Bethesda discusses squashing bugs

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 1 September, 2011

"We have and continue to get better at it."

Bethesda reckons it's much better at squashing bugs in its open world games than it used to be - and it's getting better at it.

Bethesda's Fallout and Elder Scrolls games have a reputation for being buggy at launch, with some gamers complaining of system crashes and corrupted game saves.

The company has released a raft of patches and fixes for Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas in an effort to combat these issues post launch.

With Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim fast approaching, Bethesda marketing boss Pete Hines told Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz the development team is working hard to make sure the fantasy epic is as free from bugs as possible.

"It's something we continue to try to address and design for," he said. "If you go back and look, Fallout 3 was an incredibly stable game. Certainly not bug-free, but there's a difference for us between a rock that's floating a little above the ground, which is technically a bug, and one you might have that causes your game to crash or your save-games to get corrupted.

"So there's degrees. We start at the top and work our way down. Does the game load when you click on it? Does it save properly? That stuff. So it's something we're cognisant of. I think for Skyrim we built a number of things into the game to cover that and to try to improve that."

Bethesda has a harder time with bugs than other game developers because of the size and scope of its games, Hines said.

"The truth of the matter is that it's far easier to bug-test and playtest a game that's very linear than one that's very open," he explained.

"It is a bigger undertaking to wrangle all of that and make sure you've squeezed out every possible thing, like, 'Oh, you've picked up this sword then talked to this person then gave them that, then this thing happens.' It is literally approaching infinite when you talk about all those possibilities."

Fallout: New Vegas, which launched in 2010, also suffered from bugs. The difference here, however, was that it was created by Obsidian, and independent developer.

According to Hines, the problems players saw with that game should not be repeated.

"I think we have and continue to get better at it. When you look at Fallout: New Vegas, it was not a Bethesda Game Studios title, it was different experience for those guys even though we worked with them on it, but I think Todd [Howard] and his team have continued, over the 12 years I've been here working with them, to make improvements, and I think they're in a good place with this."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (37) Latest comment 9 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • spiritsnake #1 9 months ago

    how come Red dead redemption which is open world dint have such bad bugs?? or am i comparing with a totally wrong game??

  • phycus #2 9 months ago

    "If you go back and look, Fallout 3 was an incredibly stable game."

    Was this after all the patches? Certainly not in my experience where it crashed every couple of hours in the first few days of play.

  • Inmediasress #3 9 months ago

    Wonder how unplayable Skyrim will be at launch lol.

  • Zebula77 #4 9 months ago

    Big lolz. I recently went back to Fallout: New Vegas with the intent to buy the DLC packages etc. I played for one hour and the damn thing crashed and I just though "fuck it" and traded it in for Deus Ex. :)

    I know New Vegas was not a Bethesda-developed game, but Fallout 3 was ALMOST as buggy, though maybe it didn't crash quite as much.

    Still, great games, both of them.

  • glottis0 #5 9 months ago

    Fallout 3 seemed a lot less buggy than Oblivion (comparing 1.0 release versions), so their claim that they're improving is believable enough :)

  • syra #6 9 months ago

    Day one purchase, year two play.

  • The-Builder #7 9 months ago

    #1 - Donkey woman disagrees.

    The weird thing about the Fallout patches, was that they actually made the game worse on PC. They completly broke VATS, where it would just pause for a long time when you entered it. Not sure if they have actually fixed it yet.
    Edited by The-Builder at 01/09/11 @ 09:07

  • henro_ben #8 9 months ago

    Seems believable enough, certainly I found Fallout 3 more stable than Oblivion, and Oblivion seemed more stable than Morrowind in hindsight, had some terrible saved game corruption in Morrowind originally.

    The fact that it's a) open world and b) you can warp out of missions at any time must make it a nightmare to test. Was it Morrowind where it just used to end the game if you accidently killed someone random npc who was needed later on?

    Fallout 3 New Vegas however is shockingly unstable, even after all the patches.

  • paulf #9 9 months ago

    that donkey woman looks like a feature not a bug :) Surprised they didnt charge for her as dlc tbh

  • Nazo #10 9 months ago

    Fallout 3 stable? Hahahaha no. It's the only game that has ever crashed my PS3.
    I got the game with my system and waited about 9 months before I even opened it in the hope they'd patch up the problems, but nothing came except eventually DLC enabling patches.

    I'll be watching the forums very carefully before I consider Skyrim.

  • cloud_ix #11 9 months ago

    Sorry but no every bethesda game has being a buggy painful experience for me:
    fallout3, new vegas, wet all bugged to shit, they make compelling game worlds but sadly they are compelling broken game worlds and I now avoid bethesda games on this reason alone.

  • Xboxfanuk #12 9 months ago

    how come Red dead redemption which is open world dint have such bad bugs?? or am i comparing with a totally wrong game??

    Red Dead is way less complicated with scripting and AI then Elder Scrolls and also from what Eurogamer reports it's a sweat shop.
    Edited by Xboxfanuk at 01/09/11 @ 09:59

  • barkertron #13 9 months ago

    "Does the game load when you click on it? .. I think for Skyrim we built a number of things into the game to cover that and to try to improve that"

    Yes, I would agree that the game loading when you click on it is quite important. I'm not a game developer, but you might want to have a look at that one first.

  • xYOSSARIANx #14 9 months ago

    I hope Skyrim doesn't have the bug where NPC's spawn to high in the air or just off a bridge/ledge and fall to their perma-deaths. I wasn't able to buy the best house in Oblivion, or complete a quest in Fallout 3 because of that one.

  • superbeast2010 #15 9 months ago

    Post deleted at 10:57:39 01-02-2012

  • CaptainKid #16 9 months ago

    The key is waiting 6 months before you play these games.
    I have no issues playing Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

  • xYOSSARIANx #17 9 months ago

    @CaptainKid,

    That is very true, but I look forward to Beth open world games so much, I'd never not be able to buy day one and immerse myself in the world. I don't have the will power to deny myself.

  • DirectAim #18 9 months ago

    Skyrim is day one, simple as.

  • DirectAim #19 9 months ago

    also the video doesn't work!

  • YailBloor #20 9 months ago

    Just tried to re-read EG's review of NV and Internet Explorer crashed. Ahhh, the irony.....

  • KrazyFace #21 9 months ago

    Well, weirdly I've just in the last couple weeks gone back to New Vegas as I noticed a lot of people saying it had been patched. I got it on release and went for the limited special edition because I loved FO3 so much, but after playing for a couple hours I realised it was too broken to continue. I'm glad I kept it though as I've just put in my 100th hour and I've been pretty impressed.

    I really do hope Skyrim won't suffer the same fate, but I'm sure Bethesda will forgive me for waiting and watching.

  • RichyRichh77 #22 9 months ago

    I loved Fallout 3 and only suffered from a few system hangs and the glitch within the Pit DLC where you fell through random sections of the roof. :-S

    However after reading through the list of major game breaking faults with Fallout: New Vegas (NPC's disappearing, quests that couldn't be handed in, entire game save volumes corrupted!?!) I took it back unopened and I'm genuinely glad I did.

    When it comes to Skyrim I'd have loved to make this a day one purchase but with other pre-orders on their way and a personal feeling that it will unfortunately ship with a plethora of bugs I'm happier waiting for initial user feedback and the inevitable 1GB patch.

  • intpleeus #23 9 months ago

    I want to see a few crazy bugs; it wouldn't be a Bethesda game without them.

  • Stratix #24 9 months ago

    Games need more betas.

    Gives away the story, but a game with less bugs is more important in my mind.

    If I don't want to know the story, I wont look for spoilers. Deus Ex was not afraid to do it.

    If they don't want to provide players with the game files, OnLive may begin to be a good option, but that does remove the ability to test the game on different kinds of computers.

  • glottis0 #25 9 months ago

    @Stratix... you realise that Deus Ex: HR was leaked, illegally...and not a beta? Maybe that's just extremely dry humour though.

    Quite like the OnLive idea though - would also stop journalists leaking review copies, which happens every so often.

  • jamieleng #26 9 months ago

    "how come Red dead redemption which is open world dint have such bad bugs??" Rockstars open world maps have been virtually flawless in my experience. The only RDR glitches I saw were on YouTube & were absolutely hilarious, like the poker playing horse or cougar lady.

  • FarbrorBaku #27 9 months ago

    I didn't have a single crash in fallout 3 on the 360, not bad considering that i played it for 200+ hours, new vegas on the other hand was a complete mess, it got so bad that i decided to stop playing it until they patch the hell out of it, but that felt more like it was obsidians doing their games tend to be marred by some serious bugs.

    @ Yeah rockstars games have an incredible amount of polish, the only bugs i saw in red dead where awesome.
    Edited by FarbrorBaku at 01/09/11 @ 14:04

  • AidyD #28 9 months ago

    I heard alot of complaints for Fallout 3 being a buggy mess, so seems an odd example for the marketing boss to use, though I played through it 3 times, once on 360 and twice on PC and only ever had one proper bug/crash.

  • actionfitz #29 9 months ago

    "Bethesda discusses squashing bugs..."

    Hmm. was expecting an article about spurious litigation of Indie developers for using the word Scrolls in their game...
    ;)

  • Ikaros_O #30 9 months ago

    Hate Fallout 3 because of all the bugs, developers shouldn't be reward with high sales for such a bug ridden game.

  • peppergomez #31 9 months ago

    I know I should wait a month or two after it's out to buy it because of bugs, but I won't have the patience. Please make it stable, guys!

  • sabbede #32 9 months ago

    The more content you have, the more opportunities there are for bugs - seems a fairly obvious relationship.
    I forgive them. As buggy as all their games have been, I didn't care because the games were so goddamn good!

  • sabbede #33 9 months ago

    The more content you have, the more opportunities there are for bugs - seems a fairly obvious relationship.
    I forgive them. As buggy as all their games have been, I didn't care because the games were so goddamn good!

  • knocker #34 9 months ago

    It's quite scary that they describe some of the very fundamentals of QA in terms of being a novel approach.

    It's a really simple choice for management. Do you give a f'k about QA or not ? I suggest you don't. What you do care about is your lack of quality costing you money.

    While money is an important incentive to get stuff right, it's not enough alone to change the culture within a company and reach this goal.

    And yeah, an open ended game is harder, that just means you have to do it better. Not an excuse for doing it worse.

  • Sevens #35 9 months ago

    "If you go back and look, Fallout 3 was an incredibly stable game."

    Dear lord.

  • Kaminari #36 9 months ago

    You know a company is shit at QA when they silently expect the community to fix themselves the hundreds of bugs that plague a game like Oblivion (even with the official patches).
    Edited by Kaminari at 01/09/11 @ 21:54

  • Murton #37 9 months ago

    "If you go back and look, Fallout 3 was an incredibly stable game. Certainly not bug-free, but there's a difference for us between a rock that's floating a little above the ground, which is technically a bug, and one you might have that causes your game to crash or your save-games to get corrupted."

    I don't need to go back and look, my memory of Fallout 3 is 20-20 thank you, and incredible is certainly one word that springs to mind when thinking about its stability, as in "it's incredible that you were allowed to release this broken excuse for a AAA game"

    Also, if you go back and look at your own forum archives you'll find hundreds of posts of people complaining about crashes and saved game corruption on PS3, 360 AND PC. Fallout 3 was broken right down to the core, and as New Vegas was pretty much the same game with a new map and some mods it was just as bad. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence seeing that Skyrim is running on the same engine and being built to the same "philosophy" as previous titles.