Summary
- One gamer opens the Creations page in Skyrim and finds that the mod store is written entirely in the game's Dragon language, likely due to a bug.
- To use powerful Dragon Shouts in Skyrim, players must progress through the main story, slay their first dragon, and absorb its soul, unlocking the iconic Unrelenting Force shout.
- While the cause of the bug that transliterated the Creations page into the Dragon script is unknown, reinstalling Skyrim may solve the issue, providing a potential fix for affected players.
After opening the new Creations page from the main menu, a Skyrim player inexplicably finds the mod store entirely written in the game’s Dragon language. While The Elder Scrolls had its share of fictional languages and scripts in the past, the Dragon language was one of the more memorable parts of Skyrim’s marketing campaign, as its presence in the game is not only weaved into the narrative but also has gameplay ties through the powerful Dragon Shouts of Skyrim.
In order to use the Thu'um, or the Voice, players must progress through the main story in Skyrim enough to slay their first dragon, thereby absorbing the dragon's soul. This unlocks the iconic Unrelenting Force shout, which players can further upgrade by ascending the mountain of High Hrothgar in Skyrim, and completing "The Way of the Voice" and "The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller." While some shouts are taught by certain NPCs such as the Greybeards, most shouts are learned by interacting with the Word Walls scattered throughout the Nord province. While Dovahzul (the Dragon-Voice) isn't developed enough to qualify as a complete language, it has enough word variety to form sentences and phrases that are written on the Word Walls themselves.
Skyrim's Iconic Logo Isn't Really About the Dragons
Skyrim's logo may depict a dragon, but actual dragons are only tangentially related to the ideas the symbol represents in and out of universe.
However, the script is usually not something that players know by heart, which is what makes PianoDude21's bizarre bug so amusing. Given that Dovahzul's letters each have a perfect counterpart to Latin, a more accurate description of PianoDude21's situation is that they found themselves on Skyrim's new Creations page completely transliterated into the Dragon script. They claimed to be unsure as to the cause of the bug and stated that they were an Xbox player when sharing the issue on the main Skyrim subreddit.
Some players joked that the bug created ultimate immersion, while others teasingly chided PianoDude21 for being a poor Dragonborn for not knowing the Dovah language. In truth, there are no definitive answers as to what caused the Creations page to become transliterated into the Dragon script, but a possible culprit could be a user interface or font mod that's gone rogue. Ever since Skyrim's new update launched the Creations platform, players across all platforms have had issues accessing the store, as the menu would either freeze or downright crash when trying to load. Completely reinstalling Skyrim seems to fix this issue, which may be a sound suggestion for PianoDude21 to fix their game if all else fails.
Though Creations had a controversial reception when it launched, it's also a new way for Skyrim players to make some money (provided they don't use generative AI to develop their paid mod). Given that Bethesda is planning to release the official modding tools for Starfield in early 2024, it's possible that the company's latest title is designed to fully use the new modding platform from the get-go.
- Released
- November 11, 2011
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Use of Alcohol, Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda
- Engine
- Creation
- Expansions
- Skyrim: Dragonborn, Skyrim: Hearthfire, Skyrim: Dawnguard
- Franchise
- The Elder Scrolls
