I have followed Bethesda for some time. Oblivion and fallout winning the GOTY somewhat set an expectation that Skyrim would go the same way.

I have put more than a hundred hours on skyrim now and the first 20-30 hours, i thought probably game of the year. But now, after this latest patch i dont think it should be rewarded with such a title.

To me, beth should not be rewarded for releasing a stunning game that is half finished with a plethora of problems.

Despite voice acting and different graphics i barely had a problem with Oblivion or Fallout (especially fallout). But skyrim the bugs and glitches are so much more noticeable and it is those little things that seem to really detract from the experience.

So here is a little list of things i have had issues with on the xbox

Have have got 6 quests that are broken and problematic
1. collect bounty from skald - not happening
2. collect "the old ways book" i have it in my inventory, took it to the guy, he wont take it, and the marker tells me to go to the place and get it. I go back and it isnt there, THATS BECAUSE I ALREADY HAVE IT. I cant drop the book, because YOU CANT DROP A F*#KING QUEST ITEM
3 & 4 Cant drop or remove finns lute or the flute, quest item and they wont take them, more waste of space.
5 & 6 have done the red eagle and helm of windhelm quests twice now each.

Some other problems, like books not being on the shelves even though i just put them there, and when i try and activate the shelf, i cant access it, great, glad i didnt need that book.
Stuff that was in the house is now missing eg statue of dibella, yes i stole it but finders [censored] keepers.
Dragons still not attacking while i plunge arrows etc into its meaty little head
dragons completely without textures so that i just see a frame and can see through them.

I could go on but i wont as there are many others out there with more problems than me.

My point is simply that though skyrim is in theory a great game. It is massive and beautiful, there is no way it should be game of the year as it has too many things wrong. It is an unfinished product, just like car of the year is not the one that breaks down every 15 miles down the road, game of the year is not the one that requires two patches within the first month of release and is now worse than it started.

The GOTY should go to that manufacturer/ producer who not only set out to achieve a great game but did also achieve it.

My whinge

It's just the first [censored] patch!

0/10 nice try.

Yes it should be GOTY

Great, another person whining about the damn patch.

GOTY in my opinion

i haven't put nearly as many hours as you have so maybe i will experience some issues

but no problems yet

great game bethesda

Okay I understand that you're mad about all the glitches you're recieving, but you're really getting quite a lot and many others aren't recieving nearly as much as you are. I've only had one glitch with a quest but that was easily avoided by relaoding my game.

Although the bugs are heavily prevalent, Skyrim is still the most fun game I have played ever. The bugs that I have experienced are minor, but since I am an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist with how I want things done (down to how I want enemies to fall on the ground even), these bugs often frustrate me. The only bugs that I am very disappointed with is the fact that "Blood on the Ice" will not trigger, Odahviing attacks after releasing him more often than not, and the mannequins duplicate items placed on them (not to mention the fact that they appear transparent until you remove one of the items it is holding)

All in all, Bethesda has not failed us before when it comes to fixing these problems. There were tons of bugs in Oblivion, not as many as Skyrim, but Skyrim is MASSIVE compared to OB. Frankly, I expected bugs to come along with the game and for it to be patched along the way. I still think it deserves GOTY, as no other game has nearly as much content as half of Skyrim

The game is not by any means broken. I don't know why some people have such big problems - I understand some PS3 players are having serious problems - but I'm playing on PC and it's been very reliable for me, with only like two in-game graphical oddities and four crashes. That's it, and that ain't bad overall.

Am I sure it should be considered GOTY? No, because Arkham City was an unbelievably great game - but both Arkham City and Skyrim are in the running, as far as I'm concerned. Both are simply amazing and addictive.

Skyrim = GOTY

This, way too obvious of a troll.

Game works for WAYYYYY more people than it doesn't.

Skyrim will get GOTY. At least, I hope it does

Sorry to disappoint you, but Skyrim will most likely get AT LEAST 15-20 GOTY awards !

GOTY for sure. Every quest has the length and depth of any tripple a shooter out there. Plus not a game since Morrowind has allowed me to ignore my real life so effectively.

Great, another person whining about a person mentioning the patch.

Actually, what you state doesn't make much sense. See, a GoTY title is given to a particular game RELATIVE to other nominations. Now, you say Skyrim has bugs and design flaws, sure no argument here, but who is to say all other potential GoTY nominations won't have problems of their own? I can gaurantee every one of them will have issues someone in the world will complain over. The correct way you should argue this is with other GoTY potentials, not just issues the game has itself.

Great, another person whining about a person whining about a person mentioning the patch.

what do you mean? There are two patches.


Having said this, why does the game need a patch. Because there was a defined dead line and it wasnt tested enough to sort out problems. Granted you cant catch everything, but i cant think of the last time i saw the boom enter into the shot of a spielbeg movie, or half the set fell down and they just left it in the final cut. Stop being the brainless rentacrowd this forum is renowned for and use a little bit of your brain. You wouldnt accept this kind of product from a different manufacturer, beth should be held to the same standard.

It is brave to attempt this type of game, and there are so many things that impress me about it but it is not the standard of game we should expect from a top level game producer.

You can't just decide that a game shouldn't get GOTY award just because the first patch [censored]s a few things up for you, idiot.

Great, another person whining about another person whining about a person whining about a person mentioning the patch.

the thing is... what should be GOTY then? our standards have fallen so low that this buggy mess of a release is a serious contender for best game of the year. there are plenty of less buggy games... that last all of 10 hours and then your done with them forever. beth pulled an obsidian with skyrim's release, but TES has always been pretty buggy, as can be proven when you see a mod that fixes thousands of bugs and outright amateurish mistakes left in morrowind and oblivion after the last patch ever released for the games.

i feel you, we shouldnt be rewarding games this buggy, but the world aint fair and sometimes rewarding lack of polish is the only way to get something worth polishing.

People should complain about a terrible patch and then hopefully it gets addressed.

Skyrim has a lot of flaws but compared to other games it deserves GOTY. Battlefield 3 and mw3 are just really similar to the previous games and not much changed and don't contain much detail and coding put into it. Sure minecraft is great and is a sandbox where you can build massive structures but the coding and other things you can do in the game along with graphics pales in comparison to skyrim which is also somewhat of a larger sandbox where not everything is randomly generated and there's actually quests and stuff.

actually overall skyrim is not massive compared to oblivion, its actually a bit smaller. just because it has a few more dungeons does not make it bigger.

It's not for us to say what is "GOTY" nor should we care. Care about how much utility a product gives you, not whether the people who made it are heaped with arbitrary praise.

This is the reality of games. With other forms of software, reliability is a top priority. With games, people would rather play a buggy but fascinating game than a dull game that was a rock-solid piece of reliable software - and I feel the same way. I can deal with the game crashing and showing glitches - I played the original The Hobbit text adventure in the eighties, and the old turn-based-strategy Master of Magic that borrowed Magic: The Gathering's color-based magic system back when it was a brand-new card game - and both were definitely buggier pieces of software than Skyrim. I don't know about The Hobbit game, but Master of Magic is definitely considered a classic, even though version 1.0 was nigh-unplayably buggy. They fixed it with patches back in a time when "patches" didn't mean downloading over the internet, it meant sending them a postcard and they mailed you a CD with the patch on it.

The bugs in Skyrim aren't game-breaking for most. I sympathize with the minority whose game is truly nearly unplayable, but that ain't the most of us.