Fallout 4
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Tuco
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Vandyn
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A few in this thread continues to mention that the game has flaws but that the flaws are expected (and I guess looked past) because it's Bethesda. Is there any other game company that gets that kind of a pass (on this forum) every single time they release a game?
Skanda
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Vandyn
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Tuco
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Not really. Like was said earlier the only games that attempts the same level of scope as Bethesda games is GTA/Witcher3. Rockstar generally has higher quality and bug free releases (at least on consoles) so if they released one with a lot of bugs it would be a surprise. Same as if the next GTA game had poor storytelling / writing. Witcher 3 is the bar that Bethesda has to beat for ES6, and I don't think they've beat it with FO4.
However, ES/FO games reach for different challenges than GTA. Since GTA3, GTA games can be thought of as "Cinematic driver/shooters in an open world setting" and Bethesda games can be thought of as "Open World Exploration RPGs". In that context the crafting, dialog, story and companions being much less bland than other RPGs isn't nearly as offensive.
Said a different way, nobody boots up GTAV, drives in a random direction, finds an open building and says, "This building is boring, I searched everywhere and there's no unique clutter, no loot, no random NPCs, no random story-driving notes or anything. It's just a building.".
That being said, it's my opinion that Witcher3 showed that you can add a tremendously impactful questlines and much better writing to open world exploration RPGs, and that Bethesda should hire a dozen more writers and designers than whatever they have to attempt to do so for ES6.
hodj
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Bethesda's writing team is shit.
Their animation team has been shit in the past but is getting better.
Its not that they get a pass, its that people should, at this point, know exactly what to expect, and bitching about it for 20 years hasn't fixed it, so just enjoy the goddamn game for a little while instead of fucking ruining the thread with a bunch of rehashed whining that was as applicable to Morrowind in 2003 or whenever it was that it came out as it is today. Bethesda does not listen to their fans. They do not have a fuck to give. Blame Zenimax, if you need a scapegoat, its entirely their fault. They run the show, they are owned by hollywood execs who do not give a shit about anything except the bottom line.
The other thing is that most of Bethesda's fan base knows what's coming each time. What we want is Bethesda to provide a baseline, a foundation. Then the modding community will get together to improve upon that. We all realize Bethesda is basically a little like Notch: They stumbled by pure luck on a style of game that appeals to a lot of people, that they can churn out every 3-4 years without much change that will sell well, that they are essentially incompetent when it comes to most aspects of game design. That's why we don't want them fucking with their winning formula too much each time, but rather just provide us a foundation and the community will come together to polish their not quite too smelly turds into gold nuggets.
Their animation team has been shit in the past but is getting better.
Its not that they get a pass, its that people should, at this point, know exactly what to expect, and bitching about it for 20 years hasn't fixed it, so just enjoy the goddamn game for a little while instead of fucking ruining the thread with a bunch of rehashed whining that was as applicable to Morrowind in 2003 or whenever it was that it came out as it is today. Bethesda does not listen to their fans. They do not have a fuck to give. Blame Zenimax, if you need a scapegoat, its entirely their fault. They run the show, they are owned by hollywood execs who do not give a shit about anything except the bottom line.
The other thing is that most of Bethesda's fan base knows what's coming each time. What we want is Bethesda to provide a baseline, a foundation. Then the modding community will get together to improve upon that. We all realize Bethesda is basically a little like Notch: They stumbled by pure luck on a style of game that appeals to a lot of people, that they can churn out every 3-4 years without much change that will sell well, that they are essentially incompetent when it comes to most aspects of game design. That's why we don't want them fucking with their winning formula too much each time, but rather just provide us a foundation and the community will come together to polish their not quite too smelly turds into gold nuggets.
Sulrn
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I'm with Tuco, but I also don't think anyone is giving Bethesda a free pass - more so acquiescing to the industry standard of formulas don't have to be improved upon between iterations because no one else is making a sandbox as versatile and prepped for fun-injection as they are. No one is even attempting at competing with them in this arena except CDProjekt even then its arguable that it's still a different category because you're limited with your scope in W2/3 and less so with FO/ES.
I wanted to address that when I brought up my letdown with 3>4.
I wanted to address that when I brought up my letdown with 3>4.
Skanda
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You'll get no argument out of me here other than to say they would need to make sure they don't lose what makes Bethesda games good. I loved the hell out of Wither 3 but have no desire to just wander around in that game like I do in this one. Some of that may have to do with me playing my own story in Bethesda games vs playing Geralt's story in Witcher games. Bethesda could use stronger writing but, at least to me, there is something much deeper about their games.
hodj
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I got bored with Witcher faster than I have Fallout 4. Still haven't beaten it. Witcher 3 was a huge step forward for CDProject, in every regards. I'm much more interested in their Cyberpunk game though, tbh. Witcher wasn't really disappointing, per se, just very "meh" for me. Nothing wrong with it, great graphics, great quests and story lines, better combat than the previous two titles, larger world, etc. but at the same time it just doesn't hold my attention as well.
I think fantasy has kind of worn thin for me tbh.
I think fantasy has kind of worn thin for me tbh.
reavor
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It's not necessarily about hiring more writers and designers. I don't think obsidian had many more writers than Bethesda, but they showed that if you have competent people who really care about a product, you can push out much more compelling storylines and game-mechanics, which is why New Vegas really one-upped FO3, especially I believe with the crowd who are passionate about the older fallout games.
The big success for Bethesda was I think morrowind which really set the stage for 3D open world style RPG, with a bunch of skills, ability scores, races etc. and it was still a fairly watered down version of Daggerfall in terms of game mechanics and such, but a huge upgrade in graphics, which definitely helped immersion.
What's strange to me is why there's such a huge push for voice acting for every single line in these games. Is that really what market research shows what people want? That's definitely not what made games like morrowind, the original fallout games etc. good games. Seems there are other areas where money would be more well spent.
hodj
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Agree 100%. The demand for making everything voiced is what hurts dialogue more than anything else. They have to truncate the scripts and hire only a few VAs to make that sort of effort affordable, and that's where the watered down dialogue comes from.
Bethesda's main writer, by the way, is still Emil Pagliarulo.
I'm not saying he's a bad writer, he has some seriously decent games under his belt that have done very well, but I do think they could use some better talent/fresh blood.
Bethesda's main writer, by the way, is still Emil Pagliarulo.
I'm not saying he's a bad writer, he has some seriously decent games under his belt that have done very well, but I do think they could use some better talent/fresh blood.
Caliane
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I typically like fantasy more then Fallouts theme. But I Like FO4 WAY more then Witcher3. I like how the world is set up far more then Witcher. Cant run from point A to B without coming across a new thing to do, or see.
Tuco
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The reason I say hire more writers is that I am assuming the poor quality of writing is simply due to the volume of writing that Bethesda has to make for their games and how they generally talk about how small of a team they have relative to other AAA games.
Kedwyn rightfully commented earlier about how most of the terminal text was pretty bland and didn't attempt to tell a story much less a cleverly written one. The writing team isn't given a pass on this, but in my imagination you have a team of 8 writers who are told they have a few weeks to write the flavor content for some 400 terminals. This team then has to shit bricks of text out and there just isn't enough time to do it with as much depth as we'd all want.
Like any other art/skill a talented writer who is in a moment of inspiration can just sit down a squirt beauty from their pen. But you can't just "hire talented writers who have moments of inspiration". It's not like Obsidian or CDProjekt "just hires better writers". Like anything else the shit takes time, rewriting and a lot of effort. Of course the problem might be more systemic and due to failures of the lead writer, but I don't think so.
Caliane
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Early reports said Penetrator perk was kindof shit, since you rarely actually come across npcs using cover.
reddit is now saying, penetrator works for body parts as well. Meaning, you can head shot mirelocks through their shell, fusion cores through the chest of power armor, robots through their armor, etc. presumably any time a body part covers your intended target.
reddit is now saying, penetrator works for body parts as well. Meaning, you can head shot mirelocks through their shell, fusion cores through the chest of power armor, robots through their armor, etc. presumably any time a body part covers your intended target.
hodj
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I mean that's certainly part of it I imagine, but the push for voice acting all dialogue is a bigger part of it. We see this time and time again in games. The shift from written dialogue to VA truncates scripts, leads to fewer and less impactful choices, etc. Its a cost problem more than anything.
I still find most of this stuff to be entertaining. We're not talking Shakespear here, but the terminal texts and stuff are usually pretty funny, silly, or interesting. Its the story line dialogues that suffer from lack of choice and excessive brevity.
On the topic of Witcher 3, there's an overlooked advantage CDProject has in development that comes down to the fact that they are based in Poland. 1 US Dollar is worth about 3 Polish Zloty. The vast majority of their sales are from outside Poland. They're bringing in triple AAA US development dollars to an economy that is very poor. In Poland they are a huge name now. Basically everyone knows them. They're able to hire the best talent from in Poland and from abroad because they can pay them US style wages in the Polish economy. There are some very talented developers from places like Poland, the Ukraine, etc. who would make peanuts working anywhere else, but CDProject can pay them less than the average wages for programmers in the US, and still pay them way better than they would earn anywhere else in Eastern Europe.
So they're able to employ a large team of quality writers, programmers, animators, developers, voice actors, etc. on a relatively smaller budget. They're making a fucking killing between GOG and the Witcher titles, by the way.
Caliane
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Much of Fallouts4 story telling is in the environment as well. Not just prose in a terminal which is super lazy in the first place. If you run around killing every raider without watching them or listening first, if you grab every item on the ground without paying attention to how things are set up, you miss out.
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I got a late start, but I'm impressed with the little details sometimes:
Activated a robot in Contruction-mode just because, and it noticed I was wearing a hard hat (hey I was like lvl 2) and said 'Thanks for complying with hard hat regulations' lol.
The other one is straight up witchcraft: The butler robot in the beginning calls you by your actual name. As in the voice actor recorded a ton of names? Not sure how that one worked
Activated a robot in Contruction-mode just because, and it noticed I was wearing a hard hat (hey I was like lvl 2) and said 'Thanks for complying with hard hat regulations' lol.
The other one is straight up witchcraft: The butler robot in the beginning calls you by your actual name. As in the voice actor recorded a ton of names? Not sure how that one worked