The legendary Skyrim Intro was destroyed by… a bee

“Hey, you’re finally awake.” This is a familiar greeting for anyone new to the game Skyrim. The player will hear the above dialogue while tied up and trapped in a vehicle going to the execution site.
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Setting up the scene with the rebels explaining that the player was mistakenly arrested while crossing the border and about to be beheaded seemed simple but faced many difficulties. Nate Purkeypile, an artist who worked on Skyrim as well as Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 while working at Besdetha, shared some of these difficulties.

Mr. Purkeypile said that because the entire scene is physically simulated, any changes in the environment will affect the trolley, including small details: “Maybe the road is too bumpy. Maybe just is a physical error or it could be a rock that was accidentally placed too close to the road.”​

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At one point, the vehicle not only veered off course, but also shook violently and flew up into the sky as if it had been thrown by a giant. Purkeypile explained: “Something was blocking the car from going on the road. The problem was that it didn’t happen often. At first no one knew what it was.” In the end, they figured out how to fix another bug that caused the car to fly, and discovered that they couldn’t capture the physical collisions of bees. Bee is a constant force of nature, if it happens to fly into the trolley’s path. The car wants to move down the road. The bee doesn’t want to move. Therefore, the truck is forced to “fly” around the detour.

The story of the bee is an example of why the open world game very difficult to manufacture. Purkeypile commented, “Every time you fix one thing, you can break another. This is especially true of open-world games. However, the interaction of all the systems is what makes them so great. super interesting.”
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