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dont be mean to me posted:You're right, in that the Institute's issues are political. The ball with the Institute got dropped because Bethesda puts the Sole Survivor in a unique position to enact radical policy change within the Institute and then simply provides no way for the player to do that. Yeah, ever since Fallout 2 the Brotherhood have been kind of doomed. The Enclave was proof enough that there's tech out there beyond their ability to contain, and if they don't realize that now is the time to get themselves and their technology out there to people, someone else is going to. Of course that just turns them into the Followers of the Apocalypse, but I don't think those guys have gone east yet. I'm pretty sure that subjugation and control was also the Outcast viewpoint, which is what I meant by that? Anyway, there's a lot of potential for you to steer, like, every faction in a more favorable direction but I imagine that was all a casualty of the voice pipeline - what you voice you kind of commit to, you commit to where your game is, and they were seriously overhauling this thing. So like: - Minutemen: Raiders instead, alive, or Commonwealth Provisional Government v2.0 - Brotherhood: dead, alive, or what-a-tragedy-Maxson-slipped-on-his-own-laser-gatling-but-it-turns-out-Danse-was-just-fine - Railroad: dead, alive, or totally-alive-and-not-replaced-by-Institute-synths - Institute: dead, alive, or what-a-tragedy-Synth-Retention-slipped-on-their-own-plasma-grenades-let's-all-come-clean And some fuckin' ending slides for all our companions with enough companion content to make them all matter. But based on what they've said about development Bethesda just didn't have that kind of top-down story focus, which is why I bought that game because of what I liked about the gameplay I saw, and just enjoy the bits of coherent story that somehow survived the process. Like how pretty much nobody in the bitty settlements resents the Minutemen because what they were trying to do seemed impossible, nobody in Diamond City or Goodneighbor resents the Minutemen because they didn't need them to begin with, but Kessler at Bunker Hill has no particular love for the Minutemen because Bunker Hill needed the Minutemen and has expensively made do without in the meantime.
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Feb 17, 2018 20:59
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I was the only person that liked the western BoS sticking to the old ways, and the FO3 version starting to help people. I thought it was interesting, and somewhat realistic, since they are separated.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:30
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I was fine with the Fallout 3 Brotherhood because they were idiots but they actually had an explanation for it. The division between the "normal" Brotherhood and the Outcasts was actually good writing. I feel like a lot of people missed that part of the story and preemptively got mad at Bethesda for ruining the Brotherhood.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:32
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Well the East Coast Brotherhood going back to their xenophobic ways with an extra dose of militaristic assholery was a nice addition to Fallout 4. It is fine on its own, but the implication that the west coast chapters were sick of the Lyons's poo poo and sent their top enforcer to straighten them out was a great touch.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:36
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Internet Kraken posted:Are the NCR and Ceasar's Legion even referenced in Fallout 4? Its weird to me that this game that's thick with references to Fallout 3, and even goes on to reference the original games via Kellogg, doesn't include any mention of the pre-war consumables and magazines introduced in New Vegas, and in some cases introduces some new drug or something that does exactly the same thing as an NV item. It really makes me think none of the developers played New Vegas, or are somehow convinced nobody liked it and would prefer to pretend it never happened
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Feb 17, 2018 21:44
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2house2fly posted:Its weird to me that this game that's thick with references to Fallout 3, and even goes on to reference the original games via Kellogg, doesn't include any mention of the pre-war consumables and magazines introduced in New Vegas, and in some cases introduces some new drug or something that does exactly the same thing as an NV item. It really makes me think none of the developers played New Vegas, or are somehow convinced nobody liked it and would prefer to pretend it never happened How much of New Vegas does Bethesda legitimately own for use in future games? Like, any/all of it? I don't know, I'm curious.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:53
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2house2fly posted:Its weird to me that this game that's thick with references to Fallout 3, and even goes on to reference the original games via Kellogg, doesn't include any mention of the pre-war consumables and magazines introduced in New Vegas, and in some cases introduces some new drug or something that does exactly the same thing as an NV item. It really makes me think none of the developers played New Vegas, or are somehow convinced nobody liked it and would prefer to pretend it never happened Or Bethesda know that people more or less adore New Vegas and now they have to erase it in a desperate bid to keep their half-assedness making money.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:54
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dont be mean to me posted:Or Bethesda know that people more or less adore New Vegas and now they have to erase it in a desperate bid to keep their half-assedness making money. lmao what kind of delusional crap is this No Bethesda is not trying to erase New Vegas. Don't be silly.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:57
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Randaconda posted:I played through the game like three times before I knew that. For a woman who grew up in a world without working cars, she makes a lot of vehicular innuendo.
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Feb 17, 2018 22:00
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I really wish Bethesda would pull a new vegas with every release since its pretty clear the writing parts of their bloated company are no longer getting enough blood.
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Feb 17, 2018 22:52
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2house2fly posted:Its weird to me that this game that's thick with references to Fallout 3, and even goes on to reference the original games via Kellogg, doesn't include any mention of the pre-war consumables and magazines introduced in New Vegas, and in some cases introduces some new drug or something that does exactly the same thing as an NV item. It really makes me think none of the developers played New Vegas, or are somehow convinced nobody liked it and would prefer to pretend it never happened There actually are a number of minor references, especially in the DLC. Fixer is mentioned in a terminal, the New Vegas Nuka-Cola variants are also present in Nuka-World, which also makes a reference to Sunset Sarsaparilla in one of the loading screens. Deacon tries to use Robert House as a code to override a Mr. Handy (without success) too. I think there's a few more, but it's pretty minor stuff. Overall, the reason the Mojave isn't really mentioned is pretty obvious, given that the game is pretty far from that area geographically, though I have to admit I was a bit surprised that, considering canonically Mr. House studied at the pre-war Institute, he wasn't mentioned in any way in there. But eh, it's no biggie, no one is trying to erase New Vegas.
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Feb 17, 2018 23:05
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Glazius posted:How much of New Vegas does Bethesda legitimately own for use in future games? Like, any/all of it? I don't know, I'm curious. 100% Obsidian were contractors, and made the game for Bethesda. They pretty much got paid a lump sum, no royalties.
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Feb 18, 2018 00:01
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Motherfucker posted:I really wish Bethesda would pull a new vegas with every release since its pretty clear the writing parts of their bloated company are no longer getting enough blood. Bethesda Game Studios is hardly bloated. They have around 160-80 employees. In the AAA games market that's tiny for how immense their game worlds are. Their problem is not overwriting things, it is that they lack a good lead writer to come in and build a cohesive story from the separate smaller teams designing each area. Zenimax and Bethesda's publishing arm are a different entity and shouldn't be conflated with the developer studio. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 00:26
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Hell, why not just hire one of the main guys from Obsidian and put him in charge.
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Feb 18, 2018 00:32
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Arcsquad12 posted:Well the East Coast Brotherhood going back to their xenophobic ways with an extra dose of militaristic assholery was a nice addition to Fallout 4. It is fine on its own, but the implication that the west coast chapters were sick of the Lyons's poo poo and sent their top enforcer to straighten them out was a great touch. No, Maxson is already in the Citadel in FO3. He's a little poo poo who tells you he's sick of Lyons being nice to people and wants to murder some mutants
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Feb 18, 2018 01:10
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Arcsquad12 posted:Bethesda Game Studios is hardly bloated. They have around 160-80 employees. In the AAA games market that's tiny for how immense their game worlds are. Their problem is not overwriting things, it is that they lack a good lead writer to come in and build a cohesive story from the separate smaller teams designing each area. ok well fuckin' just do it gooder
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Feb 18, 2018 01:31
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Feb 18, 2018 01:37
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Randaconda posted:Hell, why not just hire one of the main guys from Obsidian and put him in charge. lol or maybe one of the guys from Bioware who's probably looking for work.
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Feb 18, 2018 01:42
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Arcsquad12 posted:Bethesda Game Studios is hardly bloated. They have around 160-80 employees. In the AAA games market that's tiny for how immense their game worlds are. Their problem is not overwriting things, it is that they lack a good lead writer to come in and build a cohesive story from the separate smaller teams designing each area. Honestly BGS just needs to be shut down. Zenimax/Bethesda are pretty drat good as publishers/owners (since they own Arkane, id, etc.) but Bethesda Game Studios is just bad and they'd do better to license out TES/Fallout to folks like Obsidian.
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Feb 18, 2018 02:56
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dragonshardz posted:Honestly BGS just needs to be shut down. Zenimax/Bethesda are pretty drat good as publishers/owners (since they own Arkane, id, etc.) but Bethesda Game Studios is just bad and they'd do better to license out TES/Fallout to folks like Obsidian. I agree, the smartest business move would be to shutter the studio that made Skyrim and Fallout 4 to focus more on Prey, a game played by myself and maybe twenty other people. And while we're at it I want Bioware to only make isometric turn-based RPGs again, Chris Avellone to be put in charge of all Star Wars related media going forward, a remastered release of FFVI and a pony.
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Feb 18, 2018 03:46
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The hyperbole people go to when talking about Bethesda is ridiculous. Yeah their games are heavily flawed but they shouldn't just stop making them. I've gotten tons of enjoyment out of Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Skyrim. Fallout 4 was the first time I bought a modern Bethesda game and ended up regretting it, but I don't think they are gonna repeat the mistake they made with the voice protagonist. And even if you do utterly loathe all their games you'd still want them to keep making them because that increases the odds of them doing another New Vegas type game. That would have never happened if Bethesda didn't pick up the brand.
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Feb 18, 2018 03:54
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as I've said: the problem with BGS is that they consistently overextend themselves, because they've built their brand around overextending themselves. if they made something that was outside their typical wheelhouse, it'd probably be loving great, and in fact all the Terminator games BGS made before the Elder Scrolls money-engine revved up are awesome. they just can't stop trying to make games that are way beyond their resources and capabilities. e: like, if they had the ability to actually polish their games, we probably wouldn't have any of the complaints that we do about 3 and 4. the central problem with both games is that they didn't have enough time in the oven, and while NV didn't either, it at least had the benefit of working off an existing codebase and Obsidian spending the time they had really wisely.
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Feb 18, 2018 03:55
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Wolfsheim posted:I agree, the smartest business move would be to shutter the studio that made Skyrim and Fallout 4 to focus more on Prey, a game played by myself and maybe twenty other people. This, but unironically.
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Feb 18, 2018 04:14
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the problem isn't bethesda making bad games, it's gamers having bad taste.
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Feb 18, 2018 04:35
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Arcsquad12 posted:Bethesda Game Studios is hardly bloated. They have around 160-80 employees. In the AAA games market that's tiny for how immense their game worlds are. And why the gently caress can't such a profitable AAA studio hire an extra 20 or 30 people for the polishing end of things, damnit.
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Feb 18, 2018 06:31
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MikeJF posted:And why the gently caress can't such a profitable AAA studio hire an extra 20 or 30 people for the polishing end of things, damnit. That's their problem. They overstretch and have no oversight. They run their ideas past Todd Howard, he says "cool, go do that!" and that's as far as their oversight goes. That's why you can have a well made companion like Danse, and a crappy one like Preston.
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Feb 18, 2018 06:42
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Utgardaloki posted:the problem isn't bethesda making bad games, it's gamers having bad taste. Fallout 4 and Skyrim are significantly more (widely) popular than their predessecors. Both were very financially successful. (I blame reddit). I don’t have a lot of hope for future Bethesda games when they are being rewarded for their mediocrity
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Feb 18, 2018 11:03
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Prostheticfoot posted:I don't remember who suggested running right by Preston in the beginning but you may be the best goon. usually I grab the minigun from the roof for free 5mm bullets (i use a mod to make them worth firing) and run off.
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Feb 19, 2018 04:41
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Prostheticfoot posted:I don't remember who suggested running right by Preston in the beginning but you may be the best goon. If you do that, Preston says "So that's it? You're just gonna leave?"
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Feb 19, 2018 05:02
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And it's the best. Why yes, yes I am.
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Feb 19, 2018 05:58
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I've been playing Bethesda games since Daggerfall. I've loved each of the Elder Scrolls games (including Oblivion), and think they add something to the genre few other companies do. With that said, I'm not a big fan of their Fallout games. There's a lot speculation as to how Bethesda's design process works, and I think a lot it is just speculation. It's clear that Bethesda games have glaring weaknesses, but I don't think you can call games with such detailed worlds lazy. I also don't accept that large, open world games have inherent limitations to how good their storytelling and quest design can be, because well-New Vegas. The suggestion that the lack of a lead writer rings false to me. Every Bethesda RPG I've played has had pretty strong central themes; they're just kind of boring or dumb. Variance in quality of characters doesn't suggest lack of central leadership, but that in any creative exercise there will be hits or misses. I'm really curious as to how Bethesda's teams are organized. There are books full of backstory that are often quite interesting. Some of them are from the days of Daggerfall and the tabletop campaign that began The Elder Scrolls, but as I understand it the number of books continues to expand in The Elder Scrolls Online. But interactive writing is a different game than static writing, so the skill sets wouldn't necessarily bleed through. I think its more likely that building big video game worlds is really hard, and writing good stories is also really hard, and writing stories with lots of player input is an entirely different type of hard, and few teams have the talent to do all of that. Just hiring more writers or throwing more money or resources at it won't necessarily help. I do think the focus on big "set pieces" in both the modern Fallouts and The Elder Scrolls is silly. None of them will really compare to movies, and what makes Bethesda games uniquely fun is wondering around and creating your own stories. So much of the "story" of The Elder Scrolls and New Vegas happens in the head of the player, and that's something only really video games can do. Fallout 3 and to a much greater extent Fallout 4 really diminish this by giving the player character families, much more defined backgrounds, and in 4, voice acting. Bethesda is also very poor at systems design. I hate what they did to character leveling and design in Fallout 4-it just feels like a more flat, dull, and boring system. The "flattening" from Oblivion to Skyrim didn't really bother me so much, because Oblivion and Morrowind didn't have great character design systems themselves (Daggerfall felt like the rough draft for something that could have been brilliant but that was never realized). Attributes actually felt like a way of defining your character beyond their combat roles in Fallout, though, and merging attributes, perks, and skills into one system that was almost purely focused on combat just felt like it ripped out what made a lot of Fallout unique. Although I didn't hate the removal of attributes from Skyrim, the character system still left a lot to be desired. Ordinator or SPERG make the game a lot more fun. Are there any similar mods for Fallout 4 in the works that we know of?
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Feb 19, 2018 09:13
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Yeah say what you will about Bethesdas development staff, the guys that work on the environments do a cracking job.
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Feb 19, 2018 14:23
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Randaconda posted:Hell, why not just hire one of the main guys from Obsidian and put him in charge. i think another issue is that the amount of effort it takes to create a consistent and engaging narrative/plot requires a fair investment of your resources, and it's not something that generally correlates with moving 100000 more units of your game. like, if they hire a few more animators and graphic artists and create a really spectacular 20 minute intro sequence that looks and plays like silk, that's money better spent from their perspective because that's the perfect sequence for reviewers and youtubers to slobber over and get other gamers hyped about. you can look at most games on say steam, and see what percentage of the player base actually unlocks the "end of game" achievement for any given game - my conservative guess is on average it's sub 40% (with some serious variations) but RPGs probably tend even lower, like sub 20%. so you can spend more money on the first hour of the game to make it look loving killer, which is great because that's what 100% of your players will see, or you can spend more money to write a story with a satisfying conclusion, that maybe 1 in 5 of your players will ever actually complete.
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Feb 19, 2018 19:37
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Freaking Crumbum posted:i think another issue is that the amount of effort it takes to create a consistent and engaging narrative/plot ... I completely agree, and I think it’s caused the vicious cycle where less people play through til the end of the game because it’s so less coherent and developed. I still think that there are always going to be a large number of players who never see the ending (especially for an accessible game like fallout or Skyrim) but I think it’s a little cyclical nonetheless
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Feb 19, 2018 21:01
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chitoryu12 posted:If the game was made as they wanted to (with the budget and time they wanted), I think only the impoverished locals like in Novac, Goodsprings, or Freeside would have had the ramshackle huts or dirty and damaged pre-war buildings. The Strip would have been glittering and perfectly clean, basically pre-war in its opulence. The NCR would have repaired structures and built new ones from adobe, just like back in Shady Sands. Late to reply but that would be a drat cool art direction for a Fallout game in a post-post-apocalyptic setting.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:54
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Nichael posted:Late to reply but that would be a drat cool art direction for a Fallout game in a post-post-apocalyptic setting. Yeah, I know it's "not Fallout" but there's only so long you can keep up the aesthetic of everything being destroyed ruins before your timeline starts to make everyone look like morons. Fallout 4 has a length of time between then and the Great War that's greater than between modern day and the War of 1812. Imagine nobody even bothering to pick up a broom since the White House got burned down, let alone building new structures out of something other than scrap metal. Make it a Witcher-style RPG where you travel across the whole NCR between huge, clean cities that are at least on par with the 20th century and the countryside villages still dealing with bandits.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:08
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I would trade being able to pick up every piece of junk and every NPC having a home if it meant we could get larger cities and better level design. Just remember that Witcher 3 gets scale right because it focuses on a highly localized region of the Witcher continent rather than the entire Northern Kingdoms. The gigantic Witcher 3 map covers the immediate area around the delta to one of the continent's main trading rivers, nothing near the size of the NCR.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:15
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Arcsquad12 posted:I would trade being able to pick up every piece of junk and every NPC having a home if it meant we could get larger cities and better level design. Just remember that Witcher 3 gets scale right because it focuses on a highly localized region of the Witcher continent rather than the entire Northern Kingdoms. The gigantic Witcher 3 map covers the immediate area around the delta to one of the continent's main trading rivers, nothing near the size of the NCR. Well, think about the map size in GTA V. Without access to planes, that's a pretty loving huge game world and the major city is big enough that many other games would make it the entire map alone. You could do something like that, with one gigantic city and a large countryside with a few towns.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:42
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Or, and bear with me here, we could make a game like Fallout 1 and 2 where you travel between different hubs and only occasionally stop in the empty wastelands.
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Feb 20, 2018 02:35
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Arcsquad12 posted:Or, and bear with me here, we could make a game like Fallout 1 and 2 where you travel between different hubs and only occasionally stop in the empty wastelands. or... maybe just do an open-world RPG with a similar scale to those games and "random encounters" working similarly, maybe with a way to get around the empty wastelands fast (ie a car) to make the lack of static stuff more tolerable?
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Feb 20, 2018 02:37
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