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Skyrim‘s intro sequence is immediately recognizable, either as a fantastic introduction to a game or as a meme. Apparently, putting that iconic cart ride together wasn’t an easy task. According to a former developer for the game, Nate Purkeypile, the team ran into a strange bug when putting together the sequence. That bug ended up being caused by an actual bug.
According to a thread Purkeypile posted on Twitter, the cart ride isn’t just “on rails.” it was “physically simulated.” However, anyone familiar with Skyrim’s physics (a.k.a anyone ever killed by a giant in the game) knows that it’s a rather finicky system. Objects can sometimes be sent flying just from the slightest bump. “So anyways, this meant that all kinds of things could cause the cart to start to freak out and fly off the road,” Purkeypile continued.
However, there was one bug that would occur randomly, sending the cart into the stratosphere. Naturally, since the bug wasn’t consistent, it was impossible to diagnose. As it turns out, the cause was one of Skyrim’s gentle creatures, the bumblebee. “So it turns out there was another bug where the bee in the game couldn’t be picked up… That bug got fixed. Only the type of collision put on the bee didn’t just let it get picked up. It also made it collide into things,” said Purkeypile.
Because of its new collision, the bee would launch the cart and its occupants into space, like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Of course, if any modders wanted to, they could almost certainly put the bug back in place. Skyrim still has an extremely active modding community, with new mods, like one that lets players pet dogs, being added all the time.
We can only hope that the next Elder Scrolls game has an equally wonky physics system. While The Elder Scrolls VI is likely years away from release, Bethesda’s Todd Howard recently shared that it will use an updated version of Skyrim’s Creation Engine.
