There’s no doubt that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the most highly regarded RPGs we’ve seen in the last decade. While it’s a popular game, it’s also infamous for the sheer number of glitches and bugs that remain, even over ten years after its release.
Players can clip through walls, get locked in level geometry, not be able to finish quests, or even have their horses fly through the air. While many of Skyrim‘s bugs and glitches can be frustrating for players, some of these have been purposefully not fixed by Todd Howard and his team.
Todd Howard Explains Why Bethesda Didn’t Fix This One Hilarious Bug in Skyrim
We don’t have to re-hash what’s already been said about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. From it’s incredibly expansive environments to its rich questlines, Skyrim is one of the most successful games which we’ve ever seen.
A few years ago, Howard sat down with The Guardian and shared some insights on the development of his incredible project. As one of the best-selling games in Bethesda’s history, Skyrim has managed to forge its way past genre barriers, selling millions upon millions of copies to gamers who can’t get enough of the RPG.
While finishing up Skyrim‘s development, Bethesda’s team was playing the game all the time, trying to rest the limits of the world they had managed to create. However, when testers got their hands on the game, they managed to find a lot of bugs that the developers didn’t anticipate. According to Howard, one of these bugs allowed players to place buckets on other player’s heads!
There was a person who figured out that you could put buckets on people’s heads and block their line of sight
Any other gaming developer would’ve instantly fixed this bug. However, it’s Bethesda we’re talking about. They’re anything but a boring developer, so they never bothered fixing this interesting bug.
There was a great debate as to whether we should fix that. We ended up deciding no, because it’s hilarious.
Although it’s quite good to see Bethesda incorporating some of these hilarious bugs as game features, it still doesn’t change the fact that their games are a buggy mess. For years, whenever we think about Bethesda, we think about being trapped in a shaky glitch-fest ride that has no end. In recent titles, the studio has made it a point to go huge in its design scopes, which leads to rough edges around the seams.
While many of these frustrating bugs get patched out quickly, some of them never leave. Let’s hope Bethesda learns its lesson and doesn’t make players rage-quit due to game bugs in the upcoming The Elders Scroll 6 game.
Bethesda Developer’ Explains Why Studio’s Games Tend to Have So Many Frustrating Bugs
Although bugs in Bethesda’s games are certainly not a new phenomenon, the reputation has grown more toxic in recent years. Player frustrations with the 2018 release of Fallout 76 have certainly amplified the hate surrounding the company.
However, Bethesda’s Pete Hines says that the studio’s developers are fond of the chaos. Obviously, the reputation isn’t what they aim for, but the bug-rich experience proves Bethesda’s dedication to its creative experimentation. Developers are always trying to lean into player freedom, and sometimes pushing the boundaries of this element in video games comes with unintended consequences.
It’s not that Bethesda doesn’t want those playing the games to have a bad experience, of course. Hines made it clear that these frustrating elements don’t take away from Bethesda’s games and still aren’t acceptable.
