Is anyone planning to play the game differently than before? I first played as a Nord and sided with one major "faction," on the PS3. Then on Steam I played as an Imperial and sided with the other major "faction." In both games I played as a warrior with heavy armor and two-handed weapons, particularly war hammers. I'll probably repeat what I did on Steam, although I'm not sure which side I'll ally with.

@Travis thanks for the additional info! I did see something about the PS4's limited mod support. I haven't paid attention to console news much.

With all that I've seen about Khajiit lately (especially the stuff I've seen posted on FB and our No Man's Sky funny), I'm tempted to use that race. I've only played as a Nord (Skyrim) and Imperial (Oblivion and Skyrim). I think I tried out a Dark Elf on Morrowind, but I didn't play it long and I tried it out a few times, so I'm not exactly sure. I know there are races (like Khajiit) I haven't played before.

Damn that's pretty awesome! But, I love my warhammers and two-handed swords.

I have edited this event's time and description showing the updated release date and time along with a link to the news on the Store page. I have also added the system requirements along with it's link on the Store page.

It starts on 10/27 at 8pm EST and ends at 8:30pm on the same day. If you look at the event the only part of the end you see is "8:30pm" although I did selected 10/27 at 8:30pm for the end time.

I was going to ask you, Travis, what you thought of it since I saw that you were playing it. I'm planning to get it downloaded and installed tonight so the download doesn't interfere with my YouTube watching. I might check it out in the morning, but the Ark Halloween event is supposed to happen in about 12 hours.

> Weird, Alt+F4 doesn't exit. I always quicksave then alt+F4

It's F5 now.

Yeah, I forgot about that Windows shortcut because I almost never use it. I did, however, notice that one of my favorite Windows shortcuts Alt-Tab doesn't work in the game. :( Also, the sound seems low, even with the in-game settings maxed.

I haven't seen a patch yet and I've restarted Steam, though I haven't tried playing the game since my last comment.

I realized why I decided to be an Imperial, because their special ability is a charm, which I think is greatly helpful. Although I haven't really tried most of the races, so I can't quite speak for their abilities other than they didn't look as significant to me. Granted, if I played them I'd probably find more value in them.

The game detected my hardware and set my settings to "Ultra," it looks like all the settings are at their max. I just checked Geforce Experience and it says the game is optimized. This is the first time I checked the GE settings for the Special Edition of Skyrim.

However, I did load the game back up, went to options, and clicked "reset" since I thought it changed my settings to "Ultra High" instead of just "Ultra." I obviously misread it the first time. Then, I went back into Geforce Experience and it said the game wasn't optimized. The "Grass Fade" setting was at 7 and GE said optimal was 7000, so I clicked "optimize."

I saw that you were playing Skyrim earlier and it didn't seem like the Special Edition. I'm tempted to jump in between the versions and see if I notice any difference. I think that when I played before, I was using a high quality mod or something similar.

If you did indeed pop into the original game earlier, did you notice the difference?

Also, Alt-Tab works...kind of...it seems you have to hold the Alt key and it works, sometimes. Windows-D works, taking you to your desktop. I'm also monitoring my GPU temp and with the fan on auto it looks like about just less than 1900rpm (a little over half) and 52c. Normally when I play Ark, I max out that and my PCIE fans and my GPU gets into the low 80s, which is still ok for my card.

@Travis that's great that that's what you were doing.

I agree it is strange that SE performs better with better effects. That doesn't make face value sense, but I guess maybe it's better optimized "under the hood." The game also gave me "Ultra" quality settings after detecting my system, with the 690, the first time I played it (on Steam that is) and it ran fine, though I didn't monitor my temps.

I also agree that "it's amazing how far they've come with keeping the chips cool." I know when I ran Ark with the 690 it reached the 80s mark and performance suffered, however even though my 980 Ti gets there, performance doesn't suffer.

@Jon I'm looking more at Travis to tell us his thoughts on it. I'm still busy with Ark, so I'm not sure when I might actually sit through the full game again, but we'll see. Also, why didn't you get it? Do you not own all the DLC? If you do, it's free.

I also agree with Travis's statement about "it's just Skyrim with a shiny coat of paint." I'm also hoping to see some bugs fixed, which might be what I notice and actually look for more than the fresh "coat of paint." Physics in the game on PC and PS3 were a bit wonky. I also remember at least one quest that I ran into an issue with. Even though I'm hoping the things I noticed were resolved, I thought they just gave it a visual upgrade and left everything else alone.

@Travis Sweet! I haven't really read anything about it yet. I noticed some things in the game's Steam News section that I was going to check out, but I think I got distracted.

@Jon That's understandable. I skipped out on Hearthfire on the PS3 because I didn't really think it added anything to the game I really wanted or needed. I already owned multiple properties in the game. I did, however, get it all for PC and I enjoyed it.

I agree with your statement about Skyrim being a really special ES game. However, when I read or heard about the rumor that there was going to be a remastered ES game, I was hoping it would have been Morrowind or Oblivion. I only tried playing Morrowind a few years ago after I had played Skyrim (on the PS3 at least). It was kind of difficult and no where near as beautiful. I later (again after playing Skyrim) got Oblivion (on the PS3) and I fell in love with it. In fact, it's difficult to say if I like Skyrim or Oblivion better. I read some reasoning behind giving Skyrim the face lift and it was understandable (popularity and ease of doing it). Still, it'd be great if they could give those older ES games a bit of the same treatment. I saw some videos about them working on the next game in the series, but it seems their waiting on technology to catch up to what they want to do.

Paying $28 for the DLC and thus getting SE doesn't sound like a bad deal.

Since you mentioned Fallout 4, I still haven't tried Nuka World.

Ok I just read this article (link below) that's included in the game's News section on Steam. The only mod I used was the high-res texture pack from Bethesda, mentioned in the article. If anyone has more articles to share, feel free! Also, if you want to keep talking about it and perhaps with more ease, I can extend the event, just let me know.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/10/28/skyrim-special-edition-pc-changes/

Anyone play with Skyrim mods? If so, let us know which.

I decided to check out the physics issue I noticed before. This is particularly noticeable in the first house that you visit. At the table where two characters sit and talk with you, you will see the food and plates jump around like crazy, at least that's how they behaved on the PS3 and the original version of the game. In SE, during my one time experience in that scene, at least one vegetable moved a little bit back and forth, but it wasn't crazy like before. I could do more testing by trying it out again on the old version.

I read a similar article last night. I'm glad they're working on fixing it, I noticed the volume is too low.

Skyrim SE patch in beta, along with some details.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/skyrim-remaster-patch-fixes-audio-downgrade-and-mo/1100-6445093/

Patch live, check out description below taken from Steam:

Skyrim Special Edition 1.1 Update Live on Steam
posted by gstaffBethesda @ 04:07PM on November 07, 2016
Skyrim Special Edition 1.1 Update (All Platforms Unless Otherwise Noted)

Fixes

General performance and optimization improvements
Fixed rare issue with NPCs not appearing in proper locations
Fixed an issue with interface elements not appearing correctly on certain
displays (Xbox One and PS4)
Fixed issue with saves erroneously being marked as Modded, even though no mods are active
Updated some sound files to not use compression

So, I mentioned that I thought SE was too quiet. I did some testing after the patch and it seems as though SE and the original are both more quiet than I'm used to. Ark, on the other hand is much louder. Perhaps it has something to do with my sound settings within Windows, or perhaps it's just how the games are. In both games, I have the sound settings maxed.

Other than that, I didn't notice any other issues with sound quality. Travis, obviously did, but I know he has musical aptitude that I lack and I imagine such people have a better ear for sound differences. Still, I'm glad they released a patch. I'm not yet ready to dive back into the game, but I intend to do so, it's now on my short list of games to play.

Patch 1.2 in beta now, which includes a fix for the Alt-Tab shortcut:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/new-skyrim-special-edition-patch-arrives-on-pc/1100-6445293/

FYI I fixed my sound volume issue by enabling Loudness Equalization under Enhancements in Speakers/Headphones Properties. It didn't sound loud enough until I enabled that.

Oh and can someone explain to me why Run is Shift, but it makes me walk slow? Also, Alt-Tab is working perfectly.

Yeah, I have auto-run on and Shift by default makes you walk slower. I decided to switch Shift with Alt, so now, like any other game, I run with Shift.

Oops, I thought the Imperial special ability (Voice of the Emperor, I think) was to charm, but it's calm, there's a big difference. Still, it helped me out in one mission when I had to get into the Dwemer Museum and all the guards were after me and I had a 1k+ bounty on my head. Once I got outside and surrounded, I used the Voice and was then able to Fast Travel out of there. I went back to pay my bounty, but after I stored my stolen goods so I wouldn't lose them. I stole my Ebony Warhammer, so I definitely didn't want to lose it.

@Travis, thanks for the Quicksave (F5) tip, it's real handy, I'm not sure I used it before.

It's cool playing Skyrim again. I'm not sure I notice the Special Edition visual bonuses, but perhaps. It does look really good, but it did before although I was using the High Resolution Texture Pack DLC. I'm getting tempted to play Oblivion again, but I was thinking about that before I started playing Skyrim SE.