Ignorant criticisms of Bethesda need to stop

First I want to let you know I also have my fair share of criticism toward Bethesda, but some stuff i heard people said about Bethesda are just ridiculous and plain ignorance. I'm writing this because I really care about our Fallout community, and as this community grows bigger some of our more toxic members starting to yell louder and louder, it's important to let people know that these people are not represent our community, I think if you wanna hear criticism regarding the bad side of Fallout 4, listen to Gopher, I'm don't watch his videos too often but he is the kind of guy this community need, he is very helpful to people and never really exaggerating, and very polite too, I'd say he is our unofficial community manager.

Like I get it, New Vegas is my favorite game of all time too, Fallout 4 might getting rid of many role playing element, but it's still a very decent game, you can call it a bad game if you really don't like it fine, but I really can't stand for people calling it "Garbage" and say Bethesda Game Studio are "lazy" for it's design and not fixing bugs, they are made by a rather small developer team, and open world like Skyrim and Fallout 4 were not meant to be made by such a small team, no developer ever want to ship buggy games, It's simply too costly for them to fix every minor bugs they can find while they are understaffed, this has been improve by them overtime, Fallout 4 is far less buggy than Skyrim and Fallout 3. You might ask why don't they just hire more people? As someone is from a college major with animation and game developing (Yes I know, it's a terrible choice, I regret it), sometime the hardest thing isn't about making game, but to get along with your fellow team developers, this has always been an major issue within many developers, even indie one, lots of project been cancel because the team turn on each others, even Biowareseems to be having this problem recently, which is why I think Todd Howard said they try to keep a small team for better management. though recently they are try to increase their numbers with the new studio Bethesda Montreal established, I really hope they will have better luck than Bioware Montreal, BGS has been making RPG for so many years, so of course they will want to do something that isn't RPG, like Bungie left Halo franchise and Epic game left Gears of War, Disappoint with the game is one thing, rolling on the floor yelling "THIS IS NOT RPG" is another thing.

I'd like to know the background of people who call BGS people "lazy", Todd Howard has degree of double majored in engineering and finance, and recently BGS start recruiting with one of job's minimum requirement is been support AAA game industry for at least 5 years, they are currently one of most desirable video game company to works for right behind Vale and Blizzard according to IGDA (International Game Developers Association), getting a job in BGS is probably even harder than getting into Harvard, so if you ever consider them lazy, I would like to know what kind of degree you have and what job you're working at to make such statement, Don't get me wrong you can dislike them for all I care, but calling them lazy is just insulting.

In one of MrMattyPlays Youtube video "Why Do Some Gamers Love Hating Fallout 4?" He said that "Saying Fallout 4 is Bad is Disrespectful" which trigger a lots of people goes to attack him, though I think it was just rather poor words he chose to say, I think the better sentence would be "Saying Fallout 4 is Garbage is Ungrateful"There are game far worse than Fallout 4, like really if you want to see company worse than EA you should totally check Asia's mobile game company, not only they made really bad games, they also spam tons of ADs everywhere to annoy to hell outta everyone, I'm from a third world country and kinda sick of so many first world brats so ungrateful and loathing about everything.

Last thing, I love New Vegas, and would love to have Obsidian have another shot at Fallout again, but Obsidian didn't make New Vegas alone, they did use the engine and assets develop by Bethesda, so Bethesda did develop New Vegas indirectly, some people said that Fallout would be better hand into Obsidian entirely, but I disagree, Obsidian seems to also have management problem and having trouble to keep themselves together from time to time, I think it's best either that Bethesda acquire Obsidian (which I think is very unlikely), or Bethesda manage to hire old Black Isle studio developers back at develop Fallout, which they kinda did, they hire Chris Avallone to wrote Prey. And one more thing is I think it's really generous that Bethesda gave Obsidian a change to make New Vegas, that is very rare case in industry, willing to gave another shot to it's former developers, similar thing happened back with Core Design and Crystal Dynamic/Eidos with Tomb Raider Anniversary, and it didn't went well, which many old Tomb Raider fans still loathing until this day.

I think there are two kind of game company, one care about money and it's fan, the other just care about money, it's important to let publisher and developer know what we want, but not curse them whenever they did something we don't like, criticism need to be constructive. And of course they will put profit before their fans, that's what every company does, they just need to care about their players but not swear allegiance to us, it's business not marriage.

First I want to let you know I also have my fair share of criticism toward Bethesda, but some stuff i heard people said about Bethesda are just ridiculous and plain ignorance. I'm writing this because I really care about our Fallout community, and as this community grows bigger some of our more toxic members starting to yell louder and louder, it's important to let people know that these people are not represent our community,

The majority of criticism for Fallout 4 from Giant Bomb and most of the video games press seem to be reasonable and not vitriolic. Judging from your other thread about why Fallout 4 is better than Witcher 3, you have a lot of time and passion invested in Bethesda, and you shouldn't let a vocal, uncouth minority give you the impression that most of the gaming community feels that way about Fallout 4.

Like I get it, New Vegas is my favorite game of all time too, Fallout 4 might getting rid of many role playing element, but it's still a very decent game, you can call it a bad game if you really don't like it fine, but I really can't stand for people calling it "Garbage" and say Bethesda Game Studio are "lazy" for it's design and not fixing bugs, they are made by a rather small developer team, and open world like Skyrim and Fallout 4 were not meant to be made by such a small team, no developer ever want to ship buggy games, It's simply too costly for them to fix every minor bugs they can find while they are understaffed, this has been improve by them overtime, Fallout 4 is far less buggy than Skyrim and Fallout 3.

Again, you shouldn't let people who toss around hyperbolic statements without backing up their claims, get under your skin. If someone doesn't have a convincing argument to why something is "garbage" or "lazy," then don't be convinced that it is.

Most consumers who put down money for a game shouldn't concern themselves about how troubled a game's development was. The onus isn't on the consumer to do research about a game's development history and try to parse out how or why a game ends up the way it does. For most people, it's asking the question of "Is this game worth my $60 and my hours of time?" Not "Well, based on the funding of the studio, the management of resources, the developer's past experience, the size of the development team compared to the scope and ambition of the game, is it worth excusing some major shortcomings, and therefor worth my $60 and my time?"

As enthusiasts of the hobby we're in, it's absolutely fascinating to parse out how a game ends up the way it does. But to be realistic, most people don't approach every single game purchase this way, even people who are very entrenched in this hobby. While digging deep into a game's development might explain why a game disappoints people, it doesn't excuse it. All it does is offer a glimpse into how it turned out that way.

I think it's really generous that Bethesda gave Obsidian a change to make New Vegas, that is very rare case in industry, willing to gave another shot to it's former developers, similar thing happened back with Core Design and Crystal Dynamic/Eidos with Tomb Raider Anniversary, and it didn't went well, which many old Tomb Raider fans still loathing until this day.

Those things aren't very similar. The only similarity in that situation was Bethesda and Eidos switched developers. Eidos took the development of Tomb Raider away from Core Design because Last Revelation and The Angel of Darkness were failing to meet review and sales expectations. Eidos handed the franchise over to Crystal Dynamics to reinvigorate the series.

I think there are two kind of game company, one care about money and it's fan, the other just care about money, it's important to let publisher and developer know what we want, but not curse them whenever they did something we don't like, criticism need to be constructive. And of course they will put profit before their fans, that's what every company does, they just need to care about their players but not swear allegiance to us, it's business not marriage.

Let's be honest here, all game companies care about money as its primary priority. Don't get me wrong, consumer perception is also very important, but it won't overtake the need to pay wages and bills. When Bethesda announced paid mods for Skyrim, it was to make more money from a passionate community. Given how much backlash that received from the overwhelming majority, Bethesda still attempted the same thing with Fallout 4 and received the same heated response. Most fans didn't want it, and everyone else has viewed it as a bad value. Bethesda belongs to a publicly traded company, and their priority is to make money. This doesn't mean they're soulless businessman who hates fans, but they won't make business decisions at their own demise.

At the end of the day, enjoy what you enjoy. Don't let people throwing around rhetoric and hyperbole convince you otherwise. Don't let toxic people give you the impression that they're taking over as the major opinion of a game. Give the gaming community more credit.

I found fallout 4 incredibly janky, often game breakingly so. It's the 2n Bethesda game I've played where a vital quest line broke deep into my save and I've had enough of wasting my time with their rpgs.

Not sure how I'm being ignorant or hyper bolic but I've just had bad experiences with their more ambitious titles. And given their track record with Skyrim bug fixes i have no faith in them at all.

I agree. I liked Fallout 4 alot. This dismissive negative attitude really gets to me too. You see it a lot over here at Giantbomb. Jeff is so pessimistic about some of my favorite Nintendo games and it really infects the whole community. Majora's Mask, Mario Sunshine, Yoshi's Island and Twilight Princess are all great games. This place, the duders on camera and in the forums perpetuate the idea that these are irredeemable trash-fires and make out Dan, their lone defender, as some mad man for liking them.

I know a lot of it is in jest, but the sentiment is still the same. It's okay not to like something, but it blocks any positive discussion of these games. Dan is a saint for putting up with this crap.

Also, recently on the Podcast Rory's on the podcast being so apologetic for talking about WoW. First they crack about it, making Rory sound like some kind of monster, but then Brad and Jeff actually get engaged with a decent conversation about it. I don't understand why they didn't even quick look the last expansion, Legion. Rory may be the only one on Giantbomb that still plays, but any way you shake it a new WoW expansion is a major game release.

Seems a bit out of nowhere to make such an impassioned defense for what is soon to be a 3 year old game, but you do you I guess. Is anyone who doesn't like the game even still talking about it?

Hopefully people realize that Jeff's casual dismissal of those games are done in jest.

With Giant Bomb being a personality-focused site, it has gotten more difficult to separate a staffer's personal opinion of the game, to when they put on their formal reviewer hat and try to come at a game as objectively as possible.

When Jeff reviews a game or shifts into a more formal critical viewpoint of game, he never labels anything as a "garbage fire" or the like and outright dismisses it. Realize that when the staff casually makes fun of certain games on UPF or a live stream, it's just part of an in-joke.

When Jeff reviewed Fallout 4 on PC, it got 4/5 stars.

When Jeff reviewed Majora's Mask, it got an 8.3/10.

When Jeff reviewed Super Mario Sunshine, it got an 8/10.

When Jeff reviewed Twilight Princess, it got an 8.8/10.

Those are pretty great scores to me. Hell, under each GameSpot rating it even says "GREAT."

Take everything else as the jokes they're intended to be. Let's not have a whole new generation of people taking "anime is for jerks" seriously.

You do know that just the core development team and Bethesda's QA department alone constitute well over 250 people for just this particular game, right? Top that with the additional technical teams from outside companies and you're skirting closer to 350, and this is all without any voice actors or the people recording or motion capturing them.

I was disappointed in Fallout 4 because it was as similar to Fallout 3 as it was, and a lot of its concepts were implemented only half-heartedly, but I had an above-average time with it. My money was well-spent.

MMO expansions don't lend themselves well to being Quick Looked. Particularly of long standing series like WoW.

@jesus_phish:You could probably make the case for anything Giant Bomb does that it shouldn't work. I enjoy when they look at WoW. I have the bias that I've been there at the launch of every expansion. I was bored of the PUBG streams after the second, but I still watched every one because I enjoy hearing the bomb crew talk in the background. They recently spent an hour quick looking an odd game like Opus Magnum.

Sure, they cover what they are interested in, and Rory's not a part of the core team. But their history with WoW, having Rory as their go-to, and its place as one of the biggest releases of the year is more then enough reason to take a look at it in some capacity.

@tuxedocruise: Heh, just saw your reply now. Looks like you quoted me before I edited my post:

"I know a lot of it is in jest, but the sentiment is still the same. It's okay not to like something, but it blocks any positive discussion of these games. Dan is a saint for putting up with this crap."

Sometimes I think he's so pessimistic about those games was because he was forced to review them for Gamespot within their scoring system. Not saying he thinks they are complete trash when being analytically critical, but reviews from years ago don't have any barring on how they are presented in discussions today.

I know this is personality driven site, and that's why I'm so thankful that Dan is around, and I miss having Patrick defend Majora's Mask. Although Patrick has been guilty about calling one my favorite games outright "Bad" too. I think he confused Perfect Dark with Perfect Dark Zero once, or maybe he was around Brad and Jeff too long in discussions of N64 shooters.

Personally I don’t care about the background and good will of people involved in the making of the game - if the game itself isn’t very good then its not very good and that’s all there is to it. Maybe the level designer has a triple degree in some esoteric field and is a brain surgeon on the weekends, but if the levels suck then it is what it is.

@humanity: This is my take away. A lot of the original post seems to want me to focus on a lot of things that have nothing to do with a game that I outright disliked when I played it (Fallout 4). I can appreciate what goes into game design, and I'm not one of those internet nuts that want Bethesda pilloried for it or something, but to excuse a bad game because the developer's heart is in the right place isn't the right answer either.

I think Bethesda on the whole is awesome, and I am really thankful that they seem to really be digging their heels in regarding single player games (at least, for now). If it weren't for them, some of my favorite games of the last few years wouldn't exist. But that doesn't mean it's okay for Fallout 4 to be a janky, boring mess.

The way Andromeda got buried on internet Bethesda have no right putting out their garbage.

Reviews today aren't any less or more analytical or objective as they were in the past. The only thing that has changed is Jeff's environment that he discusses those games in. The environment is more causal and driven by personal opinion. This is the thing that should be considered each time a game is discussed on Giant Bomb. Jeff knows as a person who gives out game purchasing advice as a reviewer, that he needs to be objective as possible. And during an UPF when his past GameSpot reviews were brought up, he still stands by those reviews today.

But today his conversations are more casual, akin to talking with friends, rather than giving purchasing advice to thousands of people. This distinction is important, and a grain of salt must be taken when you hear opinions solely driven on personal taste.

@tom_omb: I've been at the launch of every WoW expansion too. The trouble is that a) nobody but Rorie cares about these expansions or the game and b) it's difficult to show off WoW. What's new in a WoW expansion? New zones, new class. Did they readjust the leveling system? How long will it take someone whose on the fence about it to get to the content they're being shown.

You'll notice that none of the MMOs ever get more than one quick look. It's just harder to get them across since they're already such big, engrossing things.

I do wish Rorie had more time to stream his WoW content though.

@sethmode: I loved Morrowind and Oblivion and to a certain degree Skyrim although even there the formula started to get a little stale. I appreciate everything they did up to that point. That said, the entire Fallout era of Bethesda is a bug ridden road of glitches and frankly lazy game design that a lot of people looked over but I simply couldn’t deal with.

From the same person who brought you the thread a couple months ago about Fallout 4 being better than Witcher 3, here comes another defense of 2015's Fallout 4. It's cool if you still want to talk about Fallout 4, but it's not exactly a hot topic for most other people in 2018.

@humanity: Oh, same, I was speaking more of them as a publisher in recent years. I haven't really been into their developed stuff since Morrowind, although I have played it all and for the most part enjoyed myself (just never to the huge degree that I did Morrowind).

Using understaffed and too expensive as excuses for Fallout 4 for a company that has made hundreds of millions of dollars in sales off of that franchise alone is a bit much.

I don't hate Fallout 4 because it's kind of a janky mess, or because it took away RPG elements, or because it ended up relying on crafting and settlements. I hate Fallout 4 because it is so clearly the product of a company doing the bare minimum amount of work to appease the fanbase while raking in disgusting profits. They keep their team relatively small and their engine relatively unchanged because they are still making sales at that size. They haven't hired better animators, better writers, better programmers, or better leads because they can afford to let a product in the state that Fallout 4 was released into the world.

Maybe it's justified in that most of the other Bethesda-published games are great and maybe the state of Fallout and the sales from Bethsoft pick up that slack. I don't know, and honestly I don't particularly care. it's a game that has the budget to be absolutely incredible (or as New Vegas demonstrated, can be incredible with budget constraints as well), but release after release they refuse to actually address the core issues with their approach and design and instead put more and more systems on top.

@humanity: I agree. What goes on within the dev team doesn't factor in my enjoyment of it. If I don't like it I'll be honest about it. Morrowind and Oblivion were both groundbreaking PC games at the time, setting standards for immersive first person RPGs. When Fallout 3 came out it looked like an Oblivion mod to me. It just looked so stale and ugly. The magic I felt playing Morrowind and Oblivion for the first time was not present in Fallout 3 because it was just not impressive, not from a gameplay standpoint or a technical one. Same with Skyrim, same with Fallout 4. I really have to agree with Jeff's opinion that they are just "pumping out the same fucking game" over and over again.

@tuxedocruise: Jeff has lamented plenty about how those Gamespot scores had to be weighed on certain metrics like graphics and whatnot. I'm glad Giantbomb has a 5 star system to focus on the words and not the score. But we're not talking about reviews here.

I agree with everything you say about how these conversations are personality driven. I am just frustrated at how some people are so casually dismissive about my favorite games. Jeff has a right to be bitter about those Nintendo games, maybe he's just being defensive from all the flack he's been given over the years from fans about giving Mario and Zelda games scores in the 8 range. Maybe the only solution is to have different people in the mix.

@jesus_phish Sure, but as with any big game, that's why you have some who has played more of it so they can talk about all those details you can't see. Quicklooks are never perfect, and that's what's great about them. Sure, there are better sources for WoW coverage, but I always look forward to anything I can get from my favorite site. Chances are high we'll see something when Classic WoW comes.

I agree that a lot of the gaming audience has a false sense of entitlement and that calling most devs "lazy" is ignorant. Even a bad game is hard to make and it obviously must have taken huge effort to make Fallout 4, but outside of that, you're kind of losing me. I find it hard to believe that a cash cow like Fallout 4 really couldn't get them enough money for them to afford to fix the major bugs in it, but okay, for the sake of argument let's say Bethesda don't have the staff or money to support Fallout 4. Isn't that something we should criticise in itself? Companies shouldn't be taking on projects that they don't have the scope and resources to support. Yes, getting co-operation between a dev team can be a major challenge in game development that fans often don't think about, but it's not as if other companies don't manage it, so it's not an excuse for Bethesda, and it doesn't actually make the quality of the game any better so it doesn't elevate Fallout 4 above criticism.Okay, I understand if Bethesda don't want to make an RPG; I think it would be interesting to have them make something else, but the something else they do in Fallout 4 is not as interesting as what they were doing with the more RPG-leaning Fallouts. Having a more influential and varied set of RPG stats on characters helped vary gameplay and characterise your protagonist. There may be other ways to vary gameplay and built out a character, but Fallout 4 doesn't provide a replacement. I don't entirely disagree with the design decisions in Fallout 4 that downplay the RPG elements, but you can see a lot of areas of play where all they managed to do was remove the RPG elements so it could be a more generic shooter, and we already have a lot of generic shooters.

Yes, Bethesda produced assets and an engine for New Vegas, but to say that they "indirectly" developed the game is a somewhat misleading way to spin the idea. Would we say the Unity devs "indirectly developed" any Unity game? The parts they did contribute were not the parts of New Vegas that people enjoyed either. It may be possible that New Vegas couldn't have been made without Bethesda's input, but that's speculative, and the Fallout 3 engine was notoriously buggy, while the assets of the game were frequently ugly. The best bits of New Vegas: the branching faction system, the more complex ethical take, the factions, and the characters were all made by Obsidian. There are some really awful takes that people have thrown about re: Bethesda but I think you're conflating a lot of gamer tantrums out there with the constructive criticism you're saying should exist.

The problem with Fallout 4 for me was not the glitches or whatever shit, it was that the world itself was a gigantic step down from 3 and New Vegas. Wayyyyy too much of it centered around the Synths and that whole trite-ass drama, which did have good stories dealing with it but overall it was just...too much. Every faction had their own dram/opinion on it and all roped into the main quest, making the world feel small and simple. While shooting was finally quite fun/solid, the RPG elements were further down-sized...I looked past most of the buggyness in my time with the game and it still left a lot to be desired.

The original poster must really like this game. They basically did this exact post a couple of moths ago while trying to use stats to "prove" that Fallout 4 is better than The Witcher 3. For once the deja vu was real.

please don't be ignorance.

Once again, a positive post about the merits of a game and the things it does, that no other game can provide, will be way more convincing than shadowboxing against 'certain people on the internet'.

I doubt anyone worth talking to truly thinks that employees at Bethesda are lazy individuals. But with the sandboxy-type of games they make, you have to be a certain kind of person to get the most out of that style of game. If you buy FO4 expecting to play a deep RPG where you get to decide your own faith, you will get dissapointed. If you're there to immerse yourself in that world, make your own thing in that world and explore other people's creations, you will probably have a good time. But given that the franchise started as a RPG and somewhat acts like it's an RPG, it's sad to see that beneath the skin there's not much of an RPG present anymore.

On the topic of 'laziness', Telltale works their balls off pumping out the licenced choose your own adventure games. Sadly between games ,very little progress is made on a technical aspect. But because they sell boatloads, and are able to produce a ton of content with this engine, it makes sense for them to operate in that fashion. If those games didn't do as well, Telltale would have to make changes & do something exciting to attract the audience. Them not having to go as far as they can and do whatever it takes to innovate to make a profit off their games is not lazy, but decent business sense. I just wish Fallout & Telltale games weren't in such a safe position.

It would appear that not since advocating Bloodrayne as a guest character in MK:X has he been so enthused about something.

I hope the OP can see me being okay with this game because I'm doing it as hard as I can.

As someone who plays more video games than he should and is passionate about them, I would just give this a rest. You like FO4? Cool. We all have weird gaming biases, whether or not we like to admit it. I don't like Skyrim, but I like FO4. I could tell you that one game is technically better than one I like better, but my reasons for why I like a game are, for lack of a better term, random. People aren't wrong for having opinions. Now others accusing other people of being lazy? I'll admit that's a problem. I don't think Bethesda needs defending, they are successful and still have a decent fanbase.

I like Fallout 4. It's good

never call me ignorance again. I am not ignorance

Fallout 4 is one of only two games I have ever earned a platinum trophy on, so I liked it quite a bit. That said, the criticisms on the overall jankiness are quite valid and I hope that Bethesda strives for better next time around. If the purported sales figures for Skyrim and Fallout are even remotely accurate, they've literally made BILLIONS of dollars off of those franchises in the last decade. They can afford to hire a few more folks. Is Leslie Benzies still looking for work?

What I don't get is the critique on the FO4 story. In FO 1 and 2, the main stories were basically filler material. So much so that they eventually all but removed the timer from the main quest in the first game because people were more interested in the side quests and didn't want to be rushed. The second game had you searching for a macgeckfin for 30 hours, and in the end you find it and hand it to a guy only to find out "oh, well that didn't really do much. Thanks anyway though!" But along the way you got to karate chop your way through the streets of San Francisco, hunt Geiger-esque Aliens in an old ships hull, kill Clint Eastwood's character from In the Line of Fire, and punch the President in the face. The side quests were where it was at with the previous Fallout games, so I'm fine with it being the same with four (although I thought the main quest was actually quite enjoyable in 4). They aren't quite as pop-culture centric as the old games, and overall they probably aren't quite as memorable, but I still had a great time with them.

I think one of the things go I really liked in four was they allowed you to basically play the game how you wanted, just like the old games. Specifically, I mean if you wanted to skip much of the main story, you could. The first time I met Justin in the institute, when he was setting me up for an epic quest line, I listened to what he had to say and then I shot him in the face. I saved the game beforehand and reloaded eventually (and did so with every faction) but if you want you can just nip that in the bud and cut out a good portion of the game. There aren't a lot of games still made where you can just kill an important story character and dramatically change the game with one trigger pull. There also aren't many games where you can kill some seemingly random NPC and get a scroll of half a dozen missions you didn't know existed but just failed...but it lets you keep going anyway. I'm thrilled they at least partially retained that in the new games, although I really wish that they'd let you do the same to some of your companions. Preston Garvey's head would be hanging over my mantle Mailman-Farnum-style.

Tl;dr: Fallout 4 was great but could have been a lot better if they'd sorted out the technical issues before release. Bethesda needs to do better with Fallout 5.

@humanity:You're certainly entitle to think that way, but we can all be more polite when we say it, now come think of it all I ask is for people to be more polite...

Maybe and maybe not, I can't know it for sure of course but there are just too many consider factors, like sometime the game's marketing budget are actually bigger than it's development budget (bets example is Modern Warfare 2), and lots of money Fallout 4 earn might turn into other Bethesda's game budget, like DOOM and Dishonored, and curiously last year's The Evil Within 2, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Prey, which all 3 of them are reportedly having poor sales.

You can call it a bad game it's okay with me just don't insult the it or the people who like it or the developer that make it. Not much to ask...I hope.

@gamer_152:Well by the time right now I'm sure they get the message, we want more RPG and not shooter, my point is we should give them chance to make mistake so they can improve it next time, as for money and staff, I can't be 100% certain,maybe it's profit went into other game's development budget like I said above? but like I said Fallout 4 is the least buggy game they made, I have very few crash during my 521 hours gameplay and no game breaking bug encounter, all the bugs I can think of are pretty minor, I'm not saying it's okay for them not to fix this, but I understand why it wasn't fix (check the Extra Credits's video and comment below for more information, it's really good).

As for "indirectly" developed New Vegas, I don't know, maybe It's just poor word that I chose (which happened a lots), or maybe we have different opinion on this matter, I think I will enjoy New Vegas a lots less if not for the Fallout 3's combat system and other stuff, I think the best kind of Fallout game can not exist without the strength of either developer, maybe you think otherwise I don't know, thanks for taking your time to reply.

I'm not sure what gaves you the bare minimum amount of work impression, this is the best looking game made by them yet, And i'm not sure if you read my post by keep their team relatively small is because of how hard it will be manage if there are too many people in it's development, and if Todd Howard can manage a development team of 1000 people and make a polish game out of it, it would be a waste of talent for him to make video game, he should run for office, not sure if you understand the job of a producer, the most important work for a producer isn't just making game, but rather make sure the development went smoothly, provide communication for each departments, in other words, Todd Howard has to be an expert with people, which is very hard for many developers (example: CDPR and Ubisoft), and hire better animators and, programmers? I'm fairly sure in BGS they're some of the best animators and programmers the US can offer, but it's still a very large amount of work for very few people, quote from Howard himself "We can do anything, but we can't do everything." As for writers i have to agree, because BGS has no staff member delicate to writing in their credits, their members are mostly game designer since they seems to put game as priority and not it's story, but the game's story isn't bad either although I would say that they are just over ambitious as always, like in Fallout 4 they actually try to pull a Blade Runner, which is very hard since it's just so depth, Bethesda actually try to make their own "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" story while they are actually not an expert when it came to story, I think they really want to make us ponder about Institute and synths but it didn't work out at the end. As for better leads, well I doubt there are anyone has more experience than Howard, and we are talking about a team that has work with each others for more than a decade, they're basically family at this point and I doubt they will want or need to change that

As for engine, let me ask you, how many games engine you know can be mod like Bethesda's modified Gamebryo engine? I can only think of Valve's source engine, but it's a far cry compare to Bethesda's engine. How many other game company are able to duplicated Bethesda's success by making another game that can mod like Elder Scroll and Fallout? I can name none, If it was as easy as you said, they would have done it already, I'm not an expert about game engine, but I know it's not something you can just switch whenever the hell you want, SURE they can just use Unreal Engine for their next game, but that might as well get rid of modding altogether, not every game engine can be mod like the one we are having right now, I do believe they are working on a new one but that will probably take awhile, my guess is this new engine might be use on their new IP "Starfield", and I got a feeling it's gonna be a modding nightmare because most of modders are unfamiliar with it and tweak it with the wrong way and cause the game to crash a lots,I could be wrong though.

Well I digress, as I said before New Vegas was done by a lots of pre-estabish stuff, like the assets from Fallout 3 and plots from fallout van buren, even when it's first release it was quiet a mess, they manage to fix those later and turn New Vegas into a black sheep among RPG, poeple only grows to appreciate later, most people probably think it just another cash grab due to Fallout 3's success when it's first release, and I'm surprise just how many people ignore the things BGS did learn from New Vegas, like companion's story and faction (not reputation though), and many things they learn from modding community, they sure have their issues with with some of their game design, but they did try to improve it, I assume your core issues is about their narrative, which I agree, hopefully that will be improve.

I don't think you have to accept it, but just understand not everything work out in the end every time, I believe we all use the hardest standard to measure the quality of game like Fallout, because the franchise is just that good, but after all of that we should just tell ourselves that if it's not bad than it's goodenough.

@vierastalo:I'm pretty sure most of the bug fix and developing are still done by Bethesda Game Studio, I check the credits, QA seems to be done by publisher Bethesda Softworks, and not by studio themselves, and it's around 120 people, we also know they did get some help from ID software to improve their FPS gunplay, which BGS also later assist on developing DOOM as well, regardless what other assistance they receive during development it's probably very minor and most of the hard working still fall into BGS themselves. Anyway bug and QA are very complex problem in video games. I suggest watch this video by Extra Credits for anyone want to understand why some bugs are not fixed.

Also in it's commet section Extra Credits did address in Bethesda's case

Extra Credits

In Bethesda's case, I personally believe that honestly has more to do with what goes into making a massive open-world game than with the company itself. QA testing is fantastic and catches a lot of things in most games, but I distinctly remember a bug that I encountered in the Fallout 3 Operation: Anchorage DLC where equipping a particular piece of armor at a certain time in combination with other specific clothing items or weapons (I don't remember specifics anymore) caused a certain quest to be marked as completed. When you have a huge number of possible permutations and combinations of assets to keep track of, it's more understandable (to me, at least) that something will inevitably be only discovered by a few players later on rather than QA itself. (And again, this is only one possible explanation--the point is, it's way easier to test for all possible bugs in a very tightly scoped game than a sprawling scope one like most open-world RPGs, MMOs, etc.)

--Belinda (Community Manager)

@tom_omb:Glad to see people understand, we really need to show more appreciation for the thing we have.

@imhungry:You'd be surprise how many people still do, I think they should be moving on and just live with their disappointment, but people probably going to keep complaining around the following years, kinda like some people still hating on Star Wars Prequel.

@htr10:@chrispaul92:This post has nothing to do with that post, this one is something I try to address to our Fallout community, I think this is a game franchise that can actually taught us something, but no one will take us seriously and treat game as form of art if it's fans keep acting like children, you don't have to read anything I wrote if you don't want to be any part of it. As for kinda outdated topic, you can tell that to the folks still complaint about it on Youtube to move on, but good luck with that.

@sethmode: Yes I only post something when i really feel like I need to, I usually avoid internet discussion, since I know just how toxic it can be sometime.

Point taken, as for Tomb Raider, here's the story I got from Internet,

After the critical and commercial failure of Angel of Darkness, Eidos Interactive gave the Tomb Raider rights from the Core Design team, the original creators, to Crystal Dynamics, known for the Legacy of Kain series. What followed was Tomb Raider Legend, a critically well received and more profitable reboot.

Running parallel to Crystal Dynamic's production of Legend, Core began working on a remake of the original Tomb Raider, under the title Tomb Raider Anniversary. The final product would have been released for the PSP. Eidos, however, cancelled the project before it was finished (reportedly, it was over 60% done when cancelled). There are conflicting reports to why it was cancelled but the popular explanations are Eidos didn't want Core to release the game after the design team were sold to another publishing company and Eidos would prefer Crystal Dynamics to develop the game.

In 2007, Crystal Dynamics released their version of Anniversary. A playable version of Core's game has yet to be released.

http://lostmediaarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Tomb_Raider_Anniversary_(Original_Core_Design_PSP_Game)

I have to ask, because I truly don't understand... Why does it matter to you if some people don't like the game as much? This goes to the people who lament Jeff's attitude towards Yoshi's Island or Majora's Mask, too. Obviously in those cases I think he's being hyperbolic for comedic effect, but even if he wasn't what does it matter? Jeff couldn't stand Red Dead Redemption, that doesn't make me like the game any less, and there are probably examples I could find for every staff member on the site.

As for Bethesda, I think their sales numbers open them up to a lot more criticism than other examples. The amount of money they have made from the Elder Scrolls games and now Fallout is stupendous. They keep re-releasing Skyrim at what must be comparatively little cost and the game still has huge goddamn bugs. They have the money to hire more people, whether that's QA or developers. Using the argument that more people are harder to manage is a fault of management and nothing more. Look at the credits of any Assassin's Creed game, you'll see a thousand names that somehow worked together. The argument of a small team also doesn't hold up, because you can look at what CD Projekt RED can do with the Witcher 3 (though that's excusing potential other issues with the work place conditions there). Witcher 3 looks staggeringly better and is a lot less buggy than ANY game Bethesda Game Studio have put out since at least Morrowind.

Bethesda got a free ride for way too long, to be honest. People glossed over bugs in their games because the rest was so impressive, but that loses it's lustre over time. You can't be as impressed with Skyrim if you've already played Oblivion, it's just the same thing slightly refined. And somehow still broken. I think it's frankly gross that they keep re-releasing Skyrim without putting the proper effort into cleaning that game up. In my opinion, that shows so little respect for the people that buy their games, it boggles my mind that someone might stand up for them like you do.

@ka385385:

Well, if this is still a hot debate on YouTube, then I can see why it is still fresh in your mind. You are thorough in making your points, but I think you will find the Fallot 4 discussion is only going to go so far in the positive direction on the Giant Bomb forums.

"Why does it matter to you if some people don't like the game as much?"

It doesn't, so long as we don't turn on each others and insulting developer than put a bad reputation into our community, it was people like them set out of few bad example that let and politic ruining lots of games and kickstarting the whole Gamergate debacle, Bethesda has build this community like no others that inspire creative for many people, me included. Many people put lots of effort to create mods to benefit each others, some even spend years on big project like Project Brazil (now known as Fallout New California) and Fallout Frontier, they didn't just sold you a game, but an opportunity like no other, to make your own game, that's something a lots of us can never do, but in their game it is possible, and that's very special to us, true to be told it's not the game they made are the best, but the community they build through out years.

"They have the money to hire more people, whether that's QA or developers. Using the argument that more people are harder to manage is a fault of management and nothing more..."

Jesus, where do I start...

Check this article "Why I Quit my Dream Job at Ubisoft"

http://gingearstudio.com/why-i-quit-my-dream-job-at-ubisoft

If you don't want to read the full version, here's the part when thing went wrong for him at developing Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Quote

As predicted, I started working on Syndicate very soon in the development cycle. I wanted to give it a try, even though I feared I wouldn’t like it at all. At first, since there wasn’t a lot to do on the technical side, I collaborated a lot on AC Unity with the Montreal studio. I worked on cool new techs developed for ACU, it was fun and challenging. I had a good relationship with most of my Montreal co-workers (even though it’s harder to develop a good relationship when you mostly communicate by email). I continued collaborating on ACU every now and then until they shipped.

After a few months, Syndicate started for real. The team was getting bigger and bigger as we entered production. For me, this is the root of all issues on AAA games: big teams. Too many people. Syndicate was created with the collaboration of about 10 studios in the world. This is 24 hour non-stop development. When people go to sleep in one studio, it’s morning in another one.

With so many people, what naturally occurs is specialization. There’s a lot of work to do, and no one can master all the game’s systems. So, people specialize, there’s no way around it. It can be compared to an assembly line in a car factory. When people realize they’re just one very replaceable person on a massive production chain, you can imagine it impacts their motivation.

With specialization often comes tunnel-vision. When your expertise is limited to, let’s say, art, level design, performances or whatever, you’ll eventually convince yourself that it’s the most important thing in the game. People become biased towards their own expertise. It makes decision-making a lot more complicated. More often than not, it’s the loudest voice who wins… even if it doesn’t make much sense.

On large scale projects, good communication is – simply put – just impossible. How do you get the right message to the right people? You can’t communicate everything to everyone, there’s just too much information. There are hundreds of decisions being taken every week. Inevitably, at some point, someone who should have been consulted before making a decision will be forgotten. This creates frustration over time.

On top of that, there’s often too many people involved in making a decision. Usually you don’t want to make a decision in a meeting with 20 people, it’s just inefficient. So the person in charge of the meeting chooses who’s gonna be present, and too bad for the others. What it’s gonna be? A huge, inefficient meeting where no decision is taken, or a small meeting that goes well but creates frustration in the long run?

Being an architect, I had a pretty high level view of all technical developments on the project. While it sounds cool, it has its disadvantages too. The higher you go up the ladder, the less concrete impact you have on the game. You’re either a grunt who works on a tiny, tiny part of the game (“See that lamppost? I put it there!”), or you’re a high-level director who writes emails and goes to meetings (“See that road full of lampposts? I approved that.”). Both positions suck for different reasons. No matter what’s your job, you don’t have a significant contribution on the game. You’re a drop in a glass of water, and as soon as you realize it, your ownership will evaporate in the sun. And without ownership, no motivation.

I could go on and on. There’s tons of other reasons why AAA projects are not satisfying. Don’t get me wrong: it’s nothing specific to Ubisoft or Assassin’s Creed games. This is an inevitable side effect of creating huge games with an enormous team.

I have to add that, obviously, some people are motivated. Those are usually juniors and people who never got the chance to work on a AAA project before. But when you’ve done it a couple of times, the excitement disappears, and you’re only left with the sad, day-to-day reality. That’s a huge problem for studios working on AAA projects one after another. Senior staff gets tired and leave.

End Quote

If you reading it hopefully you will have a better understand of how important it is for management, and as I said before, if you can manage a team of 1000 people development team and make a great game smoothly, YOU SHOULD RUN FOR OFFICE AND NOT WASTE YOUR TALENT AT VIDEO GAME.

As for CDPR's case, you do realize how bad their management is right? From the first Witcher game to the last, most of it's developer left on a bad terms, the in fight between it's lead are notoriously, lots of people originally sign up for developing Cyberpunk 2077 ends up have to work at Witcher 3 because Cyberpunk 2077 were going nowhere and Witcher 3 were in development stagnation.

"I think it's frankly gross that they keep re-releasing Skyrim without putting the proper effort into cleaning that game up. In my opinion, that shows so little respect for the people that buy their games, it boggles my mind that someone might stand up for them like you do."

I'm not sure if you aware but Bethesda and ZeniMax wasn't just game company, in many way they're also technology company, i mean lots of BGS members are engineer and ZeniMax Media did involved into develop VR technology themselves , so of course they will try to integrate with one to another, plus I don't see any harm it does to release an old game on a new platforms, you don't have to buy it since you already own it, and people never try it get a reason to try, and you may argue they did it way too many times, but I think it's only because of it's timing since many new technology came out around the same time (Switch and VR), and on PC which is the platform majority of people play Skyrim, we get the special edition for free if we already own the game, so really i fail to see any reason to complaint about it.

@htr10: Both of the Fallout 4 videos he's talking about were uploaded in 2016...

Like most companies, Bethasda receives some valid criticism and some not so much, at the very least uninformed criticism.

The thing is that criticisms that seem small in the grand scheme of developing an entire AAA game, can still affect the play experience so much that I do not want to play the game. All developers need the skill and wisdom to address certain issues, mechanics, story beats etc. that matter for the playing experience more than other aspects. If a developer does not do this, then even over the smallest things a game can feel bad.

The opposite is also true. In fact, my favorite games of all time, for example XCOM 2, is undeniably flawed. But the thing is that it is flawless on every single aspect that matters most. I will take a technical or graphical glitch any day for this. This is also why I disagree that Bethesda needs to focus on fixing bugs and glitches for the most part. Of course they need to put some amount of resources towards that and attempt to fix the ones that break the game, but otherwise if creating a fluid perfect running game means Skyrim would be 'just another open world game', it isn't worth it at all. Skyrim can rocket to the top of most polished games while simultaneously plummet to the bottom of the barrel in critical success.

Skyrim was one of the best selling open world games of all time and to this day we still have not seen anyone even attempt to copy Bethesda on this template.

That said, I can say with confidence I would never, ever play Fallout 4 again if it meant I had to play vanilla and not modded to the teeth. Bethesda did not focus on the correct aspects from my point of view. I cannot begin to describe to you how confused and disappointed I was to not see a Hardcore mode when that game launched (and the current hardcore mode they added to the game later is just plain bad, there is no other way to say it). This one issue makes the game such a tremendous bummer, that I just wouldn't be able to play it.

Given the fact that better Hardcore mode mods have been created in a matter of weeks, I can safely say that they should have directed some of their time to it and leave out something else that is not as meaningful.

@gaff:

I see. That’s...less recent...than the OP implied.

I am probably one of the few people who likes Fallout 4 more then New Vegas. I just loved the base building stuff. And aside from some performance stuff at launch I didn't encounter really bad bugs.

@htr10: @gaff: I only used these two video as reference, one for demonstrate what a good criticism looks like, the other one is kind of rant and I was just trying to polish it a bit, this kind of negative attitude I mostly saw it on Youtube, which with a lots of more recent video still loathing about it, I simply didn't post them here because I refuse to promote that kind of hate wagon, if you want to watch them it's easily enough for you to search them on Youtube because there's many, I don't encourage it though.

@ka385385:

It’s cool. I don’t mean to make you feel like you’re on trial here. Fallout 4 didn’t blow my mind like Fallout 3 did, but I still enjoyed my time with Fallout 4 and will probably go back to it some day. I have nothing against Bethesda. I won’t hesitate to buy another game from them if it appeals to me.

@htr10 It's okay, thanks for taking your time reading it.

@ka385385: I don’t think I was being impolite, just honest. They’ve been given chances and have time and time again shown that they just don’t care. Fallout 4 was a great chance for them to show they heard fans and will improve the quality of their games - but nope, if anything it was an even bigger mess than their earlier entries into that franchise.

It’s always been interesting to me.

I’ve played every Bethesda game. Some I dislike, some I like, few I love.

I’ve never given a shit about their bugs or jank. Not even close to a shit. Just... really irrelevant to me.

Fallout 4’s failures in my eyes are entirely design facing, not systematic, asset or script errors. I just don’t agree with where they put their focus for that game, and the options allowed by the story & mechanics felt narrow for what I wanted to do.

Fallout 4 did nothing wrong!

Fallout 4 was made with just over 100 people, Destiny like most AAA games was created by a team of 750+ people. What I didn't like about Fallout 4 was its reliance on radiant quests which can be attributed down to the small dev team, but considering Fallout 4 sold as well as Destiny its a remarkable achievement with todays spiralling budgets.

Calling developers lazy or trash is wrong. But I don't have to be grateful to Bethesda for a product they sell. I can like it or hate it, but being grateful? It's not a gift?

Obsidian crafted an amazing Fallout game IMO. Bethesda choose them because Obsidian is a solid developer and has a history with the series. It sold over 4 million copies most of that profit went to Bethesda not Obsidian. Historicaly Bethesda screwed the Obsidian employees out of a good bonus, as it was tied to metacritic (industry standard as it is) not sales. Bethesda most certainly was not generous, they were smart (minus the bonus thing, that's just mean, but that's likely the lawyers at zenimax)

Don't take away the effort and work

Obsidian put into that game and give it to the publisher. Most of that credit should go to the developer. Bethesdas engine was built for themselves, it's great Obsidian could work with it, considering they had to learn all the unique aspects of the engine's code in 1 game cycle.

I don't play unreal games and compliment Epic constantly. I might say something like "this is a good engine for this kind of game", or "what great utilisation of this engine's strengths!" The engine's creator is more than compensated.

People need to chill with the vitriol against game developers. Game fans in general have to stop the outright harassment against developers and others in this industry.

But your stretching a bit too far. There is a difference between criticism and harassment.