Everyone knows it, almost everyone loves it: Skyrim’s intro sequence on the carriage has become famous beyond the game. Numerous memes allude to the powerful opening scene that set the tone of the RPG. What few people know: It was a catastrophic design decision.
How cutscenes are made:
What is shown in the famous Skyrim intro? Your hero in Skyrim wakes up in a carriage. He is taken away as a prisoner and gets a first impression of the game world. This actually simple action has inspired players worldwide, because there is much more to it than the first impression suggests.
The game world in Skyrim is fascinating, the trailer for the title is still an eye-catcher today:
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Official Trailer
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Why was this the downfall of the Skyrim intro? There are several ways to represent a scene like in Skyrim. One of the most used options are invisible rails, on which the object moves and ignores the rest of the physics of the game world. Animations that do not interact with the game world would also have been possible.
Instead, Bethesda decided to physically simulate the carriage and actually let it drive through the game world. As a result, all objects lying on the path had an impact on the carriage.
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What is the problem? When any object can affect another object, unforeseen problems arise. Many players have already experienced funny glitches in which cars, bodies and objects are catapulted through the game world in a wide variety of games. Nevertheless, some titles still claim realistic physics.
Nate Purkepyle, a former developer at Bethesda, says, “While I was working on the carriage, it started shaking violently and suddenly it shot off like a rocket into the sky.”
No one at Bethesda understood why the carriage suddenly shot off
Can’t you just remove the objects? Yes and no. It is difficult for the developers to find the object that is throwing the error. Sometimes nothing happens at all and the carriage drives on without any problems. Then the error doesn’t show up until the second or third try, as Nate explains: “It doesn’t always happen. Nobody knew what was going on.”
Bees made the carriage unround
What were the consequences? The developers have been working on a solution for months and, among other things, found a particularly strange bug: the changed collision attribute of the bees present in the game has ensured that the physics that allow players to collect flying bees with the cart collided.
Nate comments, “The carriage wanted to move down the street, but the bee wouldn’t, so the carriage said goodbye and flew away.” To this day, Nate Purkepyle does not know why Bethesda chose this method of all things.
The carriage problem has long since been resolved, and Nate concludes by saying:
Video game development is difficult. Every time you solve a problem in an open world game, something else might break. The interaction of all systems is just super interesting.
Other games also have mechanics and game physics that stick in the memory and can also become a trademark.
This article originally appeared on gaming site 3DJuegos, our partner. Like MeinMMO, GameStar and GamePro, 3DJuegos is part of the Webedia network. We translated it into German.