Giant Bombcast Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2015: Day Two

I think what he is saying that with a game as immense as Fallout it becomes extremely complicated to tame all that moving machinery and that a ton of edge cases only emerge once that thing hits the market. He didn't say that the bugs can't be solved, just that they can't all be caught when the specific triggers can often be so obscure and so so many. There is no 'fix' for that and no way to address it until the specific bug has been noticed and the trigger action(s) identified

I did not get the sense from any of Brad's comments that he was even trying to suggest that he had an informed opinion on the matter. Which is exactly what Jeff appeared to be doing in some of the most arrogant words I've heard him say.

@quid_pro_bono: I feel like mainstream is unable to appreciate campy Engrish lyrics, Sawano is a great composer but they pushed vocal tracks real hard for whatever reason. I love me some cheesy JRPG music and even this was testing my limits. The NLA themes are just bad, if we're talking about pseudo-American hip hop/rock Japan has done way better.

The poor in-game audio balancing, lack of sound options, and annoying interruptions (Overdrive and flying) didn't do the soundtrack any favors either. And mainstream aside, the bomb crew isn't down with any of that except maybe from the outside looking in. I'm still surprised Jeff was able to appreciate Metal Gear Rising's soundtrack (talk about a game that did campy/dynamic music right).

All that said, I still get hyped when I hear Uncontrollable.

Holy fuck this best music discussion is kind of infuriating. Everyone losing their shit over Metal Gears bland action movie army recruitment bombast and 80s tunes everyone has heard 1000 times just makes no sense to me. The tunes they played from the original soundtrack sound so contrived.

this is such a serious response to the least serious thing on the internet.

Shout out to Audiosurf 2 for being a big disappointment.

@mindkiller: @mindkiller: Yep those bugs are unsolveable....until yet again modders come to the rescue as they always have for the past 10 years with far less budget behind them.

F4 = Game of the Year.

Apparently 7 years, an intimate knowledge of the engine and a near unlimited budget means nothing because the game is big. I really don't understand why they think fallout is this massive unicorn that is so deep and complex you can't ship a decent product. What is there actually in fallout that isn't in something like xenoblade or the witcher. The enemies in the world will sometimes attack each other in fallout. The npcs walk around in fallout and not in xenoblade. But by and large the witcher 3 and fallout 4 are very similar open world games yet the witcher 3 didn't have nearly as many problems, and they haven't been using that engine since 2006.

Maybe instead of bolting a bunch of shit on top of the gamebryo engine it's time to make something entirely new. This excuse that fallout is just so much more complex to script than any other open world game is a bunch of bullshit.

Edit: Also them cutting Crypt because Brad played the same song 3 times is so shitty. All of the boss battle themes are amazing and all the worlds have at least one incredible song that really hooks you.

I get that some people don't like Alex a whole lot, but moments like 0:40:50 (Move, bitch) goddamnit that was fucking fantastic!

It hurts my heart to see people so down on Hotline Miami 2. It just... I can't... umf. ):

Brad's point of the reality of the limitations of game design during the Fallout 4 discussion was heartbreaking

Splatoon is the worst soundtrack in years for me . I just don't understand , whatever .

All of the best music had killer cuts, the state of video game soundtracks is at an all time high.

I can't believe this episode alone topped 4 hours, Good God.

I like that the biggest disappointment had talks of Fallout 4. I was so disappointed by Fallout 4 I was mad to be honest.

Papyrus!?

Yea, I'm with Jeff on FO4. I don't think better technical and design polish is an outrageous expectation.

On a side note, I bet Vinnie would be really good at improv.

So glad Undertale didn't make the list for Best Music.

They should just drop the music category altogether if they're not all going to play the games they're discussing.

Music is subjective enough as it is, but you can't just play 30 seconds of a track from a game that no one has played and expect that to resonate with anyone.

That'd be like playing 30 seconds of music from the Death Star trench run in Star Wars (with everyone talking over it) and then discussing what you thought of the soundtrack.

You know why a broken game like Fallout 4 can sell this many copies?

Momentum.

@seminormal:That seems kind of dramatic, there are plenty of soundtracks I've enjoyed without playing or liking the game (or movie) that it's associated with. E.g. Medal of Honor (2010/2012), DJ Hero 1/2 etc...

@pirateogta: Man I really liked the music in Undertale but the backlash against it not winning has been hilarious, it's like an inverse of the whole mess at GameFaqs.

Which is fine.

You can like the soundtrack to a movie... even if you don't like the movie!

But you can't discount what a soundtrack ADDS to a movie (or a game). Look at what John Williams achieved with the Star Wars franchise. Do you think those movies would have succeeded with the 70s disco music of the time?

Or, back to games... Take the Rez soundtrack. There are video game soundtracks I listen to even now, but NEVER Rez. That soundtrack MADE that game. The game is nothing without the music, and the music is nothing without the game.

You don't understand it at all.

Im surprised no mention of Ciri at all, she's by far one of the best female characters in a game, but super happy with the baron and the crones getting some recognition.

I expected more from Fallout 4, very quickly adjusted my expectations and now 70 hours in am in love like its Fallout 3 all over again. Really don`t see what the fuss is about. What a minute...

but seriously, loving every sec of the game jank an all.

I understand the variables and issues with what can trigger bugs. And for Oblivion/Skyrim/FO3 I gave them a relative pass (probably unfairly given the shoddy PS3 port). Over time those games' issues got addressed with various mod packs. So 10 years later on significantly better hardware and the gift of hindsight we are here yet again, same old jank and the modders yet again being the ones to fix what Bethesda broke/did not bother to fix. Unity didn't get a pass for this, there's no reason why FO4 with far more lead time should.

It was great to listen to Jeff talk realistically about fallout 4. Brad's argument that none of GB is qualified enough to make technical arguments is hypocritical, he's inherently arguing from a position of ignorance himself. Perhaps they should scale everything way back. I don't care if fallout if 1/4 the size if it actually works like intended. At the very least, they can use the lessons from this working one to get back to the level of scale they have now. This month's 3 dollars come with real gratitude. Thanks, Jeff.

It has absolutely nothing to do with hardware and everything to do with the scope of the systems created on the software level. A more powerful processor or GPU isn't going to compel or tame these bugs into obedience. That's not how this shit works.

I don't care about Fallout (I think it's a bit shit to be honest) but I think a lot of people (like Jeff) are not even bothering to try and understand why it is not such a trivial thing to identify and catch these bugs before release. It has nothing to do with the game engine middleware or the power of the PS4 or a modern high-end gaming PC or whatever.

As for Unity I think that's a different case. That seemed to be more an example of Ubisoft not satisfying for a minute the idea of delaying that thing's release to get it into a better state. Similar to what happened with Arkham Knight.

As a game developer myself, it drove me a bit crazy hearing arguments like "That's just how Bethesda games are, you can't expect them to get any better." You should always demand better. Yes it's probably a monstrous undertaking to fix some of the fundamental problems with their tech, and it will never be perfect, and the average consumer probably has no idea what goes into fixing this stuff. But it's the consumer's job to always demand and expect better, and it's our job to never get complacent and always be striving for better. I don't work at Bethesda, I don't know what sort of conversations they're having, but I know there are ways to improve their tech. There always are.

f-four!

40:50 MOVE BITCH :D

Synthwave is taking over video game music.. And I welcome it!

@singing_pigs: Even forgetting the tech, Fallout 4 has crippling issues with story, dialog and world building. All of which could and should be addressed in planning stages.

XENOBLADE NOT EVEN GETTING MENTIONED FOR MUSIC IS THE WORST GODDAMN IT AUSTIN YOU HAD ONE JOB ONE JOB AUSTIN

@brad, I feel like Jeff from Dying Light at LEAST deserved a mention on Best New Character, solely because of how just out of place, hilarious, and fantastically bombastic his little questline is. It's probably one of the most shining moments of Dying Light. Granted, he had no chance of beating Witcher 3 stuff, but fuck me, that guy was funny and his quest was even better!

Ori and the Blind Forest had the best music of any game this year. You can get super reductive about it and call it a typical Hollywood score, but you can do the same for all the 8-bit chiptuney stuff on this list. MGS4 came in as a runner-up for what could be described as a typical Hollywood action movie score and a selection of 70s and early 80s hits that you can play out of your helicopter. Neat gimmick, but I have a feeling that it got on the list because most of the staff had played it. That's a problem with most categories, but this one is particularly frustrating because 20-second musical clips don't really serve a purpose. They'll get people's toes tapping for a bit if it's just a catchy little tune or a generic rousing action movie theme, but stuff like Ori's music just can't breathe within those limits.

Brad put up a good fight, at least.

Every time they queue up a track and it plays a common 4/4 thump and they go "this is good" it makes me want to shoot myself.

@mindkiller: Re-read what I said. It wasn't just a hardware problem, it's the fact that they haven't appeared to learn from what has happened in the past 10 years, with the same bugs (which were already fixed by modders) are appearing yet again, only to be fixed by modders...yet again. It's like Bethesda are repeating the same beats since it worked so well financially for them rather than making any visible efforts to actually have learned from the past. Which to be fair from a business standpoint it's working.

That's a very pragmatic and logical outlook to have, which is comforting to hear from a game developer.

MAN. I've never heard Jeff being so infuriating as he is talking bout Fallout. As someone who knows the industry as well as he does, it's absolutely infuriating to hear him say garbage about how they "should just fix it!!!" to problems that have no solution. I'm totally with Brad and Austin in a shocking turn of events. "I don't like Fallout" is a perfectly fine thing to say. "They should just make it better!" is petulant.

I feel like this conversation is gone around in circles to be honest. These aren't the exact same bugs. Modders did not fix in Skyrim the exact same problems that are now occurring in Fallout. They are of the same character only. They appear face-slappingly obvious now simply because there are so many people simultaneously triggering things and finding edge cases at a rate and velocity that simply is not possible in a dev environment. The difficult thing is not the fixing of the bug but the detection of that initial inconsistency which causes the bug in the first place.

Bethesda could hire more QA guys but it would take several orders of magnitude to reach the same level of code coverage as is happening right now all around the world. The only lesson that could possibly be learned here is that maybe the scope of these games are too large to realise with the way these games are distributed right now. If these games were smaller and had more things set in stone (like The Witcher does) then maybe this would be a far more difficult thing to defend. Even better they could do something like Kingdom Come and put these games in early access programs.

OMFG I love the HELL out of this, Jeff talking about Fallout 4 is INCREDIBLE. This is great.

I have never been big on Fallout games, but to hear him lay it down with some real passion is just magic, when he's got something to say, he damn well says it. So good.

@mindkiller: I understand first-hand, many of the intricacies of software development and testing too. Some bugs are hard to catch, I get that, but it's really disappointing I'm encountering the same old bugs in 2015 as I was back in 2008 (whether the root cause is not the same is irrelevant for the consumer, it's still there in the end). Using the ambition/scale excuse worked the first time round, at some point execution trumps ambition.

@bananasfoster: It's not really petulant to expect better to a sequel given new tech, time, money and 10 years of lessons learned.

Hi everyone! I did these timestamps a little after the podcasts were out, but I kinda forgot to put them on the site? I know Myggen posted them here, but just in case it's a few pages back, here they are again:

00:01:45 - Podcast starts

00:03:53 - The categories are announced: Best Music, Most Disappointing Game, Best Short-Time Game, Best New Character

00:04:08 - Best Music.

• 00:05:10 - Assault Android Cactus
• 00:08:31 - Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
• 00:08:57 - Crypt of the Necrodancer
• 00:10:50 - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• 00:17:50 - Axiom Verge
• 00:23:05 - Undertale
• 00:27:28 - Splatoon
• 00:30:57 - Hotline Miami 2
• 00:34:56 - Assassin's Creed Syndicate
• 00:35:28 - Hacknet
• 00:36:35 - Rebel Galaxy
• 00:39:15 - Galak-Z: The Dimensional
• 00:41:47 - Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball
• 00:45:02 - Ori and the Blind Forest
• 00:49:14 - Final discussion

01:24:51 - Most Disappointing Game.

• 01:27:28 - Rory McIlroy PGA Tour
• 01:28:58 - Battlefield Hardline
• 01:30:09 - Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
• 01:32:04 - Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.
• 01:32:56 - Star Wars Battlefront
• 01:36:54 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5
• 01:40:03 - Evolve
• 01:42:00 - The Order: 1886
• 01:43:24 - Call of Duty: Black Ops III
• 01:45:06 - Mad Max
• 01:47:27 - Fallout 4 (Jeff bursts at 02:00:13)
• 02:20:09 - Batman: Arkham Knight
• 02:28:04 - Just Cause 3
• 02:32:05 - Rock Band 4
• 02:36:54 - Hotline Miami 2
• 02:38:43 - NBA 2K16
• 02:44:33 - Toy Soldiers: War Chest
• 02:49:25 - Final discussion

03:12:36 - Best Short-Time Game.

• 03:16:47 - Lara Croft Go
• 03:17:50 - BoxBoy!
• 03:18:22 - Wait! are we not past Most Disappointed Game?
• 03:19:20 - BoxBoy! returns
• 03:19:36 - Hacknet
• 03:20:07 - Pac-Man 256
• 03:21:33 - You Must Build a Boat
• 03:22:08 - OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood
• 03:23:07 - Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Bros. Edition
• 03:25:39 - Downwell
• 03:28:04 - Final discussion

03:34:08 - Best New Character.

• 03:44:51 - Jenks, Paul and Ryan Rand (Contradiction - Spot The Liar!)
• 03:47:25 - BunnyLord (Not A Hero)
• 03:48:10 - Napstablook (Undertale)
• 03:49:29 - Shopkeeper (Crypt of the Necrodancer)
• 03:49:38 - D-Walker (Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain)
• 03:50:59 - Until Dawn characters
• 03:51:15 - The Dude What Talks At You (Hand of Fate)
• 03:51:28 - Flowey (Undertale)
• 03:53:23 - Bloody Baron and the Crones (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt)
• 03:55:35 - Quiet (Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain)
• 03:57:17 - Hannah and Eve (Her Story)
• 03:57:42 - Alarak (Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void)
• 03:59:33 - Nick Valentine (Fallout 4)
• 04:01:01 - Davey Wreden (The Beginner's Guide)
• 04:03:13 - Final discussion

04:14:17 - The day is done!

In the day one 2010 goty podcast, Brad mentions technical limitations when the topic is about how it's hard to feel attachment to characters in Fallout New Vegas. In 2015, Brad talks tons about technical limitations defending FO4 when it's time to talk about the most disappointing game.

On this entire thing I call shenanigans, the emotional attachment to Bethesda products that overshines their technical faults, the great games press behaviour of forgiving everything Bethesda while massacring games from other developers when they have an equal or lesser amount of jank to them.

The next Bethesda game that will be released, be it ES or FO, will be just as janky, and this will continue, because neither Bethesda nor investors got the signal that they need to shape up their act.

Thumbs up to Jeff for voicing his opinion about the jank. My research on this continues, only a few people dare to call them out in media around the world, even in Japan where shits are rarely given about technical issues unless a game is an Arkham Knight PC kind of bomb.

Jeff's claims that the technical issues in FO4 are 'just as bad' are just far too exaggerated ime, 130 hrs in. There are issues(freezes, super stiff story writing, some bugs and jank to be sure),but the game is so far superior to FO3 in so many ways it's just not fair to call Beth out so strongly. Jeff is in the tiny minority here. Of 36 critic reviews, his is the only yellow score w/the rest green on Meta. People don't trust that site much I know, but it reflects the fact that this FO is a good game and just a blast to explore and experience for hundreds of hours despite the technical issues. Progress has definitely been made; this game is much, much cleaner than FO3 and especially Skyrim. Not to mention the improved visuals, gameplay, and the modding, customization, and creation additions.

Heh, I respect Jeff's passion and his perspectives on this, and I think I understand and agree somewhat, just thought he went into this way too heavy handed. Still love Jeff and this site for their collective unabashed transparency and honesty. <3

Oh man, that Splatoon music sounds really good.

Hotline Miami 2, YES - screw you, SCREW YOU.

What a huge, giant clusterfuck of a sequel. As someone who buys games very very infrequently, I really looked forward to that, so much. The first one was amazing and not even the type of game I would normally like but the sequel was really less than half the game and a MASSIVE disappointment.

Contrary to what other people think too, I don't think the soundtrack was better either, or even on par. Just bad all round.

Such a giant giant shame.

"Across the board it's disappointing compared to Advanced Warfare." Jeff shut the fuck up you have played about 10 hours of Black Ops 3.

Best Quick Game.

Jeff's evolution into an internet forum troll over Fallout 4 is hilarious. He bullied everyone into including a game he gave 4 stars to as one of the 3 most disappointing games of the year. It's pretty amazing.

Edit: Their scolding of Quiet was expected but still very cringe & eye roll inducing. Glad the new media puritans are being pushed back against.