SKYRIM has broken questlines all over the place (to the point where fans habitually pull down the development menu and reset them to make them work...which doesn't help if you're playing on console of course). So did FO3 for that matter. With FO3 you could inadvertantly skip about 40% of the main storyline if you go to a certain Vault before the game tells you to (you can just walk up to it and go inside at any time). It's just an issue you have with these kind of open-world games, where the story tries to be linear but the non-linear nature of the world clashes with it.

MASS EFFECT 3 also has a slew of broken questlines. Some are deliberate, with consequences (don't do the Grissom Academy mission straight away and it vanishes with reports that the Academy has been destroyed; characters from that location are corrupted and deployed against you in battle later on). Others appear to be mistakes, certainly 2 quests that become uncompletable after the coup attempt on the Citadel despite the map and quest log telling you they can still be done.



The publisher and the developer are both making the game, and problems can arise from one quarter or the other or both. Most notably, the problems with ALPHA PROTOCOL and NEW VEGAS being bugged are down to QA (Quality Assurance) which is handled by the publisher (Sega or Bethesda), not the developer (Obsidian).

Obsidian certainly aren't perfect (we haven't gotten into the issues they had with NWN2, which is a whole other mess) and they definitely need to choose partner companies a lot better. They seemed to get on well with Square Enix on DUNGEON SIEGE III and actually delivered a quality, complete, non-bugged game (if a little generic and dull).

Btw, I actually just started NEW VEGAS and so far it's been excellent, a definite step-up from FO3 and notably bug-free.