A developer tells why a simple change to a bee had a massive impact on the role-playing game.
What happens when a tiny bee flies into a horse-drawn cart? Clearly: the cart immediately shoots skyward so fast that Elon Musk sheds an envious tear. Wait a minute, flying carts, physics gone awry – of course, we’re in Skyrim!
The story with the unstoppable bees that almost destroyed the famous cart ride in the intro comes from developer Nate Purkeypile, who talks about the absurd mistake on Twitter. His story is not only funny, but also shows how difficult it is to build working Open Worlds.
An unstoppable bee causes trouble
The famous cart intro kept causing trouble during development – for many players, by the way, it still does to this day, for example, if you don’t limit the FPS. As Nate explains, the problems are mainly due to the fact that the scene is not a video sequence, but is physically simulated. This means that even one stone in the wrong place can have a huge impact.
Sometimes, but not always, the cart spontaneously turned into a rocket during development. But at first, the developers had no idea why – until the crazy bees were discovered.
According to Nate, there was a completely different problem with the cosy buzzers – they could not be collected, which made it impossible to brew some potions. As a solution, the collision detection of bees was screwed. With drastic consequences:
“This resulted in the bee becoming an unstoppable force of nature if it ever crossed the path of the cart. The cart wanted to go down the road. The bee did not want to swerve. So the cart blew up!”
You can read the full story on Twitter here:
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 (@NPurkeypile) August 17, 2021
Another bee anecdote from Skyrim: Developer Joel Burgess shared his own favourite story about the bees of Sky’s Edge. They were supposed to follow players with honey in their luggage – however, they were still unstoppable at the time. Which meant that the tiny insects easily stopped even the mightiest dragon’s blood.
In Open Worlds everything is connected
Nate also explains that such mistakes are common in game development. Especially when it comes to complex open worlds where everything is connected. Even small changes can have unexpected effects in a completely different place. This will certainly be a huge challenge for Elder Scrolls 6 when it is released in the distant future.
What the future of Open Worlds looks like and what role artificial intelligence could play in it, you can find out here in the video:
Time for funny Skyrim bugs: Tell us in the comments about the strangest bugs you’ve encountered in Skyrim.
