Fans of "Skyrim: Special Edition" were surprised with the sounds emitting from the game recently. Released earlier this week, the remaster was an impressive overhaul of the original role-playing game. However, the audio sounded like a downgrade due to the compressed audio files according to recent reports.
'Skyrim: Special Edition' Audio Fiasco
Players of "Skyrim: Special Edition" playing on Xbox One and PC were surprised to hear a poor audio quality per Kotaku. In fact, a discussion on Reddit commenced, discussing the poor audio quality of the game. The compressed audio files of "Skyrim: Special Edition" made the game sound even worse than the original game, which was released 5 years ago.
According to Reddit user LasurArksinshade, while playing "Skyrim: Special Edition," he noticed something off from the game. He described the audio as less crisp and muddier. He wasn't sure if it was the effect of his overexcitement. Then a comparison of the extracted files from the original and remastered version revealed a surprising discovery.
"Skyrim: Special Edition" has sound assets that are compressed aggressively in .xwm format while the vanilla game has sound assets in uncompressed .wav format excluding the music and voiceover. The .xwm format is the compressed sound format specifically designed for games. While this isn't entirely bad, there's a way to compress files without degrading the quality unless you compressed it too much.
Bethesda Promises To Fix The Audio Issue
Bethesda was alerted of the "Skyrim: Special Edition" audio issue and promised to fix it as soon as possible, Slashgear added. Reddit user "gstaff" - rumored to be Bethesda's global community manager - replied to the Reddit thread discussing the audio issue.
The user said that a fix for the audio quality is already in progress and it should be released before the end of the week. It remains to be seen if Bethesda will release a patch to fix the audio issues in "Skyrim: Special Edition."
Fans aren't sure if the fix will improve the audio version of if the developer will just restore it to its original format. Stay tuned for more "Skyrim: Special Edition" news and updates!