Fallout 4: a tour of the buggy, janky mess — and why I don’t want Bethesda to ‘fix’ it

Fallout 4 is broken in the same ways that all Bethesda Game Studios’ projects are broken, and I love it even if it looks silly.

I’ve spent several dozen hours in The Commonwealth now (read my review), and that means the dynamic open world has gone silly on me a number of times. I’ve seen enemies falling into the landscape and other characters stumbling into the middle of serious conversations. The camera has zoomed in so far that it was giving me a really good shot of the inside the face of one of my companions. Yes, Fallout 4 is often absurd and busted in a way that you wouldn’t expect from one of the biggest releases of the year.

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Here are some examples:

But I’m not even mad. Sure, a lot of the stuff in that video looks terrible, but I haven’t experienced any hard crashes or game-breaking bugs. And that’s all I ask for from Bethesda. Give me all the ridiculous quirks in the world, as long as it means I get more moments like this:

Or this:

And this:

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It seems that all of the systems that often break to make the game look dumb are the same ones that make it feel alive. And I’m not only willing to make that trade, I have also grown attached to Bethesda’s jank. It lets me know that I’m somewhere familiar.

It tells me that I’m home.