Summary
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim isa pretty buggy game when you really think about it, and it remains fairly buggy to this day. Thankfully for Bethesda, it helped that many of them were more hilarious and fun to encounter rather than game breaking. I’m sure we’ve all been launched into the air by a Giant, or seen a man swimming through the air.
However, as games have focused more on realism, andhigh-profile disasters like Fallout 76 and Cyberpunk 2077have been released to widespread criticism, there’s less forgiveness for immersion breaking bugs than before. Bethesda has started receiving more criticism for itsbuggy and underwhelming launches, and now even Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith admits that the developer’s games could use “a higher degree of polish.”
In an interview withVideoGamer(thanksGamesRadar), Nesmith talks a little about the development side of his time at the studio before he retired back in 2021. He eventually starts talking about Bethesda’s reputation for comical bugs, and admits that all of Bethesda’s games could have done with more time in the oven, but also reckons he has a good reason for why the studio has been releasing games that lack polish.
“They have benefited, and when I was there I benefited from providing such a wide and vast array of gameplay that a certain amount of lack of polish could be forgiven,” says Nesmith. “Having an NPC run in place in front of a wall for a little while became acceptable because of the 17 things you could do with that NPC, whereas most games you’d be able to do two.”
Nesmith also claims that Bethesda’s games are so large and include so many moving parts that “a bug-free release is impossible”, and sometimes studios have to make the tough decision “to publish something you know has bugs” or miss key deadlines. Of course, there are plenty of developers out there who ship similarly buggy games, but you could argue that the overall quality of Bethesda’s recent work is a big factor as to why bugs might not be as so easily overlooked as they were in the likes of Skyrim or Fallout 3.
Now that Starfield’s Shattered Space expansion is out,for better or worse, all efforts will now likely be on The Elder Scrolls VI, as Bethesda knows full well that fans really want it. They’ll face an uphill battle to meet fan expectations,but Nesmith himself reckons these expectations will never be met, regardless of the game’s quality. I just want it to launch this century.
Skyrim
WHERE TO PLAY
One of the all-time greats, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim redefined the concept of the Western RPG. With countless awards under its belt and releases on almost every platform imaginable, you’ll find yourself engrossed in a colossal open world in your role as the Dragonborn. You must face your destiny and save the land from a formidable foe.
