Top 10 Glitchiest Bethesda Games

Nothing can stop Jessie and Zofia from liberating Neu-Paris from its Nazi oppressors… except for a couple of bugs. Luckily Bethesda released a patch for all platforms so both of them can do what they do best. This spin-off of the Wolfenstein series launched with lots of bugs and received mixed reviews. The game would give players the ‘silent treatment’ with sound drops or confuse them unintentionally with distorted sounds. A certain mission would be closed off and essentially broken if it was completed out of order due to an online co-op error and some players would enter areas where enemies and drones would spawn endlessly.

Sentry bots, super mutants and death claws are scary enough but the wasteland of Fallout 3 is also populated by glitches. Some of them were just annoying like the glitch where the PS3 version of the game would pause if you received a ‘Friends notification’. Whereas others would wear players out like when the game would crash if you used too many ‘Radaways’ in the ‘Pip-Boy menu’. Glitchy NPCs however are a mix of horrific and hilarious. Some can casually elongate their limbs, spin their heads, soar through the sky or just disappear completely. Patches were released soon after but who’d want to see this patched out?

New Vegas took what worked in Fallout 3 while still keeping things fresh. Unfortunately, the bugs made the trip to New Vegas too. It suffered from issues like game crashes, game freezes, players getting stuck, save files getting corrupted and lots more that made it difficult to enjoy what otherwise is a great game. Players would often be defenceless in the wasteland because sometimes weapons would just freeze. Other times you could only load one bullet at a time. There was also a chance that your screen would cut to black while firing a weapon. After several patches were released, we guess lots of players wished that the bugs in New Vegas didn’t stay in New Vegas.

Just like its post-apocalyptic siblings, Oblivion’s bugs would be able to send an ogre scurrying. It had the usual ones that freeze your game, corrupt your save files and pretty much ruin your day; but it also had eerie ones like constantly getting the messages, ‘enemies nearby’ or ‘guards are pursuing you’. Thankfully, Bethesda patched that paranoia-inducing bug out but it also got rid of some exploitable glitches like the one where players could duplicate items by firing an arrow a certain way. Also, it’s not a Bethesda game without some stretchy NPCs.

Bethesda dipped their bread into the first-person shooter fondue with “Brink”. It was a single-player game with co-op and multiplayer elements all blended into one. It had minor issues that wouldn’t make you lose your head, like exiting the ‘head customization’ menu would take you to the wrong menu. Issues related to online gameplay however were more annoying. There were sound drops, memory leaks & crashes, graphical problems and connectivity difficulties. All of these bugs stirred up players when it was launched and the backlash over the game feeling broken and incomplete wasn’t easy to shake off.

This game managed to capture that ghastly feeling that H.P. Lovecraft's stories were known for. The survival horror elements work really well in this game but it’s being exposed to the terrors of bugs that will drive you insane! Want to end the prologue level by jumping down a trapdoor? Prepare for a game crash. Want to move a box while crouched? That could be another game crash. Just playing the game in general? Boo! Random game crash. There is an unofficial patch that fixes most of these glitches but some bugs still linger, just waiting until you forget to save!

Since Morrowind is an RPG, you can choose to be a character who exploits glitches. At the beginning of the game, your pockets can be a bit deeper than most other players. You just have to steal something and open your inventory before a guard catches you. You’ll have a duplicate of the item after handing over the original. Speaking of duplicating, you can even make a copy of quest items. Having trouble with an enemy? Kill them with a few swings of your melee weapon and way too many swigs of alcohol! Don't want to become a citizen of Morrowind? You can do that too! The possibilities are almost endless if you don’t mind breaking the game every now and then.

You’ve just fast-travelled and a group of super mutants have you in their sights, will you take them out or will you not be able to use your weapons, grenades or V.A.T.S.? That’s just one of the many glitches that Fallout 4 has to offer. Bethesda did release patches but for a while, players had to use kooky methods to get rid of these glitches. Switching from first-person to third-person, firing and then reloading one specific weapon or the more reliable restarting your game. Fallout 4 is still an awesome game, especially after the bug fixes, but right after the launch, most players were probably going nuclear while playing it.

We are pretty sure that the antagonist of the game, Alduin, would have used glitches and exploits if he could, so why can’t we? There are so many glitches that you can use to your advantage but there are also some unpleasant ones to balance these out. You can stack armour sets and wear them all at once to combine their stats. Endless dragon souls can be yours but a few dragon puzzle doors will remain shut forever. There was a real give and take with these glitches before the patches came out. We guess we can still enjoy glitchy NPCs.

With bugs the size of radroaches, it was an easy pick for our top spot. At this point, it’s almost enjoyable to go bug hunting when Bethesda releases a new game. Since this is the first online multiplayer game in the franchise, running into glitches was expected. Everyone hoped for just a few but we got our fair share. Mundane actions like placing items were riddled with glitches, entire camps that players set up would just disappear, fast-travelling at the same time as another player would freeze you in space and time. The patches by Bethesda seem to have smoothened things out but making any game completely ‘bug-free’ might be a stretch.