so while this game is rather old now, I still play it a ton. I Honestly just keep getting these same bugs and glitches on 360 and can't figure out why this game isn't more stable after all this time for patches.

I'll get in game graphics breaking sometimes and clutching out and my conse has a tendency to freeze up during loading screens.

Also not to mention the usually bank that comes with Bethesda games. Is this a issue with my copy or is this game still kinda unstable after all these years on consoles.

PC version or bust when it comes to Bethesda games. Those unofficial patches are downright essential.

The worst thing is that the PS3 version had some serious memory leak issues and things that could make your game unplayable the further you progressed, and at some point Bethesda just gave up and said they're not going to work on fixes for that console release anymore - and no one said anything.

In fact it won a whole bunch of awards. I mean Skyrim was on the order of Unity bad, if not worse because it had a ton of game breaking bugs rather than silly graphical issues.

@corevi: yeah, I wish I had a gaming capable PC. One day I hope to invest in one. But for now I'm on consoles. What's weird is that it's not every character I made that has hear issues. Some that I created earlier seem to play without crashes. Could it be I just have too many saves and that's causing issues?

Believe it or not, but I actually had less gamebreaking bugs in the 360 version. That one had a couple of freezes, but every quest worked (about 100 hours with main character). On the PC Esbern wouldn't unlock his door down in the sewers and some guy from the companions followed me around for a couple of hours repeating the same line of dialogue.

Yeah, Elder Scrolls games are kinda fucked, but I love em sooo much. And they are way better now than they used to be about finding bugs before release (granted, the games are less complex in an rpg sense nowadays)

They did fix the framerate problem eventually. The game still ran like crap on PS3 (both consoles did really), but more like Ocarina of Time on the N64 crap and not trying to run Crysis on an IBM 5100 level crap.

All Bethesda games have weird issues that sometimes get fixed, but usually don't unless by modders. There was on area in Fallout 3 in the Point Lookout DLC where I could walk to and without fail the game would lock up every single time. This was on the path to a main quest area so I had to specifically walk around it or face restarting my console. Which being an Xbox 360 takes something like four minutes now.

Bethesda games are like a girlfriend who sometimes steals your stuff but the sex is so great, you don't care. They've always got a ton of problems, however the good far outweighs the bad. And, a lot of the issues are fixable on the PC version if you have that option.

It's because videogame "journalists" kept showering those incompetent chumps with goty awards (thankfully GiantBomb didn't) and in some cases even resorted to victim blaiming. Basically if you were playing on PS3, you were wrong & guilty in expecting a competent product. Modders also keep enabling them by fixing majority of the bugs Bethesda did not even care to acknowledge they existed. They had literally a dozen GOTY-awards from the major sites to even care about the fallout.

You should have seen the Bethesda forums blown up by angry customers to the point that every thread got locked and criticism got bans. After every patch, maybe over 15 by now, players were instructed to RESTART YOUR ENTIRE PLAYTHROUGH. They were só incompetent with such a terrible piece of shit engine that certain flags were hardsaved to the savefile, requiring a fresh save file to even make use of the patch. It doesn't stop there as people were instructed to rebuild their console's database and clearing caches as stopgap measures till the next patch came out. Both convoluted and time consuming 'fixes' for a game running on an ancient engine.

Gamers and modders should have taken a stand there and then. The same bugs plagueing New Vegas (mainly memory-related ones) were after 2 year of experience with bug patching STILL present in Skyrim. That's a whole new level of incompetence, reintroducing bugs that were patched two years ago. The case with New Vegas was worse, since on PS3 it's still not patched yet. Instead, "journalist" were blind to the problems and kept showering the game with glowing reviews. Keep in mind, Skyrim is running on the same engine as the original Hitman and apparently that's enough for a GOTY. Modders fixed most of Skyrim's problems and that somehow gave Bethesda a free pass. It's like we taught a dumb dog all the wrong things you can teach it.

Then there was the case of the new DLC's not working at all on PS3. They literally had to turn to Sony and beg for help to get their game working on the PS3. Sony sent engineers and after some tinkering they got it done. Can you imagine a studio experienced with the same decade old GameBryo engine needing help from Sony that had 0 experience with the engine to fix their abject mess?

The crazy thing is even with all the glitches it may be my favourite game of last gen, definitely top 5. Between 3 copies of the game I probably had around 400 hours. I first bought it on PS3 and put in between 100 and 120 hours, eventually the memory leak made it unbearable so I traded it in and grabbed the PC version. I put probably 120-130 hours in this version. Then when I was living in residence at my university in 2013 I didn't have my PC, just a laptop and my PS3, I had a shockingly light period of time school wise so I decided to go back in, grabbing the GOTY PS3 version. I actually don't remember experiencing any memory leak in this one. I probably had about 150 hours in this version.

Damn I played that game too much lol. The crazy thing is, if they rereleased it with some performance enhancements and maybe a little new content I would totally get it again.

@trafalgarlaw: I know enough people who finished the PS3 version of Skyrim, it was the worst version but it ran more or less the same as the 360 version. Comparing Gamebryo on Hitman to Skyrim has to be one of your more wild stance's, two incomparable games, years apart with two very different goals in mind. New Vegas is a more accurate comparison, but that was Obsidian and guaranteed NV was developed entirely separate from Skyrim, we don't know any of the specifics: What did Obsidian start with? Are the engine versions the same? Did they follow the same path or has it branched like crazy?

I also take issue with the notion that you feel Bethesda is incompetent, few of us here have developed anything even approaching the size of a ES game. Few of us can properly understand the massive challenge of doing the QA for something like a ES game, and even fewer understand what it's like to fix those issues and not break countless other things. I rate your tirade against "Journalist", 1 Sony branded soap box out of 5.

Need to get the unofficial patches. Can't really do anything about it on console unfortunately.

Suddenly Skyrim never worked for anyone when a thread like this comes along.

Bethesda is really just not very good at making, maintaining, or improving the engines for their games. They just don't have the technical in-house expertise. All of their games on all platforms suffer the same issues.

But, gamers just keep giving them money and buying broken games, so of course it never changes.

It's because everyone else just rolls their eyes and moves on...

@themaniacsgnome: The engines are the same, the very same memory leaks appeared in NV. I could name more bugs that are the same but they neglected to learn from past bugs. I take issue with your apologist stance of "Critics have never a game developed before, it's a huge game yadiyada". It's like Skyrim was the very first game ever made and is thus absolved from any scorn. Gimme a break.

I am not making this shit up, Bethesda has literally hired their very first QA employee LAST YEAR. It's crazy how much flak Ubisoft got for Unity but that game fucking worked out of the gate aside from framerate drops and weird faces.

Not everyone, but it did have issues with a lot of people, most notably on the PS3. Also it's much easier to dismiss it if you were one of those people for whom the game worked generally fine (as far as Bethesda open world game "work" fine) but when you're part of that smaller yet still sizeable group of people for whom the game completely messed up it's a real sore spot.

Another Bethesda published game, Wolfenstein New Order, didn't have a lot of people publicly complaining about any technical issues. I'll be damned if I don't always point out what an ordeal it was for me to get that thing to run on PC, as it was for tons of others on the Steam forums who were experiencing the exact same issue - something that I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't officially addressed to this day. Only way I got that game running was a user made patch.

Thats not a Bethesda developed game mind you, but the annoyance at having to deal with those issues can really make or break your enjoyment of the game quite drastically.

The only issues I had were two quests breaking (UGH) and the freeze on loading screen occasionally. However, considering all the issues I had with Oblivion, I was pleasantly surprised with how few times Skyrim made me want to pull out my hair in frustration.

It's awesome, I will say, on the PC. I originally played on the 360 and that was fun, but PC is much better. You can use console commands to fix quests, you can mod it, I've never had a freeze or crash and the loading times are much shorter. I think the next Bethesda RPG, whether it's Elder Scrolls or Fallout series, I will play on the PC from the start. It's just a better experience.

The PS3 version is basically one big scam, the load times and framerate continually gets worse the longer you play it rendering it nigh unplayble after 50 or so hours. I managed to squaeze around 70-80 hours out of one character, but boy those last hours were unbearable even for some one who's used to bad framerates.

Fallout New Vegas was funny enough way better about that stuff. It wasn't great, but at least it was playable after 50-100-200 hours on a character.

i never had a problem with the ps3 version,and none of my friends did either.it had a decent amount of small bugs at launch for me,and at this point they are all fixed.i do realize that people had problems with the game though.its kinda funny that every game that people say has a ton of bugs or a gamebreaking bug,never happens to me when i play it,but when i play a game no one says has bugs,i have a horrible experience with them.so i guess im just lucky or something,because i never have the horrible broken games anyone else has.

It sucks Bethesda games (especially on the PS3) are so fucked sometimes. Personally I've put 100+ hours into Fallout 3/New Vegas (PS3) and Skyrim (360) each and I can say that stuff can't stop me from loving the games.

phew. thought i was having a stroke for a second...since that's EXACTLY what GB did.

I'm glad I didn't have many problems. One side quest was bugged so that I couldn't complete it and other than that my experience was smooth.

I feel bad for those that experienced so many bugs. I played over 100 hours and can't say I ran into many bugs at all. Compared to games that came out last year with a fraction of the content I think skyrim was pretty impressive. Kinda sad reading comments from people that are still upset it won goty what 3 or 4 years ago? Kinda pathetic.

Even though Bethesda didn't test or fix all the bugs and deserve to get blamed to some extent for that, I think the biggest problem they have is that they are still using the most buggy and broken and awful game engine out there which is Gamebryo. The problem with changing engines though is that all the fantastic modders are used to way that engine works and so Bethesda would have to put a lot of work into mod support.

Anyway, if you're playing on PC make sure to download all the Unofficial Patches as the modders fixed a lot of bugs that Bethesda never bothered to fix.

I can't help but say "its a Bethesda game, expect bugs" but that is the actual case with them, except the whole package or don't.

I could understand the scorn if it wasn't a Bethesda game, but it is. With crazy levels of openness and complexity you are going to have crazy levels of bugs. It goes with the territory. If you want a perfectly bug-free game, play a 2D platformer and hope for the best; if you want a game that pushes the envelope, expect some problems.

And that's the thing, this game is so good that I'm playing it 3 years later: this is my favorite game series and I guess I should just accept some bugs and glitches: my thing is though I don't know if restarting my character would even do anything, because it seems like a crap shoot if your going to get these bugs or game breaking issues.

The 360 version has been pretty fine for me. I remember it crashing less than a half dozen times in the 100+ hours I played, which seems like an okay number. Nothing game breaking.

@trafalgarlaw: Actually, Skyrim was GOTY for the year it came out - but specifically the 360 and PC versions, I'm pretty sure they didn't count the PS3 version at all.

I played about a hundred hours of the 360 version and experienced few, if any, bugs. I had a lot more on the PC version, but I also had mods running on the PC version. Then again, I also had very few problems with Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas on the 360.

Took me like 30 tries before I could do one of the Daedric quests because it froze every time I tried. PC version.

Except the unofficial patches have their own problems that no one seems to talk about. I always get locked out of a particular Companion quest that works fine without the unofficial patches. And yes, I installed them correctly. Been modding Bethesda games for years, and I know how to monitor and change load orders.

@development: Never had that severe a problem with it but I don't bother with companions.

@corevi: It's the quest right before becoming a werewolf, which is the only reason I ever pay attention to them. The passive buff (total disease immunity) alone is worth it, even if you never transform. Red-Head and Grey-Hair-Guy walk to the little secret cave entrance and just stand there for all eternity.

@development: Oh, The Companions! Yeah didn't have that problem and I went through the full quest line on two characters with the unofficial patch.

@civid: I played on the PS3 for over 200 hours, and only towards the very end did it start to get bad--and never bad enough to stop playing.

I only played Skyrim for the first time last year, so perhaps they've fixed up the PS3 version a lot since release.