Has Beth lost its edge on RPG gaming?

[Guest ANTON6733]

Jeez, 14 pages.

Basically bethseda's edge is providing core and tools to skilled gamers which create their own fallout/scroll/else. You can see they did not fail yet, by amount of data on nexusmods and other sources. Sources often copy each other, but there are terabytes of unique content. Is fo4 that much different? I mean they fucked up something with gender config compared to, say, skyrim. And they somewhat screwed up textures of characters(I've read that from Reliable source). And else probably, i didn't look deep into it. I'm not sure that's enough to mark them as outsiders.

[Jusey1]

You're forgetting two major things...

 

Firstly: RPG isn't a set genre like FPS or RTS games... RPGs are very different. Most RPGs tends to have a few key elements, which both Skyrim and Fallout 4 has, so it can easily be argue-able that Bethesda didn't lost touch at all, since they have all of the major stuff that makes an RPG. At the same time, almost every person plays RPGs for different reasons. As the saying goes, if you ask 10 people "What is an RPG?", you'll get 12 different answers.

 

This isn't Bethesda's fault at all either. Bethesda makes a very specific type of RPG. A type that they only seem to make. By definition, they do make Open-World Action-RPGs but... They're Bethesda Open-World Action-RPGs, and Bethesda has always been improving on as many aspects as possible that defines their specific games, while trying out new things alongside. Fallout 4, for example, has a lot of improvement over Bethesda's previous titles but they also decided to try out new things for the dialogue system as a whole (which didn't helped out too much for them), but at least they tried something different from their normal routine in their games...

 

Basically, Bethesda does their own thing and you should rate their games as such due to how vastly different they are from all other RPGs. You can have Fallout 4, Skyrim, and even Morrowind be compared to RPGs like The Witcher 3 and Undertale, and it can be argued that the latter two games are superior as RPGs... Simply because of the differences, not because of how "bad" (or "good") they are. Cause, honestly, all of those games I mentioned that flat-out great and amazing, each in their own rights with their own strengths.

 

So, because how vastly different Bethesda's games are... It's honestly hard to say if they are flat-out bad RPGs and if you think that, then that's your problem, not Bethesda's. Bethesda makes Bethesda-RPGs. They don't make Witcher 3-RPGs, Undertale-RPGs, or any other RPG you can think of, and if you don't like that... Then perhaps you shouldn't play Bethesda games. Cause, honestly, every Bethesda game from Morrowind to Fallout 4 are all very similar. Hell, like I said to my friend (who is a casual) : "I've been playing Bethesda games for a very long time. I kinda know my way around in their engine, and games which is why I got so good at Fallout 4 so quickly."

 

And I kinda put my second point into that ordeal which was about how Bethesda makes their own types of RPGs basically... Oh well.

 

Note: There's a lot of RPGs out there which follows a specific style format and are very similar. Those one can be debated upon easily on which one is the best out of them. For example, Rogue RPGs are a thing and there's a lot of them out there. It can be argued on which one is the best out there. There's also plenty of story-driven RPGs, like Undertale, Dragon Age, Witcher, and so on which can be debated on as they're technically in their own groups. I'm not saying that every RPG is their own thing just that Bethesda technically DOES their own type of RPG which makes it hard to truly say how bad/good their games are in the RPG department.

[Chaos63]

Is Fallout 4 really that bad? I was thinking of picking it up, but looking at all this cannon fire I'm not so sure anymore.

[GodSmack]

I played fallout 4 till Diamond city did a few quests when my pip-boy radio was alerting me to them, didn't really have a problem with it the game by itself and once i get a new rig Ill dedicate more time on it than skyrim

 

m only grip is the story's restrictive chains it puts on your characters when back then in Bethesda games, you could literally be anything you wanted to be (or at least had more freedom from the "role" you were given), it is WAY TOO LINEAR, everything you do leads to the same outcomes, not a lot of side quests(or any), lack of environment other than the random folks you will see walking around the wasteland that you cant even talk to(i remember being told the map is tiny compared to NV), the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system is a bit restrictive and lack of character rpg-esque dialouge after a certain time i was spamming sarcasm to everything or rushing through dialogues in general or just being a dick and extorting anything and everything i could get out of conversations with people, I am not a liked person in F4

 

the game is fine on its own, but compare it to the other previous games its only achievements is that you actually need a decent rig to run the games stunning graphics its housing system is awesome, the full customization you get with the crafting system will keep you hooked on it trying to make your own weapons, the new power armor system is realistic as fk, and dogs are the best "follower" in the game mostly because everyone else peer pressures the fk outta ya on anything faction related and you can give them swag

[Jusey1]

not a lot of side quests(or any),

 

There is around 40-50 side quests in the game on top of the MQ and Faction Quests.

[Captain Cobra]

Is Fallout 4 really that bad? I was thinking of picking it up, but looking at all this cannon fire I'm not so sure anymore.

 

Just do what you should do for all Beth titles: Wait until the GOTY/Complete editions where you can buy the game and all the DLCs for $20.  By then the mod community will have had some time to release some really great mods (hopefully).

[BRB]

Is Fallout 4 really that bad? I was thinking of picking it up, but looking at all this cannon fire I'm not so sure anymore.

 

In my opinion, it's a decent game and I don't regret spending money on it. It's got it's flaws, the horrible inventory/menu and the repetative radiant quests were my biggest gripes, but there were many great and memorable questlines, eastereggs, tons of athmospheric and interesting locations that made up for it. True, it might not be what I was expecting, but once I stopped comparing it to NV or Skyrim, it became much more enjoyable.

[TheOzoneHole]

Is Fallout 4 really that bad? I was thinking of picking it up, but looking at all this cannon fire I'm not so sure anymore.

 

 

Q: Do you want a game where the choices the player makes have a major impact on the world?

A: Debatable; about as much as the same choices in New Vegas had, only this time you keep playing. (Which is actually a downside.)

 

Q: Do you want multiple factions, each one with a different ending?  

A: Game Ending Spoiler!    

Again, much like New Vegas, you get the same basic ending for 3 factions and a slightly different ending for the final faction.

 

 

Q: Do you want subtle, nuanced characters with actual depth?

A: This is not the game for you.

 

Q: Do you want a main character that you can empathize with or/and see yourself in their position?  Do you want them to have responses that consist of "Yes", "No", "Sarcastic" and "Other"?

A: Have you ever been married?

Was your husband/wife murdered so that someone can steal your only son?

 

A: If you selected "No" or "Sarcastic", then this is not the game for you.

 

Q: Do you enjoy running around a post-nuclear wasteland picking up every single piece of junk you find on the off chance that it may prove useful in rebuilding society?

A: If yes, then you will love Fallout 4.

 

My advice is to do what Captain Cobra said, wait for the "Complete" edition with all the DLC (figure Nov./Dec. of this year, maybe some time next year) and pick it up cheap during a Steam Sale.  I wish that I had watched some actual game play of it before buying, because I'm not sure I'd have gotten it if I had.  I think that when modding really takes off (GECK is supposed to come out this month) then there may be some good modder created stuff for FO4. 

[Guest Real]

As far as the next ES goes, they'll make the game they want to make. I'm sure it'll be fun to play. If I was betting, I'd say it'll try to address issues brought up by the rpg crowd in a superficial manner. But w/e, you wont know until it's out. 

[Jusey1]

 

Again, much like New Vegas, you get the same basic ending for 3 factions and a slightly different ending for the final faction.

 

 

For the record, Fallout 4 at least has four major factions. New Vegas only has two major factions. Mr. House and Yes Man! are NOT factions. They are just individuals with the latter being a robot who you could technically just control.

[BigOnes69]

I never expected any of the story lines from any of the major game makers to be any good. I always looked forward to the content created by the modders. The problem with the newer stuff is all the copyright infringement that webs its way through everything all the way down into the mod sites and modders content. All the older mod oriented games such as Morrowind, Neverwinter, etc had better story lines because if you posted resources everyone could use them. Now you have to almost completely make your own resources for a mod. A lot more music was incorporated into the stories because there was little enforcement of copyright's. Plus back then Artist's would feel complemented by some modder making a module using their music rather than threatened as they are told to do now. The music added a hole different level to the story making its a whole new atmosphere and level to story telling. Another aspect is the older engines made story boarding and conversation creation a lot easier of course you did not have many of the lip sinking features to go along with it but modders could easily create story boards with music for atmosphere and add a lot of detailed background to their mod through words. Now those type of backgrounds have replaced the music and words with animations that are hard to create and time consuming forcing the modder into a limited path for story creation.  I am afraid we are becoming victims of the technology we seek and the laws that go along with it and the companies like Bethesda and our modders are tied into a linear path of evolution. Hello Mr Orwell.

[DocClox]

As far as the next ES goes, they'll make the game they want to make. I'm sure it'll be fun to play.

I was sure Fallout 4 was going to be fun to play

 

I remember when Skyrim came out, I was looking forward to F4. Now F4 is out and now I'm dreading what they're going to do to TES6.

[Varamayne]

To me it is rather simple. Morrowind provided much more content and replayability compared to their newer titles(speaking of TES here because I don't play FO). Oblivion and Skyrim provided less content(before modding).

On one hand Morrowind was my first TES game and one of the first RPGs I've ever played. I was younger too. So perhaps its just massive nostalgia. On the other hand the same guys who made Morrowind had more experience in making those kinds of games... and more funds. Yet they failed to make a game that would provide just as much content to plow through and replay.

Does Oblivion and Skyrim make up for it with its action and whatever other features they added in later installments? Imho No... the action elements are hugely subpar when compared to games that focus more on that part. If they stuck with the heavier RPG elements instead of trying to hybridize the game even further they would have perhaps made a game with just as much content as their previous game. It isn't surprising that me and perhaps some others aren't too content with the direction Beth took.

And none of the 'new' stuff felt innovative whatsoever. Cyrodiil looked so painfully generic... and it was actually meant to be a jungle-like setting with a more Roman look to the civillization.

[Guest endgameaddiction]

I never expected any of the story lines from any of the major game makers to be any good. I always looked forward to the content created by the modders. The problem with the newer stuff is all the copyright infringement that webs its way through everything all the way down into the mod sites and modders content. All the older mod oriented games such as Morrowind, Neverwinter, etc had better story lines because if you posted resources everyone could use them. Now you have to almost completely make your own resources for a mod. A lot more music was incorporated into the stories because there was little enforcement of copyright's. Plus back then Artist's would feel complemented by some modder making a module using their music rather than threatened as they are told to do now. The music added a hole different level to the story making its a whole new atmosphere and level to story telling. Another aspect is the older engines made story boarding and conversation creation a lot easier of course you did not have many of the lip sinking features to go along with it but modders could easily create story boards with music for atmosphere and add a lot of detailed background to their mod through words. Now those type of backgrounds have replaced the music and words with animations that are hard to create and time consuming forcing the modder into a limited path for story creation.  I am afraid we are becoming victims of the technology we seek and the laws that go along with it and the companies like Bethesda and our modders are tied into a linear path of evolution. Hello Mr Orwell.

 

Toss in the dumbness of script language in Skyrim that has made it such a technical game to the point that scripts have become a burden for mod users because it can easily break your game now when combining scripts mods in your load order, or the heavy use of it.

 

The more technical games get, the more breaking they become and more out of touch for the sake of fun and modding. For me  at least. I mean I can't heavily mod Skyrim like I could Fallout 3 because eventually at some point I will hit some barrier and things start to malfunction. So I either have to make a decision on what to sacrifice, or remove that mod because it just causes too much problems. So much for that fun of combining mods to make your game experience more fun.

 

I never cared about scripting and never will. And with scripting being as technical as it is and causing things like this, I'm less inclined to ever want to get into it.

 

For me modding Skrim is fun, but becomes a chore. It doesn't feel limitless, it feels limited. I don't have that same experience as I did with older games I modded. One way or the other, anyone who mods Skyrim has to sacrifice certain mods they wish would work in their load order.

[Jusey1]

To me it is rather simple. Morrowind provided much more content and replayability compared to their newer titles(speaking of TES here because I don't play FO). Oblivion and Skyrim provided less content(before modding).

 

Actually, this is incorrect for the most part. Yes, Morrowind probably does offer more misc and side quests (most of them being simple ones, such as escort, kill target, or fetch) but Morrowind doesn't necessary offer the amount of content that Bethesda's newer games does in terms of imagination and world exploring. For the most part, exploring an Ancestral Tomb in Morrowind is pretty much the same as around 40% of the Ancestral Tombs in the game, making exploring pretty pointless and uninteresting after a while. While in Skyrim and Fallout 4, every location has been hand-crafted in such a way that it tells it's own story. Most of these stories aren't part of any quests, you just gotta figure out the story on your own or even just experience the story as it is happening.

 

Another example of the imagination content is that Morrowind didn't really had anything that allows customization except for Spellcrafting and Enchanting, for the most part. Bethesda, yes did removed Spellcrafting (but also improving base-spells so it doesn't matter much) while also adding in a lot of other possibly customization over time, plus with the removal of useless classes, completely allows the player to have full control over their characters with their imagination, which in turn allow for A LOT MORE of replay-ability. And they even enhance it more so in Fallout 4 with the amazing new weapons and armor customization, with the settlement feature on top of that, and now the robot customization from Automatron on top of that. (Combined with all of the already base content and in-game world to explore as well).

 

And that's the biggest thing about Bethesda's games... They aren't your normal RPGs. They are RPGs based on the player's imagination and freedom, which is what makes them so amazingly fun.

[Varamayne]

 

To me it is rather simple. Morrowind provided much more content and replayability compared to their newer titles(speaking of TES here because I don't play FO). Oblivion and Skyrim provided less content(before modding).

 

Actually, this is incorrect for the most part. Yes, Morrowind probably does offer more misc and side quests (most of them being simple ones, such as escort, kill target, or fetch) but Morrowind doesn't necessary offer the amount of content that Bethesda's newer games does in terms of imagination and world exploring. For the most part, exploring an Ancestral Tomb in Morrowind is pretty much the same as around 40% of the Ancestral Tombs in the game, making exploring pretty pointless and uninteresting after a while. While in Skyrim and Fallout 4, every location has been hand-crafted in such a way that it tells it's own story. Most of these stories aren't part of any quests, you just gotta figure out the story on your own or even just experience the story as it is happening.

 

Another example of the imagination content is that Morrowind didn't really had anything that allows customization except for Spellcrafting and Enchanting, for the most part. Bethesda, yes did removed Spellcrafting (but also improving base-spells so it doesn't matter much) while also adding in a lot of other possibly customization over time, plus with the removal of useless classes, completely allows the player to have full control over their characters with their imagination, which in turn allow for A LOT MORE of replay-ability. And they even enhance it more so in Fallout 4 with the amazing new weapons and armor customization, with the settlement feature on top of that, and now the robot customization from Automatron on top of that. (Combined with all of the already base content and in-game world to explore as well).

 

And that's the biggest thing about Bethesda's games... They aren't your normal RPGs. They are RPGs based on the player's imagination and freedom, which is what makes them so amazingly fun.

 

 

Incorrect? Morrowind flat out had more content, that's a fact. More factions, including 3 vampire clans, 7 vampire exclusive quests, etc. There's no arguing that. As for replayability I suppose that is subjective unless we somehow gathered data on how frequently each game has been replayed which would be an impossible task... when i think about it skyrim would probably win this, actually, but only because it is so quick and easy to beat without abusing exploits. Morrowind would take far longer.

 

I'm not a huge fan of Bethesda's dungeon design in general. There are very few memorable caves in Skyrim too but at least it was a huge step up from Oblivion's caves and ayeleid ruins... now those were just awful. I'd also like to mention the enemies in Morrowind were far more interesting and imaginative. I believe they were also more numerous. Lots of daedra to fight. In skyrim though? Falmers. And then more falmers. Beth really needs someone to design more interesting monsters for them. Many enemies you meet in Oblivion and Skyrim already existed in Morrowind with very few additions... and some losses. Hungers never showed up again in either of the new installments afaik.

 

I'd also disagree that skyrim offers more customization. Skyrim doesn't have attributes nor as many skills nor magic schools nor weapons unlike Morrowind. In Morrowind you could mix and match armour, even gloves used different slots, left and right, along with shoulders. The amount of builds you could play around with before inevitably reaching 100 in every skill and attribute far surpassed anything skyrim is capable of in its vanilla state.

 

Classes also added a certain element of immersion to the game. In every TES installment you start out as an adult not a toddler with a clean slate. That means your character must have been somebody before they were imprisoned. Maybe a warrior. Maybe a thief, acrobat, or a merchant. Whatever the case this means she'd naturally have an inclination towards certain skills while other skills that she had nothing to do with in her previous life would be harder to develop. This makes sense and echoes how things work in real life. Skills become harder to develop later in life when you haven't practiced them while you were young, and skills that you've been honing since childhood come as second nature to you.

 

Yet the dragonborn is equally adept at using everything and anything wherever and whenever he wants. Using a dagger makes you adept at using all 1 handed weapons, in morrowind everything had a separate skill. That's not very immersive if you ask me.

 

another thing i dont like about skyrim is how it is hard to actually go on the wrong path in this game(unless you stumble upon a glitch or a bug or a CTD). It holds your hand all the time. In Morrowind you had to read instructions on how to get to a certain place. You had to pay attention. In Skyrim they often don't even give you instructions so you are pretty much forced to use the dreaded quest marker feature.

 

Don't get me wrong skyrim is still a great game. I just expected more given how much fun I had in Morrowind and that game is... 10 years older? To tihs day Baldur's Gate 1-2 also remain among the best RPGs out there yet they're very old games... the devs must have been onto something back in the day.

 

[valektra]

They found out they didn't need to make an actual game.  Just make the framework, sell it at full cost, milk the content that should have went into the game as DLC's, and let the modding community turn it into a game/ fix all the broken shit.   And then steal mod ideas to make more overpriced DLC.  Far better way to make money than to worry about investing it in a bug free content rich title.

 

That being said, big thanks to them for making the Skyrim "framework" so the modding community could turn it into a fantastic game!

[TheOzoneHole]

Part of the reason so many of us feel Morrowind is a subjectively better game comes under the head that I refer to as "the little things." 

I don't know if all of you have played Morrowind or not, but does the name Wulf mean anything?  Wulf is a manifestation of Talos; and he shows up quietly after a point in Morrowind's main quest. Speak to him, and you receive an old coin that give the player a lesser power boosting their Luck by 20 points for (iirc) 2 minutes.  If you mention this meeting to a specific quest giver with the Imperial Cult faction, you get a 2 point boost to your reputation around Morrowind and it even enters the "latest rumors" topic of conversation. 

My point with all of this is that this instance is not some major or important thing. My first time playing through the main quest I simply didn't even notice Wulf standing around the Ghostgate. The second time I played through I hadn't joined the Imperial Cult and figured that he had always been there it was no big deal, several things change after completing the main quest and him disappearing wasn't really a major thing.  Third time playing through and I've joined the IC and happened to talk to that quest giver after meeting him and she has a topic about him and points out that he is, as I said, an Nirn-ly manifestation of Talos. Suddenly random people on the street are talking about manifestations of the Divines. These little changes, the recognition by NPCs for player actions, these are what made Morrowind feel more personal to me. Cure an egg mine of blight disease and then tell the local villagers and they like you more. You did something nice for us, so we like you. 

Kill a dragon inside Riverwood? "In all my days....I've never seen such a thing!" Says the same guard who saw you kill a dragon in Riverwood last week.  No one thanks the player for killing the dragon that was trying to eat them.  None of the wandering Imperial patrols hauling a prisoner off to wherever even notice if you have become a Legate of the Imperial Legion and are even wearing FULL LEGION ARMOR. "Imperial Business, be on your way!" is their constant refrain.  No one seems to even give a Mammoth's left nut that the PC can send them flying over the city walls with a Thu'um. It is only with mods that the guards have stopped asking me if someone stole my sweet roll after becoming Thane.

 

No lie, I enjoy Skyrim; but the world feels plastic, and despite killing a world eating dragon and stopping a civil war, my actions in the game feel like they haven't made any difference.  And yes, Morrowind is old and shows the roots of tabletop RPGs that many of the early TES game mechanics are based on.  And when BGS moved from the huge maps of Arena and Daggerfall they felt the need to drop player movement speed to make the map seem bigger, which is really annoying to people coming in from Oblivion and Skyrim (me included).  Yes, the number of default faces for each race is low, but it isn't something that I find game breaking. 

 

And FYI, Jusey, BGS used randomly generated dungeons in Daggerfall and it caused problems. By the time Morrowind came out they had gone to all hand-crafted dungeons. And yes, if you've seen one Ancestral Tomb, you've seen most of them, but that really isn't that much different from Skyrim's Nordic Barrows now is it?   

[afa]

...count me out of the Morrowind fondling train.

It was my first TES game and I played it when it was release, but even back then I wasn't crazy about it. The world space is good, it felt full of potential, but the rest of everything else is just sort of meh. I honestly don't find the whole making differences in the world any grander than that of Oblivion or Skyrim nor does the world responds positively compare to the other two. If not it is worse with all the copy and paste text dump and some of the faction stuff is mildly interesting at best and frustrating at worst.

 

Also considering the world between all these games are the same, the background lore is shared across all three, it isn't unusual to find the earlier ones more fresh and memorable by comparison.

[DocClox]

 

Actually, this is incorrect for the most part. Yes, Morrowind probably does offer more misc and side quests (most of them being simple ones, such as escort, kill target, or fetch) but Morrowind doesn't necessary offer the amount of content that Bethesda's newer games does in terms of imagination and world exploring. For the most part, exploring an Ancestral Tomb in Morrowind is pretty much the same as around 40% of the Ancestral Tombs in the game, making exploring pretty pointless and uninteresting after a while. While in Skyrim and Fallout 4, every location has been hand-crafted in such a way that it tells it's own story. Most of these stories aren't part of any quests, you just gotta figure out the story on your own or even just experience the story as it is happening.

 

Incorrect? Morrowind flat out had more content, that's a fact. More factions, including 3 vampire clans, 7 vampire exclusive quests, etc. There's no arguing that. As for replayability I suppose that is subjective unless we somehow gathered data on how frequently each game has been replayed which would be an impossible task... when i think about it skyrim would probably win this, actually, but only because it is so quick and easy to beat without abusing exploits. Morrowind would take far longer.

 

Yeah! But Fallout 4 has more teddy bear poses and that's what counts. Who cares that Morrowind had more factions, more quests, more dialogue, more interesting characters, the most creative game world I've ever seen, an engrossing story that steeped you in the history of an alien culture and a main quest that was as much a feat of scholarship as it was of combat or magic? It didn't have any posed teddy bears: clearly an epic fail!

 

Don't get me wrong skyrim is still a great game. I just expected more given how much fun I had in Morrowind and that game is... 10 years older? To tihs day Baldur's Gate 1-2 also remain among the best RPGs out there yet they're very old games... the devs must have been onto something back in the day.

There a was radio interview as I was driving into work yesterday which seems oddly relevant here. This chap was plugging book where he tries to prove that 1971 was objectively the best year for music ever. Didn't agree with a lot of what he said, but one thing resonated: "you have all these talented musicians who spent their entire careers trying to recapture the magic they made by accident back when they didn't know what they were doing". I think Bethesda are a bit like that.

 

With Morrowind, they weren't yet a major studio and they threw everything they had at the game trying to get a hit. Every grace note, every flourish, everything they could think of, they put it in - and they got a hit. So ever since then, they've been trying to find a way to recapture that sense of magic without having to work so desperately hard as they did for Morrowind. They want to boil the formula down to a set of bullet that will fit on one power point slide. And little by little they've been next-gen streamlining away all the things I like about their games.

 

It's sad really. Most studios have the courtesy to at least wait until they've been bought by EA before they get this disappointing

[Eth4rlad]

 

Is Fallout 4 really that bad? I was thinking of picking it up, but looking at all this cannon fire I'm not so sure anymore.

 

Just do what you should do for all Beth titles: Wait until the GOTY/Complete editions where you can buy the game and all the DLCs for $20.  By then the mod community will have had some time to release some really great mods (hopefully).

 

 

This, really. I checked FO4 out after release but i'm not planning on buying it until DLCs and Mods fixed this trainwreck.

[Varamayne]

 

There a was radio interview as I was driving into work yesterday which seems oddly relevant here. This chap was plugging book where he tries to prove that 1971 was objectively the best year for music ever. Didn't agree with a lot of what he said, but one thing resonated: "you have all these talented musicians who spent their entire careers trying to recapture the magic they made by accident back when they didn't know what they were doing". I think Bethesda are a bit like that.

 

With Morrowind, they weren't yet a major studio and they threw everything they had at the game trying to get a hit. Every grace note, every flourish, everything they could think of, they put it in - and they got a hit. So ever since then, they've been trying to find a way to recapture that sense of magic without having to work so desperately hard as they did for Morrowind. They want to boil the formula down to a set of bullet that will fit on one power point slide. And little by little they've been next-gen streamlining away all the things I like about their games.

 

It's sad really. Most studios have the courtesy to at least wait until they've been bought by EA before they get this disappointing

 

 

This made me think of Arnold Schwartznegger. His role as Conan and T800 in Terminator 1-2 will remain legendary till the end of time, truly. But all of his early career antics and successes were fairly... accidental yet genuine. And what is he doing now? Parodying himself... have you seen Genesyis? It's just not the same. The authenticity isn't there anymore.

 

Arnie will remain as one of my idols but unfortunately he can never repeat the same feats again.... I sometimes wonder if he were oblivious about the public immortalising his.. unique style of acting in memes and such, would he have remained authentic instead of trying to imitate himself so poorly? And Arnie is not the only actor or artist who has fallen into this trap. I'm sure anybody could think of a few at this point.

[TheOzoneHole]

Varamayne, I'll admit that, as far as modding goes, I am very biased toward Morrowind. I actually like the "text dump" conversations and I feel that it is what they should still be doing for player/npc interactions.  I have looked into re-doing SPS for later games, but without that system, it ends up just being a fade to black scene. But that isn't what bothers me. No, it is the fact that the dialogue system for all the later games is an utter mess. It isn't even possible to alter the size of the window. Something so simple as changing the size of the window in the GECK or CK, and BethSoft did not include that......that is just sad. To me it shows just how little regard they have for their users. While I think that BethSoft/BGS were somewhat well known before Morrowind, I generally agree with DocClox's assessment; they made a great game by accident and then tried to figure out how they did it without realizing that it was done by saying the heck with graphics let's just make a great world and story and then put all their efforts into that.  

[afa]

 

There a was radio interview as I was driving into work yesterday which seems oddly relevant here. This chap was plugging book where he tries to prove that 1971 was objectively the best year for music ever. Didn't agree with a lot of what he said, but one thing resonated: "you have all these talented musicians who spent their entire careers trying to recapture the magic they made by accident back when they didn't know what they were doing". I think Bethesda are a bit like that.

 

With Morrowind, they weren't yet a major studio and they threw everything they had at the game trying to get a hit. Every grace note, every flourish, everything they could think of, they put it in - and they got a hit. So ever since then, they've been trying to find a way to recapture that sense of magic without having to work so desperately hard as they did for Morrowind. They want to boil the formula down to a set of bullet that will fit on one power point slide. And little by little they've been next-gen streamlining away all the things I like about their games.

 

It's sad really. Most studios have the courtesy to at least wait until they've been bought by EA before they get this disappointing

I feel like that pretty much goes for all popular sequel, they all had their moment where they were well liked and popular, but both the audience and the developers are trying to chase after that same dragon again, but seemingly fail to do so.

Yet from a technical perspective the later titles are all in some way superior to the previous, but somehow somewhere a certain magic was lost.

 

But from an empirical perspective it is very reasonable that no franchise can stay at the top for extended period of time, there will be ups and downs as best, or peak then disappear.

[Zor2k13]

Does anyone remember counterstrike v1.6? the mods for that game were all over the place for years until steam came out. Then every time they updated the game all the gun mods had to resize their models to comply with more and more strict hitbox settings. It got so bad (valve blamed cheating) that many people just said fuck it and never updated their gun mods.

 

That game was the "forever" game where you could just play it and mod it forever and not even think about buying the next game. So much stuff from the community was made for that game it was still being played and enjoyed years and years later.

 

Skyrim is almost like that and beth knows it. They don't want to ever produce another game like that ever because it kills the sales of DLC and other games they will make. I expect the next ES game to be worse than ESO, more bugs and even more dumb ideas like F4 has with sims shit etc.

 

I don't think they really care if other people like what they make as long as they get paid and continue to get paid making additional shitty DLCs they don't care what anyone thinks. Getting paid is the top priority for anyone right now and will remain that way for a long time.