There’s a lot to love about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It’s a gigantic open world with tons to do, plenty of interesting quests, and endless replayability. It’s a beloved game just because of the number of hours people can’t help but sink into it. It’s also one of the most memeable games ever, with phrases like “I took an arrow to the knee” becoming a part of internet lore. Unfortunately, it also became well known for its glitches. While funny, glitches can be frustrating when they get in the way of progress.
While it’s easy to get frustrated with glitches, it’s always important to remember that game development is hard and that developers clean up way more than we realize before it launches. One former developer of Skyrim said as much when he told a story on Twitter about how the most iconic scene in Skyrim, the opening cart ride, was a development nightmare for the team. It also required watching the opening scene close to hundreds of times when testing it out.
So, I have a story about the Skyrim Intro and how hard game development is.
That intro is famous now, but back then, it was just that one thing that we had to keep working and working on forever. I lost track of how many times I've seen that cart ride. Easily hundreds. (thread) pic.twitter.com/D0E0oZ5uX8
— Nate Purkeypile – The Axis Unseen 🤘🏹🔥 (@NPurkeypile) August 17, 2021
See the issue with that cart ride is that it's not just a cart on rails. That cart is physically simulated. Why you ask? Good question.
So anyways, this meant that all kinds of things would cause the cart to start to freak out and fly off the road.
— Nate Purkeypile – The Axis Unseen 🤘🏹🔥 (@NPurkeypile) August 17, 2021
Obviously, the developers of Skyrim didn’t want the opening scene of the game to be bugged. While bugs can be funny sometimes, seeing one as soon as you load it up would be a bit off-putting and might sour the experience, especially if the cart you’re supposed to be a prisoner on sends you flying off the road or into the sky.
Well one time, riding that cart yet again, the cart starts to shake violently and all of a sudden WHOOSH! The cart goes up into the sky like a rocket ship. Like WAY up there.
— Nate Purkeypile – The Axis Unseen 🤘🏹🔥 (@NPurkeypile) August 17, 2021
As fun as it would be to watch the cart suddenly launch like a rocket ship, it’s understandable why a game dev wouldn’t want that to happen. Perhaps the trickiest part is how this bug wasn’t happening consistently, which is the absolute worst kind, because that makes it harder to figure out why it’s going on. It’s also what leads to someone watching the opening scene hundreds of times over and over again.
So, what was the cause of this rocket launch cart? It was something so small that nobody noticed it initially: a tiny little bee had become the most powerful force in all of Skyrim.
So it turns out there was another bug where the bee in the game couldn't be picked up. So then some potions couldn't be made. That bug got fixed. Only the type of collision put on the bee didn't just let it get picked up. It also made it collide into things.
— Nate Purkeypile – The Axis Unseen 🤘🏹🔥 (@NPurkeypile) August 17, 2021
Meaning, that bee was an immovable force of nature if it ever happened to cross the path of the cart. The cart wanted to move down the road. The bee did not want to move. So up the cart goes!
— Nate Purkeypile – The Axis Unseen 🤘🏹🔥 (@NPurkeypile) August 17, 2021
The story is very funny and it’s also a reminder for everyone how difficult game development can be. While bugs can be frustrating, it’s important to remember there are people who spend hours of their day if not weeks trying to make it presentable before launch. While Skyrim still had some other famous bugs and problems in it, we can at least all be happy that our cart never launched us into the sky because a tiny little bee told us to buzz off.