Bethesda Thursdays

Skyrim was patched to version 1.7 in the last week (officially, that is; the beta version of the patch has been available for a bit now). Dawnguard, the first major DLC for the game, continues to rake in middling (but generally favourable) reviews. And there is still no sign of the PC release of Dawnguard.

That’s basically all the news for Skyrim from the last week; Bethesda’s current flagship game has largely taken a back seat to Arkane Studios’ Dishonored (which Bethesda is publishing).

Harvey Smith and Raf Colantonio, both from Arkane, held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session at Reddit this week, and while no new details about the game appear to have crept out, it’s still a pretty worthy read. These guys have an impressive CV as far as games they’ve both worked on go, and their views on the gaming industry’s current state will resonate with harder-core Ultima fans.

Smith went on to chat with GamesIndustry about player empowerment, in which he ties his work on Dishonored back to his experiences as a tester for System Shock. GamesIndustry also interviewed Viktor Antonov (formerly of Valve), who was quite pointed about the fact that he feels the last five or so years have been very poor “for fiction in the video game industry”.

And of course, because Dishonored looks awesome, do yourself a solid and check out yet another video preview of the game.

This is cool, as well.