The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was so popular back then, it had managed to spawn a surfeit of "I took an arrow to the knee" memes, apart from other things that, like the meme just mentioned, were mostly culled from its in-game antics. Released in 2011, the title drummed up significant acclaim, and it's no surprise that its remastered edition, released late last year, was well-received too.
But there's unfortunate news for fans salivating over another potential Elder Scrolls remaster: it won't happen. Turns out, Skyrim Special Edition was a one-shot deal.
That's straight from Pete Hines himself, Bethesda's VP for public relations and marketing, in an interview with Xbox: The Official Magazine, which was published by GamesRadar. The company's roadmap bears no plans whatsoever to release any more of special edition remasters of its past Elder Scrolls titles.
Bethesda released Skyrim Special Edition in October, intended to run on current-gen hardware. It features the full content found on the original, flavored with remastered graphics, which had been upped significantly from the original platforms it was released for.
Sorry, No More Remastered Elder Scrolls In The Pipeline
Hines says that Skyrim Special Edition was a preparatory development experiment, moving the Skyrim engine to newer and much more powerful consoles to determine requirements needed for it to run on current-gen hardware. Skyrim Special Edition was the result of Bethesda's Fallout 4 preparations as well.
Bethesda Wants To Move Forward
Instead of wishing for more remastered versions, users should shift their gaze at the future, since that's where Bethesda is looking toward.
"[I]nstead of spending all this time on a thing we've already made, why don't we instead spend that effort on something new, or on the next version of that thing?" Hines said.
The studio is approaching Skyrim remasters the same way it approached Dishonored — releasing only one. That game was released at a time when the Xbox 360 and the PS3 neared the end of their life cycles. The studio then ported remastered version of the game to newer hardware. This "Definitive Edition" includes, needless to say, beefed-up graphics, along with all previously released Dishonored DLC.
Skyrim Special Edition Update
On a different note, the studio rolled out a Skyrim Special Edition update recently for PC and PlayStation 4. Chief of the changes was enhanced support for displays with a 144 Hz refresh rate. Apart from that, the patch contains minor fixes, including the proverbial performance improvements, a fix to the game's Slow Time effects, and another fix in relation to failed Bethesda.net logins.
Finally, Hines hinted at Bethesda's possible expansion of genre, whether it plans to break away from its vaunted repute as an exclusively RPG studio. He said that he is scouring the playing field, looking for, and working with developers who possess the same philosophy championed by the studio: to do things that have a different take or try something new.
"Things that aren't just saying, 'Well everyone's doing X, so we're going to do X too,'" Hines said.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
