Words by: Catherine Lewis
We all love Skyrim, but it's no secret that it's full of bugs. Both bugs in terms of game bugs, but also bugs in the insect bug sense. But what would happen to the game if there was a buggy, buzzy bug on the loose? ...My head hurts.
Well, it turns out that the iconic opening cart ride sequence was actually way more difficult to make than it should have been, all thanks to a small, wildly unpredictable bug (in both senses of the word). Over on Twitter, former Bethesda dev Nate Purkeypile shared a hilarious behind-the-scenes story of the cart ride's development, and why the team had to keep going back to it time and time again.
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Bees causing shenanigans aren't the only things to see in Skyrim. Check out our guided tour of the frosty region:
As it happens, the iconic cart that the player starts their journey in was physically simulated rather than on rails, which essentially means that anything in its path would send it flying off the road. Even though it had a path that it wanted to follow, if anything was in its way, it couldn't necessarily follow it, and was abruptly sent off track, leading to countless issues.
"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," the former dev wrote on Twitter. "Something was telling that cart to just f*ck right off and to get off that road. The thing is, it wasn't happening every time. Nobody knew what was going on at first."
Meet the natural enemy of wooden carts - the humble bee. Earlier still in development, there had been a problem where the poor bees couldn't be picked up, which had led to a different type of collision being put on them. This worked a treat for the initial issue, only it added a new one - the bee was now able to collide into things: "That bee was an immovable force of nature if it ever happened to cross the path of the cart," added Purkeypile. "The cart wanted to move down the road. The bee did not want to move. So up the cart goes!"
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Sadly, there's no footage of the one-sided cart vs bee battle, but it's still incredibly amusing to imagine the chaos that single bee left in its wake. If The Elder Scrolls VI doesn't have a giant, superpowered bee boss fight after this, I don't think they're doing it right.
Featured Image Credit: Bethesda