Game-breakers

[Gabe]

What do you do when you experience a game-breaking event while playing a videogame that totally isn't your fault, which prevents you from progressing or at least strongly cripples you from the experience?

Sometimes game developers will accidentally look over certain glitches or gameplay elements that prevent the best experience. Sometimes a player will do things a certain way to the point where they come across a moment where the game is almost ruined for them, due to the game's process when it was made.

Have you ever had any of these moments?

The biggest one I've ever had really turned me off from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I sided with the Imperials and I desperately wanted to end that civil war before I completed the main quest so I could end the game with a really CHANGED world, leaving me satisfied with not only that but + the PS3 trophy. Unfortunately, the game designers didn't really debug the main NPC where you're supposed to receive quests from for this series of civil war quests, and she wouldn't give me the dialogue needed to proceed in the quests due to some glitch. The objective arrow was even directly above her head. After research, I saw that others experienced the same problem and I was very frustrated. Even after two patches, she still isn't fixed. I refuse to continue Skyrim until they fix that lady D:< (Her name is Legate Rikke, in case anyone is familliar)

 

[Ethics]

Normally? I trash the game (not literally) and move on, I don't miss neglected games only the cash and time I spent on it. Skyrim being one of those cases, I'm a perfectionist and having a bounty quest that cannot be closed as it was issued after I had already killed the dragon, perhaps. Does it ultimately cripple me from REALLY enjoying what the game offers? No, but it annoys the absolute piss out of me.

Although, these glitches should be expected the moment "freedom of choice" could be applied to it, especially in open world games like Skyrim. I can't remember where I heard it, but I once heard that "players are agents of chaos." The more freedom you have in any case, the more planning it requires, programmers would have to be able to figure out exactly where you would go and exactly what would happen for each and every person to play the game. Some glitches are massive in comparison to others, true, but testing is absolutely nothing in the face of a blockbusters launch. Bugs, even game breaking ones, are to be expected if we want freedom in games. It's just the nature of the beast, nothing more.

 

[Mitsuki]

Pretty much like Jeff, I completely stop playing the game for months, maybe even permanently. Or, if it's a glitchy quest and I can't progress (ran into one in Skyrim), then I'll abandon the quest entirely and move on to another one. Good thing with Skyrim is that if it's a glitchy quest, you can always backtrack and go back to the world map...at least, I've never heard or experience being stuck on a glitchy quest - as in, 'can't-get-the-hell-out-of-this-cave' deal. I typically have 2-3 save files that I switch around when saving in every games.

 

[Mitsuki]

Pretty much like Jeff, I completely stop playing the game for months, maybe even permanently. Or, if it's a glitchy quest and I can't progress (ran into one in Skyrim), then I'll abandon the quest entirely and move on to another one. Good thing with Skyrim is that if it's a glitchy quest, you can always backtrack and go back to the world map...at least, I've never heard or experience being stuck on a glitchy quest - as in, 'can't-get-the-hell-out-of-this-cave' deal. I typically have 2-3 save files that I switch around when saving in every game.

 

[AddleBoy]

Stuff like this has happened to me before. I feel like my save in Skyrim has been glitching a lot lately. I was doing the mission to repair the White Phial, and I needed to collect a specific Briar Heart from this Forsaken warrior. I go there, kill him, then take the briar heart off his body, but the objective arrow stays over his body. The game just won't acknowledge the fact that I took the briar heart even if I go back to the guy and tell him. I'm just glad I didn't get a glitch like this during a major mission because THAT would have bothered me.

This also happened when I was playing Star Wars KOTOR II. There was a story mission that was initiated by leaving the ship on a certain planet. You walk out, and a scene begins where you have to take control of one of the other characters and fight these two enemies. It was hard, so I kept getting game overs. Eventually, the game decided not to load this scene anymore, which resulted in me not being able to continue the story. I had to start over from the very beginning. It's really annoying because if I have to do it over, I feel as if I have to do everything exactly the same way as I did it the first time.

These type of game breaking glitches mostly seem to happen in "open world" type games. Skyrim better not glitch in a big way because I won't play it over again. I've already spent over a hundred hours playing that game.

 

[.Mosh]

A moment like this has happened to me in The Last Remnant..that game I was over leveled for when fighting these bosses on the second discs and I would always die in like five seconds and I looked up online and it is a glitchy problem which hasn't been patched. So for a game I was enjoying, completely destroyed the experience for me. I had a game breaking quest problem for me in Skyrim in which I couldn't finish the 'The Companions Guild: Main Quest'.
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Spoiler

I had done the quest requiring you to kill the witches and take their heads. I done that, went back to deliver it to the guild master and they were all ambushed and died. The glitch here in which tricked me, was that I could drop the heads cause I believed I didn't need them now as the guild master is dead. Later on you go in a cave and find his ghost and he is like, have you still got the heads, chuck it into the flame....I was like "YOU SON OF A *****" went back to the guild and the heads disappeared. So I could never finish it.

 

[Martel]

It depends on the game, really. I had this with Resonance of Fate - the game kicked the absolute shit out of me - so I left it alone for, like, nine months, before I decided to go back to it. Demon's Souls I wound up selling because I couldn't kill Flamelurker no matter how hard I tried to, and I just lost patience. At other times, I just keep trying until I do it; I spend a very long time indeed trying to do some of the Secret Missions in Tales of Vesperia, and killing Lorithia in Xenoblade Chronicles; she was so broken it wasn't even funny. Most of these game-breaking moments, for me, are in JRPGs, and can be overcome fairly easily with a little grinding or the right strategy.