Let's be honest, was Bethesda ever actually good?

[Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ]

People act like Starfield was the final fall of Bethesda, but were they actually ever any good?

- Oblivion was my first Bethesda RPG in 2006 when I was 17 or 18, I put the most hours into. But going back to it today, it really doesn't hold up well at all playing it now.
- Fallout 3 started off good, until the ending and not being able to continue playing after finishing.
- Skyrim? I was totally stoked and waited in line to buy it on 11-11-11 only to be disappointed and felt it was a step back from Oblivion. I also had the PS3 version which was notoriously unstable. Yeah I know my opinion is probably unpopular but I liked Oblivion better and was let down with Skyrim.

Then I played Fallout 4 and put the most time into that mainly because of mods and mainly building settlements, but without those things it would be pretty lack luster. I never bothered with Fallout 76 due to all the negative backlash and the fact I'm not a multiplayer guy..

Starfield was disappointing, but what were people expecting from Bethesda?

[Psycho_Soyer]

Originally posted by Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ:

People act like Starfield was the final fall of Bethesda, but were they actually ever any good?

- Oblivion was my first Bethesda RPG in 2006 when I was 17 or 18, I put the most hours into. But going back to it today, it really doesn't hold up well at all playing it now.
- Fallout 3 started off good, until the ending and not being able to continue playing after finishing.
- Skyrim? I was totally stoked and waited in line to buy it on 11-11-11 only to be disappointed and felt it was a step back from Oblivion. I also had the PS3 version which was notoriously unstable. Yeah I know my opinion is probably unpopular but I liked Oblivion better and was let down with Skyrim.

Then I played Fallout 4 and put the most time into that mainly because of mods and mainly building settlements, but without those things it would be pretty lack luster. I never bothered with Fallout 76 due to all the negative backlash and the fact I'm not a multiplayer guy..

Starfield was disappointing, but what were people expecting from Bethesda?

SKYRIM PS3 version I owned and still do. I never had a problem with it.
It must be you.

For someone who dislikes BETHESDA well you sure have purchased most of their games. 😄

[xybolt]

It really depends of your taste. I've enjoyed Skyrim (with many replays on its first release and their Special Edition) for a lot hours (four digits). Identically for Oblivion. Or Fallout 3, spent lots of hours in that. Same for New Vegas, albeit being made by another studio. Despite the critics, I've liked Fallout 4. Yes that main story arc is really bad but the game is offering more content than just that story.

I like open world games with freedom. This is what these Bethesda games have given to me. Not to mention that these games are very moddable, allowing me to extend the gameplay time with lots of creations from various mod authors. Just giving an example: there are really well worked out faction overhaul mods you can add to your game. Then you can have a new game with a protagonist whose existence is to join that faction. That is "role playing" for this game.

I've also played another open world games, but also different genres such as FPS or strategy or management sims ... There are many (for me) good games I've enjoyed to spend my time on, a fraction out of the existing games that got released to the world. There are much more "bad" games than there are good games, but for other people, these - for me - "bad" games are not "bad" games but "good" because they like it, they have enjoyed it. That matters.

Thus, for you, Starfield is disappointing, but there are other people that do like the game and aren't disappointed with it.

People simply can have different tastes. It seems that these games you have mentioned aren't in your alley. Don't follow the hype. Do follow your preferences. Focus on games that you would not get disappointed with. There are soooooo maaaaaannnyyyyyy games in Steam store. There are certainly some that are in your alley.

[Ihateeverybody]

Just to add to Xybolt's post.

People tastes may also change over time and the things they liked before, they may not like now. I used to spend many an hour on various Stratagy games. Now I find them annoying.

9/10ths of figuring out if a game is bad for you is figuring out if its the game or you.

Baldurs Gate 3 is a very well made game. Its just not a good game for ME. I realized that 140 hours or so in. Nothing it did was going to change that. With Days Gone, it took me less than 30 minutes to determine that. Rage 2 45 minutes. No Mans Sky 20 minutes.

Some I refunded, some I didn't. But knowing yourself can help you save time.

[Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ]

Originally posted by Ihateeverybody:

People tastes may also change over time and the things they liked before, they may not like now. I used to spend many an hour on various Stratagy games. Now I find them annoying.

Yup. I'm like a different person than I was years ago. A lot of games I used to like and spent so much time on just don't hold up anymore.

[Lord Haart]

I must agree with the sentiments expressed regarding the wooden acting and stunted movements that have plagued certain performances. These deficiencies are not merely superficial flaws but rather fundamental issues that detract from the immersive experience that we, as an audience, seek. The wooden acting, characterized by a lack of emotional depth and authenticity, often results in performances that feel mechanical and unconvincing. This is particularly evident in scenes that demand a high degree of emotional engagement, where the actors’ inability to convey genuine feelings leaves the audience disconnected and disinterested.

The stunted movements further exacerbate this problem. In the realm of performance, physicality is as crucial as dialogue in conveying a character’s intentions and emotions. When movements are stiff and unnatural, it disrupts the flow of the narrative and breaks the illusion of reality. This issue is not confined to novice actors alone; even seasoned performers can fall prey to this pitfall if they are not mindful of their physical expressiveness. The lack of fluidity in movement can make scenes appear choreographed rather than spontaneous, stripping away the organic quality that is essential for believable storytelling.

RIP Bethesda

[Meow]

This is obvious, they had something good going for them, a creative formula that the original developers had made and every rendition was refining this model, Oblivion to Skyrim and so on. One Day they said to themselves let's stop what works, stop making new creative games too and start following the mobile live service model. Flopped.


Hired new incompetent people, And now here we are.

[murdalyzem]

Yes, of course they were. They are still great, objectively, you have just become familiar with what they do and the magic is gone. Starfield is better than it's reputation. Lacks late-game content, and a reason to explore all the different planets. Might get better in that regard, but I'm not holding my breath. Only reason I have this game, instead of waiting a few years for all the dlc to come out in a package deal for like $20, is I got it for free with my CPU last year.

Oblivion, and Gothic 3, are the reasons I stopped getting super hyped about new games. Oblivion is a top 100 all-time game, but it was still a pretty big disappointment for me. It holds your hand way too much. The atmosphere is a bit generic, and the gameplay didn't go anywhere interesting for me. Exploration, combat, quests, all pretty much the same as Morrowind. Just something missing compared to Morrowind in regards to tonality / atmosphere that I couldn't overlook, and this was in the era of huge graphical leaps from one game to the next. Skyrim fixed a lot of the boring aspects of Oblivion, but added it's own problems with dumbing-down character development in a series where it was already near-meaningless since you could do anything with a single character without restrictions or consequences.

[Neo]

Yes Bethesda have always been good.

Next thread.

[Lokaror]

Oblivion still holds up.

[wesnef]

Originally posted by Ｓｏｌｉｄｕｓ Ｓｎａｋｅ:

, but were they actually ever any good?

Yes.
I've certainly enjoyed their stuff since Morrowind.
And Starfield isn't terrible, it's just. . . okay. It has a couple inherent flaws due to it's game style/structure that undercut some of Bethesda's strengths, so it isn't as good (or long-term replayable) as their other stuff.

People act like Starfield was the final fall of Bethesda

And those people are being overdramatic. Which is a widespread issue on gaming forums - hyperbole rules everything. (just okay game = "Worst. Game. Ever.", etc, etc)

[Berserk Breton]

Bethesda are good at making a particular spin on the RPG genre. Not "proper RPGs" that manage your experience, but a kind of flexible world, a backdrop against which you manage the experience.

It is always a love/hate thing, because their base games are always passable and they are good at things other games don't do, but there is loads of stuff their games are bad at...

...which makes it important to realise: "A Bethesda RPG is a modding platform with a free game included", this and player freedom are the unique selling points of Bethesda games, which is why...

...their games are not generally half as good at release as they are after a few years of mods and patches, they get better with time...

...^ also related to the last point, Last Game Syndrome: most of their games are not fully loved until the next one arrives to be hated.

Bethesda RPGs offer some of the best value for money, best mod support, best player freedom and RP flexibility there is, but if you expect anything outside their wheelhouse, you will be sorely disappointed.

[Meow]

Originally posted by Berserk Belta:

Bethesda are good at making a particular spin on the RPG genre. Not "proper RPGs" that manage your experience, but a kind of flexible world, a backdrop against which you manage the experience.

But tbf that's exactly what a RPG should be, it should give us the freedom to experience a kind of Dungeon's and Dragons feel, the play who you want as you want, that no two games should be the same, the ability to pick your species, race, gender, if you want to join a Mage Guild or a fighters Guild, be a Stormcloak or an Imp, a vampire or a werewolf, marry the local miners daughter, or marry your companion...

The main story should simply be a guide, glue, spine or foundation to the world as we create our own journey in between.

Contrast this to an Adventure or Action Adventure Game where you play someone else's story, you play as Spider-man and become Spider-man, Or Batman and you begin to understand why he is who he is and what he does , like Arthur in RDR2, sure we can do whatever we want but it all makes sense in the stor and personality of his character with a beginning, middle and end.

[Jarsonne]

Morrowind was a bit hard to start, but once you enter in, and realized optional side activities was well focused and could add a lot of fun, it was Rpg rather original and with many good point and some flaws. But let face it, it aged very badly. And it had its share of flaws:
- Incredibly ugly NPC faces.
- Very bad combats.
- Ugly graphic style.
- Dramatic design errors with flying and superman jumping, breaking sooner or later the feeling it was a large area, nope a small one.
- Many ridiculous collect quests, simple kill it quests.

Oblivion get bashed hard by many players of Morrowind, And for a good reason, it choose apply a deep change and replace NPC giving directions, paper global map showing general position of key locations, indication panel, more. To use much simpler markers for anything plus a compass and a terrain design favoring more straight to target shown by compass. it has its plus but had its flaws too as:
- Excessive hand guiding.
- Lame abuse through very repetitive Hell gates.
- Very average combats.
- Most special gameplay mechanic added to sustain a few special quests, just borderline bad and with only merit to add something different.
- Crap exploration changed to tourism rush or rush to next target most often.
- Many ultra repetitive dungeons, obvious fillers.

Skyrim is just clearly overated, not that it is just bad, but the blindness on the big flaws is comical:
- So many bad quests, up to have only one faction providing a good series of quests.
- Very bad main story so annoying to follow.
- Very average combats, again.
- If its very special graphic style was marking, now it looks awfully weird.
- Idiot follower system with immortal followers but from friendly fire.
- A bunch of pathetic very superficial undeveloped followers.
- Totally dumb abuse of dragons, when clearly it's typical lore beast that need be rare.

Fallout 3 get bashed a lot, probably a lot because of the schism with FO1&2, in my opinion it isn't worth such a bad fame, but for sure it has its flaws.

Fallout 4 is overall better than FO3, but its main story is so weird, and the VATS system so annoying. It has more flaws but I forgot.

And then Starfield, with also a bunch of flaws, but the problem is optional activities not achieved that well because the dev couldn't solve all the difficulties from having a good procedure generation, not just for the eyes, but the gameplay too.

That's the difference, no matter the flaws, for their release time, older RPG fo the dev had honest core gameplay element, and the few optional activities very bad, was small enough to be easily ignored.

Some complain targeted to Starfiled was valid for most of their previous RPG as 3D animations, or writing not at top but for a few parts.

But there's really a difference, and Starfield is clearly more flawed, even if played smartly (skip what's annoying, don't delay for some replay what's good, ignore the junk NG+, more) it can be as fun or even more fun.

[Berserk Breton]

Originally posted by Meow:

Originally posted by Berserk Belta:

Bethesda are good at making a particular spin on the RPG genre. Not "proper RPGs" that manage your experience, but a kind of flexible world, a backdrop against which you manage the experience.

But tbf that's exactly what a RPG should be, it should give us the freedom to experience a kind of Dungeon's and Dragons feel, the play who you want as you want, that no two games should be the same, the ability to pick your species, race, gender, if you want to join a Mage Guild or a fighters Guild, be a Stormcloak or an Imp, a vampire or a werewolf, marry the local miners daughter, or marry your companion...

The main story should simply be a guide, glue, spine or foundation to the world as we create our own journey in between.

Contrast this to an Adventure or Action Adventure Game where you play someone else's story, you play as Spider-man and become Spider-man, Or Batman and you begin to understand why he is who he is and what he does , like Arthur in RDR2, sure we can do whatever we want but it all makes sense in the stor and personality of his character with a beginning, middle and end.

I don't agree that it's necessarily what RPGs *should* be, and I like other kinds of RPG, but I see it as a more valuable part of the genre than some people realise.

Because while people criticize it lfor being dumbed down (which is correct in some senses) with the way it takes the systems out of your way, avoids locking you out of paths, and focuses on providing you with sandbox/emergent gameplay, the Bethesda-style RPG offers a particular kind of RP purity you don't find elsewhere.

You can be a kind of person the writers didn't even account for, set goals and drive gameplay the game's systems don't even recognise as mechanics, just "be" in the world etc etc.

The thing I find weird is when people compare it unfavourably to other types of RPG, as if they are competing to provide the same kind of experience, when they clearly aren't.

[HeyYou]

I think Beth peaked with Morrowind. Oblivion was unplayable for me at initial release... the level scaling was WAY over the top. I played for about 45 minutes, and quit. Then FCOM was released, and it DRAMATICALLY changed game play...... I logged thousands of hours in that game.... Skyrim was no longer an RPG. It was an action/adventure game with some RPG elements. It became more about player skill, rather than character skill.... Still and all, it was a fun game, and I have a lotta hours there too..... FO3 was fun, but, didn't hold my attention like previous titles... FO4? Yep. thousands of hours there too..... I loved the gun play, and building my OWN residences.... I didn't do overmuch with settlements.... Starfield has followed Beths trend more toward action/adventure, than RPG..... But, that strategy appeals to a much wider audience..... which means, more sales/money..... and that is what it has become all about.