I was in Discord with a couple friends who had Skyrim Remastered downloaded last night and were trying to play it. Trying being the keyword there, as apparently they were struggling just to get the thing to launch. Evidently they weren't alone in this endevour, as complaints have already been rising on various other message boards (primarily reddit). There's a number of people saying that all Bethesda did was copy-paste the game from a 32 bit system to a 64 bit system, which has led to numerous game-breaking bugs (and indeed an inability to even launch the game in some cases) such as not being able to minimize the game without it crashing and not being able to subsequently re-launch the game without restarting your computer.
Also to be found on the message boards are comments about what the game looks like for those that can get it up and running. Evidently all the images we saw of the side-by-side comparisons don't accurately represent the quality of the final product. People with settings on max claim that the differences are hardly noticeable, stating that it's more or less vanilla Skyrim, just with more grass.
Edit: since the wall of text below is off on a bit of a tangent from the primary warning of this topic (i.e. that Skyrim Remastered is apparently anything but a remastered edition), I've gone ahead and put it in a spoiler box for those uninterested on my over-all thoughts on Bethesda's "No Review Copies Until The Day Before" policy. (end edit)
Conspiracy Time!
<spoiler=Thoughts On The Day-Before Review Copy Policy>Full disclaimer: I downloaded it yet, myself, so I can't offer verification on any of this. As the topic's title indicates: the above is all word of mouth information that I received from a friend last night in Discord. However if it is indeed the case that Bethesda shipped out a half-assed pile of garbage and called it a Remaster, it seems rather convenient that this was the first title under their official new policy of "We're not giving out review copies until the day before," and this is where the conspiracy comes into play.
It all starts with Doom, as this was title that "inspired" Bethesda to implement the policy of day-before review copies. Generally speaking, the attitude towards publishers that mess around with the review schedule (i.e. via review embargoes, giving out review copies the day before/day of, or even not allowing any reviews at all prior to the game's launch) is that they're trying to suck up as many pre-orders as they can, knowing full well their game is a shit-show that's going to tank very shortly after it's launch. And that's a fair attitude for consumers to have towards the motivations of the publishers considering the industry is running rampant with anti-consumer practices.
So Bethesda withholds review copies for Doom until the day before and surprise! The game was actually pretty damn good! Multiplayer was a bit meh, but the single player - by most accounts - was absolutely fantastic! There was no need to be worried about the whole review copy situation since the game turned out to be really good.
I submit that this was the setup for the conspiracy. Bethesda was wanting to go with this policy before Doom even launched due to the mediocre response that Fallout 4 received. So they take a game which they have full confidence in - in this case Doom - and say "We're not going to send out review copies until the day before." Why? It makes little sense from a business standpoint to hide away a game you have confidence in, especially when you released a multiplayer beta that didn't exactly light people's fires. All it does is lead people to be wary of your product, suspicious that you're trying to release a full-blown stinker and get as much money as you can before it gets destroyed by the reviews. In actuality, Doom has now become their excuse.
Doom launches, receives a good amount of commercial and critical success, then Bethesda drops this new "from now on, no one gets any review copies until the day before! We want reviewers and gamers to all experience the game at the same time!" policy. For starters: even in their given reasoning they kinda spell out that this is a bullshit policy. "We want everyone to experience it together!"...well yeah, I'm sure there's LOTS of companies that would love to have everyone already own their product before any warnings of it's crap quality are in circulation...you've completely bypassed the entire purpose for reviews by doing so. Secondly, they're banking on people dropping the "are they trying to hide a shit-show from us?" suspicion, and instead be looking to Doom and saying "Well they did this with Doom and that game was great. Nothing to worry about here." Which brings us to the complaints that the apparent toss-fest that is Skyrim Remastered has already ushered in within the first day of it's launch.
Whether you believe in the above conspiracy or not, the moral of the story remains the same: stop pre-ordering games. Wait until you have information about a product before you throw money at a publisher (any publisher, for that matter) that just wants to suck up as much of your cash as they can while delivering sub-par products. Want higher standards in video games? Then the publishers and developers need to be held to higher standards. Games should not be going gold before they've even been released...that's putting the cart before the horse in an almost literal sense.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've more tinfoil clothing to fashion for myself. :^)
Also to be found on the message boards are comments about what the game looks like for those that can get it up and running. Evidently all the images we saw of the side-by-side comparisons don't accurately represent the quality of the final product. People with settings on max claim that the differences are hardly noticeable, stating that it's more or less vanilla Skyrim, just with more grass.
Edit: since the wall of text below is off on a bit of a tangent from the primary warning of this topic (i.e. that Skyrim Remastered is apparently anything but a remastered edition), I've gone ahead and put it in a spoiler box for those uninterested on my over-all thoughts on Bethesda's "No Review Copies Until The Day Before" policy. (end edit)
Conspiracy Time!
<spoiler=Thoughts On The Day-Before Review Copy Policy>Full disclaimer: I downloaded it yet, myself, so I can't offer verification on any of this. As the topic's title indicates: the above is all word of mouth information that I received from a friend last night in Discord. However if it is indeed the case that Bethesda shipped out a half-assed pile of garbage and called it a Remaster, it seems rather convenient that this was the first title under their official new policy of "We're not giving out review copies until the day before," and this is where the conspiracy comes into play.
It all starts with Doom, as this was title that "inspired" Bethesda to implement the policy of day-before review copies. Generally speaking, the attitude towards publishers that mess around with the review schedule (i.e. via review embargoes, giving out review copies the day before/day of, or even not allowing any reviews at all prior to the game's launch) is that they're trying to suck up as many pre-orders as they can, knowing full well their game is a shit-show that's going to tank very shortly after it's launch. And that's a fair attitude for consumers to have towards the motivations of the publishers considering the industry is running rampant with anti-consumer practices.
So Bethesda withholds review copies for Doom until the day before and surprise! The game was actually pretty damn good! Multiplayer was a bit meh, but the single player - by most accounts - was absolutely fantastic! There was no need to be worried about the whole review copy situation since the game turned out to be really good.
I submit that this was the setup for the conspiracy. Bethesda was wanting to go with this policy before Doom even launched due to the mediocre response that Fallout 4 received. So they take a game which they have full confidence in - in this case Doom - and say "We're not going to send out review copies until the day before." Why? It makes little sense from a business standpoint to hide away a game you have confidence in, especially when you released a multiplayer beta that didn't exactly light people's fires. All it does is lead people to be wary of your product, suspicious that you're trying to release a full-blown stinker and get as much money as you can before it gets destroyed by the reviews. In actuality, Doom has now become their excuse.
Doom launches, receives a good amount of commercial and critical success, then Bethesda drops this new "from now on, no one gets any review copies until the day before! We want reviewers and gamers to all experience the game at the same time!" policy. For starters: even in their given reasoning they kinda spell out that this is a bullshit policy. "We want everyone to experience it together!"...well yeah, I'm sure there's LOTS of companies that would love to have everyone already own their product before any warnings of it's crap quality are in circulation...you've completely bypassed the entire purpose for reviews by doing so. Secondly, they're banking on people dropping the "are they trying to hide a shit-show from us?" suspicion, and instead be looking to Doom and saying "Well they did this with Doom and that game was great. Nothing to worry about here." Which brings us to the complaints that the apparent toss-fest that is Skyrim Remastered has already ushered in within the first day of it's launch.
Whether you believe in the above conspiracy or not, the moral of the story remains the same: stop pre-ordering games. Wait until you have information about a product before you throw money at a publisher (any publisher, for that matter) that just wants to suck up as much of your cash as they can while delivering sub-par products. Want higher standards in video games? Then the publishers and developers need to be held to higher standards. Games should not be going gold before they've even been released...that's putting the cart before the horse in an almost literal sense.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've more tinfoil clothing to fashion for myself. :^)
You see they were smart! So now their job can even be done on the consoles for them