Skyrim Fits On One DVD

Mike Kayatta

Minister of Secrets
Aug 2, 2011
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Skyrim Fits On One DVD



Using dynamic effects and other wizardry, Bethesda has somehow managed to cram the entire world of Skyrim into a relatively tiny package.

Everything we seem to hear about Skyrim involves growth. Bigger maps, better graphics, L.A. Noire [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112577-Skyrim-Legalizes-Gay-Marriage] earlier this year), yet somehow, perhaps by sacrificing a few mud crabs to a Daedric prince, Bethesda has seemingly ignored the laws of physics and managed to fit all of Skyrim onto one, count it, one DVD.

Now, before you get all "this is how they did it with advanced data compression" on everyone in the forums, nerd, let's just take a moment to breathe in the sweet, sweet aroma of being able to place just one disc into our Xbox 360s and never need to leave our couches for anything other than fridge-runs and bathroom-breaks for sixty hours straight. Get a good whiff? Okay, onto the tech.

According to a previously leaked half-hour Skyrim walkthrough video, developers claimed they were able to handle the majority of Skyrim's environment utilizing "dynamic effects." Essentially, what this means is that whenever the sun sets during a rainstorm, allowing your argonian vampire [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112598-Bloodsuckers-Return-in-Skyrim] to stalk the poor people of Dawnstar, the game applies these filters on the fly to already-produced textures as opposed to having the need for a second texture set for each condition (i.e. an argonian texture, a wet argonian texture, and a wet argonian in the dark texture are all simply "an argonian" with different filters that can apply to all other textures as well). That's impressive, Bethesda, but I'm still not sure I really understand how you can fit all of Skyrim in 8 gigs, or as I like to describe it, less than the size of my Bob Dylan .mp3 collection.

The confirmation comes from Bethesda's art director Matt Carofano, who answered the question during a brief interview with ripten.com at this year's PAX Prime. Granted, Carofano isn't marketing or PR, so perhaps it's too soon to call this statement official. On the other hand, Carofano has been involved with the entire game's production, including the design of game cases and disc labels, so he probably has a pretty good idea of what's going on. There's still no word regarding the number of Skyrim discs you'll need to keep track of for PS3 or PC, but it's probably safe to say that if they got it down to just the one for the 360, they'll likely be doing the same for the others.

Source: Geek.com [http://www.ripten.com/2011/08/28/bethesda-confirms-that-skyrim-will-fit-on-one-xbox-360-disc/]


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imnot

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Apr 23, 2010
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Obviously the new AI is so good they made a mage character and got him to shrink the data.
 

Dr_Horrible

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Oct 24, 2010
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Maybe I just don't understand how 360 hardware works, but is this news? It's pretty standard for rpgs, especially, to put it on one disk because f carrying over player data.
 

Necator15

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Jan 1, 2010
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Well, I'm extremely glad they fit it all on one disc. The way Elder Scrolls games are set up, I feel like it would be a massive immersion breaker (Read: Pain in my ass) to change out discs on anything resembling a regular basis.

It honestly never occurred to me that Skyrim would be anything other than a single-disc game.
 

Simalacrum

Resident Juggler
Apr 17, 2008
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.......

You know what? Screw Bethesda's flimsy explanation, it's time to get the pitch forks and torches out cause they're blatantly using witchcraft.

Burn the heretics!
 

Wieke

Quite Dutch.
Mar 30, 2009
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What's the state of the PC version? Cause I would assume we get higher resolution textures? Well as long as it's less then 300 gb I don't mind (otherwise it wouldn't fit on my games partition).
 

zelda2fanboy

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Oct 6, 2009
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Unless you used really high bitrates to compress your music, 8 gigs is a lot of Bob Dylan, even by Bob Dylan standards. That would have to be every studio album, live album, official bootleg, nonofficial bootleg, alternate mono versions, and a couple of box sets.
 

Tharwen

Ep. VI: Return of the turret
May 7, 2009
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This is what happens when you're working in the same company as John Carmack, High Wizard of Games Technology and Related Arts. Woo, go ZeniMax!
 

darkszero

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Apr 1, 2010
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As far as I know the 360 uses default DVD disks, with 4.3/7 GB per layer.

I hope the PC version uses as many disks as it needs. I prefer my games installed with no need for "disks in the dvd drive". (or else I'd be forced to rip the disk and put it into a virtual drive :p)
 

SextusMaximus

Nightingale Assassin
May 20, 2009
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Dr_Horrible said:
Maybe I just don't understand how 360 hardware works, but is this news? It's pretty standard for rpgs, especially, to put it on one disk because f carrying over player data.
But this isn't a normal RPG.

[HEADING=1]THIS SKYRIM![/HEADING]
 

FogHornG36

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Jan 29, 2011
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You say this, but a week months after it comes out, i will be downloading the updated textures and such off a mod site because its just a port of the version that has to be able to play in the console that is much weaker then my pc.
 

babinro

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Sep 24, 2010
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Sure it's 1 disk for release day, but there will be 6 gigs of patches after the first month.

Laziness is good for gaming, I'm glad to read this.
 

XaVierDK

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Jan 16, 2008
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McNinja said:
The HDDVDs the 360 uses can handle up to 15 gigs on a single layer, double for dual-layer. The Blu-ray discs can handle about double a bit less than a dual layered HDDVD disc, which is why ME2 was two discs on the 360, but only one disc on the PS3.

However the techniques they used to save space is pretty neat.
The X360 never came with a HD-DVD drive... It uses standard, old, boring DVDs for both games and everything else... There was talk about an add-on drive for HD-DVDs back before the format wars ended (back in 2007), but it never materialised...
So all you get is 8 gigs on a dual-layer DVD, 4,7 on a single layer...

Best Regards :)
 

Dr_Horrible

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Oct 24, 2010
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SextusMaximus said:
Dr_Horrible said:
Maybe I just don't understand how 360 hardware works, but is this news? It's pretty standard for rpgs, especially, to put it on one disk because f carrying over player data.
But this isn't a normal RPG.

[HEADING=1]THIS SKYRIM![/HEADING]
Good point, good point... I say 250 gigs or else!

I just hope you don't kick me into a bottomless pit...
 

Camarilla

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Jul 17, 2008
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Wait, some people would have made the 'wet Argonian' and 'wet Argonian in the dark' seperate textures? Who are these people, and when can I slap them?

Using shaders and filters isn't exactly new or impressive.

Honestly, the fact that Skyrim fits on one DVD doesn't surprise me, the Oblivion Game of the Year, with Knights of the Nine and the Shivering Isles included on the disc, was only 4.6GB.
 

Danzaivar

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Jul 13, 2004
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Wonder if they're doing a (can't remember game name) where it ships with the second best textures on, then an optional patch gives you the ultra-high resolution textures for the best graphics? Can't see how it would work otherwise. o_O
 

mad825

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Mar 28, 2010
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darkszero said:
I hope the PC version uses as many disks as it needs. I prefer my games installed with no need for "disks in the dvd drive". (or else I'd be forced to rip the disk and put it into a virtual drive :p)
In many cases the PC version only needs one disc as quite a few developers compress the data then uncompress it during installation.

Sad to say, I think the Xbox 360 is limiting the potential content in-game and having an knock-on effect with the other formats. Same might be said for Skyrim.