For the past five years, the YouTuber Bacon_ has been uploading funny video game clips, nearly all of which come from titles made by Bethesda Game Studios. With the release of Starfield this week, Bacon_ has new fodder. “Just trying to get through my shift,” which was posted four days ago, shows a Starfield NPC pounding a mining laser into his colleague’s crotch. “So Starfield is out, and it’s definitely a Bethesda game,” Bacon_commented.
For video games, technical difficulties come with the territory. Yet since the release of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in 2003, Bethesda—known affectionately, or cruelly, as “Bugthesda”—has developed a reputation for moments of glitchy chaos. No matter how generically predictable it may initially seem, at the core of any Bethesda game lurks an uncontrollable weirdness. If these games were embodied in a character, they would be the skin-stealing alien from Men in Black: a maniac trying to pass themselves off as normal.
