8 years since New Vegas and stupid Zenimax still has yet to produce a game to at least match it. Sad!
I did love that game. But really, we have to consider a few things. One, Zenimax is still in business, and apparently making money. Two, the games they have been making haven’t pleased a lot of people nearly as much as stuff like NV. This leads to, three, the fact that the mainstream game market is perfectly fine with what Zenimax has been making, and there is no compelling business reason for them to devote resources to something like New Vegas, if they can be successful doing other, presumably less costly, projects.
…like Elder Scrolls Online? I mean… Seems like a pretty big project. not sure this argument holds much water @TheWombat =)
FO3 was my first RPG in forever and I loved it. I never really got into the story in NV, it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t as emotional as FO3.
I haven’t played FO4 so I can’t compare.
My problem with your thesis is that New Vegas was most likely the cheapest RPG they ever made - completely reused engine and most assets, smaller team, 18 months devtime from pitch to ship, and it sold around 5 million copies at launch (now of course much higher). If I was a Zenimax executive, contracting Obsidian again to make more spin-offs would be a nobrainer. But maybe they didn’t want to do that after Avellone spilled the beans on the metacritic “fuck your bonus” gaffe.
Ok, so then, um, why haven’t they made anything you guys like as much since then? The attitude seems to be that they must be doing something wrong. They are in business to make money. I assume, as they are still in business, they are making money. If they are doing so, and not making games you like, then maybe your tastes aren’t in line with the rest of the gaming public? I mean, people always make it sound like the company is stupid and leaving money on the table by not making your favorite type of game. I’d suggest that they aren’t making those games because they make more money making something else.
For what it’s worth, I’d love more games like New Vegas. But I have enjoyed the other stuff Zenimax has done since then too. I just don’t see that there is much beyond your argument than “we want different games than you are making.” Well, i want a pony, too.
As would I. I consider NV the best of the first person Fallouts and would love another just like it.
Once again…
New Vegas sold 5 million at launch. The fact that it was much better than FO4 writing-wise did not impede on its ability to make money (imagine that). It has nothing to do with tastes. Just that for some reason, after New Vegas, Zenimax pretty much stopped working with external studios. I don’t know what that reason is, and I am not saying they are not making money, but I have a hard time believing that if they gave Obsidian another 30 million to make new Fallout, they would lose money on it, given that NV brought back 300 million in revenue in a month.
(obviously my posts assume that Obsidian would be willing to work with them again, but given what Feargus often says, they most likely would, albeit perhaps with more favourable contract that does not cause a bonus loss due to single metacritic point).
Yeah, I get you. Sorry if I seemed a bit snarky. I just happen to think that A) these companies are in the money making business, not the game business; games are what they do to make money, and if they could grow lettuce or carve wooden monkeys more profitably, they’d do that; and B) whatever decisions they make about what to make or not to make must make sense for them, in their context, and thus, while I may not like those decisions, it is fairly silly to accuse them however indirectly of making bad decisions. It’s not my return on investment that is at stake.
So when, as you paint the picture, a company turns out a critically-acclaimed, and apparently profitable, game, but then does not go back to that formula for some reason, I just assume they have their reasons. I fully support making known one’s preferences, and trying to persuade a company to do something you want it to do, but I just don’t see much point in acting like these decisions are necessarily bad ones–for the company involved.
They may have good reasons we are not privy to. They may also just be making bad decisions for spurious reasons. We will doubtless never know.
Wait a sec. New Vegas sold 5 million at launch? I loved the game but I have to call… well I have to call further research. Fallout 4 mechanics, animation, and gameplay (if not story, writing, and environment) was a lot better. 4 Was a grade A release no matter what we think about the game. New vegas was not. I’ll research a bit and come back.
Quick research: Fallout New Vegas did indeed sell 5 million copies helped Bethesda with tons of money. Drop in the bucket compared to Fallout 4.
My guess would be that someone high up simply made a decision to only do inhouse development because it gives them greater control or whatever. Hence trying to blackmail Human Head and failing, but suceeding at buying id, arkane, tango, machinegames etc.
Ironically though, none of the games made by these internal studios, as amazing as they are (particularly Dishonored and Prey) made half as much money as New Vegas, their last externally developed game, did.
Of course, Bethesda Game Studio is still insanely successful with FO4 selling some insane shitton. But critically it is their lowest rated game in 20 years (of BSG, not Zenimax as a whole).
But anyway, them making Fallout 4 did not preclude them hiring Obsidian to make another game. But…nope.
Were most of those sales in the early days? If so, then it would have to be because F:NV was so good and it has been a long time since the last Fallout game. I hope the realise that and do not think that F4 is an amazing game and a model for future fallout game.
I would hope this as well. Unfortunately, it may well be likely that another game more similar to FO4 than to NV would make another huge bucket of money, and thus, that’s where the arrow will point. About the only way to incentivize a company to do something is to show that it will make them more money than something else.
I still feel like you are looking at it the wrong way. What were FO4’s issues that were criticized the most?
The writing, dialogue and quest design. I seriously doubt that FO4 would sell any worse, if these three aspects had NV-like quality, while keeping rest of the stuff. It is not either/or, if Bethesda hires Chris Avellone to write next Fallout (like they already hired him to help out on Prey) and some other great writers, then the game can be fantastic, AND sell same or more as FO4.
Plus there’s nothing out there that would lead me to believe Bethesda won’t do that. With each iteration of their games, I feel like they’ve done a great job with handling what was previously their weakest points. Morrowind’s weakest points were things like Cliff Racers and the game becoming too easy too fast. By the time I hit level 20, I could kill anything and everything in the game with the tools I had gathered. They fixed that in Oblivion. Oblivion’s biggest problem was their level scaling was way over the top, and their combat was still kind of stilted. Skyrim fixed that with better melee combat, and much better level-scaling so that it was still open-world, but still had extremes of weak enemies and strong enemies. Skyrim’s weakest points were… I’m not sure on this. Maybe someone else can fill in the blanks. Character animations?
Fallout 3’s real time combat was kind of lame compared to real shooters, and despite a good story, there was no real sense of a rebuilding civilization after all those years of lawlessness. Fallout 4 really improved the real time shooting aspect and built the game around the concept of rebuilding settlements and restarting civilization. Fallout 4’s weakest points are apparently the writing, dialog and quest design. So hopefully those will be addressed in the next iteration.
Except those have been their biggest weak points for the history of the studio.
Those have been weak, but I disagree that they were the biggest weak points. They had a lot wrong with more of the fundamental mechanics in early games, and I think those were bigger deals. Now that those are addressed, a rising tide will lift all boats, I hope. Now they can finally get to this stuff because their game mechanics and game balance and such are in a much better place.
I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that those things will be any more of a priority than they have historically been, nor that they have the internal talent to execute at a higher level and have just focused those people elsewhere. And that’s assuming they don’t have new things they want to try mechanically in future games, which they have typically done every game.