I like bethesda because of FA3 And TES. I love how their games have this "bethesda feel" feel to them.
Is there anything wrong with Bethesda softworks?
- Thread starter slipknot4
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I do love Bethesda, but their games somehow feel incomplete. Credit really has to go to the mod communities for making the experience of these games whole.
I loved Fallout 3, and I played Morrowind to death but I had some trouble getting into Oblivion. Sure, Oblivion had a few noticeable improvements, but Morrowind seemed more accessible and instant and the world felt a lot larger. Plus the expansions and some of the factions in Morrowind really added a lot of play time with great rewards (the enchanted guard armor and other stuff in the first expansion, and the wolf ring and that whole extra continent in the second one). Plus I feel there was a lot more open-ness in Morrowind...you seemed to be able to carry a lot more, you could go to vendors at night, you could kill just about anyone and rob their houses very easily and quickly without people noticing...it was the little things.
They have a penchant for creating very enjoyable, believable game worlds, and they tend to be very unique in their art style, level design, etc. However, it is also worth nothing that they basically suck when it comes to writing, especially dialogue, and they have some of the worst character animation in the industry (though some of it has improved with Fallout 3; supposedly they now own a motion capture studio but they might be limited by the game engine they're using). They have also recently adopted a very sort of player-friendly approach to game design which, while good, also tends to make their games too easy in many ways; for example in Fallout 3, even though it's been hundreds of years since the Great War, every single building is still jam-packed with useful items, and the "scavenging" feel of the game is completely lost once you hit around level ten.
Bethesda's games are effectively very much double-edged; while they can boast amazingly immersive game worlds on a scale that most developers their size wouldn't dream of creating, their games are often completely full of bugs, their customer support and community involvement can be poor, and they often rely upon modders and whatnot to fix the problems in their games for them (such as poor interfaces and game-breaking glitches).
Bethesda's games are effectively very much double-edged; while they can boast amazingly immersive game worlds on a scale that most developers their size wouldn't dream of creating, their games are often completely full of bugs, their customer support and community involvement can be poor, and they often rely upon modders and whatnot to fix the problems in their games for them (such as poor interfaces and game-breaking glitches).
Most animations are hard-coded into the engine as far as I know, such as "walkright", "runright", "walkforward", etc., and they cannot be expanded upon, not even by modders (I think they have to replace animations altogether to get custom animations to work). As far as I know, the AI in their games does not actually move diagonally at all, only left to right and forward and back, so they don't need animations for that sort of character movement. Their games are designed for playing in first-person so they don't bother with special animations for the player character. In theory it is not a hard thing to fix, but just one of those things that falls by the wayside as unessential. Their third-person cameras are only really so players can take a look at their gear, cinematic angles, etc. not for actually playing the game.zauxz said:
Bestheda Rule! Try and make a game as big as they do there is going to be ALOT of bugs, but i doesn't take away from the sheer epicness of it all.slipknot4 said:
They could have done something about the conversation mechanic in Fallout 3. It was tolerable in Oblivion, what with the game being such a novelty..
That eerie 'close up of Mr/Mrs Potatohead' thing gets old very fast.
A Mass Effect system could have been implemented, but it would have taken a lot of time to script it all.
Perhaps..you know the briefings in Assassin's Creed?Where you get to walk around in a limited space while the old fellow talks disapprovingly at you?That would have worked nicely.
That eerie 'close up of Mr/Mrs Potatohead' thing gets old very fast.
A Mass Effect system could have been implemented, but it would have taken a lot of time to script it all.
Perhaps..you know the briefings in Assassin's Creed?Where you get to walk around in a limited space while the old fellow talks disapprovingly at you?That would have worked nicely.
If anything actually ANNOYS me about Bethesda's games, it's that the character-to-NPC interaction involves the NPC standing ramrod stiff and never breaking eye contact. It's creepy and it breaks any feeling of immersiveness.
There's two reasons for this:samaritan.squirrel said:
1) They don't have dialogue recorded for the player character because they feel it would either take too much time to get right or would break immersion because the whole idea is that the player is "transplanted" into the game world. It would also make things more difficult for modders who want to write new dialogue for the player.
2) In the case of Fallout 3, the close-up character portraits were used because they were also used in the original Fallout titles; Bethesda was trying to retain the same sort of feel and continuity. To be fair, I think they did a pretty good job in replicating it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW8TNY9W_2E], though there is a nice mod that takes it even further [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5coN957CFo].
are you trying to get away with copying the "Y" man and his reasons? at least acknowledge him.The Great JT said:
Other than that
I like the games they have come out with but I wish they would include more monsters and have certain kinds in certain areas (Like the Y man)They could use some of the old monsters from their other games just update the looks and make them fly or something. (Other than flying deer and slaughterfish I haven't seen any flying creatures in Oblivion)
"In the case of Fallout 3, the close-up character portraits were used because they were also used in the original Fallout titles"
That's a pretty interesting point [and mod], actually. But if I recall correctly, the older titles only had portraits for the more pivotal characters..
The character models could have been better, too. Look at that suicide leap..
Now I'm just nitpicking. It's a great game.
That's a pretty interesting point [and mod], actually. But if I recall correctly, the older titles only had portraits for the more pivotal characters..
The character models could have been better, too. Look at that suicide leap..
Now I'm just nitpicking. It's a great game.
I never said that Bethesda was the best technology company out there. It's their creativity and artwork that really shine. Oblivion was in many ways their next-gen "testing grounds" for their game engine. With Fallout 3 they were able to create a far more detailed (though smaller) world with much more unique content because they had most of the technical hurdles cleared already.samaritan.squirrel said:
I'd agree that Oblivion was more of a testing ground for a new engine, though that didn't stop Morrowind from being far more varied and interesting overall. The main thing I liked about Morrowind is the way the way the difficulty scaling works (yes, the enemies scale in Morrowind too). In Oblivion, the enemies scale to be "challenging" for all level of players without being overpowering. This ruined the sense of danger because you could generally always defeat most enemies you came across. In Morrowind, the enemies only scaled within a certain level range, so running off into the blight at lvl 2 would see you get killed by cliffracers that, while they are stronger, at lvl 20, would be little challenge (they still are stupid and extremely annoying, though)
i enjoy their games, but after a while i get bored, and i find far too many glitches and problems with them if i play the for a lenghty amount of time, but their games are still good fun to go back to and add mods to so i can play about!!!!!
I love me too apart from thier game breaking bugs. F3 is prob my second favorite of all time after HL2
The one thing that I hear most often is how Bethesda turned away from turn based in Fo3. I see no problem with that, I LOVE Fo3.
Fallout threes a good game in its own right, although I really do prefer the original two. The problem was that Bethesda created such lofty expectations by making the game a successor to such a famous and well loved set of games. Bethesda isn't black isle, so I didn't expect a black isle style game from them.
It's a great game though, just a step in a different direction from the original two. I love all three to bits. Even if the old Bethesda buggers ups are crawling about in there.
It's a great game though, just a step in a different direction from the original two. I love all three to bits. Even if the old Bethesda buggers ups are crawling about in there.
Thanks! Pleasure to be here.slipknot4 said: