The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a pretty buggy game when you really think about it, and it remains fairly buggy to this day. Thankfully for Bethesda, it helped that many of them were more hilarious and fun to encounter rather than game breaking. I'm sure we've all been launched into the air by a Giant, or seen a man swimming through the air.
However, as games have focused more on realism, and high-profile disasters like Fallout 76 and Cyberpunk 2077 have been released to widespread criticism, there's less forgiveness for immersion breaking bugs than before. Bethesda has started receiving more criticism for its buggy and underwhelming launches, and now even Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith admits that the developer's games could use "a higher degree of polish."
In an interview with VideoGamer (thanks GamesRadar), Nesmith talks a little about the development side of his time at the studio before he retired back in 2021. He eventually starts talking about Bethesda's reputation for comical bugs, and admits that all of Bethesda's games could have done with more time in the oven, but also reckons he has a good reason for why the studio has been releasing games that lack...
