Bethesda game development is outdated

[JF]

@Title

[DANEDANGER]

Post like this are outdated

[CurrySpirals]

And how many games have you developed? Curious what your knowledge base of video game development is, that you’ve formulated this opinion off of.

[PortalShifter]

And will always be as long as they continue using the Creation engine.

[Biff]

I mean ya it has been for a while. The charm comes from the world and NPCs which is why Starfield is such a bad Bethesda game.

[🐠🍑]

Whoever is writing for them should be fired. But I doubt that would change anything since the execs probably demand a story that is safe, PG/PG-13 and marketable.

[trevorbergershank]

I quite like Starfield; but still cannot argue with this.

A standout thing for me is what they have naively tried to do with the core concept - they've attempted to create an entire galaxy but have totally underestimated how immersion-killing it is when you don't actually capture everything within it - the game reminds you of this absolutely everywhere.

The total population of the 'Settled Systems' is probably about 1000 people at most - the 'cities' are tiny and could not support a populace in any way, shape or form - where are all ship manufacturers and company shipyards and factories? Where are weapon manufacturer factories for that matter? We hear about 'Megacorps' but only really see two in-game, where are the rest? I could go on and on and on.....

[lizzo(overturned bans x 69)]

couldn't agree more, that 25 year old grandfather clock game engine isn't helping bethesda's future out one bit. the formula was outdated 10 years ago its complete trash.

[Velique]

It is. But Fallout London shows that if BGS weren't so resoundingly mid, they could still make compelling games with the Creation engine. It didn't help that they seem to have hired rainbow parade liberals.

[Viper]

Originally posted by Velique:

It is. But Fallout London shows that if BGS weren't so resoundingly mid, they could still make compelling games with the Creation engine. It didn't help that they seem to have hired rainbow parade liberals.

Maybe you should find another hobby if you expect games to fit in your little safe space. There called stories. No game is going to be what you want.

[patrick68794]

Originally posted by Velique:

It is. But Fallout London shows that if BGS weren't so resoundingly mid, they could still make compelling games with the Creation engine. It didn't help that they seem to have hired rainbow parade liberals.

Fallout London is horrendously broken and terribly designed lol it's a perfect example of what not to do for actual game developers.

[Blackcompany]

Bethesda has some serious issues:

The games they make have to TELL you there's a huge society there, because the tech they use to make them can't SHOW you that. In a visual medium, they can't show their world building work.

The engine is full of old code, and I doubt many people making games at Bethesda have any idea what that old code does. Most of the people who wrote it are probably gone.

The engine cannot seem to handle modern rendering or animations. Both are extremely dated.

Their game design philosophy has not aged well, and has grown every bit as tired as Ubisoft. IT just took longer for them to feel it, because they take longer to make games. Everything is so formulaic. Every story is a generic chosen one. Every town is full of lazy people who can't walk 50 feet and need you to do it for them. The economy is always a disaster and combat lacks balance or progression...not to mention the godawful, boring, early 2000's 'numbers go up' skill trees.

Bethesda is a tired has-been. If they weren't making games with such unprecedented player freedom, and mod support, no one would even know they exist.

[HeyYou]

Originally posted by 🍌:

Whoever is writing for them should be fired. But I doubt that would change anything since the execs probably demand a story that is safe, PG/PG-13 and marketable.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with this.... A lot of features from previous games are now gone. Stripping bodies leaves them fully clothed.... blowing them up with grenades/mines leaves them in one piece. What happened to 'adult' themes in BGS games???

As for the population though..... Beth has NEVER had anything resembling a 'real' population count. Even Capitol City in Cyrodiil had only around 20 to 30 permanent inhabitants.....

I do miss schedules though.... It isn't really immersive seeing the same folks in the stores, both workers, and visitors, 24/7/365..... People didn't need to eat or sleep any more??? (not that I engage in either activity in-game.... so, I suppose.....)

[Heretic]

Originally posted by trevorbergershank:

I quite like Starfield; but still cannot argue with this.

A standout thing for me is what they have naively tried to do with the core concept - they've attempted to create an entire galaxy but have totally underestimated how immersion-killing it is when you don't actually capture everything within it - the game reminds you of this absolutely everywhere.

The total population of the 'Settled Systems' is probably about 1000 people at most - the 'cities' are tiny and could not support a populace in any way, shape or form - where are all ship manufacturers and company shipyards and factories? Where are weapon manufacturer factories for that matter? We hear about 'Megacorps' but only really see two in-game, where are the rest? I could go on and on and on.....

I think this criticism is pretty legit. In Fantasy games like Skyrim, and Post Apocalypse ones like Fallout, the complete lack of people is expected for the most part. Starfield does its best to make the cities feel lived in and populated, but the scale is off for what is allegedly taking place in the galaxy. I think they wanted to honour the "Open World" idea too much when it came to exploration. The large populated planets should be covered in habitats of all kinds, and your ability to land willy-nilly on them should be heavily restricted, and the areas you could land in those cases, should have custom assets on the horizon to remind you that there are billions of people around. Probably have some ships flying through the sky on a regular basis, someone off-roading through the wilderness that you might come across.

I think thats the real problem with Starfield. The delivery is all wrong for what the narrative tries to tell. Had the narrative been more along the lines of "Your species used a special wormhole to settle in a new galaxy and there are only a small handful of settlements so far" it would make sense. But "Earth crapped the bed, so you magically dispersed among the stars." is just a bad set up.

[Blackcompany]

Originally posted by Heretic:

Originally posted by trevorbergershank:

I quite like Starfield; but still cannot argue with this.

A standout thing for me is what they have naively tried to do with the core concept - they've attempted to create an entire galaxy but have totally underestimated how immersion-killing it is when you don't actually capture everything within it - the game reminds you of this absolutely everywhere.

The total population of the 'Settled Systems' is probably about 1000 people at most - the 'cities' are tiny and could not support a populace in any way, shape or form - where are all ship manufacturers and company shipyards and factories? Where are weapon manufacturer factories for that matter? We hear about 'Megacorps' but only really see two in-game, where are the rest? I could go on and on and on.....

I think this criticism is pretty legit. In Fantasy games like Skyrim, and Post Apocalypse ones like Fallout, the complete lack of people is expected for the most part. Starfield does its best to make the cities feel lived in and populated, but the scale is off for what is allegedly taking place in the galaxy. I think they wanted to honour the "Open World" idea too much when it came to exploration. The large populated planets should be covered in habitats of all kinds, and your ability to land willy-nilly on them should be heavily restricted, and the areas you could land in those cases, should have custom assets on the horizon to remind you that there are billions of people around. Probably have some ships flying through the sky on a regular basis, someone off-roading through the wilderness that you might come across.

I think thats the real problem with Starfield. The delivery is all wrong for what the narrative tries to tell. Had the narrative been more along the lines of "Your species used a special wormhole to settle in a new galaxy and there are only a small handful of settlements so far" it would make sense. But "Earth crapped the bed, so you magically dispersed among the stars." is just a bad set up.

Each city should have been its own worldspace, with a market area we could explore. Then the rest of the city could have been fake backdops with moving vehicles or walkways and tons of NPC's glimpsed here and there. Like in MAss Effect, at the Citadel.

Instead, we got the hamlet of New Atlantis and the medieval holdover village of Akila City. To say nothing of Hopetown, with literally nowhere to actually, you know...live.

[Mooman]

Starfield's problem isn't outdated design, it's problem was BGS tried to do something new.

For Starfield the company grew much larger than it has ever been with the majority of that 'growth' being in the form of offsite co-development studios.

This need to work with seperate and distant dev teams annoyed many of their long term staff. Lots of them quit Bethesda during or just after development of the game.

If they kept their outdated design philosophy instead of trying to grow into a new co-development studio the result would have been different.