Why are Bethesda games so unstable?

[Jestere]

Bethesda didn't work on New Vegas, they just published it. Obsidian Entertainment developed F:NV. AS for why they are so buggy, most likely because of how large and detailed the games are. It would require a massive amount of man hours to find every single bug in the game. As for stability, I would go along with the idea that the engine is crap.

At least Skyrim is on a new engine. Hopefully it will be more stable.

I think this is a point a lot of people seem to be missing. Bethesda is the Publisher folks, Obsidian were the developers, so right off the bat your argument needs to be revised SacremPyrobolum

 

[ZeroMachine]

Then why, oh why, cant modded New Vegas or Oblivion stay up for longer than three cell changes?

I spy with my little eye...

I mod nearly all my games as you can see above and Vegas and Oblivion are the only ones that crash.

I have a massively modded Oblivion and it rarely crashes. Do you have all of the unofficial patches installed? Have you used a mod sorter like BOSS?

... Have you downloaded Midas Magic? Because you should. That's pretty unrelated to the crashing, but it's awesome. So are the Gates to Aesgard mods

Ehem... anyways.

To answer your question, it's because the games are so fucking huge. There are an infinite amount of things that could cause clashes.

 

[James Crook]

Well, that's probably because the GameBryo engine is a horrible piece of unoptimized arseshittery...
I hate it.

 

[Irridium]

Because Gamebryo is complete ass. Though you'd think Bethesda would get that after Oblivion and Fallout 3. But no, they then decide it's a good idea to give that buggy-ass engine to Obsidian to make a game, with Bethesda testing it.

Sucks man. Oblivion wouldn't STOP crashing for me until I installed some mods. Fallout 3 was a bit better, but Games For Windows Live made the game less stable.

Hopefully their Creation Engine is actually stable.

 

[obex]

For one New Vegas is made by Obsidian sure it uses Bethesda's engine but most of the problems were due to poor bug testing by Obsidian.

Bethesda did the bug testing and QA for New Vegas.

Edit: Unrelated, but Skyrim isn't using a new engine. It's just a polished up Gamebryo, so I wouldn't be surprised if much of the problems remain.

Well it was still a poorly tested game the bugs were due to the lack of testing not the engine seeing as it wasnt a million miles different from Fallout 3 and that didnt have half the amount of bugs (Awful DLC launches excluded)

Also skyrim is using a new engine the creation engine.

"since it was revealed they'd be using an entirely new engine and not the Gamebryo one used for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion or Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. "

http://www.ausgamers.com/news/read/3006733

"Skyrim utilizes the Creation Engine, a game engine developed internally by Bethesda"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim

"Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is going to benefit from an all-new engine, and Bethesda has detailed some of the improvements we can expect from the much-anticipated fantasy RPG. "

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/114/1144412p1.html

 

[Dirzzit]

Probably because their games have massive environments and complex AI and gameplay systems. Also they probably don't leave themselves much time to bug test.

uhhhhh what? Complex AI and gameplay systems? I don't know what game you were playing buddy.

 

[sheah1]

I would probably say unlimited potential. Bethesda games are the only games I can spend hundreds of hours on. The only games.

 

[Insanity72]

Then why, oh why, cant modded New Vegas or Oblivion stay up for longer than three cell changes?

I play Oblivion all the time on my PC with mods and it has never crashed once.

Snip

Off topic: why is your Avatar a Lorenz attractor plot?

 

[AlternatePFG]

Well it was still a poorly tested game the bugs were due to the lack of testing not the engine seeing as it wasnt a million miles different from Fallout 3 and that didnt have half the amount of bugs (Awful DLC launches excluded)

Also skyrim is using a new engine the creation engine.

"since it was revealed they'd be using an entirely new engine and not the Gamebryo one used for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion or Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. "

http://www.ausgamers.com/news/read/3006733

"Skyrim utilizes the Creation Engine, a game engine developed internally by Bethesda"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim

"Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is going to benefit from an all-new engine, and Bethesda has detailed some of the improvements we can expect from the much-anticipated fantasy RPG. "

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/114/1144412p1.html

Fallout 3 had plenty of bugs as well, saying that New Vegas had way more is kind of a stretch.

I know the Creation Engine is a new engine, but it's still using the old Gamebryo code, which is one of the reasons that Bethesda's version of the Gamebryo engine is so damn buggy. (There are other games that use the Gamebryo engine and aren't nearly as buggy as a result. It's the code.)

 

[Spectrum_Prez]

Think of it this way: are there any games out there quite like the ones Bethesda puts out? Open-world roam where everything you do is logged, where you can go in any direction, pick up any odd item, kill any person you meet? The fact is that it's too ambitious for most developers to touch, so they don't.

Oblivion was hella buggy for me until I disabled a single codec on my computer, after which it ran like a charm. Fallout 3 was always stable for me. Fallout New Vegas crashes every 5 or 6 external loads, or whenever lots of NPCs start dying. But I'm okay, and I just save and reload because there simply isn't another experience out there like it.

Rockstar games try the same thing. GTA4 was laggy as all hell on my computer, and the newer ones haven't even been released yet. The Saints Row 2 port was the buggiest thing I've ever tried.

Bethesda needs some competition in their little niche. I say that with love. But they need an upstart to show them they need to clean up their act.

 

[Caedus]

I don't know anything about Oblivion (never really had the patience for this particular game).

What I can tell you though is this:
New Vegas was published by Bethesda. Obsidian developped it using the Gamebryo engine. The thing is, a great bunch of Obsidian quests aren't really compatible with the engine (so it crashes).

That's why the DLCs are pretty much straightforward and the indoor environments are small, they can't provide support for the DLCs, only for the vanilla parts of the game (and I don't think we'll see another patch or whatever, the story arc pretty much ended with Lonesome Road).

Then there's the modding issue, maybe that's where the problem come from.

I wasn't able to install Fallout 3 for a full year on my computer (that's why I bought New Vegas on Xbox). I tried everything but it would just crash. Then (no patch came out, nothing), one day I tried to play it again and it worked! Just like that for no reason.

 

[mastermarty]

I f might give a hint: mods take up a huge amount of memory, wich the .exe file can't use.
I used a program wich made sure that fallout: new vegas may use all the memory it wishes, and I got a 70 hour save and not a single crash. wit mods.

 

[Zakarath]

Part of it is gamebryo. Part of it is that they have much more complexity in their systems than other games. In almost any game I can think of, all the NPCs you run into apart from enemies have very simple, straightforward scripting that tells them to do one or two tasks (if that). In Bethesda's games, each entity has its own AI, which massively increases the amount of possible interactions as well as their complexity, which makes both finding and solving bugs quite a bit harder. And yeah, they have the occasional other problem too (i.e. artists who use way too many polys for simple objects), so those aren't their only problems, but I would say that those are the primary causes.

 

[spartan773]

Probably because it's not bethesda, but probably Obsidian

 

[Omnific One]

Because there's a different between a map mod in a strategy game that just loads up a different map, than something that changes fundamental elements of the original game.

Also, I maxed Deus Ex and had more crashes (4) than I did in Fallout. And Fallout was modded.

After the patch, did anyone else start crashing around the basketball court?

 

[dyre]

A lot of it is Gamebryo, but at least for me, 9/10 crashes come from mod conflicts. Try disabling half your mods, see if the crashes persist (if they do, try disabling the other half, if the crashes stop, enable half of the mods you disabled to narrow down the problem)

 

[Joseph Alexander]

Probably because their games have massive environments and complex AI and gameplay systems. Also they probably don't leave themselves much time to bug test.

"complex AI" HA-hahaha, thats a good one.
but yeah betheda is one of a few companies who let bugs stay in, or even down right maintain them, if they're funny/improving the game somehow.
unfortunately they also happen to be the only company to do this who forgets that there are bugs that make gameplay shit.

 

[Woodsey]

Partly the engine, partly the size of the games.

 

[Robert Ewing]

Bethesda probably have 4x the lines of code any of those games listed. Maybe even more than those put together. I've looked the codes, and they are boundless. You have to expect that some lines of code won't add up, or will contain an error.

Also, most of their scripters, coders, designers are interns, hoping to prove themselves. So in all, I don't think it's all bad. It's still largely playable.