I do hope they take the feedback from Fallout4 and focus more on role-playing systems in TES6.
I think Starfield is supposed to be their next project, not Elder Scrolls or Fallout. I’m kind of excited to see a new world from Bethesda.
True. Good points. My only defense is that with Fallout 4, there seemed to be a critical consensus that these were the biggest problems left, hence they are most likely to be noticed by Todd Howard and others at the studio as problems that finally need a solution.
First I’ve heard of Starfield, but I just looked it up and the leaks/fakes sound fantastic.
Even if Bethesda proper is working on Starfield, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it would be financial malpractice to allow the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises to lie fallow. They should be farmed out to studios like Obsidian or developed in parallel.
Linkes / Starfield dedicated thread?
Man, I hope so. Got a great big Mass Effect-shaped hole in my life.
Take with a gigaton of salt, applied intravenously. This is an unverified leak from an anonymous person about an unannounced game.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BethesdaSoftworks/comments/8cg8vn/information_on_starfield/
I don’t assume it is true, but if it was, that sounds horrible to me. I need less procedural generation and more handcrafted stuff in my games, not the other way around.
Plus this
Your character is silent
Instainterestkill.
Way I read it, the procedurally generated content was an “infinite dungeon” area that you could explore if you wanted, or ignore entirely.
A talking player character necessarily constrains role-playing choices. You can’t be a slug parasite mind-controlling a lizard-catman centaur if your only choices are male or female Shepherd. Fully-voiced games can be very deep but lack width, they offer less meaningful choices because everything needs to be voiced.
I’d say that depends on what silent means. Your character is “silent” in New Vegas too. It doesn’t mean they don’t have dialogue options, it’s just not voice acted.
Regarding second point, obviously if the character speaks like in New Vegas, it will be fine. I just hate the FarCry 5 nonsense.
People rightfully criticised FO4 dialogue, it would be super lame if Bethesda went the other extreme and made dumb mute with no dialogue.
As for procgen, I just always feel like it is a waste of my time. I wish they would not even waste time with it. Bioware wanted to do something similar with Mass Effect and it lead to hellish development that resulted in buggy, somewhat mediocre game, after they cut out all procgen anyway.
Ahh! I assumed it meant the PC wouldn’t be voiced, not that you’d be completely silent like Gordon Freeman. That would suck balls.
Perhaps. My point though is that if anyone knows how to use their resources most profitably, I’m betting it’s Zenimax, not a bunch of us on a gaming forum. It is, to me, totally immaterial whether NV had better X, Y, or Z, because as far as I can tell none of that matters in terms of selling games. Don’t mistake my views for disagreeing with your assessments of the games–I agree wholeheartedly with your critique. I just think these sorts of critiques are only relevant to us, not to publishers, in the main.
Oh I don’t think that’s true, even publishers are sensitive to review scores, and to a lesser extent criticism. And even large studios like Zenimax care about their craft, making the best games possible, entertaining their audience. They aren’t soulless parasites like Zynga.
I hear you, but I am unconvinced. Oh, I know they are sensitive to review scores–years as a game writer/editor taught me that!–but I don’t see much evidence that critical reception sets spending agendas, unless the critics align with sales numbers. And I am not suggesting these companies are soulless, given the talent and enthusiasm of the people that work there. But I am suggesting that their definition of good gameplay is often not shared by folks on forums like this, and that difference of opinion often gets expressed in binary terms–we are right, they (whose livelihoods depend on selling games) are wrong. That, I find hard to swallow.
But that sci-fi game linked above? I’d play that in a heart beat. I have far less affinity for handcrafted/narrative heavy games than some here I think. Procedural generation, tons of weapons, and enough context to frame the carnage, and I’m good.
If FO4 had amazing writing and quest design, and as a result got metacriticed at 95 like currently God of War is getting, do you think it would sell worse than it had?
I’m not sure I follow? Are you asking whether good reviews would have further improved the sales? I have no idea; I suppose so. Your assumption that better writing and quest design translates into better critical reaction, though, depends a lot on how those things get defined, and how different people value those ideas. I suppose, in a perfect world, a mediocre game that sells really well would, if made better, sell even more copies, but I have no idea how elastic the market actually is. It’s quite possible that no amount of improvement to FO4 would have increased sales, if the game’s sales already saturated the market.
Regarding Fallout 4 sales, it’s good to remember that A) Fallout Shelter caused a huge spike in awareness of the franchise which resulted in a sales boost that likely would happen regardless of the game’s quality, B) the most frequent criticism I see is that it’s not a bad game, just a bad Fallout game - a distinction that the general public usually doesn’t care about at all, and C) with successful franchises a poor entry usually doesn’t affect its own sales very much; it affects the next game’s sales. However, with Bethesda’s unpredictable development times for its RPGs there’s no way to predict how a future game might be affected; people have short memories. It is possible that the FO4 DLC was affected by negative reception but I haven’t seen any numbers that would indicate one way or another.
Mod coming on October 23. Prequel campaign to New Vegas, starts you off in Vault 18 in Los Angeles.
I thought it was mod for Fallout 4.