Awful in the way that people describe Oblivion or awful in the sense of Vampire Rain?
If the first, I will still love it.
And as for the second, I love Deadly Premonition. It'd have to do everything so poorly that it was actually unplayable for me to dislike it. I mean. The game would have to be unplayable. I seriously doubt (at the very least) that the exploration aspect would be any worse than Oblivion's (and I personally love Oblivion).
I still play Oblivion entirely unmoded and find very few game ending bugs or horrible travesties (although I have run into plenty of bugs, glitches, and freezes) that everyone talks about. Mods are great, but I have never played a Bethesda game so broken that it couldn't be enjoyed without mods.