History GameBreakingBug / RolePlayingGame

** ''Videogame/Fallout4'':
*** There's more than one suit of power armor in the game, most of which is found lying around in the open, ready for you to step into- some enemies even use it, and it can be looted from them after they die. However, looted power armor suits have an "owned" tag on them, meaning that stepping into them, or even taking any of their armor parts, counts as stealing. Most of your companions do not like stealing, and there have been reports of this bug turning friendly NPCs hostile if you put it on near them.

* In ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheLastHope'', sometimes when the player or the CPU-controlled partner casts the spell Silence on an enemy, if the spell misses, "Miss !" will remain displayed on the top of the foe until the battle ends, and after that, the game freezes, forcing the player to reset. Fortunately, the player can manually prevent the IA from casting that spell, which is a UselessUsefulSpell anyway. In the [=PS3=] port of this game, the glitch still remains. It was also reported that playing the [=PS3=] version with the [=PlayStation=] Network still running in the background occasionally freezes the game, so the player better has to play the game 100% offline, as it doesn't feature any online mode anyway.

* ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'' has an unpredictable bug in the giant Luigi sections where the gyroscope completely stops registering any input. It's not always the end of the world (since it can happen right at the end of a motion controlled section where you can tank the hit), but it rather makes the anti gravity sections of the Zeekeeper battle and the last two phases of the giant Bowser battle impossible since your steering/movement (needed to dodge any attacks/hurt the boss) completely cuts out. See more about it [[http://nintendo3dsdaily.com/nintendoarticles/looks-like-ive-found-a-game-breaking-bug-in-mario-luigi-dream-team/ here]]

** There is a rather annoying -- albeit rare -- glitch that's only game breaking if you haven't saved in a while. Due to the scrolling health of your party members, if everyone in your party dies at the same time all the enemies have been defeated, the game ''divides by zero'' to figure out the amount of experience to dish out. Imagine that happening during a boss battle, especially one of the later {{ThatOneBoss Sanctuary Guardians}}. ''Ugh''.

*** In the quest "Purity", it's possible that the brazier used to cure Farkas and Vilkas of their lycanthropy will do diddly to your own lycanthropy, leaving you stuck as a werewolf.

* ''Franchise/Pokemon'':

In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' there is a curious glitch where if you screwed up during a puzzle in one dungeon a bolt of lightning would move you partially into a wall, and you won't be able to move.
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'', there is a truly amazing glitch where, if you were to remove the disk from your [=PS2=] while in the overworld, and run around a bit, the land would give way and you could run infinitely in any direction, and you could concievably go ANYWHERE. This leads to easy gets of, if exploited early, some very high-level equipment, making the game ridiculously easy until that equipment is outdated. However, it is possible to replace the disk, making you drop back down to the ground, in the ocean, a river, in a city, on an edge, or in a mountain, and be unable to move, thus making you reset. Still worth it early on, given you save before trying it.
** This glitch can be used to [[GoodBadBug change the main character, so you can play as Asch instead of Luke]], and nothing bad happens if you do this. However, if you finish the game using Asch, you will start your [[NewGamePlus next playthrough]] without Luke. Since the first battle in the game (the tutorial) occurs before you can get any other character, the game will freeze because you don't have any character to control during the tutorial. If you saved your clear data over your only save file, [[UnWinnable well...]]
** Another glitch in ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'', though, isn't quite so nice. Anise's Dying Moon attack is badly bugged; after using it, there is a strong chance it will be impossible for Jade and Tear to use their [[LimitBreak Mystic Artes]] until the battle ends. If the attack wasn't satisfied with that, occasionally it will outright ''cause the game to freeze''. To make matters worse, Dying Moon is one of the most useful attacks in Anise's arsenal, meaning this bug greatly hurts her viability as a party member. The one upside is that if you know what you're doing, it's possible to use this same bug to seal certain bosses' Mystic Artes - including even [[ThatOneBoss That One]] BonusBoss.
*** It is possible to revert the Mystic Arte "lock" by using any Mystic Arte other than Dying Moon. There's no way to revert the freeze, though.
** If you get [[TotalPartyKill TPKed]] by a boss's Mystic Arte, the game will freeze. This includes Asch's Mystic Arte, which he only uses when ''you'' try to use yours.
** If you turn on the [=PS2=] with a memory card that haven't finished the game yet on slot 1, and then later load a file that has already finished the game, and then save, the finished file will lose its finished flag and will behave as if you have never finished the game (you can't use the special Mystic Artes, some sidequests that require a NewGamePlus will not trigger, etc). This happens because the game data is saved in two files in your memory card: one called ''Game Data'', and one called ''System Data'', and the game only loads the System Data when the [=PS2=] is turned on, and the finished flag is stored on the System Data file.
** In the Abandoned Factory, there is one ladder that, if you climb it while having Guy as your on-screen character, you will fall in the darkness below the factory. You can still walk, open menus, etc, but you cannot return to the regular path without resetting the game.

** You can fix this bug with an action replay and allow her to use that attack properly. Hah, [[{{irony}} a cheating device to make the game play properly]]

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI: [[UpdatedRerelease Dawn of Souls]]'', the [[BonusDungeon Whisperwind Cove]] has exactly one floor where you can get the Angel Ring: the 33rd basement. However, the Angel Ring can only be obtained if you're on a floor that has 10 chests, and the only floor that will yield this many chests will never be selected as the 33rd basement. As a result, the Angel Ring is unobtainable.

* In ''PhantasyStarIV'', after the fight with Zio, two of your party members leave the group to pursue other things. This frees up enough space for the next two to join up. However, the fight with Zio can be extremely difficult, and the two characters who leave are the ones with the most HP and highest defense (assuming you didn't just equip Rune with two shields), meaning there is a very decent chance that Chaz, Rika, and Rune will all be Near Death when the fight ends. After the cutscene where Gryz and Demi leave, up pops a "Chaz was defeated!" message on the worldmap, and the game ends.
** Also in ''Phantasy Star IV'', there is the legendary "Level 99" glitch, which makes it so that leveling any character to 99 will actually make them ''lose'' skills. While this is true, the actual glitch starts activating around level 96 or so, with characters like Rika suddenly losing hundreds of technique points, and Wren losing the Positron Bolt skill (it still appears in the menu, but has zero uses available). The androids even start gaining a Mental stat (which, being machines, they normally do not), and Demi gains an impressive number of technique points (but no techniques to use them with.)
* The first ''BaldursGate'' has the now infamous Beregost Bug, which comes in two frustrating flavors:
** First, if you do a full save in Beregost (quicksaves and autosaves are fine), it is possible that your file will become corrupted. Thankfully, there's an application that can undo this.
** The second, and arguably more frustrating of the two, is that, after leaving Beregost for the first time, it is possible that from then on, re-entering Beregost in any way, including the console, will cause the game to immediatly crash. Again, there's a workaround to this, but it requires a little bit more effort than the first one.

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' was rumored to have been tested on one kind of video card and one kind of sound card since it was a port to the PC from the XBox 360. The result was a buggy crashy mess that generated tons of complaints and took months to fix through a combination of game and driver patches. Examples include:
** The background music on the Citadel devolving into a medley of snapping, crackling, hissing and popping.
** [[spoiler:Matriarch Benezia]]'s use of Biotic powers would toss the main character ''through the wall'' and out into the empty void surrounding the rendered game area. With the character trapped in the throw animation there was no way to recover or reload and the game had to be force quit.
** The game would crash to desktop after completing a cutscene. These were unskippable and could easily be several minutes long.
** The game would freeze during romance dialogues depending on ''what button on the keyboard'' was bound to "Talk".
** During the [[spoiler: Matriach Benezia fight]] if you have been hit by a biotic power and are currently in the glowy blue ragdoll state while one of the mid-battle cutscenes goes off you are trapped when the cutscene ends. You can't enter the menu, and you can't move. The only way to get out is to restart the game.
** Biotics in general are incredibly buggy. It's not only possible but nigh inevitable that at some point, if Shepard or one of your squadmates uses biotics on enemies in enclosed spaces (such as the bunkers or mines that make up about 75% of sidequests), the enemies will end up clipping through a wall, where it is impossible to reach them, either by shooting them or through the use of powers. The only way to progress in many places is to use Singularity on them (which will slowly whittle their health down; this is only available if Shepard is an Adept or Liara is in the party) or to exit the map and re-enter, which isn't always possible or convenient. If neither options are available, have fun reloading from the previous save, which was probably a long time ago.
** The Mako (planetary landing vehicle) would clip through the ground of certain terrain depressions on certain planets, and fall endlessly below the rendered area. The game won't recognize the Mako being out of bounds so it won't be beamed back to the center of the ground, and you cannot leave either since the ship is not stable.
** On the [=PS3=] version during the Noveria mission you discover that one of the scientists is actually working for Benezia and go from cut scene to the fight. In theory. In practice it's not at all uncommon for the game to be stuck with the dialogue wheel present throughout the fight and your team completely unable to do anything, forcing you to load an auto-save from ''before'' the cut scene and hope that this time it works.
** Sometimes, on the ruined citadel before the final boss the player must interact with a console to activate a cutscene, but sometimes an invisible wall would be present in front of the object preventing the player from reaching it. The only thing to do was to either use a noclip cheat (which is tricky to set up and use) or reload a previous save and hope it doesn't happen again.
** The "give all items" cheat is essentially a trap, if used it would cause the game to crash at the next loading screen without fail.
** During the final battle with [[spoiler:Saren-Sovereign]], the boss has an attack where it leaps to the top of the arena and then dives down at you. Sometimes it leaps to the top of the screen... and disappears. Thankfully, the game auto-saves at the start of the fight, [[spoiler:after Saren's first death]], preventing the player from losing too much progress.
* VideoGame/MassEffect2 would at times send the party floating above the map on the other side of the InvisibleWall that surrounded normally accessible areas. In effect, you could walk freely where you were not meant to, but there was no way to get back and progress the game, save from performing a biotic charge on a ground bound enemy -- if you were not a vanguard or there were no enemies around, you could only reload a save.
** A vanguard who likes to charge a lot will end up in a lot of buggy situations. There's many occasions where a charge at an enemy will take Shepard past an event trigger (where a cutscene is supposed to begin) or trap you in midair unable to move, only fixable by reloading from a previous save.
** Thane's loyalty mission requires you to talk to a stockboy who confronts you about being in a restricted area. Regardless of your approach to handling him, it's entirely possible that you'll get stuck in the cutscene, watching a wall while Thane [[ContinueYourMissionDammit harasses you to keep up.]] The only solution is restarting the program, which dumps you back at the start of the section, and hoping that the bug doesn't kick in this time. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if the section preceding the glitch point consisted of something other than a slow walk along a catwalk.
** There's also strange glitches related to reloading several times in quick succession, where you reload the game only to find the enemies have simply disappeared. This can be good in some cases (allowing you to bypass difficult fights!) but in cases where you need to kill a certain number of enemies to progress, you'll be stuck until you reload.
** The game also has a tendency to corrupt your entire career if you try to resume a game after uninstalling any story-adding DLC (Lair of the Shadow Broker, Arrival, Overlord, Firewalker, or Zaeed: The Price of Revenge), replacing all your location data with "Unknown Location" and refusing to load the saves. The only fix is to restart the career.
* In VideoGame/MassEffect3, there's a deathtrap on Normandy's bridge -- if you step on the wrong spot, Shepard will become stuck in the floor and unable to move. The only way out is to load a previous save. A similar situation can occur in the Presidium Commons map on the Citadel. One of the vendors on the far end of the map from the elevator will occasionally have a pair of [=NPCs=] walk up to the kiosk. This can happen while you are accessing the kiosk, since the game doesn't pause when you're in the vendor screen. If this occurs, it's quite likely that you'll end up trapped between them and the wall, and like the previous glitch, forced to load a saved game.
** The Leviathan DLC also has an obnoxious ladder bug where you can find yourself stuck at the top of a building at Ann Bryson's dig site indefinitely, although some have recorded making it function properly by looking upwards.
** It's possible for a Cerberus turret on Benning to become indestructible, which is a bit of a nuisance since completing that mission requires destroying all enemies. It stops firing after it reaches the usual destruction point, but its shields regenerate and it never actually dies.
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' has a "stat-leak" bug: if Sebastian and/or Isabela are removed from the party without going through the party organization screen, their Friendship bonuses (+5% damage resistance and attack speed, respectively) are removed from your base score.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork 4'' had a very nasty bug in the Blue Moon version where the game would freeze and crash after any battle during Woodman's scenario if the game was being played using Slot 2 on a NintendoDS. This meant the entire game was UnwinnableByMistake unless you either dusted off a GBA to play it on or used some sort of cheating device to disable random encounters.

* The PS3 version of ''NiNoKuni'' has a glitch that can cause the game to become {{Unwinnable}} if you save shortly after Drippy is revived, but before you pick up the stick that becomes your first magic wand. The character who gives you the stick never appears, meaning you can never progress through the game. Luckily, this happens quite early on, but it can still be nasty to encounter as it means you need to play through the game's beginning all over again.
** Less nice is a bug in the DS version, which occurs after fighting one of the [[RecurringBoss Nightmares.]] The game will prompt you to autosave after doing so, but if you take it up, there's a good chance your game will crash ''and'' the save will corrupt.

* ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'' has a rather annoying -- albeit rare -- glitch that's only game breaking if you haven't saved in a while. Due to the scrolling health of your party members, if everyone in your party dies at the same time all the enemies have been defeated, the game ''divides by zero'' to figure out the amount of experience to dish out. Imagine that happening during a boss battle, especially one of the later Sanctuary Guardians. ''Ugh''.

* ''VideoGame/CitizensOfEarth'' has an unacceptable amount of game-crashing bugs. Simply closing the curtains in the Vice President's house crashes the game, as does using certain skills in combat. Fortunately, the game is quite generous with {{Auto Save}}s.
** In addition, the large amount of bugs means it can happen ''anywhere''. Regardless of what you're doing, there's a chance that a bug that will crash your game ''will'' do so.

* ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3WildHunt'' has little to prevent the player from [[SequenceBreaking accessing locations that are plot-important much earlier than expected]]. This can lead to the main quest becoming UnwinnableByMistake.

* ''Series/{{Fallout}}'':

* ''Series/TheElderScrolls'':

* ''Series/PaperMario'':
* The original ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' also contained a game breaking bug in Bowser's lower area of the castle. There was a room containing an item that was supposed to only be accessed after getting rid of the lava. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ilHV_p5op4 If you tried to jump into the entrance of the room]], what would happen is, the lava will damage you, sending you up in the air as usual, but as a result of you also going to the entrance, it triggers the "new room" script. This results in the game crashing as it cannot comprehend the player dying and entering the room at the same time, and it also results in an error screen with hex numbers and values popping up, with the main line of it naming the bug itself: "Floating Point Exception".

* ''Series/FinalFantasy'':

* Early versions of ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'' had a cutscene that would repeat constantly in one area, with only one round of combat in-between "cycles", taking forever to finish one boss fight. This was fixed in 1.06 and later.

*** The thid Expansion got its own share of bugs as well. Mainly the installer. The copy protection of the first discs that were produced were quite vigorous in their protection, causing you to be unable to install the game because it would not recogniue the original DVD in your drive. Of course by then it would cancel setup and wipe out the files it tried to patch, causing the Main Game and the first expansion to be unplayable as well.

* Similarly, ''VideoGame/TitanQuest'' has a bug which causes your computer to bluescreen, restart, and destroy your character. Thankfully, a backup is saved each time you quit.
* In the PC/Xbox 360 adventure game ''VideoGame/TwoWorlds'', save files made before the most recent patch would not be able to get the achievements Visit All Locations and Visit All Undergrounds due to a glitch that occurs when a player attempts to enter Beaver Kettle Cave. The player attempts to enter the cave and is suddenly warped across a fairly large river quite some distance away from the cave, and is therefore unable to unlock the cave on his map.
** Similarly, at launch it was possible to make the game {{Unwinnable}}. If one were to steal from a town or attack someone, the townsfolk would rebel and there was absolutely no way of calming them down apart from killing them all. If left to their angry ways, or if left for dead, this could possibly interrupt questlines required for the story and make it impossible to finish.
* In the [=PS3=] version of ''Two Worlds 2'', there's a glitch in the staircase in one of the Thieves' bases. If you walk next to the stairs and turn back, you fall through the floor into some kind of glitchworld. The thieves can still attack you, but you can't see them, which is pretty annoying. You do get some nice views into the walls though.
* In ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheSecondStory'' for the [=PS1=], if the player presses ANY buttons while switching from the 'battle complete' screen to the field screen, you get the Blue Screen of Death. Particularly interesting if you're in the Secret Dungeon, which has ZERO save points. There are other various glitches, but this is the most prominent.

* Almost all of the infamous [[GoodBadBugs "Glitch Pokémon"]] in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue Pokémon Red/Blue]]'' that the normal player will encounter are more or less "safe", despite their infamous effect on the player's Hall of Fame data. However, by using the more complicated [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Mew_glitch Mew glitch]], it's possible to encounter glitched Pokémon -- and glitched ''Trainers'' -- who can severely mess up in battle, crashing your game. The upside is that the crashes are frequently so spectacular, [[GoodBadBugs they might just be]] [[WorthIt worth seeing anyway.]]
** Probably the best example is the hang that occurs if you encounter a ♀. In theory, the battle might just go fine -- but we'll never know, because ♀'s cry never completes. The music code that gets loaded is an infinite loop. The cool thing is that it doesn't ''sound'' like an infinite loop, because it actually spans portions of the audio chip's RAM, which can get changed between cycles.
** Performing the infamous [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Surf_glitch Surf glitch]] incorrectly, or saving in Glitch City without a Pokémon who knows Fly, can lead to getting stuck forever and forcing one to delete their current file and start a new file. Or use [=PokéSAV=] to edit their current location; whichever works.

** In some versions of Pokémon, there was a rare bug that made the game ignore the most recent save and revert to the previous one. This meant that the player had to save twice to ensure that he/she would not lose progress. However, beating the Champion of the Elite Four caused the game to save once, and then automatically reset, taking the player back to the previous save in an endless loop and making the game {{Unwinnable}}.
** The Acid Rain glitch in ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' and ''Platinum''. Using Pursuit while Trick Room or a weather conditon is in effect can result in all the weather happening at once. That knocks the heck out of your Pokémon and their abilities start hurting them. And if you happen to be using Castform or Cherrim, the two Pokémon that transform due to weather conditons, they'll go into an endless loop of sun/rain transformations, forcing you to reset the game to fix it. It won't break your game, but it is a battle-breaking bug of sorts, you could say.
*** These games also had a glitch in the Pokemon League Pokemon Center that got players stuck upstairs due to a faulty escalator. It's fixable if you don't save up there, but since most people went up to trade...
** ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'' has the Frozen Zoroark bug. When you return to Victory Road after beating the Elite Four, you MUST follow Zoroark into the cave it's guarding and asking you to come with it into. If not, it'll return to its spot and stay there forever, preventing you from accessing N and initiating the steps necessary to catch Reshiram/Zekrom and Kyurem. Fortunately, this one was fixed for the international release.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' shipped with a particularly nasty glitch; saving in the wrong location in Lumiose City (specifically, in any area with a taxi) could result in one's save file becoming irreversibly corrupted, forcing the player to start a new game entirely. The bug affected both physical and digital copies. Mashing the home button for a while would get the player out of the freeze problem, though it wouldn't fix the root problem. A patch was released for all affected copies on October 25, 2013.
** Rumors have circulated of a version of the "bad egg" that turns other Pokémon in the PC into bad eggs. Players have to be careful on Wonder Trade, but only a couple cases are known thus far. It was blamed on corrupted trades/hack attempts with that feature, though it was found too early to be entirely that.

* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' there is a curious glitch where if you screwed up during a puzzle in one dungeon a bolt of lightning would move you partially into a wall, and you won't be able to move.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 1}}'' had its share of minor bugs, but VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}, whoo boy. The car seemed to be a Bug, and not in the 'small German vehicle' sense. It would end up stuck in the exit grid, making it unusable, as you couldn't reach it to drive away. In a particular mission, it would block the exit and prevent a load of freed slaves from escaping the map, and again preventing you from being able to use it. Occasionally the trunk would detach and follow you around; the rest of the car just vanished. Although bizarre, the glitch has a simple (and amusing) explanation - the trunk is treated as a follower NPC by the game, who is unable to move once you enter a location, but can carry a ton of loot; the rest of the car is treated as an exit grid, to create the effect of the character driving away when he interacts with it. Their graphics are juxtaposed together to look like a complete car, but they are actually two completely different objects, and could get separated if the game had a hiccup.
** There are certain missions in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' that you can access out of order, producing glitches in each other rendering them {{Unwinnable}}. The most infamous are "Scientific Pursuits" and "The American Dream". If you decide to search other Vaults for info on Vault 112, you can end up retrieving the G.E.C.K. from Vault 87 and escaping Red Rock before you ever set foot in Vault 112.[[note]]The location of Vault 112 is tucked at the very end of an audio tape that you find in the Jefferson Memorial; that specific detail is never added to your quest log or displayed on your World Map, other than the marker only seen when the quest is active and you have listened to the tape.[[/note]] You won't be able to enter the Citadel like you are told to ([[GuideDangIt because you have to complete the other quest in order to trigger the required plot event]]), and if you decide to find Vault 112 and rescue your father from Dr. Braun's simulation, the door to the rotunda lab which should be open won't be, making it impossible to complete one of the required {{fetch quest}}s.

** Entering the ''Operation Anchorage'' VR simulation when you have a follower may cause them to mysteriously die, rather then returning to where you picked them up. Dogmeat always returns to the Vault 101 entrance, though.
** And then there's the music, which is all stuttery and broken on Windows Vista and newer [=PCs=], due to the game using a deprecated [[UsefulNotes/ApplicationProgrammingInterface API]] called [=DirectSound=], which has been discontinued in Windows Vista onwards[[note]]The wallbanger here is that the game was released when Windows Vista was already in the market. While it's understood that Vista was one of the black sheeps of the Windows world and few people used it, it was still irresponsible for Bethesda to not test the game thoroughly under Vista[[/note]]. Granted tho, there are fixes for this, but it involves spending an entire day hacking the game, or having a sound card whose manufacturer has put out their own fix for things (ie Creative and their [=ALchemy=] softeware), or downgrading to Windows XP (32-bit, because even the 64-bit version doesn't support DirectSound). Pre-made fixes? Bethesda is issuing DMCA takedowns left and right to sites that are hosting pre-made fixes. Apparently their stand is either you live with it, or you show your love for the game by spending time fixing it yourself, or take a hit for the game and downgrade your PC to a old discontinued OS that can't take full advantage of your hardware.
** The initial PC release of ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' was prone to random crashes from the start of the game. But the game-breaking part was that quicksaves were corrupted and would only load the very first one the player made (usually in the starting town). This meant only autosaves (from entering or exiting a building or location that brings up a loading screen) and regular saves could be used to recover your game if it crashed. Hope you didn't like quicksaving.
** ''New Vegas'' still enjoys glitching out when it comes to loading; it was not uncommon on even patched vanilla installs to have the game inexplicably and quietly crash behind a loading screen, ''any'' loading screen, therefore leaving you looking at a spinning roulette wheel forever. Or until you quit and reset. Usually the solution was to employ a save file backup on the PC (helpfully auto-created by ''New Vegas''), or pray one of your older saves would work and not trigger the issue again.
** The Xbox 360 version of ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' had a very severe issue in that, occasionally, after having beat the game and started playing again, the level up feature wouldn't activate. Many players wouldn't realise until they actually checked the XP meter and saw something ridiculous like '5400/200'. What made this worse was that the only known way to fix this was to delete all save data of both your new save, and the previous one on which you completed the game, and this wasn't actually a sure fix. It was more wishful thinking. You better pray it works, otherwise the hours you spent wandering the waste and finishing every quest were deleted for nothing.
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsArena'' and ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'' are exceptionally buggy games; their stability is alleged to be different between different start-ups, between different systems, and between different installations on the ''same system''. Inherently, both games suffered from broken quests, garbled dialogue, texture loading problems, item and enemy failures, unloadable saved games, audio-induced crashes, and nonfunctional features; the latest (last) patches for each respective game, including save state and quest fixer programs, make the games workable but leave many errors.
** The infamous Void, introduced in ''Daggerfall'' and featured in many other ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' games, is a consequence of 3D gaming - an expanse of emptiness that existed outside of the game's standard corridors. What makes the ''Daggerfall'' Void (in)famous is the frequency of the player's helpless fall into it. One of the many tunnels in plot-relevant dungeon Castle Daggerfall ends abruptly on an opening into the Void. Given that Castle Daggerfall houses the MacGuffin central to the plot, you'd think it was one of the few of the thousand or so dungeons where designers would catch that.
** The auto-dungeon generator in Daggerfall was so buggy that Bethestha finally just threw up their hands and released a patch that turned on the debugging shortcuts-- so affected players could teleport around dungeons and avoid falling into the numerous bottomless pits.
* In the Xbox version of ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' (the Game of the Year edition), annoying glitches prevented one from using most of the added features. The quest chain in which the player gets turned into a werewolf would not progress after a certain point. Going for Vampirism afterwards would allow one to complete a few quests for the chosen vampire clan, but the keywords to get the next quests didn't show up.
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'' also has its fair share of bugs, but one notorious one in the [=PS3=] Game of the Year version rendered the state of Vampirism to be incurable because a certain EventFlag during the [[ThatOneSidequest Vampirism]] [[FetchQuest Cure quest]] failed to work properly. Strangely enough, this bug appeared in the original versions for the PC and 360 and was quickly patched up, while the [=PS3=] original version released a year later did not have the bug. This makes people wonder [[WhatWereYouThinking what the developers were thinking]] when it was [[WhatAnIdiot somehow re-introduced in the Game of the Year edition]].
** A rather lethal but nevertheless hilarious one is a bug (has been fixed by official patch) where any item stolen by a ''female'' character automatically loses its stolen tag, meaning it no longer counts as stolen and can be sold to any honest merchant; this breaks the Thief's Guild quests as it requires you specifically to sell "Stolen" goods. The DoubleStandard implication can't help but make some wonder whether such a quirky bug was ''really'' by accident.
** And then we have the infamous Abomb bug. This is a particularly malevolent and soul-crushing one, as it kicks in after you played for hundreds of hours (which is very easy to do in a sandbox game, especially one with as much stuff to do as Oblivion). When it triggered (yes, WHEN, not IF - it's inevitable and can't be fixed on consoles), effect animations like fires, lighting or, say...doors opening, would either slow to a crawl or stop executing entirely. This, among other things, caused dungeon gates and Oblivion gates to stop working altogether...which has predictable results on the playability of the game. The worst part? Bethesda KNEW the Abomb bug existed - they found out during a contest to see which player could play for the longest time. They did NOTHING to fix it. For shame...
** There was also a bug wherein one could be promoted to Master Thief in the Thieve's Guild questline, BEFORE being promoted to Shadowfoot. When you then proceed to finish the quests from the Shadowfoot questgiver, you are "promoted" to Shadowfoot. In the ending of the questline, following the conversation between [[spoiler:Grey Fox and Countess Umbranox]] the game is meant to have [[spoiler:The Grey Fox]] come and talk to you to finish everything. However, in this glitch he never comes to speak to you, and simply walks away. Thus you are stuck in cutscene mode, unable to move, fast travel, or interact with anything.
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' shipped with a rather nasty bug on the [=PS3=] version, where the game discovering new locations put the data into your save file, bogging it down. If you've filled out your map, the save file will either be unplayably laggy or simply refuse to load at all. The PC version also has a rather frequent issue with graphics glitching out just preceding a crash the next time the game would load up. Bethesda fixed the former, but their attempts to fix the latter [[NiceJobBreakingItHero has actually]] ''[[EpicFail increased]]'' [[NiceJobBreakingItHero the frequency of the crashes on some systems]].
** One bug that has yet to be fixed in ''Skyrim'' involves the quest "Rise in the East," requiring the player to go to a location known as Japhet's Folly. The glitch comes, however, in the fact that said island exists in its own "map" that exists specifically for that quest only, meaning that you cannot fast travel to or from it. In theory. You can, however, fast travel back to the island, but not off of it, and it is surrounded by invisible walls in the oceans on all sides of it, making it impossible to leave. Many players may appreciate the irony of being stuck on an island whose namesake was also trapped there, up until they realize that the three autosaves that the game uses as a default will have filled up by trying to figure out how to get off the damn island, leaving the only option to teleporting with the console (on PC), or losing hours worth of progress from having to reset to the last manual save (360 and [=PS3=]).
** Yet another still unpatched bug: "No One Escapes Cidhna Mine". After completing another quest, the PC is arrested by corrupt guards and thrown into the titular prison/mine. This is almost unavoidable, as any encounter with the Reach's guards forces you to either surrender or kill the guard. If the PC surrenders to try to clear their name, then they [[NoGearLevel temporarily lose all their equipment and other inventory items]]. These are returned as soon as the level ends, except that quest items are not returned, and are LostForever. This includes items relevant to the main quest (including an ''[[ArtifactOfDoom Elder Scroll]]''), breaking any number of quests, including the main storyline.
** The Companions questline is notorious for being buggy, to the point where it is often rendered impassable if not completed right away (or, alternatively, after all other quests have been taken care of). Much of the problem comes from the fact that the Blood's Honour and Retrieve the Helm of Winterhold quests require you to kill an NPC at the end of the same dungeon, which messes up the game's triggers. Players with both quests who try to complete one will almost always become stuck - upon their return to Whiterun, the Companion who is supposed to give them the next quest will not have the proper dialogue options and the character will be unable to progress (and, thus, stuck permanently as a werewolf).
*** In the quest "Purity", it's possible that the brazier used to cure Farkas and Vilkas of their lycanthropy will do diddly to your own lycanthropy.
** Then there is the Daedric quest "Waking Nightmare" which can cause the game to crash as soon as you enter Nightcaller Temple. The game would freeze when ever the save menu is brought up and sometimes during auto saves which requires the player to reset the game, but this can happen at any time during the quest making it a complete chore to play through, especially for players who are trying to get the Oblivion Walker achievement.
** In the quest "Trinity Restored" of the Thieves Guild/Nightingale questline, at the point where Karliah is supposed to open the gate into the inner chamber she'll instead ''walk back out of the cave and never stop walking'', forcing you to use console commands to make her move in the right direction and delete the gate since you can't open it yourself.
* The PAL version of ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'' had a glitch that froze the game if you did some stuff out of order. Not SequenceBreaking, just completing some tasks without talking to someone nearby who specifically tells you to do them. Since the Wii doesn't do downloadable content and patching very well, Nintendo just let people swap for a patched disc if they really wanted to.
* The original ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' also contained a game breaking bug in Bowser's lower area of the castle. There was a room containing an item that was supposed to only be accessed after getting rid of the lava. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ilHV_p5op4 If you tried to jump into the entrance of the room]], what would happen is, the lava will damage you, sending you up in the air as usual, but as a result of you also going to the entrance, it triggers the "new room" script. This results in the game crashing as it cannot comprehend the player dying and entering the room at the same time, and it also results in an error screen with hex numbers and values popping up, with the main line of it naming the bug itself, "Floating Point Exception".
** The explanation for the glitch is that a floating point exception in programming is where the code does something it isn't supposed to do. Of course, why would the game allow you to do this?
* The Japanese version of the DS remake of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' had a glitch where, if you played a certain video from the Fat Chocobo's video viewer menu and saved afterward, the player would actually gain control during the ending sequence, and the game would never actually end. Thankfully, this was fixed in the Western releases.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' had a weapon that would sometimes make you run away from battle instead of doing an attack (the Chicken Knife), and a class that could not run away from battle (the Berserker). If the Chicken Knife's effect triggered from a Berserker attacking with it, the battle would keep going, but neither you nor the enemies could actually do anything to each other. The only way out of this one was to reset your game. Better hope you saved recently. To make this one even more annoying, the Chicken Knife could easily be one of the most damaging weapons in the game. Thankfully, this bug was fixed for the [[UpdatedRerelease Advance version.]]
* Similarly, the original release of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' had the infamous "Sketch bug" -- one of your character's commands, when it failed, would have unpredictable results, often rendering the game unplayable. This was quietly repaired, and most cartridges of the game don't have this particular error. The game does have other bugs, but thankfully, they're not as severe or as easy to trigger. Of course, if the game didn't become unplayable after that, you could end up with a bounty of items. Beware using "Sort" afterward, though, because you can lose items in your inventory. The 1.1 release fixed the bug with an ObviousRulePatch that can be disabled with a single Pro Action Replay code.
** The original Japanese version of the game has a bug late in the game that lets you go back to before the PointOfNoReturn. Specifically, going into the Opera House and dying to one of the rat monsters dashing about the rafters will cause you to reappear outside... [[spoiler:in the World of Balance, i.e. before TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt]]. No points for guessing whether or not you can get ''back''. This was fixed in all other versions of the game by simply removing the rats.
** The Greatest Hits release of ''Final Fantasy Anthology'' has a bug that can render the opera scene in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' {{Unwinnable}}. You're required to have Celes and Locke in your party for the scene, but the game doesn't lock them in your party; it only locks the characters in the first two slots. So, make a party, switch them around so Celes and Locke are on the bottom, and make a new party. The only problem is, to switch party members again, you have to go back to the house in Narshe and talk to one of your other party members. Celes and Locke aren't programmed to show up at the house, parties contain four members, and you only have six characters available; making a full party that doesn't include Celes and Locke, then saving, makes it forever impossible to put them back in your party.
** It is also possible to render the game [[UnwinnableByInsanity unplayable]] by having a party with nobody in it. This can be done via a somewhat convoluted method of making a party containing only Gau, after the battle at Narshe when everyone splits up to look for Terra, and then joining up with Shadow, who will appear in Kohlingen if there is an empty space in your party. Then travel to the Veldt, have Gau Leap on an enemy, leave before he returns, and take Shadow back to Narshe alone. Upon entering the town, he will spout one of his "my job is done" lines and leave, which happens every time you take him there during this part of the game, but since he's your only party member, it will then become impossible to continue in the game. (You can, however, bring up the status screen and see your empty party. The game will crash when you exit the status screen, though.) Demonstrated [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPDtoTMwAkY here]].
** In the Coliseum, the party members run on an AIRoulette, just like the enemies do. However, this makes a few characters all but guaranteed to lose, and the ones who don't still act bizarrely. Sabin has a nasty tendency to use Soul Spiral, which sacrifices himself to restore his allies HP, when all Coliseum fights are [[DuelBoss one-on-one]], so it's an instant loss. Strago isn't much better if he knows Exploder. Terra, meanwhile, will use Morph/Trance as a battle starts... and then, due to a bug, sit there and do nothing until she either dies or the timer runs out. Depending on how long it's been since Terra last transformed, this could mean up to fifteen minutes of nothing happening. Mog also has a tendency to try to use his Dance moves, even though it will never work.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' has the Northern Crater save crystal. Placing it in certain locations would often cause the game to glitch out, making it impossible to leave the room. It's not so bad if you have multiple save files, but if you only had the one, then your game would be permanently ruined.
* ''VideoGame/MakaiToshiSaGa'', released in the US as ''The Final Fantasy Legend'' had a lot of strange bugs, including warps, area glitches, character corruption, extreme increases in travel speed, and a [[GoodBadBugs one-hit-kill that works even on the final boss]], which [[http://magweasel.com/2009/07/06/the-final-fantasy-legend/ when exploited ruthlessly]] make it possible to [[http://www.destructoid.com/this-is-how-you-beat-final-fantasy-legend-in-two-minutes-138937.phtml finish the game in under two minutes]]. That's less time than the ending credits take.

* ''ManaKhemiaAlchemistsOfAlRevis'' has this in the bonus dungeon. Any monster past a certain floor except the bosses have a high chance of freezing the game over any little thing either they or you do, combined with how long a fight with them can be due to their insane stats and it is pure luck if you can get 100% completion. Also in part 2 there is a bonus boss in the first chapter on your second play through who has an attack that freezes the game as well. As with the ''ArTonelico2'' example above, NISA is very bad at playtesting their localizations.
** Also in [[ManaKhemia2FallOfAlchemy Part 2]], a glaringly obvious bug in the Extra Scenario, where [[spoiler:all 10 characters team up]]. While encounterable if you chose Raze first, it's ''especially'' apparent if you chose Ulrika as the first character. Having Ulrika read an entry on the Job Board or even ''going into the Job submenu in the Student Handbook'' during this Scenario will freeze. Fighting an optional mark in the second scenario will freeze like Raki does - but on the first attack. Thankfully, at that point, you have a load of fresh items with which to lay the smackdown on. A harder one to find is in Puniyo's last Character Quest, where you get up to three Punis in your party. Using a Finishing Strike with a Puni will freeze the game.

** And then there's the music, which is all stuttery and broken on Windows Vista and newer [=PCs=], due to the game using a deprecated [[UsefulNotes/ApplicationProgrammingInterface API]] called [=DirectSound=], which has been discontinued in Windows Vista onwards. Granted tho, there are fixes for this, but it involves spending an entire day hacking the game, or having a sound card whose manufacturer has put out their own fix for things (ie Creative and their [=ALchemy=] softeware), or downgrading to Windows XP (32-bit, because even the 64-bit version doesn't support DirectSound). Pre-made fixes? Bethesda is issuing DMCA takedowns left and right to sites that are hosting pre-made fixes. Apparently their stand is either you live with it, or you show your love for the game by spending time fixing it yourself, or take a hit for the game and downgrade your PC to a old discontinued OS that can't take full advantage of your hardware.

** And then there's the music, which is all stuttery and broken on Windows Vista and newer [=PCs=], due to the game using a deprecated [[UsefulNotes/ApplicationProgrammingInterface API]] called [=DirectSound=], which has been discontinued in Windows Vista onwards. Granted tho, there are fixes for this, but it involves spending an entire day hacking the game, or having a sound card whose manufacturer has put out their own fix for things (ie Creative and their [=ALchemy=] softeware). Pre-made fix? Bethesda is issuing DMCA takedowns left and right to sites that are hosting a pre-made fix. Apparently their stand is either you live with it, or you show your love for the game by spending time fixing it yourself.

** And then there's the music, which is all stuttery and broken on Windows Vista and newer PCs, due to the game using a deprecated [[UsefulNotes/ApplicationProgrammingInterface API]] called [=DirectSound=], which has been discontinued in Windows Vista onwards. Granted tho, there are fixes for this, but it involves spending an entire day hacking the game, or having a sound card whose manufacturer has put out their own fix for things (ie Creative and their [=ALchemy=] softeware). Pre-made fix? Bethesda is issuing DMCA takedowns left and right to sites that are hosting a pre-made fix. Apparently their stand is either you live with it, or you show your love for the game by spending time fixing it yourself.

** There's also the infamous "[[http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/01/weird-earthbound-glitch/ Circus Tent Glitch]]": in Threed's circus tent, checking the area right below the bottom-right pillar will sometimes delay the "No problem here" text. If you do this enough, the game will start to print out garbage data, sometimes in indefinite quantities. Eventually, enough checks on the spot will cause the glitch to mess around with sprites, sometimes causing the game to display [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByZbcG6CEAAlzk6.jpg random sprite data]] and/or emit what can best be described as HellIsThatNoise.

*** Removing any level 0 or 1 Pokémon out of the PC crashes the game, since it's not normally possible to encounter a Pokémon below level 2. Lvl 1 Pokémon can be encountered by using the Mew glitch, and using Growl six times in the encounter just before triggering the glitch encounter[[note]]The glitch encounter's level is set at 7, ranges from 1 to 13, gets decremented by Growl, and gets incremented by Sword Dance. However, there's another glitch with lvl 1 Pokémon that allows you to instantly level them up to 100, neatly sidestepping the above.[[/note]] Fortunately, this was fixed in later games, since Gen II properly coded for every possible Pokémon level, and every game in Gen III beyond starts a hatched Pokémon at level 1.

* The original ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' also contained a game breaking bug in Bowser's lower area of the castle. There was a room containing an item that was supposed to only be accessed after getting rid of the lava. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ilHV_p5op4 If you tried to jump into the entrance of the room]], what would happen is, the lava will damage you, sending you up in the air as usual, but afterwards, you would trigger the "enter area" script. It would show the room in lava momentarily, then the game cuts sound and practically implodes, and you see countless numbers pop up.

* ''VideoGame/FatalLabyrinth'' requires you to venture to the top of a tower with randomly generated floors. To move up to the next floor, you have to search the current floor for the staircase that leads you there. However, because of the randomly generated (and shitty) nature of the game, sometimes it will forget to spawn a staircase. Search the floor all you want. It’s just plain not there, sometimes. Nothing can be done now but to hit the reset button.

** It is also possible to render the game unplayable by having a party with nobody in it. This can be done via a somewhat convoluted method of making a party containing only Gau, after the battle at Narshe when everyone splits up to look for Terra, and then joining up with Shadow, who will appear in Kohlingen if there is an empty space in your party. Then travel to the Veldt, have Gau Leap on an enemy, leave before he returns, and take Shadow back to Narshe alone. Upon entering the town, he will spout one of his "my job is done" lines and leave, which happens every time you take him there during this part of the game, but since he's your only party member, it will then become impossible to continue in the game. (You can, however, bring up the status screen and see your empty party. The game will crash when you exit the status screen, though.) Demonstrated [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPDtoTMwAkY here]].

* ''VideoGame/CitizensOfEarth'' has an unacceptable amount of game-crashing bugs. Simply closing the curtains in the Vice President's house crashes the game, as does using certain skills in combat. Fortunately, the game is quite generous with {{Auto Save}}s.