A Broken Bee Almost Ruined Skyrim's Iconic Intro
Image: Bethesda

We all know the introduction to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Even if you haven't played the game, there's a ton of memes, clips and other amusing compilations out there referencing it. However, it was something that proved challenging to make according to one former developer on the game, as a rogue bee was causing all sorts of problems.

Nate Purkeypile, who previously worked on the game, shared the story on Twitter. While many have previously believed the intro cart ride was on rails, it's actually said to be a physically simulated event in the game. Of course, with programming situations such as that, there are issues. Purkeypile spoke about times "the cart [would] start to shake violently and all of a sudden WHOOSH!"

This was an issue that was hard to replicate as it wasn't happening every time, resulting in Purkeypile replaying the same segment of the game over and over again. So, what was the culprit?

It was a single bee.

During the game's development, the team discovered that bees in the game couldn't be picked up. The bug was fixed, but it also made it so that bees could collide into things. As you can expect with the dynamic world of Skyrim and the non-scripted introduction to the game, if the two came into contact it was met with disastrous results.

Thankfully, this was an issue that was resolved by the time the game launched, but we can imagine there would have been some interesting stories if this was kept in. It reminds us of the mystical swing in Grand Theft Auto IV, which saw players that drove into it be thrown across the map.

If Bethesda wants to add the bee collision in as a mod, we wouldn't say no.

Have you ever come across any unusual glitches such as this? Let us know in the comments below.