Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim received critical acclaim when it was released back in 2011. The game saw the elimination of the usual character class system, which was a staple in previous The Elder Scrolls entries. The change was positively received by the community.
While overall the game managed to win the hearts of fans, it also came with a lot of bugs, which were quite bothersome. Bugs are not completely alien to games. Almost every game has bugs. And so did the earlier installments of Elder Scrolls.
Todd Howard talks about the bugs in Elder Scrolls 4 Skyrim
Ahead of Elder Scrolls 4 Skyrim‘s release, the game’s game director and executive producer, Todd Howard, in an interview with Gamesutra revealed some insights on how they perceive bugs in their games. Referring to bugs as “weirdness” he was asked if it was ever possible to make a game that has no bugs. He was also asked if Skyrim has less of that “weirdness.”
Howard replied,
“It matters how you define “weirdness.” There’s going to be some [weirdness], like the player did X, Y and Z that we didn’t expect, and now he’s attacking the town, sleeping in this guy’s bed, he killed his wife [laughs]… We sort of learn each time how people play these games and experience them. So we get better each time, but we do at the end of the day sacrifice, say, a well-paced story. It’s almost impossible for us to do. We’d rather let you go do whatever you want. So that’s a sacrifice that we’re willing to make.”
The game director, during the same interview, was seen talking about how they think the previous Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, could have been better. He also mentioned that while they make games, there are a lot of things they struggle with.
Besides, Howards added that the game is so dynamic, and they don’t want to script them. As a result “weirdness” can ensue sometimes.
Skyrim had a bagful of bugs
That being said, Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim did have its fair share of bugs and issues at launch. Players reported several technical issues of differing severity. Some of these included a texture down-scaling issue on the Xbox 360 version every time the game was run from the hard drive as well as crashes, slowdown, and frame rate issues on PlayStation 3 consoles whenever the save files exceeded 6 MB.
Additionally, several such crashes and slowdowns were also reported on the Windows version. After the game’s release, Howard had said that the notion that bugs were caused by “restrictive RAM” was incorrect. He said, “It’s literally the things you’ve done in what order and what’s running.”
Naturally, the game has received several patches attempting to address technical issues and improve overall gameplay. However, some issues continued while some patches brought newer issues. Besides the countless, strange bugs in Skyrim also became the center of several memes and jokes online.
The community also released an unofficial patch that attempts to fix the remaining issues unaddressed by the official patches. It included hundreds of gameplay, quests, and other bugs that the unofficial patch fixed in the game along with its add-ons.
