Nintendo surprised the hell out of everybody by finally officially releasing Skyrim’s Anniversary Edition to the Switch! I kind of knew this was already coming, given the leak that went around about this back in May, but now the AE on the Switch is finally here. 😀
Here’s what I know about it so far, for those of you who, like me, might want to consider playing Skyrim on your Switch.
One: this is not a free upgrade for previous Skyrim owners, you do have to pay an additional twenty bucks if you want the new content. (Whether that additional twenty bucks is worth it to you, your call! If you’ve already bought enough versions of Skyrim and don’t feel like buying more of it, totes fair. Me, I’m still new enough to Skyrim that ponying up for the AE on the Switch too is worth it to me.)
Two: I have no way of knowing for sure, but I’m fairly sure this release won’t necessarily deliver any bug fixes to the Switch. The Anniversary Edition is essentially a package deal for all of the Creation Club content previously available on PC and console. So any previously known existing bugs on the Switch are probably going to still be there.
(I’ll be confirming this, at least, when I get Faanshi back to the Throat of the World to learn Dragonrend, and I’ll see whether the cutscene is still broken for her.)
Three: This is going to have interesting ramifications in general for Faanshi’s playthrough, since she was up to level 62 and had just reached Solstheim. So she’s pretty far along in my usual playthrough cycle, and I’m not sure yet whether I want to go to the trouble of playing all of the new AE content with her.
At the very least, though, since she did just get to Solstheim, this now puts me in a very good position to run Ghosts of the Tribunal with her. 😀
And I also feel like that as the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, she’s pretty much obliged to go get Shadowfoot Sanctum, as well as the Bow of Shadows. Not quite so sure about the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, just because Faanshi is a Khajiit, and that thing does not have ear holes!
I don’t want to bother to go and get every single house available in the AE, though it’ll be amusing to see how many of the couriers start showing up to hand me notes. I’m pretty sure I should get the ones for the quests for Hendraheim and Bloodchill Manor?
And since I enjoyed the hell out of Saints and Seducers as well as The Cause, it might be interesting to go ahead and run those with Faanshi as well. Doing Saints and Seducers as a higher level character should mean it’ll go a lot easier for Faanshi than it did for Shenner!
So, a lot to think about here! And I’ve got to now be amused at the thought that my Switch is all jealous that I’ve got the Deck now, and it’s going pay attention to meeeeeee!
Four: I can at least report that I’ve had a Faanshi session since installing the AE content on the device, and it seemed to work just fine, no problems at all. I’ve seen one of the new spellbooks already, showing up as cultist loot while running Miraak’s temple.
More on this in Faanshi’s next official playthrough post!
A second Twitter thread from May 3, 2021, in which I talk about prior experience with turn-based combat in games, and how different playing Skyrim is in comparison.
And oh yeah one other thing I’ll say about playing Skyrim tonight: up till now all the combat I’ve done in games has been strictly turn-based. Lots and lots of Nethack (and games similar to Nethack, like Moria and Angband and Slash’em), and lots and lots of Dungeon Boss.
9:32 PM · May 3, 2021
Playing Skyrim which is decidedly _not_ turn-based is a whole new experience for me, and _oh god the suspense_, sneakily inching my way up that mountain and waiting for something to leap out and attack me.
9:33 PM · May 3, 2021
Aaron Humphrey · @alfvaen · May 3, 2021
This is why Elder Scrolls games are the only ones I tend to leave their own music playing (rather than playing my own library). Because they have Battle Music to let you know when you’re being attacked.
9:46 PM · May 3, 2021
Angela Korra’ti · @annathepiper · May 3, 2021
I remember totally also being impressed by the music in all the times through that Dara and Paul have played. And now that I’m playing it myself, chances of my acquiring the OST have gone significantly up. <3
9:55 PM · May 3, 2021
A far, far cry from ASCII-based graphics and a horde of o’s beating up on my @!
9:33 PM · May 3, 2021
Notes
This post was originally written on 3/13/2022, but it’s backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
Post rewritten on 12/26/2022 and 12/27/2022 to reconstruct the Twitter thread directly here on this site, including replies, and remove all links to Twitter.
Like a lot of folks during the pandemic, my housemate Paul got heavily engrossed in playing Animal Crossing. He specifically ordered himself a Nintendo Switch so that he could play it. And from all the things he was sharing about the experience of playing it, a couple weeks ago I started thinking, gosh that sounds like fun, I’d like to play it too I think.
A Twitter thread from April 28, 2021, in which I determined that nope, still not ready to leave Riverwood. But this was also when I discovered how to take screenshots, and that I really needed to set the Invert Y setting in my game!
Today I got the add-ons I ordered for my Switch, the stick extenders and the precision rings to improve my ability to control motion on the JoyCons. I definitely feel an improvement in Animal Crossing, where maneuverability matters when you’re diving to catch undersea creatures.
10:41 PM · Apr 28, 2021
But the main point of extra toys being Skyrim, I fired that up again tonight. Quickly learned a few things: 1) nope still not ready to leave Riverwood, I tried and promptly got my ass kicked by a wolf; 2) I’m apparently one of those people the “Invert Y” setting is for?
10:43 PM · Apr 28, 2021
I turned that on and suddenly found the ability to look around much less random; 3) I might actually like third person view better? I don’t know yet. I need to experiment with that more.
10:44 PM · Apr 28, 2021
The main point of experimenting with third person view though being, getting a snap of my character! Behold, Alarrah the Wood-Elf (and unknown baby Dragonborn)!
Alarrah in Riverwood10:44 PM · Apr 28, 2021
(P.S. I know a lot of people have said this before me, but now _I’m_ playing it, so I’ll say it again: _holy crap_ Skyrim is gorgeous.)
10:47 PM · Apr 28, 2021
(HAH and I just figured out why the Invert Y setting is apparently what I need. It’s because of scrolling and swiping gestures! In macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, the two-finger gestures for scrolling are reversed from what you might expect…
11:13 PM · Apr 28, 2021
… Swiping up with two fingers means you scroll down. Swiping down with two fingers means you scroll up. This is reversed on my PC/Linux laptop and it _regularly_ throws me off, so I’m pretty damn sure that’s why i need the Invert Y setting in Switch Skyrim.)
11:13 PM · Apr 28, 2021
Notes
This post was written on 3/13/2022, but backdated to the date of the Twitter thread for organizational purposes.
Edited on 12/26/2022, to reconstruct the Twitter thread and remove links to Twitter.
This is the first of several posts to reconstruct Twitter threads about Alarrah’s playthrough, which dated from before I started documenting her action directly in WordPress.
Here, I had the very first kickoff tweet for buying Skyrim for the Switch, as well as a 400GB SD card!
Also accomplished on the Switch:
1. bought Hades
2. bought Skyrim
3. bought me a 400GB SD card so I can actually have enough space to play Skyrim!
2:34 PM · Apr 17, 2021
Notes
I created this post on March 13, 2022, but I’m backdating it to the time of the tweet, just for organizational purposes.
Post updated November 21, 2022 to change embedded tweet to a textual reproduction, and remove the link to Twitter.
Updated again December 26, 2022 to tweak the wording to reconstruction of Twitter threads rather than linking to them.
