Don’t worry, Piper’s not dead. She’s just planking, and not because she wants to. Fallout 4 has simply decided that her time would be best spent face-down on the floor.
While Fallout 4 doesn’t technically come out until November 10th, the game has already been launched in the eastern world for several hours already. As such, the Fallout 4 review embargo has ended, and that means reviews are already starting to come out. However, while the game has been getting some great praise, some reviewers are finding some terrible flaws that might ruin the game for many players.
Glitches have always been part of Bethesda games. In fact, the developer is notorious for them. Many of these bugs come in the form of quirky physics glitches, repetitive conversations, character “pops”, and even the occasional instant-death. Sometimes these are funny (like this one from Skyrim seen above) while other times it can be downright frustrating. Unfortunately, Fallout 4 is reported as having all of these classic bugs and more, as well as some potentially game-breaking ones that fall into the latter category.
According to Chris Carter of Destructoid:
At this point, you [the player] are probably aware of Bethesda’s history with shipping buggy open-world games by now. If you were hoping that somehow a generational leap would magically buck that trend, prepare to be disappointed. Nearly every classic glitch is accounted for, including occasional save data issues, repeated dialogue, frameskipping, severe frame-rate drops, pop-in, falling through the floor, and so on.
For those of you who are used to this with the past work, it’s par for the course — for everyone else who doesn’t put up with it, nothing has changed. I should also note that while visual issues were persistently present in the Xbox One edition (reviewed here), I only ran into full-on game crashing twice during my travels. Given how glitchy it is, I can only speculate as to whether or not there will be any game-breaking bugs that completely halt progress, but it seems very likely.
Carter’s testimony lies with what many players have come to expect from Bethesda. Whether it is the Elder Scrolls series, or Fallout, players know that they should save often if they hope to make it through the game in one piece. However, not everyone is so lucky.
As Chris Plante of The Verge has come to understand, Carter’s hypothesis on game-breaking bugs is rather accurate.
In a rather eloquent role-played article, Plante states that he has become stuck in an elevator after 9 hours of gameplay. In an attempt to progress further into the game he reloaded a previous save file that was set several minutes prior to his beginning of the mission. However, after reaching the elevator again the elevator froze once more. In fact, none of the elevators in the game worked ever again. No matter which save file he loaded, the game would not let him use an elevator ever again.
The game was broken, as was his heart. Since then, Plante has been reconsidering whether or not he should start a new save, or simply not invest any more time into the game.
While it should be expected from Bethesda at this point, these glitches are simply inexcusable. Whether the games are fun or not, is it not an insult to us – the consumer – to pay good money towards these games, and yet be unable to play them properly as a result of glitches?
I for one cannot see why we hold a game like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 to such high standards while Bethesda simply gets a slug in the shoulder and a good ol’ “Oh you!” from consumers. Maybe their games are just that good. But on the other hand, maybe we – as gamers – have simply grown accustomed to just accepting what is handed to us.
For those who want to see some more glitches in action, here’s a compilation of videos I’ve found online:
Forget The Phantom Pain, Here’s The Phantom Limb!
– via David Wilcox (Youtube)
An Air-Swimming Dogmeat
– via David Wilcox (Youtube)
Collision Error Breakdancing
– via NowGamerTube (Youtube)
Raiders “pop” in for a Surprise Party
– via David Wilcox (Youtube)
[Header Image] Piper Decides Planking is Useful
– via FPetts (Youtube)
What do you guys think about the glitches in Fallout 4? Do you think that Bethesda should be allowed to get away with this? How long do you think it will be before Bethesda or modders find a way to clean up this mess? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!
