Skyrim is a cult RPG that has left its mark on the world of video games. For a former Bethesda employee, who also worked on the game, the results are clear: it’s a very bad memory.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has undoubtedly left its mark on the minds of a large portion of the players who have touched it. It is in particular its reputation which has created the enormous wait around the sixth opus, which is struggling to provide news to the community. Either way, it’s a good memory for most of us, but not everyone. Particularly for Bruce Nesmith, a former Bethesda veteran who was lead designer on the RPG. His experience is more like a nightmare than a dream.
Skyrim, full of bugs? Inconceivable
It was during an interview for MinnMax that the developer spoke about the work that preceded the release of Skyrim. In particular, he talked about how he and other colleagues rested between projects of this magnitude. Like many of its peers, this fifth opus was initially full of bugs in its pre-launch build. So it was Nesmith’s role, among others, to play the game to spot them in order to deal with them. In total, he says he spent more than 1000 hours on it, but it wasn’t the optimal experience. “ Of the 1000 hours, I spent 950 hours on a broken game “.
In short, he probably saw an astronomical amount of bugs during 950 hours on Skyrim. Which must have been mentally exhausting. Obviously, it couldn’t be otherwise, and the veteran explains in detail that this was normal. “ We were still developing Skyrim, it could only be broken. This doesn’t mean Bethesda is bad. In every studio, out of those 950 hours, you’re playing a broken game. And what’s more, you play the same thing over and over again. “. We can’t imagine the effect it must have to encounter so many technical problems over almost 1000 hours of play.
It’s all the more tiring when, as soon as Skyrim is finished, you have to go to another construction site. Fortunately, there is no question of going back directly to test a game. “ We’re not going to start at the beginning of the process, and that’s what’s exciting, when it’s just ideas or whatever. And so it really helps to recharge too “. According to its own words, the studio really helps developers to rest after each launch, such as that of Skyrim. “ Bethesda gives people time to relax at the end of a project, so when one ends, we don’t immediately dig in to a new grindstone “.