Bethesda Jank

@kishinfoulux: "Cleary aren't capable" is a little strong. In my experience they have been very capable

And I hate the word jank, especially because I only ever hear it used/said in this context

Why? It's plainly apparent if you look at the games.

@demoskinos: It is not that. As a consumer, I'm perfectly fine with Bethesda level of jank because nobody make games on that scale. I'm not talking only about the size of the world but also about the number of systems interacting with each other.

The Witcher 3 does not even come close in my opinion. The world is much more static which is easier to keep bug-free.

Bethesda can "get away with it" because the scale of interactions is unmatched by any game. People that love those games love them for that and can accept that it come with some issues.

you want a perfect game? wait 10-15 years while the dev irons all the bugs out, while making zero revenue and folding in the process. it's frustrating but it's reality. i'm still amazed that games of this scope manage to come out at all, let alone relativitely functional as they are. we're pretty much spoiled brats in this day and age, truth be told.

So you have worked on all three games? We do not know what underlying systems work in all of those games, how the engine works, what problems interactions might have caused etc. You might be right, you might not be. I'm saying it's presumptuous to look at F4 and say "it's big and it's a RPG so it's automatically more complex than MGSV or GTA V". That's all. They all have a ton of systems that have to work together and they're all grand in scale.

@grantheaslip: If people want to hate on the PS3 versions of Bethesda games I certainly get that and I certainly think how all that went down is a bummer. Otherwise, I take the issues and bugs with the acknowledgement that there are going to be some bugs because the game is fucking huge and bigger than any other on the market with what it's trying to do. I haven't seen a similar game that is bug free.

And outside of the PS3 issues, their games aren't broken for me at all.

@kishinfoulux said:

The thing is though people are shitting on it.

A lot of the discussion about this game has been about the jank and the frame rate and even the basic graphical fidelity. The reviews have been positive but they mention that the jank does detract from the game. It's just that it is still good in spite of this.

It's not Battlefield 4 or Assassins Creed: Unity or Halo: Master Chief Collection levels of broken though. And Bethesda don't get a free pass just because. It's because people like their games enough anyway. I agree that it's actually pretty silly they are in that sweet spot where they can get away with it but that's how it is.

What I mean is that having some serious rough edges (to put it lightly) doesn't automatically invalidate the entire experience for everyone.

Actually I can say that just by looking at the games and taking account what is going on in them.

GTA V isn't tracking my gear (which in F4 appears to have an extreme level of customization) or all the RPG stats or perks you can have (which dictate what you can do in all the other aspects of the game, not like MGSV or GTA V is checking a sneaking stat or fire arms stat to decide what happens when I perform an action), an inventory that allows you to pick up basically any item in the game world and then pull it back out or use it for something, dealing with the deep character customization Bethesda does, NPCs that try to have a real schedule (MGSV in particular has no NPCs that do anything but go on patrols and all of them have one "guard" type behavior), the systems regarding stealing and theft, a variety of factions and reputations regarding those factions, keeping track of where you place individual items across the game world (that all have their own physics, more so than you're going to see in GTA V or MGSV for sure), modeling the interiors of basically every building, placing lootable items across the whole game world, a complex quest system (that can involve procedural generation, it did in Skyrim at least), systems involving scaling content to the players level, a dialogue system to interface with across many or the NPCs, etc. I could go on.

Not saying GTA V or MGSV aren't deep, have their own challenges, or that they don't involve some of those aspects (both are different and may have aspects individually I mention above, and different Bethesda/Obsidian games in the TES or Fallout series may or may not have all those aspects) but there is clearly way more going on in a Bethesda game. That is why things like save file sizes ballooning as you play for longer go on in those games or performance continually degrading on PS3 as you played longer. That's why, as Rorie said, they have to break apart their open world more than they'd like in Fallout New Vegas (because system memory has so damn much to keep track of).

All of that complexity means more opportunities for things to go wrong, especially because almost all that stuff is interacting in some way with one or multiple of those systems at any given time.

Yeah it's not like Bethesda gets a pass. As stated the "i'm a consumer I want a finished product approach" is fine. But then as a consumer the only thing you want is a select group of games. Go find me all the games that release that have zero bugs, or very very few even. There is your list. That is what you can play.

I promise you they will be small in scope, size, and systems. Likely scripted sequences, more load times etc. I'm not just talking about games you played that you encountered little bugs either, that doesn't count. If you can find a good handful of youtube compilations featuring several different crazy bugs that occur in a game that aren't just repeats of each other than that game should not qualify for the "released with very little bugs" category. Ergo 90% of all games are like that.

The fact that they occur more regularly and to more users in Bethesda games is just an example of their size and scale. Again I'm not saying you don't have a right to dislike that. But all open world RPG games have these type of bugs/jank. All of them. The fact that it isn't just a Bethesda issue is why these games get a pass. People know going in, that in exchange for the ambition and systems and scale they will encounter more bugs. Whether its Fallout, Witcher, Red Dead, hell even Arma. All EVIDENCE shows that the more you put in a game, the harder it is to make it work without bugs. I didn't think we'd need to actually debate that fact in this thread honestly.

And yes, the arguments made that Bethesda could scale down their games and do less to have a tighter more refined/bug free experience. But their games have consistently sold the way they are. Which implies that the audience cares more about the ambition, scope, and scale Bethesda offers than they care about seeing bugs in the game. Could that change eventually? Sure. But for now, it hasn't. That is the way it is.

It honestly feels like some of you literally are saying "Hey you, company who continues to do crazy ambitious things in scope/size that continues to sell and continues to get tons of positive critical reviews and feedback. Stop making money on giving people games they like/enjoy and start making something with less bugs because a minority of us are sick of buggy games at face value, regardless of what else the game does right/wrong."

Actually no. They don't need to do anything. If people are inclined to buy their games in their current state, then there is no imperative to fix their games according to higher standards outside their own, let the opinions of a relatively few people who demand better. At this rate, Bethesda is in the business of appealing to Bethesda fans and from a business perspective, sadly.

Amen.

Also, what's up with everyone calling Witcher 3 flawless? I experienced so many crazy glitches in that game.

On today's Mixlr stream, Jeff talked about this issue as well and he also agrees that this kind of jankiness shouldn't exist today.

"If you want to make awesome fucking gifs of broken shit, Fallout 4 has a ton of that"

I am not saying this as a haughty know-it-all but as a genuinely curious citizen of the universe:

Hasn't it been commonly established already that one should wait a bare minimum of six months after a Bethesda release to buy the game unless you genuinely enjoy the silly jank?

They'll get away with it as long as the audience lets them. Right now, anything less than a score of 9 runs the risk of death threats to reviewers, so that's probably a while off.

So for now, we just sit here like Jesse Pinkman in the final season of Breaking Bad.

What you call jank, I call character.

Wouldn't this make a great ska band name?

I'm fine with jank in open world games. Hell, I'm a huge forgiver of it in general. My problem is that Fallout 4's jank is so immediately identifiable as Bethesda's. Not only does the game not look impressive visually, and have almost identical mechanics, but even the jank and quirks are the same thing we saw for hundreds of hours last console generation. It's tiring. It just doesn't feel like a new game because of it. I'd be fine with jank and glitches, as long as they (and everything else about the look and feel of the game) was actually, ya know, something new. Something different. I hate that the character jumps the exact same way, that the NPCs have the same jilted animations. I mean, Morrowind was still a buggy ass game, but at least Oblivion felt like a new experience for a new console generation with it's own unique jank and bugs that weren't just holdovers from the previous generation's installments because they refused to use something new to make it with. Maybe telling them to get a new engine is unrealistic, as someone here said, but it needs to be done, unrealistic or not. I'm not gonna be playing this game, and if the next elder scrolls is on gamebryo (or whatever Frankenstein modified version they're using now), I might not play that either. GET A NEW ENGINE!

The Far Cry 3 quick look barely went 5 minutes before jank started dropping out of the sky that could have fallen straight out of a Bethesda game. Everyone loved Far Cry 3. Now Bethesda PS3 releases were way, way beyond that, and I think everyone knows how they got away with that stuff, so I can see why people would like the games press to exact some punitive damages on FO4. But as far as graphical bugs and bad framerate? No, it doesn't seem that Bethesda is the only one getting a pass.

Progress stopping and other more annoying bugs, as always, seem to be scored on a 'seeing is believing' basis. Polygon's review had an entire sidebar about bugs including multiple console freezes, but the only personal experience relayed by the reviewer was getting 'stuck on geometry' and he gave it a 9.5.

It very much is stopping me from buying it, as least anytime soon. I played Skyrim and aside from finding the general world and quest design boring, the jank really just demolished it for me. I was hoping Fallout would do more so that I could see what all the fuss is about for these Bethesda games, but it doesn't look like it will happen. Either way, when 20 million people bought Skyrim, I guess it really doesn't matter.

That's what gets me mad in all of this. Jeff is a veteran Game Journalist and he has an understanding of game development, for him to imply that the game is flawed/broken due to lack of effort or care is irresponsible to me.

I for one, will not be buying this at launch and will purchase only after the fans have patched the game for Bethesda.

No air quotes there, none at all.

I'm tired of their janky vanilla games, and the combat always falls into the 'okay at best', and the RPG aspects also fall under 'it's okay.. sometimes good'.

They get away with quantity over quality.

And I'd rather have quality over quantity, thank you very much.

Jeff knows this but it doesn't matter to him.

Yes, Jeff knows this... However, this is not a good excuse to use over and over again to put out a janky unpolished game with the same issues as previous iterations.

It is the reality of video games. A digital medium that relies on programming. Games are more and more complex and that is why we see more bugs and jank. it's understandable for an oblivious consumer to expect perfection blindly, but to have seasoned game journalist who have access to companies and developers behind the scenes is inexcusable to me. Instead of coming off as entitled and indifferent to the realities of game development. We tend to forget what video games actually are. There aren't many pieces of software whether it be operating systems or what ever that release bug free , so why do we expect games to be perfect? For perfection games will have to be put on 10-20 year dev cycles and there will still most likely be bugs. Either that or games should lower their scope and ambition and play it safe. It's a lose lose situation either way. I just hate the irresponsible approach that certain game journalist have towards the issue. Instead of implying and assuming why not offer more behind the scenes interviews and bring us closer into the realities of game development.

Can't help but think a few months of polish could've done a world of good though.

I'm sure they had a marketing window to hit for pre-holiday sale plans.

The Glitches make it fun so I hope it stays around. If something is to messed up mods will fix it.

Reviewers do not owe anything to developers of games.

They are simply there to review solely the game only, without outside interference, or consideration of circumstance.

They are there to review a product. Whether the product is good or not.

I don't care if my knife is dull because the process of making a knife is takes too much time to mass produce. I want a sharp knife.

Making excuses for a developer? I'll leave that to the fans.

They actually do owe them. They're the reason why they have the jobs they have.

Jank in terms of game breaking, crashes or save corruption are and should not be acceptable but criticising the game because a character model is floating in mid-air or that the animation is not seamless is kinda making a fuss out of nothing. Literally every game has that kind of jank.

Because as a reviewer he reviews the game as a finished product. It is not his job to care about why certain things didn't come together. It is not his job to make excuses for the developers. I also don't like the strawman of "you want games to be perfect". That's not what this is about. A certain amount of jank in these games is unavoidable but if you have a buggy mess with a ton of technical issues (the game is hitting 0fps at times in the Xbone version for fuck's sake) then it's absolutely okay to criticise that because they're asking you to pay full price for it. It's actually downright insulting to call that "entitled". You're fine with the state of the game and think that it's unavoidable? That's cool but don't call people irresponsible because they don't agree with you or because they are experiencing issues that you do not. If it affects your enjoyment while you're playing it then it deserves to be called out. Period. Bringing those who are interested closer to how game development is a good thing, I agree with that, but that's not something that you (should) need to know to judge the quality of a game.

@leejunfan83:

No one expects the game to be perfect and completely bug free.
What I'm saying, as well as others, is that Bethesda games always seem the have the same sort of bugs over and over again.
I understand there's a lot of complex systems at work here, but this isn't their first time at the rodeo, so to say.

It starts to get a little frustrating when the same problems that existed 7yrs ago are still present today.
Especially when the problems move along to a new console generation.

I understand this is an issue many people have just "come to terms" with, heck I have Fallout 4 pre-loaded on my PC now, but that doesn't mean we can't share our concerns and wonder if this will continue to happen.
After all, it's the little details that either make or break immersion. Sure, a huge world is nice, but if the little things aren't right the whole experience unravels.

They actually do owe them. They're the reason why they have the jobs they have.

Video Games!!!!!!!!!!

Agreed. Better written than my explanation. :)

I can't believe you're actually using that argument.

I don't really have a problem with jank and bugs myself as long as they don't fuck up my savefile (especially since i can easily use console commands should i need it), but what i cannot understand is that a lot of reviewers went to town when it came to rip Obsidian for bugs in New Vegas (across all platforms; i know the ps3 version had major problems, but i clearly remember that Skyrim too was a mess on that console and got nowhere the same amount of flak) which in my eyes are more excusable since it wasn't their own engine, yet Bethesda still gets a free pass.

I've long been (very) a vocal critic of the Bethesda Game Studios games and still have trouble understanding the sheer amount of adoration and praise their games receive but for Fallout 4 I have noticed a (subjective) increase in the amount of critics who voice their displeasure with the sheer amount of jank these games have.

Needless to say I hope that (perceived) trend continues.

All I can tell you is that you can be sure as hell I will be shadow-play recording every session with the game.

I'm not sure I've ever seen this much outrage over an unreleased game. Oh wait, jk. Literally JUST happened with the Metal Gear Solid V pre-release microtransaction madness. And then MGSV turned out to be one of the best games of all time. Ho hum.

@nevergameover: There is a difference between a game that is broken on a technical level and any issues someone might have with the business practices surrounding a game.

'flaming trash heap' is VERY hyperbolic

Have you actually played the game?

@nevergameover: hey and also this game has been released in a lot of places

I have no doubt that there are people who have played the game and who are displeased. I also have no doubt that the vast majority of people here have not. If you came around here right before the MGS release, you would have found hundreds of people blasting the game for microtransactions, and accusing reviewers of juicing the scores for coverage and overlooking its flaws. You would have walked away with the impression that the game was rotten with microtransactions that ruined the experience. And then, low and behold, it was released and all of that went away because the same people who were complaining the entire time leading up to release, realized that the game was awesome enough to overlook the flaws. Now, don't get me wrong. That may or may not happen again, but I would have thought people would learn their lesson about this by now. It is outrageously silly to throw temper tantrums about the quality of a game that you haven't even played.

@nevergameover: word

MGS V's world size is already divided in half, and combined together still not as big as your usual Bethesda world. Additionally, while the textures might look great, there isn't nearly as much going on in terms of environmental assets, NPCs, etc.

I don't know why people care so much. If don't like jank and you don't wanna play the game then don't. When I hear people complain about this , it sounds to me like that want to play some other version of Fallout 4 that is a much tighter experience and bug free. That game don't exist, and it would probably be nearly impossible to actually make for tons of practical reasons (like cost)

If you don't like it, then fine! Just don't play it! When people say "They shouldn't get away with this" or "this is unacceptable" it sounds like Bethesda is trying to get away with a crime or something. Between game reviews, forums and youtube, we are armed with all the information we need to make an informed choice. So just make one.

Jesus Christ people just calm down. So much anger in this thread its really insane.

Look if you think the jankiness in the game is unacceptable, then don't play it. Its OK to just not play something you think you won't like. But there is no need to get angry over it.