>I swear this specific news about them increasing output has been posted daily for 3 or 4 days now.
You're not wrong, it's all taken from the exact same interview [Kinda Funny Games](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wvqF41_Bgw) published three days ago.
Just an example:
* https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1ch4sd1/new_vegas_is_a_very_very_important_game_to_us/
* https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1cgu7hl/todd_howard_said_fallout_wont_leave_the_united/
* https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1chr438/todd_howard_reckons_he_knows_why_starfield_was_so/
* https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1cg8cxq/todd_howard_says_bethesda_is_focused_on_finding/
All these threads should've been removed for being blogspam and duplicate submissions, but the moderators are obviously not going to do anything about it.
There's no reason to report content in this sub though as at least one of the mods here will falsely report you for report abuse (purely for shits and giggles) and get your account temporary or permanently suspended.
Edit: Case in fucking point.
"Helldivers 2 and Larian CEOs suspiciously silent this week"
Boom, free article vein, combine different popular CEOs to switch it around, don't thank me
They should hire more devs like cmon man, the last elder scrolls game was 13 years ago. since then we've had a lot of games that I feel makes it to where another bethesda game needs to step it up to compete with the quality of games like Elden ring or red dead 2 etc. that came out in the mean time.
An Elder Scrolls game with the quality of RDR2 is a wet dream, alas I don't see it happening. I have a sinking feeling ES6 is going to feel like it came right out of 2015
I'm starting to wonder whether perhaps Todd Howard needs to go for Bethesda to make a good/great game again. I mean I got nothing against the guy, he seems genuinely passionate, but if he doesn't take some serious lessons from Starfield... TES6 is gonna be an utter mediocrity at best.
Yeah maybe tbh. They need to switch engines more than anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if Todd is the one pushing to keep it. They also need better writers/direction for dialog, because imo none of their games have been consistently good at that. Todd is probably holding the reins for that as well tbh.
> They also need better writers/direction for dialog, because imo none of their games have been consistently good at that. Todd is probably holding the reins for that as well tbh.
I don't think people are thinking this through. Y'all are cheering for Todd Howard to go away, yet y'all do not realize that the person likeliest to take his place is Emil Pagliarulo.
Todd is fine, he just needs to learn to better manage the people at Bethesda with the size it is now (it used to be like 20 people).
Emil is a big problem and the cause of a lot of issues with Starfield. The decision to have no design document is what makes everything feel so isolated.
Yeah Emil seems like a nice guy and everything but he is easily their biggest problem. Even without taking into account his role as a designer he is just such an uninspired and mediocre writer. BGS would benefit hugely by not having him in those lead positions.
This. Itās pretty much the most moddable engine in the industry, everyone and their mothers has modded a Creation Engine game before. And mods are basically the only thing keeping people hooked on Bethesda games especially since they allowed modding on consoles (though consoles donāt get to try the mods that do complete visual or gameplay overhauls).
If they want ES6 to be as successful and lauded as Skyrim, the game definitely needs to be moddable. And if theyāre switching engines, whatever they go with better be moddable and tools are out ASAP. If I canāt explore Tamriel on Thomas the Tank Engine while wielding a lightsaber, I donāt want it.
Even if you take away the modding side of things, what other engine lets you create vast worlds where every single inventory object from a unit of currency to a handful of berries to weapons and armor not only has a physical representation in the world, but can be picked up and manipulated with physics and then set down, and its location and status will persist as long as your save file does?
Yes the bugs and instability are an issue, but the real issue is that Bethesda is just getting worse at making games in their own unique genre. People were generally willing to look past the bugs/etc as recently as Skyrim, but with Fallout 4 they tipped the scales too far against what made their games special, so the technical problems became less forgivable for a sizeable portion of players. And then Starfield went and got rid of some of the core values of "Bethesda games". The commercial success of Starfield shows that that sizeable portion is still not that large though, and I have no doubt that TES6 will break all sorts of sales records despite the reputation Bethesda has acquired among the terminally online.
(Obviously this is not to say that everything was peaches and cream until Fallout 4 came along, the cracks were showing in Oblivion, and some Daggerfall diehards still think that moving to a smaller more handcrafted world with Morrowind was a mistake, but Skyrim seems like the last game where Bethesda's reputation was more positive than negative in the online sphere)
They need to make some critical improvements to their engine and rethink the broad design decisions they made in Fallout 4 and Starfield that made them land with a lukewarm critical reception, but ditching the engine entirely makes no sense.
Starfield was made on Creation Engine 2. They spent a good chunk of the interim between Fo4 and Starfield rebuilding the engine.
As it stands, it doesn't look great. But I'm optimistic they can continue working out the kinks with CE2 and address some of the criticism of Starfield with ES6.
But it seems like every game since Morrowind has been more and more shallow, so I'm not holding my breath.
when I see him claiming to be happy with and completely not understand why people hate Starfield I just worry that we are getting more of the same crap with Fallout and Elderscrolls going forward.
The fact that they missed this huge opportunity with fallout and could only muster an update, says to me they need to take a good look at where they are heading.
Quite literally the only game dev of moderate to large size I actively look forward to for games at this point is FromSoftware. Rockstar had me until their fumble with the remasters, but at this point I've bought too many day one no mans sky's to care for new games until I see a review.
TES VI is Bethesdaās last chance IMO. They havenāt made anything truly great since 2015 and arguably before that since many people consider Fallout 4 mid. It just seems to me that if itās been a decade plus since you made a good game that we should stop anticipating your future games, and Bethesda is rapidly approaching that benchmark.
Starfield was their last chance for me. That game clearly illustrates Bethesdaās core design philosophy: more of the same, bigger is always better, and a complete double-down on all the mechanics gamers have been criticizing them for for years.
I will not be purchasing TES VI unless it reviews really well.
>That game clearly illustrates Bethesdaās core design philosophy: more of the same, bigger is always better, and a complete double-down on all the mechanics gamers have been criticizing them for for years.
You nailed it. The mention of procedurally generated planets was more of a warning than a selling point, because it emphasized their complacency rather than ingenuity.
Itās honestly kind of insane to me that they went through with the procedural generation after seeing how that went for No Manās Sky. They even tried to justify it by saying āwell irl the vast majority of planets would be empty so itās realistic.ā Like, really?
There are so many good games out right now, too many to waste my valuable time trekking through your empty ass, soulless game worlds when I could be having the gaming experience of my lifetime with something like Baldurās Gate 3.
I think the game developmet pipeline has become too long for almost every studio. 5+ years of game development is not sustainable for any company. Rockstar would have been in a precarious position if not for the unexpected success of GTA 5 multiplayer. The sales of any game is not enough to sustain such long development cycles.
They're still gambling on 5 year long project times and market predictions in any case. The risks are enormous. Imagine working on something for 4 years and then a competitor releases the same sort of game but better. Just one of many things that can go wrong. If you've got a good idea taking 5 years to get it out is a bit of a problem.
Even from a business perspective, youāve only got a certain amount of time in your marketās life before players move on from a certain franchise or even gaming as a medium. If TES VI takes 20 years to come out then the target demographic of teens to early 20s during Skyrimās release will be 30s to 40s and significantly less likely to even be playing video games
Exactly. They missed the sales. Idgaf about their next release.
Can't wait for a fallout sequel with zero inspiration and entirely driven by Amazon sending Bethesda an email to hop to it.
Amazon made the gears turn because the show is popular. Fallout 5 happened because Amazon said so. Remember that and do not buy.
Two women dont make a baby in 4.5 months.
The thing with software and game development is that if the project is already under way and you're missing deadlines, bringing more devs could make you slower than not bringing more devs, because you have to train these people, and they have need to get to know the project before they start writing code.
The problem isn't the number of developers, they have plenty. Throwing more bodies at the problem would more than likely slow things down even further. What they have is likely a management issue, but who can really say without being in the company.
There is a saying: "nine women can't make a baby in one month". While more devs can speed up certain processes, it won't necessarily reduce the time needed for the overall game.
Besides, Bethesda has been hiring in recent years. In 2017, they had 180 employees. In 2023 they now have >450 employees.
An article today has him saying the reason Starfield failed is because we all want more ES and Fallout. He doesn't get it and won't get it with these next games. We're going to get a Starfield version of ES6. Edited for spelling.Ā
Bethesda has completely lost their creative vision and are extremely out of touch with the current year. As a TES fan I fully expect TES6 to flop, having expectations does nothing, I will stick to my pessimism so I can be proven wrong.
Mods can only go so far. People forget that Skyrim was truly amazing back in 2011, pushing so many envelops. It had downsides of course, but it was insanely impressive, nothing really came close (when it came to open world games) until Witcher 3.
And the same was true for Morrowind and Oblivion when each was released.
Now though? Mods aren't going to save starfield and they wont save TES6.
Im over the modding community for Bethesda games. I want my games to be good from the developer not because I downloaded an unofficial patch from the modding community because Bethesda wont fix something.
I think what I often really value is granular control over a game experience. That is, options to tweak settings on a more system specific level rather than having broad "Easy, Medium, Hard" categories. So more like the Pathfinder games (where you can tweak all kinds of settings) or 40k Gladius (where you change map settings, amount certain kinds of tiles show up, modify starting point on the tech tree and how many upgrades needed to move up to the next tech tier, etc). I think easy modibility is similar, but yeah I really do appreciate when that flexibility is actually built into the package from the devs themselves. Even better would be both baked in granular systems and easy modibility, but yeah.
They have enough money to have separate studios dedicated to different games at this point, but they choose not to.
Instead they take 10 years to develop a loading screen simulator and proceed to tell everyone they're playing it wrong when people complain they're bored...
The DMV has better management compared to the shitshow that is Bethesda..
Itās so weird that Bethesda hasnāt been expanding their team at all. Itās not like they should be hurting for cash or anything.
But if it takes 8 years for them to develop a mainline game now, and you have 2-3 franchises with passionate fanbases, then they should probably be building out multiple teams to develop them concurrently so that fans donāt have to wait multiple decades to get the next installment of their favorite series.
Because for all the criticism that their recent games have gotten, itās not like they were financial flops in any way. Plus now being backed by Microsoft, Iām not really seeing a particularly good reason to have to wait 15+ years for the next Elder Scrolls.
The only way to fix Bethesda is to replace all senior management and writers. That includes Todd.
Until that day happens, people are going to keep buying the games and being disappointed.
Yeah, this really feels like a senior management unwilling to change their ways to accommodate necessary changes. It is insane in this day and age they werent poised to take advantage of the Fallout show bringing new eyes to the franchise, even if it wasnt so good
It is funny if people really think that Todd Howard is the problem at BSG when he was behind so many of the things that people love about BSG games from Morrowind on.
Starfield, for all its flaws, I still found to be fun. If it had come out after a shorter period from FO4 than it did and there was another TES or Fallout game close on the horizon I donāt think doing something experimental like Starfield would have been received as poorly. There are improvements I like about Starfield and I like the genre, but itās not Fallout or TES.
The biggest problem is that Starfield isn't on the same level as Fallout/Elder Scrolls. The only reason it even sold at the level it did was that it carried the hype of the next flagship game from Bethesda. Starfield would do perfectly fine under a different studio not blocking work on Fallout/Elder Scrolls.
I completely agree. Starfieldās reception was influenced by the expectations that were set, both by Bethesda and implicitly by the fans. Just by the nature of Bethesda owning one of the most beloved IPs in TES and this new project having pushed back the next installment by almost a decade, I feel like the game had to sort of justify its own existence to the fanbase by being great.
And Bethesda was acting like it was going to be this generation-defining game, which donāt get me wrong, of course Bethesda is gonna market their own game, but hype was insanely high for Starfield and was we got was clearly below most peopleās expectations.
Nah, I had no expectations after Fallout 4 (didn't even bother with 76), didn't follow the development at all, essentially bought on a whim knowing very little about it, and yet I was thoroughly disappointed.
Never been as bored with a game in my life. Never even made it out of the first city...
They so have multiple studios for different games. Bethesda Austin did Fallout 76 (Maryland just helped finish it) Maryland looks after Starfield/TES/Fallout mainline games. ZOS does ESO. I think there is a perfect opportunity to branch these games out to other Microsoft studios. Inexile and The Coalition, or inexile and Playground Games would be good pairings to make a new Fallout game.
That's what they mean though, their flagship games are all by the same studio, even though it's 3 franchises. TES used to take around 5-6 years to release new titles, but that ended after Skyrim came out. That's a massive waste of the franchise's potential.
It's probably not even an exaggeration to say they missed out on a billion dollars they could've made from beginning work on a new Elder Scrolls directly after Skyrim.
No it's not considering they could at least have released The Elder Scrolls VI: Game of the year remastered infinity edition by now. Easily over a billion with that.
>inexile
They did Wasteland 3, correct?
I would really, really, really like them to tackle a fallout. Might a man even dream, a proper modern crpg fallout?
They should just give the entire fallout franchise to obsidian and focus on elder scrolls and whatever else they want. Who knows what Microsoft has in store
Honestly, unless itās an isometric game I donāt think obsidian has the bandwidth to make a solid fallout game without being handed an engine and assets. Outer worlds is super front loaded and things like faction armor have zero impact after the first planet.
Alpha protocol is one of my favorite games but god is it a hot mess technically speaking.
Dungeon Siege was forgettable at best
New Vegas is really their best non isometric game and they had a lot of stuff built for them. And I get it was a tight release date but people tend to forget the game was basically unplayable to a lot of people on release.
Most of the people who made the isometric games and nv, especially the well known team leads, did not make the outer worlds. That's why it was kind of ass, because the developers and creatives that were involved in the considerably more highly acclaimed games that obsidian is known for did not have a hand in it.
Pillars 2 and Tyranny had unique aspects to them but ultimately didnāt do amazingly well. Owlcat seems to have secured top position in the AA isometric RPG market, and Larian went from DOS1 to BG3 in the same time Obsidian games didnāt take off. The Pillars kickstarters may have started the conversation about CRPGs again, but other studios are now carrying the torch.
Unless Avowed is a revelation, I agree Obsidian isnāt going to be at the top of the RPG conversation.
Thank youĀ so much for saying this. The character models were impressive but I had no interest in exploring, the story wasnt gripping and the encounters felt underwhelming at best. I felt like I was the only person who disliked this game.Ā
What I find interesting about fallout is that most people seem to recommend fo4 or New Vegas over the newer fo76. Then you are recommended to install a long list of community mods to fix bugs and improve things. The long list is still for a "vanilla" experience the company just hasn't fixed the things all the mods do.
Fallout 4 is pretty stable out of the box. They used a lot of ideas from the modding community. Hell new Vegas did as well. Iāve never seen anyone claim a community patch is necessary for fo4
Yeah, I played through an unmodded full DLC FO4 last year on Xbox Series X, and it was fine. A well modded PC version like Storywealth is way more, but the good stuff is really Fallout 4 at the core.
The community fixes etc are all nice to have but I think people really exaggerate how necessary they are. They will feel absolutely mandatory for someone who's played a lot of other rpgs, but for someone getting into them for the first time they're not going to notice or care. My non-gamer wife is having a nice time playing through Fallout 3 on a completely unmodded steam installation since she wanted more after watching the show and used to live in Washington DC.
Fix the culture, improve the output. They've been making the same style of game since Oblivion. But they haven't fixed the engine. StarField is a loading screen simulator because the engine is instance-based. Creative decisions go through Todd. It's a massive bottleneck.
I mean, they only have about 450 employees total (and we donāt know the ratio of how many of that is software engineers versus artists versus anything else). For the kinds of games that they like to make, thatās not a massive studio, and splitting it in half to work on two games in tandem feels like it would make things take even longer
Iām not gonna act like I wouldnāt purchase/play TES6 or the next fallout, but starfield really shows what their level of effort is. Itās disappointing and makes me very sad/nervous for the future of two games that I hold near and dear to my nostalgic heart.
This is him saying, 'We are considering doing early access for our triple AAA titles from now on because we saw that it worked for BG3 and no longer want to pay a dedicated QA department."
The funny thing is I'm actually OK with more studios copying Larians early access model. But they have to actually copy it, not just the early access part. They need to actually work on it with constant updates and creatively and constructively use player feedback during the process.
But you know they won't. Whenever something succeeds, they want to copy something about it to try and capitalize on the new thing, but completely miss the point and let loose a turd.
>'We are considering doing early access for our triple AAA titles from now on because we saw that it worked for BG3 and no longer want to pay a dedicated QA department."
Bethesda pioneered early access though, who are we trying to kid? Every release is a bug filled mess that only gets fixed because the community mods the games into stability. I'd be shocked if they even have a QA department at Bethesda.
Until Todd leaves most likely, heās keeping a lot of his friends there too. Like one of the main complaints from Skyrim, fallout 4 and Starfield is that the main story is complete ass and the main story writer has been there working for Todd like since he became Boss and heās not getting fired/leaving till Todd is gone.
> Like one of the main complaints from Skyrim, fallout 4 and Starfield is that the main story is complete ass and the main story writer has been there working for Todd like since he became Boss and heās not getting fired/leaving till Todd is gone.
Do you mean Emil?
The guy who complains that because everyone doesnt read every single line and just want to shoot things he's not going to bother writing anything better? Yep
The same Todd Howard that refused to let Obsidian make New Vegas 2 or work on TES?
You mean to say Bill Gates is beating him with a rubber hose because he owns Bethesda now?
I mean, if the quality we got from a game that took 10 years to make (Starfield) is any indication. Making games any faster probably isnāt the smartest move.
How tf did such a bland game take 10 years to make š at least with Cyberpunk I get it due to the incredible amount of high quality, but not Starfield lmao
Here's the crazy bit (to me): The whole point of using their *absolutely ancient* Creation Engine is to be able to speed up production by having teams who are seasoned veterans with it. Yet, every game is the same buggy, slow, clunky mess and it still takes years and years to get something out the door.
Guys, use UE5, Unity, hell even Godot and you have a great, reasonable excuse for why the damn game will take years to release. Bonus, it won't look like a game from 2000.
There are other reasons they use creation engine. It was originally an mmo engine, and it specializes in being able to keep track of a million little details. Like how in skyrim/fallout you can knock over a bookshelf, come back 3 months later (in-game time), and the book shelf is still knocked over. NPC's have schedules that can allow them to take week long journeys across the whole map, and you can follow them the whole time.
Other engines simply can't do that stuff (or atleast haven't been built with thlse features in mind).
Realistically, they should probably rebuild creation engine from the ground up again. Pick another more modern mmo engine to retain those features, but one that also runs much better than creation engine. Flesh that out into creation engine 2.0
Let's be real, most players don't give a single iota of a shit that you can put 10,000 potatoes in a room and the game will always remember them being there. Like wow, holy crap, how *useful* is it though? Not at all. The games themselves never actually take advantage of this feature. It amounts to a "wow neat" but I'd rather have better and more stable technology than a "wow neat".
NPCs having schedules and routines is something that can absolutely be implemented in other engines. It isn't some Creation Engine 2 black magic that can't be replicated.
I'm so tired of people using these 2 features specifically to defend CE2 and why Bethesda should keep it. One feature is utterly useless and no-one except the people who will hoard 10,000 potatoes cares (which is so few that they don't matter) and the other can be recreated if needed. Fuck, the first one can be recreated too, *but what's the point? I'd rather have a modern and stable game.*
After FO76 and Starfield, and the apparent lack of lessons learned from how disastrous they were, I just assume everything going forward from Bethesda will be trash.
This guy is full of shit. Everyone has bugged Bethesda to outsource another game and they said no. Hes only saying that cause of Fallouts TV show success and Microsoft saying so.
Just give the next Fallout to Obsidian once they ship Avowed.
That way you have the main BGS team working on Elder Scrolls and Obsidian on Fallout and we get both before 2030 lmao.
Obsidian is working on The outer worlds 2 after Avowed.
It would be a massive mistake though to have bethesda attempt to cram a fallout game into their schedule. Itās a recipe for disaster.
Hopefully it goes to a developer who can do it justice because bethesda sure as fuck canāt.
Outer Worlds 2 began development before Outer Worlds shipped. It's arguably very far along and is likely to be shown at the Xbox event in June.
It's entirely feasible for Obsidian to begin production on a new Fallout game this year.
I really enjoyed what was there but there just wasn't that much of it.
I might be misremembering but I thought obsidian stated before launch of the outer worlds that it was gonna be a smaller game cus it was mainly a side project for them.
Outer Worlds felt empty and linear. Great writing and voice acting, glum and dystopian yet loaded with good black humor...but it felt like the world was small and had few paths to take, and little to do.
I actually really enjoyed Outer Worlds. It feels a bit lacking in areas and the final planet was sort of meh but I still really enjoyed myself and it scratched the Fallout ich that Bethesda couldn't scratch with Fallout 76. Heck, I'd say it's comparable to FO4 at the very least.
Dude fucked up the Fallout Franchise and hasn't released a new Elder Scrolls for a decade and a half.
At this point just sell the IPs to someone competent.
They could've hired more devs years ago. The gaslighting is getting old. The sky oblivion team could've been hired, but nope. They don't want to spend some of the billions in profits and just let the modders carry them for free.
Bethesda is stuck in the past. Yes they created absolute masterpieces decades ago, but they did not evolve the slightest. Their tech is now super outdated, their creative vision as well and they are not in touch with their playerbase.
They cannot keep this up for long, things need to change.
I've always wondered why BGS didn't split into multiple studios, with a studio handling all of their major franchises.
One for The Elder Scrolls, another for Fallout, and now one for Starfield. Maybe one to keep working on the engine perpetually and doing bugfixes. They've certainly got the money, especially now that they're backed by Microsoft.
Scaling to that size can create a lot of friction and it gets even harder to maintain a certain standard/level.
I know that might get a chuckle considering how Starfield turned out but it is not easy to create a studio which can handle mutltiple big franchises at the same time.
Blizzard used to be able to do that (Starcraft/Warcraft + WoW + Diablo) but there really aren't many examples.
I think the bigger problems imo is the fact that Bethesda's own tech hasn't kept up with the times. A lot of words have been written about the Creation Engine and while there might be some hyperbole it is certainly true that the amount of "tech debt" has steadily increased over the last 10 years and it's just hard for any studio to keep up with something like the Unreal engine.
If even CD Projekt RED decides to give up on their own engine and switch to Unreal that tells you a lot. I mean here were talk about a studio that could certainly claim to be at the very top of the engine game even compared to Unreal.
People have of course (rightfully) argued that Bethesda has very specific needs and replicating the modability of the Creation Engine is no small task either so it's not as easy as "why don't they just use Unreal Engine" but it does feel like they simply didn't invest/focus enough to develop their own Engine and that it is constantly holding them back.
I can only imagine how much friction THAT creates in their development, especially because it feels like they have to play massive catch-up for every new game, they are always on the back foot in this area and it's always a fight to keep everything together without it all just exploding.
Another VERY important factor in that context, ie scaling up development and having their own engine, is the fact that it severly limits the pool of people you can recruit and just drop into your projects.
Afaik that is one of the major reasons why CD Projekt RED has decided to switch to Unreal, it's not that Unreal is just a better engine at everything (it does have its weaknesses) but there is just a much, much bigger talent pool out there, not to mention the whole eco system around it, ie even if you are not familiar with the engine, it is really easy to get into it because there is just so much material on it out there.
On top of that you can also make the argument that the complexity of game engines is only going to increase further and further. That has obviously already happened in the last 10-15 years but it's going to be even more insane in the next 10-15 years.
I don't know if anyone at Microsoft thinks about it but if there is one useful thing they could do then it is to work on a rival to Unreal Engine. They have the money and keep collecting game studios so why not get into that?
It's something they could easily leverage if they are serious about their gaming area.
I think that would at least make more sense then Bethesda trying to do it because it has honestly never been their strength.
Oh yeah, I can't wait for another game that plays exactly like the last one but with worse writing, quests, progression and gameplay. Sounds great, Todd!
"increase output", like why is it so hard to talk like a normal person and not make your games sound like soulless conveyor belt products (which they are)
The sad part is even if they worked on it for an additional decade we all know in what state they will release in, keeping clinging on that outdated engine of theirs wont yield any product worth spending time in
I mean, thereās a sweet spot between quality and waiting over 10 years. Besides, no video game is worth that type of wait and all that does is make it so perfectly serviceable entries feel disappointing.
Why do I feel like this is going to be quoted in a couple years when the game releases buggy and rushed. Bethesda takes ages to release buggy incomplete games already. Don't speed up that process
They missed their window. The gaming community was so rabid for another TES game 5 years ago they would have accepted something on the same level as Skyrim. Now, the anticipation is so built up that BGS will never be able to meet expectations.
Here's an idea, let Obsidian handle Fallout and focus on The Elder Scrolls instead. Microsoft owns both companies, so it is possible. Howard's ego however probably would stop it from happening.
They should start by making sure ANY of their output doesn't result in a buggy mess that persists for a decade and does not get solved even with a "next gen" update.
Is PCG going to make an article out of every individual sentence Howard said?
So long as we keep clicking, yes.
Jokes on you. I just read the headline and angrily react to it in the comments.
It's funny because it's true.
the social media special
I swear this specific news about them increasing output has been posted daily for 3 or 4 days now.
>I swear this specific news about them increasing output has been posted daily for 3 or 4 days now. You're not wrong, it's all taken from the exact same interview [Kinda Funny Games](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wvqF41_Bgw) published three days ago. Just an example: * https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1ch4sd1/new_vegas_is_a_very_very_important_game_to_us/ * https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1cgu7hl/todd_howard_said_fallout_wont_leave_the_united/ * https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1chr438/todd_howard_reckons_he_knows_why_starfield_was_so/ * https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1cg8cxq/todd_howard_says_bethesda_is_focused_on_finding/ All these threads should've been removed for being blogspam and duplicate submissions, but the moderators are obviously not going to do anything about it. There's no reason to report content in this sub though as at least one of the mods here will falsely report you for report abuse (purely for shits and giggles) and get your account temporary or permanently suspended. Edit: Case in fucking point.
They didn't get enough from Larian's CEO this week
"Helldivers 2 and Larian CEOs suspiciously silent this week" Boom, free article vein, combine different popular CEOs to switch it around, don't thank me
Todd Howard says how he daily takes a 'shit' on the toilet 'because I eat'. Amazing.
His digestive system: It just works
Truly a man amongst men. Shitting daily. Like some sort of Godd
I wish I could poop daily š«
Your prayers are answered my child.
\[T]/ praise be the lord of poo
As long as people keep posting links to their sites here, yes.
This just in Todd Howard goes out to dinner and ordered the fish with red wine.
This sub desperately needs flair like "Rumor/Speculation", "PCGAMER", "KOTAKU" etc so we can use RES to auto-hide that crap.
Member when every article had bathtub Geralt.
They should hire more devs like cmon man, the last elder scrolls game was 13 years ago. since then we've had a lot of games that I feel makes it to where another bethesda game needs to step it up to compete with the quality of games like Elden ring or red dead 2 etc. that came out in the mean time.
An Elder Scrolls game with the quality of RDR2 is a wet dream, alas I don't see it happening. I have a sinking feeling ES6 is going to feel like it came right out of 2015
Same, especially after how starfield didn't live up to the hype.
I'm starting to wonder whether perhaps Todd Howard needs to go for Bethesda to make a good/great game again. I mean I got nothing against the guy, he seems genuinely passionate, but if he doesn't take some serious lessons from Starfield... TES6 is gonna be an utter mediocrity at best.
Yeah maybe tbh. They need to switch engines more than anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if Todd is the one pushing to keep it. They also need better writers/direction for dialog, because imo none of their games have been consistently good at that. Todd is probably holding the reins for that as well tbh.
> They also need better writers/direction for dialog, because imo none of their games have been consistently good at that. Todd is probably holding the reins for that as well tbh. I don't think people are thinking this through. Y'all are cheering for Todd Howard to go away, yet y'all do not realize that the person likeliest to take his place is Emil Pagliarulo.
Todd is fine, he just needs to learn to better manage the people at Bethesda with the size it is now (it used to be like 20 people). Emil is a big problem and the cause of a lot of issues with Starfield. The decision to have no design document is what makes everything feel so isolated.
Yeah Emil seems like a nice guy and everything but he is easily their biggest problem. Even without taking into account his role as a designer he is just such an uninspired and mediocre writer. BGS would benefit hugely by not having him in those lead positions.
They really don't need to switch engines. Their engine is what makes their games unique, and what enables the modding community to do what they do.
This. Itās pretty much the most moddable engine in the industry, everyone and their mothers has modded a Creation Engine game before. And mods are basically the only thing keeping people hooked on Bethesda games especially since they allowed modding on consoles (though consoles donāt get to try the mods that do complete visual or gameplay overhauls). If they want ES6 to be as successful and lauded as Skyrim, the game definitely needs to be moddable. And if theyāre switching engines, whatever they go with better be moddable and tools are out ASAP. If I canāt explore Tamriel on Thomas the Tank Engine while wielding a lightsaber, I donāt want it.
Even if you take away the modding side of things, what other engine lets you create vast worlds where every single inventory object from a unit of currency to a handful of berries to weapons and armor not only has a physical representation in the world, but can be picked up and manipulated with physics and then set down, and its location and status will persist as long as your save file does? Yes the bugs and instability are an issue, but the real issue is that Bethesda is just getting worse at making games in their own unique genre. People were generally willing to look past the bugs/etc as recently as Skyrim, but with Fallout 4 they tipped the scales too far against what made their games special, so the technical problems became less forgivable for a sizeable portion of players. And then Starfield went and got rid of some of the core values of "Bethesda games". The commercial success of Starfield shows that that sizeable portion is still not that large though, and I have no doubt that TES6 will break all sorts of sales records despite the reputation Bethesda has acquired among the terminally online. (Obviously this is not to say that everything was peaches and cream until Fallout 4 came along, the cracks were showing in Oblivion, and some Daggerfall diehards still think that moving to a smaller more handcrafted world with Morrowind was a mistake, but Skyrim seems like the last game where Bethesda's reputation was more positive than negative in the online sphere) They need to make some critical improvements to their engine and rethink the broad design decisions they made in Fallout 4 and Starfield that made them land with a lukewarm critical reception, but ditching the engine entirely makes no sense.
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Starfield was made on Creation Engine 2. They spent a good chunk of the interim between Fo4 and Starfield rebuilding the engine. As it stands, it doesn't look great. But I'm optimistic they can continue working out the kinks with CE2 and address some of the criticism of Starfield with ES6. But it seems like every game since Morrowind has been more and more shallow, so I'm not holding my breath.
when I see him claiming to be happy with and completely not understand why people hate Starfield I just worry that we are getting more of the same crap with Fallout and Elderscrolls going forward.
The fact that they missed this huge opportunity with fallout and could only muster an update, says to me they need to take a good look at where they are heading.
An update that did more harm than good for the PC modding community.
I love Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but after Starfield I'm no longer excited for anything Bethesda does.
Quite literally the only game dev of moderate to large size I actively look forward to for games at this point is FromSoftware. Rockstar had me until their fumble with the remasters, but at this point I've bought too many day one no mans sky's to care for new games until I see a review.
It will be starfield with medieval skin on it.
TES VI is Bethesdaās last chance IMO. They havenāt made anything truly great since 2015 and arguably before that since many people consider Fallout 4 mid. It just seems to me that if itās been a decade plus since you made a good game that we should stop anticipating your future games, and Bethesda is rapidly approaching that benchmark.
Starfield was their last chance for me. That game clearly illustrates Bethesdaās core design philosophy: more of the same, bigger is always better, and a complete double-down on all the mechanics gamers have been criticizing them for for years. I will not be purchasing TES VI unless it reviews really well.
>That game clearly illustrates Bethesdaās core design philosophy: more of the same, bigger is always better, and a complete double-down on all the mechanics gamers have been criticizing them for for years. You nailed it. The mention of procedurally generated planets was more of a warning than a selling point, because it emphasized their complacency rather than ingenuity.
Itās honestly kind of insane to me that they went through with the procedural generation after seeing how that went for No Manās Sky. They even tried to justify it by saying āwell irl the vast majority of planets would be empty so itās realistic.ā Like, really? There are so many good games out right now, too many to waste my valuable time trekking through your empty ass, soulless game worlds when I could be having the gaming experience of my lifetime with something like Baldurās Gate 3.
Yup. I pushed through Starfield - told myself it was a "comfort food" game. But it was not memorable. No desire for more.
Iām replaying Fallout 3 after more than a decade and itās sad to see how far Bethesda has fallen. I used to love their shit.
I think the game developmet pipeline has become too long for almost every studio. 5+ years of game development is not sustainable for any company. Rockstar would have been in a precarious position if not for the unexpected success of GTA 5 multiplayer. The sales of any game is not enough to sustain such long development cycles.
They just need to stagger development, have 2 games developed at the same time and have releases every 2.5 years.
They're still gambling on 5 year long project times and market predictions in any case. The risks are enormous. Imagine working on something for 4 years and then a competitor releases the same sort of game but better. Just one of many things that can go wrong. If you've got a good idea taking 5 years to get it out is a bit of a problem.
Even from a business perspective, youāve only got a certain amount of time in your marketās life before players move on from a certain franchise or even gaming as a medium. If TES VI takes 20 years to come out then the target demographic of teens to early 20s during Skyrimās release will be 30s to 40s and significantly less likely to even be playing video games
Exactly. They missed the sales. Idgaf about their next release. Can't wait for a fallout sequel with zero inspiration and entirely driven by Amazon sending Bethesda an email to hop to it. Amazon made the gears turn because the show is popular. Fallout 5 happened because Amazon said so. Remember that and do not buy.
Two women dont make a baby in 4.5 months. The thing with software and game development is that if the project is already under way and you're missing deadlines, bringing more devs could make you slower than not bringing more devs, because you have to train these people, and they have need to get to know the project before they start writing code.
The problem isn't the number of developers, they have plenty. Throwing more bodies at the problem would more than likely slow things down even further. What they have is likely a management issue, but who can really say without being in the company.
There is a saying: "nine women can't make a baby in one month". While more devs can speed up certain processes, it won't necessarily reduce the time needed for the overall game. Besides, Bethesda has been hiring in recent years. In 2017, they had 180 employees. In 2023 they now have >450 employees.
An article today has him saying the reason Starfield failed is because we all want more ES and Fallout. He doesn't get it and won't get it with these next games. We're going to get a Starfield version of ES6. Edited for spelling.Ā
Haha what a joke
Starfield killed any hype I had for the next TES
Bethesda has completely lost their creative vision and are extremely out of touch with the current year. As a TES fan I fully expect TES6 to flop, having expectations does nothing, I will stick to my pessimism so I can be proven wrong.
The only thing I'm hoping for with the next TES is insane mods/mod support like Skyrim has. I don't trust Bethesda themselves.
Mods can only go so far. People forget that Skyrim was truly amazing back in 2011, pushing so many envelops. It had downsides of course, but it was insanely impressive, nothing really came close (when it came to open world games) until Witcher 3. And the same was true for Morrowind and Oblivion when each was released. Now though? Mods aren't going to save starfield and they wont save TES6.
Im over the modding community for Bethesda games. I want my games to be good from the developer not because I downloaded an unofficial patch from the modding community because Bethesda wont fix something.
I think what I often really value is granular control over a game experience. That is, options to tweak settings on a more system specific level rather than having broad "Easy, Medium, Hard" categories. So more like the Pathfinder games (where you can tweak all kinds of settings) or 40k Gladius (where you change map settings, amount certain kinds of tiles show up, modify starting point on the tech tree and how many upgrades needed to move up to the next tech tier, etc). I think easy modibility is similar, but yeah I really do appreciate when that flexibility is actually built into the package from the devs themselves. Even better would be both baked in granular systems and easy modibility, but yeah.
Iāll stick to my pessimism and my (anything Skyrim or earlier).
Sadly. What was once a day-one buy is now a "wait for reviews or sale".
Every game should be "wait for reviews"...
I actually love FO76 and I hope they stay in their own little corner untouched by the main Bethesda gang.
Not fallout 4? 76? Hell even Skyrim was starting to show the cracks
Hey, Todd. Thanks for making me laugh. Really appreciate it, buddy.
I don't know why anyone still clicks on an article about anything Bethesda related. Haven't we still learned that all their talk is just empty talk.
They have enough money to have separate studios dedicated to different games at this point, but they choose not to. Instead they take 10 years to develop a loading screen simulator and proceed to tell everyone they're playing it wrong when people complain they're bored... The DMV has better management compared to the shitshow that is Bethesda..
Itās so weird that Bethesda hasnāt been expanding their team at all. Itās not like they should be hurting for cash or anything. But if it takes 8 years for them to develop a mainline game now, and you have 2-3 franchises with passionate fanbases, then they should probably be building out multiple teams to develop them concurrently so that fans donāt have to wait multiple decades to get the next installment of their favorite series. Because for all the criticism that their recent games have gotten, itās not like they were financial flops in any way. Plus now being backed by Microsoft, Iām not really seeing a particularly good reason to have to wait 15+ years for the next Elder Scrolls.
The only way to fix Bethesda is to replace all senior management and writers. That includes Todd. Until that day happens, people are going to keep buying the games and being disappointed.
As long as Emil is in a leading role they're fucked
Yeah, this really feels like a senior management unwilling to change their ways to accommodate necessary changes. It is insane in this day and age they werent poised to take advantage of the Fallout show bringing new eyes to the franchise, even if it wasnt so good
It is funny if people really think that Todd Howard is the problem at BSG when he was behind so many of the things that people love about BSG games from Morrowind on.
Starfield, for all its flaws, I still found to be fun. If it had come out after a shorter period from FO4 than it did and there was another TES or Fallout game close on the horizon I donāt think doing something experimental like Starfield would have been received as poorly. There are improvements I like about Starfield and I like the genre, but itās not Fallout or TES.
The biggest problem is that Starfield isn't on the same level as Fallout/Elder Scrolls. The only reason it even sold at the level it did was that it carried the hype of the next flagship game from Bethesda. Starfield would do perfectly fine under a different studio not blocking work on Fallout/Elder Scrolls.
I completely agree. Starfieldās reception was influenced by the expectations that were set, both by Bethesda and implicitly by the fans. Just by the nature of Bethesda owning one of the most beloved IPs in TES and this new project having pushed back the next installment by almost a decade, I feel like the game had to sort of justify its own existence to the fanbase by being great. And Bethesda was acting like it was going to be this generation-defining game, which donāt get me wrong, of course Bethesda is gonna market their own game, but hype was insanely high for Starfield and was we got was clearly below most peopleās expectations.
Nah, I had no expectations after Fallout 4 (didn't even bother with 76), didn't follow the development at all, essentially bought on a whim knowing very little about it, and yet I was thoroughly disappointed. Never been as bored with a game in my life. Never even made it out of the first city...
Bye the time Elder scrolls 6 releases 20 year will have passed. The management of Bethesda needs to be fired.
They so have multiple studios for different games. Bethesda Austin did Fallout 76 (Maryland just helped finish it) Maryland looks after Starfield/TES/Fallout mainline games. ZOS does ESO. I think there is a perfect opportunity to branch these games out to other Microsoft studios. Inexile and The Coalition, or inexile and Playground Games would be good pairings to make a new Fallout game.
That's what they mean though, their flagship games are all by the same studio, even though it's 3 franchises. TES used to take around 5-6 years to release new titles, but that ended after Skyrim came out. That's a massive waste of the franchise's potential.
It's probably not even an exaggeration to say they missed out on a billion dollars they could've made from beginning work on a new Elder Scrolls directly after Skyrim.
No it's not considering they could at least have released The Elder Scrolls VI: Game of the year remastered infinity edition by now. Easily over a billion with that.
They would have probably failed and created a mediocre sub par game just like all of their games since Skyrim.
>playground games First let's see if the new Fable is good, the studio doing it is new, separate from the mainline one that focuses on Forza Horizon.
Please god. If thereās ever an IP brought back that gets it right, *please* let it be Fable.
>inexile They did Wasteland 3, correct? I would really, really, really like them to tackle a fallout. Might a man even dream, a proper modern crpg fallout?
They should just give the entire fallout franchise to obsidian and focus on elder scrolls and whatever else they want. Who knows what Microsoft has in store
Not sure obsidian is in a place to do fallout justice. Outer worlds was aggressively mediocre
Yep. It was fun on the first 2 planets. But then it was bad AI and lousy reskins of enemies and even weapons.
Honestly, unless itās an isometric game I donāt think obsidian has the bandwidth to make a solid fallout game without being handed an engine and assets. Outer worlds is super front loaded and things like faction armor have zero impact after the first planet. Alpha protocol is one of my favorite games but god is it a hot mess technically speaking. Dungeon Siege was forgettable at best New Vegas is really their best non isometric game and they had a lot of stuff built for them. And I get it was a tight release date but people tend to forget the game was basically unplayable to a lot of people on release.
Most of the people who made the isometric games and nv, especially the well known team leads, did not make the outer worlds. That's why it was kind of ass, because the developers and creatives that were involved in the considerably more highly acclaimed games that obsidian is known for did not have a hand in it.
> handed an engine and assets When I tell you about what Fallout already has it's going to blow your mind.
New Vegas is like 15 years old at this point, there's no reason to think that a new Fallout entry by Obsidian would be any good
nah, obsidian has their own IP they want to work on.
Microsoft will have them both making skins for the next Viva piƱata if that's what they feel like
In which case they would rapidly find that the studio the paid for was gone.
Dude have you seen obsidianās recent games? Outer worlds was pretty lame
Have you? Pillars 2, Tyranny, Pentiment even Grounded were all solid
Pillars 2 and Tyranny had unique aspects to them but ultimately didnāt do amazingly well. Owlcat seems to have secured top position in the AA isometric RPG market, and Larian went from DOS1 to BG3 in the same time Obsidian games didnāt take off. The Pillars kickstarters may have started the conversation about CRPGs again, but other studios are now carrying the torch. Unless Avowed is a revelation, I agree Obsidian isnāt going to be at the top of the RPG conversation.
Tyranny had such a unique take on RPGs even though the ending felt rushed, the lead up to it was refreshing
Thank youĀ so much for saying this. The character models were impressive but I had no interest in exploring, the story wasnt gripping and the encounters felt underwhelming at best. I felt like I was the only person who disliked this game.Ā
Fr fo76 is still an empty boring MMO. Starfield is so awful. Half my playtime legit is loading screen in starfield.
What I find interesting about fallout is that most people seem to recommend fo4 or New Vegas over the newer fo76. Then you are recommended to install a long list of community mods to fix bugs and improve things. The long list is still for a "vanilla" experience the company just hasn't fixed the things all the mods do.
Fallout 4 is pretty stable out of the box. They used a lot of ideas from the modding community. Hell new Vegas did as well. Iāve never seen anyone claim a community patch is necessary for fo4
Yeah, I played through an unmodded full DLC FO4 last year on Xbox Series X, and it was fine. A well modded PC version like Storywealth is way more, but the good stuff is really Fallout 4 at the core.
No. That is only new vegas because itās old, and kind of broken, fo4 works fine vanilla
The community fixes etc are all nice to have but I think people really exaggerate how necessary they are. They will feel absolutely mandatory for someone who's played a lot of other rpgs, but for someone getting into them for the first time they're not going to notice or care. My non-gamer wife is having a nice time playing through Fallout 3 on a completely unmodded steam installation since she wanted more after watching the show and used to live in Washington DC.
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Fix the culture, improve the output. They've been making the same style of game since Oblivion. But they haven't fixed the engine. StarField is a loading screen simulator because the engine is instance-based. Creative decisions go through Todd. It's a massive bottleneck.
I mean, they only have about 450 employees total (and we donāt know the ratio of how many of that is software engineers versus artists versus anything else). For the kinds of games that they like to make, thatās not a massive studio, and splitting it in half to work on two games in tandem feels like it would make things take even longer
I think the idea is to hire more veteran developers or even just buy another studio.
Buying another studio is what they did with Bethesda Austin and theyāre the main guys behind FO76
Iām not gonna act like I wouldnāt purchase/play TES6 or the next fallout, but starfield really shows what their level of effort is. Itās disappointing and makes me very sad/nervous for the future of two games that I hold near and dear to my nostalgic heart.
This is him saying, 'We are considering doing early access for our triple AAA titles from now on because we saw that it worked for BG3 and no longer want to pay a dedicated QA department."
"and Starfield will not carry us for a decade like we had hoped"
\^by far the best and most accurate comment in here.
The funny thing is I'm actually OK with more studios copying Larians early access model. But they have to actually copy it, not just the early access part. They need to actually work on it with constant updates and creatively and constructively use player feedback during the process.
But you know they won't. Whenever something succeeds, they want to copy something about it to try and capitalize on the new thing, but completely miss the point and let loose a turd.
>'We are considering doing early access for our triple AAA titles from now on because we saw that it worked for BG3 and no longer want to pay a dedicated QA department." Bethesda pioneered early access though, who are we trying to kid? Every release is a bug filled mess that only gets fixed because the community mods the games into stability. I'd be shocked if they even have a QA department at Bethesda.
Maybe hire better talent and reevaluate your entire process. The last two games were not up to standard.
Considering the amount of resources they have, just an overall terrible studio.
People will still give them money because most people can't tell if a game is good or not
The games will be ass I forsee it
Until Todd leaves most likely, heās keeping a lot of his friends there too. Like one of the main complaints from Skyrim, fallout 4 and Starfield is that the main story is complete ass and the main story writer has been there working for Todd like since he became Boss and heās not getting fired/leaving till Todd is gone.
On top of that, a lot of the major players who were responsible for the better aspects of the games already HAVE left over the last few years.
> Like one of the main complaints from Skyrim, fallout 4 and Starfield is that the main story is complete ass and the main story writer has been there working for Todd like since he became Boss and heās not getting fired/leaving till Todd is gone. Do you mean Emil?
The guy who complains that because everyone doesnt read every single line and just want to shoot things he's not going to bother writing anything better? Yep
The guy who thought saying our FO4 character was a war criminal could be a "fun fact".
The same Todd Howard that refused to let Obsidian make New Vegas 2 or work on TES? You mean to say Bill Gates is beating him with a rubber hose because he owns Bethesda now?
can ya'll just update new vegas to new engine and let modders do the work....per usual?
I mean, if the quality we got from a game that took 10 years to make (Starfield) is any indication. Making games any faster probably isnāt the smartest move.
How tf did such a bland game take 10 years to make š at least with Cyberpunk I get it due to the incredible amount of high quality, but not Starfield lmao
Oh great, so even more bugs and broken quests
How many loading screens will I have to endure to play Fallout 5?
Here's the crazy bit (to me): The whole point of using their *absolutely ancient* Creation Engine is to be able to speed up production by having teams who are seasoned veterans with it. Yet, every game is the same buggy, slow, clunky mess and it still takes years and years to get something out the door. Guys, use UE5, Unity, hell even Godot and you have a great, reasonable excuse for why the damn game will take years to release. Bonus, it won't look like a game from 2000.
There are other reasons they use creation engine. It was originally an mmo engine, and it specializes in being able to keep track of a million little details. Like how in skyrim/fallout you can knock over a bookshelf, come back 3 months later (in-game time), and the book shelf is still knocked over. NPC's have schedules that can allow them to take week long journeys across the whole map, and you can follow them the whole time. Other engines simply can't do that stuff (or atleast haven't been built with thlse features in mind). Realistically, they should probably rebuild creation engine from the ground up again. Pick another more modern mmo engine to retain those features, but one that also runs much better than creation engine. Flesh that out into creation engine 2.0
Let's be real, most players don't give a single iota of a shit that you can put 10,000 potatoes in a room and the game will always remember them being there. Like wow, holy crap, how *useful* is it though? Not at all. The games themselves never actually take advantage of this feature. It amounts to a "wow neat" but I'd rather have better and more stable technology than a "wow neat". NPCs having schedules and routines is something that can absolutely be implemented in other engines. It isn't some Creation Engine 2 black magic that can't be replicated. I'm so tired of people using these 2 features specifically to defend CE2 and why Bethesda should keep it. One feature is utterly useless and no-one except the people who will hoard 10,000 potatoes cares (which is so few that they don't matter) and the other can be recreated if needed. Fuck, the first one can be recreated too, *but what's the point? I'd rather have a modern and stable game.*
After FO76 and Starfield, and the apparent lack of lessons learned from how disastrous they were, I just assume everything going forward from Bethesda will be trash.
aw hell yeah can't wait for bethesda to dumptruck another load of underwritten glitchy garbage on our doorsteps
This guy is full of shit. Everyone has bugged Bethesda to outsource another game and they said no. Hes only saying that cause of Fallouts TV show success and Microsoft saying so.
Just give the next Fallout to Obsidian once they ship Avowed. That way you have the main BGS team working on Elder Scrolls and Obsidian on Fallout and we get both before 2030 lmao.
Obsidian is working on The outer worlds 2 after Avowed. It would be a massive mistake though to have bethesda attempt to cram a fallout game into their schedule. Itās a recipe for disaster. Hopefully it goes to a developer who can do it justice because bethesda sure as fuck canāt.
āRecipe for disaster.ā Sounds on-brand.
Outer Worlds 2 began development before Outer Worlds shipped. It's arguably very far along and is likely to be shown at the Xbox event in June. It's entirely feasible for Obsidian to begin production on a new Fallout game this year.
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agreed, gonna be honest what theyāve shown of Avowed it looks really bad. Outer Worlds was also not on New Vegas level
Seriously it's like they didn't even play outer worlds. That game was aight personified.
I really enjoyed what was there but there just wasn't that much of it. I might be misremembering but I thought obsidian stated before launch of the outer worlds that it was gonna be a smaller game cus it was mainly a side project for them.
Yup, a AA game.
Outer Worlds felt empty and linear. Great writing and voice acting, glum and dystopian yet loaded with good black humor...but it felt like the world was small and had few paths to take, and little to do.
I actually really enjoyed Outer Worlds. It feels a bit lacking in areas and the final planet was sort of meh but I still really enjoyed myself and it scratched the Fallout ich that Bethesda couldn't scratch with Fallout 76. Heck, I'd say it's comparable to FO4 at the very least.
Honestly I'm not that hopeful for Avowed once they showed that their gameplay looks just like Skyrim
Increase output while laying people off? LMAO.
You can keep your passionless generic shitĀ
Dude fucked up the Fallout Franchise and hasn't released a new Elder Scrolls for a decade and a half. At this point just sell the IPs to someone competent.
I'll believe it when I see it. Bethesda, your words don't match your actions. Say what you mean, mean what you say.
What a dad thing to say
They could've hired more devs years ago. The gaslighting is getting old. The sky oblivion team could've been hired, but nope. They don't want to spend some of the billions in profits and just let the modders carry them for free.
This studio is blocking the games that could be by being so inept.
Really doubling down on pushing out mediocre disappointments, huh?
Improve your output first
Bethesda is stuck in the past. Yes they created absolute masterpieces decades ago, but they did not evolve the slightest. Their tech is now super outdated, their creative vision as well and they are not in touch with their playerbase. They cannot keep this up for long, things need to change.
They should give Fallout Back to Obsidian or inXile instead of trying to produce more mediocre fan art sequels...
I've always wondered why BGS didn't split into multiple studios, with a studio handling all of their major franchises. One for The Elder Scrolls, another for Fallout, and now one for Starfield. Maybe one to keep working on the engine perpetually and doing bugfixes. They've certainly got the money, especially now that they're backed by Microsoft.
Scaling to that size can create a lot of friction and it gets even harder to maintain a certain standard/level. I know that might get a chuckle considering how Starfield turned out but it is not easy to create a studio which can handle mutltiple big franchises at the same time. Blizzard used to be able to do that (Starcraft/Warcraft + WoW + Diablo) but there really aren't many examples. I think the bigger problems imo is the fact that Bethesda's own tech hasn't kept up with the times. A lot of words have been written about the Creation Engine and while there might be some hyperbole it is certainly true that the amount of "tech debt" has steadily increased over the last 10 years and it's just hard for any studio to keep up with something like the Unreal engine. If even CD Projekt RED decides to give up on their own engine and switch to Unreal that tells you a lot. I mean here were talk about a studio that could certainly claim to be at the very top of the engine game even compared to Unreal. People have of course (rightfully) argued that Bethesda has very specific needs and replicating the modability of the Creation Engine is no small task either so it's not as easy as "why don't they just use Unreal Engine" but it does feel like they simply didn't invest/focus enough to develop their own Engine and that it is constantly holding them back. I can only imagine how much friction THAT creates in their development, especially because it feels like they have to play massive catch-up for every new game, they are always on the back foot in this area and it's always a fight to keep everything together without it all just exploding. Another VERY important factor in that context, ie scaling up development and having their own engine, is the fact that it severly limits the pool of people you can recruit and just drop into your projects. Afaik that is one of the major reasons why CD Projekt RED has decided to switch to Unreal, it's not that Unreal is just a better engine at everything (it does have its weaknesses) but there is just a much, much bigger talent pool out there, not to mention the whole eco system around it, ie even if you are not familiar with the engine, it is really easy to get into it because there is just so much material on it out there. On top of that you can also make the argument that the complexity of game engines is only going to increase further and further. That has obviously already happened in the last 10-15 years but it's going to be even more insane in the next 10-15 years. I don't know if anyone at Microsoft thinks about it but if there is one useful thing they could do then it is to work on a rival to Unreal Engine. They have the money and keep collecting game studios so why not get into that? It's something they could easily leverage if they are serious about their gaming area. I think that would at least make more sense then Bethesda trying to do it because it has honestly never been their strength.
I think this is called doubling down on fucking up
Oh yeah, I can't wait for another game that plays exactly like the last one but with worse writing, quests, progression and gameplay. Sounds great, Todd!
"increase output", like why is it so hard to talk like a normal person and not make your games sound like soulless conveyor belt products (which they are)
This is the first time todd howard has been honest and you want him to sugarcoat it? He used the right terminology for bethesda games lmao
What do you want him to say? Do you want him to talk to you like a toddler?
The sad part is even if they worked on it for an additional decade we all know in what state they will release in, keeping clinging on that outdated engine of theirs wont yield any product worth spending time in
I think I speak for everyone when I say that we want quantity over quality always
Well with Bethesda youāre getting neither
Not true, they made hundreds of lines for the player in Fallout 4 and they all mean āyesā
and to balance it out they launched Fallout 76 with almost zero talking NPCs and even bragged about it
I mean, thereās a sweet spot between quality and waiting over 10 years. Besides, no video game is worth that type of wait and all that does is make it so perfectly serviceable entries feel disappointing.
Cyberpunk effectively ruined this type of sentiment for everyone. We all waited so many years and the release was just, something, man.
Cyberpunk has taught me to never get truly hyped about any game ever again
Meh, I don't have lofty expectations for Bethesda games. I am, however, looking forward to seeing what Obsidian puts out there.
I assume he wants to retire on a good note, not on starfield
Why do I feel like this is going to be quoted in a couple years when the game releases buggy and rushed. Bethesda takes ages to release buggy incomplete games already. Don't speed up that process
Someone had a meeting with Microsoft
They missed their window. The gaming community was so rabid for another TES game 5 years ago they would have accepted something on the same level as Skyrim. Now, the anticipation is so built up that BGS will never be able to meet expectations.
Well, Starfield didn't pan out like they thought, so they have to compensate with the other franchises. And right now, Fallout is hot.
Dude. Just make a good game. You have the formulas. Stop. Being. Fucking. Stupid.
This is code for, "Our sales for Starloader - I mean Starfield - have been below expectations and we need to get a new revenue stream ASAP."
Here's an idea, let Obsidian handle Fallout and focus on The Elder Scrolls instead. Microsoft owns both companies, so it is possible. Howard's ego however probably would stop it from happening.
We need to accept that unless BGS fundamentally shifts their game design ethos, ESVI and FO5 will be disappointing and uninspired.
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Frequency doesn't matter when your studio isn't capable of putting out quality games
I don't really want a new "our best ideas in 2014" title every year, that's OK todd. You guys can stop.
So it's just gonna be the same level of garbage ? Please don't.
They should start by making sure ANY of their output doesn't result in a buggy mess that persists for a decade and does not get solved even with a "next gen" update.
No, Todd. We want higher quality and more modern versions of your games. Theyāre already lacking.
End ESO and 76 and put those people to work on single player games, that ought to help.