Having launched earlier this week Fallout: New Vegas is receiving mostly positive critical acclaim, although it’s not without its flaws.
Developer Obsidian Games’ senior designer Chris Avellone has said that the sheer expanse of the game is the reason so many bugs were able to sneak in to the retail release version.
Speaking to CVG, Avellone said: “I think when you create a game as large as Fallout 3 or New Vegas you are going to run into issues that even a testing team of 300 won’t spot, so we’re just trying to address those as quickly as possible and so is Bethesda. It’s kind of like the bugs of the real world – the sheer expanse of what you’re dealing with causes problems.”
A PC patch has already been pushed out that fixes over 200 problems. A second PC patch came shortly afterwards, addressing autosave and quicksave issues. The second PC patch had to disable Steam Cloud functionality and it won’t be re-enabled until the root of the saving problem has been resolved. Bethesda is also working with hardware manufacturers to improve performance on certain video cards.
One of the more ridiculous anomalies being reported as a bug was the freakishly awesome spinning head of Doc Mitchell. It must be seen to be appreciated:
Senior producer Jason Bergman has ruled this out as bug however, giving the following explanation: “The now infamous Doc Mitchell video, while very funny (and horrifying) was not a bug. Unfortunately during our launch day, there was a brief window where Steam was pushing out corrupt or incorrect files. In the event that a user wound up with a corrupt meshes.bsa file, they would get that error. It was easily (and instantly) corrected by simply re-validating your files with Steam. At most, a handful of people ever saw that issue, and even then, only for a moment before fixing it.”
According to the Bethesda blog, the development team has “just released an automatic update for the PC version of Fallout: New Vegas that resolves quest and scripting issues.”
As for the console versions, the team is working to get the same PC bug fixes pushed out to the console as soon as possible.
“The issue regarding the PlayStation 3 digital pre-order bonuses has also been resolved. Users should attempt to re-enter the codes to download their bonuses. Should the “80023156″ error continue, we ask that players wait 24 hours before entering the code again. The code should then activate the bonus without any issue,” said the development team via the Bethesda Blog.
News of the patching process for the Xbox 360 version has also been shared: “We are aware that a small group of 360 users are seeing a DLC warning which is preventing you from loading save games. We are absolutely looking into this bug now, along with other reports of save game corruption. It is our highest priority right now that we find out what is causing it,” said Jason Bergman on the Bethesda forum. “In the meantime, we recommend you save often, and revert to an older save if this occurs.”
Discuss Fallout: New Vegas on the MyGaming forum.
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