@gorkamorkaorka:

A lot of the issues is due to its size. Not all of them though.

For example, all games, not just Skyrim, have to deal with AI routines interacting with each other and its environments. BUT, where Skyrim is different is that there are an absolute ton of NPCs that can, literally, go anywhere any time and interact with any other NPC or the player. Because the world is so big, and because there are so many NPCs, this makes creating that AI really hard.

It's not just the physical size of the world either. Skyrim tries to have a number of different gameplay mechanics. The fighting involves melee with multiple classes of weapon, ranged, and magic. A player can sneak or blunt force their way through situations or both. The game has a seemingly insurmountable number of quests. The game, again, has an extraordinary amount of NPCs and locations. Keeping the quality high with so many things going on and are readily available at nearly any time to every player is amazingly difficult.

BUT, the size and depth of the game doesn't overcome it's short falls. The fact that no one questline is as well done as some of their previous efforts is disappointing. Backwards flying Dragons, texture problems with installed games, and the terrible PS3 version is not all due to the game's size and depth. To boil all that is wrong with the game to 'its big though!' is a lame excuse that takes the responsibility off of the developers. There's nothing wrong with admitting fault no matter the explanation. There maybe real issues with the PS3 hardware that causes Bethesda's games to not work well on that hardware. But that explanation does not mean that fault should not be placed on Bethesda's shoulders when the PS3 version of their game is terrible.

I think some people would allow Bethesda to make an absolutely shitty game because 'its big'. It's amazing because people (me included) didn't give Obsidian the same 'pass' when New Vegas had issues.

@gike987 said:

And the things that seems to break the most in Skyrim is things that are related to the AI and the physics and both those things are not as advanced in MMOs as they are in skyrim.

I think the bugs in bethesda games are quite different from the bugs you mentioned (in WoW was it ?).

I never found the AI in skyrim to be anything special. Enemies just run up to you and flail away. I haven't seen any run for cover; use potions or heal their friends. Most fps games have vastly superior AI systems. Dragon AI is horrendous; especially after they land which lends to a very anticlimactic and underwhelming fight turning dragons into pests.

I sometimes wonder why exactly bethesda puts so much effort into marketing and implementing the "radiant AI" it constantly boasts of.

I do not find beth games in any way more "immersive" than the cities in grand theft auto; the locales in assasin's creed, or any other game with "bystander" type npc's.

Does giving npc's a routine and having them get in the way of dragons to get friendly fired really add to the immersion ?

For me, no.

@Scrawnto: Mmm, i remember making a game in Gamebryo, it was pretty annoying. It does have a lot of its own stuff that you CAN use, but you mostly don't want to, it's much better to write your own, cause their code is kinda confusing, and a lot of it doesn't work that well.

And yeah, Saints Row the Third has some crazy bugs, the most annoying one though, jumping into a car and dieing instantly for no reason, that's pretty annoying.

@Neeshka said:

Big mmorpg's are gigantic; they have a ridiculous number of quests and things to do; take WoW or TOR for example. Yet they have almost no bugs and balance issues are almost negligible.

Why does the scale argument magically disappear for these games ?

Big MMORPGs are iterated on constantly after being released -- as well as before release with lengthy betas involving thousands of players testing the content. Despite this, they still don't release bug-free and perfectly balanced, nor can I name a single MMO that has "almost no bugs" or balance issues even after years of running. If anything, the amount of bugs and balance issues only increases as the amount of content increases -- lending credence to the theory of "bigger games have more issues", rather than proving it wrong.

And yet for as big as they are and as many quests as they have, the mechanical parts of an MMO are incredibly rigid by nature. They don't allow the amount of dicking around (and possible mucking of the gears) that something like Skyrim does, nor do they have to keep track of so many variables based on how the player has interacted with the world -- because the world is immutable. So if so much can go wrong in an MMO, then it stands to reason that a lot can go wrong in a game such as Skyrim, which -- while not quite as massive -- has a higher degree of potential complexity due to its more dynamic gameplay and mechanics.

@EchoEcho said:

Skyrim, which -- while not quite as massive -- has a higher degree of potential complexity due to its more dynamic gameplay and mechanics.

My point is; what's the point of adding in this complexity, as a developer ?

If you are doing so to add more immersion what's the point in releasing broken and unbalanced features or shoddy gameplay that actually just break the immersion that you wanted to create.

The average gamer will try to do a few quests; kill some enemies and level to around 35-40.

The average linear RPG completionist/perfectionist gamer will try to optimize their build; finish all the non-radiant quests; discover most of the important locations on the map get to about 45-50 and then stop.

I don't see the vast majority just "dicking around" and experiencing any emergent gameplay that can be had from the "radiant AI" complexity. I've put in roughly a week or 50 hours into the game, but I've never experienced anything with the radiant AI that was charming or even remotely interesting. I really don't care if npc's have their daily routine or schedule.

So again, what's the point of radiant AI if the actual AI during combat is awful, if npc's are still lifeless and soulless; lacking facial expression or with bored/tired/bland voice acting and the player character doesn't even have a personality to begin with.

I felt a lot more immersed in GTA or assasin's creed; and both the franchises have no issues creating the immersion of a large bustling crowded city.

To me it feels like Bethesda added a ton of completely wasted features that don't even accomplish their intended goal of adding immersion.

Sorry; I'm just completely lost on this aspect of their game design.

@phrali said:

i'm sorry, this whole argument is ridiculous. the game is fucked up.

TRYING TO DO SOMETHING AMBITIOUS IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR FUCKING IT UP

if you can't do something big right, maybe you should try to do something smaller. you know, crawl before you walk?

That's hardly fair, I think. I firmly believe no one could make a game of this magnitude without some fuck ups, barring a ten year development cycle and hundreds of QA testers working roung the clock. One of the follies of a dynamic, open world with the sheer volume of content skyrim has, as said countless times already in this thread, is that the man power and hours simply do not exist to test every possible scenario. It's not like this is Bethesda's first rodeo. This is not an experience related issue.

EDIT: Let me add, that doesn't mean they get a pass on everything. A patch that breaks a game further is not admissible. There's no way backwards dragons and broken magic couldn't have been prevented with a bit of further quality testing. However, most of the inherent flaws of the game are, with current tech limitations, just a necessary sacrifice to achieve something this enormous.

I think it was in one of the developer top 10s on this site where they pointed out the amount of systems that needed to mesh seamlessly together.

Think about the AI, Quests, Random encounters, scripted events, dragons, combat, etc etc, all bundled into an open world where the developers can only PREDICT what the player will do in this giant "sandbox" environment (i use the term loosely). If it were a different game, and everything was funneled down a single narrative path, they would have no excuse for some of the bugs, but because there are so many things interacting in the world in real-time it's impossible to remove all the bugs.

@Neeshka: Well, my goal wasn't to debate immersion, since that's entirely subjective; I was only discussing the technicalities of MMOs versus Skyrim. I'll engage you on this matter if you want, though; keep in mind it's 5:30 in the morning and I've been up all day/night, so this might not be my most coherent rant.

Personally I have no issues with the Radiant AI and I don't feel like it's an obstacle to my immersion in the game world. To be honest, I'd find it a lot less immersive if all the NPCs were just standing around not doing anything rather than going about their lives. If that comes at a price, then it's not one that's so high that it's affected my enjoyment of the game. I don't personally find the gameplay to be "shoddy", and I haven't personally come across any immersion-breaking bugs -- not a single backwards flying dragon in my game so far.

I'm not in the business of assuming what the vast majority will or will not do in a game, so I won't really say one way or the other, except for this: I know several people who play this game who aren't big RPG players in general; average gamers in every sense of the word. When they talk to me about their experiences in Skyrim, they don't tell stories about the gameplay mechanics or how they're min/maxing their builds -- they tell stories about the crazy things that happen to them while exploring or, you guessed it, dicking around in a town -- things that happen because of the Radiant AI.

Are the benefits of Radiant AI always readily apparent? No. But if it wasn't there, I think you'd notice -- the experience would be a whole lot different, and personally I don't think it'd be for the better. If that is a wasted feature to you, then that's fine -- you don't have to like what Bethesda has going in their games, after all, and disliking it is a perfectly valid opinion to have. But what I don't understand is why it's such a mystery that Bethesda make their games the way they do, and why some people enjoy it. Their games don't bring in near-universal praise for being half-assed and mediocre.

Comparing the game to GTA and Assassin's Creed doesn't make sense to me. They're all "open world" in their own ways, but the focus of each game is wildly different. GTA and AC may have believable representations of large, bustling cities, but you don't interact with the people populating those bustling cities. Those crowds exist for no other reason than to establish the setting; they're window dressing. In Skyrim, every NPC you run across has a 50% chance of being part of a quest, and almost all of them have dialog. If you could walk up to a random pedestrian on the street in GTA and speak to them like you can in Skyrim then you might have a point, but you can't, because that's not what they're there for. Two completely different uses of NPCs, serving two different purposes.

At the end of the day, the amount of bugs that crop up in a game like Skyrim is almost certainly due to the enormous amount of content, content that would take a ridiculous amount of manhours to make completely bug-free at release. Those manhours aren't free, though, and either you pony up a whole hell of a lot of cash for a veritable army of testers, or you take two years past an already long development cycle to do the same amount of work with a smaller team. They need to release this product, and they're not going to spend more than they think is reasonable on testing, so they're going to do the best they can with what they've got in the time they've got. Whether or not someone considers this "excusable" is a matter of personal judgement. Personally, I find a handful of bugs to be excusable considering the scope of the project, and I would much rather Skyrim stay huge, complex, and Radiant-AI-ridden than the alternative.

Now you'll have to excuse me, because I'm about to fall asleep on my keyboard, and I can't be arsed to proofread at this point. Hopefully it's all legible.

(Edit: I lied. I spotted a couple egregious typos and my obsessive-compulsiveness compelled me to fix them. I'm closing this damn window before I have a chance to spot another.)

@EchoEcho said:

In Skyrim, every NPC you run across has a 50% chance of being part of a quest, and almost all of them have dialog. If you could walk up to a random pedestrian on the street in GTA and speak to them like you can in Skyrim then you might have a point, but you can't, because that's not what they're there for. Two completely different uses of NPCs, serving two different purposes.

I find the npc's in skyrim to be dull, boring, lifeless, soulless, sterile and most importantly completely devoid of any personality. This is a common theme in Bethesda games.

As a sharp contrast I vividly remember characters from other video games; like minsc and boo from baldur's gate 2; HK-47 from the knights of the old republic, tomi undergalows & deekin from neverwinter nights, Geralt/Triss/Iorveth/Saskia from Witcher 2, tony from liberty city stories, Dmitri & Patrick from GTA4; the list is endless.

I've never come across such characters in Skyrim or in any beth game for that matter. Even Fallout New Vegas had a few interesting characters; so I don't think the huge/sandbox argument is really valid.

The literary quality of bethesda dialogue writing isn't stellar; gamebryo or at least how bethesda implements it leads to a very stiff and expressionless feel to the npcs.

Although a few lines of voice acting are well done to me they seem to get very repetitive and the bulk of it felt lazily done by voice actors that sound bored. When I go on a main quest and 2-3 voice actors sound exactly the same; it just kills immersion for me.

Similarly when I talk to someone and their accent abruptly changes for no apparent reason; it's bad [happens with the dunmer mage erandur]

The game world rarely reacts to your accomplishments, and each "interesting" npc is usually nothing more than a radiant quest hub.

For these reasons I cannot connect with any of the npc's and they always seem distant and forgettable.

Is something wrong with me ?

lol. It's probably something odd with how giantbomb does formatting; when I press enter it goes to a new paragraph.

@Neeshka: I think the issue is that you're looking for something that was never intended to be there.

Bethesda games have never been very story-important. Bethesda likes to create worlds for you to explore, that is the primary focus of their games, and it's what sets theirs apart from more linear RPGs -- but it isn't necessarily what's most important to every player. If you need strong story and characterizations to get immersed in a world, rather than just the world itself, that's what BioWare and Obsidian do -- they've got that angle covered.

There's a good reason that New Vegas had some memorable characters where Fallout 3 didn't, and it's because it was Obsidian taking a turn with Bethesda's tech, and if Obsidian is known for anything, it's their excellent writing. Keep in mind NV was also smaller than F3 overall, and Obsidian had all of the assets from F3 to work with from the get-go -- leaving them a lot more time to work on fleshing out the world and characters. But a few interesting characters is still only a few; asking them to make all the hundreds of NPCs walking around interesting is simply impossible, at least with budgets and time restraints in mind.

All those other games you mentioned are strongly story-based, and strong stories need strong characters -- lead and support. Even someone like Tomi Undergallows, for example, who doesn't exactly get many lines of dialog throughout the game at least has a story to keep you interested in having him along. Considering the amount of interaction you actually have with the henchman in NWN, though, I consider them less "characters" and more "short-stories on legs" -- but I digress. Once again, it's a few memorable characters in a game otherwise filled with NPCs that are nothing more than window dressing.

Whether or not anyone finds the NPCs in Bethesda games to be boring and lifeless, it is still impressive that they manage to make so many of them actually useful to the player, and it is because they strive to allow the player to interact with everyone in the world that they may come across as a little "samey" or "lazy"; but again, I don't think it's laziness so much as budget and time restraints. And considering the interaction with random NPCs in games such as NWN or KoTOR are generally even more samey (when they let you interact with them at all), I don't think it's something to hold against them.

@Neeshka said:

lol. It's probably something odd with how giantbomb does formatting; when I press enter it goes to a new paragraph.

No, that's how the enter key works in everything.

@Beforet said:

@Shirogane said:

@Vodun said:

@Shirogane said:

It SHOULDN'T give them a pass. And not everything that's broken is cause of how big the game is, a lot of stuff is just broken, cause it is. But yeah, a game of this scope, the amount of AI scripting and other random crap that can happen will cause a lot of issues, but not all of them, maybe half...or slightly more.

Good thing you came in here and gave the proper technical lowdown on what's at work.

And what the hell is that supposed to mean? You want technical details? Maybe if Bethesda hires me and i get to take and look at their code and new engine. What the hell is wrong with you people, being assholes for the sake of it now?

Perhaps they should hire you, given your incredible understanding of the issues plaguing the engine allowing you to conclude that "maybe half" is due to the scope. To see that without even needing to look at the code and new engine first! You've impressed me, that's for sure.

Just pointing out that the engine for Skyrim isn't new. It's the same one they used for Oblivion, just heavily modified.

@echoecho

I think you presented the most reasonable arguments I've ever seen for the case of Bethesda. Finally I guess I sort of understand; bethesda creates mostly beautiful worlds that are fun to explore. That's it. For every other aspect that could be relevant to video gaming they will appear to be mediocre at best; since so much effort was taken to make a world with the amount of complexity and scale they have. So I guess it's almost entirely up to the player; to choose to be immersed in such a world. Because if you are not; you will be thoroughly disappointed. I'm surprised such a niche way of gaming got so much acceptance in mainstream.

@AlexW00d said:

@Neeshka said:

lol. It's probably something odd with how giantbomb does formatting; when I press enter it goes to a new paragraph.

No, that's how the enter key works in everything.

Actually on most forum pressing enter takes you to the next line; you have to press it again to create the gap you get here. That's how notepad and microsoft word work too.

@Neeshka said:

@AlexW00d said:

@Neeshka said:

lol. It's probably something odd with how giantbomb does formatting; when I press enter it goes to a new paragraph.

No, that's how the enter key works in everything.

Actually on most forum pressing enter takes you to the next line; you have to press it again to create the gap you get here. That's how notepad and microsoft word work too.

No, every edition of Microsoft Word since 2003/2004 does it too. It is auto formatting. Holding shift and pressing return will go down one line, pressing return will go down two. If you think about use cases, people are likely pressing return to start a new paragraph. The only reason notepad doesn't do it is that it is meant to be a basic text editor.

@AlisterCat said:

@Neeshka said:

@AlexW00d said:

@Neeshka said:

lol. It's probably something odd with how giantbomb does formatting; when I press enter it goes to a new paragraph.

No, that's how the enter key works in everything.

Actually on most forum pressing enter takes you to the next line; you have to press it again to create the gap you get here. That's how notepad and microsoft word work too.

No, every edition of Microsoft Word since 2003/2004 does it too. It is auto formatting. Holding shift and pressing return will go down one line, pressing return will go down two. If you think about use cases, people are likely pressing return to start a new paragraph. The only reason notepad doesn't do it is that it is meant to be a basic text editor.

And that's why choosing Notepad for GOTY is bullshit.

@punkxblaze: I would rather talk about that than the topic of this thread.

@AlisterCat said:

@punkxblaze: I would rather talk about that than the topic of this thread.

I agree entirely, I just couldn't help but make the crack. Hopefully all this goty bullshit will blow over soon and we can all go back to enjoying games without making a federal case about it.

Every game brings glitches. With so many people playing this, its easier to see the flaws. Pick up that Hogan game and tell me how fucked up that game is. I don't think Bethesda gets away with it. With Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas the one thing it kept getting pinged on was the jenkyness. A linear game you play it over and over and you can correct those flaw easier. When you have world that you just loose yourself in, its easy to overlook issues or from the players perspective looks past it.

I think the way the AI move around & interact, even if its awkard,
tend to give Bethesda software its character.  It feels alive as compared
to some rehearsed theatrical event where everyone knows their
places & their lines, what needs to be said & when, without any
screw-ups.

It is pretty much true, if you have ever done any kind of programming, for anything, you will see that changing something the code can affect the performance or functions of other things in the program. Look at Windows. Something like that is working to do so much and they release countless patches and fixes and still people are able to break it. If we want a game that big, we have to accept it will be broken at some point. Brad pointed it out and the guys did relent, there is no other game like this, with a real living breathing world, with such rich history.

Addressing what is wrong with the PS3 version, games like this get broken more easily because 1) Sony still decides to make its own damn cell processor making it hard to get the most out of it. 2) They split the V-RAM and system-RAM, as stupid thing to do in my view. This problem was first encountered with the whole linux thing when the PS3 launched. Though these things do lead to games that look like Uncharted and MGS4. Though MGS4 looks crappy to me today. And plays like crap. Lets admit it, those games are not gameplay masterpieces, but the visuals got us hooked.

@Shirogane: Chill out rookie.

I was listening to A Big Mountain to Climb: Animating Skyrim and animator Jeremy Bryant said:

Even going for a simple stroll in a game such as Skyrim can present some interesting – and sometimes entertaining – scenarios for the animators to deal with. You can paralyze people. There can be a lady taking a bite of bread, and you can cast ice form on her, have her tip over and fall into a stream. Then the stream has physics, so she goes down river, wakes up, and she still has bread in her hands. So now you have this NPC in this crazy state: 'Hey I'm in water. I'm eating. I'm swimming.' There's all this crazy stuff you can get to happen in the game.

I knew in the back of my mind that Skyrim is one complex beast, but what he said really drove the point home. There are so many systems acting and reacting at all times that I'm surprised it functions as well as it does. Now add the player to the mix. We've got free reign to do pretty much anything to anyone at any time and the game has to deal with whatever we come up with. To expect all of this complexity to be bug-free is simply unfair in my opinion.

My entirely unprofessional view of it is that Skyrim has an absurd amount of ones and zeros moving around in the background at all times, and that often those ones and zeros get mixed up. Like when you play a really long game of Civilization with the max amount of players, over time, the CPU just gets bogged down with calculations and changes and things get janky. (That analogy worked better when Fallout 3 and CIV IV were on the same engine.) But rather than lag things and take the time to put everything back in order as in CIV, Skyrim just sorta rolls with it.

I played 20 hours of Skyrim, which isnt alot to be honest, and i can see its GOTY worthy. My personal tastes may have changed but, i find games this open a bit of a bore. I like abit of direction in my game, a game which is predominately focused on side missions (in terms of content)i find myself less engrossed in the story. I think Skyrim biggest strengths are the versatility in building your character and walking around a living breathing world.

I find game-makers that think they can direct my story better than I can to be a bore. 
 
Usually, they can't. Playability is therefore vastly expanded when my own creative mind is the engine.

Yes, the size of this game is causing all the problems. I'm honestly surprised that a game of this magnitude didn't crash upon putting it in my 360.

I remember reading a story in game informer about bug testing oblivion. This is the kind of stuff they are dealing with " During Oblivion, our new Radiant AI system - which would let all the NPC's in the world think and act on their own - led to some of the best bugs. My favorite was a quest where you had to talk to a prisoner in jail. Sometimes, when play testing, we would find him locked in his cell, dead. It took us forever to figure out why. Turns out, the guards in the jail could run out of food and get hungry. They would then go down and kill the prisoner to take his food. All this happened when the player wasn't there. I still don't remember how we figured it out. But the solution was easy: more guard food!"

This was my first year with giantbombs game of the year, I am pleased with their outcome having played most of the games reviewed. I never knew Brad was so defensive about his opinions. He is great at arguing though and I loved Jeff leading him on lol. What a great year at giantbomb!