The Elder Scrolls

[dustnight]

Worldbuilding like not showing what the first town in the game eats, or why they haven't moved over to the nearby pre-war suburb like Silver does, when the game clearly states the water is better there. This is even funnier when you remember that even Oblivion had farms, there is zero in Fallout 3 unless you could some ruined farmhouses with no crops.
Unless you're being sarcastic, hard to tell when half the Fallout 3 fans are just ultra ironic gigachad avatars on twitter with contrarian /v/ opinions made out of spite.

I think he means level design. Which it is, the only area that F3 is better than NV. Even the most transexual NVfags agree with that.

 

[30+GameOvers]

I think he means level design. Which it is, the only area that F3 is better than NV. Even the most transexual NVfags agree with that.

Level design of what, precisely? Open world, dungeons, towns? It's a mixed bag, but as far as making a believable world, Fallout 3 really is just Oblivion with guns, where as Fallout New Vegas resembles the older two titles, which have actual world building and decently written setting. Fallout 2 has a ching-chong chinatown where asians and scientologists are having a power struggle and New Reno, the most stereotypical mafia town ever made to the point where it's cartoony sometimes. The difference between making these a theme park attraction and somehow making it all fit within a game world is a matter of skill that Bethesda simply doesn't have, the rest of the locations in Fallout 2 are not just written well but provide the second deepest political intrigue you will experience in the franchise, second only to NV and it's faction focused story. TES has the same problem, in a vacuum a lot of these locations are fine, but when they are all together in one open space, few of them make sense as to how they're there or how they function and they rarely play off one another except for an odd quest that has you travel between two locations. Last TES game with decent world building was Morrowind and then Daggerfall before that.

As for towns, there is maybe 3 towns in Fallout 3 and they're all rustbuckets with barely anyone living there, meanwhile Fallout New Vegas has pretty much just Vegas/Freeside but they both feel fantastic and lived in. Then there is a whole lot of smaller towns and once again, they might not feel grand but they feel like someone lives there and that will continue with or without the player. Both games have a pretty empty open world but in this case, that's a good thing as unexplored 200 year old ruins make little sense and once again, this messes with world building big time(Fallout 4 was even worse in this regard than Fallout 3). I will relent that dungeons were better designed in Fallout 3 since there is a whole lot of them, same with combat arenas. Then again, Fallout 3 combat sucks without TTW so that's a moot point.


If there is anything that Fallout 3 actually excels at over New Vegas that would be the exploration and atmosphere the game creates. In that, Fallout 3 is unmatched and a whole lot of fun with TTW/mods to that play well with turning the game into a Stalker lite. However, when you're starting to think about how the game world works or how a community in the game survives or why the hell there is 200 year old cereal boxes laying around everywhere, that's when the cracks start showing, a post-post apocalypse experience of the West Coast will always have Bethesda beat since it's simply more believable, even when they throw wacky things into the mix as well. Bethesda made Oblivion with guns, which is what they were most qualified to do at the time, and I actually don't have a problem with that. What I do have an issue with is that by the time Fallout 4 released, that game still did not have an identity of it's own, so it became Skyrim with guns that continues the plot elements of Fallout 3 if you squint hard enough, making it Fallout 3.5 and not much more. Following that logic, I don't see TES6 being anything more than Skyrim 1.5, which is going to make people even less happy than Fallout 4 did considering that the wait is not only longer but Skyrim already has a bajillion mods which makes the new game already obsolete at launch unless there is massive improvements to the formula. Once again, Oblivion OG vs Remaster scenario.

Anyways, if there is anything to take away from what I wrote, is that Fallout 3 is a great Fallout New Vegas DLC and not much more. That comes from someone who regularly replays the vanilla game with DLC on the 360 btw so I have the pleasure of regularly being reminded of the game's flaws and the few positives it has.

 

[Caddo Cobgang]

I hope Starfield serves a good purpose as a wake up call for Todd and the crew

I liked Starfield but its biggest problem was the fact that most of it was procedurally generated, 1000s of planets and moons don't mean shit when all of them just have 2 PoIs that look like the exact same fort you would find on any other planet in the game, the game felt like your average Skyrim or Fallout 4 experience but with the worst aspects of Daggerfall, for TES VI they need to avoid doing that at all costs, make the map as interesting as possible, have all the cities look unique and interesting and have dungeons actually be cool, Skyrim's were ok even if most of them were relatively small, if i go into a dungeon, kill some bandits and loot a chest, and then go to another dungeon, it should look relatively different from the one I was at before

 

[Übertroon]

I liked Starfield but its biggest problem was the fact that most of it was procedurally generated, 1000s of planets and moons don't mean shit when all of them just have 2 PoIs that look like the exact same fort you would find on any other planet in the game, the game felt like your average Skyrim or Fallout 4 experience but with the worst aspects of Daggerfall, for TES VI they need to avoid doing that at all costs, make the map as interesting as possible, have all the cities look unique and interesting and have dungeons actually be cool, Skyrim's were ok even if most of them were relatively small, if i go into a dungeon, kill some bandits and loot a chest, and then go to another dungeon, it should look relatively different from the one I was at before

I could have tolerated the boring planets and excessive loading screen, but I couldn't tolerate the snoozefest of a setting and story. It's easily one of the least interesting sci fi settings I've ever come across

 

[Problematic User Forever]

The repeat and copy/paste POI's were the problem with Starfield for me.

It's weird that for a company that became soooooo obsessed with random loot, that you can find the UC Listening Outpost very very easily and as long as you have like the 2nd rank of lock picking you can always find a couple high level assault rifles in the janitors closet because there is absolutely no change in any of the dungeons that they reuse over and over in the game.

 

[Caddo Cobgang]

but I couldn't tolerate the snoozefest of a setting and story.

I can somewhat agree with this, I thought the main quest was mostly a nothingburger, I think the religious allegories, especially towards the end of it were interesting but everything else felt meh at best, the faction quests were just ok and the general setting of a Cold War between Space Neolibs and Space Lolbertarians that are both dealing with a retarded Pirate Confederation didn't really catch my interest, TES and Fallout have far stronger lore, though to be fair there were more games in their respective series to flesh them out

The repeat and copy/paste POI's were the problem with Starfield for me.

agreed, it was my biggest problem with the game even though I liked it to some extent, it wasn't just boring to go from one star system to another and see the exact same building, it was almost immersion breaking, why the fuck would someone make a building with the exact same floor plan on a Moon on Uranus as a far-off desert planet millions of light years away,even for a society with FTL travel its nonsense

 

[Rick The Stick]

Anyways, if there is anything to take away from what I wrote, is that Fallout 3 is a great Fallout New Vegas

Jesus christ, new vegas fags can't even stick to the fallout thread. Weren't you bitching about people talking about outer worlds in the fallout thread?

 

[30+GameOvers]

I liked Starfield but its biggest problem was the fact that most of it was procedurally generated, 1000s of planets and moons don't mean shit when all of them just have 2 PoIs that look like the exact same fort you would find on any other planet in the game, the game felt like your average Skyrim or Fallout 4 experience but with the worst aspects of Daggerfall, for TES VI they need to avoid doing that at all costs, make the map as interesting as possible, have all the cities look unique and interesting and have dungeons actually be cool, Skyrim's were ok even if most of them were relatively small, if i go into a dungeon, kill some bandits and loot a chest, and then go to another dungeon, it should look relatively different from the one I was at before

Funny thing is it could be an amazing game if it had several hundred templates vs like 2 or 3. Imagine an entire galaxy worth of decent Bethesda dungeons, trick here is to have so many of them in a template that you would never get the same one in a given playthru. Or, do what Daggerfall did and have them be procedurally generated however have each planet be the same for everyone, ie randomly generated by Bethesda but no procedural generation on the planet itself for players outside of random encounter. This way, they could also have more of the planet be handcrafted as well once Bethesda knew what they wanted to do with it, instead of being able to land anywhere but having absolutely no reason to as every piece of land has to be a blank slate.

Of course, that would take effort so there is no way it could be done by modern Bethesda. Also, impossible to do without a central design document. That said, the game is still at least decent if you're looking for a mediocre dungeon crawler and absolutely nothing else. Outer Worlds is a perfect template for how to do a game like this: Each planet is composed of small open world zones, but they actually play a purpose in the story and have other quests and NPCs call back to them, not to mention that each outpost has it's own lore and reason for existing in the first place. You will never know why outpost #740525 was made in the first place or why it was overrun with space raiders in Starfield, it only exists to get you a little bit of loot and nothing else.

BTW this is most likely the route TES6 is going to take so get your butts ready. There is zero chance that modern day Bethesda can even match mediocrity of Skyrim again.

I could have tolerated the boring planets and excessive loading screen, but I couldn't tolerate the snoozefest of a setting and story. It's easily one of the least interesting sci fi settings I've ever come across

The very simple fix would be to let the player kill everyone and be able to complete the game by going to The Eye themselves to get the artifacts. This game was MADE for this, remember that you can reset the universe and try again if you want to complete the quests you failed or you killed the wrong NPC and now the questline is incompletable, or it would be the perfect game for this system if Bethesda actually let you fail any quests. I am not even sure there is a single quest you can technically fail in Starfield, I know you could in Fallout 4 but it was so difficult to fail a quest you would likely never have that happen unless it was a procedurally generated timed quest you just couldn't be bothered to do.

I can somewhat agree with this, I thought the main quest was mostly a nothingburger, I think the religious allegories, especially towards the end of it were interesting but everything else felt meh at best, the faction quests were just ok and the general setting of a Cold War between Space Neolibs and Space Lolbertarians that are both dealing with a retarded Pirate Confederation didn't really catch my interest, TES and Fallout have far stronger lore, though to be fair there were more games in their respective series to flesh them out

You are giving the game way too much credit. There is only 3 major religions in the game, one is the snake cultists that have no interaction in the game so they might as well be generic bandits with different combat barks, one "religion" is quite literally just urbanite atheists in the slums of Jemison(or whatever the capital city was called) and the last one is relevant to the late main quest and it doesn't really come up again. Also, the "cold war" setting is also much more interesting than what we actually got: Instead we got pozzed starship troopers vs space cowboys, except that starship troopers used to have space deathclaws for whatever reasons and space cowboys had mechs(which everyone in the galaxy stopped using because...? At least you can understand why everyone wanted space deathclaws banned from being used in warfare, that would be like banning tanks in modern day along with agent orange and white phosphorus, one of these is not like the other). I have no clue what that is all about, ironically enough the space pirate and space corporate questlines are much more interesting despite being smaller in scale since at least they have focus.

 

[Problematic User Forever]

agreed, it was my biggest problem with the game even though I liked it to some extent, it wasn't just boring to go from one star system to another and see the exact same building, it was almost immersion breaking, why the fuck would someone make a building with the exact same floor plan on a Moon on Uranus as a far-off desert planet millions of light years away,even for a society with FTL travel its nonsense

I can believe that in the future there would just be a bunch of pre fab buildings/layouts thrown around tbh

But just...*everything* being the exact same? Right down to skill books and weapons and trash stuff?

At the very least I would think they would at least have the items change depending on leveled lists and stuff.

I didn't *hate* Starfield. It has bare bones/stupid ass lore but that doesn't really bother me that much cause I'm creative enough to just make up shit in my head. I could have had (and did) have fun with the game just building ships and traveling around being a pretend bounty hunter or space trucker or whatever, but much like MGS V without mods the game world is too large with not enough content (even randomized) to justify it.

But yeah, how much time and money to make proc gen planets but you couldn't figure out how to proc gen more than like a handful of dungeon designs? I can't believe the tech isn't there, especially since the dungeons were generic as shit anyways.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

I could have tolerated the boring planets and excessive loading screen, but I couldn't tolerate the snoozefest of a setting and story. It's easily one of the least interesting sci fi settings I've ever come across

It's been boring and offensive to the mind. For example, the hidden problem with Gravdrives or whatever the fuck their called and how any planet can end up a desolate wasteland like Earth but just...doesn't. And no one found out about this issue, not that it matters because it's meaningless but holy shit man.

I liked Starfield but its biggest problem was the fact that most of it was procedurally generated, 1000s of planets and moons don't mean shit when all of them just have 2 PoIs that look like the exact same fort you would find on any other planet in the game, the game felt like your average Skyrim or Fallout 4 experience but with the worst aspects of Daggerfall, for TES VI they need to avoid doing that at all costs, make the map as interesting as possible, have all the cities look unique and interesting and have dungeons actually be cool, Skyrim's were ok even if most of them were relatively small, if i go into a dungeon, kill some bandits and loot a chest, and then go to another dungeon, it should look relatively different from the one I was at before

There was a video about Starfield I watched recently and the guy makes a good point in how out of touch Bethesda is, more specifically Todd. This was his "dream game", he can't seem to understand why people disliked it and the DLC. He didn't conclude that it was anything you said (which to me is one of Starfield's biggest issues since if the story is shit, which it is, I can ignore it and focus on the rest of the game like Fo4, but I can't with Starfield since everything else is shit), he just said "oh if we added cars early it would have offset a lot of the negativity" or something.

Regarding all the procedurally generated garbage on otherwise completely barren wastelands of planets, it comes from that attitude that Todd (and probably co.) has and a fundamental misunderstanding of why people want to go to space or like space exploration games. Todd is on record to have stated that the planets were dull on purpose because "astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there but they certainly weren't bored." He can't understand it was everything leading up to the destination rather than the destination itself, and even then the destinations are either copy-paste garbage or just largely mediocre.

It's weird that for a company that became soooooo obsessed with random loot, that you can find the UC Listening Outpost very very easily and as long as you have like the 2nd rank of lock picking you can always find a couple high level assault rifles in the janitors closet because there is absolutely no change in any of the dungeons that they reuse over and over in the game.

Case and point, the journey to the unknown is dull and the destination is just the same shit over and over. Copy-paste dungeon, random loot that don't even make sense half the time, there is nothing that this game offers.

Jesus christ, new vegas fags can't even stick to the fallout thread. Weren't you bitching about people talking about outer worlds in the fallout thread?

Given how little of anything there is in either thread (anything interesting anyway) there's bound to be overlap between the Bethesda games, I mean we're talking about Starfield for a while here.

but that doesn't really bother me that much cause I'm creative enough to just make up shit in my head.

Exactly the type of mindset you shouldn't have and Bethesda loves, people who do the heavy lifting for them. I will admit I'm guilty of doing that too but it's not worth pretending that the game is more interesting than it is in Starfield case. In fact you might accidentally trick yourself into thinking it's better than it really is, which would explain why so many niggercattle will defend it from indefensible shit rather than just go "well I liked it anyway" and moving on.

 

[Asian tech support]

Regarding all the procedurally generated garbage on otherwise completely barren wastelands of planets, it comes from that attitude that Todd (and probably co.) has and a fundamental misunderstanding of why people want to go to space or like space exploration games. Todd is on record to have stated that the planets were dull on purpose because "astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there but they certainly weren't bored." He can't understand it was everything leading up to the destination rather than the destination itself, and even then the destinations are either copy-paste garbage or just largely mediocre.

I don't think this Todd misunderstanding, I think it's a cope. Empty rectangular landmasses and a half dozen POIs is the best his army of jeets and diversity hires could do. You can't sell that to an audience, but you can dress it up to make yourself seem less pathetic. Todd is perfectly aware of what players want but doesn't have the will or the means to make it happen. IIRC, all the BGS devs unionized and Microsoft even said they weren't going to do jack shit to stop them. He can't fire the dead weight and he probably can't even fire Emil but he makes too much money to care either way.

Edit: Emil on the other hand absolutely misunderstands. It just so happens that Todd has cultivated for him an environment of people on his level from a design point of view. No one should be surprised this was the direction Bethesda went after Emil's ascent.

 

[Enward Cullen]

I don’t understand how almost thirty years later they couldn’t manage to give Starfield a Daggerfall-esque dungeon procgen. That’s all that the dungeons needed to have a bit of spice, rather than the exact same fucking layouts repeated.

If they gave me that and made generated planetary terrain more visually appealing then I’d be happy. I want to explore glacial worlds with raging blizzards and beautiful ice formations that go beyond the one set piece settlement you land at, not worlds that look worse than the original planets of Star Wars Galaxies. For a game that wants you to go out and explore, there’s nothing remotely interesting to look at or do once you leave the settlements.

 

[Übertroon]

I don’t understand how almost thirty years later they couldn’t manage to give Starfield a Daggerfall-esque dungeon procgen. That’s all that the dungeons needed to have a bit of spice, rather than the exact same fucking layouts repeated.

If they gave me that and made generated planetary terrain more visually appealing then I’d be happy. I want to explore glacial worlds with raging blizzards and beautiful ice formations that go beyond the one set piece settlement you land at, not worlds that look worse than the original planets of Star Wars Galaxies. For a game that wants you to go out and explore, there’s nothing remotely interesting to look at or do once you leave the settlements.

Honestly, Daggerfall dungeons are boring and tedious. I've never been impressed with procedurally generated content

 

[30+GameOvers]

Reminder that vehicles were cut content and re-introduced in an update since they were still working on them come launch day anyways. This is giga cope by Todd.

Honestly, Daggerfall dungeons are boring and tedious. I've never been impressed with procedurally generated content

The difference between Daggerfall and Starfield is that back then, the technology to make this many interesting and engaging dungeons the game needed was not there. With Starfield, we have the tech but Bethesda are either too incompetent or too lazy to make it happen. Daggerfall devs would kill to have the kind of technology we have today to work on the game, even if we're just talking about the shitty Gamebryo 2.0 engine Bethesda uses today.

If they gave me that and made generated planetary terrain more visually appealing then I’d be happy. I want to explore glacial worlds with raging blizzards and beautiful ice formations that go beyond the one set piece settlement you land at, not worlds that look worse than the original planets of Star Wars Galaxies. For a game that wants you to go out and explore, there’s nothing remotely interesting to look at or do once you leave the settlements.

You're crazy to think Starfield was ever going to have any biome diversity if they turned the entirety of Earth into a generic desert out of laziness. The closest the game has to an interesting biome is cut content, as there were going to be planets with hallucinogenic properties that would likely effect you thru your suit(yes, environmental hazards effect you thru your sealed space suits, just don't ask any questions how that works and you are still protected from the environment of space itself). Bethesda dabbled with something like this in their previous games, but imagine an entire randomly generated planet with crazy shit happening, even if it amounted to nothing more than your screen going wibbly it would still be more interesting than almost any other planet currently in the game.

 

[StacticShock]

Emil on the other hand absolutely misunderstands. It just so happens that Todd has cultivated for him an environment of people on his level from a design point of view. No one should be surprised this was the direction Bethesda went after Emil's ascent.

sharted space being what it is confirms that, what a massive shitstorm relying on jeets turned out to be.
i have no hopes of seeing microshart getting rid of the poos, especially after the studio that made Reblivion laid off people because they probably cost more than a jeet.

 

[30+GameOvers]

sharted space being what it is confirms that, what a massive shitstorm relying on jeets turned out to be.
i have no hopes of seeing microshart getting rid of the poos, especially after the studio that made Reblivion laid off people because they probably cost more than a jeet.

Shattered Space was such a colossal failure that the usual places(including Starfield thread here, which I am still banned from for pissing off a few hardcore holdover fans too much) didn't even discuss it for more than a week and the whole thing was quickly forgotten. Even youtubers didn't bother touching it, for example neither Private Sessions or Patrician TV did a Shattered Space video and out of the essay autists within Bethesda sphere I remember only Creetosis made a video on it. The only reason it exists is because Betheda had to contractually make it for the LE owners who were swindled into buying a season pass(Does not cover Creation Club content btw).

I'm thinking they're not going to make a second DLC despite the rumors, it's all hands on deck(including brown poo covered ones) for TES6 and Fallout 5 since this is Bethesda's last chance at relevancy.

 

[Chieftain Coke Peanut]

Please Todd send Emil out to the retard corner to work on Fallout 5s story while the real ones like Kirkbride can chop away at TES6. I believe he's even said he likes Fallout more than TES, just let him finish raping that series he's almost done anyway.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Emil on the other hand absolutely misunderstands. It just so happens that Todd has cultivated for him an environment of people on his level from a design point of view. No one should be surprised this was the direction Bethesda went after Emil's ascent.

Emil is just a normie with too much ego and power. Easily entertained, just cares about his paycheck and ticked boxes, nothing else. He was a level designer originally iirc, so jumping to writing the story of major Bethesda releases and no wonder they suck.

 

[Super Hans v2]

Emil is just a normie with too much ego and power. Easily entertained, just cares about his paycheck and ticked boxes, nothing else. He was a level designer originally iirc, so jumping to writing the story of major Bethesda releases and no wonder they suck.

Slight correction, before he made shitty Thief 2 levels he wrote shitty articles for gaming mags. His gateway to BGS was him and Pete Hines working for the same no-name outlet at one point.

 

[scathefire]

I think the first work he did with Bethesda was making sidequests for the Bloodmoon DLC. He should've never been promoted beyond that, I have no idea what Todd sees in him.