Poll: Bethesda: Their fault or not?

[captaincabbage]

So, I was having a conversation with my girlfriend today about Skyrim. Naturally we're both super-excited about it. Everything from the full 3D inventory, to the little details, like how the stock animations are dynamically blended into the environment (e.g. the giants walking down the hillside in the E3 demo).
Anyway, our conversation/excited babbling eventually lead us to one point that's on everybody's minds about Skyrim. Will it be as glitchy as Bethesda's recent entries to the game market?

Now, personally, I don't think it will be at all. I have always held out a little faith in Bethesda as a developer, and I'll explain to you why.
First off, I've personally never experienced games like theirs. Games that are so in-depth, so dizzyingly deep and so detailed that you could lose yourself in them for weeks at a time (something which I constantly did with Oblivion). I personally find it hard to believe that a company that, for all intents and purposes, is obsessed with giving you the most fully featured and life-consuming games, could turn such a blind eye to QA.
Secondly, both myself and my girlfriend (after she coerced me into it) play the absolute shit out of Morrowind. I never, in my 60+ hours of that game came across one broken quest or one destructive, or otherwise benign, glitch. Neither did my girlfriend. These sorts of crashes and broken quests only really came about from Oblivion onwards, when the Gamebryo engine started it's run at Bethesda. I've always found the Gamebryo engine so fragile that it would simply crash to desktop at the slightest provocation. Numerous games of Oblivion and Fallout 3, cut short by a temperamental and otherwise touchy game engine. Thank god for it's auto-save function, that's all can say.
Finally, it's universally recognized that Oblivion was the main attraction to the next (current) generation. It was at the cusp of the new gen of hardware and software and as such, it had no back wall of previously proven ideas and tech to lean on. Gamebryo was a daring leap into the unknown. Gamebryo, combined with the seemingly limitless possibility of Oblivion's open structure was a recipe for disaster. There is only so much testing of each quest, item and location they can do before shipping, so the infinite variables of Oblivion's world was just sitting there, waiting for an unwary gamer to put two and two together unwittingly, so it could pounce and crash to desktop. Gamebryo didn't have a lot of the mainstays of modern gaming, like dynamic animation (like the aforementioned giants in the E3 demo). The SDK was simultaneously the most varied and constricting kit, since, for example, characters couldn't crouch whilst moving to pick something up. They'd have to run to the idem, stop, crouch, pick it up and stand up again. There were no logical shortcuts. It all lead to an incredibly constricting experience.

All in all, I just can't see a developer that cares so much for it's world and it's inhabitants. That cares so much for the lore, history and minute details like fully readable books, would consistently drop the ball on something so serious as QA. It just doesn't make sense to me.
Now Obsidian and Gamebryo, that's a different story all together. . .

TL;DR: Do you think the bugs, glitches and crashes in Oblivion and Fallout 3 are Bethesda's fault, or the Gamebryo engine's fault?

 

[Saelune]

The games are freaking huge! Most of the glitches are minor and hard for them to truly be pinpointed. So the occasional rock floats above the ground, or someone walks into a wall sometimes. All that matters is the big glitches. The game ending ones. So far, the directly Bethesda made games have been fine on that. The big glicth in oblivion was the Umbra one, which got fixed. I expect Skyrim to be full of little glitches, but its a big game, bigger than most. Bethesda is one of the few devs to actively try to make long lasting games. I STILL play Morrowind (plan on binging again on it soon even). And this is not just reminisant replaying, like you would for say, Ocarina of Time or something either. I still havent really finished Morrowind or Oblivion.

 

[Smooth Operator]

A bit of both I would say, a "poor craftsman blames his tools is the saying", i.e. the craftsman should know what tools to use, but with something as complex as a game engine the underlying issues are only know by the tool maker so as Bethesda dug into it they probably didn't know the full extent of it's problems.

But I blame Bethesda them for the shoddy releases, if you know your game is so flawed then don't put that shit on the shelves until it's fixed, sadly "sell now patch later" is becoming the industry standard.

 

[Nooners]

Gamebryo. It doesn't matter how much playtesting a game is subjected to, millions of obsessive players will ALWAYS break a game.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Both, I think. But I really don't get too mad about that - glitches aren't really a deal-breaker for me. Some of my favorite games are really glitchy. Now, weak writing, on the other hand...

 

[ShotgunZombie]

The thing is that no matter how advanced the game's engine is the developer's will almost never be able to conceive every way that the player will interact with the environment or in the case of a "dynamic game" like Skyrim, how the environment will interact with itself AND the player. All of this persistent data creates mistakes and screw ups in the game's code. Some of these are minuscule or irrelevant and you'll probably never even notice them or remember them. So yeah...

 

[Zhukov]

I smell an apologist.

They release games. Those games are buggy. So buggy that there is no possible way that they aren't aware of it. It is their fault.

 

[Vern5]

While I would willingly blame Gamebryo for just being unstable, I would still have to blame Bethesda for using it and then trying to stick with it in hopes that they could make it better. Still, I've never had a Bethesda game that was incredibly bugged that I noticed for more than a second.

They chose to use the shitty engine time and again so yes, Bethesdas fault.
Just like its Gearboxes fault that DNF sucks. If a person is okay with putting out a half assed product then they bear all the blame.

Anyway, Bethesda games aint deep (Excluding Morrowind since I have not played that one), they are actually pretty half assed and just rely on fan content to bulk up their empty ass worlds.
They just provide the canvas, the community are the ones who use it to create fantastic things.

Bethesda games aren't deep. They are large. Why were you looking for depth in games that are touted as "Do whatever" games? Depth is something more commonly associated with a linear game that has a well-crafted story and characters with interesting backgrounds.

Bethesda games have always been a sort of blank slate in that way, both for in the mod sense and the actual game. Players going into games like Morrowind and Fallout 3 have to ascribe their own meaning to what they find rather than in a game like DA:O or Mass Effect, which already knows what it wants to show you and how it wants you to feel upon seeing or hearing those things.

 

[Javarock]

They chose to use the shitty engine time and again so yes, Bethesdas fault.
Just like its Gearboxes fault that DNF sucks. If a person is okay with putting out a half assed product then they bear all the blame.

Anyway, Bethesda games aint deep (Excluding Morrowind since I have not played that one), they are actually pretty half assed and just rely on fan content to bulk up their empty ass worlds.
They just provide the canvas, the community are the ones who use it to create fantastic things.

Damn, Pretty high standered.

They appear deeper then what square enix realses now and days

 

[Spencer Petersen]

While I would willingly blame Gamebryo for just being unstable, I would still have to blame Bethesda for using it and then trying to stick with it in hopes that they could make it better. Still, I've never had a Bethesda game that was incredibly bugged that I noticed for more than a second.

They chose to use the shitty engine time and again so yes, Bethesdas fault.
Just like its Gearboxes fault that DNF sucks. If a person is okay with putting out a half assed product then they bear all the blame.

Anyway, Bethesda games aint deep (Excluding Morrowind since I have not played that one), they are actually pretty half assed and just rely on fan content to bulk up their empty ass worlds.
They just provide the canvas, the community are the ones who use it to create fantastic things.

Bethesda games aren't deep. They are large. Why were you looking for depth in games that are touted as "Do whatever" games? Depth is something more commonly associated with a linear game that has a well-crafted story and characters with interesting backgrounds.

Bethesda games have always been a sort of blank slate in that way, both for in the mod sense and the actual game. Players going into games like Morrowind and Fallout 3 have to ascribe their own meaning to what they find rather than in a game like DA:O or Mass Effect, which already knows what it wants to show you and how it wants you to feel upon seeing or hearing those things.

Depth is just a measure of how much there is more to learn about the game and play in different manners. DA:O and Mass Effect are not deep, because your experience is the same every time with a different flavor. Open ended games have a lot more depth in that the way you play and the way you interact with the world can change dramatically, both in how you tackle quests/combat and also where you go and what you do.

DA:O and Mass Effect never have any depth in combat, as the only goal is to just kill whatever is put in front of you by the game, and the ways of avoiding combat are tied to one stat that requires no input or thought on the controller, just an arbitrary number of points either allotted to a coercion skill or just how many good/bad points you collected by playing the game normally. The open world type games usually have multiple methods of combat and ways of avoiding them, like stealth, conceding combat, bribery, non-lethal weapons, the coercion skill or using magic to calm/charm enemies to your side.

They also never have any element of exploration, as they both play out entirely either in recycled hallways, caves, towns and on-rails corridors or on empty planets with a couple landmarks and bad driving controls. Bethesda type open world games offer true exploration in that you actively search and explore unknown territory and find quests, dungeons and treasure you may not have even known existed in a previous playthrough. Just because the Bioware style games like to drone into your ear for a few minutes at a time and give you colorful text to click on does not make them any more deep then Oblivion or Fallout, it only makes them look deeper by pandering to the "im the only one who can save the day" trope that everyone loves to imagine about themselves. The only time that gets used in Oblivion is the main quest, which isn't the real focus of the game.

 

[Vern5]

snip

Oh hahah, I'm definitely not espousing that Bioware has anything over Bethesda. The stance I was taking on DA:O and Mass Effect are just comments I've heard from other people. What I meant about the Bioware games is that they already have their depth created for them by the designers. I have no idea how deep that depth actually is mostly because I couldn't stand either of those games for too long because they remind me of power-fantasy games designed specifically for losers (the "I is the heroz" mentality pops up in both games to such an extent in became nauseating). The point is that Bioware games have static depth while Bethesda games have a more fluid depth.

There are many different ways to play Morrowind, for example. If you tested two different gamers playing Morrowind for a month, where they both end up in the game by the end of that month could be wildly different places. The depth of a Bethesda game is mostly constructed by the player, who sees a task or interesting location or enemy and then has to use the myriad tools at his disposal to interact. For example, When presented with a powerful new enemy, the player could choose to engage it with magic, weaponry, diplomacy, stealth or not to engage it at all via tactical retreat.

Anyway, my point is that Bethesda games are no designed to have inherent depth. Instead they coax any perceived depth out of the player. Its what makes games like Morrowind more of an interactive medium rather than Mass Effect, which was essentially a book that occasionally shot lasers at you.

 

[StBishop]

They chose to use the shitty engine time and again so yes, Bethesdas fault.
Just like its Gearboxes fault that DNF sucks. If a person is okay with putting out a half assed product then they bear all the blame.

Anyway, Bethesda games aint deep (Excluding Morrowind since I have not played that one), they are actually pretty half assed and just rely on fan content to bulk up their empty ass worlds.
They just provide the canvas, the community are the ones who use it to create fantastic things.

This.

Also, I think the best way to play Bethesda games is 2 years late.

The shmucks that buy on release day and fuck around with the game for ages find most of the game breaking bugs so that people like myself can buy the GotY edition 12-24 months after release and get all the DLC on the disc and wait a few minutes when first putting the game in for all the patches to fix the problems.

Just as an aside, I'm not having a go at the die hard fans by calling them shmucks. I think people who get anything that's pushing the edge of technology is running the risk of being disappointed and that's their prerogative, I just don't think it's a great decision.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

Oh hahah, I'm definitely not espousing that Bioware has anything over Bethesda. The stance I was taking on DA:O and Mass Effect are just comments I've heard from other people. What I meant about the Bioware games is that they already have their depth created for them by the designers. I have no idea how deep that depth actually is mostly because I couldn't stand either of those games for too long because they remind me of power-fantasy games designed specifically for losers (the "I is the heroz" mentality pops up in both games to such an extent in became nauseating). The point is that Bioware games have static depth while Bethesda games have a more fluid depth.

There are many different ways to play Morrowind, for example. If you tested two different gamers playing Morrowind for a month, where they both end up in the game by the end of that month could be wildly different places. The depth of a Bethesda game is mostly constructed by the player, who sees a task or interesting location or enemy and then has to use the myriad tools at his disposal to interact. For example, When presented with a powerful new enemy, the player could choose to engage it with magic, weaponry, diplomacy, stealth or not to engage it at all via tactical retreat.

Anyway, my point is that Bethesda games are no designed to have inherent depth. Instead they coax any perceived depth out of the player. Its what makes games like Morrowind more of an interactive medium rather than Mass Effect, which was essentially a book that occasionally shot lasers at you.

Thats kinda my point. In 20 years when this age is considered retro and people look back at the games that defined this generation, I have a strong feeling that games like DA:O and Mass Effect will be forgotten or have aged terribly, mainly because their focus is on predefined events in predefined times in predefined places, which you can learn easy and master quick, making it a easy to learn, easy to master thing.

Depth is depth, no matter how it is generated, and the idea of an experience crafted by your own actions rather than just how you decide to react to predefined problems will generate a lot more replay-ability and timeless classic-ness than what essentially is a choose your own adventure book, because when you get one of those you read it seriously about 3 times then you read every page ending and then its worthless.

The criticism that Bethesda is lazy because there is an active modding community puzzles me somewhat. It really only hurts you if you play on console or if you don't know how to install mods. Id rather they leave that moddability in there even if it means more bugs because its better in the long term. Bugs can be fixed, bad gameplay cannot. Especially if we look again to the future, where a game like Oblivion may still be relevant due to fan mods redoing graphics and animations to next gen standards, something that a game like Mass Effect simply cannot do.

One more thing: I think one of the reasons a game like ME or DA:O has to have so much more QA is because of the nature of its triggers and activations. Imagine if a door in DA:O that is crucial to open during a quest bugs out and simply cannot open (or no need to imagine, cause this happened to me). What can you do? Look for a patch update? None for a week. Look for a fan-made fix? Not available yet. Can you open console and open it manually? Ok, but you need a mod to access the console, and then the door opening was supposed to trigger a crucial dialogue, and that doesn't start either. Now your up shit creek. Whereas in Oblivion no door is truly necessary to open due to the non-linear nature, and console access is as easy as pressing ~ and typing unlock. Because you can engage in conversation with anyone at any time you don't need to worry about those triggers. Oblivon can work with bugs because of its nonlinear nature and ease of access to its mechanics, whereas in a Bioware game a glitch can be much more disastrous because of certain key moments that are crucial for advancement.

 

[veloper]

Gamebryo does't make animations bad. That's all Bethesda's sloppy work.

Proof: a small studio made Divinity 2 DKS on the Gamebryo engine on a small budget and the NPCs there aren't nearly as stiff as the NPCs in Fallout3 and Oblivion.

 

[Zantos]

I think that after the image people have of Bethesda for releasing buggy games, they're going to try really hard to dispel that with skyrim. The only foreseeable problem is they chose a very memorable date which they can't really get out of, so if they come up with a gamebreaker in post-prod or testing then they either have to ditch out the whole 11.11.11 thing (which was pretty cool) or work their arses off to try and fix it for the deadline.

 

[Hyper-space]

Well, seeing as they are in the business of making huge-ass games with tons of features/locations/quests/whatever, glitches are to be expected.

The development process is simply a matter of trying to squeeze as much content within the constraints of their budget, meaning that they could either spend time and money on (more) extensive QA or use that time/money to make more content. Frankly, considering that they are really dedicated patchers and that the modding community often times put out tons of unofficial patches that can fix almost anything, i would rather have them try to make more content and fixing gamebreaking buggs than trying to iron-out every glitch there is.

 

[thecatsme0w]

I've worked in software QA before and it really is hard to forsee every single possible glitch that can go wrong especially with a world as giant and vast and detailed as Elder Scrolls - all those NPCs, all those quests, caves, Ayleid ruins, abandoned forts etc. They realistically can't test everything and thankfully that's why they listen to the end users and release patches when problems crop up that couldn't necessarily be anticipated pre-release.

(I wasn't doing game QA, mind you, but working for a local independant programmer who did a lot of custom inventory programs for retailers)

 

[Ninjamedic]

It's a Bethesda game, it NEEDS bugs to be the true Bethesda experience.