The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a big game. Players will want to save their progress along the way. And this is apparently causing players problems on the PS3 and making some call the game "broken".
After Skyrim gamesave files surpass 5MB in the PS3 version, many claim to experience lag and stability issues. "Such as framerate issues, poor rendering, shoddy loading and non interactions fro finishing quests/cutting wood etc," wrote gamer PurpleHaze on the game's official forums.
"I can't finish ANY quest and i can't buy from ANY trader/npc and i can only talk to them after some laggy button pressing," continued PurpleHaze. So my gamesave is now 6mb (how i don't know since i couldn't buy/sell/talk or complete quests) and the LAG and framerate issue is so bad at this point, the game isn't worh restarting."
PurpleHaze, whose issues started after hitting 5.3MB, isn't alone, with other players experiencing similar slowdown once their save files pass the neighborhood of 5MB~6MB (some are reporting problems after reaching 10MB).
"My file size is growing constantly, and fast," wrote player AMG on the game's forums. "It's already well over 3mb in size and I've only played for 3hrs."
The current fix is to restart the system, which makes Skyrim playable. However, after an hour or two of play, the game once again apparently becomes laggy.
This issue does not seem to affect the Xbox 360 version nor the PC version. Even gamers with plenty of available PS3 hard drive space are having problems.
"It does not take long for the save file to exceed 6MB, roughly 16 hours for me, so playing the game in any sort of depth will become very troublesome," wrote Kotaku reader Toby.
In the above gallery, there is game footage of what looks like people experiencing these issues (note that they might be experiencing unrelated glitches, too). Players are calling the PS3 version "broken".
Bethesda, Skyrim's developer, is no stranger to PS3 game issues. The PlayStation 3 version of Bethesda's Fallout 3 also suffered a whole host of PS3 problems, including this.
Kotaku is following up with Bethesda and will update this post should the company comment.
PS3 Skyrim bug, needs some publicity [Reddit]
Gamesave Size Limit Lag [Bethesda Forums]
You can contact Brian Ashcraft, the author of this post, at bashcraft@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
