Legendary Bugs & Flaws

[Tigranes]

Also, in The Elder Scrolls games, in general, falling through the ground was always a distinct possibility.

 

Happened to me a lot in Vivec's lower waistworks, when you're trying to jump left and right to squeeze past the Ordinators in the narrow corridors.

 

In my last playthrough though, I'd eventually end up in the water and I'd be able to swim back to the realms of the living.

[Mamoulian War]

Biggest bug i encountered in Daggerafall was when i tried to do Dark Brotherhood quests... i ended up killing lot of innocent people but my reputation jumped very very positive to the city guards

[Hell Kitty]

There is a bug in Thief 1 & 2, where you would suddenly die for no apparent reason. Whenever that happened the scream Garrett would let out was enough to almost give me a heart attack.

[Musopticon?]

^Sudden heart attack syndrome, usually appreviated as SHAS, was the bane of the unpatched vanilla games and untested mods. It was a result of the player model crossing two improperly aligned area brushes, basically Garrett would die from being squished by terrain physics.

 

It was highly entertaining at times. Made fanmissions with elevators really exciting, since even after you mastered sneaking so well that you could hide in lighting glitches and drop from third floor to an open door and not die, the elevators would still hunt you down and kill you...

 

Another really infamous that comes mind is the Rome: Total War diplomacy glitch. There was a bug pre-Barbarian Invasion(1.03 IIRC) that would reset enemy AI to "just met you" when you loaded a previously saved game. This meant that you could pass completely ridiculous peace treaties if you e.g wanted to solve a long-lasting war with your arch enemy or e.g your best and favorite ally would suddenly retire from your shared war with a common enemy, break most ties and later invade YOU.

 

Then there's the ridiculous pre-patch bug in Thief 3 that made all difficulties reset to "easy" in the ini if you loaded a previous save. No doubt the game felt ridiculously easy for everyone when the hardest difficulty had the brainless ai and the skinprick-like damage model, heh.

[LadyCrimson]

I've encountered so many bugs and design flaws in games over the years that I honestly can't remember that many - I totally forget about 'em until new and similar problems arises.

Same here.

I know there have been games where while playing I'd think "what a terrible/annoying gameplay flaw/bug/design" or whatever, but I can't think of them off-hand. There's a lot of little gameplay annoyances that aren't actual bugs. One of my biggest beefs is when games have terrible menu interfaces - not the layout of the actual menus, but, for example, the way you enter/exit them and how it affects the game. Or when they don't include an "are you sure" type of check for things you might too-easily accidentally click on (like "quit").

 

Ultima9 is still the one that sticks in my mind for actual bugs. You don't even need a list, just toss a stone and you'll hit one.

[Rostere]

I remember this old FPS where you would jump in an elevator descending faster than the pull of gravity and die of falling damage when it stopped.

 

Also, see the screenshot for a very peculiar bug on my old Win98 PC (I don't remember why I kept savegame folders on the desktop but I think it had something to do with swapping hard drives).

 

[Gfted1]

^Huh, you guys are only five hours ahead of Chicago, how is that possible? Im set to GMT -6 and you are East of the UK. Weird.

[Calax]

I remember this old FPS where you would jump in an elevator descending faster than the pull of gravity and die of falling damage when it stopped.

 

Also, see the screenshot for a very peculiar bug on my old Win98 PC (I don't remember why I kept savegame folders on the desktop but I think it had something to do with swapping hard drives).

 

I think that was in most origional FPS's... if you missed the elevator you were screwed because you usually fell just as fast as the thing moved so it'd touch down and you'd splatter.

[Walsingham]

Far Cry 2 currently trumps everything by havinga bug which causes not just one, not just a few, but every single save game you've ever made to suddenly become corrupt. I quite like this, as it makes completing the game a race against randomness.

[Meshugger]

Speaking of which, Gears of War for the PC not only demanded that you had to sign up for a LIVE-account, there was also no savegame-feature in the traditional sense. Like selecting a savegame from a huge list and such. Instead, your LIVE-profile had had its own savegame function, only saving for you when you reached certain checkpoints. Thus, you had to have multiple accounts in order to have multiple savegames, veery irritating.

 

Well, think of this: You have only one profile and you're only able to load your savegame by pressing the 'continue campaign'-button in the main menu. You have played about 8 hours so far, and you wish to continue your game, only to realize that there is no 'continue-campaign' option. Strange, Gears of War claims that you have no campaign to continue upon, but dearly wishes you to start a brand new one. Your savegame is not corrupt or anything, it is just gone, disappeared. It never simply existed in the first place, time to start over, buddy. Apparantly, this is a very common bug for the GoW PC-version.

 

Geewee, thank you very much, Epic, People can Fly or Microsoft for not only implementing the most silly savegame function that there is, but also manages to make it so broken that it fails to work on what it is fundamentally designed to do.

[Jaesun]

In Ultima VII - The Black Gate, if you did not CAREFULLY WALK to Minoc, the "Murder Scene" there would not happen. Which is plot stopping (IIRC).

 

This is however fixed i you just play Ultima VII with Exult.

[Wistrik]

I've been gaming for 20+ years and have forgotten more bugs than I can remember, and none seem particularly legendary, but here are a few I can recall.

 

 

Ultima IX - falling through the floor (you and certain items); dead guards spinning in place and zipping around the map in Wrong; triggers not firing properly if you don't walk over them just right (running could break lots of things). Oh, and watching 'dead' skeleton bones travel vertically up an elevator shaft to join other bones three levels higher... creepy.

 

Oblivion - crashes while exiting to desktop most of the time; has a chance of crashing to desktop if after selling stolen loot you switch to the fence's goods and try to buy back items. Hitting vertical edges just right when jumping can launch you 2 to 4 times higher than normal. As guild master you can still be kicked out of a guild. Countesses sometimes use a citizen's rumor and end up talking about themselves in a funny way. Beggars switch back and forth between beggar and non-beggar voices all the time. If you manage to kill Mehrunes Dagon before entering the Temple of the One, he melts (and is replaced by another copy for the temple cutscene!).

 

Elite (old 3D game on C64) - if you were behind a space station when engaging the docking computer, it would attempt to fly you through the back of the station to dock.

 

Baldur's Gate - the humorous bug of being able to pickpocket scalps from bandits, and related goofs.

 

Diablo 2 - Blizzard's coding goofs such as drawing spell effects twice instead of once per frame, and the star-shaped pattern of Static Field after a certain patch.

 

NWN2 - gliding orcs

 

 

For the most part I've avoided some of the more serious pitfalls, mostly because of reading reviews and forums posts before buying/playing most of my games.

[Hassat Hunter]

Well, encounter plenty, don't remember that many. This one I do remember though:

 

*Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Swordcoast. I saved after defeating the Wolfwere leader, and died opening his chest to a fireball trap (Imoen had too low skill to detect, had no thieving potions left ). Obviously I reloaded my save.

Odd was however that my PC remained dead (and that didn't end the game)! Every time I had a mapchange his corpse would be spawned along the rest of the members. With no means to resurect I decided to load the quicksave, losing about 1.5 hours of progress .

Then when I left the island I saved after the cutscene, and ended up loading that save later (died again). Each time it loaded the cutscene though and the person that should walk to me didn't. And after I killed him inside he still would remain standing outside. I finally decided to attack and kill him (civilians didn't care, only 20's hitted, took 15+ minutes) and take a second unique very nice armor.

Aaah, bugs... aren't they fun?

[Monte Carlo]

Well, encounter plenty, don't remember that many. This one I do remember though:

 

*Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Swordcoast. I saved after defeating the Wolfwere leader, and died opening his chest to a fireball trap (Imoen had too low skill to detect, had no thieving potions left ). Obviously I reloaded my save.

Odd was however that my PC remained dead (and that didn't end the game)! Every time I had a mapchange his corpse would be spawned along the rest of the members. With no means to resurect I decided to load the quicksave, losing about 1.5 hours of progress .

Then when I left the island I saved after the cutscene, and ended up loading that save later (died again). Each time it loaded the cutscene though and the person that should walk to me didn't. And after I killed him inside he still would remain standing outside. I finally decided to attack and kill him (civilians didn't care, only 20's hitted, took 15+ minutes) and take a second unique very nice armor.

Aaah, bugs... aren't they fun?

 

Wow, after playing all the IE games to death over the years I never came across that one. What was the armour?

 

Cheers

MC

[SteveThaiBinh]

I don't know if anybody else had this, but before Knights of the Old Republic was patched, overloading any computer terminal would also overload mine, making it crash.

Life imitating art.

 

I was playing Arcanum and having a good time of it when I got to that point where your cultist friend (the one who you begin the game with) had a BG2-esque "my planet needs me now" revelation and ran off from the party. He did not come back. I looked online for the triggers that would cause him to reappear but no matter how hard I tried I could not cause him to spawn. And so I finished the game without that guy.

 

That's not even getting into the game-breaking bug that was Arcanum's design.

 

I had a bug in Arcanum that once the cultist left my party my inventory was FUBARed making it impossible to continue on as I lost main quest related items to the ether.

Cultist? His name was Virgil!! Or occasionally Virgoo, depending on your intelligence. I wish there'd been a Virgil romance mod. I would have written one myself if I'd known how.

 

I had a bug in Arcanum where you got to the First Panarii Temple and as soon as you spoke to the priest, the game set all your stats permanently to 1. That was a pain.

[samm]

Speaking of which, Gears of War for the PC not only demanded that you had to sign up for a LIVE-account, there was also no savegame-feature in the traditional sense. Like selecting a savegame from a huge list and such. Instead, your LIVE-profile had had its own savegame function, only saving for you when you reached certain checkpoints. Thus, you had to have multiple accounts in order to have multiple savegames, veery irritating.

 

Well, think of this: You have only one profile and you're only able to load your savegame by pressing the 'continue campaign'-button in the main menu. You have played about 8 hours so far, and you wish to continue your game, only to realize that there is no 'continue-campaign' option. Strange, Gears of War claims that you have no campaign to continue upon, but dearly wishes you to start a brand new one. Your savegame is not corrupt or anything, it is just gone, disappeared. It never simply existed in the first place, time to start over, buddy. Apparantly, this is a very common bug for the GoW PC-version.

 

Geewee, thank you very much, Epic, People can Fly or Microsoft for not only implementing the most silly savegame function that there is, but also manages to make it so broken that it fails to work on what it is fundamentally designed to do.

I quite like the problem they had with the expired certificate that blocked each and every single player on earth from playing the game for a certain time - ah, the lucky sods that had a cracked version... Edited April 4, 2009 by samm

[Hassat Hunter]

Wow, after playing all the IE games to death over the years I never came across that one. What was the armour?

A Chainmail +3. Pretty nice to have 2 off in BG1.

[Gorgon]

You mean the class restricion immune chain.

 

NWN2 - gliding orcs

 

That rubber banding is all over the game, don't ask me why but the AI seems exceedingly interested in where everyone is in relative distance to each other, if it's too far it tugs everyone back.

[Morgoth]

I seem to remember that I got often stuck between rocks and other "polygonal stuff" that the wondrous Thief engine produced.

[Gorgon]

Stuck in a clipping error and no saves. Gotta love it.

[Guest PoziomyPion]

Tomb Raider 3 - seeing trough walls , clipping textures, beating first level in 5 minutes (exploit), and the best one was in the manor. You had to run to a gate, stand in a corner, look down and keep on jumping, after a couple of times Lara would teleport up onto some invisible ground. Worked on training track too.

 

Tomb Raider games usually have some funny glitches.