I logged into Steam this morning and I saw something funny and something a bit disgusting. Let's start with the funny: Rage just receives a 33% discount thanks to the "Asteroid Fly-By" promotion. Valve's sense of humor is impeccable. Now for the disgusting part... Steam is trying to push sales for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as you can see from the screenshot below:
Last chance? Who wants to pre-purchase it anyway?
The game is being released tomorrow so Bethesda is doing one final push to shove this game down our throats without any form of lubrication. The game does offer a pre-load option however, so those who pre-order it will be able to play the game immediately once it goes live if they choose to download it now. I have always been an Elder Scrolls fan but let me tell you why I wouldn't be rushing to get this one. Firstly, we all know by now that the Personal Computer is not the lead platform for this game because the developer has only been showing the X-Box 360 version of the game to the public. Why is this a bad thing? Well, because the latest in the series deserves what the PC technology could offer it and now, we have to just make do with something that is designed with quite a hefty limitation. Notice that Skyrim is only 5.10 GB in size. Wow. It doesn't even utilize Steamworks. Double douche. It's like the Final Fantasy XIII situation where the game was obviously designed with the disc media limitation of the X-Box 360. The series has always been developed with the PC in mind but now that commitment to quality has changed. I have played Oblivion both on the PC and the 360 extensively and yeah, that near infinite loading time and the bad textures on the 360... Horrible. The only reason why I stick with the 360 version at that time was because I was rebuilding my PC. Secondly, that price. Please do not try to force that ridiculous $59.99 price to the PC market. It's bad enough that Activision is already doing that. $59.99 for a digitally distributed game = death. As for me, I am going to wait until this game hits the $20 or lower mark before I would even consider getting it because of the poor decision on the developer's part. They certainly don't deserve our support.
Update Note: 11/10/2011 - The gameplay footage for the PC version of Skyrim has finally been revealed and at least it looks a whole lot better than the console version with greater draw distance. And the load time is almost non-existent too. The texture works still look pretty bad though. If you are going to get this game, the PC version is the right choice.
11/11/2011 - This game actually uses Steam as the digital rights management tool! I apparently missed that somehow because I have been looking at the store page on Steam predominantly and there was no indication that it was going to use Steamworks. Today, Steam achievements have been listed on the page and I was able to confirm that other copies of the game, digital and physical, do indeed require Steam activation. My apologies Bethesda, you did right! The price is still a little high but you sure did the right thing. I'll make it up to you.
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