Novice gamer launched Skyrim for the first time and couldn't even make it to Helgen because his horse suddenly started breakdancing
Some games forgive bugs, while in others glitches eventually become part of the mythology. But when a title breaks within the first half minute, before the hero even reaches the chopping block, that's a whole other level of hospitality.
That's exactly how one newcomer on PC was introduced to Skyrim. The cart full of prisoners rolls toward Helgen to the famous "Hey, you. You're finally awake," and then the horse and the cart start spinning and bouncing. The cherry on top was another horse in the background, which shot into the sky like a rocket right as the camera turned away.
The cause has been known for a long time. Physics in the Creation Engine, Bethesda's engine, is tied to frame rate. The game was built around 60 FPS, and at 144 or 240 frames the Havok physics engine recalculates collisions far too often, so objects shake, fly apart, and carts turn into carousels. One player couldn't hold back and wrote in all caps:
LOWER. YOUR. FPS. CAP. this is very much a known issue where high framerates mess with physics. Remember, this is a 15 year old game. 60 is more than enough.
The fix is to cap the frame rate at 60 through the Nvidia Control Panel for Skyrim.exe, use the equivalent setting in AMD software, or tweak the iPresentInterval parameter in the game's config file. For some players even that didn't help, and they had to install an alternate start mod just to skip the cursed ride. Commenters also recalled that the cart is sometimes sent flying by a random bee or butterfly that wanders onto the road.
Still, almost every veteran has a story about their first glitch. One player described walking to Solitude and suddenly seeing all the animals of Skyrim slowly float into the sky. He assumed a mage was casting a levitation spell somewhere, and after the game crashed he seriously intended to track that mage down. Another met Miraak with no head at all, yet the villain kept playing out his script. And someone else spent hours as a kid sitting in the cart because the Helgen disembark animation never triggered, waiting for the story to finally continue.
Prisoners have been rolling into Helgen for 15 years, and the horses still haven't learned to stand still.
