Only hours after the much-needed 1.3 patch for Skyrim has been released for Xbox 360 (and PS3 in Europe), users are beginning to report a variety of new bugs and unfixed issues. Some of the complaints include infinitely hanging loading screens, dragons that don’t give souls when defeated, Lydia falling through floors, and broken auto-saves. And, based on feedback in both comments and forums, players with a penchant for archery may be losing a considerable amount of skill points. We decided to test the 1.3 patch on our own Xbox 360 copy, and found that when loading auto-saves (pressing continue or manually loading the auto-saves from the load screen),...

If backwards-flying dragons, a sudden lack of magic resistance, and various other bugs have kept you and fellow Xbox 360 users from the world of Skyrim, it may be time to jump back in. Bethesda’s 1.3 patch for Skyrim has been approved by Microsoft and is now available. Patch 1.3 reportedly fixes many issues that patch 1.2 was supposed to resolve. Here’s the list of what it addresses: General stability improvements Fixed Radiant Story incorrectly filling certain roles Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly Fixed issue with placing books on bookshelves inside player purchased homes Fixed dragon animation issues with saving and loading Fixed Y-look input to scale correctly...

As popular single-player-only franchises continue to usher in multiplayer modes with their new offerings (Mass Effect, Uncharted), Rockstar is also prepping a multiplayer suite of their own with Max Payne 3. We already knew this, but now we have a few concrete details. Entitled “Gang Wars,” it will eschew the standard, mindless “run and gun” attitude and maintain both a dynamic narrative, and dynamic objectives based on previous rounds. In terms of story, Mr. Payne himself will provide voiceovers during cutscenes between rounds, explaining the objective type. According to Rockstar’s Charlie Bewsher (lead multiplayer designer on Max Payne 3) these narratives will tie directly into the single player storyline. So...

As pre-order access for Star Wars: The Old Republic begins to open up, Bioware is already looking to the future of the MMO, acknowledging that a massive online game like SWTOR is never finished being built. The developers are promising content update for years to come, based primarily on feedback from players, and have gone into specific detail regarding updates to guild functionality, PvP, space combat, and more. Bioware’s explanation of “new content” is somewhat vague, but they do state that they’ll be adding it to the galaxy constantly, and it will include Operations, Flashpoints, and solo content. How about the rest? Here are the facts, directly from Game...

To say that our first year at VideoGameWriters.com has been outstanding would be an understatement. Our success isn’t just attributed to a group of workaholic writers, it is certainly attributed to you. We’ve learned so much from our loyal readers throughout the course of 2011, and we think it’s time to return the favor. Beginning today, you have an open line of communication to the VGW editorial team, in the hopes that we can answer your questions about the industry. Ask us anything about everything we do by emailing us at letters@videogamewriters.com. Every month, we’ll do our best to directly and honestly answer as many as we can, and...