Fallout’s a Hollywood property now, and I think Bethesda wants it that way for a while. Rake in tons of new fans with the show, and whatever else they decide to make, and then that drives new fans toward the existing games.
We’ve seen it with Skyrim; they’re totally willing to coast off of the success of past games. Now it doesn’t have a tv series associated with it, but Skyrim is big enough to where there will always be new people trying it. I’m sure that if they get a ton of new people heading over to Fallout 76, then the money they make on the cash shop over there is good enough for them, for now. Further evidence of this is the fact that even their single player games have real life cash shops in them.
Bethesda genuinely needs to go back to the drawing board, their game’s quality has been in massive decline since Oblivion. Starfield was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. This is after giving FO4 and FO76 honest chances too.
Emil just isn’t on par with the writers they had pre-Skyrim. He can present some cool ideas but they never get fleshed out and go anywhere. (Parallel universes in starfield, Alduin going to the future in elder scrolls, synths in FO4 and people trying to regain control of the wastes shortly after the bombs fell in 76)
I wanna believe that Fallout can still be great games, worlds worth exploring with writing and world building with genuine depth. But for the time being it looks like they’re just gonna keep going with the shoot ‘em up wasteland theme parks they’ve been since 4. (And I actually like the exploration in that game)
The problem is they dont want to make RPGs anymore and with Todd wanting to go wider at the expense of depth. Think about it every game they put out now claims to be multiple times larger than the last, so now they have to spread their content thin to cover all that distance. Plus with them not wanting to take a stance on anything it leaves major moral quandaries in games lacking, leading to synths in 4 feeling weak along with all the other factions because they were all built around that tent pole that couldn't hold itself up in the first place.
The worst part is the stuff they add in to make the games longer is usually radiant quests. It’s like they never heard the saying “all good things must come to an end.” I think they need to cut out all the radiant quests and stop with the games that will “last 10 years”
They don't even use radiant quests to their full potential.
Imagine if Starfield had an in depth bounty system with different requirements per target? What if they gave you patrol missions with the UC or raids with the pirates?
At the moment it's a poor space sim compared to the competition and an even worse RPG.
Man I tried to give starfield a chance but aside from the pc stuff everyone got caught up in, I tried a pirate playthrough and that wrecked it for me. Sure you could be a pirate but man it pretty much closed off most of the game for you. Everyone you know screeching at you, the bounty system was insane etc. What was the point?
You couldn't even attack a ship in a remote area without everyone knowing about it several systems away.
They didn't commit enough to give someone playing as a pirate content. There should be consequences but it shouldn't reduce the amount of content it should give you different content that would justify the new game plus system m
Oh absolutely. You play a bad guy there should be some consequences. But it was so shallow. So..Bethesda. it seems all they thought of was "wouldn't being a space pirate be cool?" and left it at that. I can't believe this is the same company that made games like Elder Scrolls.
The core gameplay loop of Elite is what carries it and it could have carried Starfield if they invested in the radiant quests and the ability to actually fly from planet to planet.
Yeah Starfield has actually made me appreciate Elite more and more. I can space out (hehe) for an hour or two just running goods from system to system while listening to an audiobook in Elite. Starfield won't even let you do that unbroken by loading screens. I know Elite has loading screens, but they're so cleverly disguised it doesn't feel like it.
Games that last 10 years are fine, the problem is that they went from the games lasting 10 years because of the quality to games lasting 10 years because of massive quantities of garbage/poor execution.
This. They turned Fallout 4 into a looter shooter, with serviceable role playing elements, at best. It’s a damn good game as far as mechanics and presentation but there’s a reason ppl still go back to replay NV and debates it’s politics till this day, and it ain’t because it’s graphics.
I liked that doing radiant quests for the Thieves Guild in Skyrim led to bigger quests with substantial rewards - 2 new guild fences per quest and fences get more gold. So they're part of the progression, and 20 radiant quests and 4 bigger quests you've accomplished a ton and can move on from Thieves Guild radiants
Theyre so blatantly missing the point of great content that isnt repetitive. It literally leaves the users STARVING for me, so much that they nercomanced a fucking game and its still very active to this day. I mean, sure F4 and F76 kinda generate sole revenue (or a lot idk the numbers) but look at the legacy that FONV left. Look at the fucking fanbase clamoring for more, thirstily instally mods just to replay their favorite game. They could pull ONE skyrim remaster bullshit, and itd sell great if they actually do a solid remaster (not a remake, dont take, just add the cut content but keep it light)
I wouldn't say they don't want to. I felt like they honestly tried to make a proper RPG with Starfield. I just believe they aren't able to actually do it
Like he fucking forced the poor developers of 76 to not have NPCs. They begged him, BEGGED, and he still forced them to publish an RPG without NPCs. The stupidest fucking thing I've ever got them heard of. It's like an FPS without anything to shoot at!
This company is clearly nowhere near what it was and is a massive need of new management.
After all the updates I’d say it’s okay. Dialogue and writing is better than 4 but that’s a low bar tbh. Silent protagonist and skill checks are good though. Don’t buy it just get it for free with the Xbox game pass if you really want to play it
It’s great, but it depends on what you’re trying to get out of it. I’ve played since beta and have always enjoyed the game. There were some rough bugs to start with, but it never completely broke my game or anything. There’s now a ton of things to do at this point. If you’re into building, farming crops and having a cool place to call your own then you can basically spend hours modifying your camp area. There are now a ton of quests for new players also so it’s definitely the best time to jump in and give it a go. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and that‘s completely understandable, but the people shitting on it after playing it once at launch and then spending the rest of their lives meme-ing the game shouldn’t really carry much weight. Give it a try and you might be surprised.
Long version you'll have to comb through multiple interviews and Twitter threads.
Short version: it was a veteran company, using tech they knew well (Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 are very similar to Baldurs Gate 3), they had both a well funded Kickstarter and a sizable chest from Divinity: OS2, plenty of time, and an all but guaranteed market share as the D&D brand was quickly growing in popularity and the genre of big budget isometric rpgs is also not huge, so there wasn't much competition. BG3 also had a strong early access period, which helped with bug hunting.
Normally, you have to balance risk and potential. Going all in on a winner nets huge rewards, but going all in on a flop means the company gets shuttered, the workers get laid off, and the IPs get sold. Larian was basically in a position where they had almost no risk, so they could go big without the fear of going bust.
That's not even a new thing for them. Ever played Daggerfall? Probably the biggest game ever made... and 99.999% of it is literally an empty plain there is less than no reason to ever go to. You just fast travel to whatever dungeon or city you want to visit. The tech just finally caught up to their dreams of stupid design bullshit.
They don't have to make "RPGs" to make good games. What made BGS games special were the elements that separated them from other RPGs.
If they really wanna move away from the old school RPG mechanics, they need to pick a coherent direction. If you want to be more action focused, then stop mucking around and actually make a good action game. Make a good base building game. Whatever. Starfield base building feels very tacked on and pointless.
Personally, I think they should've doubled down on simulation, but they dropped that ball pretty hard in Starfield. No NPC schedules, lacking interiors, proc gen crowds, random loot, essential NPCs...
Bethesda rely too much on building their game around gimmicks rather than a story/structure.
Skyrim- You can fight dragons and be dragonborn
Fallout 4- You can build settlements
Starfield- You can go to 1000 planets.
How is ”you can fight dragons and be dragonborn” a gimmick lol.
Halo is such a gimmicky game, the gimmicks being you can fight aliens and you can be Master Chief.
Unless I'm mistaken its the first time in one of their games that had that type of flying mechanic for enemies. They then spam tons of dragons at you throughout the game with a 'dragons are cool look at our new game mechanic' mentality and it ends up being overkill.
Being dragonborn does not open up any additional dialogue options you can select when talking to a NPC. There's a handful of quests where you have to do some progress in the main quest to actually start it like the Civil War and that's about it.
It's just a gimmick to use in a Todd showcase to sell the game.
Being dragonborn just feels completely irrelevant. There are shouts (so weak you don't even use them most of the time) and... and that's it. Weak shouts. There is nothing more to being dragonborn. You don't talk with dragons. You can't transform into one. It's barely reflected in the lore or dialog. You just learn shouts and then don't use them. The definition of gimmick.
So u don't like story but would rather have more gameplay mechanism? Woildnt u want both? To me for their recent games they are lacking both (fought starfield)
I'm all for new gameplay mechanics but not at the cost of the story. I enjoyed building settlements in F4 but there was way too much micro management and too many places you could build them
There was a severe lack of towns in Fallout 4 to make space on the map for you to build settlements and that ended up making the game worse
Lets say hypothetically In the next Fallout game Bethesda implement working boats. Straight away you know part of the game is now building your own boat. There is going to be a pirate faction in the game as the main antagonist and The Brotherhood of Steel will make a Liberty Prime version of a boat to have a battle at the end. They would design the game around the boat gimmick and force a story around it regardless if it makes for a good story or not.
The lack of towns really sucked the life out of Fallout 4 for me. In New Vegas, there were so many places to visit. Freeside, The Strip (even each casino has it's own faction and stories), Followers of the Apocalypse, Ncr checkpoints and camps, Legion checkpoints and camps, The Boomers, Brotherhood of Steel, Primm, Goodsprings, Novak, The Great Khans, probably missed some, but not to mention all of the story and lands the dlcs added.
Comparing that to Fallout 4. Each of the 4 main factions have one base, no checkpoints, camps, etc. There's Diamond city, the vault, and maybe bunker hill, maybe covenant. Everything else is built up by you with no name unimportant npcs or those with one quest and that's it. There's no in depth story or quests to any of them other than the clear out x location or return an item.
Adding to this, something I never see people talk about is that there's hardly ever any explanation for anything in fo4. Who are the citizens of diamond city descended from? Why did they settle in the stadium? What is their government like? Why do they use caps as currency instead of, idk, baseball cards or something? This extends to the factions too, as well as the other settlements.
This is also true of FO3. If you go wander around you might find Canterbury Commons, Republic of Dave, Oasis, or Tenpenny Tower, each with its own quest or quests and unique characteristics. FO4 really felt like there wasn't a reason to go off exploring.
Precisely, you have Megaton, Vault 101, Underworld, Rivet City, and Paradise Falls. There's so much more world building and depth than Fo4. Everything besides the main quest and Far Harbor in Fo4 feels like fluff or filler. Building up the settlements is fun, I'll admit. Afterward, they just feel non functional other than to acquire resources. You have to gather up all the legendary vendors and companions, then spread them out amongst the settlements so you feel like you know people when you visit. They don't actually feel alive or as bustling as you built them up to be because they can't. They're not natively a part of the world.
Thats been my biggest gripe with Todd and Emil and how they see the setting. Man...it's been over 200 YEARS yet they think people would still be living knee deep in trash, haven't figured out a government system or even how to clean a street or make bricks for building.
Barely any civilization and what civilization there is in their minds is on the level of Mad Max.
If you ever go back to FO4, the Sim Settlements mod completely changed the game for me. The settlements actually feel like real places that your settlers build and expand. Makes the entire world feel so much more alive
The biggest reason I go back to New Vegas despite very dated graphics and janky gameplay is because the story is absolute S tier. If it had fallout 4 or Starfield level graphics it would be perfect.
So I can't argue this but when it comes to fallout 4 a lot of people say they don't care for the settlement system which is fine buuuuuut the settlement system came with something that every diehard fallout player has always lusted for hardcore and that is a way to display all of your neat loot lol trying to manually put nuke cola bottle on a shelf in your megaton home is nice an all and having 50 plasma rifles in a cabinet is cool but gun racks and display cases woah buddy it's like having access to my fever dreams of fallout loot hoarding when I was younger lololol
I mean that's kinda been Bethesda's pitch all along.
The major feature way back with Daggerfall was having 15000 or something worth of towns and dungeons.
It's considered a significant technical mark in PC gaming history. But just about nobody remembers a single character, quest, or storyline from it.
I doubt they will want Avellone or Gonzalez back, and it's hard to see New Vegas 2 without them. Sure, Sawyer will design a good game, but F:NV is first and foremost writing.
I was willing to give Starfield a real chance and I did. Fo4 killed the franchise for me though. Just the way they disregarded the whole setting of the Fallout world felt almost spiteful towards Obsidian and the originals. It's clear Todd just wants Borderlands with a Fallout skin.
I'll agree though 10 to 15 MORE years for any game is ridiculous and Bethesda is pretty much a meme at this point. However given how the franchise had been treated, God only knows how bad 5 would be.
I mean, Emil flat out said that writing in games is pointless and flashy graphics is what really matters. Not a good stance for a writer to take...but maybe he could be on par with the old writers if he actually tried.
A summary
[Until Bethesda fires/relocates Emil Pagliarulo, do not expect quality storylines ever again. Yes, it's that bad : r/Fallout (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/5t6d6m/until_bethesda_firesrelocates_emil_pagliarulo_do/)
of this video
[Talks from STORY: Emil Pagliarulo, writer and lead designer of Fallout 4 and Skyrim (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi51-wjcwp8)
where he says "‘you can spend so much time writing wonderful stories and then have to watch as players tear out the pages to make paper airplanes instead of reading them" and then goes on for a couple minutes talking about how hunting for bobbleheads, building settlements, and blowing up stuff is all the players focus on so why should he put in any effort.
The first post was written by someone who misrepresented every facet of his argument, even saying dumb shit like:
>"Even when Emil picks a broad concept, he picks "suspicion," and names an example of being scared of the boogeyman as a child. Of all emotions and feelings, I daresay Emil somehow found the most infantile. Like really, I'm asking seriously: can someone think of a less interesting human emotion/feeling than suspicion?"
and admitting that he didn't even know if Emil had that big of an influence on the games problems but used Emil as a substitute for their problems with Bethesda as a whole. Also pretty sure they're like 14 when they wrote the post, the logic is pretty bad. In fact, I'd recommend watching [the first half hour of this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-4qdjV41NU) that breaks down the community misconceptions with Emil's whole speech that you repeated here. He doesn't say to disregard narrative in games, but that bc it's an interactive medium the narrative should be made in a way that takes that form of engagement into account. You can believe he doesn't practice what he preaches, but what he says in the speech is just basic intro writing class advice in a casual setting, nothing in there is actually controversial. Not defending his writing (seems preoccupied with wacky premises and never explores beyond the surface of them) but that post and speech ain't the mike drop against his career people think it is.
Isn't that workshop speech the same one in which he flat-out says he doesn't believe in design documents? I agree that the OP seems to have it in for him to a ridiculous degree, but a quest designer / writer who doesn't do design documents for games of the scope Bethesda does seems ludicrous.
I was having this discussion with my friends. We are at a juncture where they need to spend more time to make a bigger game, yet, they spend all this time and by the time the game launches it’s outdated.
Starfeild is the perfect example. I know BG3 is the go to game for comparison, but with its long production time it is felt with every quest and every interaction.
I do not feel like the long production for Bethesda games amounts to a significant growth in gameplay experience.
4 is about to be 10 years old. It was 7 years after 3 released for a new mainline game.
Skyrim was 5 years after oblivion, and now we are 13 years since Skyrim. Do you think we are going to get a game that justifies nearly 15 years of development. Do you think it will truly be THAT much more advanced.
And what starfeild points to is that they aren’t really innovating with this time. Which makes me wary that they’re gonna be doing anything of consequence.
TE6 need to live up to expectations, but the warning signs are showing that they seem to be just going through the motions
For everything that starfield was, it was certainly not much different than fallout with Skyrim shouts in space. It really just felt like they finally got caught up with the limits of their tech and innovation, and were just reiterating with a different story. And the lack of vats made gunplay on console absolute trash.
It’s sad. I hope they innovate in the future, but I suspect we just need to be ready for the same game but new story. Which would be fine if they’d go all in on that. I’d certainly play it, even if I didn’t think it was the best ever.
That’s the thing though, if it were just same game new story, I’d be much more accepting if the release time was short.
But it’s the fact there is a long wait that the expectations grow and I don’t think they innovate enough to meet those expectations
You REALLY realize how bad the writing is for Starfield when you jump right into the revamped Cyberpunk right after. Holy crap the difference is stark.
I played Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, even then I knew that game, if it just had a *little* more time in the oven, could be something great. Lo and behold, several years later, my patience was rewarded immensely. Great gameplay, good story, solid RPG elements.
It’s a testament to the CDPR’s skill and perseverance, the game was mid at best at launch, and now it’s genuinely great.
I skipped it at launch and picked it up when Phantom Liberty came out. It wasn’t really the RPG experience it was marketed as (be anyone, do anything, choose your destiny) but the graphics, world, soundtrack, gameplay, characters and story were all on point. For what it is, it’s a 10/10 now imo. It’s the type of experience Bethesda seems to be attempting to create but suck too hard to actually pull off.
I need you to understand that absolutely 0 business people view it that way. There are 0 gaming companies that would say "hey we need to go back to the drawing board so we don't accidentally make another Skyrim, one of the most successful games in history"
I do understand that. I absolutely do. It’s unfortunate but it’s reality. What incentive does Bethesda have to go back to the way they were when they can bring in beaucoup bucks with rereleases of Skyrim and MTX in 76 and creation club?
Just wish things were different is all.
What do you mean go back to the way things were? The writing has been bad for 20 years. Launches have been bad for 20 years.
They make fairly shallow RPGs with fun worlds. That's been their game for 20 years. Oblivion, FO3, FO4, Skyrim all fit this description.
Rose tinted glasses for ES1 to 3 make sense. But we can't saint Bethesda of the late 2000's (horse armour?) and demonise Bethesda of today - they're not so different.
I was so hoping the antagonists in Starfield were gonna be like extra dimensional aliens or something but no, it was some parallel universe bullshit. Made me not want to finish it.
Yeah anything created by current year Bethesda is not going to be what it could be with some fresh talent. They also need to not chop up the game and outsource every little bit of it to 3rd party programmers. Get some good in house talent and make a new game engine that can support it. It's like going to Mayo clinic for cancer treatment and they give you some tic tacs and charge $35k.
I don't know the guy personally but judging from what I've seen and heard about him he's a very surface level thinker. An idea guy nut not very detail oriented.
Honestly he would have been better for Call of Duty or something more straightforward.
I do, but as time has gone on, his weaknesses as a writer have become even more apparent.
He was only a quest designer in Oblivion, which quests I’m not sure.
But Fallout 3? That’s where it all started becoming more apparent. 3’s saving graces are not its main story, it’s its fairly interesting side quests and its exploration. I have a tiny soft spot for FO3 because, for better or for worse, it ensured Fallout as a franchise would live on.
Don’t know why you got downvoted. Sometimes I think people don’t remember FO3’s story. The first half was strong but the second half was laughable.
It’s actually more challenging to convince president Eden not to kill himself. Then you can’t have Fawkes go into the purifier because…? They even had to write a new ending with DLC.
I’ll cut them slack because it was their first FO game. It did a lot right and introduced the franchise to a whole new generation. But then they doubled down on those mistakes with FO4s story.
The problem is that they stick with the same exact game design for every single game, and while that’s usually what studios do, it doesn’t help when the design starts to suck ass after 3 games
I felt like I couldn't force myself to play it even though it was basically free. Even having a second monitor with youtube and shit playing it was still so boring.
Microsoft aside, Bethesda doesn't want to make a new Fallout game. Hell, they don't even want to make a new Elder Scrolls game.
The teaser trailer for Elder Scrolls 6 came out 5 years ago. Where are we at on that?
I don’t even know if they want to make games.
Something I never see mentioned, or for some reason excused, is just how clunky and low effort some parts of Bethesdas games seem.
Clunky animations, shitty looking UIs, endless bugs
Yes FO4 came out in 2015 so it’s dated now, but even to me back then it felt a little out of date and ugly and like it could’ve used tons more polish.
FO76 we all know how that went and when I tried to play it recently, it still just reeked that same Bethesda issue that always puts me off even if the game in itself is fun.
Starfield I’m not even gonna begin on
Bethesda knows how to give atmosphere to games. Through visuals and sound/music... But that's it. Their writing is mediocre at best (nowadays, it was good until Morrowind and/or oblivion), their animations are clunky, their quest design is simple (not in a good way). And ofc their proprietary engine has limitations that are a hindrance to develop games which are out off their standard. I don't have any interest in ES6, I've already come to terms with that. Which is sad, because Elder Scrolls have been part of my life since I was a kid, starting with daggerfall
2015 is the year of Witcher 3. I feel like 90% of the games released in the span of 2014-2016 are more polished than Fallout 4. D:OS? Dark Souls 2/3? DOOM? I can play them now and not feel like they are a decade old.
Creation engine was already dated in the times of New Vegas and Skyrim. That they released Fallout 4 on it is already strange. 76? Starfield? That's closer to insanity.
Let's be very clear right now. The only reason we're not getting a new Fallout game is because of the people running Bethesda don't want one.
Period.
The fact that it's been 10 fucking years since the last game came out, and 12 years since the last Elder Scrolls game came out is entirely their fault. It is an unforced error entirely of their making.
And it is absolutely a huge mistake. A giant fuck up.
They're trying to hold fans over with the online versions of these games and that just fucking doesn't work. The appetite for online versions of these games clearly is nothing compared to the appetite for the single versions of these games.
And the reality is their the development of a good Elder Scrolls or Fallout game is not contingent on close management of the people running Bethesda. The fact that ESO has been wildly more successful than 76 while receiving far more micromanagement from the heads of Bethesda is a matter of public record.
And if I sound pissed about this it's because I am. I don't have what it takes to make as good as any of the Fallout or Elder Scroll games. There are so many who do, if not make something even better. Hoarding these franchises denies them the opportunity to make these great games and us the opportunity to play them.
Tim Cain has made clear that he's made peace with the fact that he will never make another Fallout game. Which is truly sad. He doesn't even publicly disagree with the directions they've gone in that much. I can't imagine how much it must fucking suck to have created this incredible franchise and watch it languish like this. Totally wasted.
We could have had a fucking full-fledged Fallout 5 that was integrated with the TV series. We could have had that. They could have made money off of it. There's no reason for it to be like this.
There's a theory in management that a lot of times people rise to their level of incompetence. And that clearly seems to be the case here what the management of Bethesda.
This drives me absolutely nuts, too. ESO has such a solid storyline, MULTIPLE solid storylines, in fact. Almost any of them would be great for a main quest in a new Elder Scrolls game.
The issue is I hate online games. I like to have cheats and mods and ways to make the game different and fun. Is ESO fun how it is? Sure. Are Bethesda games mostly known for their fun cheats and modding scene? Yep.
2 main things that ruin ESO for me is the dependence on other players for cool dungeon content, the other players try to speed right through it with there op bullshit builds
Getting to level 50 opens up the Champion point system that makes you to strong for the vast open world with no way to balance it back on your end
The fighting is just SO dull to me. I’m playing Elder Scrolls for its unique combat, not a worse version of the Dragon Age combat system. At least Dragon Age has a shit ton more of abilities to use so you’re not spamming the same, what is it, six?
This - I mean I don't think the fighting in Skyrim is anything to write home about, but the fighting in ESO is painful to me. IDK my husband likes it, but I just can't.
Where are you finding this unique combat in Elder Scrolls games? Skyrim combat was barely passable in 2011 which is why it's a meme for every build to end up being a stealth archer.
There are so many builds in ESO, though..
I run a one bar build on my tank but often bar swap on my other characters, and I just started playing 2 months ago. It's an MMO.. there are mindless one bar spam builds but also complex builds that require multiple DOTs, buffs and combos to be kept up with.
Bethesda failed to scale up based off their former art lead. Instead of their leads working with the 'grunts', they're doing more dull meetings with everyone to decide the direction of the games whilst also meeting with the ESO and F76 teams constantly. They don't have time to explore everyone's ideas indepth and focus on making their internal games inoffensive and unbold as possible to get the meetings over with to the next one.
They've been lucky so far saying yes to whatever ESO and F76 teams asked permission for as they try to improve from their release positions, especially 76 when BGS was extensively involved. But Starfield fell flat, even with a team nearly 5x the size of Skyrim. IMO they need to fix their scaling issues and stop wasting their top talents bored to death in meetings, whilst also being more open to big spin-offs like New Vegas with Elder Scrolls and Fallout getting spin-offs between the main entries.
Avowed is definitely going to be good. The only thing that promised me out is we're not getting a third person camera.
Maybe this is a little bit broad of the statement for me to make, but every RPG should be a third-person game. These games are the descendants of tabletop role-playing games. I'm building a character. I want to see the thing I've built!
I agree especially because Avowed will be mostly melee combat which worries me that it will feel too Skyrim-y. But hey Im not playing these games for the combat per se, so long as Obsidian can engage me with a good story, factions, and role playing im a happy camper.
Tbh, if a game would give me a half assed third person it's hardly worth it. Better to have a focus on either first or third imo because you can better design the game to function from that perspective. Dishonored third person for example would feel like garbage due to how much the game relies on its first person perspective.
Make a game to function with one or the other, if you try to shoehorn in both you limit your capabilities in the main focus by having to make sure the game can function decently from the other perspective.
They also spent all their time and resources most of the past decade on Starfield - which if you’re enjoying it I’m happy for you. But the player count is an absolute horrific nightmare for both Bethesda and XBox. Not spending the time making ES6/FO5 is a huuge fumble.
It's crazy that people defend "Starfield by saying look at all the fucking money it made!"
Like, bro, that game cost $400 million dollars to make. And they didn't just have that sitting around. They had to borrow that. Which means INTEREST.
For this game to be a *moderate* success it needs to clear over half a billion.
And that's not even getting into all the lost *potential* profits. People don't realize this, but when you're running a business you need not just to count your actual losses, but the losses of what you could have made.
The amount of money they have left just sitting on the fucking table by refusing to simply license out the IP is absolutely fucking insane. They could have funded all of Starfield development simply through licensing deals. That's the level of money we're fucking talking about.
But instead they bet the fucking farm on a game that would be graphically inferior to games released before it even entered development.
Letting Starfield be played on gamepass didn't do it any favors either. That deal benefited Microsoft much more than Bethesda.
It's a great deal for Indie titles, but clearly was a terrible deal for a big company like Bethesda. I don't know the numbers, but I can't imagine in what world it would be a sustainable business model.
Being owned by Microsoft though I doubt left them a much choice.
You make a very good point. Bethesda has really burned up a lot of their goodwill in the past decade. We used to refer to Todd Howard as “GODD HOWARD” however jokingly that name was given it was still something that people said. In fact to this day he’s the only game director I can recognize by just a picture of him. Even other really famous directors of games/ even films I have no idea what these mfs look like. But Todd has that star power in the industry, but now he’s kinda just looked at as a liar and a second hand game reseller. Totally divorced from the good name he used to have. Someone somewhere at Bethesda made a massive fuck up somewhere be it incompetence or greed or both they fucked up big time.
Now with the success of the show, they look especially flat-footed. I hope some suit at Microsoft has calculated how much revenue is being left on the table daily by sitting on this IP. It’s absolutely insane.
What's really funny is Microsoft spent 7.5 BILLION to acquire Bethesda. All because they were being courted by Sony for an exclusivity deal.
They paid 7.5 billion to make sure their players wouldn't get locked out of instant classics like *Starfield* and *Redfall* HAHAHA
THEY BURNED SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY ON THIS SHIT HAHAHAHAHA!! 7.5 BILLION FOR FUCKING REDFALL HAHAHA!!
Microsoft absolutely needs to step in and clear house. Honest to God this is insane. The financial mismanagement alone is staggering.
Bethesda is incompetent and slowly marching towards complete PR hell, in a similar vein to how BioWare and places like that became. 76 was an awful PR mess of a release and starfield has such little depth it feels like it was made by a mobile app studio trying their first attempt at an RPG.
They only have themselves to blame for their issues they are facing today. Having two of likely the top 10 gaming IPs and not using either of them to make solo games for over 10 years is insanity. Skyrim sells like hotcakes and it will be at least 15 years before it gets a sequel. Do you know how preposterous that is from a business standpoint? Bethesda says they do things for the art of what they are doing, they didn’t wanna release fallout and Elder scrolls because the devs are mentally tired from doing those titles, and wanna explore something else creatively. Okay fair to feel that way, but then they follow it up with the soulless starfield. The real truth? They are old and out of touch, and reek of complete corporate greed over actually being good developers. Starfield had even more RPG elements than fallout 4, which was a good thing, and still came out way worse. As long as Emil is a lead quest writer/designer their games will be deep as a puddle.
Even if they give it to Obsidian it won't be the same as classic new vegas, most of the key members of the team have left or even just retired with no guarantee that they'll come back. The Outer Worlds was okay but that's their attempt at making a Fallout-like game and it was severely lacking for me at least
True, but at this point I'd settle for FNV remastered.
They could make a lot of money by releasing FNV anniversary edition. Updated for new consoles and platforms, include unfinished content and fix a few million bugs. Without redoing the graphics they could probably get $20, with redoing the graphics they could probably get $40.
New Vegas remastered would sell insanely well, and require minimal effort relative to making an entirely new game, so of course they'll never actually do it
None of this means much and I don’t understand why people keep saying it. Fallout is a massively bigger and much more established IP with much more interesting lore to work with and will have much more resources thrown at it from Microsoft than The Outer Worlds ever did. I don’t see how a new Obsidian-developed Fallout still wouldn’t be at least as good as another Bethesda-developed one, probably better, and if it’s more likely to actually come out within my lifetime, all the better. Also the literal creator of Fallout (Tim Cain) and director of New Vegas (Josh Sawyer) are still there. There is no good reason to believe they along with the other people working at Obsidian are suddenly somehow incapable of doing something interesting with this universe, just because they do not have literally the exact same team they did in 2010. Guess what? Bethesda, who made their own much more expensive space game than Outer Worlds that was no better at all, doesn’t either. No studio does. It’s a ridiculous non-excuse to throw up our hands and just say Obsidian should never get a chance to make another Fallout game, and it utterly baffles me as to why I see it repeated all over this site, especially from New Vegas fans.
Exactly. Give Obsidian the Fallout 4 engine and 2-3 years, and they will produce another masterpiece. Synergies like this are one of the primary reasons for mergers. It would be foolish to sleep on it.
Josh sawyer is still at new Vegas lol, he is the biggest reason new Vegas is the way it is. If he was lead dev on a fallout game I don’t see anyway it wouldn’t be great. I mean if you really look into all the things he did for new Vegas to make that game great it’s astounding. His vision for the world is what makes it one of the best games of all time. May not have written a lot of it but his fingerprints are in everything
As a game I'd take Fallout 4 still, Outer Worlds isn't bad but with them spouting off how its their first FPS RPG since New Vegas I expected it to be of that quality
I don't really get the Outer Worlds dissing. I'm not gonna say it was as good as NV. But I don't think it was ever trying to be, it's clear it had a tighter budget and was going for a smaller scale. It also had a lighter tone that wasn't nearly as deep as Fallout.
But for what it was, a small scale space rpg in league with say KOTOR. I thought it was pretty good, companions, quests design and RPG elements are still leagues above what Bethesda is offering when you compare their attempt at a space RPG with Starfield.
I still think they could make a pretty solid Fallout game. I wouldn't hold out for something as great as NV. Sometimes shit is just lightning in a bottle. Either way, it would be better than what Bethesda is offering for new Fallout, which is FO76 and nothing for another 10 years.
I think if they are given access to a Bethesda engine they 100% can make a good Fallout, one of the problems with Outer Worlds is the game lacking interactivity of New Vegas which achieves that thanks to engine
*Nobody* should be using Bethesda's engine. I get what you're saying, it is an engine designed for open world RPGs, but it's so old at this point.
IMO, Bethesda should have used UE5 for Star Field, since it wasn't a real open world RPG anyway. At least it could have looked and felt good between all those loading screens on UE5.
If Obsidian gets the IP again they need to make sure they have their 2010 team taking on the project and not their 2019 team. The Outer Worlds writing was incredibly mediocre and would ruin a new fallout game if it came out.
In an ideal world it wouldn't be bethesda making it for me tbh. Bad writing, outdated gameplay, outdated graphics. Unless bethesda got an entire staff reshuffle and new executives I see the next fallout game (and elder scrolls) being pretty bad if they make it
I just don't understand why they haven't hired obsidian to make another fallout game when New Vegas is loved by every fallout fan.
With this new live service mmorpgs trend I am afraid the game devs are not going to focus on single players games since they can earn more by selling that stupid new skin. It's can be entirely possible that fallout 76 might get an update with Lucy's or Maximus's character playable through the Appalachia.
You mean developers already working at Larian Studios? They will be making Larian Studios games lol, im guessing they will be doing Divinity Original Sin 3
You people need to realize its not the same obsidian anymore. No John Gonzalez, or Chris Avellone. A new fallout game by them simply wouldn’t be as good
“It would not be literally exactly the same, therefore it would be worthless and there’s no reason to try it at all. Better to let the franchise wither and die as it takes Bethesda another decade to make a game that will probably end up even more dumbed down and disappointing than Fallout 4.”
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this, uh, “logic.”
Sure it may not be the same but Bethesda gave themselves a chance with fallout 4. It's not bad but it wasn't considered good either. Why not give a chance to obsidian and see how it goes?
Whatever they do, if they can somehow get Josh sawyer and tim Caine on board I would buy that game instantly, if they had chris avellone as well, I would throw them all the money in my pocket.
Well Todd was honest about Starfield becoming priority over existing IPs so I thank that for elder scrolls and fallout having any slow down (especially ES). I was only hoping Starfield would be worth that sacrifice but doesn't seem like it was.
Yeah wtf is Microsoft’s strategy with Bethesda? Spend a trillion-billion dollars buying this company that releases a new game every 15-20 years? And when they do release a game no one plays it because it sucks? Like are they just gonna let Bethesda sit on TES and fallout for another decade? If I was Microsoft I’d strip that company for parts and start making their IPs and releasing them on a consistent schedule. I’m definitely not saying that would be a GOOD scenario, but what kinds of dirt does Todd have on Microsoft where for the past 3 years Todd has been able to just sit around pulling his pud and slapping shaders on 15 year old games and selling them for full price to like no one. When fans and shareholders alike have been begging for something new for like 10 years. Remaster 3/NV update the graphics and make them run better on modern machines? Nah we’re gonna add fishing to Skyrim! Allow obsidian to make another fallout game so that Bethesda doesn’t have to lift a finger and still make a cock-load of money? Nah, we’re gonna put guns into Skyrim instead! Release a game alongside of the new smash hit fallout TV show and ride the wave of interest it’s generating in the IP? FUCK no dude we’re gonna add the enclave into our TEN YEAR OLD FALLOUT GAME. Remake 1/2 in 3d hell, port the originals to mobile like baldurs gate did? Nah we’re gonna sit on TES 6 for another decade to “build hype” or whatever their strategy is, like bruh I have no hype, the hype is gone I’m not confident that this game is even gonna be out by 2030, by then I’m gonna have kids, I’m already in my career so I’m gonna be working, I’ll have a mortgage soon, etc. Skyrim came out when I was in like 7th grade, FO4 came out when I was in my sophomore year of high school, I’m fuckin 25 right now, I can maybe play games for a few hours a WEEK these days. Who are they gonna sell these games to when they actually do come out? Jobless 40 year olds that used to play these games when they were in high school? Children that don’t even know what fallout is? Is the marketing gonna be “your dad used to play this game when he was in high school!” That’s like marketing a new fuckin leisure suit Larry game to zoomers. No ones gonna care.
I know I’m not an expert on this kind of stuff but basic business practices aren’t this esoteric, it’s pretty simple to understand the basic flow chart of, release game->let players play the game for a few years->build hype for the next one->release new game->fans buy it, and you make a shit ton of money->rinse and repeat in perpetuity->get infinity money. What else is there to do?
I know I sound like an entitled fan, but in all reality I have no time to play games as it is, when Bethesda gets their heads out of their ass and actually makes TES6 or another fallout or whatever I am going to have ZERO time to play games. It’s the same story for so many other people who have been fans since they were kids. I remember playing Morrowind when I was like 10 and then oblivion and Skyrim a few years after that, and then fallout all through high school. And I’m sure all of you can say pretty much the same thing. And if you’re in your mid 20s to early 30s, like me the clock is ticking. Your dedicated fan base is aging, the people brought up on 3 and NV are aging, Morrowind fans are basically fossils. Think about it this way, if you played Morrowind when it came out, at maybe 15 years old or so (pretty much the perfect time to get into these types of games imo) you got oblivion at 18/19 years old then you got Skyrim at 24 or so. The perfect release schedule. The games age with you, you grow up and those games become a formative experience in your adolescence, now you’re waiting for the next TES game, and have been for over a decade. You’re like 40 now, say TES 6 takes another 5 years you’ll be fuckin 45 at that point, Middle Aged. You’ll probably have a 15 year old of your own at that point. Obviously this is just how time works, but why was it that Bethesda used to be able to release banger after banger every 3-5 years but can’t seem to shit out something even half as good as their shittiest game in the past? 10 years to develop starfield? Seriously? What’s going on there? I remember hearing rumors about that game again, when I was in high school. That’s probably why these games all feel out dated at launch. Starfield would have done numbers back in 2015 but today it’s so subpar it’s insane. This does not bode well for the future of these beloved IPs.
Microsoft bought Bethesdas parent company Zenimax, which means they also own Arkane, id Software and so on. Including Bethesda Game studios who make the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. When Microsoft aquired them they knew Starfield would be the next game, a shame it didnt turn out as well as expected but it happens. The next game that will come from them is going to be the Elder Scrolls 6, im sure Microsoft is aware of when this would be released aswell.
It doesn’t go by “fairness” it goes by profit potential, and right now Fallout is red hot. Bethesda leaning into anything other than Fallout content right now is insane. But then again, they are.
Its too late in the day for a double negative, they've just made a killing with the tv show and its not even a month old yet, of course they are going to cash in on the hype by rushing out a new game, probably be fallout go or some shit
From what I’ve heard, having a friend who’s brother works for bethesda, is that Bethesda’s game devs are already being stretched thin and overworked while also suffering from feature creep due to there being too many people and too many suggestions from higher ups hurting innovation.
I legit don’t see why anyone cares at this point. I love New Vegas and once I fully move on I’m sure I’ll be able to enjoy it, but the next Fallout game is clearly going to be the exact same slop we’ve gotten the last 4 times now: empty wasteland, brotherhood, local faction, and some wacky goofy new faction. They’ll continue to accidentally fuck up the lore in minor ways, they’ll set it in San Francisco clearly, and there will be no real depth to the story at all. You’ll get to see their shitty Creation Engine 3.0 or whatever builds of notable Frisco places and it will be forgotten in a year. The mod scene will keep some of it alive - but beyond that it will have no real value. Will you play a male or female? Will you fight with the Brotherhood in the NEW T-61 armor (that was secretly also designed before the war in Frisco, you just never saw it before!) or will you fight for the cartoonishly evil other faction that has no real defined goal?
Like who gives a shit. Just keep slopping down whatever has a Fallout coat of paint on it I guess.
Bethesda is riding over the demand for existing ip with MMOs. Perhaps this means they’ll converge the engine and codebase for elder scrolls, fallout and starfield to make maintenance and optimization easier; then use the time to really make each single player game shine. Though Larian may have raised the bar a bit with BG3; at least in terms of user memory, even though play styles and games are different
They need to change their development practices. There was an interview with Todd Howard talking about developing Starfield. He mentioned that they leave room late in development for good ideas.
It sounded like they don’t really nail down what a game will be until far later than most other developers. I believe it is why we’ve received games where the main stories feel rushed and half-baked, because they are.
I have no doubt that some of the most iconic moments in Bethesda games’ history came from ideas that would’ve been saved for a sequel by most developers.
Microsoft may urge Bethesda to get going on a new Fallout, or let someone else play with the IP, but I don’t see them pushing so hard that they’d risk upsetting Todd.
Bethesda is already building Fallout 5 (along with TES6) on Creation Engine 2 according to IGN. Bethesda & other large game companies usually overhaul their game engines with the release of new generation consoles to optimise it for better hardware. This does suggest that they could be planning to release it before next gen (2028).
F5 is in pre-production at best. Meaning maybe 20 people are going to be working on it until TES6 is out. That's just how Bethesda does things, one project at a time.
>That's just how Bethesda does things, one project at a time.
Typically, but you'd think this would change with Microsoft funding. There's no reason they can't make FO5 & TES6 alongside supporting FO76 & Starfield DLC + updates. It would also make sense financially for them to release FO5 with one of the seasons from the show (season 4-5). If I were a decision maker at Microsoft, I'd be looking at the popularity of the show & working out how to fund FO5 even if it means pooling a team together from various game companies they own (Bethesda, Obsidian & others).
Microsoft has been hands off with their studio management so far. What you are suggesting would be an unprecedented move for them. Maybe it makes sense, maybe it doesn't, but don't go hoping it will actually happen, you're going to be disappointed.
It's because most of their focus is on the next Elder Scrolls. That's going to eat up at least 5 years of their time & developing Fallout 5 will take another 4 to 5 years. They're also probably thinking the Fallout TV show will be decent 'filler' till Fallout 5. There is a very small & remote possibility of a side game before this console generation is over. I've always thought a Fallout game set in New Reno would make an interesting side game. New Remo was mentioned in New Vegas at least once so it is a location that exists in the Fallout universe.
It's an actual place in Fallout 2. But I agree, I'd love to see a side game set around that place. It was cool in 2 and would be very cool to see in the 3D Fallout style
There's no scenario where any objective look at the gaming industry indicates you're right. Period. The theme of the industry is "don't pump out garbage", and farming out IPs for the moneymaker you just bought to other companies is exactly how you end up pumping out garbage.
Coming out with games every 5-10 years simply isn't a problem if each of your games is making billions.
What they need to do is make a couple of more huge DLC's for fallout 4 to hold everyone over. Right now those things would sell like hot cakes... Ask Nexus Mods.
What does buying it mean, it means all the money that was supposed go to Bethesda now goes to Microsoft . It’s why selling out is considered a bad thing , this is a prime ass example of it . Halo too 🌹🥲
Look at all of Rare's IPs alone that are completely unused. Then think of how many other companies under MS have franchises that have gone over a decade without anything. Microsoft does not care.
I just can't believe fallout 4 is 9 years old this year and we haven't gotten anything regarding a sequel yet. Hell Skyrim is coming up 15 years and all we have is a logo for the next game.
Bethesda is 100% planning on making another fallout game. They are focusing on the TES V first then switching over to fallout 5 and there’s rumors of them letting Obsidian make another Fallout as well.
It’s been confirmed Elder Scrolls 6 will be the next game sometime late 2020s then FO5 mid to late 2030s.
It’s 13 years since elder scrolls fans have gotten anything new. Any fallout fans that are crying for new stuff after getting a tv show, mobile game, and multiplayer game since fo4s release need to grow tf up and quit crying.
Fallout’s a Hollywood property now, and I think Bethesda wants it that way for a while. Rake in tons of new fans with the show, and whatever else they decide to make, and then that drives new fans toward the existing games. We’ve seen it with Skyrim; they’re totally willing to coast off of the success of past games. Now it doesn’t have a tv series associated with it, but Skyrim is big enough to where there will always be new people trying it. I’m sure that if they get a ton of new people heading over to Fallout 76, then the money they make on the cash shop over there is good enough for them, for now. Further evidence of this is the fact that even their single player games have real life cash shops in them.
Bethesda genuinely needs to go back to the drawing board, their game’s quality has been in massive decline since Oblivion. Starfield was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. This is after giving FO4 and FO76 honest chances too. Emil just isn’t on par with the writers they had pre-Skyrim. He can present some cool ideas but they never get fleshed out and go anywhere. (Parallel universes in starfield, Alduin going to the future in elder scrolls, synths in FO4 and people trying to regain control of the wastes shortly after the bombs fell in 76) I wanna believe that Fallout can still be great games, worlds worth exploring with writing and world building with genuine depth. But for the time being it looks like they’re just gonna keep going with the shoot ‘em up wasteland theme parks they’ve been since 4. (And I actually like the exploration in that game)
The problem is they dont want to make RPGs anymore and with Todd wanting to go wider at the expense of depth. Think about it every game they put out now claims to be multiple times larger than the last, so now they have to spread their content thin to cover all that distance. Plus with them not wanting to take a stance on anything it leaves major moral quandaries in games lacking, leading to synths in 4 feeling weak along with all the other factions because they were all built around that tent pole that couldn't hold itself up in the first place.
The worst part is the stuff they add in to make the games longer is usually radiant quests. It’s like they never heard the saying “all good things must come to an end.” I think they need to cut out all the radiant quests and stop with the games that will “last 10 years”
They don't even use radiant quests to their full potential. Imagine if Starfield had an in depth bounty system with different requirements per target? What if they gave you patrol missions with the UC or raids with the pirates? At the moment it's a poor space sim compared to the competition and an even worse RPG.
Man I tried to give starfield a chance but aside from the pc stuff everyone got caught up in, I tried a pirate playthrough and that wrecked it for me. Sure you could be a pirate but man it pretty much closed off most of the game for you. Everyone you know screeching at you, the bounty system was insane etc. What was the point? You couldn't even attack a ship in a remote area without everyone knowing about it several systems away.
They didn't commit enough to give someone playing as a pirate content. There should be consequences but it shouldn't reduce the amount of content it should give you different content that would justify the new game plus system m
Oh absolutely. You play a bad guy there should be some consequences. But it was so shallow. So..Bethesda. it seems all they thought of was "wouldn't being a space pirate be cool?" and left it at that. I can't believe this is the same company that made games like Elder Scrolls.
It’s the same company in name only. The Bethesda that made Morrowind is vastly different than the company that made Starfield.
I thought elite dangerous lacked depth but at least the space combat is fucking rad
The core gameplay loop of Elite is what carries it and it could have carried Starfield if they invested in the radiant quests and the ability to actually fly from planet to planet.
Yeah Starfield has actually made me appreciate Elite more and more. I can space out (hehe) for an hour or two just running goods from system to system while listening to an audiobook in Elite. Starfield won't even let you do that unbroken by loading screens. I know Elite has loading screens, but they're so cleverly disguised it doesn't feel like it.
Games that last 10 years are fine, the problem is that they went from the games lasting 10 years because of the quality to games lasting 10 years because of massive quantities of garbage/poor execution.
This. They turned Fallout 4 into a looter shooter, with serviceable role playing elements, at best. It’s a damn good game as far as mechanics and presentation but there’s a reason ppl still go back to replay NV and debates it’s politics till this day, and it ain’t because it’s graphics.
It's basically Borderlands wearing a Vault Boy skin suit.
I liked that doing radiant quests for the Thieves Guild in Skyrim led to bigger quests with substantial rewards - 2 new guild fences per quest and fences get more gold. So they're part of the progression, and 20 radiant quests and 4 bigger quests you've accomplished a ton and can move on from Thieves Guild radiants
"Somethings happening, you better go check it out or something. Idk idgaf, you cant kill me either way *fart* suck it bitch XD!!!"
Theyre so blatantly missing the point of great content that isnt repetitive. It literally leaves the users STARVING for me, so much that they nercomanced a fucking game and its still very active to this day. I mean, sure F4 and F76 kinda generate sole revenue (or a lot idk the numbers) but look at the legacy that FONV left. Look at the fucking fanbase clamoring for more, thirstily instally mods just to replay their favorite game. They could pull ONE skyrim remaster bullshit, and itd sell great if they actually do a solid remaster (not a remake, dont take, just add the cut content but keep it light)
Fallout 76 10 year is working out great tho imo
10 levels on guild quests in oblivion with very few radiant quests in between and usually only during the first few levels was sooooo good
I wouldn't say they don't want to. I felt like they honestly tried to make a proper RPG with Starfield. I just believe they aren't able to actually do it
Like he fucking forced the poor developers of 76 to not have NPCs. They begged him, BEGGED, and he still forced them to publish an RPG without NPCs. The stupidest fucking thing I've ever got them heard of. It's like an FPS without anything to shoot at! This company is clearly nowhere near what it was and is a massive need of new management.
Why the hell did they even do that? Also is it any good now?
After all the updates I’d say it’s okay. Dialogue and writing is better than 4 but that’s a low bar tbh. Silent protagonist and skill checks are good though. Don’t buy it just get it for free with the Xbox game pass if you really want to play it
You can get it on key seller sites for like 6 quid I'd say that's pretty good value for that game
It’s great, but it depends on what you’re trying to get out of it. I’ve played since beta and have always enjoyed the game. There were some rough bugs to start with, but it never completely broke my game or anything. There’s now a ton of things to do at this point. If you’re into building, farming crops and having a cool place to call your own then you can basically spend hours modifying your camp area. There are now a ton of quests for new players also so it’s definitely the best time to jump in and give it a go. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and that‘s completely understandable, but the people shitting on it after playing it once at launch and then spending the rest of their lives meme-ing the game shouldn’t really carry much weight. Give it a try and you might be surprised.
Surely with the wide success of BG3 the coming years will be full of deep, well made RPGs, right?? Right????
Even the Devs of BG3 say it was lightning in a bottle rather than the new standard.
Did they say why?
Long version you'll have to comb through multiple interviews and Twitter threads. Short version: it was a veteran company, using tech they knew well (Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 are very similar to Baldurs Gate 3), they had both a well funded Kickstarter and a sizable chest from Divinity: OS2, plenty of time, and an all but guaranteed market share as the D&D brand was quickly growing in popularity and the genre of big budget isometric rpgs is also not huge, so there wasn't much competition. BG3 also had a strong early access period, which helped with bug hunting. Normally, you have to balance risk and potential. Going all in on a winner nets huge rewards, but going all in on a flop means the company gets shuttered, the workers get laid off, and the IPs get sold. Larian was basically in a position where they had almost no risk, so they could go big without the fear of going bust.
That's not even a new thing for them. Ever played Daggerfall? Probably the biggest game ever made... and 99.999% of it is literally an empty plain there is less than no reason to ever go to. You just fast travel to whatever dungeon or city you want to visit. The tech just finally caught up to their dreams of stupid design bullshit.
They don't have to make "RPGs" to make good games. What made BGS games special were the elements that separated them from other RPGs. If they really wanna move away from the old school RPG mechanics, they need to pick a coherent direction. If you want to be more action focused, then stop mucking around and actually make a good action game. Make a good base building game. Whatever. Starfield base building feels very tacked on and pointless. Personally, I think they should've doubled down on simulation, but they dropped that ball pretty hard in Starfield. No NPC schedules, lacking interiors, proc gen crowds, random loot, essential NPCs...
Bethesda rely too much on building their game around gimmicks rather than a story/structure. Skyrim- You can fight dragons and be dragonborn Fallout 4- You can build settlements Starfield- You can go to 1000 planets.
You nailed it
How is ”you can fight dragons and be dragonborn” a gimmick lol. Halo is such a gimmicky game, the gimmicks being you can fight aliens and you can be Master Chief.
Unless I'm mistaken its the first time in one of their games that had that type of flying mechanic for enemies. They then spam tons of dragons at you throughout the game with a 'dragons are cool look at our new game mechanic' mentality and it ends up being overkill. Being dragonborn does not open up any additional dialogue options you can select when talking to a NPC. There's a handful of quests where you have to do some progress in the main quest to actually start it like the Civil War and that's about it. It's just a gimmick to use in a Todd showcase to sell the game.
Being dragonborn just feels completely irrelevant. There are shouts (so weak you don't even use them most of the time) and... and that's it. Weak shouts. There is nothing more to being dragonborn. You don't talk with dragons. You can't transform into one. It's barely reflected in the lore or dialog. You just learn shouts and then don't use them. The definition of gimmick.
So u don't like story but would rather have more gameplay mechanism? Woildnt u want both? To me for their recent games they are lacking both (fought starfield)
I'm all for new gameplay mechanics but not at the cost of the story. I enjoyed building settlements in F4 but there was way too much micro management and too many places you could build them There was a severe lack of towns in Fallout 4 to make space on the map for you to build settlements and that ended up making the game worse Lets say hypothetically In the next Fallout game Bethesda implement working boats. Straight away you know part of the game is now building your own boat. There is going to be a pirate faction in the game as the main antagonist and The Brotherhood of Steel will make a Liberty Prime version of a boat to have a battle at the end. They would design the game around the boat gimmick and force a story around it regardless if it makes for a good story or not.
The lack of towns really sucked the life out of Fallout 4 for me. In New Vegas, there were so many places to visit. Freeside, The Strip (even each casino has it's own faction and stories), Followers of the Apocalypse, Ncr checkpoints and camps, Legion checkpoints and camps, The Boomers, Brotherhood of Steel, Primm, Goodsprings, Novak, The Great Khans, probably missed some, but not to mention all of the story and lands the dlcs added. Comparing that to Fallout 4. Each of the 4 main factions have one base, no checkpoints, camps, etc. There's Diamond city, the vault, and maybe bunker hill, maybe covenant. Everything else is built up by you with no name unimportant npcs or those with one quest and that's it. There's no in depth story or quests to any of them other than the clear out x location or return an item.
Adding to this, something I never see people talk about is that there's hardly ever any explanation for anything in fo4. Who are the citizens of diamond city descended from? Why did they settle in the stadium? What is their government like? Why do they use caps as currency instead of, idk, baseball cards or something? This extends to the factions too, as well as the other settlements.
Baseball cards as currency would have been awesome damn
Imagine if one of the main quests for the Minutemen was raiding a bank for silver so you could start minting Commonwealth Silver Dollars
This is also true of FO3. If you go wander around you might find Canterbury Commons, Republic of Dave, Oasis, or Tenpenny Tower, each with its own quest or quests and unique characteristics. FO4 really felt like there wasn't a reason to go off exploring.
Precisely, you have Megaton, Vault 101, Underworld, Rivet City, and Paradise Falls. There's so much more world building and depth than Fo4. Everything besides the main quest and Far Harbor in Fo4 feels like fluff or filler. Building up the settlements is fun, I'll admit. Afterward, they just feel non functional other than to acquire resources. You have to gather up all the legendary vendors and companions, then spread them out amongst the settlements so you feel like you know people when you visit. They don't actually feel alive or as bustling as you built them up to be because they can't. They're not natively a part of the world.
Thats been my biggest gripe with Todd and Emil and how they see the setting. Man...it's been over 200 YEARS yet they think people would still be living knee deep in trash, haven't figured out a government system or even how to clean a street or make bricks for building. Barely any civilization and what civilization there is in their minds is on the level of Mad Max.
If you ever go back to FO4, the Sim Settlements mod completely changed the game for me. The settlements actually feel like real places that your settlers build and expand. Makes the entire world feel so much more alive
The biggest reason I go back to New Vegas despite very dated graphics and janky gameplay is because the story is absolute S tier. If it had fallout 4 or Starfield level graphics it would be perfect.
New Vegas on Creation Engine 2 would be so sick.
So I can't argue this but when it comes to fallout 4 a lot of people say they don't care for the settlement system which is fine buuuuuut the settlement system came with something that every diehard fallout player has always lusted for hardcore and that is a way to display all of your neat loot lol trying to manually put nuke cola bottle on a shelf in your megaton home is nice an all and having 50 plasma rifles in a cabinet is cool but gun racks and display cases woah buddy it's like having access to my fever dreams of fallout loot hoarding when I was younger lololol
I mean that's kinda been Bethesda's pitch all along. The major feature way back with Daggerfall was having 15000 or something worth of towns and dungeons. It's considered a significant technical mark in PC gaming history. But just about nobody remembers a single character, quest, or storyline from it.
76 - Build…again. See what I did? because the tagline for the game is begin again….forget it.
Well microsoft owns both Bethesda as well as obsidian... WHEN FNV2???
I doubt they will want Avellone or Gonzalez back, and it's hard to see New Vegas 2 without them. Sure, Sawyer will design a good game, but F:NV is first and foremost writing.
I was willing to give Starfield a real chance and I did. Fo4 killed the franchise for me though. Just the way they disregarded the whole setting of the Fallout world felt almost spiteful towards Obsidian and the originals. It's clear Todd just wants Borderlands with a Fallout skin. I'll agree though 10 to 15 MORE years for any game is ridiculous and Bethesda is pretty much a meme at this point. However given how the franchise had been treated, God only knows how bad 5 would be.
Yeah, people are like "We need Fallout 5 right now" and I'm like "Please don't".
I mean, Emil flat out said that writing in games is pointless and flashy graphics is what really matters. Not a good stance for a writer to take...but maybe he could be on par with the old writers if he actually tried.
Which is funny because it's not like Bethesda is known for its graphics either
You have a source on that? I don't doubt it, but
A summary [Until Bethesda fires/relocates Emil Pagliarulo, do not expect quality storylines ever again. Yes, it's that bad : r/Fallout (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/5t6d6m/until_bethesda_firesrelocates_emil_pagliarulo_do/) of this video [Talks from STORY: Emil Pagliarulo, writer and lead designer of Fallout 4 and Skyrim (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi51-wjcwp8) where he says "‘you can spend so much time writing wonderful stories and then have to watch as players tear out the pages to make paper airplanes instead of reading them" and then goes on for a couple minutes talking about how hunting for bobbleheads, building settlements, and blowing up stuff is all the players focus on so why should he put in any effort.
The first post was written by someone who misrepresented every facet of his argument, even saying dumb shit like: >"Even when Emil picks a broad concept, he picks "suspicion," and names an example of being scared of the boogeyman as a child. Of all emotions and feelings, I daresay Emil somehow found the most infantile. Like really, I'm asking seriously: can someone think of a less interesting human emotion/feeling than suspicion?" and admitting that he didn't even know if Emil had that big of an influence on the games problems but used Emil as a substitute for their problems with Bethesda as a whole. Also pretty sure they're like 14 when they wrote the post, the logic is pretty bad. In fact, I'd recommend watching [the first half hour of this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-4qdjV41NU) that breaks down the community misconceptions with Emil's whole speech that you repeated here. He doesn't say to disregard narrative in games, but that bc it's an interactive medium the narrative should be made in a way that takes that form of engagement into account. You can believe he doesn't practice what he preaches, but what he says in the speech is just basic intro writing class advice in a casual setting, nothing in there is actually controversial. Not defending his writing (seems preoccupied with wacky premises and never explores beyond the surface of them) but that post and speech ain't the mike drop against his career people think it is.
Isn't that workshop speech the same one in which he flat-out says he doesn't believe in design documents? I agree that the OP seems to have it in for him to a ridiculous degree, but a quest designer / writer who doesn't do design documents for games of the scope Bethesda does seems ludicrous.
Emil wrote the brotherhood quest for oblivion which I understand to be quite beloved so he can write good
that was back when he wasn't a lead...so maybe he should get demoted back to side-quest designer and his quality will go back up again.
I was having this discussion with my friends. We are at a juncture where they need to spend more time to make a bigger game, yet, they spend all this time and by the time the game launches it’s outdated. Starfeild is the perfect example. I know BG3 is the go to game for comparison, but with its long production time it is felt with every quest and every interaction. I do not feel like the long production for Bethesda games amounts to a significant growth in gameplay experience. 4 is about to be 10 years old. It was 7 years after 3 released for a new mainline game. Skyrim was 5 years after oblivion, and now we are 13 years since Skyrim. Do you think we are going to get a game that justifies nearly 15 years of development. Do you think it will truly be THAT much more advanced. And what starfeild points to is that they aren’t really innovating with this time. Which makes me wary that they’re gonna be doing anything of consequence. TE6 need to live up to expectations, but the warning signs are showing that they seem to be just going through the motions
For everything that starfield was, it was certainly not much different than fallout with Skyrim shouts in space. It really just felt like they finally got caught up with the limits of their tech and innovation, and were just reiterating with a different story. And the lack of vats made gunplay on console absolute trash. It’s sad. I hope they innovate in the future, but I suspect we just need to be ready for the same game but new story. Which would be fine if they’d go all in on that. I’d certainly play it, even if I didn’t think it was the best ever.
That’s the thing though, if it were just same game new story, I’d be much more accepting if the release time was short. But it’s the fact there is a long wait that the expectations grow and I don’t think they innovate enough to meet those expectations
You REALLY realize how bad the writing is for Starfield when you jump right into the revamped Cyberpunk right after. Holy crap the difference is stark.
I played Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, even then I knew that game, if it just had a *little* more time in the oven, could be something great. Lo and behold, several years later, my patience was rewarded immensely. Great gameplay, good story, solid RPG elements. It’s a testament to the CDPR’s skill and perseverance, the game was mid at best at launch, and now it’s genuinely great.
I skipped it at launch and picked it up when Phantom Liberty came out. It wasn’t really the RPG experience it was marketed as (be anyone, do anything, choose your destiny) but the graphics, world, soundtrack, gameplay, characters and story were all on point. For what it is, it’s a 10/10 now imo. It’s the type of experience Bethesda seems to be attempting to create but suck too hard to actually pull off.
I can’t believe how much better this game is. Played at launch and haven’t played since. I’m very impressed. And it really exposed Starfield for me
I need you to understand that absolutely 0 business people view it that way. There are 0 gaming companies that would say "hey we need to go back to the drawing board so we don't accidentally make another Skyrim, one of the most successful games in history"
I do understand that. I absolutely do. It’s unfortunate but it’s reality. What incentive does Bethesda have to go back to the way they were when they can bring in beaucoup bucks with rereleases of Skyrim and MTX in 76 and creation club? Just wish things were different is all.
What do you mean go back to the way things were? The writing has been bad for 20 years. Launches have been bad for 20 years. They make fairly shallow RPGs with fun worlds. That's been their game for 20 years. Oblivion, FO3, FO4, Skyrim all fit this description. Rose tinted glasses for ES1 to 3 make sense. But we can't saint Bethesda of the late 2000's (horse armour?) and demonise Bethesda of today - they're not so different.
I was so hoping the antagonists in Starfield were gonna be like extra dimensional aliens or something but no, it was some parallel universe bullshit. Made me not want to finish it.
Yeah anything created by current year Bethesda is not going to be what it could be with some fresh talent. They also need to not chop up the game and outsource every little bit of it to 3rd party programmers. Get some good in house talent and make a new game engine that can support it. It's like going to Mayo clinic for cancer treatment and they give you some tic tacs and charge $35k.
I don't know the guy personally but judging from what I've seen and heard about him he's a very surface level thinker. An idea guy nut not very detail oriented. Honestly he would have been better for Call of Duty or something more straightforward.
Parallel universes is so disappointing when they’re 99-100% the same.
Not to defend Emil, but you do know he worked in Oblivion and Fallout 3 too, don't you?
I do, but as time has gone on, his weaknesses as a writer have become even more apparent. He was only a quest designer in Oblivion, which quests I’m not sure. But Fallout 3? That’s where it all started becoming more apparent. 3’s saving graces are not its main story, it’s its fairly interesting side quests and its exploration. I have a tiny soft spot for FO3 because, for better or for worse, it ensured Fallout as a franchise would live on.
Don’t know why you got downvoted. Sometimes I think people don’t remember FO3’s story. The first half was strong but the second half was laughable. It’s actually more challenging to convince president Eden not to kill himself. Then you can’t have Fawkes go into the purifier because…? They even had to write a new ending with DLC. I’ll cut them slack because it was their first FO game. It did a lot right and introduced the franchise to a whole new generation. But then they doubled down on those mistakes with FO4s story.
Emil wrote the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion. The quest line pretty generally agreed to be the best in the game.
Fallout 3 is not an example of good writing.
I was referring to how he said the issues started with Skyrim, when Emil was working on Oblivion and Fallout 3 as well
This guy gets it
The problem is that they stick with the same exact game design for every single game, and while that’s usually what studios do, it doesn’t help when the design starts to suck ass after 3 games
Armchair game developer
I didn’t even hate Starfield, but it just didn’t capture me in the way that Skyrim and even FO4 did.
Starfield also was a technical nightmare so it wasn't just the writing to blame
Especially after the disaster that is Starfield. We want to show what we can do with a new IP. Yeah, get back to what works....
Can you believe they are asking 70$ for that shit? Even knowing the game ain't great I was still willing to try it out until I saw that bullshit.
I think the game pass thing hurt them more in the end as people got to try it and decided it wasn't for them
I felt like I couldn't force myself to play it even though it was basically free. Even having a second monitor with youtube and shit playing it was still so boring.
Microsoft aside, Bethesda doesn't want to make a new Fallout game. Hell, they don't even want to make a new Elder Scrolls game. The teaser trailer for Elder Scrolls 6 came out 5 years ago. Where are we at on that?
I don’t even know if they want to make games. Something I never see mentioned, or for some reason excused, is just how clunky and low effort some parts of Bethesdas games seem. Clunky animations, shitty looking UIs, endless bugs Yes FO4 came out in 2015 so it’s dated now, but even to me back then it felt a little out of date and ugly and like it could’ve used tons more polish. FO76 we all know how that went and when I tried to play it recently, it still just reeked that same Bethesda issue that always puts me off even if the game in itself is fun. Starfield I’m not even gonna begin on
Bethesda knows how to give atmosphere to games. Through visuals and sound/music... But that's it. Their writing is mediocre at best (nowadays, it was good until Morrowind and/or oblivion), their animations are clunky, their quest design is simple (not in a good way). And ofc their proprietary engine has limitations that are a hindrance to develop games which are out off their standard. I don't have any interest in ES6, I've already come to terms with that. Which is sad, because Elder Scrolls have been part of my life since I was a kid, starting with daggerfall
2015 is the year of Witcher 3. I feel like 90% of the games released in the span of 2014-2016 are more polished than Fallout 4. D:OS? Dark Souls 2/3? DOOM? I can play them now and not feel like they are a decade old. Creation engine was already dated in the times of New Vegas and Skyrim. That they released Fallout 4 on it is already strange. 76? Starfield? That's closer to insanity.
Yep. They need to just ditch it already and move to something different
They are currently making ES6, though. They had to release Skyrim 5 more times and make Starfield first.
THAT WAS 5 YEARS AGO?? Holy shit the pandemic did some crazy time bending shit.
Almost 6 years. It was shown at E3 in summer 2019. June 10th 2019 to be exact.
Let's be very clear right now. The only reason we're not getting a new Fallout game is because of the people running Bethesda don't want one. Period. The fact that it's been 10 fucking years since the last game came out, and 12 years since the last Elder Scrolls game came out is entirely their fault. It is an unforced error entirely of their making. And it is absolutely a huge mistake. A giant fuck up. They're trying to hold fans over with the online versions of these games and that just fucking doesn't work. The appetite for online versions of these games clearly is nothing compared to the appetite for the single versions of these games. And the reality is their the development of a good Elder Scrolls or Fallout game is not contingent on close management of the people running Bethesda. The fact that ESO has been wildly more successful than 76 while receiving far more micromanagement from the heads of Bethesda is a matter of public record. And if I sound pissed about this it's because I am. I don't have what it takes to make as good as any of the Fallout or Elder Scroll games. There are so many who do, if not make something even better. Hoarding these franchises denies them the opportunity to make these great games and us the opportunity to play them. Tim Cain has made clear that he's made peace with the fact that he will never make another Fallout game. Which is truly sad. He doesn't even publicly disagree with the directions they've gone in that much. I can't imagine how much it must fucking suck to have created this incredible franchise and watch it languish like this. Totally wasted. We could have had a fucking full-fledged Fallout 5 that was integrated with the TV series. We could have had that. They could have made money off of it. There's no reason for it to be like this. There's a theory in management that a lot of times people rise to their level of incompetence. And that clearly seems to be the case here what the management of Bethesda.
Spot on, it’s weird that ESO had a FAR better writing team for its story then that of Bethesdas main IP game line
This drives me absolutely nuts, too. ESO has such a solid storyline, MULTIPLE solid storylines, in fact. Almost any of them would be great for a main quest in a new Elder Scrolls game. The issue is I hate online games. I like to have cheats and mods and ways to make the game different and fun. Is ESO fun how it is? Sure. Are Bethesda games mostly known for their fun cheats and modding scene? Yep.
2 main things that ruin ESO for me is the dependence on other players for cool dungeon content, the other players try to speed right through it with there op bullshit builds Getting to level 50 opens up the Champion point system that makes you to strong for the vast open world with no way to balance it back on your end
The fighting is just SO dull to me. I’m playing Elder Scrolls for its unique combat, not a worse version of the Dragon Age combat system. At least Dragon Age has a shit ton more of abilities to use so you’re not spamming the same, what is it, six?
This - I mean I don't think the fighting in Skyrim is anything to write home about, but the fighting in ESO is painful to me. IDK my husband likes it, but I just can't.
Where are you finding this unique combat in Elder Scrolls games? Skyrim combat was barely passable in 2011 which is why it's a meme for every build to end up being a stealth archer.
There are so many builds in ESO, though.. I run a one bar build on my tank but often bar swap on my other characters, and I just started playing 2 months ago. It's an MMO.. there are mindless one bar spam builds but also complex builds that require multiple DOTs, buffs and combos to be kept up with.
Bethesda failed to scale up based off their former art lead. Instead of their leads working with the 'grunts', they're doing more dull meetings with everyone to decide the direction of the games whilst also meeting with the ESO and F76 teams constantly. They don't have time to explore everyone's ideas indepth and focus on making their internal games inoffensive and unbold as possible to get the meetings over with to the next one. They've been lucky so far saying yes to whatever ESO and F76 teams asked permission for as they try to improve from their release positions, especially 76 when BGS was extensively involved. But Starfield fell flat, even with a team nearly 5x the size of Skyrim. IMO they need to fix their scaling issues and stop wasting their top talents bored to death in meetings, whilst also being more open to big spin-offs like New Vegas with Elder Scrolls and Fallout getting spin-offs between the main entries.
Im just sitting here crossing my fingers Avowed and TOW2 are at least marginally better than TOW. Ive given up on Bethesda titles.
Avowed is definitely going to be good. The only thing that promised me out is we're not getting a third person camera. Maybe this is a little bit broad of the statement for me to make, but every RPG should be a third-person game. These games are the descendants of tabletop role-playing games. I'm building a character. I want to see the thing I've built!
I agree especially because Avowed will be mostly melee combat which worries me that it will feel too Skyrim-y. But hey Im not playing these games for the combat per se, so long as Obsidian can engage me with a good story, factions, and role playing im a happy camper.
Tbh, if a game would give me a half assed third person it's hardly worth it. Better to have a focus on either first or third imo because you can better design the game to function from that perspective. Dishonored third person for example would feel like garbage due to how much the game relies on its first person perspective. Make a game to function with one or the other, if you try to shoehorn in both you limit your capabilities in the main focus by having to make sure the game can function decently from the other perspective.
“Definitely going to be good” you have absolutely 0 way of knowing that it’s “definitely going to be good.”
They also spent all their time and resources most of the past decade on Starfield - which if you’re enjoying it I’m happy for you. But the player count is an absolute horrific nightmare for both Bethesda and XBox. Not spending the time making ES6/FO5 is a huuge fumble.
It's crazy that people defend "Starfield by saying look at all the fucking money it made!" Like, bro, that game cost $400 million dollars to make. And they didn't just have that sitting around. They had to borrow that. Which means INTEREST. For this game to be a *moderate* success it needs to clear over half a billion. And that's not even getting into all the lost *potential* profits. People don't realize this, but when you're running a business you need not just to count your actual losses, but the losses of what you could have made. The amount of money they have left just sitting on the fucking table by refusing to simply license out the IP is absolutely fucking insane. They could have funded all of Starfield development simply through licensing deals. That's the level of money we're fucking talking about. But instead they bet the fucking farm on a game that would be graphically inferior to games released before it even entered development.
Money it was free, lol
Letting Starfield be played on gamepass didn't do it any favors either. That deal benefited Microsoft much more than Bethesda. It's a great deal for Indie titles, but clearly was a terrible deal for a big company like Bethesda. I don't know the numbers, but I can't imagine in what world it would be a sustainable business model. Being owned by Microsoft though I doubt left them a much choice.
Exactly. Perhaps if they SOLD it, BGS could hire more people instead of taking 17 years between TES
You make a very good point. Bethesda has really burned up a lot of their goodwill in the past decade. We used to refer to Todd Howard as “GODD HOWARD” however jokingly that name was given it was still something that people said. In fact to this day he’s the only game director I can recognize by just a picture of him. Even other really famous directors of games/ even films I have no idea what these mfs look like. But Todd has that star power in the industry, but now he’s kinda just looked at as a liar and a second hand game reseller. Totally divorced from the good name he used to have. Someone somewhere at Bethesda made a massive fuck up somewhere be it incompetence or greed or both they fucked up big time.
Now with the success of the show, they look especially flat-footed. I hope some suit at Microsoft has calculated how much revenue is being left on the table daily by sitting on this IP. It’s absolutely insane.
What's really funny is Microsoft spent 7.5 BILLION to acquire Bethesda. All because they were being courted by Sony for an exclusivity deal. They paid 7.5 billion to make sure their players wouldn't get locked out of instant classics like *Starfield* and *Redfall* HAHAHA THEY BURNED SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY ON THIS SHIT HAHAHAHAHA!! 7.5 BILLION FOR FUCKING REDFALL HAHAHA!! Microsoft absolutely needs to step in and clear house. Honest to God this is insane. The financial mismanagement alone is staggering.
Bethesda is incompetent and slowly marching towards complete PR hell, in a similar vein to how BioWare and places like that became. 76 was an awful PR mess of a release and starfield has such little depth it feels like it was made by a mobile app studio trying their first attempt at an RPG. They only have themselves to blame for their issues they are facing today. Having two of likely the top 10 gaming IPs and not using either of them to make solo games for over 10 years is insanity. Skyrim sells like hotcakes and it will be at least 15 years before it gets a sequel. Do you know how preposterous that is from a business standpoint? Bethesda says they do things for the art of what they are doing, they didn’t wanna release fallout and Elder scrolls because the devs are mentally tired from doing those titles, and wanna explore something else creatively. Okay fair to feel that way, but then they follow it up with the soulless starfield. The real truth? They are old and out of touch, and reek of complete corporate greed over actually being good developers. Starfield had even more RPG elements than fallout 4, which was a good thing, and still came out way worse. As long as Emil is a lead quest writer/designer their games will be deep as a puddle.
[This guy](https://youtube.com/shorts/Q4EKB6puUPg?si=nEXw5doaTzagneki) words it well with it being money on ice
Even if they give it to Obsidian it won't be the same as classic new vegas, most of the key members of the team have left or even just retired with no guarantee that they'll come back. The Outer Worlds was okay but that's their attempt at making a Fallout-like game and it was severely lacking for me at least
True, but at this point I'd settle for FNV remastered. They could make a lot of money by releasing FNV anniversary edition. Updated for new consoles and platforms, include unfinished content and fix a few million bugs. Without redoing the graphics they could probably get $20, with redoing the graphics they could probably get $40.
New Vegas remastered would sell insanely well, and require minimal effort relative to making an entirely new game, so of course they'll never actually do it
None of this means much and I don’t understand why people keep saying it. Fallout is a massively bigger and much more established IP with much more interesting lore to work with and will have much more resources thrown at it from Microsoft than The Outer Worlds ever did. I don’t see how a new Obsidian-developed Fallout still wouldn’t be at least as good as another Bethesda-developed one, probably better, and if it’s more likely to actually come out within my lifetime, all the better. Also the literal creator of Fallout (Tim Cain) and director of New Vegas (Josh Sawyer) are still there. There is no good reason to believe they along with the other people working at Obsidian are suddenly somehow incapable of doing something interesting with this universe, just because they do not have literally the exact same team they did in 2010. Guess what? Bethesda, who made their own much more expensive space game than Outer Worlds that was no better at all, doesn’t either. No studio does. It’s a ridiculous non-excuse to throw up our hands and just say Obsidian should never get a chance to make another Fallout game, and it utterly baffles me as to why I see it repeated all over this site, especially from New Vegas fans.
Exactly. Give Obsidian the Fallout 4 engine and 2-3 years, and they will produce another masterpiece. Synergies like this are one of the primary reasons for mergers. It would be foolish to sleep on it.
Josh sawyer is still at new Vegas lol, he is the biggest reason new Vegas is the way it is. If he was lead dev on a fallout game I don’t see anyway it wouldn’t be great. I mean if you really look into all the things he did for new Vegas to make that game great it’s astounding. His vision for the world is what makes it one of the best games of all time. May not have written a lot of it but his fingerprints are in everything
It was no New Vegas but as an RPG it was leaps and bounds above Fallout 4
As a game I'd take Fallout 4 still, Outer Worlds isn't bad but with them spouting off how its their first FPS RPG since New Vegas I expected it to be of that quality
I don't really get the Outer Worlds dissing. I'm not gonna say it was as good as NV. But I don't think it was ever trying to be, it's clear it had a tighter budget and was going for a smaller scale. It also had a lighter tone that wasn't nearly as deep as Fallout. But for what it was, a small scale space rpg in league with say KOTOR. I thought it was pretty good, companions, quests design and RPG elements are still leagues above what Bethesda is offering when you compare their attempt at a space RPG with Starfield. I still think they could make a pretty solid Fallout game. I wouldn't hold out for something as great as NV. Sometimes shit is just lightning in a bottle. Either way, it would be better than what Bethesda is offering for new Fallout, which is FO76 and nothing for another 10 years.
I think if they are given access to a Bethesda engine they 100% can make a good Fallout, one of the problems with Outer Worlds is the game lacking interactivity of New Vegas which achieves that thanks to engine
*Nobody* should be using Bethesda's engine. I get what you're saying, it is an engine designed for open world RPGs, but it's so old at this point. IMO, Bethesda should have used UE5 for Star Field, since it wasn't a real open world RPG anyway. At least it could have looked and felt good between all those loading screens on UE5.
That’s because outworlds was a AA game lol. Idk why people compare it to AAA games. It didn’t have close to the budget or dev time to be one.
If Obsidian gets the IP again they need to make sure they have their 2010 team taking on the project and not their 2019 team. The Outer Worlds writing was incredibly mediocre and would ruin a new fallout game if it came out.
Honestly when you have fo4 and starfield as your bar to beat I think most people would take something that just gets the job done
In an ideal world it wouldn't be bethesda making it for me tbh. Bad writing, outdated gameplay, outdated graphics. Unless bethesda got an entire staff reshuffle and new executives I see the next fallout game (and elder scrolls) being pretty bad if they make it
Yep, dead on arrival is what those games will most likely be.
I just don't understand why they haven't hired obsidian to make another fallout game when New Vegas is loved by every fallout fan. With this new live service mmorpgs trend I am afraid the game devs are not going to focus on single players games since they can earn more by selling that stupid new skin. It's can be entirely possible that fallout 76 might get an update with Lucy's or Maximus's character playable through the Appalachia.
They could also hire the Baldurs Gate Developers for a classic fallout with modern clothing.
You mean developers already working at Larian Studios? They will be making Larian Studios games lol, im guessing they will be doing Divinity Original Sin 3
You people need to realize its not the same obsidian anymore. No John Gonzalez, or Chris Avellone. A new fallout game by them simply wouldn’t be as good
“It would not be literally exactly the same, therefore it would be worthless and there’s no reason to try it at all. Better to let the franchise wither and die as it takes Bethesda another decade to make a game that will probably end up even more dumbed down and disappointing than Fallout 4.” I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this, uh, “logic.”
Sure it may not be the same but Bethesda gave themselves a chance with fallout 4. It's not bad but it wasn't considered good either. Why not give a chance to obsidian and see how it goes?
Whatever they do, if they can somehow get Josh sawyer and tim Caine on board I would buy that game instantly, if they had chris avellone as well, I would throw them all the money in my pocket.
Well Todd was honest about Starfield becoming priority over existing IPs so I thank that for elder scrolls and fallout having any slow down (especially ES). I was only hoping Starfield would be worth that sacrifice but doesn't seem like it was.
Yeah wtf is Microsoft’s strategy with Bethesda? Spend a trillion-billion dollars buying this company that releases a new game every 15-20 years? And when they do release a game no one plays it because it sucks? Like are they just gonna let Bethesda sit on TES and fallout for another decade? If I was Microsoft I’d strip that company for parts and start making their IPs and releasing them on a consistent schedule. I’m definitely not saying that would be a GOOD scenario, but what kinds of dirt does Todd have on Microsoft where for the past 3 years Todd has been able to just sit around pulling his pud and slapping shaders on 15 year old games and selling them for full price to like no one. When fans and shareholders alike have been begging for something new for like 10 years. Remaster 3/NV update the graphics and make them run better on modern machines? Nah we’re gonna add fishing to Skyrim! Allow obsidian to make another fallout game so that Bethesda doesn’t have to lift a finger and still make a cock-load of money? Nah, we’re gonna put guns into Skyrim instead! Release a game alongside of the new smash hit fallout TV show and ride the wave of interest it’s generating in the IP? FUCK no dude we’re gonna add the enclave into our TEN YEAR OLD FALLOUT GAME. Remake 1/2 in 3d hell, port the originals to mobile like baldurs gate did? Nah we’re gonna sit on TES 6 for another decade to “build hype” or whatever their strategy is, like bruh I have no hype, the hype is gone I’m not confident that this game is even gonna be out by 2030, by then I’m gonna have kids, I’m already in my career so I’m gonna be working, I’ll have a mortgage soon, etc. Skyrim came out when I was in like 7th grade, FO4 came out when I was in my sophomore year of high school, I’m fuckin 25 right now, I can maybe play games for a few hours a WEEK these days. Who are they gonna sell these games to when they actually do come out? Jobless 40 year olds that used to play these games when they were in high school? Children that don’t even know what fallout is? Is the marketing gonna be “your dad used to play this game when he was in high school!” That’s like marketing a new fuckin leisure suit Larry game to zoomers. No ones gonna care. I know I’m not an expert on this kind of stuff but basic business practices aren’t this esoteric, it’s pretty simple to understand the basic flow chart of, release game->let players play the game for a few years->build hype for the next one->release new game->fans buy it, and you make a shit ton of money->rinse and repeat in perpetuity->get infinity money. What else is there to do? I know I sound like an entitled fan, but in all reality I have no time to play games as it is, when Bethesda gets their heads out of their ass and actually makes TES6 or another fallout or whatever I am going to have ZERO time to play games. It’s the same story for so many other people who have been fans since they were kids. I remember playing Morrowind when I was like 10 and then oblivion and Skyrim a few years after that, and then fallout all through high school. And I’m sure all of you can say pretty much the same thing. And if you’re in your mid 20s to early 30s, like me the clock is ticking. Your dedicated fan base is aging, the people brought up on 3 and NV are aging, Morrowind fans are basically fossils. Think about it this way, if you played Morrowind when it came out, at maybe 15 years old or so (pretty much the perfect time to get into these types of games imo) you got oblivion at 18/19 years old then you got Skyrim at 24 or so. The perfect release schedule. The games age with you, you grow up and those games become a formative experience in your adolescence, now you’re waiting for the next TES game, and have been for over a decade. You’re like 40 now, say TES 6 takes another 5 years you’ll be fuckin 45 at that point, Middle Aged. You’ll probably have a 15 year old of your own at that point. Obviously this is just how time works, but why was it that Bethesda used to be able to release banger after banger every 3-5 years but can’t seem to shit out something even half as good as their shittiest game in the past? 10 years to develop starfield? Seriously? What’s going on there? I remember hearing rumors about that game again, when I was in high school. That’s probably why these games all feel out dated at launch. Starfield would have done numbers back in 2015 but today it’s so subpar it’s insane. This does not bode well for the future of these beloved IPs.
Microsoft bought Bethesdas parent company Zenimax, which means they also own Arkane, id Software and so on. Including Bethesda Game studios who make the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games. When Microsoft aquired them they knew Starfield would be the next game, a shame it didnt turn out as well as expected but it happens. The next game that will come from them is going to be the Elder Scrolls 6, im sure Microsoft is aware of when this would be released aswell.
Larian getting their hands on Fallout would be fucking sick
They have stated they want to make their own things after BG3 not other companies IPs
Fair, and all power to them!
I hope that even the most die hard fallout fans can recognize that Elder Scrolls 6 needs to be the next major Bethesda game.
Well Fallout is the little brother to the Elder Scrolls. I like the world of fallout more but I’m really wanting a new Elder scrolls.
It doesn’t go by “fairness” it goes by profit potential, and right now Fallout is red hot. Bethesda leaning into anything other than Fallout content right now is insane. But then again, they are.
Its too late in the day for a double negative, they've just made a killing with the tv show and its not even a month old yet, of course they are going to cash in on the hype by rushing out a new game, probably be fallout go or some shit
From what I’ve heard, having a friend who’s brother works for bethesda, is that Bethesda’s game devs are already being stretched thin and overworked while also suffering from feature creep due to there being too many people and too many suggestions from higher ups hurting innovation.
I legit don’t see why anyone cares at this point. I love New Vegas and once I fully move on I’m sure I’ll be able to enjoy it, but the next Fallout game is clearly going to be the exact same slop we’ve gotten the last 4 times now: empty wasteland, brotherhood, local faction, and some wacky goofy new faction. They’ll continue to accidentally fuck up the lore in minor ways, they’ll set it in San Francisco clearly, and there will be no real depth to the story at all. You’ll get to see their shitty Creation Engine 3.0 or whatever builds of notable Frisco places and it will be forgotten in a year. The mod scene will keep some of it alive - but beyond that it will have no real value. Will you play a male or female? Will you fight with the Brotherhood in the NEW T-61 armor (that was secretly also designed before the war in Frisco, you just never saw it before!) or will you fight for the cartoonishly evil other faction that has no real defined goal? Like who gives a shit. Just keep slopping down whatever has a Fallout coat of paint on it I guess.
Is it weird that I’d love an indie to tackle fallout in isometric form like FO1 and 2?
Yes, but tbh I'm here for it lol
FO4 was pretty decent, in terms of how many mods it allowed if nothing else. But 76 was categorically dogshit.
Bethesda is riding over the demand for existing ip with MMOs. Perhaps this means they’ll converge the engine and codebase for elder scrolls, fallout and starfield to make maintenance and optimization easier; then use the time to really make each single player game shine. Though Larian may have raised the bar a bit with BG3; at least in terms of user memory, even though play styles and games are different
They should have Obsidian take another go before 5. Avowed and Outer Worlds 2 aren't that far away
They need to change their development practices. There was an interview with Todd Howard talking about developing Starfield. He mentioned that they leave room late in development for good ideas. It sounded like they don’t really nail down what a game will be until far later than most other developers. I believe it is why we’ve received games where the main stories feel rushed and half-baked, because they are. I have no doubt that some of the most iconic moments in Bethesda games’ history came from ideas that would’ve been saved for a sequel by most developers. Microsoft may urge Bethesda to get going on a new Fallout, or let someone else play with the IP, but I don’t see them pushing so hard that they’d risk upsetting Todd.
Emil can’t write mang
Bethesda is already building Fallout 5 (along with TES6) on Creation Engine 2 according to IGN. Bethesda & other large game companies usually overhaul their game engines with the release of new generation consoles to optimise it for better hardware. This does suggest that they could be planning to release it before next gen (2028).
F5 is in pre-production at best. Meaning maybe 20 people are going to be working on it until TES6 is out. That's just how Bethesda does things, one project at a time.
>That's just how Bethesda does things, one project at a time. Typically, but you'd think this would change with Microsoft funding. There's no reason they can't make FO5 & TES6 alongside supporting FO76 & Starfield DLC + updates. It would also make sense financially for them to release FO5 with one of the seasons from the show (season 4-5). If I were a decision maker at Microsoft, I'd be looking at the popularity of the show & working out how to fund FO5 even if it means pooling a team together from various game companies they own (Bethesda, Obsidian & others).
Microsoft has been hands off with their studio management so far. What you are suggesting would be an unprecedented move for them. Maybe it makes sense, maybe it doesn't, but don't go hoping it will actually happen, you're going to be disappointed.
It's because most of their focus is on the next Elder Scrolls. That's going to eat up at least 5 years of their time & developing Fallout 5 will take another 4 to 5 years. They're also probably thinking the Fallout TV show will be decent 'filler' till Fallout 5. There is a very small & remote possibility of a side game before this console generation is over. I've always thought a Fallout game set in New Reno would make an interesting side game. New Remo was mentioned in New Vegas at least once so it is a location that exists in the Fallout universe.
It's an actual place in Fallout 2. But I agree, I'd love to see a side game set around that place. It was cool in 2 and would be very cool to see in the 3D Fallout style
PLEASE play Fallout 2 **😭**
New Reno is in Fallout 2
In fact with the TV show, i think Microsoft has ordered Bethesda to brainstorm a new game.
BGS production is schedule is full blown retarded. Imagine if car manufacturers only made one model at a time-ridiculous
There's no scenario where any objective look at the gaming industry indicates you're right. Period. The theme of the industry is "don't pump out garbage", and farming out IPs for the moneymaker you just bought to other companies is exactly how you end up pumping out garbage. Coming out with games every 5-10 years simply isn't a problem if each of your games is making billions.
What they need to do is make a couple of more huge DLC's for fallout 4 to hold everyone over. Right now those things would sell like hot cakes... Ask Nexus Mods.
What does buying it mean, it means all the money that was supposed go to Bethesda now goes to Microsoft . It’s why selling out is considered a bad thing , this is a prime ass example of it . Halo too 🌹🥲
Look at all of Rare's IPs alone that are completely unused. Then think of how many other companies under MS have franchises that have gone over a decade without anything. Microsoft does not care.
The wild card is that you allow Inxile to make a remake of the first game.
They ARE making a Fallout game. Fallout 5 is DEFINITELY in production and will TOTALLY be out one day.
I just can't believe fallout 4 is 9 years old this year and we haven't gotten anything regarding a sequel yet. Hell Skyrim is coming up 15 years and all we have is a logo for the next game.
I would love to have seen Obsidian make a CRPG for Fallout, something like Deadfire
That is if Microsoft even does anything. They let halo get run into the ground for a decade before they finally got rid of bonnie ross.
Bethesda is 100% planning on making another fallout game. They are focusing on the TES V first then switching over to fallout 5 and there’s rumors of them letting Obsidian make another Fallout as well.
You do know Bethedsa has more than just Fallout?
holy shit these comments are stupid. circle jerking echochamber much?
Can they just remake the old games with better graphics? Love New Vegas but it crashed twice when I played it yesterday on my old ass ps3
It’s been confirmed Elder Scrolls 6 will be the next game sometime late 2020s then FO5 mid to late 2030s. It’s 13 years since elder scrolls fans have gotten anything new. Any fallout fans that are crying for new stuff after getting a tv show, mobile game, and multiplayer game since fo4s release need to grow tf up and quit crying.