The Sad State of Bethesda Games

Bethesda Game Studios, few names in the video game industry are as good and divisive among people as Bethesda, this company known for many things such as developing fan favorite

games

like the Elder Girls and Fallout series, it is also synonymous of fun and quirky things, like innovative mistakes. and performance issues paid mods mediocre writing, but the kid refused to follow the father's selfless example and was just a general PR nightmare. Bethesda has earned a reputation for promising one thing and delivering another, the next generation PC game, we really push the technology it introduces, brand new. Render lighting and landscape technology allow us to have 16 times more details generating such classic phrases, as it just works, it works, no, I'm not kidding, don't worry, although the modders will fix the game and Bethesda will try to monetize it in the last years. become the figurehead for some of today's most hyped but somewhat middle-of-the-road gaming experiences and say: I'd like to take a look at how the beloved developer went from creating critically acclaimed

games

like Oblivion to telling the users. um you're actually wrong or the game isn't boring you're just playing it wrong Starfield reviews why when Todd comes on stage does he use his level 100 speech stat to tell us Sweet Little Lies and show us a JPEG? from Elders Girl 6, everyone collectively jumps on the hype train and rides it straight to star fields?

Moon in phallic form procedurally generated. This video will be one part history lesson and one part partially informed rant, so sit back and get ready. I'm going to take a brief look back at a bit of the company's history, leading up to the recent releases that led to my main complaints. Please note that this is partially my opinion, so if you're a Die Hard, you might want to close now before you start crying to the Lord. and Savior God Howard with all that out of the way this is the sad

state

of Bethesda games let's start in the year of our Lord 2001 with the founding of Bethesda Game Studios Bethesda's internal development team before this Bethesda had no separation between their publishing and development sides, so in an attempt to grow the development side of the company, they diversified a small team of about 40 people into their own game studio with charismatic bear Todd Howard at the helm acting as executive producer. of EX at the time I write this they have expanded to 450 which is still relatively low compared to most AAA developers anyway during this time they developed Elder srels mwind running on the Brio engine of the game.

Take note of this, it will be important later in the game. Praised for its open yet detailed world design that allows the player to approach the game however they want, due to its emphasis on role-playing game mechanics and well-written story, it soon became a critical and commercial success, selling 200,000 units. back in September of that year and to this day, many consider it one of the best Elder Scrolls, it sure still had some of that classic Bethesda charm. But it was a revolutionary game for its time, fast forward to 2006 and the release of Oblivion this is more of what people wanted with some quality of life tweaks but overall very safe playing here, the game mechanics RPG and other aspects have been simplified to be less daunting for people who aren't looking to read an instruction manual and level a character or software. your game by killing a Quest NPC essential where this game made some groundbreaking advancements is with the development of the Radiated AI system which is basically just a system that dictates how the NPCs behave in the game, the system was designed to do that the AI ​​has goals and schedules and allows the game world to feel more alive and dynamic, this was done in part due to criticism of Morn's NPC AI, not that this one is much better at times, bye, May you rest in peace, geez, this is actually the same system they use. in future games, it will simply be based on it in later installments, it's a recurring theme with this company integrating their older technology into newer versions, for better or worse, something I'll address shortly.

You can also start to see Bethesda's monetization method here as well to this day. They mock Bethesda for the infamous horse armor DLC which, for those who don't know, is just a cosmetic horse armor that sold for 250 at launch. This is commonplace nowadays in most games, but at the time people thought it was ridiculous and many times. in articles that talk about this, they trace the microtransaction-riddled hell we live in now and come back to this, a trend they would unfortunately try again later. 2008 gave us Fallout 3, Bethesda's next big hit. Todd during an interview slightly exaggerates the number of endings in the game, how is that part of the project going? um being Bethesda um it all gets a little big so up until last week there were over 200 endings that's not an exaggeration but surely this would be the only right time of course you can. play this one alone, anyway, selling almost 5 million copies in its first week, the game was an almost instant hit.

I don't really have much to say about this one because overall it was pretty good, aside from some ridiculously bad writing at certain points. It won't be the end either and some issues with Performance Plus without this game we objectively wouldn't have the best game out there. Fallout 3 walked so New Vegas could run over the crazy people in Obsidian, I saw Fallout 3 and said hello. that's cool, but we could have made it even cooler and so they did and that's how on the seventh day God gave us the greatest video game known to man. Amen, success after success.

Bethesda was at the top of its game. It is one of the best companies. in AAA games and viewed fondly by most, it seems like they could do no wrong and remove Gold for good, however, nothing lasts forever and in the years to come his fall from Grace would come gradually over the course of the following titles. in 2011. Skyrim made its debut and just like Smash Mou said, it started coming and won't stop coming since we had re-releases in 2016, 2017 and 2021 for almost every platform imaginable. I've heard of Doom running on literally everything, but this is getting ridiculous.

Now, something worth mentioning here is the development of the creation engine, which is essentially just an updated version of the Grio engine that they have been working with since the early days and which is based on the Grio engine, meaning it comes with all the same old Jank. that you're also used to what was a brand new Jank even though Skyrim sold over 7 million units in its first week which is nothing to scoff at and although the world felt well designed and the graphics were nice, I have some complaints. the plot wasn't great, it's Bethesda, go to You're the Chosen One, go fight the big bad and while it's not necessarily bad, it's the same thing we've seen before and a lot of people I know don't even bother with the main plot .

Quest anyway, the game was sold as an action RPG, but the combat was pretty basic and the RPG elements weren't very deep, you didn't really have to choose a setting to specialize in as eventually You could be dominated at every moment. skill, for example you create a stealthy character who just happens to stumble upon the Guild and become their leader despite having Plankton's magical prowess from that SpongeBob episode, well this sucks, overall the combat is reduced to continue brandishing your weapons. and hit wheels of cheese until everything is dead and that works for about 90% of enemies, on top of that the UI wasn't good and the dialogue didn't really matter and I'm not saying every game has to have levels from New Vegas.

Branching dialogue, but a little more choice for the player would have been nice. The latter is more of a personal thing, but all the dungeons felt like the same thing, copied and pasted over and over again, with a few exceptions. Usually you take a quest, go to some ruins, fight 69. jogger maybe solve a puzzle Loot and repeat this is an oversimplification, but take any screenshot of the dungeon and try to tell me the difference, these could all be Personal complaints for me and if you enjoyed the game it's totally great but take a critical look. There were some misses, however, they weren't offensively bad until the next game in line.

Also edited while writing this, they added paid mods to Skyrim in the most recent update, which I think is a fun feature to add for a while. A single player game from a decade ago, this is where most of my plots come in as it had the most atrocious implementations of them, similar to the previous game, the plot wasn't very good, the dialogue was even worse in certain points and now the skill and perk system has changed. It's been reduced to basically nothing more than stat boosts, and while that makes the game accessible to people who don't care much about RPGs, it also takes away a lot from the core of the game.

Remember in three in New Vegas, where you would choose a buff or invest points in a stat and generally do something unique to the game that wasn't fun for you because you have 20% more healing with stim packs. The same goes for the dialogue system. Remember when having certain advantages or abilities gave you unique dialogue options. more of that has a wheel with two flavors CBS one for no and maybe a question there Fallout was also marketed as an action role-playing game, but it was simplified so much that it made it a lukewarm experience Bethesda had the software created by the people .

Doom and Wolfenstein handle the gunplay, which is at least better now than the previous games, as well as some quality of life stuff like running and having a button for grenades, those were some of my few compliments for the game, though. I'm sorry like anyone else. Generic open world first person shooter looter just for its Fallout look on top and honestly I'm a little sick of every game trying to be that but that's a topic for another day, simplifying it IMO All of these elements removed what made Fallout interesting. For starters, and while there are a few side quests here and there that were interesting or had some interesting concepts, there were few days when you could approach a quest any way you wanted, you're going to go to this dungeon that you're going to shoot. everything in sight, you'll loot a few things and return to that note.

I couldn't really find myself invested in the main plot as all the factions were just boring one-note characters, which is usually not how things work like in the real world. There are a lot of gray areas and that's what makes the characters interesting and worth investing in when returning to New Vegas. Each faction had pros and cons and you could choose who you allied with based on your personal beliefs. It's not necessary to have nuanced characters, but I think it adds a nice layer of complexity, the best villains are the ones you can relate to, not just comically evil for evil's sake, this one also had shitty paid mods that, in their defense , they are mostly cosmetic and fun enough, they added some horsepower armor.

As a stranger, the fact that the horse armor in Oblivion recognizes it doesn't make it any less sad, but at least it's kind of funny, some areas worked horribly poorly and the building system they promoted barely worked, basically making the game work good and something fun. It takes tons of tweaks and modifications until it's a completely different game. Anyway, we have to move on or I'll sit here criticizing Fallout 4 all day long. In some ways it's even worse than this. I'm not going to go into much detail about this since everyone online has already done it, so I'll just briefly go over a few things if you want a deeper look.

An internet historian made a very comprehensive video about it a few years ago, so check it out in 2018. Todd continues. On stage to present the next Fallout game, a lot of people were excited about it and while he stands there, with his shiny Perfect Teeth, talking about the game, touting the size of the map and the fidelity of its graphics and finally ends by saying that It is a multiplayer game and it is our largest yet, it is four times the size of Fallout 4 to have 16 times the details. Yes, Fallout 76 is completely online, which if you like is an immediate red flag, as the series has always been a single-player experience, arbitrarily turning it into multiplayer.

I don't really add anything, especially since it's still running on thecreation engine, which barely worked for single player let alone multiplayer. More on that in a minute. Also, I feel like the multiplayer aspect makes the world less immersive, but it's to incentivize gameplay. major multiplayer, the game was released without NPCs, a series known for its large number of NPCs and dialogues initiated without NPCs that the chain of command at Bethesda thought this was acceptable, it took two full years of complaints and ridicule from people online to finally add For him in 2020, the map was quite extensive, but there was really no reason to visit most of the places as the content just wasn't that interesting, the game was plagued with bugs and performance issues, of which I'll put some fun clips here and I just gave up on trying to upgrade skills and it said here are some RNG cards for perks, the quest lines were boring and also they went out of their way to monetize a game you already had They have to pay the price they are for.

Currently, as of this writing, I'm still doing this, many features are essentially locked behind the first Fallout subscription, which you can buy for $13 a month or 100 a year, plus it's still somehow a $40 game , you guys want a single-player Fallout. Subscribe So if you choose not to align Todd's Pockets, you are limited in many ways in the game, the biggest being item storage, but also cosmetics and smaller things like that. There have also been reports of users deleting negative reviews on Steam, which I can't. I'm neither confirming nor denying it, so for the sake of this video I'll post one to see if they remove it.

I'll keep you all posted on Twitter or the Community tab on YouTube or something about that while the game is in a

state

. much more finished now than a few years ago, still not comparable to single player games, yes, even Fallout 4 for that matter. as I thought it was a downgrade from the previous ones, it's still a better experience in this, this brings us to now with their only new IP in almost two decades in which everyone was excited for Starfield, the space game as they called it with their releases previous. As good as it was, this one would have to be pretty stellar, right, you're part of Constellation, now part of our family.

Well, the game came out in most reviews stating that it was incredibly boring and lifeless, with uninteresting exploration and slow, clunky combat. Starfield ended. Being Fallout in space, but with even less interesting things populating the world, the game was created with the new and improved Creation Engine 2, which Todd explained significantly improves the graphics in AI and the biggest improvement is the procedurally generated content. . I don't know everything. the ins and outs of the engine though, it doesn't feel like it's really improved things that much, it still has the same gameplay from two decades ago with the same lobotomized AI from previous games and the same combat, nothing feels new and while that It's not a bad thing for everyone.

I thought there would be more changes to this much hyped game for comparison. Take the difference between Valve Source engine 1 and two. The last game developed was Halflife Alex and that csgo port. in the works, both look better in graphics and lighting and have updated features from the previous engine while still maintaining that familiar look, that's how you update an engine for today on top of all the run-of-the-mill Bethesda stuff. Gameplay, the game is, by many user accounts, a loading screen simulator that suffers from poor optimization despite Todd's best claims that it is not. I'll play that clip now, don't worry, there is a mod to fix it, why didn't you optimize this game? for PC, uh we did it, it's working great, it's an upcoming PC game, we really push the technology so you might need to upgrade your PC for this game but it has a lot of cool stuff and the fans are responding in kind.

Incredible way, that is. Lately they are not the only negative PR with this game: they started responding to negative reviews of the game, basically telling users that they are playing badly or refuting the emptiness of the worlds with the fact that real space is also quite empty, which yes, it probably is. It's true, but if I'm playing a space sci-fi action game, I don't expect realism so much as something entertaining. At its core, the game isn't that bad, just forgettable and uninspired, and I don't know if. that's better or worse than just being bad, it seems like one of those games that everyone will forget in the next few years unless they go the no one sky route and just add content and updates continually and for a company with so much prestige.

As Bethesda, I was simply hoping for better, so what can we expect for the future? Well with one mediocre game after another it doesn't really fill me with hope for the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout game and that's sad, these titles once excite me because they have a level of immersion that you don't find all the time the great feeling of exploring a huge world with tons of things to discover or building a character that suits your specific playstyle and completing quests using your specific strengths feels really unique and satisfying even in Fallout. 76 for a while I enjoyed just wandering around the world and seeing all the little details and areas as well as the unique enemies, which was kind of fun.

Bethesda seems out of touch and in their attempts to appeal to everyone they end up making an extremely lukewarm experience. just my opinion, but if I had to offer advice, I'd say narrow the scope, stop creating these massive worlds with nothing in them, and create a smaller, more detailed experience. The previous entries had things to explore hidden around every corner and those were some of the biggest draws for me and two are to stop simplifying games and trying to appeal to everyone because generally when you try to do everything right you end up not doing Nothing good.

People who like Shooters will play any number of better games and people who like them. RPGs are going to be bald and gay again, okay, I'm done complaining for today, I'm done with the ending thanks for watching this video. I'd like to hear your thoughts in the comments, what do you think of Bethesda games? I'm not sure everyone will agree with my opinions, which is totally fine, feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments. Most of you seem to really like the last style video I made, as it's still my most popular video. on the channel for a long time and while I don't want to be known exclusively as one of those YouTube people who just makes videos about things they find fun to do from time to time, if this one is well received maybe I'll do it. make it a series and do one or two of these a year, so let me know in the comments if that's something you'd be interested in.

I have some potential ideas and Jakey made a video that covers a lot of the same things. recently which I found out after this was already mostly written and while I didn't intend for that to happen it was a fun coincidence so definitely check it out it finally makes awesome content if you stay here for that long time. I just want to say thank you, it really means a lot if you want to like the video and subscribe, that helps me a lot, but that's all for now, have fun and see you next time.