Fallout 76 General Thread - Bethesda does it again!

[vertexwindi]

The way I see it, Gamebryo powers Catherine and that's a rather polished game, so clearly it's not so much the fault of the engine as it's the fault of the higher-ups. If at this point Bethesda still can't figure out how to put out a polished product despite their well-recognized brands with high budgets and large teams behind them, then someone at the top just doesn't give a shit about QA. The company is just fucked.

 

[AnOminous]

The way I see it, Gamebryo powers Catherine and that's a rather polished game, so clearly it's not so much the fault of the engine as it's the fault of the higher-ups. If at this point Bethesda still can't figure out how to put out a polished product despite their well-recognized brands with high budgets and large teams behind them, then someone at the top just doesn't give a shit about QA. The company is just fucked.

Why bother when your retarded fans will apparently just gobble up any plate of shit you put in front of them?

 

[Absolutego]

The way I see it, Gamebryo powers Catherine and that's a rather polished game, so clearly it's not so much the fault of the engine as it's the fault of the higher-ups. If at this point Bethesda still can't figure out how to put out a polished product despite their well-recognized brands with high budgets and large teams behind them, then someone at the top just doesn't give a shit about QA. The company is just fucked.

I don't think a lot of people recommending Bethesda switch to a more modern engine realize how much of a monkey's paw request that actually is.

Can you imagine the shitpile a game like TES VI would be if, on top of all the QA issues Bethesda seems institutionally encourage, the developers now had to learn an entire new tool set?

 

[vertexwindi]

Why bother when your exceptional fans will apparently just gobble up any plate of shit you put in front of them?

Well at some point the goodwill runs out and your brand becomes toxic aka like what happened with Fallout 76. It doesn't help that we've seen a few very impressive games these past few years like BotW and RDR2 that prove you can make an ambitious open-world game that's functional and polished. In comparison Skyrim just doesn't impress any more. Maybe the real die-hard Bethesda fans will stick with them but I don't see normies doing the same if they have to shell out sixty dollarydoos for a game that barely runs on their PS4.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Can you imagine the shitpile a game like TES VI would be if, on top of all the QA issues Bethesda seems institutionally encourage, the developers now had to learn an entire new tool set?

See, the funny thing is: Bethesda is a 2.5 Billion dollar company.
I expect their programmers to be professional enough to pick up and familiarize themselves with a new engine if they have to.

It's not a matter of "can our programmers handle a new engine?" it's a matter of "how long can we squeeze money out of this ancient engine and avoid paying money to create or license a new one?".

At this point Gambryo is a giant 4D puzzle of bugs, bugfixes, workarounds, additions, changes, dead code that's no longer in use, and so on that I don't even want to imagine how fucking bloated it is. I can't imagine the time of familiarizing with a new one would not outweight dealing with the rotten, bloated carcass of an ancient engine, filled to the brim with code from people who might have retired a decade ago.

 

[Slap47]

It's so much worse than that. Gamebryo is over two decades old, with the first version in 97. It was already a generation old when Morrowind came out.

I can't imagine why they still use it. Literally, my imagination fails me. What possible situation could force them to keep using such shit tech?

A company that refuses to change and programmers that don't want to learn using their influence to convince the higher ups of following through with even more bad ideas.

 

[BScCollateral]

I don't think a lot of people recommending Bethesda switch to a more modern engine realize how much of a monkey's paw request that actually is.

I agree that switching engines isn't a no-brainer. Something similar contributed to the disaster which was Daikatana.

Still, there's a point where you can't keep the old flivver running.

 

[Absolutego]

See, the funny thing is: Bethesda is a 2.5 Billion dollar company.
I expect their programmers to be professional enough to pick up and familiarize themselves with a new engine if they have to.

It's not a matter of "can our programmers handle a new engine?" it's a matter of "how long can we squeeze money out of this ancient engine and avoid paying money to create or license a new one?".

At this point Gambryo is a giant 4D puzzle of bugs, bugfixes, workarounds, additions, changes, dead code that's no longer in use, and so on that I don't even want to imagine how fucking bloated it is. I can't imagine the time of familiarizing with a new one would not outweight dealing with the rotten, bloated carcass of an ancient engine, filled to the brim with code from people who might have retired a decade ago.

FYI, it's actually the Creation Engine, which is basically early 2000's Gamebryo with 15 years of development on Bethesda's part to specialize it in making their flavor of open world RPG. They'd probably have a more stable engine if they licensed whatever version of Gamebryo Gamebase is still offering to studios like Atlus instead of what they use in-house.

That aside, I agree about there being the need for either a serious overhaul of their engine or licensing a new one, I'm just pointing out that switching engines won't fix the underlying organizational issues that led to something like the Fallout 76 release. Half the reason Mass Effect: Andromeda was so fucked upon release was, besides EA foisting a brutal schedule on a newbie team, that they also were forced to use Frostbite, an engine designed for linear action shooters, to make an open world RPG and had to recreate all of the assets and tools they built for Unreal. The first game Bethesda put out post-switch would make Fallout 76 look mild.

 

[SJ 485]

FYI, it's actually the Creation Engine, which is basically early 2000's Gamebryo with 15 years of development on Bethesda's part to specialize it in making their flavor of open world RPG. They'd probably have a more stable engine if they licensed whatever version of Gamebryo Gamebase is still offering to studios like Atlus instead of what they use in-house.

Everyone knows they call it the creation engine but it's still the same old shit with a new coat of paint, the same rickety foundation with another layer built on top of it. Nobody cares what they call it, the point is that Bethesda refuses to develop new tech, they just keep adding pieces on top of this tower of frankenstein bullshit. If you hear "Bethesda is still using Gamebryo" you know that's a bad thing because it tells you they STILL can't move away from and stop relying on all this legacy tech, not because "gamebryo bad."

 

[Absolutego]

Everyone knows they call it the creation engine but it's still the same old shit with a new coat of paint, the same rickety foundation with another layer built on top of it. Nobody cares what they call it, the point is that Bethesda refuses to develop new tech, they just keep adding pieces on top of this tower of frankenstein bullshit. If you hear "Bethesda is still using Gamebryo" you know that's a bad thing because it tells you they STILL can't move away from and stop relying on all this legacy tech, not because "gamebryo bad."

I was more pointing out that referencing other recent games being made with Gamebryo isn't a valid comparison because Bethesda's had more than a decade to break the old version they already had. They've probably spent more time working on the engine than Gamebase originally did when they licensed it out to them.

 

[RJ MacReady]

Gamebryo is basically the Something Awful of game engines.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Something similar contributed to the disaster which was Daikatana.

Daikatana changed engines halfway through the production process. Bethesda would change engines in between games, I wouldn't call that very similar, especially when they have quite some time to familiarize themselves with the engine. I don't know how exactly Bethesda is structured, but put some of your guys to working on Game A with the old and tested engine while another, smaller team starts working on Game B with a new engine, mainly to get a grip of how to use it. Then have Team A switch over to B the moment Game A is released and let them work together for two years or so. The first game with the new engine might not be perfect, but dragging onwards the corpse of an engine that's double the age of your core audience is not going to play out well in the long run. Eventually, they will have to pick up a new engine and the longer they wait, the worse it gets.

 

[BALLZ-BROKEN]

The problem with Bethesda games isn't the technology, which is admittedly janky AF, it's a lack of vision. Their game design philosophy has to be "One step forward, two steps back" because for every good feature or mechanic they add, they take away two that actually worked in their previous game.

For example, in Oblivion when you completed the guild questlines you actually felt like you were the leader. You just sat on your ass and collected the gold. In Skyrim you had all the radiant quest bullshit but at least you got to see the shelf behind the Thieves Guildmaster's desk fill up with trinkets the more quests you did. In Fallout 4 you didn't even get that! The whole game just turns into Settlement Helper Simulator 2015. That's just one example I can think of off the top of my head.

Also, the writing isn't very good. Not that I'm expecting War and Peace outta these games, but I'm at least expecting lore that is somewhat consistent with the pre-established lore, but lore that is actually consistent with the actual game mechanics! Like in Fallout 4, one of the loading screen blurbs says something like "The Commonwealth has no justice system" but when you go to Diamond City you can go to the jail, which implies that there is some sort of law enforcement bureaucracy in place. Hell, you actually have to break someone out of there in a quest for fuck's sake! But when you accidentally steal an oil can next to Myrna's head the whole place turns into south side Chicago on Friday night!

 

[Raging Capybara]

The problem with Bethesda games isn't the technology, which is admittedly janky AF, it's a lack of vision. Their game design philosophy has to be "One step forward, two steps back" because for every good feature or mechanic they add, they take away two that actually worked in their previous game.

For example, in Oblivion when you completed the guild questlines you actually felt like you were the leader. You just sat on your ass and collected the gold. In Skyrim you had all the radiant quest bullshit but at least you got to see the shelf behind the Thieves Guildmaster's desk fill up with trinkets the more quests you did. In Fallout 4 you didn't even get that! The whole game just turns into Settlement Helper Simulator 2015. That's just one example I can think of off the top of my head.

Also, the writing isn't very good. Not that I'm expecting War and Peace outta these games, but I'm at least expecting lore that is somewhat consistent with the pre-established lore, but lore that is actually consistent with the actual game mechanics! Like in Fallout 4, one of the loading screen blurbs says something like "The Commonwealth has no justice system" but when you go to Diamond City you can go to the jail, which implies that there is some sort of law enforcement bureaucracy in place. Hell, you actually have to break someone out of there in a quest for fuck's sake! But when you accidentally steal an oil can next to Myrna's head the whole place turns into south side Chicago on Friday night!

The writing is fantastic. Failout 4 basically subverted your expectations and you - an idiotic manbaby - didn't understand the cleverness.

It's a Rian Johnson reference, guys. lol

 

[RJ MacReady]

The writing is fantastic. Failout 4 basically subverted your expectations and you - an idiotic manbaby - didn't understand the cleverness.

The genius of Todd "God" Howard is only apparent to the pure of soul, and the first step to enlightenment is self-sacrifice: $59.99 American dollars.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

The genius of Todd "God" Howard is only apparent to the pure of soul, and the first step to enlightenment is self-sacrifice: $59.99 American dollars.

Or 30 dollars if you wait 8 days.

 

[BALLZ-BROKEN]

The writing is fantastic. Failout 4 basically subverted your expectations and you - an idiotic manbaby - didn't understand the cleverness.

Well that sounds like something a synth would say!

 

[Medicated]

The problem with Bethesda games isn't the technology, which is admittedly janky AF, it's a lack of vision. Their game design philosophy has to be "One step forward, two steps back" because for every good feature or mechanic they add, they take away two that actually worked in their previous game.

For example, in Oblivion when you completed the guild questlines you actually felt like you were the leader. You just sat on your ass and collected the gold. In Skyrim you had all the radiant quest bullshit but at least you got to see the shelf behind the Thieves Guildmaster's desk fill up with trinkets the more quests you did. In Fallout 4 you didn't even get that! The whole game just turns into Settlement Helper Simulator 2015. That's just one example I can think of off the top of my head.

Also, the writing isn't very good. Not that I'm expecting War and Peace outta these games, but I'm at least expecting lore that is somewhat consistent with the pre-established lore, but lore that is actually consistent with the actual game mechanics! Like in Fallout 4, one of the loading screen blurbs says something like "The Commonwealth has no justice system" but when you go to Diamond City you can go to the jail, which implies that there is some sort of law enforcement bureaucracy in place. Hell, you actually have to break someone out of there in a quest for fuck's sake! But when you accidentally steal an oil can next to Myrna's head the whole place turns into south side Chicago on Friday night!

I find it funny of all the things to port from Skyrim, the guard telling you to go to jail wasn't in Fallout 4.

 

[AmpleApricots]

If you compare the line of these games, they just got simpler and simpler mechanics wise with every new title. Compare the Stuff in Morrowind with the Stuff in Fallout 4. I'm very surprised you could piece and mix/match armor together, knowing Bethesda it would've been more probable they don't let you change out of the vault suit.

I know I can claim what I want now, but the very first day I heard about Fallout76 I knew it will be a mess. It's like they looked at the multiplayer mods for Skyrim and thought "maybe we can do that too!" just like with the settlement mods in Skyrim they ended up implementing in FO4, along with the more detailed power armor mechanics some dude cooked up in a mod for New Vegas, where I saw them first. (Complete with helmet-HUD and everything) It's like they look at a bunch of random mods and put them into the game, without understanding why the people wanted these mods.

Everything about the Bethesda games from the broken engine to the writing just screams loveless and "lets put in the least effort possible". Patches always had a chance of breaking as much as they'd fix. There are still bugs present in Skyrim (the original one) they introduced with the last patch and then never bothered to fix. People really want to like these games as the worlds are huge and very detailed and you've got to be able to do a good game with that, right? Doesn't seem like it. When I played Fallout 4 I thought all the random shit to explore and the Power Armor stuff (which I liked) should be enough to make me keep playing this game,, but the story was so dumb that it just couldn't keep me in it.

 

[Feline Darkmage]

This was quite illuminating. Some of the stuff I didn't know about (just read this thread, previously just heard the major reports through youtubers: notably the nylon bag and the data breach). I also didn't realize how old and shitty Bethesda's engine was. I've basically only played Fallout 3/NV and like, Oblivion.

@Alan Pardew, can lolcow of the year awards next year have a special category for game dev/publisher studios that released horrible abominations or just acted lolcowish in general the last year or two?

Candidates:
-Bethesda (for well, THIS)
-EA (For the new Battlefront II game, and greed)
-Konami (in general but also for Metal Gear Survive)
-Sony (for the playstation classic debacle and censoring japanese boob games)
-Activision-Blizzard (for Diablo Immortal and increasing greed)
-TellTale Games (for literally shutting down because they couldn't budget and overworked their employees)
-and probably others, but that field is pretty cramped already