How To Fix Bethesda
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- Опубліковано 29 січ 2025
- Following our "How Skyrim Ruined Bethesda" video, I wanted to have a conversation on what I would do to adjust Bethesda Game Studios better to our liking. From community feedback to behaving like their team size, I think there are some ways that they can tighten things up. Are they in a bad spot? Absolutely not? Are they primed for the future? It's tough to say as a fan looking from the outside-in.
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#Xbox #Bethesda #Starfield
In theory, it should be so easy for Bethesda to be successful. Just give us a tight, handcrafted game. One province/area, lots of hand crafted quests, great exploration. You know, what they used to do.
Its not about the amount of content, or how many radiant quests there are, or how HUGE the game is.
I wish they would understand this. Why is it so hard for them to get it? It's weird, like really weird.
In theory yes. But I am also a theoretically a physicist.
The issue with what you just asked such as “hand crafted quests” is that Bethesda do not really like that. What Bethesda do is to create a roller coaster. You get on and let the coaster take you along for the ride.
The way Bethesda makes quest is railroaded and outdated. Sure. They can be fun. But so can the original Doom game where you can aim vertically. What Bethesda do is to use the old Doom system, and try to sell it to you as something new.
Bethesda are just outdated. They are at least 15 years outdated. In order to become great again they must do something they haven’t done for at least 20 years. Actually learning how to write good stories and not create roller coaster. They are selling RPGs you can’t roleplay in ffs. Their games are not RPGs but open world action games. And they are nowhere near being able to compete against the established market there.
1. Fire Todd
2. Fire Emil
Then you’d all be whining about the game being too small, too short, and not a “true Bethesda game”.
@@Cloud_Seekerthat's crazy because the last 2 game of the Year winners were both built around game design from 20 years ago. People don't care whether it's outdated or not, they just want it to be executed well. BG3, Elden Ring, Spider-Man, GoW, Alan Wake, RE4 and Dead Space remakes.. these are all games built on old school game designs lol.
When Todd Howard and Bethesda roundabout suggest that they want Starfield to be like Skyrim in space, they mean that they want people playing it for as long as they've been playing Skyrim. The problem is that Starfield has none of exploration during the travel that Skyrim has. The repetitiveness of the procedural generation is grating. Have you developed the muscle memory to avoid all the anti-personnel mines on the paths to the abandoned outposts, yet? You know what I'm talking about.
@monkeybomb8215 I do not play Stafield, I do not own it, but given that it's the same engine:
You can look up where you are in the quest online, then use the console to set your place in the quest to the correct part. Or simply force complete the quest.
@@Varian-Killbot Pray he's not on Console otherwise that's moot.
Starfield is what happens when a dev becomes too corporate.
"We must have players play this game for x amount of hours." The only people who decide if a game is worth playing for 10 years are the players lol.
Yep and you can tell they've really fallen into the idea of "look at all the space modders have to make stuff!" They completely forgot that it has to be a good game first before people actually want to mod it.
Brutal honesty? Todd and Emil need to retire. They’re both too comfortable and untouchable, and will keep lowering the bar if people keep buying. They need fresh ideas and staff while keeping the Bethesda feel. And they need to expand to work on more than one IP. Single player Fallout and Elder Scrolls have been rotting just so we could get a new IP that they didn’t make exciting enough. There’s no mer or magic, no vault boy or mutants. Just boring people in space.
oh yea and then when the next game comes out everyone will be like "well no wonder its bad all the talent has left bethesda years ago" just like with obsidian cause people who cant seperate nostalgia from fact are impossible to please
Skyrims greatest strength was Starfields greatest weakness. In Skyrim, every 10 steps I take, I run into a new quest/dungeon/interesting npc. In Starfield, I need to run a mile to find a completely uninteresting outpost.
The first step is mandatory.
Fire The Lead Writer.
The things I've watched and read about the guy made me go from "how the heck are Bethesda's games an empty husk" to "how the heck did this guy kept failing upwards for two decades". The things he said, the irresponsibility he's shown, his indifference and blunt, generic and superficial approach to things should earn him at least a demotion.
Bethesda can be fixed if people stop buying their games and they start losing enough money to realize where did they go wrong. Criticism doesn't really work for some companies as long as they make money.
At the very least, hopefully Starfield doesn't manage to reach Skyrim/Fallout 4 numbers from how boring the IP and actually game is. Nobody's gonna buy merch for friggin Starfield lol
yeah, i aint buying the dlc for starfield when it comes out unless it somehow fixes the game. There is also the question of gamepass and how they financially interpret data from there, starfield surely brought in new users and some of them will stay so bethesda/zenimax/xbox/microsoft/whoever will keeping making profit from the game indirectly.
@@amalteaaa dlc for starfield should definitely just be what people wanted from the game to begin with. 1 planet with a story and characters. That kind of DLC would be much better than the actual vanilla game entirely
That won’t fix anything. MS will just shut them down, and no one who gets the IP after will have the time and budget to do it right. They can’t do Halo anymore. I sincerely doubt they can make a good Elder Scrolls game between their existing issues and monetization pressures from accounting.
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 if microsoft does shut down bethesda, then it’s actually over for both of them.
Bethesda can't be fixed, i've lost hope for Elder Scrolls 6
Yup
You all are being too reactionary
Do you really think so?
I feel as if you combined the strengths of fallout 4 (dense open world filled with interesting activities and engaging A to B exploration) with Starfield (bounce back in writing and questing quality, similar to fallout 3/oblivion/skyrim era from a storytelling perspective).
Leave the voiced protagonist and procedural simulation content behind. Leave random loot, random legendary weapons behind in favor of named unique weapons.
If Starfields content was delivered across a single solar system with maybe 4 fleshed-out fully explorable planets, and maybe 5-8 empty planets and moons for modding capabilities and outposts and resource gathering, it would’ve been a great game. As is, it’s simply good. I played the main story and faction quests and was done. Gameplay loop sucks.
Executives with elitist views removed would help, Emil basically told us that he believes we are wrong and Starfield is the best game ever released we just don't play it right or are lying about it being bad. Todd is a known liar, AFUERA! Emil is a huge piece of shit, AFUERA! A lot of these new diversity hires that advertised Starfield, AFUERA!
@@gleam6370no, its called noticing trends. Having a decades worth of evidence.
It’s crazy that you really said “The engine isn’t the problem. The engine was fine for games from 16 years ago” 😂
Is it crazy? If Fallout 4 came out yesterday, it would still be a better game than Starfield. Starfield's technical limitations aren't even in the top 5 for what makes it such a bleh game.
Still, Fallout 4 looked shit for it's time.@@acudaican
Not crazy at all. Matty's statement on issues with Starfield being centered around game design, not game engine hold true.
People go back to playing games released 20-30 yrs ago. Why? Because they are *FUN* that's game design and has little to do with graphics or physics
The engine if fine, it's the devs who are the core issue that really holds Bethesda back
I get what you're saying and I agree that there are technical limitations that stand out regardless of what Matty says. However he's also right that a few loading screens wouldn't be a big deal if the underlying game was good. I wouldn't even put the engine in the top 10 issues with the game
My main issue with Starfield is that a lot of the writing/characters just aren't captivating. No-one in Starfield is memorable, they all have the same flat personality. There's no real complexity to their characters, they all have to be perfectly good or bad. I just finished the gang questline in Neon and no-one in that "gang" felt like they were part of a gang, it was like a college campus meeting.
The Witcher 3 is a great example of how it should have been done. Everyone in that game is memorable. All of the side quests had interesting turns that you couldn't predict. It doesn't feel like i'm doing a bunch of delivery missions like in Bethesda games. The witcher hired a team of TV/film writers to write missions and it shows. It feels like Bethesda hasn't evolved its writing since Morrowind and is still just using random developers with no writing experience to write a lot of it.
Starfield is Fallout and Skyrim if you take away the quirky characters, fictional races, and neat worldbuilding that makes the world more than it actually is. The world is just modern generic sci-fi, it's not even a fun star wars ripoff.
That's because they are using random developers as writers.
I think they need to hire at least 50 writers. The only one listed in the credits is Emil.
The writing and consequences are my biggest gripe
No wonder the writing was so bad. Emil is a hack!
The companions were all squares
Totaly agree , the world building is terrable and the npcs bland
Emil isn't the problem, remember he wrote the Dark Brotherhood questlines for Oblivion and Skyrim. He's a fine writer, but it takes lots of writers to produce a Skyrim.@@babyspoot
There's a lot of info that has come out over the past couple of years about the sort of internal shifts that have taken place at Bethesda since the release of FO4 and development on FO76 and Starfield started, and I guess to summarize it boils down to a lot of senior dev talent leaving the company, going indie, or retiring from the industry all together, as well as Todd becoming more of a Producer for all Bethesda projects rather than getting hands-on with the development of any of them.
Needless to say it leaves me less than excited for anything that might be coming from Bethesda in the near future, but 5 years is a long time and it's about how long it takes to put out a new title at minimum so hopefully they can correct those issues sooner than not. I'll always be rooting for the redemption arc.
They've had a good run of "doing something different" and "going to new places" etc with trying their hand at new types of games and new stories. I think it's maybe time to get back to basics and focus on the core BGS products that have made their name. Would love to see the next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games focus on creating more compact games rich in handcrafted content with an excellent narrative experience. After that see if there's any capacity for another crack at something different but it's time to get back to the main focus.
If you want a good understanding of the hellscape that is BGS for any employee not in management or senior levels, read the various articles where former BGS employees like FO4 QA testers were interviewed.
That will make you understand just how bad it is and how it's not a new thing.
I hoped the luke warm recpetion of FO4 was enough to shock them straight but maybe the reception to Starfield being so bad they had to respond to random peoples reviews will actually do it. I'm not saying I'm expecting it but at the same time if TES 6 really is Todd's last game I could see him wanting to be really hands on craft something special. Of course, at the same time the biggest issue isn't a lack of care but rather a complete misconception of what fans like about BGS games which is worrying.
I finally upgraded to the new Xbox generation for Starfield, even bought the starfield controller and headset with it. I was so excited to finally have a reason to upgrade.
I put 30 hours into the first few days and have not touched it since. I tried Elden Ring and Cyberpunk. The game is horrifically boring and animated compared to those. Bethesda needs to rework A LOT of things.
Why? What in particular was so offensive?
@@TheFos88he said it's horrifyingly boring. That's the only reason needed to stop playing.
I did the same, I was even a PlayStation user and switched because of the Xbox purchase of Bethesda. I really liked fallout 4 and the building and starting communities. Starfield building is a joke. Barely any modular sets to choose from.
Cargo links is a shittier version of settlement links in fallout 4.
Fallout 76 is actually pretty fun now, so I do hope starfield a year from now is much better.
Can't fix that story though..
I'm offended at how boring and empty it was, and how they are trying to tell us it isn't. Gaslighting like a toxic girlfriend. @@TheFos88
You people are fucking wack.
In a recent interview Todd Howard talked about a major shift in himself personally after Fallout 4; a work-life balance shift where he pulled back a bit and became more of a big picture manager/administrator and less of a boots on the ground, in the trenches developer with his core team in Maryland. He also doesn't seem as passionate as he used to be, maybe because he spends more time these days in his office in Zoom meetings with all of Bethesda's studios than working alongside his own team. He always feared that would happen if they grew too large and now we're watching it play out. I also wonder if his personal taste has changed, becoming a bit out of touch and no longer in tune with what gamers want nowadays. He should pass the baton to a more driven and motivated game director with a fresh perspective, otherwise we're going to witness Bethesda conservatively try and fail to recreate Skyrim again, not realizing that you can't catch that kind of lightning in a bottle again.
Game companies ran by higher ups that don't care about games makes them go downhill very easily. Bethesda is trying to be Rockstar but I'm happy they aren't. The companies themselves make compromises to games that are beloved and managed to be successful by its fans.
But there are much bigger companies than BGS making games much better and much more soulful than what Bethesda makes. I don’t think it’s the size of Bethesda that is the problem. The problem is who are the ones making the decisions
@@Hoppelite The issue is that Bethesda has grown too large for how it has historically been structured and managed in the past. Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim and Fallout 4 were all developed by a core 100 person team in Rockville. Since that time they’ve grown 5x larger with studios all over the country now and the only projects we’ve seen from them so far are Fallout 76 and Starfield. They’re too dependent on Todd and it’s becoming pretty clear that he’s not doing his best work with the way these studios are currently organized.
Ask him what non-Bethesda games he's personally played and finished in the past 5 years.
@@tronam you’re right. Todd needs to delegate better. Either Todd should be on the ground as much as possible, or just step down and let someone else do the job.
Fire Emil first and foremost. No question. His writing is absolutely abysmal. Then bring back using a universal design document (a removal caused by Emil) so that your devs actually know what the fuck is and isn’t in your game. The removal of a design document is why every single quest and character feels developed in a vacuum with zero interesting crossover. Then stop relying on both modders and procedural content to fill your game worlds.
Def keep modders look at how amazing Tamrial rebuilt is
@@jakeen229 No absolutely keep modders and support a modding community. Give people as many tools as you can. Which also includes removing creation club. It directly conflicts with what consumer friendly modding is about. But the key word I said is “relying”. Keep modding, just stop relying on mods to fix your games and create content. Mods are meant to be optional supplemental content, not fucking mandatory.
@@Gbag34 I'm right there with you, I posted up top we had this conversation in the morrowind forums yearssssssss ago. I kid you not someone jokes about how good mods were getting maybe Beth is gonna start charging for em....lol now look where we at. It's sad to be honest
I agree with your engine take. It was really the design decisions behind how the handle exploration that gutted the game. Although I disagree with the quests, I think personally the quests are palpably shallow. It doesn’t feel like anything is ever really at stake and most characters feel flat, basic, unattached, uncanny even. Big chunks of the writing to me genuinely felt very simplistic, very I’m still in high school and this is deep type energy.
The Engine still plays a huge part of their obsolescence I think... The Creation Engine can handle a huge chunk of ingame assets (like we all see in Skyrim, thus creating a feeling of openness), but Starfield simply has more details (in texture, fidelity, etc) that are more demanding to your CPU/GPU Processing.
Imagine you play heavily modded Skyrim (more texture loaded), it'll take a huge amount of vram & cpu usage, it'll crash. The process is equivalent in Starfield, but times 16 (because you know, Starfield does have at least 16x the detail, if not more), but the Creation Engine simply can't make the process more efficient, it must retain its core principle/algorithm to allow the game to be moddable.
Loved doing a mission in Skyrim and then find something interesting go off the beaten path and explore that & discover whatever then go back to the original quest
I cannot say how often in Skyrim I had about a week delay in completing a quest due to all the side tracking of completing this or that dungeon, then processing a reward or leveling smithing or going town to town selling the loot, or just hunting animals to find other locations of interest.
This is Skyrim's charm. Finding tons of fun locations to explore. Even Fallout 4 had that as does 76. But Starfield dropped the ball. I did not buy it after seeing the game play for that reason.
@@michael1barnette yup
I don't think Bethesda needs "fixing", they just need to go back to their old formula and take some inspiration from other great RPGS such as Baldurs Gate 3.
It also wouldn't hurt to start properly updating their engine to make their games hit 60fps on consoles with no crashes.
Lmfao bg3 has more and longer load screens then starfield and yet no one says a peep.
@doomslayer8025 Starfield definitely has more loading screens, like there is ZERO doubt about that, they just aren't as long.
I personally don't give a shit about loading screens🤷🏻♂️
@@Light-YTloading means the game is working.
@@doomslayer8025 there are only real loading screens when going from one big area (like githyanki creche, shadow-cursed lands, wilderness, wyrm's crossing and lower city) to another, all interiors load in an instant no fade to black and loading icon in the corner, fast travel in those big areas is also instant, you can fast travel from bhaal temple that is on one side of the city and actually under it (in the sewers) to heapside strand that is on the surface and on the opposite side of this entire big ass location instantly. in starfield fast travel between the well and the surface levels of new atlantis is a loading screen, going inside many building is a loading screen, going from one big area to another is sometimes several loading screens.
They need more writers.
They have writers?
@@Lightsaglowllc They have *A* Writer. Like only one lead writer, and some outsourced one.
No, they need better writers
*better writers
Bethesda doesnt use game design documents. THAT alone can cause many of there problems.
Bethesda can fix Bethesda by making Bethesda games. Most of the content in Starfield and Fallout 76 before the backlash felt like Bethesda hates making the games that make them successful.
I think they earnestly believe that modders will do the actual work for them, so they pumped out Starfield as a effectively barren galaxy devoid of cool mechanics and alien empires in the hope that modder willl make it for them. when in reality, people know when they're being used and they absolutely hate that feeling, some modders will try but the majority will wipe their hands clean of doing any work on Starfield.
Toxic dev culture. Dont' listen to the fans, they are all racist neckbeards and so on and so forth.
@@jonnysilia5740 There is no way years of development time went into that game, I refuse to believe they used their A team for Starfield XD XO The whole game reeks cheap indie ripoff, out of all the things they could've ripped off from The Outer Worlds. They had to choose the no aliens part.
@@heroicgangster9981 According to some reports I saw, at least 10X more people worked on Starfield than on Skyrim. Someone did an averaging of Starfield vs Skyrim and the size of the development team and came out with the numbers which shows, that the Skyrim team did 42x more work with less people and almost 1/3rd of the development time, than what Starfield has. In a better illustration, basically the larger Starfield team would only have to work 40 minutes per day to justify 8 years of development to reach what we got in Starfield if Skyrim is the measuring stick.
Yeah, it sounds BS, so I assume it was nowhere near in 8 years of development, unless having the idea of the game drawn on a napkin and put inside a drawer for 6 years counts as development time.
I’d like to also say they need teams for each franchise, as much as I love Todd I think he might put too much on himself, not that Todd’s a saint but being a control “freak” even if it’s unintentional isn’t healthy personally or for the growth of Bethesda, make people help with final decisions bc at this point it feels like Bethesda as a whole looks to Todd as a messiah and I love his work, but as said in the video he’s human, he needs a pupil at least.
Hopefully with MS they can expand. BGS is still a small AAA studio. CDPR has over 1000 devs, BGS has 400 so projects are limited.
@@JuicedOnKids
that is so weird to think about lol, because CDPR were an indy dev before they became a AAA dev, most of their success was found in the witcher games, but mostly in witcher 3.
bethesda sold Morrowind, Oblivion, the fallouts, not NV, but they still payed for it i guess, they eventually made skyrim that everyone loved so much so that they kept releasing the same game with only very minor upgrades.
i think bethesda has the potential to make great games, but i don't think their a small dev as they have more than just one project they are working on all at the same time, i think in many ways CDPR are still an indy dev, sure they put most of their devs for their cyberpunk game, but that's just their dedication to making that single game good and then some with the witcher upgrade, while bethesda has a crap ton of other projects all running at the same time.
maybe bethesda should just focus their work on single games instead of all these other projects at the same time, i mean i like management jobs to a degree, but i think Todd is going a bit overboard giving himself way to many projects at once to handle, pretty much biting off more than he can chew, which means the overall quality slips through the cracks and some things don't meet that deadline before launch and the game is nowhere near done at that stage, like they pretty much had an extra year to get their shit together and they still couldn't finish the project at launch.
what pisses me off is the game is clearly not a finished product and it was still sold like it was a finished product and at full price taking insult to injury of a product that's clearly early access being sold at full AAA prices.
@@5226-p1e I agree although I’ll say as a mainly fallout fan who like the elder scrolls and starfield somewhat we have ate pretty well with modern bgs, I didn’t play fo76 @ launch, I started after wastelanders so to me it felt like a solid if buggy online fallout game with some issues which I still enjoy to this day but fo3, nv, 4 and 76 post wastelanders are all good in their own way imho, def some better than others.
Fire Emil for starters
What's interesting with Starfield is that many people aren't givng Bethesda a free pass this time. There's a lot of critique of how Bethesda do, or do not do, game design/development and how that has impacted Starfield (Camelworks has a good one, NakeyJakey has done a couple as has Blaze... with Patrician TV's 8 hour retrospective being probably the most detailed). You could say it's "Broken by Design" as in Starfield has suffered from Bethesda's design and development processes. Take the engine, Creation Engine 2 may not be a bad engine, but not for Star "Loading Screen" field as designed.
Ya, I think the biggest omen for BGS was the departure of Will Shen. For me, the number one thing BGS needs is new blood, especially at the leadership level. Just look at Mario and Zelda. Miyamoto and Aonuma still do PR and function as producers, similar to Tod Howard, but they've really handed the IPs to a new generation of talent. That talent has greatly reimagined Nintendo's biggest franchises, and I think it's easy to see that new perspective has paid dividends. Starfield may try new things, but it still feels trapped in the mid 2000s. And that's partly because the lead designer goes all the way back to Oblivion. And I'm not saying Emil should be fired, I'm just saying the best talent trains their replacement.
It's not the engine, its the writing. It's pg-13 bland, main quests with no real consequences, (mostly) shitty optional quests. There's no reason to invest in anything anything, when you can do/be anything and the game just allows it. It was the game I played most this year, and I've mostly forgotten it. Maybe ill get back to the DLC, but tat's it. I'm not even interested in modding it.
This. And the rise of radiant quests and quantity. Its all quanitity over quality.
..by removing Emil Pagliarulo
Wonder if Bethesda's game design choices also have to do with how capable they feel the engine is. Like "let's add xyz, but oh wait, the engine needs to be updated for it to work optimally, and that means abc number of man hours". If that's the case with some of their design choices, we're fighting a losing battle. Even a couple of years of time spent significantly reworking parts of the engine from the ground up would go a long way in the long run.
They literally spent years rebuilding the Creation Engine, which is why it took 8 years for them to release Starfield.
Matty, it IS the engine. The reason why you can only explore the planets in square increments, the reason why you have to fast travel and there are loading screens everywhere, it's because of the engine.
It did great things yes, but the older it gets the more apparent its technical limitations become, especially regarding animations, scripting and scale, no matter how pretty they get the graphical aspect to look.
And I would argue that this also limits the creative direction the studio can take.
I feel like Bethesda needs new blood and maybe Todd should retire
I've been saying that for a while now
Honestly, I don't know that Bethesda is fixable. To my mind, the issues are in passion. They can tell us all they want that Starfield is the game they've wanted to make for a decade but I have two choices; believe that's true and feel sad for how pitiful their current imagination is or it's a lie. Either way, whether there truly is no heart left in the company or that heart is prevented from being pursued, the end product feels completely without soul. First and foremost, that would need to change. I think that the rest of the problems can mostly be solved as a natural byproduct of just making games that don't feel formulaic and bland.
Honestly, the quickest and easiest thing BGS could do to see a substantial improvement is to just get rid of Emil Pagliarulo.
I think it's clear at this point (not that it wasn't clear 10 years ago) that he's just not up to the task.
The passionate people who created the worlds of fallout 3 and skyrim are gone. Places where player curiosity is rewarded. Stories that are deep and connected, where choices matter are gone. You want to save Bethesda? Call Austin Powers, they done lost their MOJO. They have made a lot of money though.
The fact that they haven’t grown their team has long been the most baffling thing to me. They should have two teams working on both ES6 and Fallout at the same time and their staff should be 3x the size.
But they have, thats kinda the problem now. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
@@Hero_Of_Old I mean, as covered in the video, they are extremely small for a “AAA” game developer. Rockstar has over 1,000 on staff for comparison.
@@Hero_Of_OldNot how development works.
Too many cooks means too many decision makers, not employees.
@@YourBlackLocal They don’t need to hire decision makers. They need QA tester, designers, coders, and artists.
100% agreed! Look star citizen with 800+ employes and making just one star system fully explorabled with planets and moons
Why is bethesda one of the companies we hold to a different standard than everyone else...
Such an old bullshit take... have you been on the Internet lately? Starfield is getting f*cking crucified both fairly so and for many undeserved reasons aswell. So what are you talking about? There is clearly no special treatment for bethesda any longer.
@BabooonZz You didn't understand what I said at all. I is it that we're hard on bethesda, but we'll take the same nintendo game for the last forty years... We'll just take any clone of a ubisoft game that sony makes... Really seems like the only 2 companies that have been getting called out for this Lately are now bethesda and e a.
@@blickedxb Because Nintendo still makes good polished games. And for their most popular IPs they don't take too much time like Rockstar does for their Mario games? Nintendo is driven by business obviously but at least they acknowledge their games have to be good art and they address what they are good at (exception being the Switch Mario sports games being made with no content, Nintendo made trash sports games in order to try being another Splatoon and that failed)
Bethesda right now hates making Bethesda games. Nintendo loves making Nintendo games.
@@BabooonZz Starfield deserves it. Or else Bethesda would actually think we want more games like Starfield and that would be the worst. Game companies hate having to do effort to make money.
@@blickedxb lol. Well damn Im sorry dude. I guess your comment could be interpreted both ways and I just got it wrong.
I just see that kind of comment everywhere but then it's about how they actually think bethesda gets some kind of special treatment... and that's just so far from the truth these days... it's actually the other way around now, they get so much criticism, much of it fair but also so much hate that's totally undeserved.
I totally agree Matty. The Creation Engine is an incredible tool, they've just forgotten how to use it effectively.
underrated comment that i def agree with. the tools are malleable enough to create an immersive world with a lot of rich engagement and exploration, so the source of the quality is in writing and design, not so much the program. solid take from Matty!
I would argue they haven’t. They know how to use it, matter of fact they know how to use it so much so that it’s a big reason why they’ve opted to stick with their creation engine for this long. Adopting or creating a new engine would be a huge undertaking and that’s what they’re afraid of cus they know there’s already so much dead time inbetween each release. With the creation engine they know the ins and outs of it all and with someone new or something heavily modified they’d have to learn all that stuff all over again which adds to development time and to budget costs significantly. So I disagree it’s not that they’ve forgotten it’s more so imo that their way of making games is just outdated and isn’t as acceptable as it once was and on top of that the way starfield was drawn up conceptually doesn’t really work well with their typical gameplay loop style. We’re using to being able to walk not far in any direction in their games and encountering something whereas in starfield points of interest are much more spread out which causes more fast travel and in turn more loading screens which people hate. And the whole points of interest issue is why they decided to toss in procedural generation on top of what they usually do to make up for that and to populate their starfield universe more but procedural generation is imo never gonna be able to measure up to handcrafted levels and worlds. We go to these planets in the game that just feel so lifeless and then on the other hand the handcrafted stuff feels so alive which makes those planets feel even more soulless. Anyways I don’t mean to rant on forever but I could go on and on about this lol
@@jeremyroberts8822 A) Bethesda have always used procedural generation. For an example, see Daggerfall.
B) you admitted yourself in this post that the problem is the way the game is designed. Exploration sucks now because points of interest are so far apart, and well, uninteresting.
C) if indie developers were allowed to use the Creation engine to make games, we would see just how immersive and flexible the creation engine can be.
@@jeremyroberts8822 D) Morrowind is literally better than starfield. The team of developers have cycled through. Like you said their way of making games is outdated, not the engine itself.
I blame community made unofficial patches. Those made Bethesda lazy. Developers should fix their product not customers. When customers start fixing product they are giving lazy developers free pass
Marty defending the creation engine is crazy, like dude even if bethesdas previous games were good they were always really buggy on launch.
Like I remember playing Skyrim on the ps3, and my saves would often get corrupted so I would have to make a whole new character, or how in fallout 4 the game would bug out in random ways. Lag spikes, getting stuck in terrain, crashing when using a mini nuke, swans whole area being laggy asl etc.
The engine is a major contributing factor to the amount of bugs. The only way it couldn’t be is if the actual developers can’t code well.
the tl;dr is that Bethesda has become more and more disjointed with their systems, and what you call synergy/interplay of systems have been eroded by later releases. It is a lack of overall vision that seems to amplify these issues over time.
I think the main issue is a lack of focus. Starfield itself is an example lack of focus and a well defined vision. It looks like a philosophy of pushing as many systems into a game as possible with no real afterthought. The question about implementing new systems in to an RPG should be: "How can it affect the existing gameplay and the story?", while the approach seems to have been: "If we keep it is isolated, we don't need to think about it." It makes not only the story disjointed, but also the gameplay elements.
Tools nowadays does make it easier to make bigger and bigger scopes, but setting a limitation is very important, no project can be loose in it's concept and design phase without blowing it in development and re-development because definitions weren't clear. Whether you work on a building, an electronic gadget or a computer program this holds true.
A concept paper can't be: "You can do that, this is the everything sandbox." In a Bethesda RPG you need to focus on the Story - exploration - crafting loop, and how these structure interact with each other. This is something they got close to right in Skyrim, and the reason people still play that game. Even radiant quests were something you mostly asked the local barkeep about, so they felt they had a place, where in fallout 4 this stuff was very badly implemented.
Don't get me wrong. Base building and ship building were good elements in Starfield, but they really had no effect in the world, nor did you really have to use it. This meant that the systems were just wasted focus, and created the feeling of singleton systems (systems that feel disjointed and don't interact with each other). The whole disjointedness of the game is the main issue people have with it. Especially for a style of game that works on making the player immersed.
starfield just shows that bethesda sucks with making their own shooter game. fallout 4 is better than starfield in ever way possible and fallout wasnt originally their ip, they just bought it out
@@terrycruise-zd5tw Yes, Fallout 4 is way better than Starfield. It still had some game design issues compared to older titles. Unfortunately the issues seem to have carried over in to Starfield + a host of new problems as well.
Honestly the only thing they need to do is change their engine it sucks absolute balls I rather not have ES6 release on the garbage engine.
It’s honestly just sad we are even having this conversation after the Xbox acquisition, and studios like Larian are out here lapping Bethesda in a genre they were the first to truly define on consoles
Step 1: Replace Todd Howard
Step 2: Hire someone named Hodd Toward
I agree with you, it's not the engine. You don't blame the paint brush if the painting sucks. The problem is quantity over quality. When BGS released Fallout 3 they took the time to bring an isometric, lush with lore, world into 3D. Sure they didn't and couldn't make the game as detailed and large as FO1 and 2, but what they could do is try to pay homage to the fallout universe while forging a new path. Using the same engine Obsidian added more lore and finer RPG elements and created NV. Given more time they could've easily made it the GOAT of action RPG's, but I digress.
While they were working on FO3 they were also working on Skyrim. Oblivion is considered a fantastic RPG, but a little inaccessible to someone who has never played one before. So, like Metallica after "And Justice For All" ,they decided to appeal more to the masses. BGS's Black Album? Skyrim.
Skyrim was a gargantuan hit. Regardless of the objections from RPG purists it appealed to a wide swath of gamers. So what do they do? Chase the hit, not the quality. That turns Fallout 4 and 76 into Load and Re-Load respectively. They're okay games, but the focus, the quality, and the soul of the games, like Load and Re-Load, were lacking.
Which brings us to Starfield. Guess what Metallica album corresponds with Starfield? Yup, St. Anger.
Now, Metallica needed to pull their heads out of their butts to start making better music. BGS needs to go to greed rehab and do the same.
Greed rehab....I like it 👍👍👍
Definitely the best possible description
If the paint brush sucks, the painting is guaranteed to suck.
@@TheCybercoco I disagree. The painter chooses to use the brush because they feel they can express their creativity with it. If the artist is familiar with the brush, and takes their time, they can pull it off. If they rush it and expect other junior, unpaid artists to fill in the blanks, it's laziness and greed.
IT is the engine. It's not ill conceived, the true problem is the engine and devs having to work within that engine and it's modules and it's fundamental flaws. Outside of writing, and direction, the actual development and what they can achieve is hindered greatly by the engine to the point many of us couldn't even run starfield without it crashing too often, and not just a random crash, a consistent crash due to scripts not loading fast enough, cluttering and just crashing. It's bad, the engine is the problem with Starfield.
I wouldn't mind reusing Creation if Bethesda would fix alot of the bugs within the engine, and add more framework systems for modders to use.
There isn't one for vehicles which means vehicles have to be treated like NPCs just to work, or having to make other workarounds to make them work, Fallout 3 having to make the train be a hat for a clone of your character just to get from the capital wasteland to adam's air force. Otherwise i rather have an engine like OpenMW, which does behave and is set up similarly to Creation, but has less bugs and has more liberty with modding.
The writing team needs to remove the top guy and get a bigger team.
Matty new thumbnail style is badass keep it up
You're genuinely so right about the engine, it is what gives their games freedom not to mention mods, Bethesda is just not utilizing it to its potential
more like it gives bethesda the right to be lazy and cut costs by shipping a broken product and letting the players fix the game for them
@@terrycruise-zd5tw They could choose to be lazy regardless, many gaming companies are lazy without a highly mod friendly engine, they could just as easily step up quality control and have modding, the engine is irrelevant they have terrible leadership
@@McqueenMayor Honestly I see the mods from FO4 or Skyrim etc. The bugfixes the work arounds, the ambitious mods like combat overhauls in Skyrim. What I think is that the engine has more potential than a lot of people give it credit for.
My thoughts is that honestly, Bethesda just seems so woefully incompetent in bringing out the best of their own engine. Like the fact they haven't integrated the Script Extender team or their work in to their engine by default at this point is brazen.
Modding is not unique to CE. It's more credited to the usability of the kit than the engine itself. Most engines can be easily modded and there are large modding communities for many games using many engines.
As for why Bethesda is more conservative than modders? Bethesda has to be more sensitive to the stability of the game for a much wider audience than modders do.
i completely agree with your take on the Creation Engine. A tool's only as powerful as the people using it. Not to say that the people at Bethesda aren't extremely talented and very acquainted with their own engine, i'm just saying that if they know their tool will only get them that far, then they should manage their expectations as creators, and certainly they shouldn't make people believe it's something more than what it is.
Listen to former developers who worked at Bethesda and switched to studios using other engines, or went indie with Unreal, and listen to them say how shocked they are at how easy things were compared to Creation Engine/Gamebyro. Bethesda's engine is definitely holding them back.
creation engine is super outdated to the point that a LOT of things are just not doable in games that use it, vehicles is an example, actual good combat is other, cut down loading screens is other, bro the games cant even have a weapon weel for god sake
@@Jeanssj98 „vehicles is an example“
Not true. Vertibirds work in Fallout 4, and modders have added working Tanks, Buggies and normal Cars to Fallout New Vegas.
„bro the games cant even have a weapon weel for god sake“
They can, Skyrim has one implemented by modders and it works very well.
It is just that bethesda chooses not to.
@@Clockwork0nions „how shocked they are at how easy things were compared to Creation Engine/Gamebyro.“
Ask them or yourself how easy it is to mod those other engines/games and then ask whether you trust BGS to deliver a working good game with another engine, where modders cannot fix Bethesdas mistakes.
@@amazinghorizon8270
What is this cope? Are we pretending Bethesda games are the easiest to mod? lmao.
It comes down to ego. They know what their player base wants. They think they know better. When players tell them they’re wrong, we get hot takes from Bethesda devs basically saying we don’t know a thing about game development. Until that attitude and company culture shifts, their priority will continue to be trying to prove they are innovators at the expense of the actual quality of their games.
Honestly, they're right. Most people don't know what they are talking about. As a comsumer we can only give feedback on what we like and don't like and even THAT has been unreliable these days with social media bandwagons. I remember when Cyberpunk launched it was impossible for anyone to say they liked it without an angry mob telling them the game is trash. Fast forward to Phantom Liberty its suddenly the most amazing game ever despite being mostly the same..seriously?
@@Mike-sf7ex they are right that we as the audience know almost nothing about game development, but that attitude as a company can be detrimental long term when it comes to accepting constructive criticism from players. does it really matter if they are right technically about game development if, long term, their fanbase starts to become indifferent to what they release? because that's the path they are heading down.
as consumers, we dont need to know a lot about game development to know we are not having fun playing a game. and i think enough of bethesda's playerbase has aired their grievances about Starfield to the point where the studio should re-evaluate themselves instead of lashing out at their audience
cyberpunk was unplayable when it released. not trash, there was a solid foundation and good game underneath all of the bugs. cyberpunk is praised now because the game has received gradual overhauls and is now, functionally, largely different to what it was at launch. even in its most broken state, it still had more substance and soul than Starfield
@@Reaver1223 Cyberpunk is largely the same game still. Lol. The hate mobs were real and the game was criticized for everything. I know because I was there day one, on the other side of that hate train. It might have started with the technical issues but people attacked Cyberpunk for its game design, the mechanics, the pacing, the dialogue, lack of branching story, lack of choice, inventory management, the in game economy, the NPCs, the animations, the quests, everything you can think of. So it's really crazy to me that all of sudden it's gone from complete garbage not worth anyone's time to the most amazing game ever when all CDPR did was fix some bugs and tweaked some things. No game is perfect and feedback is obviously needed for games to improve but it doesn't help when you have a bunch of people piling on devs and forcing them to be defensive. If I were a dev and some random person who have no clue about game development told me the game I spent years creating is trash and passionless, I would tell them to fck right off too.
@@Mike-sf7ex I mean it really isn’t the exact same game as Cyberpunk 1.0 in a few significant ways. Overhauled leveling/cyberware system, lots of small quality of life improvements that add up to a noticeably different experience, and lots of added systems to make it feel like the complete package CDPR was promising before the original release (overhauled police systems, gang reputations, metro system, buying different apartments, vehicle combat/hacking). All of these added elements combined with new mechanics in phantom Liberty do make it a proper 2.0 version of the game. I just started a new playthrough a week ago, I hadn’t played since the 1.5 update. It absolutely feels like a different experience to me.
@@Mike-sf7ex and again, I’m not at all suggesting that devs should give credence to complainers who just hurl abuse their way because they didn’t like their game. But something devs with big egos do is lump in actual constructive criticism with the shit flinging which is just plain old deflection. At the end of the day, a game dev condescending to players on why they should like their game by telling them they know nothing about game design/development is a tactic that will never work. You need to know what your player base wants and appreciates you for. And take the risks and innovate with that in mind. I, like every other BGS fan, wanted to love Starfield. I wanted to play it for the next 10 years like Skyrim with added story mods and everything. But I just can’t see myself doing that. The best Skyrim modders don’t even want to develop large scale mods for this game. That should honestly wake Bethesda up and get them off their high horse 🤷🏼♂️
I watched the Starfield direct probably a dozen times and it says what you asked it to say almost verbatim. Its early on when it lands on a planet Howard says something like “We know our players enjoy exploring in our games, but you do explore differently in Starfield.” He didnt get into every nitty gritty detail but I thought about that line and everything else we learned in the direct and decided it basically had to be something similar to what it turned out to be.
To me its more about the extremely high degree of investment and ownership players have in these games. Then when something is different than expected it means something is wrong with the game.
Much of the exploration in Starfield happens within the few massive cities, other medium sized settlements, and the hundred or so other handcrafted locations.
Its different than previous games but those things do exist even if some people want to act like they dont.
Its crazy how people dismiss this and keep ignoring the fact exploration isn't non existent, just different. Even before the direct, what were people thinking? That you would have the Skyrim/Fallout traversal experience across an entire planet, hundreds of times over? Come on.. lol
@@Mike-sf7ex No we expected to actually explore space, aka find planets that are actually empty, where you are truly the first person to step on this planet.
We expected each location to be unique and is not just reused every 5 planets, by using the same system the had for Daggerfall to generate unique dungeons for its 2000+ dungeon locations.
We expected a game with significantly more content that would not make Starfield feel bland and repetitive so quick. They had ~400 people work on that game for 7 years, while Skyrim „only“ had 100 people work on it for 3 years and sadly this ~10x more work capacity did not result in 10x more quests, factions, handcrafted content than Skyrim. In fact we have less factions with less quests than in Skyrim or Oblivion or Morrowind.
💯 this - the fact is, the faction quest lines alone are each the size of a game unto themselves. Starfield is so content-rich in so many ways…it’s essentially a human story, centered around an evolving civilization as they tackle the necessities of space-faring existence. Of course the missions, quests, activities etc are going to be based around this premise…it seemed fairly obvious to me, going into the game. 🤷🏻♂️
While not perfect, Starfield is essentially what was advertised, and hence, what I’d expected it to be!
@@JazzzRockFuzion „the faction quest lines alone are each the size of a game unto themselves.“
No? Just go and play Oblivion, it not only has more factions each faction also has significantly more quests and more stuff going on.
Yeah and thats why the game is shite. SOrry but the quests are often boring and not enough to keep you coming back. BGS writing has always been bad, it was just passable enough to enjoy everything else. And no they arn't games onto themselves,.
Baldurs Gate 3 feels like a warm hug from someone that cares. Starfield feels like that last peck on the cheek from an ex as you leave each other. Sad that it happened this way, glad it happened before it REALLY broke my heart (ES6 hype gone)
We should dig up Bethesda Maryland, and PUSH it somewhere else!
Matty, Game design was based on the Creation Engine’s limitations. Compound this with their “good enough” attitude is the recipe for Bethesda’s downfall.
FINALLY. FINALLY someone reporting on Starfield has pointed out that the problem is NOT the engine. Everyone shouts "change engines" like that wouldn't cause issues with not only Bethesda for having to learn a completely new engine from scratch, but the modding community. Changing engines would cause a modding community reset because everything modders know about modding Bethesda games goes out the window and they'd have to learn new engines.
> the problem is NOT the engine.
Literally go watch or listen to interviews with former developers. Almost all of them universally cite how terrible the engine is and how much it held them back.
@@Clockwork0nions If these former devs are claiming this, then I guess modders are better programmers because Skyrim modders have been making the game do things people thought was impossible for the Creation Engine for years.
@@StygianIkazuchi
Easy to "do the impossible" with workflows that don't need to be used by 100's of people over years, and doesn't need to be QA'd to make sure they work with as many people as possible (especially on PC).
They really just need to patch it up and fix the bugs and it would be solid.
@@StygianIkazuchi The modding community have been begging for a different design approach to the engine for the last couple decades.
step 1 get rid of emil
step 2 profit?
Get good game designers that like to make bethesda games
1. Boot Emil
Really great content you've been putting out matty while on your break!! Great job!
Agree
it has always been completely beyond me how bethesda can have 2 of the most loved gaming franchises on the planet and then they a) forget to focus on what people love about them and b) only bring out a new game every 10 years
I disagree with your creation engine take. I do not blame everything on the engine. Their biggest problems have little to do with the engine. HOWEVER, the engine is showing its age quite clearly, and to move forward and compete I think they have to update.
Problem is that they did update, but their approach to updating is flawed. They really need a reset.
I have a feeling it's the same with bioware but for different reasons. The studios just aren't the same anymore
As gaming has become popular and more investors have invested money into studios, the demands for higher yields for investors have put pressure on studios to churn out games faster. How many games have we seen that have been released to meet a deadline and have so many problems with them. The "get the game out and we will fix it later" is hurting gaming.
@@craigslater2321 not only churn out them faster but make sure there are no too radical and interesting ideas presented in the games as to not put some people off buying the game to maximize potential customer base and profit.
Inquisition wasn’t that bad I think BioWare is redeemable of course not guaranteed but maybe there’s a chance
i thought inquisition was the final nail in the coffin for bioware? or was that adromeda? i guess bpoth but for each franchise :D@@acev3521
@@acev3521 Inquistion was okay, it's more Andromeda and Anthem.
If Dreadwolf doesn't slap I worry for Bioware
i think the creation engine suffers from the same problem that the actual games suffer from, its that bethesda REFUSES to properly update and stabilize their engine and bring it up to par with modern engines, whether its because bethesda is to lazy or refuses to hire a bigger staff to work on the engine, or is stuck in the past etc. i mean bethesda made it possible to have space ship battles in starfield using the CE2, have ship customizations, and made the graphics look more prettier than fallout 4 etc. but they never took those features/gameplay a step further, they half-assed it because the lack of man power to upgrade the engine or whatever the reason it is
ppl say that the CE is bad because its "old" but are oblivious to the fact the EVERY single engine is in fact old, even UE 5 is built from the engine in the 90s. again its not the engine, its bethesda for not properly updating it/ stabilizing it. i get the starfield was already close to finish when the microsoft acquisitions was happening, but NOW is the time to use that microsoft money to properly update their engine and hire more ppl for their biggest games ever, TES 6 and fallout 5
Bethesda today is a joke, Starfield was a joke. Probably the most mediocre game i have played lately with incredible empty world and lack luster dialouges and ugly design on npcs.
@@bobjoe5937 The amount of loadingscreens in Starfield got me flashbacks from Anthem.
"Stick with creation engine". No. Absolutely not. So many technical issues and limitations have come from creation engine. They need to either make a new engine, or use an industry standard engine like UE5. Your comment about keeping creation engine seems more like engagement bait than an actual fully baked opinion.
i agree with matty's point on the creation engine, the engine is buggy as hell, but i really don't want them to ditch the engine because of bugs and he's also right that many people equate the issues with the design with the engine which has near to nothing to do with what they are talking about.
the main point is that bgs doesnt want to drop the creation engine because the player agency interaction and mods, but if you play prey you will see that that game has WAY more payer agency/interaction than any bgs game ever and it doesnt need mods to make the game actually good
@@Jeanssj98
pray, the only thing i remember about that game is that it's a bad stealth game, just like dishonored, it passes because it's mainly line of sight stealth with not much in between, but it's not very good stealth.
i assume pray is like dishonored when it comes down to player choice in the way the quest ends or your approach to a quest?
bethesda games are known open world sandboxes, where pray or dishonored are very linear and restricted in the linear path presented in front of you, where a creation engine game focuses on more than just one kind of gameplay style, you can play a stealth archer or you can play a tank brute or a magic user or a vampire or a dawnguard good guy, these choices provide the games with lots of replay value in choices and you can play any way you wish in that role within the open world, or at least almost any way, there are some restrictions of course, but with modding some of these restrictions become more flexible.
i think all games can benefit from mods.
granted when i first played skyrim, i loved the game even without mods, i played it for 3 years straight without mods i was addicted to the game and couldn't play any other game as many games were shit and couldn't compare at the time, i guess it wasn't until i played the witcher 3 for the first time that i fell in love with another RPG that was well made and a lot better in some ways, but the game still was restricted because the modding didn't really offer much outside of basic mechanic changes, it's a great game for the story and experience no doubt, but i still find myself wanting to go back to skyrim with the mods, there is just something that no other game offers in the range of atmosphere to the point where you don't want to leave it behind, and i have taken about a year off of playing skyrim and i still think about it from time to time, it lingers on my mind so much, no other game really grasps me like skyrim did.
No, it actually does have a huge impact on game design, as it governs what can and can't be done in a game. Matty downplays that too much. Bethesda's design approach to the engine will directly impact the design approach to the game itself. That's the nature of it.
@@5226-p1e prey is bether than any bgs game other than skyrim bro, it has way more player agency and interactivity (what bgs claims to be why they use that trash engine) than any bgs game
@@5226-p1e plus bgs games are the definition of quantity vs quality, you can play 100 way but everyone of them will be with mid levels of quality, while in prey and dishonored you can play a few ways but they are made with masterpiece levels of quality
I completely agree the creation engine is excellent for modding, there is no other game developer that allows such access to mod creation tools. I just wish they would stop messing with skyrim. Everytime they do they break its modding.
The problem is YT channels get clicks on negativity. You guys are the problem, lol
How do I avoid Asmon reaction videos?
If you have a lake that is 10 miles long and 1 inch deep, if you dip a cup into that, you'll get '1 inch' worth of water. If you have a lake that is 5 miles wide and 6 inches deep and you dip a cup into that you'll get '6 inches' of water. If you have a lake that is 1 mile wide and 12 inches deep and dip a cup into it, you'll come up with '12 inches' of water.
Which would you prefer? Sure, you can dip down and get that 1 inch of water over and over, but you're gonna get tired of it a lot sooner. Dip into the 6 inch deep cup and sudden you're really getting a lot more for the same time spent. You might even *prefer* the 6 inch deep compared to the 12 inch deep water. Maybe you like the location, maybe you prefer the cup you use for it, even over the 12 inch deep lake. Others might also enjoy the 1 inch deep too. But me personally, I'd rather take that 12 inch deep water any day of the week, because I'd rather get more water with each 'dip' and make it worth my time.
Problem is, Bethesda's learning the wrong lessons and making the lake wider and shallower with each new game they produce. This actually isn't new for them. Arena is actually the perfect encapsulation of this issue, it's 10 miles wide and 1 inch deep. Daggerfall is more the 6 inch deep water (as is Oblivion, Skyrim, FO 3, and 4). Morrowind is more the 12 inch deep water. But everything past that (FO76 at launch, Starfield) is back to the 10 miles wide and 1 inch deep lake. They've cycled back around to the start in the worst way possible, only now with actual graphical fidelity without any of the interesting worldbuilding that people liked from them. It's shallow, pedantic, and boring. I'd genuinely only ever go back to Starfield if it had a mod that absolutely blew my mind come out one day, which I'm not sure will ever happen.
I feel like if they learn from their mistakes then they’ll be fine, and I feel like that’s not possible
Their main mistakes with Starfield were knew ones
And honestly I feel like those problems couldn’t have been fixed by setting it in 2 or even 1 star system, I think it would’ve had to have been mainly 1 planet with occasional trips to other places outside it
i think a lot of the game could have been solved if they scaled down the quantity of space, because nobody likes going through 7 load screens just to get to the mission destination, also nobody likes a space game that lacks actual space travel lol, just another load screen like all the others.
what's funny is bethesda could at the very least simulated space travel through the gameplay, now technically it wouldn't be actual space travel, but it would feel like space travel and offer some playability that better fits the simulation for the player.
they have what are called delayed loading cells that function as a space that is playable and in this cell they could have made space travel actually simulate you going somewhere, what's really happening is the player engages the gravdrive and the cutscene takes place, but instead of going into an instant load screen the player is ejected from the cockpit and is allowed to see the animation of the gravdrive in motion through the windows of the ship and this cell takes some time to reach the destination, the player is allowed to walk around and chat with the crew or fix something on their gear or fix something on the ship while they wait for the ETA of when they reach their destination, but this system is based on how fast your ships drive is and how far away the planet destination your headed to is, but not too realistic where it takes literal real life hours to get there like star citizen, this is a game after all and you don't want the player becoming bored if this takes too long so for game playability, they shorten the window a bit to make it feel like they actually traveled.
but this system can go even further to procedural events based on chances of potential events during your travel time to your destination where anything could happen.
When your new game removes the best features of your previous games, it should be obvious you need to rethink your strategy. Looting, crafting, and exploration were all worse in Starfield. They should've scaled back and made it "Skyrim in space".
I just think they have been around a long time and haven't changed a lot in there design. This happens in all walks of life, they hit there peak late 00's early 10's and havent hit the same heights.
Playing Starfield really gave me the impression of lost passion from the team. The quest design and storyline is so bland and boring. It's like they were just slogging through some homework they weren't interested in doing when they designed it.
Go get the Chunk's Sauce -- okay. Is this going to be a cooking skill quest? Will it have multiple outcomes depending on how I complete it? Can the store close down if I get the wrong item and make customers sick? Will it unlock a new recipe with a nice stat boost?
NO. Fast travel to an NPC, receive the sauce, fast travel back. That's it, that's the quest. 200xp. Done. Navigating those fast travel menus like I was playing inside an excel spreadsheet, doing inventory control at work or something. This isn't a game.
What the fuck ?? Is this Emil's legacy? Nearly every quest is like this..
Somehow you always seem to come through with takes that resonate with me.
I listened to a few videos complaining about the creation engine. Although I don't know that much about game engines. I have played countless hours in Skyrim, fallout 4 and now Starfield. I don't see why Starfield couldn't deliver the key aspects I would hope to see, while using the creation engine. As you said the issues are in game design / creative choices. Not limitations of the engine they built it on.
Overall I really like Starfield, it's revived my gaming hobby and given me my fix of Skyrim and fallout esque content. But it does feel underwhelming and that had some different choices been made this game could've surpassed Skyrim rather than just be attempting to live up to it.
Keep pushing your content. I keep thinking to myself if they just put this man in the design team as a consultant we'd have such a better product on our hands.
The only update they made to the engine for starfield was adding a 3rd party renderer plugin. They can't even update their own engine. And people keep saying there isn't a problem with it.
How to fix Bethesda?
Easy answer:
Dont
Let them fail, sell the rights, and hopefully whatever new company rises from the ashes will actually make decent games again.
It's definitely also the engine. There's a reason the physics are bugged, why all their games have tons of loading screens, why you can't seamlessly travel between planets in Star Field, why Skyrim's cities are so small. There's a memory limit, at least for Skyrim on around 4gb. This means if the amount of data, from the game, stored in the RAM exceeds 4 giga bytes, the game crashes.
*Quick info on binary*
(One byte = 8 bits. Each bit can be either a 1 or a 0. The series of bits determine the value. One byte can have a maximum value of 255 (Unsigned) or a value between -128 to 128 (signed), depending on whether it's unsigned or signed. If higher values are needed, you must combine bytes. so two bytes can equal a value larger than 255 or -128 to 128.
0000 0001 = 1, 0000 0010 = 2, 0000 0011 = 3, 0000 0100 = 4, (...), 1111 1111 = 255 - Binary uses the power of two)
I don't know how AI for NPCs are programmed, only that it likely requires a lot of bytes, and with each individual NPC having a lot of unnecessary code, it quickly adds up the bytes along with anything else. This is why Skyrim has like 13 NPCs in each major city.
As I understand it, the Creation Engine is a modified version of Netimmerse, which in Bethesda's modified version is built upon a flawed foundation, probably from back when it was still Gamebryo.
Also Perfect games don't need mods.
The shallow writing isn't to do with the Engine though
I can only hope the brutality of SF Steam rating for the last 30 days hitting negative, it was at a mere 37% positive when I looked at it yesterday, will have to impact BGS and hopefully right the paths of ES6 and FO5. Hopefully it will be reflected in their sells numbers going forward. This many negative reviews and the utter lack of memes from SF should be troubling BGS.
The biggest thing should really be a less is more kind of mentality. ES6 shouldn't have all of Tameriel, probably should only really have 1 province. Focus on what makes that great. Don't dump 100 features onto the game.
Just here to say I LOVE the new thumbnails. Creative and they stand out from the majority “reaction face and caption” that a lot of folks do.
I always find it funny and kinda sad how the most negative blanket statements rise to the top of these comment sections. I distinctly remember a lot of people saying that Starfield was awesome when it came out, but the conversations have soured in only a couple months, and I find it hard to believe that all these people have come to the conclusion that "Starfield sucked" on their own.
I think Bethesda itself doesn’t need fixing, but leadership does. Starfield’s biggest mistake was chasing the idea of making the ultimate “simulator” rather than making a space exploration game, and those kinds of decisions is the reason it failed. The studio is talented, they have great tools to work with, but what they are working on just isn’t appealing anymore to new gaming audiences who have tasted games like Baldur’s Gate 3
I just have absolutely zero hope in all of Bethesda anymore at this point
I think its just time for Bethesda to let the old guard go... ask them to retire and if they don't then fire them.
I know to some that'll sound outlandish: like how could they fire Todd and Emil and some of those other guys for all that they've done in the past? But they key there is "in the past" - you can't just keep the company in the hands of guys whose best days are 15+ years behind them just because they were once industry greats.
And to say things like "But they won't want to alienate their long term fans and supporters" - but anybody who first played Skyrim in the past 5 years isn't long term and all the fans who were around when Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3 first came out are going to be in their 30s, 40s and 50s... they are going to be looking at it more like: I will probably still be around when Elder Scrolls 6 comes out... but it is possible I might have passed on from old age by the time Elder Scrolls 7 and Fallout 5 come out.
By the time Elder Scrolls 6 finally comes out I think its going to be met with a lot of disappointment - I am sure its going to be a cool game and all that, but so many people are going to be looking at it like "Wait... what? This is it? You made us wait 15+ years for this thing?"
I'm sure the graphics will look good and there will be some nice additions to the game engine... but then on the other hand you'll probably be able to say "Yeah it looks good, but modders achieved this all in Skyrim 10 years ago"
And I'm not saying that they should have been cranking out an Elder Scrolls game every 3-4 years, but I seriously expect when ES6 comes out that a lot of people will look at it like "We should have had this back in 2016 at the latest"
Personally, I hope Bethesda dial down their obsession on "Realism" and fully give in to wackiness and silliness we could experience in games like Oblivion, especially in Shivering Isles DLC. I don't want politics and boring drama in games. I want good old fashion fun.
Hey Matty! Thank you for all your awesome work joined your Patreon yesterday and was able to join the discord server that has been awesome!! There is a great community there!
Yooo fam I recognize your name from the discord last night! Welcome!!
You’re the only person on the internet who hasn’t said the creation engine sucks. People don’t understand that the engine gets updated for every game. Everyone says “it’s basically the gamebryo engine which is ancient muh.” Every engine is built on a previous engine or uses code that was built off of really old code. That’s how software is developed. I’m a software developer who commonly refactors code from 2005. It’s a thing
Bethesda certainly has been on a downward spiral with their latest releases. Microsoft should force Bethesda to work with Obsidian. Maybe that would bring back some of the lost "Bethesda magic"
They should merge them, honestly. Both studios on their own have been putting out mediocre products.
Bethesda should have just said starfield is outer worlds on steroids. I feel bamboozled
I very much agree with your take on the Creation Engine. The engine is fine, serviceable and fitting for the type of game Bethesda used to make. All of Starfields problems with the story and world stem from bad design and bad writing. It's probably one of the smoothest Bethesda launch to date and while things like dlss support didn't arrive on release, it's not a common issue to have the game broken.
the main point is that bgs doesnt want to drop the creation engine because the player agency interaction and mods, but if you play prey you will see that that game has WAY more payer agency/interaction than any bgs game ever and it doesnt need mods to make the game actually good
No its not wtf u smoking? 😂
I disagree, quest writing and dialogue is not one of Bethesda’s strengths. Starfield’s quests were much worse than Fallout 4 and Skyrim’s quests in my opinion. I will say elder scrolls and fallout lore is a huge strength for Bethesda which can be used to spice up bellow average quest writing. Bethesda needs to double down on their biggest strength of exploration in ES6. Exploration was non existent in Starfield which is why I think the game ultimately died.
Everything wrong with Starfield from combat, quests, world and everything else funnels down to mismanagement and the incompetence of the game director. Period.
Maybe Bugthesda should've done more procedural generation. Make outposts with ten, just as an example number, variations. Make the insides random too. Make the caves and their contents random too but their colors should be similar to the planet's colors.
Yes, people will see repetition but it won't be that obvious.
Maybe Bugthesda can be saved but I don't think so. They think their burning house is fine.
I agree about the engine. Even the Graphics don't bother me that much. Issue I have is with all the loading screens. It makes the world feel like too much hubs combined, unlike a dynamic open world.
creation engine is super outdated to the point that a LOT of things are just not doable in games that use it, vehicles is an example, actual good combat is other, cut down loading screens is other, bro the games cant even have a weapon weel for god sake
@@Jeanssj98 It's not a problem with the engine itself, Bethesda just doesn't want to modify the parts that aren't working for some reason.
@@lennysmileyface maybe is that, but the fact is that the creation engine limits way more than it enables, look at mass effect 1 from 2007, it has WAY more cinematic stuff
@@lennysmileyface the main point is that bgs doesnt want to drop the creation engine because the player agency interaction and mods, but if you play prey you will see that that game has WAY more payer agency/interaction than any bgs game ever and it doesnt need mods to make the game actually good
@@Jeanssj98 Again I think Bethesda doesn't see the point in drastically changing the engine even though it would be good for their games. They have the engine source code, they could make it do whatever they want.
You've kinda nailed the issue with the bethesda fanbase. Yes the creation engine gave rise to games such as skyrim......which was over 10 years ago. Bethesda's biggest issue is how dated their games feel these days
Creation Engine is a major issue, definitely not the single issue within Starfield as that was a writing issue.
Now that they are a part of Microsoft and have an absolutely massive team of people under their umbrella Microsoft should be looking at making their own engine that takes the great parts of Creation Engine (mod compatibility, asset management, and easy prototyping) but takes a ground-up approach and is a real competitor to Unreal that will allow their individual companies to do whatever they want with it, including modding for the community, but takes current and future technology and AI into account, as well as reverse compatibility of games from one iteration to the next of the same engine. Something that they could sell licensing for to other companies looking to use it much like Unreal does.
Yes, the writing needs to improve as the major concept of Fallout 4 was just dumb, specifically talking about the main questline, and Starfield was just terrible all the way around. The concepts behind Starfield were great in theory but poorly executed. We don't have to understand the inner workings of a game company to understand that the game was a mile wide and a micro-millimeter deep.
One problem with the creation engine, it would seem to me, is that it makes bugs difficult to fix. It’s been months since multiple game halting quest bugs were identified in Starfield, and they have proven unable to fix them.
Matty just told Bethesda to unironically keep the creation engine🤦♀️
2006 - 2016 was the golden age of Bethesda. Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout NV (by Obsidian), Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE.
That makes 5 different games plus Skyrim SE. There never will be times like that again. Since then 7 years has passed and all we have is Fallout 76 and Starfield.
At this point, I'm completely happy, if they just remaster their old games. I'm completely fed up with all the endless waiting. Besides I don't trust them anymore.
TES 6 could be the best game ever and better than Skyrim, but it also could be another semi-good game. I think they just lost themselves after the success of Skyrim.
I agree, the engine isn't the issue, it's design decisions. In seeking to provide endless content, they've really strayed from what made Skyrim endless. It's roleplaying different characters who make different choices and do different faction questlines. It's having the radiant quests serve a specific end rather than be completely endless. Imagine if Skyrim had a single dungeon design for each type: mine, cave, tomb, dwemer ruins, etc and you were sent to these by innkeepers randomly placing them on the map. That would have been boring, but it's closer to how Starfield operates. There's still a good game in Starfield with the quest and writing. However, the game pushes you to the poor, endless exploration of generated content, which turns it into a mediocre game. Also, the replayability is around roleplaying different characters. However, Starfield wants you to keep the same character with new game plus. I feel like I have to work against what the game wants me to do to enjoy it as a good game rather than get frustrated playing a mediocre game.
It's funny seeing people talk about "design decisions" without understanding that the engine is designed and how that directly impact how the game is designed. You guys should just say that you didn't want what Starfield was going for. But to be frank, I don't think you guys understand what Bethesda was going for with Starfield. With better engine design, Bethesda would've been able to achieved what they were going for in Starfield, and you'd probably have a different opinion.
It’s crazy how much damage Emil Pagliarulo has done. He’s one of the only writers credited for the faction quest lines as well as the main quests and side quests. His writing style is incredibly simplistic and devoid of nuance. He is a huge reason why the studio doesn’t use a design document which is a staple for almost every game studio! It’s what keeps everyone on the same page about what IS and ISN’T in the game. So not only is the incredibly poor story and quest writing on him but the disjointed nature of the games writing, quests, world, and mechanics is on him as well because most of the devs can’t commit to an overlap between anything because nobody knows what’s in the game or what will be scrapped or focused on more! It must be a nightmare trying to create anything of substance in these games because your cool idea either gets reduced to nearly nothing or it gets removed because it doesn’t fit the latest revision that you just heard about weeks after it was decided. The future of Bethesda could be so bright if they cut him loose and hire a team of at least 20 talented writers with a passion for games and good writing with no motive to inject their personal opinions into it.
Great tips man. I know it comes from a place of love and as a fellow Bethesda fan, I totally agree on just about all of this.
The only one I have mixed feeling on is the team size. I like that they're a smaller team. And I actually think it lends something to the games. But they could also hire more support staff and have the best of both worlds. So I think your points are fair there too.
Doubt it,nothing has shown that BGS is willing to rethink their ways. People will cry foul or say “trolls…Starfield is great/good…etc” but all us REAL BGS fans since Morrowind know that Sh*tfield was not only underwhelming, but borderline regrettable. I would love to be wrong, but the future of BGS including TES 6 is looking rough…