Who cares? Bethesda is long past the point of developing a good game.
They could take all the time in the world and it would still be shit because their formula for game development is pathetic.
I haven't tried Starfield because it's still getting patched, but Bethesda games are some of my favorites. Yes they're janky and everything but I love exploring and looting and they really nail that.
There are some films I enjoy which are objectively bad, and that's okay.
If people want to enjoy Bethesda games, it's fine, each to their own.
However, if you want to talk about game design, there is a lot of evidence which supports the claim that Bethesda don't know what makes a (objectively) good game anymore.
Unfortunately, Bethesda are the only ones in town who are capitalising on "Bethesda style games". (With the exception of a few, like The Outer Worlds, and Cyberpunk 2077).
Bethesda's strong suit is their physical world building - but everything else has been getting worse.
The running joke is that the players mod the game to fix after launch. Except it's not a joke, and it's really not funny when the devs actually expect the community to fix their game. They could simply pay someone to implement every single fix from the UFO4P and UESSP, but choose not to. They do not care about quality.
Unfortunately, Bethesda are the only ones in town who are capitalising on "Bethesda style games".
I thought a lot of games are like that now. I personally love the fallout universe but hate the game style. Hate now things like horizon zero, Witcher, Elden ring, assassins creed and all those games have slow pace open world with huge RPG elements.
More like Bethesda game style become an industry standard. That’s my perspective though, im sure those who like the format don’t agree.
Never play Starfield; it'll make you hate Bethesda, especially Emil Pagliarulo (the lead designer and writer of the story).
I used to feel the same way as you, until I played it. Now I have zero interest in anything Bethesda has coming out in the future. They've proven to me that they're incapable of making a modern game with a good story. Only thing that would convince me to play another title of theirs is if they finally ditch Gamebryo and never let Emil in the writer's room ever again, two things that'll never happen.
Pretty similar for me. I've been a fan of Bethesda since morrowwind but starfield was the last straw. It's a a slap in the face to fans
The faction quests were pretty good.
I really like Starfield. It's not perfect, but it's great.
I won't discount them unless an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game drops and is garbage. 76 has turned around into an actually enjoyable experience, for instance. At the same time I don't particularly care if a studio pumps out good or bad as there will still be idiots preordering and buying day 1. I am more than happy to wait for the reviews. A good game is a good game, and a bad one, bad. Who develops it makes no real difference apart from an expectation.
Thaaaat saaaid: Todd, my dude, you do actually need to hurry up. A great entry into the Fallout universe would restore some of the old faith you have caused to fall away.
won't discount them unless an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game drops and is garbage
It was called Starfield and it dropped last September
Which is neither fallout or elder scrolls. I played starfield to it's completion. It was fine. Nothing more than a 7/10. Had a lot to work on.
But I don't get the fallout 4 hate. With a few mods and shutting up the protagonist, the game was more than enjoyable.
Which is neither fallout or elder scrolls
It's in the same engine with the same mechanics that the last 2 Single-Player Fallout and Elder Scrolls games used (the gunplay is Fallout, the magic is Skyrim shouts, exploration is the same in all of them), to pretend Starfield doesn't reflect on what future BGS Games will be like just because it doesn't have the same name as their other series is patently silly
Nothing more than a 7/10
Your standards are way too low if you think Starfield is anything close to a 7
This is one point I contend with: Fallout 76 didn't become good with patches. I'm not unconvinced that there's a conspiracy for Bethesda to create the impression online that the game became good with updates.
That's just me though.
I tried it after repeatedly reading it was good now. The main change is the servers work. If you disliked the structure or content it’s just more of the same. A few boring npcs were added I guess.
Right 76 is structurally boring. Just like star field, and kind of lik3 fallout 4.
They are bad in the writing department and gameplay is super lack luster. Previous games got away with bad gameplay because the story was good, but they are diamonds in the rough because of it. These ones are partially polish concrete.
I was going to say Fallout 4 was the stinker and the only reason it gets as high of praise as it does is just how bad Fallout 76 was and after a lot of patches still is.
Come on now, let's be honest : as long as the community keep doing the work for them, their games will be popular.
All they gotta do is make it easy to make mods and the jankiness and stupid decisions can be patched over and made into something great that actually pleases everybody, because everybody can decide to fix what they want.
The problem is their delusion that people love their games as they are.
Even this is a stretch to be honest. Their games aren't easy to mod. Minor updates break shit. You need to consider mod load order. You need to "clean" the base files before loading in any big mods.
Their games are made of fucking speghetti code and they don't care. They could fix it, but they don't. They could clean their own base game files so this isn't necessary, but they would rather force people into the ecosystems of Creation Club.
Like, you've got an engine, which you paid a bunch of money to develop. But you're only making one game at a time in it, which limits the return. If another carefully-selected studio were willing to use the engine and had Fallout rights, they could put out a game. You did that with Obsidian and Fallout: New Vegas was an enormous success.
They dont even need to use the engine, chuck the IP at Inexile and let them make a new Isometric Fallout game again.
Or Larian
and let them make a new Isometric Fallout game again.
Great idea if the game is less polished than bethesda's fallout
The engine is antiquated.
The Starfield one is fine in my book.
They do need to refactor their cell framework to support real-time streaming for interiors or cut down the load times to near instantaneous because modern titles do not need to have such long loading times apart from the initial load when the game boots
Loading times aren't getting smaller. Textures, sounds and other files are getting bigger, and regardless of how well optimized you make your engine load assets, if those files are big your device CPU is going to take longer to load them into RAM.
Better hardware absolutely cuts loading times.
They did. Fallout 76 was licensed to a newly created studio named Bethesda Austin. And Fallout 76 was an on holy disaster on release.
on holy disaster
unholy
Autocorrect, but you get the meaning
Just like they didn't rush Starfield? Well, Microsoft told them to spend another year on it. I can't imagine what that version looked like.
It looked worse than Redfall when that game was released. There was a leaker at that time that said Starfield was absolutely no where close to a game and they hadn't even figured out how to make it fun at all when Redfall went out.
Wow. Todd must have an amazing contract. Has Bethesda released an actual finished game since...what? Oblivion?
Howard has been a gold mine for Bethesda. Him, Pete Hines (the PR guy), and Emil (the only writer they employ) are the three amigos. Their games are cheap, modders will fix everything for them, and they've held strong to their money at any cost don't call it mtx ideals that rake in the loot.
Notice how they only have two IPs. Elder Scrolls and Fallout. They've been coasting on lore that was created before Oblivion and Fallout 3 for decades. That's why Starfield fails so hard, they had to actually come up with new ideas for once.
Plus they also know how to throw banging release parties complete with private concerts. You didn't get rid of that guy.
That's why Starfield fails so hard, they had to actually come up with new ideas for once.
I actually enjoyed Starfield's lore, it had interesting takes on sci-fi tropes and was pretty consistent.
If only it wasn't held back by ancient engine and gameplay elements weren't so disconnected, it'd have been fine
Emil is not their only writer, just the lead.
Name the other writers. Actual credited Bethesda.writers
They are hard to find because they aren't credited exclusively as writers but I know Ferret Baudoin worked as a writer and senior developer for most Bethesda games, including Starfield.
Hmmhmm I see
True, but you do need a new goddamn game engine.
I really wish we could go back to smaller scale rpgs that came out more frequently. Tighter, trimmer play areas with efficient stories. They don't need to have tons of side quests with mediocre at best writing. Just pare it down for shit's sake
Yeah it's too late to rush it, everyone has watched the TV show and is now interested in something else.
The longer Bethesda doesn't touch Fallout the better, as I see it.
I want Obsidian to get another stab. I could see them pulling off something great with an improved engine and no sabotage like they got when they developed New Vegas.
As if they'd let that happen.
The last time they let another studio develop something, it blew expectations out of the water and as a result made their game built on their home engine look like hot dog water.
New vegas is by far the beat fallout game, if for no other reason, it's an actual role playing game, and not an action adventure game.
I’d imagine they don’t get the final say anymore, daddy MS does
To some extent they likely do. Nobody truly knows their "proprietary engine" other than dedicated modders and bethesda staff.
There's definitely a level of negotiation that goes on between Microsoft and bethesda, which, outside of their massive titles Skyrim and Fallout, has successful games published (not developed) by Bethesda, like Doom, Deathloop, Dishonored, among others. If Microsoft makes demands, they could backstab the devs of whatever game they make, just like they did to new vegas.
Based on 76, Starfield, and the Fallout TV show. The next Fallout and Elder Scrolls games is going to be a shit show.
What was wrong with the TV show? I thought It was pretty good
It is good. It's pretty bland as well, if that makes sense. I really liked it, but I have zero interest in ever watching it again.
I agree with that take. The story was fun but writing was meh.
A lot of the TV show is the world's slowest "unboxing" of the Fallout world.
It's a fun ride, but the ultimate reveal is everyone's too busy being out for themselves to make the world better. (Not a surprise to anyone versed in Fallout lore), but without any of the story surprises, lore reveals the acting and story alone aren't really strong enough on their own to call for second viewings.
Honestly wasn't crazy about the acting myself, but took the show at face value. A solid 6/10 for me.
Of course not they make enough offa Skyrim
I'm still waiting for the Atari 2600 version of Skyrim.
If nobody beats me to it, I'll give it a try.
I don't even know if mine still works, but I can't hook it up to the TV right now anyways. Had to get a cheap one with no RCAs. Fuckin Costco.
16x the wait
That’s true and I agree to an extent.. they really need to build a new engine for whatever release is next, starfield proved that the current one won’t cut it. People are tired of these tiny cities and copy/paste dungeons everywhere.
The next big Bethesda title should coincide with the new engine launch if Todd has his witts still. It also shouldn’t be 2030 before we see that new engine..
They just spent five years upgrading their engine. They're not going to use anything else for ES6
Those upgrades clearly weren’t up to snuff. The game may have ended up profitable but it certainly wasn’t the next Skyrim from community feedback. They dumped a ton of money into it but it won’t have the money printing longevity of Skyrim
The whole company needs to be refreshed and upgraded
I hope they'll take their time to make a great game, the best thing that could happen is that they take example on interplay's fallout. Thoses vibes should do a comeback in the franchise.
You're right.
You NEED to rush TES 6.
If they can't make a game about space ships and hundreds of worlds you can play on fun, then I have zero hope for TES6.
Problem with starfield is the content was small and sprinkled into an ocean of game. MAYBE with a smaller world to build in they’ll be ok, though I agree, low hope here
The mod community will just fix it like its done for every other game they've made.
It's not worth fixing a game that's not fun. There's hundreds of mods for Super Metroid on the SNES. Not so many for Barbie.
Thankfully 76 still receives fresh and free expansion packs on a regular cycle
ESO does too. Seems like the people that are not in charge of the mainline games know what they're doing.
Who cares? Bethesda is long past the point of developing a good game.
They could take all the time in the world and it would still be shit because their formula for game development is pathetic.
I haven't tried Starfield because it's still getting patched, but Bethesda games are some of my favorites. Yes they're janky and everything but I love exploring and looting and they really nail that.
There are some films I enjoy which are objectively bad, and that's okay.
If people want to enjoy Bethesda games, it's fine, each to their own.
However, if you want to talk about game design, there is a lot of evidence which supports the claim that Bethesda don't know what makes a (objectively) good game anymore.
Unfortunately, Bethesda are the only ones in town who are capitalising on "Bethesda style games". (With the exception of a few, like The Outer Worlds, and Cyberpunk 2077).
Bethesda's strong suit is their physical world building - but everything else has been getting worse.
The running joke is that the players mod the game to fix after launch. Except it's not a joke, and it's really not funny when the devs actually expect the community to fix their game. They could simply pay someone to implement every single fix from the UFO4P and UESSP, but choose not to. They do not care about quality.
I thought a lot of games are like that now. I personally love the fallout universe but hate the game style. Hate now things like horizon zero, Witcher, Elden ring, assassins creed and all those games have slow pace open world with huge RPG elements.
More like Bethesda game style become an industry standard. That’s my perspective though, im sure those who like the format don’t agree.
Never play Starfield; it'll make you hate Bethesda, especially Emil Pagliarulo (the lead designer and writer of the story).
I used to feel the same way as you, until I played it. Now I have zero interest in anything Bethesda has coming out in the future. They've proven to me that they're incapable of making a modern game with a good story. Only thing that would convince me to play another title of theirs is if they finally ditch Gamebryo and never let Emil in the writer's room ever again, two things that'll never happen.
Pretty similar for me. I've been a fan of Bethesda since morrowwind but starfield was the last straw. It's a a slap in the face to fans
The faction quests were pretty good.
I really like Starfield. It's not perfect, but it's great.
Sounds like a Bethesda game to me
I won't discount them unless an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game drops and is garbage. 76 has turned around into an actually enjoyable experience, for instance. At the same time I don't particularly care if a studio pumps out good or bad as there will still be idiots preordering and buying day 1. I am more than happy to wait for the reviews. A good game is a good game, and a bad one, bad. Who develops it makes no real difference apart from an expectation.
Thaaaat saaaid: Todd, my dude, you do actually need to hurry up. A great entry into the Fallout universe would restore some of the old faith you have caused to fall away.
It was called Starfield and it dropped last September
Which is neither fallout or elder scrolls. I played starfield to it's completion. It was fine. Nothing more than a 7/10. Had a lot to work on.
But I don't get the fallout 4 hate. With a few mods and shutting up the protagonist, the game was more than enjoyable.
It's in the same engine with the same mechanics that the last 2 Single-Player Fallout and Elder Scrolls games used (the gunplay is Fallout, the magic is Skyrim shouts, exploration is the same in all of them), to pretend Starfield doesn't reflect on what future BGS Games will be like just because it doesn't have the same name as their other series is patently silly
Your standards are way too low if you think Starfield is anything close to a 7
This is one point I contend with: Fallout 76 didn't become good with patches. I'm not unconvinced that there's a conspiracy for Bethesda to create the impression online that the game became good with updates.
That's just me though.
I tried it after repeatedly reading it was good now. The main change is the servers work. If you disliked the structure or content it’s just more of the same. A few boring npcs were added I guess.
Right 76 is structurally boring. Just like star field, and kind of lik3 fallout 4.
They are bad in the writing department and gameplay is super lack luster. Previous games got away with bad gameplay because the story was good, but they are diamonds in the rough because of it. These ones are partially polish concrete.
I was going to say Fallout 4 was the stinker and the only reason it gets as high of praise as it does is just how bad Fallout 76 was and after a lot of patches still is.
Come on now, let's be honest : as long as the community keep doing the work for them, their games will be popular. All they gotta do is make it easy to make mods and the jankiness and stupid decisions can be patched over and made into something great that actually pleases everybody, because everybody can decide to fix what they want.
The problem is their delusion that people love their games as they are.
Even this is a stretch to be honest. Their games aren't easy to mod. Minor updates break shit. You need to consider mod load order. You need to "clean" the base files before loading in any big mods.
Their games are made of fucking speghetti code and they don't care. They could fix it, but they don't. They could clean their own base game files so this isn't necessary, but they would rather force people into the ecosystems of Creation Club.
Well, you certainly haven’t been rushing it so far, considering Fallout 4 released back in 2015…
Okay. Can you license it to someone else?
Like, you've got an engine, which you paid a bunch of money to develop. But you're only making one game at a time in it, which limits the return. If another carefully-selected studio were willing to use the engine and had Fallout rights, they could put out a game. You did that with Obsidian and Fallout: New Vegas was an enormous success.
They dont even need to use the engine, chuck the IP at Inexile and let them make a new Isometric Fallout game again.
Or Larian
Great idea if the game is less polished than bethesda's fallout
The engine is antiquated.
The Starfield one is fine in my book.
They do need to refactor their cell framework to support real-time streaming for interiors or cut down the load times to near instantaneous because modern titles do not need to have such long loading times apart from the initial load when the game boots
Loading times aren't getting smaller. Textures, sounds and other files are getting bigger, and regardless of how well optimized you make your engine load assets, if those files are big your device CPU is going to take longer to load them into RAM.
Better hardware absolutely cuts loading times.
They did. Fallout 76 was licensed to a newly created studio named Bethesda Austin. And Fallout 76 was an on holy disaster on release.
unholy
Autocorrect, but you get the meaning
Just like they didn't rush Starfield? Well, Microsoft told them to spend another year on it. I can't imagine what that version looked like.
It looked worse than Redfall when that game was released. There was a leaker at that time that said Starfield was absolutely no where close to a game and they hadn't even figured out how to make it fun at all when Redfall went out.
Wow. Todd must have an amazing contract. Has Bethesda released an actual finished game since...what? Oblivion?
Howard has been a gold mine for Bethesda. Him, Pete Hines (the PR guy), and Emil (the only writer they employ) are the three amigos. Their games are cheap, modders will fix everything for them, and they've held strong to their money at any cost don't call it mtx ideals that rake in the loot.
Notice how they only have two IPs. Elder Scrolls and Fallout. They've been coasting on lore that was created before Oblivion and Fallout 3 for decades. That's why Starfield fails so hard, they had to actually come up with new ideas for once.
Plus they also know how to throw banging release parties complete with private concerts. You didn't get rid of that guy.
I actually enjoyed Starfield's lore, it had interesting takes on sci-fi tropes and was pretty consistent.
If only it wasn't held back by ancient engine and gameplay elements weren't so disconnected, it'd have been fine
Emil is not their only writer, just the lead.
Name the other writers. Actual credited Bethesda.writers
They are hard to find because they aren't credited exclusively as writers but I know Ferret Baudoin worked as a writer and senior developer for most Bethesda games, including Starfield.
Hmmhmm I see
True, but you do need a new goddamn game engine.
I really wish we could go back to smaller scale rpgs that came out more frequently. Tighter, trimmer play areas with efficient stories. They don't need to have tons of side quests with mediocre at best writing. Just pare it down for shit's sake
Yeah it's too late to rush it, everyone has watched the TV show and is now interested in something else.
The longer Bethesda doesn't touch Fallout the better, as I see it.
I want Obsidian to get another stab. I could see them pulling off something great with an improved engine and no sabotage like they got when they developed New Vegas.
As if they'd let that happen.
The last time they let another studio develop something, it blew expectations out of the water and as a result made their game built on their home engine look like hot dog water.
New vegas is by far the beat fallout game, if for no other reason, it's an actual role playing game, and not an action adventure game.
I’d imagine they don’t get the final say anymore, daddy MS does
To some extent they likely do. Nobody truly knows their "proprietary engine" other than dedicated modders and bethesda staff.
There's definitely a level of negotiation that goes on between Microsoft and bethesda, which, outside of their massive titles Skyrim and Fallout, has successful games published (not developed) by Bethesda, like Doom, Deathloop, Dishonored, among others. If Microsoft makes demands, they could backstab the devs of whatever game they make, just like they did to new vegas.
So yeah, I doubt they'd let it happen again.
Todd last month. Todd Howard says Bethesda's trying to 'increase our output' with Elder Scrolls and Fallout 'because we don't want to wait that long either'. Make up your mind, Howard.
Based on 76, Starfield, and the Fallout TV show. The next Fallout and Elder Scrolls games is going to be a shit show.
What was wrong with the TV show? I thought It was pretty good
It is good. It's pretty bland as well, if that makes sense. I really liked it, but I have zero interest in ever watching it again.
I agree with that take. The story was fun but writing was meh.
A lot of the TV show is the world's slowest "unboxing" of the Fallout world. It's a fun ride, but the ultimate reveal is everyone's too busy being out for themselves to make the world better. (Not a surprise to anyone versed in Fallout lore), but without any of the story surprises, lore reveals the acting and story alone aren't really strong enough on their own to call for second viewings.
Honestly wasn't crazy about the acting myself, but took the show at face value. A solid 6/10 for me.
Of course not they make enough offa Skyrim
I'm still waiting for the Atari 2600 version of Skyrim.
If nobody beats me to it, I'll give it a try.
I don't even know if mine still works, but I can't hook it up to the TV right now anyways. Had to get a cheap one with no RCAs. Fuckin Costco.
16x the wait
That’s true and I agree to an extent.. they really need to build a new engine for whatever release is next, starfield proved that the current one won’t cut it. People are tired of these tiny cities and copy/paste dungeons everywhere.
The next big Bethesda title should coincide with the new engine launch if Todd has his witts still. It also shouldn’t be 2030 before we see that new engine..
They just spent five years upgrading their engine. They're not going to use anything else for ES6
Those upgrades clearly weren’t up to snuff. The game may have ended up profitable but it certainly wasn’t the next Skyrim from community feedback. They dumped a ton of money into it but it won’t have the money printing longevity of Skyrim
The whole company needs to be refreshed and upgraded
I hope they'll take their time to make a great game, the best thing that could happen is that they take example on interplay's fallout. Thoses vibes should do a comeback in the franchise.
You're right.
You NEED to rush TES 6.
If they can't make a game about space ships and hundreds of worlds you can play on fun, then I have zero hope for TES6.
Problem with starfield is the content was small and sprinkled into an ocean of game. MAYBE with a smaller world to build in they’ll be ok, though I agree, low hope here
The mod community will just fix it like its done for every other game they've made.
It's not worth fixing a game that's not fun. There's hundreds of mods for Super Metroid on the SNES. Not so many for Barbie.
Thankfully 76 still receives fresh and free expansion packs on a regular cycle
ESO does too. Seems like the people that are not in charge of the mainline games know what they're doing.