The Elder Scrolls

[Swingletonthesimpleton]

Since vehicle building is now a thing in bethesda games, i wonder how far they'll go with it.

If elder scrolls 6 takes place in hammerfell, maybe we'll have ship building. Obviously it being a boat you won't be attaching rooms to the sides or bottom of it but you can still snap rooms on the inside part of it.

The random generation of planet terrains wouldn't be a TES thing unless we're going back to realms and that they planned to have random pocket dimensions as part of the game, like random planes of Oblivion under not Dagon.

Honestly i hope they do that it sounds fun. just explore the infinite planes of oblivion. Go through 1 portal its a lush paradise and the next its a plane inhabited by giant maneating spiders. And cheese.

where the returned dwemer or the thalmor are enslaving the redguards. Unlike everywhere else in Tamriel, Hammerfell will be strangely homogenous.

Well i wouldn't be too mad if its the thalmor enslaving people as that pretty much matches up with what we've seen of them already.

If it was the dwemer? Yeah that would just be bullshit. The dwemer barely had any interest in gods, much less random nigger pirates. And yeah they kept the snow elves after blinding them but the snow elves begged to stay there and being experimented on with underground fungus was the price for entry so that was their own fault.

 

[Ghost of RBG]

Most of the talk around Skyrim's first DLC is it was halfway made in the final hours of development, continuing on once the game went gold. I don't think the opinion has really changed. With how werewolf was a thing again but vampire was barebones, it just sort of struck a lot as withheld or at least planned during development. The actual DLC itself mostly feels relatively low effort using textures from vanilla and a seemingly small amount of new anything. No one thought of Dawnguard as "saving Skyrim". It was mostly thought of as a complete game and the DLC just being something new to do, if boring. Dragonborn was seen as the one that improved the core a bit and was "new" despite it mostly being memberberries.

Hilariously Bethesda did a game jam after Skyrim's release where they showed all the shit that developers could add in with only a week of work. Obviously, they have never done this again because it makes them look horrible. A lot of familiar faces from updates and DLC are here like ranged and magic killcams, werebears, the werewolf perk tree, vampire lord, dragon riding, horse combat, and Hearthfire. Some of the other ones were butchered and implemented as creation club slop while others like seasonal foliage were left to the realm of mods.
It even ends with this absolutely stellar quote:

This was just a taste. It was one of the most productive, creative weeks we've had. What if we worked like that more often? What could we do?

Oddly enough, the werewolf perk tree and vampire lord form seem to have less content in Dawnguard. The werewolf perk tree has 17 dots on it, at least 4 of which are upgradeable, while Dawnguard's only has 8 with one being upgradeable.

Vampire lord is also shown to be able to summon imps, which is not present in Dawnguard.

They showed this all off in 2012 but the actual development of all of this content took place in 2011. Youtube link and UESP link containing a full list of features provided.
Youtube
UESP

TLDR Vampire lord looks and feels like ass because it was literally made in a week.

 

[Epoch]

Obviously, they have never done this again because it makes them look horrible.

Wow you are right, the fact that they re-used a lot of this for DLC or updates with seemingly little changes also makes them look terrible as well (Arvak and Goblins just being re-coloured from the jam). What are they doing for most of the development time when this is the result of them actually trying? Just dicking around for most of it?

Some of those things have a lot more effort put in them than others

To clarify in case I get erm aktually'd. I am aware that game development in a game jam environment is much faster paced than a full project because you aren't concerned about the fine details of optimization or QA and all that, but the fact that all the features that got added are seemingly unchanged from the game jam just paints a picture that Bethesda isn't really doing as much as they could be for all the time they spend working on these games.

 

[Ghost of RBG]

What are they doing for most of the development time when this is the result of them actually trying? Just dicking around for most of it?

That's pretty much the golden question with Bethesda. There're dozens or hundreds of hours of interviews of Bethesda employees outlining major production issues with every release, plus most of the interviews with senior staff like Todd and Emil containing unintentionally embarrassing admissions. My guess is that a big part of it is doing away with design documents because you're too much of a sperg to outline how systems should generally work or what their goals are so you just have to hope that everyone in the ever-growing studio can just psychically intuit your ideas and create coherent gameplay systems that really work together. Todd used to say that with every game they "started over", which is mostly just a marketing speak but I do think that it partially explains why so many promising systems that just need improvements are shafted for the new gimmick of the day like 4-choice dialogue or 1241241 planets or whatever. Pre-production started for TESVI before Starfield even released, and Bethesda said they had already outlined major things like the intro or some systems before that.

Bethesda has so many missed opportunities and blunders that you can literally make a living outlining them all.

Not like it matters. We all already know how TESVI will turn out. The signs were all there for Starfield if you read and watched what they were putting out. I'm sure the exact same thing will happen in two or three years when Bethesda starts showing promos for TESVI:Hammerfell. Even if Bethesda magically had the engine in a perfect state and had perfect gameplay and combat the writing and story and the world would still be bland at best because nobody there cares.

Well, at least I hope its Hammerfell and not Elsweyr.

 

[Epoch]

My guess is that a big part of it is doing away with design documents because you're too much of a sperg to outline how systems should generally work or what their goals are so you just have to hope that everyone in the ever-growing studio can just psychically intuit your ideas and create coherent gameplay systems that really work together.

Does Todd still think its a tiny team where everyone works in the same room together? Design documents are essential for the people working on a project to actually know what the hell they are doing and what is going on. They don't even need to make a complete one at the start, even if its just a basic general idea of what they want and they add to it as the game progresses development. A lot of the time design documents are only finished after the heavy development has finished as things stop changing and systems are in place and glued together. It may be optional for little tiny teams or close knit studios, but for giant AAA open world games full of different systems interacting, not having any design document is just beyond retarded, like how are they still running their studio retarded.

I am amazed Starfield actually came out and functions, because that entire game is a disjointed clusterfuck, probably because nobody knew what the game actually was because they had no design outline to follow. Made even worse by the fact they outsourced a lot of it, I can't imagine how little those outsource companies had to work with, Jesus Christ.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

Hilariously Bethesda did a game jam after Skyrim's release...

Yeah, I remembered that and part of it being people's justification for why the features of Dawnguard were barebones or ass was because they were just shit slapped on at the tail end or after it went gold.

But holy shit, I forgot just how much of the game jam was flat out reused and I read this exact UESP page a decade ago. Jesus Christ, this is more egregious than I committed to memory. I thought they just added in horse combat in an update and slapped some of it into addons. I didn't realize all of it was just parted out like this.

 

[Ghost of RBG]

Does Todd still think its a tiny team where everyone works in the same room together? Design documents are essential for the people working on a project to actually know what the hell they are doing and what is going on. They don't even need to make a complete one at the start, even if its just a basic general idea of what they want and they add to it as the game progresses development. A lot of the time design documents are only finished after the heavy development has finished as things stop changing and systems are in place and glued together. It may be optional for little tiny teams or close knit studios, but for giant AAA open world games full of different systems interacting, not having any design document is just beyond retarded, like how are they still running their studio retarded.

It’s bizarre given that Rolstone used them during Morrowind and Oblivion’s development. Goodall makes specific mention to design docs for the Great Houses and some general “no-no’s” for quest writing. Rolstone did an interview in 2011 but I don’t know if it gives more info about his methods as lead designer.

I would love for Todd to explain exactly how Bethesda is laid out and what specific roles do, but I doubt we’ll get much more than we already have. Certain eccentricities like no dedicated quest writers work a lot better when one guy does most of the faction quests and another guy does most of the side quests, for example.

There’ll probably be some 5 hour documentary in 20 years when Bethesda dissolves or something that puts everything into context.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

I'm playing through AE, and it has this really annoying sound bug. I can't hear things directly behind me. Not just speech, either, If I'm standing next to a waterfall and turn away from it, I can't hear it at all. This wasn't a problem on LE. Is this a problem on everyone's game? Or is it WINE being shit (for a change)?

 

[Epoch]

I'm playing through AE, and it has this really annoying sound bug. I can't hear things directly behind me. Not just speech, either, If I'm standing next to a waterfall and turn away from it, I can't hear it at all. This wasn't a problem on LE. Is this a problem on everyone's game? Or is it WINE being shit (for a change)?

I'll be honest I have no clue what vanilla Skyrim sounds like anymore because I always install this mod immediately: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26916

I don't know if that will work on WINE. Maybe try Proton instead? Idk how Linux stuff works beyond the basics.

 

[Super Hans v2]

It’s bizarre given that Rolstone used them during Morrowind and Oblivion’s development. Goodall makes specific mention to design docs for the Great Houses and some general “no-no’s” for quest writing. Rolstone did an interview in 2011 but I don’t know if it gives more info about his methods as lead designer.

I would love for Todd to explain exactly how Bethesda is laid out and what specific roles do, but I doubt we’ll get much more than we already have. Certain eccentricities like no dedicated quest writers work a lot better when one guy does most of the faction quests and another guy does most of the side quests, for example.

There’ll probably be some 5 hour documentary in 20 years when Bethesda dissolves or something that puts everything into context.

Unless things changed, which I doubt, nobody that touches the game has a defined role; anybody can contribute to anything. Which is great when you have a small team, for example one of the art ladies did A Brush With Death, often an example of peoples' favorite Oblivion quests. But when you have hundreds and hundreds of team members, you get a mess like Starfield because nobody can feasibly do anything on their own.

 

[Epoch]

Unless things changed, which I doubt, nobody that touches the game has a defined role; anybody can contribute to anything. Which is great when you have a small team, for example one of the art ladies did A Brush With Death, often an example of peoples' favorite Oblivion quests. But when you have hundreds and hundreds of team members, you get a mess like Starfield because nobody can feasibly do anything on their own.

Perhaps they are trying to copy Valve's method of game development? But the people at Valve are actually very talented, and its their perfectionism that leads to Valve never releasing anything. The Final Hours of Half-Life Alyx is a good read if you are interested in Valve's struggles with releasing things.

Half-Life Alyx credits 393 people, but that is really just all Valve employees and the tiny bit of outsource work was specialists working at big AAA studios, not Indian pajeet teams. When the entire game is done by a single studio where everyone works together then having no defined roles works since people fall in to place, but Valve also had a design document.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/143668/half-life-alyx/credits/windows/

 

[Friendly Primarina]

I'll be honest I have no clue what vanilla Skyrim sounds like anymore because I always install this mod immediately: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26916

I don't know if that will work on WINE. Maybe try Proton instead? Idk how Linux stuff works beyond the basics.

I don't use headphones but this 100 percent fixed the problem. Thank you so much for the recommendation! For anyone else using WINE, you will need to add a dll override for x3daudi1_7.dll. Set it to "Native, then builtin."

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Well, Kurt Kuhlmann has left Bethesda Game Studios.

This actually leaves me much more worried about Elder Scrolls VI than anything else. For those who don't know, when asked if there was a bible for Elder Scrolls Bethesda employees would say he WAS the bible.

It doesn't sound like he had another job lined up and is actively looking. I didn't think much of Pete Hines retiring or Will Shen moving onto another studio, but this makes me wonder if there isn't more going on over there now.

Edit: Kirkbride claims on reddit that Kuhlmann was asked to leave Bethesda, but says it's not his place to elaborate further. He also said these in various posts

"Kurt was the best writer that TES ever had. He was a torchbearer of keeping Tamriel’s more unique qualities and ideas alive. (No surprise as he has came up with so many of them.) His leaving will be to the creative detriment of 6. Such a massive mistake letting him go."

"With Kurt gone, my faith in TES6 has cratered."

Kirkbride is also claiming that Elder Scrolls VI doesn't even have a real story outline yet.

(Kirkbrides reddit account if anyone wants to take a look)

 

[Epoch]

Well, Kurt Kuhlmann has left Bethesda Game Studios.

This actually leaves me much more worried about Elder Scrolls VI than anything else. For those who don't know, when asked if there was a bible for Elder Scrolls Bethesda employees would say he WAS the bible.

It doesn't sound like he had another job lined up and is actively looking. I didn't think much of Pete Hines retiring or Will Shen moving onto another studio, but this makes me wonder if there isn't more going on over there now.

Edit: Kirkbride claims on reddit that he was asked to leave Bethesda, but says it's not his place to elaborate further...

Sounds to me like Microsoft is cleaning house of all the undesirables (white men who are actually creative) now that Starfield is out and no longer doing anything that was being done before the acquisition. ES6 is going to be terrible.

Either that or Emil is pulling a Druckman and pushing everyone else out of the company, but he doesn't strike me as that kind of person.

 

[Übertroon]

I definitely smell the hand of Microsoft, every single studio they aquire they gut and then wonder why the goose is no longer laying golden eggs

 

[TVB]

I definitely smell the hand of Microsoft, every single studio they aquire they gut and then wonder why the goose is no longer laying golden eggs

See also Rare. Aside from the likes of Viva Pinata, Rare could not capture the same magic like they did in the 90s once Microsoft bought the company

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

Viva Pinata

They shat out 4 games in a year in that series and burnt it out in record time.

 

[TVB]

They shat out 4 games in a year in that series and burnt it out in record time.

And lest we forget the cartoon that came out in that same time

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

So do you think Emil is going to name the new protagonist Desertborn?

 

[The Hero of Kvatch]

So do you think Emil is going to name the new protagonist Desertborn?

The Hero of The-town-made-of-tents.