This is gonna sound crazy, but I’ve basically played every Bethesda game (except redguard) from release, going all the way back to Arena. I know they have bugs, but they’re not really more buggy on release (or later) than a lot of other games I’d played back then. I agree that we should always be expecting better from game companies that are expecting more profit, but if I compare tES games to my other faves… well, let me use examples.

I love Vampire Bloodlines. Famously fan patched for its extreme bugginess after the studio dissolved. Master of Magic? Yup, fan patched. In fact, I think almost every game I put on my top 20 list has fan patched for major bugs that never got fixed in the full lifecycle of the game.