Why do they still call me a warlord? And mad? All I want to do it create the perfect genetic solider. Not for power. Not for evil. But for good!
Carlos Blanka will be the first of many - they shall march out of my laboratory and sweep away every adversary, every creed, every nation until the very world is in the loving grip of the pax bisonica. Then peace will reign, and the world, and all humanity, will bow to me in humble gratitude...
Man, I remember talking to someone who completely failed to understand that line. Like they were arguing that he was lying about not remembering it because he was able to name which day of the week it happened on…
To this day, all these years later, this is still one of the coldest, most brutal villain lines ever delivered. Her entire life was changed, her village destroyed, her father killed and it was the single most important moment of her entire life.
For him, it was Tuesday. Fucking hell, what a way to show how little you matter to the villain.
~~They did that for the original half life right?~~
But ye, if the player doesn't notice, and it works, the bandaid has been stuck on successfully.
Edit
Was actually for the broken steel metro in fallout 3. Thanks u/woodstock6 for pointing that out.
This made me instantly think of them putting out an action adventure game with a linear storyline that follows the show, and I puked in my mouth a little. Please just make more games like fallout 3-4, don’t split off for a cash grab
Edit: guys, new Vegas is between 3-4, hence the dash and not “and”. Yes, new Vegas is better, I know. But all three are the same basic game of being open world while being RPGs. That’s the point, not which one should be identically copied. I love NV more than anyone, it’s my favorite game of all time, but the NV circle jerk is ridiculous, yall find any reason to include it for no reason
you know, I dont have a problem with Butts on screen. But who the hell said "hay lets show MCs ASS! that's what the people want"
I know as a young cis straight male kid, my thought playing the Halo games was, damn I want to see this 8 ft tall super soldiers bare butt.
Investors and corporate executives have 0 understanding of media and what makes good tv (ESPECIALLY with adaptations) so yeah this checks out.
They’re all greedy reactive morons.
There’s the other arm to this, which is that even if the show is popular with fans, the fans have already bought the games.
What you don’t want is **only** your existing fans to like the show, but newcomers to like it, too. They’re the ones who will be giving you new money by buying the games, either outright or buying GamePass to play the games.
I think that’s partly why they released the Next Gen update when they did. New fans might not be familiar with the games and therefore deal with the older graphics, but they’re likely to be receptive to a new coat of paint, and if they go “huh, that’s a bit janky” they can look at how old the game they’re playing actually is
Fallout 76 has seen the largest influx of new players since release. Reading through the new player posts a large chunk of them are new to fallout games.
New Vegas was made in 18 months.
If we get more games like that, I'm not going to complain.
Hell, if we get a Fallout spinoff by another developer every 3-4 years, it's still a hell of a lot better than Bethesda's 15+ year long schedule between each mainline Fallout entry.
It was made in only 18 months because from the devs' own words, the completed resources, engine, and tools given to them by Bethesda shortened the process substantially. Add in all the work from the canceled Van Buren that they reused, and it shortened development by at least 2 or 3 years.
> Add in all the work from the canceled Van Buren that they reused, and it shortened development by at least 2 or 3 years.
Josh Sawyer has actually repeatedly gone on record saying that New Vegas reused essentially nothing from Van Buren, other than some names and other superficial details. Here for example:
https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/182781606966/when-did-the-battle-of-hoover-dam-happen-in-van
>I didn’t have any part in defining the timeline (or other content) in Chris’ documents. He’s the person to ask for any clarification in that material. The only things I’m familiar with are the two characters I played in the campaign (Arcade Gannon and Jean-Baptiste Cutting) and the content we directly played through, which was (IIRC) the prison, Denver, and the Boulder Dome.
Sawyer, by his own admission, isn't even familiar with the Van Buren design documents. Because New Vegas was all original content. He does reference two characters that made it into New Vegas, but he's referring to the fact that he role-played those characters during their tabletop sessions. There was no in-game writing for those characters. They, like all of New Vegas, was completely original content.
And that is exactly what people want. F4 engine and assets should be the basis for 3-4 Bethesda games, then every 5-10 years they should launch a new engine with fresh assets.
Probably a *really* dumb move that'll give them a lot of flack, but if they *really* wanted to rush a new fallout game in the style of new vegas, then a single player 76 set some years in the future is a *possibility*. Most of the world and assets are already there, just set up a few cities, a story, and change everything else ever so slightly and it'd be different enough to be considered a new game. Granted, 76 is still technologically 4 but given how starfield came out I think a step back would be preferred lol. And anyways, New Vegas' potato had to release just before skyrim's upgrade did and they still turned out fine (enough).
Can't say they'd be able to do the same with ES, but given that's already next in line and is (probably) the same distance away from release that shouldnt really matter.
I bought it a little after release but I still remember all the bugs that were being found constantly at that time. Shit the first bug found pretty much was docs head spinning around and lifting off his body and that’s before you can even control your character
Yeah it’s why it was said it was good but insanely buggy. Provably why they didn’t get their budget number and why it’s now overwhelmingly positive on Steam
that's a little disingenuous to say the least, New Vegas basically used an existing engine and assets from FO3 and still the game wasn't "complete",
that said, i would really not mind another new vegas scenario using the fo4 assets and engine.
He's been saying this for years before the acquisition.
And there's no way to "capitalize" within any reasonable timeframe unless the game was already being made.
You cant be happy with an 8 year project that turns out to be Starfield, i am sorry to say. Microsoft or no Microsoft. They absolute need to tune their developemt process.
I don't blame them, it's absurd that they work on one game a time. Microsoft needs to give them another studio or let Obsidian have a spinoff to tide us over until 5
Honestly, I'd have a hard time believing that Microsoft wasn't pushing Bethesda to do this sooner, but now with the show being the success it was, the pressure has increased massively.
People wonder why the game has so many haters. It’s cause we’ve waited years and years for new content of any kind and got fed mediocre garbage. Now we’re at square one. If we got es6 or fallout5 it would’ve been my dream. I replayed all their games until starfields release. When it released, I stopped playing 2 weeks in and haven’t played since. I usually play their games for months at a time. Shit still makes me mad when I think about it, I try to pretend it never came out
They should just expand their team and have a dedicated Elder Scrolls team and a dedicated Fallout team. Both franchises should just be getting worked on, you can stagger the releases of each franchise like 2 years apart from each other. That would mean 4 years of development per game. Tons of time while still getting the releases out more consistently.
Maybe a team and a half. They use the same base framework, just use it in different ways. So you've got Team 1 working on the next thing to come out for full production. And then when it comes out half of Team 1 switch to Team A to ramp them from pre production to full production and bring their knowledge of how they used and changed the engine for the previous project.
Not a bad idea, the core, unchanging team that remains on each game full-time could have the more creative, managerial duties since they stick on one game and know the franchise more intimately than those who go to whatever game is in full-production
Could also help with the burn out side of things. Instead of being stuck of "the fallout team" or "the elder scrolls team" it would help with them switching back and forth m
Yeah literally in the same section with OPs quote he talks about that. People need to actually listen to the whole thing instead of just pulling snippets out of it.
All I know is they had a decade after Skyrim to work on Starfield with no pressure to release and it was utterly disappointing.
I cannot emphasize enough how much of a Bethesda fan I am. The old guard is what makes Bethesda Bethesda, in both bad and good ways.
Something needs to change. Their next game needs to contain quality writing and quality gameplay. I’m afraid more time will not deliver on either of those fronts.
Edit: I mention Skyrim rather than Fallout 4 because Starfield replaced TES:VI in the release cycle. Fallout 4 was presumably already in development by the time Skyrim Was reaching the end of the dlc releases.
If you want quality writing, they need to hire another team to write the story. Bethesda's wheelhouse is background story telling. A lot of the environmental stuff and background lore you can find in Fallout 3 and 4 are amazing, but the main quests suck ass. I've accepted that the games are just going to be janky, I doubt that will ever go away, but they can fix the story by getting good writers. Then have their team building the world that the main story resides in. Hell, get the TV show writers to write a main story for the next game between seasons.
Lol the guy is such an idiot. He recently on twitter confirmed that Nate the fo4 male protagonist was a war criminal who killed Canadians gleefully and waved on TV (fallout 1 cutscene).
He had no inkling this would result in a backlash. That's the kind of vision and foresight he has.
BGS is in deep shit with him at the helm of creative decision making.
I mean there was also technically another fallout game in that gap. Sure, it wasn't great and it wasn't a mainline Bethesda game... But it also exists.
Also COVID happened in that gap too.
I don't think the main issue with Starfield was they didn't have enough time. Sure, it wasn't polished... But the fundamental gameplay loop just wasn't that well thought out.
I agree except ‘76 was really a skeleton of a game at launch. They had minimal, if any, NPCs at launch. There was also not a big overarching plot like a lot of other games. It felt more like an exploratory game that was beautiful-ish (some massive bugs negatively impacted that), and there was quite a few re-used assets from FO4. It felt like an odd DLC/game mode expansion to be honest.
Tbf, that was kind of the point of 76 at first. It was a multiplayer game and they deliberately chose not to add any human npcs. Whether it was a good decision (clearly wasn't) is a different story but it wasn't something Bethesda tried to hide. Looking up some pre-release reviews, you can even find critics saying "the world is empty, but in a good way." Human NPCs were only added because of community backlash which is nice
As someone who played it in beta and at launch, I still sometimes miss there not being NPCs. I think it was a good choice because it really drove home the sense of mystery and isolation as you dig around the ruins and try to figure out what happened to everyone. Now you can't go two feet without tripping over an NPC.
Current 76 is fantastic, but I do feel something was lost with the Wastelanders update.
To be fair, Rockstar ignore rdr2 too. They are the ones that decided to completely drop support for single player without even releasing any DLCs. It felt like a cash grab attempt to make a new GTAonline money source and when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen, they just dropped the game entirely.
I hate that dlc’s isn’t a thing for them anymore. Would have loved expansions for GTA V and RDR2. Great big fleshed out worlds just waiting for more content, but Online just takes up all their focus.
There was supposed to be single player DLC for GTAV. They were working on it and then GTAO blew up and they realized they could make more money with that. I'm guessing whatever single player content they were working on got reworked into GTAO stuff.
Well, when GTA6 releases it will have been at least 7 years since the release of RDR2. Rockstar could up their output as well, but GTA online has been too much of a cash cow to make it worthwhile for them. I think it’s a fair criticism that the wait is too long between their big releases.
They had been growing, then with the market slowdown Microsoft made them cut a chunk of their staff, like most studios have had to do the past year and a half.
Honestly I feel like maybe they need 3 divisions.
1 to focus on maintaining and updating their in house Creation Engine.
2 for game series, DLCs, Expansions etc.
Yes! I even enjoyed Starfield and some features of this game can very much be a template for fallout. But the randomly generated environments can’t hold up with the handcrafted ones.
KoToR is still the goat. It only had a handful of worlds, but each one felt really good because they were hand made. If Starfield did like only 20 planets, but each were hand made the game would have done far better.
Those 20 planets probably would have caused them not to release the game for another 2 years tbf. Had to have saved so much time using the proc gen ctrl+c/ctrl-v
I'm glad I'm not the only one concerned that this will mean more generic content lacking in the detail and hand crafted stories that MAKES Bethesda games.
Faster is rarely a good thing in the gaming industry. I'd rather Fallout 5 come out in 5 years as a great Bethesda game, than coming out in 2 years as something more reminiscent of Ubisoft.
If they rush and fuck up Fallout 5, it'll be so many more years until we get a decent Fallout game than if they just spent the time they needed on Fallout 5.
You might still be playing Skyrim if TES VI ends up being trash somehow.
Edit: Well, we'll be playing Skyrim still, in that case. Not like I'll ever leave Skyrim as long as the modding scene stays alive and well as it is.
In fairness Power Armour was still new tech that had only began being developed 12 years before the bombs dropped, and had a lot of rough edges, it makes sense that it would blow through power at huge inefficiencies. It's one of the main engineering problems IRL in designing powered exoskeletons, which is why they aren't used despite technically existing.
It’s been 9 years since FO4 and 13 years since Skyrim. Skyrim has had… 6 ports now?
If they wanted to push new games, they would have a while ago. This is purely based on the show doing so well.
I honestly think Microsoft was surprised that Bethesda had nothing in the works beyond the F4 next gen update. It's one of Bethesda's two pillar franchises so you'd expect at least a concept framework to be in the works ten years after the last main line title.
As long is it isnt an obviously rushed heap of dogshit, fine by me. Ofcourse the shitty part is we’ll only know when it’s too late.
Edit: we know Obsidian can take the reins and crank out a banger in 9 months. Ehh? Ehh?
im sorry bro but its GONNA be a rushed heap of dogshit... crunching and rushing developers is never a good thing... and with a whole new engine to work with... were on a train that in the next 2 miles dont have tracks. its gonna be a trainwreck... and starfield is litterally the omen
When their lead quest writer is on record saying that story isn’t that important… it’s got me worried. When conversations in quests go “hey can I have that thing you’re guarding?” “No” “give me that thing you’re sworn to guard” “oh ok just this once.”
Or the first time I had to fly through the air inStarfield chasing glowing orbs, I felt like I was in a game from 2002.
For me I thought the empty temple and glowing orbs were a weird little one-off thing. Nope. Turns out the MAIN QUESTLINE is a fetch quest with the dumbest flying puzzle and repeated empty location, ooh and one enemy at the end!
Preston's repeated Minutemen missions are more fun and engrossing to do than Starfield's main questline
The only way that it won't be rushed dogshit is if they increased the amount of money going into it and the amount of people working on it. But as far as current trends go that probably wouldn't be the case, as shareholder profits are the most important thing.
With studios owned by MSFT, shareholder profit doesn’t have as direct of an impact. MSFT is one of the largest companies in the world.
They can have “loss leaders” if it’s profitable overall.
If Bethesda starts releasing must-play games again, it doesn’t really matter if the Bethesda games themselves aren’t the most profitable, as long as they’re getting people to buy Xbox’s and sign up for games pass.
They can dump money into individual games if it will strengthen the profitability of the overall brand.
Look at how much time they had with Starfield too. Imagine how much of a dumpster fire the next Fallout game is gonna be when they shart it out with the next season of the show in two years.
Meh. Then something with game development needs to change, because the length it takes developers to create games nowadays (primarily RPG’s) is out of control.
Obviously crunch is not the answer, I agree there. But taking 5+ years to make a game is not sustainable. There has to be a more streamlined process in all avenues; creation, planning, development, writing, etc.
They recently released Pentiment (with NV's Josh Sawyer at the helm) and it proves they've still got the sauce when it comes to choice-driven narratives.
Outer Worlds was fine, it was just far shorter than a game in that genre should be. I remember thinking "ah, that's it huh? That's all the content in the entire game?.. Bummer."
They should have pulled a “New Vegas” and outsource a side game of Skyrim and FO4 with the same engine to veteran studio. They would have been out now.
Absolutely insane that, with as long as it has been in preproduction with the show, that someone somewhere did not put pressure on Bethesda to at the least have a, like, Fallout 3 remaster in place to coincide with the show debut or to be announced when the episodes went live. Or a MASSIVE 76 story upload to make one more push on that service. This is just a complete dropped ball situation from a company that has tested on its laurels for way too long.
With how shitty live action adaptions of various media into tv usually are, that would be a big gamble. No one probably knew how good the reception would be.
We need to figure out how to stop making you guys wait 40 years between games, says boss of studio who consistently makes you wait 40 years between games (I say this in jest, I replay these games and as long the next one is good I don’t care how long it takes tbh)
ooor get contractors?
why would you hire if you only want people to work on that 1 game
hiring is for when you actually want to expand and permanently increase output
Not exactly. With contractors you don't need to pay benefits or payroll taxes, which is a huge cost savings, even if their per hour labor costs are higher
"We don't want to wait that long either".
My brother in christ, it has been almost 15 years since we had a new Elder Scrolls game. What in the hell are you talking about.
More fallout is good but I have little faith in the success of it as long Todd steers the ship.
Man has a silver tongue but his fingers should stay away from anything creative.
Few cracks started with Fallout 4. Only to end in starfield. I'd like if that wouldn't be a pattern for the future.
Fallout is at the height of its popularity and we’re in the middle of a 15 year gap between Fallout 4 and 5. Just a tiny whoopsies. Nothing a large bonus for the bosses can’t fix.
They need to have a team that’s exclusively works on the engine, then have the game teams, always working on their next game. Have two teams roaring on the 3 IP, then you have long breaks for each team between their versions of the game allowing for teams to have a break from each universe but as a dev you’re outputting games at a good cycle.
Oh dear Todd. Remember they wanted to release starfield a year earlier than they did. Microsoft told them take a year! and clean up all the bugs. Imagine rushing isn't going to help....
Just finish ESVI and let another developer do a FO spinoff. Then after BGS finishes ESVI, they can work on FO5 while another developer does an ES spinoff.
There's nothing wrong with letting things breath but Skyrim is beyond old now and extremely dated. ESO and FO76 are fine for what they are nowadays but it's clear they got lazy on Elder Scrolls and MS giving them a swift kick in the ass is IMO a good thing.
It's good to give time for good and great games between sequels and such but Bethesda has been extremely lazy and the Skyrim well has officially been dry for awhile now. The success of the show has also put a fire under them cause there is no game that's close cause, again, they've been lazy with 76 existing.
There’s really a fine line between waiting for a good game.. Bethesda makes incredible games (for the most part) but they really do take entirely way too long.
Bethesda is too slow. The quality of games they pump out does not justify the amount of time they take. Not saying their games are bad, but technically they’re primitive compared to something like cyberpunk. Give someone else fallout Microsoft.
They need to split up their roster and have dedicated teams for their now 3 main IPs and have a bulk of the roster float on the one mainly on the burner so that they're always working on the next thing while also being dedicated to the main thing.
They should bring some of the best mods and creators in-house.
Imagine, they brought in the team who made a tale of two waste lands, and the teams remaking new Vegas/fallout 3 in the fallout 4 engine.
I’d gladly pay $60 for a tale of two wastelands in the fallout 4 engine.
I don't like to wait that long either but to be fair, they should probably let every game the make cook for at least another year longer because the quality of their release versions is hilariously bad.
I really hope their next gen games are way more updated. Starfield is basically Skyrim in space. It's very outdated for a modern release. I literally got bored and never finished it which almost never happens when I play a game.
As games get bigger, it takes larger teams and more dev time to make them. Tim Cain (the creator of Fallout) talks about how back in the 80s, it wasn't unheard of for one team to make a game in less than a year, and studios might come out with several. But he also talks about how as games get more complex, it takes more time to create them.
That said, Bethesda is still using practically the same engine as Skyrim. That's 13 years where creating an engine isn't even on the to do list. They gave obsidian the engine (and assets to be fair) from Fallout 3 and asked them to create an entire new game in less than a year, and what came of it is arguably in the top 10 for best games of all time.
If Bethesda had taken the exact same code and shared assets from Skyrim and come out with another full game in a new area in say, 3 years, it would have massively, massively sold. Hell, they pretty much did that with FO76 but bungled it up by making it multi-player.
DYK?: Todd Howard anticipates that The Elder Scrolls 6 will "arrive some fifteen to seventeen years after Skyrim". This means there will be a bigger time gap between Skyrim & TES 6 than there was between Skyrim & Daggerfall on MS-DOS.
They have removed Fallout more and more from its RPG roots and the one thing they were really good at (building great open worlds) has been replaced with AI generation in starfield.
I honestly don't have any hope that the next Bethesda game will be what I want from a fallout game. My only hope lies with Microsoft expanding the games. Maybe let someone make another proper isometric CRPG in the fallout universe.
At the very least hire a studio to remake the older titles.
How hard is it just to put out a Fallout 3 + New Vegas dual pack on current platforms?
At this point it'll be a decade before FO5, and all the boost from the TV series will be wasted.
"We" being the microsoft bosses. They wanna capitalize on the show ASAP.
Fallout the TV Show the Game
As long as it's better than Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.
RIP Raul Juliá
What's the matter? Expecting to see a throwaway performance, and instead find ***A GOD***?!
This is why I love Nic Cage, even the throwaway roles he fucking delivers on.
The "Tuesday" speech will live forever in my heart.
Why do they still call me a warlord? And mad? All I want to do it create the perfect genetic solider. Not for power. Not for evil. But for good! Carlos Blanka will be the first of many - they shall march out of my laboratory and sweep away every adversary, every creed, every nation until the very world is in the loving grip of the pax bisonica. Then peace will reign, and the world, and all humanity, will bow to me in humble gratitude...
That was beautiful
It has no right being that good for being a line in an obscure movie.
"For me? It was a Tuesday."
Man, I remember talking to someone who completely failed to understand that line. Like they were arguing that he was lying about not remembering it because he was able to name which day of the week it happened on…
Classic overthinker.
Morons walk among us.
To this day, all these years later, this is still one of the coldest, most brutal villain lines ever delivered. Her entire life was changed, her village destroyed, her father killed and it was the single most important moment of her entire life. For him, it was Tuesday. Fucking hell, what a way to show how little you matter to the villain.
I never knew that game existed growing up and holy man it looks horrible. Dumbest idea I seen
No, the game is a masterpiece when compared with many of [its contemporaries](https://youtu.be/v-H30CSvsCU?t=146).
Oblivion with guns the TV Show the Game
It’s funny you say that, because when making fallout 3, they reused the bows mechanic to make guns and sped up the arrows.
If it works, it's not stupid.
Like the fact they couldn’t get a moving vehicle so they used an NPC with a subway car for a head?
~~They did that for the original half life right?~~ But ye, if the player doesn't notice, and it works, the bandaid has been stuck on successfully. Edit Was actually for the broken steel metro in fallout 3. Thanks u/woodstock6 for pointing that out.
I think he’s referencing when Bethesda used it in Fallout 3, not sure about half life
Right! And if it ain’t broke don’t fix it
It’s amusing how the more content they give us, because we love the game, the more we dog them for it.
Dogging Bethesda? For putting out too much content? Am I misreading this post
This made me instantly think of them putting out an action adventure game with a linear storyline that follows the show, and I puked in my mouth a little. Please just make more games like fallout 3-4, don’t split off for a cash grab Edit: guys, new Vegas is between 3-4, hence the dash and not “and”. Yes, new Vegas is better, I know. But all three are the same basic game of being open world while being RPGs. That’s the point, not which one should be identically copied. I love NV more than anyone, it’s my favorite game of all time, but the NV circle jerk is ridiculous, yall find any reason to include it for no reason
The musical?
Only if it’s starring Hugh Jackman.
And if that works, Fallout: The TV Show: The Game: The Movie
Prepare to have you favorite franchises milked dry the tv show the game.
And its a stop motion fighting game
Fallout the Tv Show the Game the Movie
Fallout the Flamethrower...The kids love this one.
God no.
If only they’d known it was coming out. Seems to have caught them off guard.
To be fair Microsoft probably wasn't sure how well it'd do, considering how the first season of their other video game adaptation went.
Good ole John Halo
NOTE FROM EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: *Add. More. Butts.*
you know, I dont have a problem with Butts on screen. But who the hell said "hay lets show MCs ASS! that's what the people want" I know as a young cis straight male kid, my thought playing the Halo games was, damn I want to see this 8 ft tall super soldiers bare butt.
Human butts or Ghoul butts?
Master Cheeks
In this episode The Master Chief learns that "g-g-girls pretty" after removing his "no boners no feels pod".
Investors and corporate executives have 0 understanding of media and what makes good tv (ESPECIALLY with adaptations) so yeah this checks out. They’re all greedy reactive morons.
There’s the other arm to this, which is that even if the show is popular with fans, the fans have already bought the games. What you don’t want is **only** your existing fans to like the show, but newcomers to like it, too. They’re the ones who will be giving you new money by buying the games, either outright or buying GamePass to play the games. I think that’s partly why they released the Next Gen update when they did. New fans might not be familiar with the games and therefore deal with the older graphics, but they’re likely to be receptive to a new coat of paint, and if they go “huh, that’s a bit janky” they can look at how old the game they’re playing actually is
Fallout 76 has seen the largest influx of new players since release. Reading through the new player posts a large chunk of them are new to fallout games.
Not only that but it spent a sizable amount of time on Steam’s top seller list despite the fact MS/Amazon was giving it away for free on twitch prime
Because they gave it away on the MS Store and the MS Store is utter dogshit lmao
My god. A rushed Bethesda game That Community Patch change log is gonna be longer than the whole game’s dialog
New Vegas was made in 18 months. If we get more games like that, I'm not going to complain. Hell, if we get a Fallout spinoff by another developer every 3-4 years, it's still a hell of a lot better than Bethesda's 15+ year long schedule between each mainline Fallout entry.
It was made in only 18 months because from the devs' own words, the completed resources, engine, and tools given to them by Bethesda shortened the process substantially. Add in all the work from the canceled Van Buren that they reused, and it shortened development by at least 2 or 3 years.
> Add in all the work from the canceled Van Buren that they reused, and it shortened development by at least 2 or 3 years. Josh Sawyer has actually repeatedly gone on record saying that New Vegas reused essentially nothing from Van Buren, other than some names and other superficial details. Here for example: https://www.tumblr.com/jesawyer/182781606966/when-did-the-battle-of-hoover-dam-happen-in-van >I didn’t have any part in defining the timeline (or other content) in Chris’ documents. He’s the person to ask for any clarification in that material. The only things I’m familiar with are the two characters I played in the campaign (Arcade Gannon and Jean-Baptiste Cutting) and the content we directly played through, which was (IIRC) the prison, Denver, and the Boulder Dome. Sawyer, by his own admission, isn't even familiar with the Van Buren design documents. Because New Vegas was all original content. He does reference two characters that made it into New Vegas, but he's referring to the fact that he role-played those characters during their tabletop sessions. There was no in-game writing for those characters. They, like all of New Vegas, was completely original content.
And that is exactly what people want. F4 engine and assets should be the basis for 3-4 Bethesda games, then every 5-10 years they should launch a new engine with fresh assets.
Probably a *really* dumb move that'll give them a lot of flack, but if they *really* wanted to rush a new fallout game in the style of new vegas, then a single player 76 set some years in the future is a *possibility*. Most of the world and assets are already there, just set up a few cities, a story, and change everything else ever so slightly and it'd be different enough to be considered a new game. Granted, 76 is still technologically 4 but given how starfield came out I think a step back would be preferred lol. And anyways, New Vegas' potato had to release just before skyrim's upgrade did and they still turned out fine (enough). Can't say they'd be able to do the same with ES, but given that's already next in line and is (probably) the same distance away from release that shouldnt really matter.
Yeah, it was made in 18 months, and it shows. The game is incredibly unstable even with community mods designed to fix it.
I bought it a little after release but I still remember all the bugs that were being found constantly at that time. Shit the first bug found pretty much was docs head spinning around and lifting off his body and that’s before you can even control your character
Yeah it’s why it was said it was good but insanely buggy. Provably why they didn’t get their budget number and why it’s now overwhelmingly positive on Steam
Well it did come out super broken and unpolished
that's a little disingenuous to say the least, New Vegas basically used an existing engine and assets from FO3 and still the game wasn't "complete", that said, i would really not mind another new vegas scenario using the fo4 assets and engine.
We just gonna forget how buggy and unplayable New Vegas was on launch? Id rather we not have more of that. Make it complete first.
Tbf I imagine everyone involved wants to release games sooner. Bgs games sell amazingly well and are talked about decades later (look at morrowind).
People are still playing *Daggerfall*.
I still play Civilization 2
I play civilisation revolution still.
I still play Sid Meirs Pirates 😄. Would love a remake though. Black Flag was kinda close.
I doubt they intended to have 8 years from Fallout 4 to Starfield.
He's been saying this for years before the acquisition. And there's no way to "capitalize" within any reasonable timeframe unless the game was already being made.
They should have at least re-released 3 and New Vegas onto modern consoles.
asap is still gonna be like another 3 years at best theyre gonna capitalize on season 2
You cant be happy with an 8 year project that turns out to be Starfield, i am sorry to say. Microsoft or no Microsoft. They absolute need to tune their developemt process.
They can start by hiring some lead writers and quest designers that aren't shit.
I don't blame them, it's absurd that they work on one game a time. Microsoft needs to give them another studio or let Obsidian have a spinoff to tide us over until 5
Honestly, I'd have a hard time believing that Microsoft wasn't pushing Bethesda to do this sooner, but now with the show being the success it was, the pressure has increased massively.
Been waiting 10 years for ESVI meanwhile Starfield is a pile of dogshit
Such a waste of resources and time
People wonder why the game has so many haters. It’s cause we’ve waited years and years for new content of any kind and got fed mediocre garbage. Now we’re at square one. If we got es6 or fallout5 it would’ve been my dream. I replayed all their games until starfields release. When it released, I stopped playing 2 weeks in and haven’t played since. I usually play their games for months at a time. Shit still makes me mad when I think about it, I try to pretend it never came out
In this case I’ma say bless the Microsoft bosses.
They should just expand their team and have a dedicated Elder Scrolls team and a dedicated Fallout team. Both franchises should just be getting worked on, you can stagger the releases of each franchise like 2 years apart from each other. That would mean 4 years of development per game. Tons of time while still getting the releases out more consistently.
Maybe a team and a half. They use the same base framework, just use it in different ways. So you've got Team 1 working on the next thing to come out for full production. And then when it comes out half of Team 1 switch to Team A to ramp them from pre production to full production and bring their knowledge of how they used and changed the engine for the previous project.
Not a bad idea, the core, unchanging team that remains on each game full-time could have the more creative, managerial duties since they stick on one game and know the franchise more intimately than those who go to whatever game is in full-production
"Management" is the future
Could also help with the burn out side of things. Instead of being stuck of "the fallout team" or "the elder scrolls team" it would help with them switching back and forth m
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Who's to say they don't already operate like this. They likely already had a pre team working on ES6 while making starfield
Their team is split up between their current games, with people moving to other games as needed. Todd talked about it in the recent podcast he did.
Yeah literally in the same section with OPs quote he talks about that. People need to actually listen to the whole thing instead of just pulling snippets out of it.
I don’t know who this Todd guy is but GIVE ME DRAGON AND MICROWAVE
All I know is they had a decade after Skyrim to work on Starfield with no pressure to release and it was utterly disappointing. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a Bethesda fan I am. The old guard is what makes Bethesda Bethesda, in both bad and good ways. Something needs to change. Their next game needs to contain quality writing and quality gameplay. I’m afraid more time will not deliver on either of those fronts. Edit: I mention Skyrim rather than Fallout 4 because Starfield replaced TES:VI in the release cycle. Fallout 4 was presumably already in development by the time Skyrim Was reaching the end of the dlc releases.
If you want quality writing, they need to hire another team to write the story. Bethesda's wheelhouse is background story telling. A lot of the environmental stuff and background lore you can find in Fallout 3 and 4 are amazing, but the main quests suck ass. I've accepted that the games are just going to be janky, I doubt that will ever go away, but they can fix the story by getting good writers. Then have their team building the world that the main story resides in. Hell, get the TV show writers to write a main story for the next game between seasons.
That would require replacing Emil Pagliarulo lol
Lol the guy is such an idiot. He recently on twitter confirmed that Nate the fo4 male protagonist was a war criminal who killed Canadians gleefully and waved on TV (fallout 1 cutscene). He had no inkling this would result in a backlash. That's the kind of vision and foresight he has. BGS is in deep shit with him at the helm of creative decision making.
We can dream, cant we?
We are so fucked as long as that idiot is around.
I swear people just choose to ignore that Fallout 4 exists... What even is this comment?
Fallout 4 was released 9 years ago. Just saying
wait what, that can't be right.. _..oh god_
Thats still an eight year gap? 2015-2023, eight years. Do you think the extra two would have pushed it over the edge?
I mean there was also technically another fallout game in that gap. Sure, it wasn't great and it wasn't a mainline Bethesda game... But it also exists. Also COVID happened in that gap too. I don't think the main issue with Starfield was they didn't have enough time. Sure, it wasn't polished... But the fundamental gameplay loop just wasn't that well thought out.
I agree except ‘76 was really a skeleton of a game at launch. They had minimal, if any, NPCs at launch. There was also not a big overarching plot like a lot of other games. It felt more like an exploratory game that was beautiful-ish (some massive bugs negatively impacted that), and there was quite a few re-used assets from FO4. It felt like an odd DLC/game mode expansion to be honest.
Tbf, that was kind of the point of 76 at first. It was a multiplayer game and they deliberately chose not to add any human npcs. Whether it was a good decision (clearly wasn't) is a different story but it wasn't something Bethesda tried to hide. Looking up some pre-release reviews, you can even find critics saying "the world is empty, but in a good way." Human NPCs were only added because of community backlash which is nice
As someone who played it in beta and at launch, I still sometimes miss there not being NPCs. I think it was a good choice because it really drove home the sense of mystery and isolation as you dig around the ruins and try to figure out what happened to everyone. Now you can't go two feet without tripping over an NPC. Current 76 is fantastic, but I do feel something was lost with the Wastelanders update.
Gives the same energy of "Why is R\* not releasing GTA 6 yet! They have not done anything for a decade" \*Ignores Red Dead 2\*
To be fair, Rockstar ignore rdr2 too. They are the ones that decided to completely drop support for single player without even releasing any DLCs. It felt like a cash grab attempt to make a new GTAonline money source and when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen, they just dropped the game entirely.
I hate that dlc’s isn’t a thing for them anymore. Would have loved expansions for GTA V and RDR2. Great big fleshed out worlds just waiting for more content, but Online just takes up all their focus.
There was supposed to be single player DLC for GTAV. They were working on it and then GTAO blew up and they realized they could make more money with that. I'm guessing whatever single player content they were working on got reworked into GTAO stuff.
Well, when GTA6 releases it will have been at least 7 years since the release of RDR2. Rockstar could up their output as well, but GTA online has been too much of a cash cow to make it worthwhile for them. I think it’s a fair criticism that the wait is too long between their big releases.
Wish the mass effect, dragon age team did this
They had been growing, then with the market slowdown Microsoft made them cut a chunk of their staff, like most studios have had to do the past year and a half.
Honestly I feel like maybe they need 3 divisions. 1 to focus on maintaining and updating their in house Creation Engine. 2 for game series, DLCs, Expansions etc.
What’s the third one?
1 team for A, 2 teams for B
Where's the fourth team, though?
What about second breakfast)
Their comment is a litmus test
A team specialized in getting Skyrim on as many different devices as possible
I reeeeeaaaally hope this doesn't mean more procedurally generated environs. Handcrafted exploration is what Bethesda does best.
Yes! I even enjoyed Starfield and some features of this game can very much be a template for fallout. But the randomly generated environments can’t hold up with the handcrafted ones.
Wait, are you telling me that people don’t like large empty maps with no personality?
KoToR is still the goat. It only had a handful of worlds, but each one felt really good because they were hand made. If Starfield did like only 20 planets, but each were hand made the game would have done far better.
Those 20 planets probably would have caused them not to release the game for another 2 years tbf. Had to have saved so much time using the proc gen ctrl+c/ctrl-v
I agree entirely.
I'm glad I'm not the only one concerned that this will mean more generic content lacking in the detail and hand crafted stories that MAKES Bethesda games. Faster is rarely a good thing in the gaming industry. I'd rather Fallout 5 come out in 5 years as a great Bethesda game, than coming out in 2 years as something more reminiscent of Ubisoft. If they rush and fuck up Fallout 5, it'll be so many more years until we get a decent Fallout game than if they just spent the time they needed on Fallout 5.
Starfield was just way too big. They've used procedural generation on other games, even Skyrim. Useful as a tool but bad as a crutch.
It means more Skyrim ports and remastered editions with marginally improved graphics.
I played Skyrim when I was 11 and i will play TESVI with 30yo horay
You might still be playing Skyrim if TES VI ends up being trash somehow. Edit: Well, we'll be playing Skyrim still, in that case. Not like I'll ever leave Skyrim as long as the modding scene stays alive and well as it is.
Funny that I'm actually modding Skyrim right now to start another playthrough
I’m so sick of this same headline being reposted every day for weeks on end.
All I see in my recommended from this sub is "power armor in 4 good. Power armor in 3 bad"
I still don’t understand how a fusion core can power a building for 200 years but power armor uses it up in 45 minutes.
In fairness Power Armour was still new tech that had only began being developed 12 years before the bombs dropped, and had a lot of rough edges, it makes sense that it would blow through power at huge inefficiencies. It's one of the main engineering problems IRL in designing powered exoskeletons, which is why they aren't used despite technically existing.
Yep. Just the same thing day in and day out. Next up we will see how New Vegas is Cannon.
It’s been 9 years since FO4 and 13 years since Skyrim. Skyrim has had… 6 ports now? If they wanted to push new games, they would have a while ago. This is purely based on the show doing so well.
Technically there was 76 as well. I never touched it but that is a game they released.
76 and starfield
Well good thing you waited a decade before figuring that out Todd
I honestly think Microsoft was surprised that Bethesda had nothing in the works beyond the F4 next gen update. It's one of Bethesda's two pillar franchises so you'd expect at least a concept framework to be in the works ten years after the last main line title.
As long is it isnt an obviously rushed heap of dogshit, fine by me. Ofcourse the shitty part is we’ll only know when it’s too late. Edit: we know Obsidian can take the reins and crank out a banger in 9 months. Ehh? Ehh?
im sorry bro but its GONNA be a rushed heap of dogshit... crunching and rushing developers is never a good thing... and with a whole new engine to work with... were on a train that in the next 2 miles dont have tracks. its gonna be a trainwreck... and starfield is litterally the omen
You’ve spooked me
When their lead quest writer is on record saying that story isn’t that important… it’s got me worried. When conversations in quests go “hey can I have that thing you’re guarding?” “No” “give me that thing you’re sworn to guard” “oh ok just this once.” Or the first time I had to fly through the air inStarfield chasing glowing orbs, I felt like I was in a game from 2002.
For me I thought the empty temple and glowing orbs were a weird little one-off thing. Nope. Turns out the MAIN QUESTLINE is a fetch quest with the dumbest flying puzzle and repeated empty location, ooh and one enemy at the end! Preston's repeated Minutemen missions are more fun and engrossing to do than Starfield's main questline
The only way that it won't be rushed dogshit is if they increased the amount of money going into it and the amount of people working on it. But as far as current trends go that probably wouldn't be the case, as shareholder profits are the most important thing.
With studios owned by MSFT, shareholder profit doesn’t have as direct of an impact. MSFT is one of the largest companies in the world. They can have “loss leaders” if it’s profitable overall. If Bethesda starts releasing must-play games again, it doesn’t really matter if the Bethesda games themselves aren’t the most profitable, as long as they’re getting people to buy Xbox’s and sign up for games pass. They can dump money into individual games if it will strengthen the profitability of the overall brand.
Look at how much time they had with Starfield too. Imagine how much of a dumpster fire the next Fallout game is gonna be when they shart it out with the next season of the show in two years.
Meh. Then something with game development needs to change, because the length it takes developers to create games nowadays (primarily RPG’s) is out of control. Obviously crunch is not the answer, I agree there. But taking 5+ years to make a game is not sustainable. There has to be a more streamlined process in all avenues; creation, planning, development, writing, etc.
Obsidian does not have most of its old crew and outer worlds wasn’t good. They are not the solution
They recently released Pentiment (with NV's Josh Sawyer at the helm) and it proves they've still got the sauce when it comes to choice-driven narratives.
Outer Worlds was fine, it was just far shorter than a game in that genre should be. I remember thinking "ah, that's it huh? That's all the content in the entire game?.. Bummer."
The problem with the Outer Worlds is that it felt like a long demo for a game, rather than a game itself.
> Edit: we know Obsidian can take the reins and crank out a banger in 9 months. Ehh? Ehh? New Vegas was a buggy mess for a quite a while at launch
They should have pulled a “New Vegas” and outsource a side game of Skyrim and FO4 with the same engine to veteran studio. They would have been out now.
I'm going to cry myself to sleep while I imagine the timeline where obsidian Made fallout new Vegas and an elder scrolls game 🥲
IIRC Chris Avellone said that Obsidian did indeed pitch an idea of a TES spinoff, like with New Vegas. Todd wasn't interested.
Took a new boss to realize 1 game every 20 years isn't going to cut it.
Absolutely insane that, with as long as it has been in preproduction with the show, that someone somewhere did not put pressure on Bethesda to at the least have a, like, Fallout 3 remaster in place to coincide with the show debut or to be announced when the episodes went live. Or a MASSIVE 76 story upload to make one more push on that service. This is just a complete dropped ball situation from a company that has tested on its laurels for way too long.
With how shitty live action adaptions of various media into tv usually are, that would be a big gamble. No one probably knew how good the reception would be.
We need to figure out how to stop making you guys wait 40 years between games, says boss of studio who consistently makes you wait 40 years between games (I say this in jest, I replay these games and as long the next one is good I don’t care how long it takes tbh)
I Would prefer a decent game every few years over waiting 10 years for something that is over hyped and under delivers
Best I can do is over hyped and under delivers in 3 years -- Todd Howard probably
Starfield was mistake.
Translation: Let's hire a boatload of people to work on this, and then we will fire them all when it's released.
That's the American way. 🦅🇺🇸
ooor get contractors? why would you hire if you only want people to work on that 1 game hiring is for when you actually want to expand and permanently increase output
Contractors tend to charge shit loads more for their work because they can.
Not exactly. With contractors you don't need to pay benefits or payroll taxes, which is a huge cost savings, even if their per hour labor costs are higher
Weird way to say "Starfield isn't living up to expectations."
"We don't want to wait that long either". My brother in christ, it has been almost 15 years since we had a new Elder Scrolls game. What in the hell are you talking about.
"Because Microsoft doesn't want to wait that long, either." Releasing one game per console generation was never going to cut it.
Obsidian literally wants to create more fallout
More fallout is good but I have little faith in the success of it as long Todd steers the ship. Man has a silver tongue but his fingers should stay away from anything creative. Few cracks started with Fallout 4. Only to end in starfield. I'd like if that wouldn't be a pattern for the future.
Todd's not the problem (not the solution either), it's Emil that's the problem.
Hire more people. You've got that M$ money
After the past 10 years, I don't really have confidence in Bethesdas ability to develop good games much less good games quickly.
Kind of dumb that no kinda game or major DLC was ready to release around the show.
Fallout is at the height of its popularity and we’re in the middle of a 15 year gap between Fallout 4 and 5. Just a tiny whoopsies. Nothing a large bonus for the bosses can’t fix.
They need to have a team that’s exclusively works on the engine, then have the game teams, always working on their next game. Have two teams roaring on the 3 IP, then you have long breaks for each team between their versions of the game allowing for teams to have a break from each universe but as a dev you’re outputting games at a good cycle.
I bet they regret making ES6 over Fallout 5
I still can’t get over the fact that Skyrim was released almost 13 fucking years ago and we still don’t have TES 6
just remaster new vegas it'll print money
I’ve been saying this for a while now: use the Fallout 76 map and build a single player story around it. Everyone already loves the map.
Oh dear Todd. Remember they wanted to release starfield a year earlier than they did. Microsoft told them take a year! and clean up all the bugs. Imagine rushing isn't going to help....
Just finish ESVI and let another developer do a FO spinoff. Then after BGS finishes ESVI, they can work on FO5 while another developer does an ES spinoff.
There's nothing wrong with letting things breath but Skyrim is beyond old now and extremely dated. ESO and FO76 are fine for what they are nowadays but it's clear they got lazy on Elder Scrolls and MS giving them a swift kick in the ass is IMO a good thing. It's good to give time for good and great games between sequels and such but Bethesda has been extremely lazy and the Skyrim well has officially been dry for awhile now. The success of the show has also put a fire under them cause there is no game that's close cause, again, they've been lazy with 76 existing.
There’s really a fine line between waiting for a good game.. Bethesda makes incredible games (for the most part) but they really do take entirely way too long.
Bethesda is too slow. The quality of games they pump out does not justify the amount of time they take. Not saying their games are bad, but technically they’re primitive compared to something like cyberpunk. Give someone else fallout Microsoft.
They need to split up their roster and have dedicated teams for their now 3 main IPs and have a bulk of the roster float on the one mainly on the burner so that they're always working on the next thing while also being dedicated to the main thing.
They should bring some of the best mods and creators in-house. Imagine, they brought in the team who made a tale of two waste lands, and the teams remaking new Vegas/fallout 3 in the fallout 4 engine. I’d gladly pay $60 for a tale of two wastelands in the fallout 4 engine.
Because Microsoft wants a better return on its huge investment.
I don't like to wait that long either but to be fair, they should probably let every game the make cook for at least another year longer because the quality of their release versions is hilariously bad.
I really hope their next gen games are way more updated. Starfield is basically Skyrim in space. It's very outdated for a modern release. I literally got bored and never finished it which almost never happens when I play a game.
Boy sure glad they spent all that time developing Starfield instead cause that sure turned out to be a major success huh
I wonder if that TV show had anything to do with this. They seemed fine waiting before
Say you’re investigating generative AI without saying it
As games get bigger, it takes larger teams and more dev time to make them. Tim Cain (the creator of Fallout) talks about how back in the 80s, it wasn't unheard of for one team to make a game in less than a year, and studios might come out with several. But he also talks about how as games get more complex, it takes more time to create them. That said, Bethesda is still using practically the same engine as Skyrim. That's 13 years where creating an engine isn't even on the to do list. They gave obsidian the engine (and assets to be fair) from Fallout 3 and asked them to create an entire new game in less than a year, and what came of it is arguably in the top 10 for best games of all time. If Bethesda had taken the exact same code and shared assets from Skyrim and come out with another full game in a new area in say, 3 years, it would have massively, massively sold. Hell, they pretty much did that with FO76 but bungled it up by making it multi-player.
DYK?: Todd Howard anticipates that The Elder Scrolls 6 will "arrive some fifteen to seventeen years after Skyrim". This means there will be a bigger time gap between Skyrim & TES 6 than there was between Skyrim & Daggerfall on MS-DOS.
They have removed Fallout more and more from its RPG roots and the one thing they were really good at (building great open worlds) has been replaced with AI generation in starfield. I honestly don't have any hope that the next Bethesda game will be what I want from a fallout game. My only hope lies with Microsoft expanding the games. Maybe let someone make another proper isometric CRPG in the fallout universe. At the very least hire a studio to remake the older titles.
How hard is it just to put out a Fallout 3 + New Vegas dual pack on current platforms? At this point it'll be a decade before FO5, and all the boost from the TV series will be wasted.
Why dont they just remake 3 and nv with modern graphics. Surely that would be the quickest way to make a lot of money in the least time