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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition |OT| Winter is Here
- Thread starter Cornbread78
- Start date
Jesus christ, that is truly ludicrious.. Upscaling textures and adding noise/dithering is literally something beginner amateur texture modders do. That's twice the performance cost for little to no gain in fidelity or quality. This was never something I expected to see in a professional product.
And the .xwm compression... I noticed yesterday that the new sounds.bsa was nearly half the size of the original one. I just knew something fishy was up there. Skyrim's audio was already subpar to begin with, and this "Special" Edition compounds the issue even further.
What I'm worried about now is that any custom sounds are going to be auto-converted to .xwm with terrible quality, without having any access to parameters when saving mods in the new Creation Kit.
OnionPowder
Member
The directional audio in this game is so bad. People are loudest when they are just off of my field of view.
Crantius_Colto
Member
Great to hear. Also noteworthy: Nearer objects are finally being reflected on water surfaces correctly whereas in the orginal version only faraway assets were visible.
Goddamn it. Goddamn it. First the Bioshock remasters fucked up the audio, now this.
I'll give the SE a try in a minute, but I think I might just wait and see if someone comes up with a way to replace the compressed audio with higher quality audio.
Ricerocket
Member
Well, it seems that Bethesda really upscaled many textures and even doubled the resolution without much visual improvement:
http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index...rting-standard-mods-to-sse/page-3#entry163361
Meanwhile, they heavily compressed most of the audio files: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods...atures_a_significant/?st=iutrks2p&sh=0b7c2b1c
This matches what my overall feel when I checked it out yday, the game looked soft and low res and I'll add underwhelming.
Same shit as Fallout 4 and every other game Bethesda makes.
Well, it seems that Bethesda really upscaled many textures and even doubled the resolution without much visual improvement:
http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index...rting-standard-mods-to-sse/page-3#entry163361
Meanwhile, they heavily compressed most of the audio files: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods...atures_a_significant/?st=iutrks2p&sh=0b7c2b1c
I think this is the first time I have ever double faced palmed.
Like, I had one hand over each of my eyeballs, and I couldnt see anything. I just let out are really breathy sigh.
im so flabbergasted right now. What on EARTH?
I'll port over my own sound mod as soon as I am able. Hopefully with intact .wavs, or at least .xwms with a higher bitrate.
Oh, that's awesome! Hope it won't be a massive undertaking
Darkstorne
Member
Awesome, thanks. I'm also betting we can just drag and drop the original game's sound files once we understand the new file system.
Not so much luck for Xbox One owners =( But at least mods like yours can help out there. And this is finally something else PS4 owners can be happy about, having the best sound quality out of any version of Skyrim.
How would Sonys propietary format make audio sound better than the original wav files that they were probably converted from?
Darkstorne
Member
I have no idea. Just trusting what's being discussed about it in this thread (which may well be a mistake =P).
Unless their format is fucking magic, that isn't why at all.
Ah, yeah, I guess the audio quality of Skyrim PC OG wasn't that hot either and the PS4 got the best compressed version of the raw files judging from that thread.
Not that I care too much, luckily I'm not a huge audiophile so I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference either way
Darkstorne
Member
Pretty sure it's packaged in with the base game now.
Like I said, I'm guessing at the details, but we do know sound format was specifically mentioned as a reason why mods wouldn't work on PS4 (and why they were cancelled entirely for a while), so presumably this does have something to do with it.
Lister
Banned
This has nothign to do with propriatary audio formats. You can have a high quality compressed audio file if you want it using what Beth used, or any number of other high quality formats.
They chose not to.
Skimming through this thread, I'm seeing a lot of "wait for a sale" and "Bethesda can't get away with this" type comments, which doesn't sound too good. What is wrong with the Special Edition on PS4, specifically? I don't have the option for PC, and my only experience with Skyrim was the awful PS3 version. I just barely managed to finish the main quest, before getting hit with constant crashes, endless loading screens, lag, etc. That version was just broken for me, unfortunately. Is this any better? I've always wanted to give Skyrim a fair shake, and was hoping the PS4 version might be a good place to jump in. Is it?
Darkstorne
Member
Without doubt it's better than the PS3 and 360 versions. The PS4 version doesn't suffer from the audio downgrade (it's possibly even received an upgrade there) that other versions suffered from, so compared to the last gen console versions it's a clear improvement.
The issue is how much of an improvement it is, and whether that improvement is worth the full price of the game right now. Compared to other remasters, it leaves a lot to be desired visually.
Lister
Banned
You're missing out on a large number of mods, but otherwise it's a lot better than the original PS3 version.
If you don't have the option of a PC or xbox one, and you WANT to play this game again, then it might be worth your while... the question then becomes: is the facelift to this old game, that you have already played, worth $60 to you? Are there other, newer games that might be worth that money instead?
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
Saw this on reddit yesterday and it was clearly stolen from 4Chan, but I'm thinking about doing something like this to give my playthrough a bit of a theme.
I enjoy stuff like this, I've played Skyrim so much that this actually is useful in spicing it up a little.
Or the PS4 got more uncompressed audio? That's more than likely what happened. There is no evidence at all that their "proprietary audio format" improves anything at all (other than making mods impossible apparently, so I'd call it a negative).
Dialogue and music in the original were compressed as well so it's possible it's not nearly as bad. The normal sound effects, I believe, were mostly WAV in the original release.
ComputerBlue
Member
Since Dawnguard is installed. Is it possible for Vampires to kill important NPC's? and is there a way around this?
This is the only DLC I didn't play in the OG. But reading about it, it seems like it could be kind of annoying.
This is the only DLC I didn't play in the OG. But reading about it, it seems like it could be kind of annoying.
Looping sounds are not affected, since xwm does not support embedded loop data.
LichtenbergFigures
Member
More than likely, file type. Could just not load or allow upload of .DDS files, for example, which are used for textures.
Coming out this year? No, not really. Dishonored 2 looks alright, but ehh. Not really into Jrpgs or shooters either, so yeah, there ain't really much in the next few months I really want. Saying I'd be playing Skyrim "again" is probably a bit of a stretch too, since I only played through the main quest, which is the supposedly the worst part of the game, lol. Never touched the majority of the side quests and stuff, or played any of the DLC, so there's probably like 200 hours of new content here for me. I was just trying to make sure it's a decent port before jumping in., which it sounds like it is. Also, anybody here played the DLC? Is it any good?
RuinerPrime
Member
I'm having this issue also
SuperEpicMan
Banned
I'm not really sure what other people were expecting, as someone who only ever played around 60 hours or so on PS3 and none of the DLC, I only really wanted to be able to play it on PS4 with better performance, anything else on top of this is just a bonus.
Yeah the textures and character models are pretty basic, much like the original game, but I don't feel like it detracts from the game itself. I kinda think the art style somewhat helps anyway.
That said, I actually think the remaster looks pretty nice. It seems a lot more colourful and the resolution seems better.
Yeah the textures and character models are pretty basic, much like the original game, but I don't feel like it detracts from the game itself. I kinda think the art style somewhat helps anyway.
That said, I actually think the remaster looks pretty nice. It seems a lot more colourful and the resolution seems better.
LichtenbergFigures
Member
Well see I thought that, but I checked 2 different mods by the same Author - one can be on PS4 the other not. Both had .bsa and .esp files.
So I'm just wondering what would happen if you uploaded a mod that used external assets. Is it automatically blocked because it recognises those assets?
Perhaps I need to ask a mod author. I'm just curious, really, to see how these restrictions are enforced.
This has been reported loads on this thread yes - not just PS4 either.
SuperEpicMan
Banned
I had this issue. But it was something I was able to correct by going into my TV aspect ratio settings. I have a Samsung and there is a setting for Screen Fit which fixed it.
BSAs are just archives. Would be pretty trivial to have the upload process look at what's inside the archive.
I lost a merchant in Whiterun (the blacksmith lady) because of vampires. I would just complete Dawnguard as soon as possible to avoid any of this.
Thanks, I'll take a look at the options on my TV when I get a chance to see if there's anything I can do to alleviate it.
Pretty disappointing oversight on this, though.
This is a good place to jump in.
SuperEpicMan
Banned
It makes me think it was my TV all this time and I just haven't noticed it.