Bethesda recently rolled out Skyrim Special Edition for PC, PS4 and Xbox One gamers.
The game is a remastered version of the original and has a lot of visual improvements.
While it was supposed to be a superior version of Skyrim, the game which is known for its plethora of bugs is at it again. The issue was first spotted by a Reddit user. It is related to the sound files being used in the Skyrim special edition. The game’s original version released a couple of years ago used uncompressed .wav files for sound, including background audio and music. It sounded loud enough and was of good quality. However, in the new edition, the developers have compressed and change all audio files into .xwm format.
Changing the sound format didn’t have any adverse effect on the PS4 version of the game. Those who purchased the remastered edition on Xbox One and PC platforms are experiencing sound issues, according to the Reddit user. The overall volume is always low and the crispness found in background sound has gone down considerably. Being an open world game that promotes exploration at all points, it is not easy to ignore the lack of noise in the environment. The game had a good sound design in the first place which is missing at the moment.
Bethesda, developers of Skyrim Special Edition has addressed the issue and confirmed that they will be rolling out a fix this week. The Reddit user also commented that the sound quality and music is very impressive on the Playstation 4 console. It is much better than the original PC version, according to the user. The developer may not openly reveal the strategies they used to implement sound in the current generation consoles and PCs. Besides, they made a lot of compromises in order to bring mod support to the Playstation 4 platform. So many factors come into play when revamping an old game to look good and run on completely new architecture.
Ever since its launch in 2011, Skyrim has faced the highest number of issues and bug fixes in recent gaming industry. While it’s open world design allows players to enjoy hours of roaming and fun, it leads to a significantly increased number of issues. And, there’s always the task of making the game run smooth on PCs and consoles. Mod support is a unique addition for console gamers and it is already quite popular on the Xbox One console. The PS4 edition does have some restrictions though.