Wasn't there a scandal over how the metacritic reward worked? I seem to remember that they were something like 1 point below the threshold, which everyone knew to be total bullshit because the "video game journalist" industry was, and is paid shilling. There was allegations that Bethesda purposefully scuttled the marketing on the paid shill side just to tank the metacritic score so they didn't have to make a payout. Every glitch and screwup that Obsidian got hammered for was already present in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim later on.