The beta version of the next Skyrim patch is up.

Apparently, this one addresses some concerns that modders had with Steam Workshop and the Skyrim Creation Kit.

Skyrim will have big DLC, evidently.

Todd Howard, in an interview with Kotaku, explains Bethesda’s path forward with DLC for Skyrim:

“For Fallout 3 we did five DLCs,” Howard told me during an interview last week at the DICE Summit. “That was a very aggressive path for us. Our plan now is to take more time, to have more meat on them [for Skyrim]. They’ll feel closer to an expansion pack.”

That right there is good news, I think. That’s how DLC should be done.

GameInformer also had a chance to interview Todd Howard…

…in which he admitted that he has no clue under heaven how the game did so well:

As far as sales goes, Skyrim is the best-selling game in Bethesda history. Is there something about the game from a design standpoint that made it more popular and mainstream? The Elder Scrolls series has been typically thought of as very hardcore RPGs.

Todd Howard: The short answer is “I don’t know.” I can give you my guess, which is people underestimate how many core gamers there are; people who want a lot of depth and will play a game for a long time. There are a lot of them. If you give them something unique and good, you don’t have to dumb it down.

There are things we changed to make the game better, but not to appeal to a wider audience. I think we always benefited in Elder Scrolls early on, the fact that it is first-person and kind of walks this action line sometimes. We’ve always benefited from that. Even our own lofty expectations for how the game would be received or sell, it’s way, way beyond that.

I don’t have a way of explaining it.

I think he’s on to something in his first bit of speculation: I think many developers and publishers actually underestimate — considerably so — what the gaming market is comprised of, and where the interests of gamers are focused. The rampant success enjoyed by Double Fine on Kickstarter is evidence enough of that.

VentureBeat invites massive controversy!

Any comparison between the critically panned Dragon Age 2 and the widely celebrated Skyrim is bound to draw the ire of many, especially when that comparison is accompanied by the assertion that the latter has something to learn from the former.

But Rob LeFebvre goes there:

More variety to colors/environments

Oh man, Skyrim designers, I get it. Skyrim is a cold, brown, and gray place. Even the underground is brown and gray. And cold. The monsters there are brown. And gray. The dragons, for the most part, are a variety of grayish-brown.

Please, Skyrim, can I have some color? Just a little? The northern lights at night are pretty, but they are not enough to counteract all the…wait for it…brown.

And repetition? It’s like they got the same guy with the bad Nordic accent to design all the inns. Every. Single. Inn. Has the Exact. Same. Layout. And some minor variation of an annoying bard whom I continue to want to shoot in the head.

Dragon Age II, with all its maze-y back channels and Deep Roads and such, at least has some variety in color and in environment.

Not everything’s perfect in the world of Dragon Age, though. What can DA2 learn from Skyrim?

At a guess? The open world concept, and the importance of not re-using terrain and area assets too often.

Get the Skyrim map app for iOS!

Actually, don’t. The Prima-developed app purports to offer a map of the world of Skyrim, but it will evidently microtransact the living tar out of you if you actually want to see all the in-game locations displayed on it.

Also, it’s apparently US-only.

Skyrim running a bit slow?

If you’re running an Nvidia graphics card, try installing their latest drivers.

If you’re on ATI, of course, you’re boned. As always.

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