Bethesda’s got a lot going for it over the past decade. It helped to resurrect DOOM, it put Wolfenstein back on the frontlines, we’ve even seen Quake respawn to complete id Software’s trinity of landmark shooters. It dipped its toes into survival horror with The Evil Within, and crept into the stealth action genre with Dishonored.
Of course, that still leaves us with the crown jewels of Bethesda’s gilded gaming crown; Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Every gamer, casual, hardcore, even non-gamers are more than familiar with the titles. Their popularity is hardly without reason - release for release, they’re generally the biggest, most feature-heavy open-world adventures to be had for their time.
And the latest releases, Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, showcase these claims brilliantly. For all the hype preceding their releases, the buzz following, and the immense amount of critical praise that they receive, you’d almost think that they were flawless.
They aren’t. They’re great games, make no mistake. But they’re not without drawbacks, strange design choices or fundamentally flawed mechanics.
So pull the arrows out of your knee, grab a sweet roll, and get ready to help another settlement. We’re about to dive in and see fifteen things wrong with each of these titanic franchises. And just for a bit of sport, we’re going to avoid the low hanging fruit. Which means we aren’t even going to mention the bugs. We get it, they’re open world Bethesda titles. There are bugs. That’s a given. Anyway, as we take the plunge together, just remember…
Sometimes it’s okay to admit that it just doesn’t work.
30 FALLOUT 4: Why Do We Even Want To Find Sean?
Your character’s first taste of the post-nuclear Commonwealth is helplessly witnessing the murder of their spouse and abduction of their son. Ouch. Now that’s a tough break.
So it’s totally understandable to embark on a desperate and singularly important quest of recovering sonny boy Shaun from the Institute’s clutches. Right after you build a city. Or twelve. And pick a cool club to join, make a few friends, solve your new friends’ personal issues, and aimlessly explore half of Massachusetts. Wait, Shaun? Who’s Shaun?
29 SKYRIM: What Exactly Was The War Good For?
What’s built up to be an epic line of quests and warfare boils down to your taste in aesthetics. Do you like knock-off Roman armor, or do you like vikings? There. Choice made.
Also, you can complete the main quest while ignoring the conflict.
The only difference it makes is whether or not you get to participate in a largely ineffective “negotiation” quest that may or may not result in a few town guards changing costumes. The civil war battles can be a neat bit of swordplay, but they’re more like skirmishes and sort of lacking in the rewards department.
28 FALLOUT 4: We’ll Settle For Less (Building Settlements Sucked)
This really had the potential to be an awesome addition to the game. But with the vanilla implementation, it’s pretty easy to come up with a list of activities that’d be way more fun. Like hugging a porcupine, digging splinters out from beneath your fingernails or swallowing a burning coal.
After you’ve spent hours realizing that you can’t finish the perfect design for your shantytown, much less come close, you can populate it with a colorful assortment of vagrants that will cheerfully remind you of what a bad mayor you are at every opportunity they get. Geeze, guys. You’re welcome?
27 SKYRIM: Oh, You Mean That Fire-Breathing Mosquito? (Dragons Are Weak By The End)
Another much lauded inclusion in this chapter of the Elder Scrolls was true blue dragon slaying, the quintessential cornerstone of RPG tropes.
For your first few encounters, it could be a truly epic experience.
However, you’d inevitably hit a point where swatting dragons is something akin to swatting gnats. They do get stronger, but it doesn’t seem to be paced very well. And true, as your character gets stronger, daunting tasks should get easier. But should slaying a dragon ever elicit a yawn?
26 FALLOUT 4: He Had A Lot Of Nothin’ To Say (The Choices In Fallout Are Bad)
Your dialogue options generally break down into four branches. You can develop amnesia and ask what you’re talking about again, you can be the good guy, you can try being the bad guy, and you can be the sarcastic edgelord jerk.
And really, that’s about it. Once in a great while you can perform a speech check, but the opportunity rarely presents itself and tends to just either give you the option to either be an even edgier jerk or wimp out of a fight. In the worst and most common situations, they’re an unreliable “press me for some experience” button.
25 SKYRIM: Should’ve Stayed Classy!
Yeah, you get to pick your character’s race, and that’s neat. But defining his or her profession provided that extra layer of personalization that really made your character feel like your own.
Being a Battlemage even sounds cool. Seriously, try saying it out loud.
Okay, not that loud. People can hear you, and Nightblade was easily the superior choice. But really, having that further degree of direction went miles in terms of immersion and defining your play style. It gave you a real reason to play two or more characters, outside of being a man cat thing this time instead of an elf.
24 FALLOUT 4: The Wasteland Doesn’t Feel So Wild Anymore
Fallout’s inherent wackiness is a part of the charm. There are absolute tons of other games out there if you wanted a hardcore wasteland survival experience. The sense of humor and self-awareness are intrinsic to the Fallout experience.
That isn’t to say that these elements are absent from Fallout 4, I mean, who didn’t buy the charge card?! But they’re far less pronounced and far between. Fallout 3 and New Vegas had struck a happy medium by making these experiences optional for those that preferred to go without, and Fallout feels a lot less like Fallout with so few of them. At least we’ve got the Silver Shroud quests.
23 SKYRIM: Statistical Anomaly (Where Did Our Stats Go?)
Stripping away and replacing typical RPG conventions can be exciting, and fun. But you do need to remember to replace them, or else all you’ve really done is take a step towards the action-adventure genre.
Yes, there are technically three statistics remaining: health, magicka, and stamina. But in addition to assigning a perk point, that’s pretty much all you’ve got in terms of progression. It just further cements the idea that there’s really not much in the way of replay value for a new character.
22 FALLOUT 4: No Skills To Pay My Bills
Taking the polar opposite when it comes to controversially absent RPG bedrocks, the entirety of Fallout’s typically expansive and well-loved skill system was relegated to a short list of “perks.”
While successfully making the game a little more accessible for the less hardcore of RPG fans, it detracted from the more unique aspects of each playthrough and harmed the game’s general replay value, as higher level characters had a much easier time of seeing more concerning what the game had to offer.
21 SKYRIM: The Early Bird Gets The Under Leveled Worm
You’ve got it. Chillrend. One of the coolest, and most powerful, one-handed blades in the game. It practically purrs as you unsheathe it, ready to do battle against whatever foe has dared cross swords with the Dragonborn.
Only it would be a lot better if you’d waited five levels to get it.
There is perhaps nothing more frustrating than learning this for the first time, and knowing for the rest of your playthrough that your favorite bandit whacker is permanently gimped because you didn’t dally around long enough before getting your greedy paws on it.
20 FALLOUT 4: The Sole Survivor’s Predetermined Role
Fallout has always set you on the road with some vague notion of your character’s origins. From the Vault Dweller to the Courier, they struck a balance between an origin story and still serving as a canvas that the player could paint.
Fallout 4 filled in too many of your survivor’s gaps to be considered a truly “open” roleplaying experience. Whether you were army dude Nate or lawyer lady Nora, you were cornered into the role of devoted spouse and doting parent, whether you liked it or not. You got the option to apply some sass, but never really had the option to stray from the mark.
19 SKYRIM: A Clear Case Of Stealthy Favoritism
The quest lines for stealthy sneak thieves and shadowy assassins should be thrilling and full of intrigue. And with Skyrim, they knocked it out of the park on both fronts.
And that’s great! But what about everyone else?
They’re there, sure. The Companions, the Mage’s College, even the uh, Bard’s College? Anyway, few, if any of them provide the depth of their stealth based cousins, and often get left by the wayside, even though the Companions’ huntress Aela is quite a fox. Or wolf. You know what I mean.
18 FALLOUT 4: No Reputation, No Problems!
You sure do get a neat bunch of clubs to join in the wasteland. You get the xenophobic tin cans, the guys that got blown all the way back to 1774, the underground railroad and a slightly more serious version of Aperture Science!
You can even join all four of them for maximum fun! And no, none of them really seem to mind.
You will, at some point, be forced to pick which one you like best. But three of them lead to roughly the same end, and the choice itself doesn’t amount to much outside of who tags along for your last few scuffles, and who you’re shooting at.
17 SKYRIM: Easy Street
Yes, at long last, it’s the most commonly regurgitated complaint when it comes to the modernization of nearly every video game series since the history of ever.
But it does carry an unfortunate degree of truth, all things considered.
Skyrim really did pack it in here. While the combat in the Elder Scrolls series has always been a bit straightforward, everything from regenerating health to picking locks seems to support complete ease of play. It’s a nice thought, but a little challenge outside of “don’t poke the giant at level two” would make the whole game a lot more rewarding.
16 FALLOUT 4: The Mysteriously Annoying Sanctuary Hammer Cult
Clink, clink, clink, clink. If ever you attempted to make Sanctuary your base of wasteland survival operations, your initial band of Quincy refugees ensured it was the biggest mistake you’d ever made.
Every single day for the entirety of your playthrough, these four will gather at the garage at the center of Sanctuary at daybreak, and perform this strange ritual. No one knows why, because it’s certainly not accomplishing anything. But they’ll gleefully hammer away to the tune of the most annoying racket you could ever ask for from dawn ‘til dusk.
15 SKYRIM: I Saved The World, I’ll Lollygag Wherever I Want
No matter how important, renowned or infamous you become, no one ever seems to realize it. Unless you accidentally stole a worthless, empty cup off a shelf that one time. Then the town guard, at least, will recognize you for your crimes.
If you manage to slay a dragon in the middle of town, everyone, their grandma and their dog will pop up to marvel over the spectacle. As soon as they pick their jaw up out of the snow, they’ll go right back to being thoroughly unimpressed that you can cast a couple of spells, or accuse you of wanting to lick their daddy’s boots.
14 FALLOUT 4: DLC Non-Dilemma (Nuka World)
Nuka World was more or less directly addressed to the common complaint that your survivor got slim to nil in the way of morally questionable options.
Too bad it totally missed the point.
Your only other option with the DLC, apart from taking part in the necessary evil, lengthy and intricate main quest, was to just slaughter the whole crew to a man. That’s it. No middle path, no sneakily playing them against one another, just going open season on the whole lot and missing out on the majority of the DLC’s content.
13 SKYRIM: I Know Where Else You Can Take An Arrow
Arrows, knees, etcetera. Stolen sweet rolls. Constant reminders to keep your hands to yourself, and the day to day struggles of getting a dull old blade through butter. You can likely recite every single one of these lines off the top of your head.
And for the record, Nazeem, getting to the Cloud District is not that hard. What are you man, allergic to stairs? You climb a few stairs and boom, you’re in the Cloud District. In fact, I once went to the Cloud District and just waited there for a day and a half. No particular reason. Just because I could. In your pompous, snide little face, you dweeb.
12 FALLOUT 4: Settlement Related Quests Were A Pain
Almost every interaction with Minuteman meme machine Preston inevitably resulted in a quest to go liberate a new shack factory. You didn’t really get the option to pass on them, either. The guy would force the quest into your Pip-Boy every chance that he got.
To make it worse, your settlements were regularly attacked, often at the most inconvenient times. Oh, and the attacks were time sensitive. So unless you were cool with some of your hard work getting wrecked, you needed to drop what you were doing and immediately head out to repel the invaders.
The best solution? Dump Preston off at a far-flung settlement you never used, and ignore him for as long as possible.
11 SKYRIM: Slow Down, Fast Traveler
Skyrim’s chief draw is, well, it’s Skyrim itself. A massive setting, all beautifully rendered and painstakingly detailed.
It’s also the part that is most often skipped by almost every player.
No, carriages and horses aren’t enough. We need instant gratification. Granted, the click-and-go travel method cut down on the more painful aspects of trudging time and time again over the same road to satisfy a fetch quest, but it would seem like there are more direct ways to address this issue. We’ll look at that in a minute.
