Elder Scrolls V: How can Bethesda learn from Bioware

[ElTigreSantiago]

I feel that Bioware's games have been a lot more linear than Oblivion and Fallout 3. But the character thing is definitely true.

Also, I don't really think that Bethesda should be looking up to Bioware for ideas. I enjoyed Fallout 3 and Oblivion more than Mass Effect and Dragon Age. In my opinion, Bethesda is the ONLY developer that has ever succeeded at making an open world seem like an open world. While Bioware's worlds are all seperated by constant loading screens and things to make you THINK you are traveling, Bethesda's actually let you travel from place to place in one great big seamless environment. Anytime I play an open-world game, I can't stop thinking about how much it fails in comparison to Bethesda's.

 

[Meggiepants]

I actually agree with most of your points. I like both Bethesda and Bioware games, and I also think Bethesda suffers a bit with making characters you actually care about beyond, "If I kill him, will I get to wear his armor?"

I just hope Bethesda springs for a bit more money when it comes to hiring voice talent for their next title. They don't need to hire big name talents. There are a lot of great video game voice actors out their.

 

[BritishWeather]

All Bestheda needs is a lip synching departments and high facial detail and more varied voice acting and a sorted morality system

 

[Fappy]

I feel that Bioware's games have been a lot more linear than Oblivion and Fallout 3. But the character thing is definitely true.

Also, I don't really think that Bethesda should be looking up to Bioware for ideas. I enjoyed Fallout 3 and Oblivion more than Mass Effect and Dragon Age. In my opinion, Bethesda is the ONLY developer that has ever succeeded at making an open world seem like an open world. While Bioware's worlds are all seperated by constant loading screens and things to make you THINK you are traveling, Bethesda's actually let you travel from place to place in one great big seamless environment. Anytime I play an open-world game, I can't stop thinking about how much it fails in comparison to Bethesda's.

Actually the traveling thing reminds me of an old argument that must be made. Elder Scrolls V SHOULD NOT have fast travel! Give us fast horses or certain means of faster travel (i.e. boats and Silt Striders), but please no instant teleportation (although Mages Guild teleportation is fine).

 

[RobotNinja]

Bethesda and Bioware make very different games. In Oblivion, you just do whatever the hell you want. You don't even have to do the main quest. However, the game is so big, that it feels empty. In Bioware games your only real choices are what class you are and your whether you choose to be a saint or a dick. But their games are full of interesting characters and good writing. I don't think these styles would blend very well.

 

[Zeromaeus]

I thought the whole point of Elder Scrolls was that you were destined to complete that path as it was foretold.

Unless I've been playing them wrong or something.

Well I guess, if you want to get technical about it, you could just read (or have someone else read) an elder scroll that depicts you with a different destiny. Then lose your eyesight (which is why you'd have someone else do it).

EDIT: What I want to see is a more dynamic world. Things need to change a bit as time goes on. Robbers attack villages, farms pop up, farms get sacked by goblins, a giant walks in from the mountains, season, wars, sieges, treaties. Its, if not the next step, a nice hearty goal for a game series based around freedom to move about a working world at your leisure. Things should happen when you aren't there, and things should happen as a result of the stuff you do.

 

[Booze Zombie]

I honestly thought the main thing Bethesda did wrong with Oblivion was getting lazy.
The "necromancers" don't even raise the dead, they just cast summon like you do, most of the spells are just higher level copy-pastes of previous spells, some simple stealth elements like actual back-stabs and neck-slitting would've improved the experience greatly...

I could bang on for hours.

Main thing I would love to do in a new Oblivion game, though, is owning a castle and filling it with guards, treasure and my own personal collection of deadly implements and a lab for more-effective potion making and spell creation.

My custom character modifying how this all goes would be nice, like I could create skeleton guards if I was a necromancer and use the castle as a base to exert my influence over the surrounding area, purging bandits and securing the area against attacks on my home.

I can dream...

 

[Mr. Grey]

I thought the whole point of Elder Scrolls was that you were destined to complete that path as it was foretold.

Unless I've been playing them wrong or something.

Well there's no fun in a prophecy if it was 100% fullproof, "misread the prophecy might have been". (Sorry for quoting a terrible movie).

Spoiler: Yeah, but you're talking about Bethesda...

...they're about as smart as the Jedi Council was when they accepted Anakin without thinking that the Sith may have planned this... or that to bring the balance to the universe was to give it back to the Sith as that was the Cycle of Balance. Also known as the Circle of Life to Disney.

Hakuna Matata~!

That's the point of the Elder Scrolls though... they are foolproof. In fact, if you have one in your grasp you can control your destiny, I'm not sure how... I think you can write in it and that will become the truth. I've forgotten to be honest.


EDIT: Also this. This could be a possibility to control the realm and change it as you'd want it, but it would have to be used as a finale sort of thing...

I thought the whole point of Elder Scrolls was that you were destined to complete that path as it was foretold.

Unless I've been playing them wrong or something.

Well I guess, if you want to get technical about it, you could just read (or have someone else read) an elder scroll that depicts you with a different destiny. Then lose your eyesight (which is why you'd have someone else do it).

 

[Zaik]

That's great and all but I think if the good guy neutral guy and asshole dialogue system spreads any more i will stop buying video games altogether. It's getting old. Really old.

 

[Fappy]

I honestly thought the main thing Bethesda did wrong with Oblivion was getting lazy.
The "necromancers" don't even raise the dead, they just cast summon like you do, most of the spells are just higher level copy-pastes of previous spells, some simple stealth elements like actual back-stabs and neck-slitting would've improved the experience greatly...

I could bang on for hours.

Main thing I would love to do in a new Oblivion game, though, is owning a castle and filling it with guards, treasure and my own personal collection of deadly implements and a lab for more-effective potion making and spell creation.

My custom character modifying how this all goes would be nice, like I could create skeleton guards if I was a necromancer and use the castle as a base to exert my influence over the surrounding area, purging bandits and securing the area against attacks on my home.

I can dream...

Morrowind did a great job of this with the House Strongholds. I am playing through Morrowind (again) at the moment and just got my Telvanni stronghold guarded by Dwemer Centurions (steam robots). Its totally badass.

 

[Irridium]

Bethesda needs to take some pointers from Obsidian actually. Bioware as well.

Why you ask? Because while Bethesda and Bioware were giving us the illusion of choice and requiring 3 damn games to get through them all (respectively), Alpha Protocal had assloads of choices, and they all actually mattered throughout the story in meaningful ways.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

What worries me about the upcoming Fallout: NV is the group to work on it. From all the articles I've read the original [Fallout 1&2] team seems almost irate that Fallout 3 wasn't their brainchild, and I fear what that might do to NV.

Anyway, OT, I think saying that either of them has really mastered any aspect of game design is a stretch, and asking them to homogenize features is just going to water down future releases. I hope they go about things in their own fashion and expand on their games in worthwhile (rather than cash cow) methods.

As many have mentioned, I've beaten Dragon Age 3 times in the last month (and I just got it last month) and I've determined that [shocking spoiler] many of the choices are illusions of choice anyway. So though Bethesda may be more up front about this, both of them are somewhat linear. And just for me, my favorite part of Fallout 3 was the setting. The RPG aspects were cool but more often than not I found characters to be eccentric, whereas if there had been fewer characters left it might have even improved the mood. Seriously, a post apocalyptic world and there's some guy in a penthouse with 2 women just shagging all day?

 

[Slaanax]

I dunno, Bioware and Bethesda make very different games, for the exact reason everyone mentioned for bioware sucking is why I like them, I like playing that tells me a story. The open worldness of Bethesda games makes them drag on and I start losing whats going in the story as a wonder about place from place. I never really enjoyed an open world game besides fallout 3, but I just played the story I didn't really stray to far from the main quest.

 

[Always_Remain]

Are me and Furburt the only people on this forum who love Bioware with all of our hearts? lol

But anyways as people have said the styles don't mix. Bioware games are linear with a taste of free roaming and Bethesda games are for free roaming with a little linearity. Bethesda just needs to hire more voice actors, improve facial animation and create more interesting characters. There's not a whole lot I can add to this discussion.

 

[Zeromaeus]

I honestly thought the main thing Bethesda did wrong with Oblivion was getting lazy.
The "necromancers" don't even raise the dead, they just cast summon like you do, most of the spells are just higher level copy-pastes of previous spells, some simple stealth elements like actual back-stabs and neck-slitting would've improved the experience greatly...

I could bang on for hours.

Main thing I would love to do in a new Oblivion game, though, is owning a castle and filling it with guards, treasure and my own personal collection of deadly implements and a lab for more-effective potion making and spell creation.

My custom character modifying how this all goes would be nice, like I could create skeleton guards if I was a necromancer and use the castle as a base to exert my influence over the surrounding area, purging bandits and securing the area against attacks on my home.

I can dream...

This would be awesome. It could even be simplified to a "home-base" kind of thing that reflects your actions and can be modified through upgrades etc. like the houses in Oblivion, only more in-depth. There also needs to be a reason you would want to have this place defended. Have daemons and the like attacking the noble Paladin's keep or have heroes for hire that'll assault the necromancer's lair. Make it so that when you do evil things something happens other than people being a little snippy before they talk to you.

 

[brodie21]

nothing, i dont want them to learn a thing. bethesda and bioware have very different styles and i think they are both good. i dont want them messing things up. bethesda has an open world to explore and lots of goodies to find, and bioware has a more linear storyline. there are some things that bethesda could do better, such as making a more interesting combat system, and getting more voice actors. and they could add other little things (which i wont bother mentioning here) to make it a bit better, but on the whole, oblivion and fallout three are the two games that hold the majority of my play time. all i want is more

 

[Maladjusted]

Are me and Furburt the only people on this forum who love Bioware with all of our hearts? lol

Hell, no. Deifnitely add me to the list of pathetic 'why play a non-Bioware game?' diehards.

On the issue of how Bethesda might improve, @Wanderfreak's brilliant "Do you have enough voice actors test" would obviously be the place to start. After that, I'd refer to Yahtzee's Z.P. review and generally to all the 'immersion breaking' problems that make "Oblivion" so sadly short of genius...

Last, I'd say that Bethesda have to find a way to give the player lots of choice (free-roaming, exploration, side quests etc.), without thereby giving her the sense that her choices are INCONSEQUENTIAL. This was one of my biggest beefs with "Oblivion": I always thought I that the game didn't give a shit if I took endless days ignoring the whole apocalyptic demonic invasion thing in order to help some guy find his lost pig, or even to increase my ranks in the pig-finder's guild. In contrast, despite also having innumerable side effects, Mass Effect (for instancE) at least gave me the illusion of moral choice, i.e. that even 'though the game didn't really do anything to me for taking out time from saving the galaxy to help that guy find his brother: I still had a moment of FEELING like I was -risking- the main plot in order to do the sidequest.

So, it's not like you have to DITCH all the (let's face it, nice) free-roaming and side-quests, just to give a sense (via better voice-acting) that they're not little bits of random content: some MINOR integration of side-quests with the main quest would help: for example, if the world is being threatened by demons, how about we have a few side quests, based around NPCs -dealing- with this fact??