to shift loot. My poor companion is carrying so much crap I can’t sell anywhere, no matter how much I try to buy every health potion and lockpick first. It just seems like I could dangerously break the economy with the gold I currently have in my pockets. (Also, bearing this in mind, when I drop one gold from my fortune on a begger, I’m not convinced this should provide me with the gift of (Charity).)

…

‘¢ Obviously it’s time to employ some of the simplest features gamers added in within minutes of the game’s appearing. But, officially, so that a patch doesn’t undo them all. We’d like some FOV options please, because we’re not as short-sighted as the game seems to imagine. And, you know, the shadows you worked so hard to create let those appear in the game without our having to repeatedly hack ini files. And perhaps most of all, please include the ugrids fix, because the bodged version breaks save games.

‘¢ Maybe there should be more than one face for all male and female children? Because it’s not only peculiarly slipshod, but it’s also damned creepy.