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"You can’t just throw new people at that problem": Bethesda devs doubt future Elder Scrolls and Fallout games will have the same "quality level", after losing seasoned staff to Xbox cuts (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
submitted 2 days ago by [M, B] to c/gaming@lemmy.zip
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[–] 15 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

Well I think Obsidian will be better able to do a Fallout game than Bethesda, but oof yeah maybe fire Emil and Todd, if you want to start fixing Bethesda's problems.

See the primary problem with Bethesda is that its leadership are incompetent hacks that haven't had a new idea muchless a good idea in a decade, and they've have promoted a hugbox culture with 0 accountability anywhere.

Thats how something like FO76 and Starfield and the FO4 update that broke everything happen.

In case anyone is unaware:

https://gamingpromax.com/obsidian-new-fallout-game-confirmed-bethesda-2026/

Yeah, Asha Sharma told Obsidian to drop basically everything they were doing, and now they're tasked with making another Fallout game.

Bethesda is also tasked with making a new Fallout game. Well, more accurately, they've been tasked with that for years, got a head start.

... only one of these studios is currently publically pissing and shitting themselves over how difficult that will be.

And its not Obsidian. Haven't heard much from them.

Probably because they are busy, you know, working.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    To be fair, the article makes it sound like Obsidian is going to be doing with Fallout 4 what they did with Fallout 3/NV - use the existing game engine to create an entirely new game - versus what Bethesda is doing, which is updating the whole system to Fallout 5, which presumably would be sharing some work with ESVI.

    One of those things would actually be more difficult than the other, though I'd also suspect that Microsoft's atitude here is driven by Bethesda's largesse when it comes to ESVI. It's been discussed to death but a single non-trailer on your biggest tentpole in 10 years in favor of your boss' seriously mid space game is certainly a... decision.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Well the last time Obsidian got their hands on the then current Creation Engine, they hot rodded it and got it to do things that Bethesda had stated they wanted to be able to do but couldn't figure out how to do.

    What would a wholly updated FO5 even... have be different? What are the systems that would be reworked?

    No one has any idea because no one has mentioned anything at that level of detail, at all, that I'm aware of.

    Also what, like, Bethesda is going to somehow make the Creation Engine not a giant pile of shit, with now 15 more years of acculumated technical debt from never doing a full ground up rebuild... ?

    Anyway my suspicion is that MSFT is generally pissed at Bethesda for spending stupendous amounts of money over the last decade and a half, making basically one decent game that was a commercial success, one maybe commerical success that was a PR disaster, and then a combo PR+commercial disaster.

    That, all in addition to FO5 and ES VI are as best we can tell literally just dreams, concepts of a plan.

    Sharma's job is to make Xbox as profitable as it can be, partially to stem the damage from Xbox itself's fuckups over the last decade, Spencer's 'buy every IP' plan only works if that leads to actually profitable games...

    ... but Sharma also has to make Xbox as profitable as it can be to cover for the incredible amounts of money MSFT has spent on AI/LLMs, Windows itself going to shit, mass abandonment of Windows and Windows enterprise software thats been going on in Europe since Trump Round 2 started.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago

    NV was also an incredibly unstable game, and worse at launch than it is today, which is still incredibly bad even with mods. NV was great, but let's not pretend it was flawless.

    Also, Obsidian isn't the same studio it was back then. I don't know how people still view things like this. Obsidian is a name. The people working there are the talent. The talent is mostly gone.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Also what, like, Bethesda is going to somehow make the Creation Engine not a giant pile of shit, with now 15 more years of acculumated technical debt from never doing a full ground up rebuild... ?

    We've been saying this since Morrowind: Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout NV, Fallout 4 - Gamebryo sucks, what are they going to do to this wheezing trash heap etc etc - and every time they do the same thing: update the graphics and gameplay marginally, introduce new elements (dual wielding magic, radiant quests, settlement building, whatever) release it as the "new" version (outrageously buggy ofc) and largely let the mod community fix it. I'll go out on a limb here and say that's probably what FO5 and ESVI will also do, it's the path of least resistance and nobody will be bringing out their surprised Pikachu faces.

    I don't really care all that much because I like the games, none more than FONV, so I'd be happy for Obsidian to hot rod FO4 into something equally interesting.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    I agree with everything you said but the obsidian game will be using creation engine 3. Which is the engine running ES6 and fallout 5. Just a minor detail, and it'll still have the same issues as every other thing Bethesda does. Todd NEEDS to be fired. Should have been fired 10 years ago. It's insanity that he's still in charge after this long making as many poor decisions as he has for that long. It must be nice to be rewarded for decades of incompetence.

    I honestly can't believe anybody bought FO76 or starfield. Like at all. I played 76 for a week because it was free on PS+ and it was straight up garbage. It's hard to even call it a fallout game. I would judge anybody who paid money and got the passes, but I don't know anybody irl who did that. I played it for free and it still felt like a scam. It's an empty shell of a game with a fallout theme. And starfield, well I wouldn't even bother with that if it was free. Don't get me started on fallout shelters.

    They're doing all these side jobs because Todd knows if they make another series game they're going to fuck it up worse than anything they've made before. Their reputation is shit and they know that as soon as they make another mainline game, it'll tank their reputation to a point they won't recover from. THATS why it's taken 15, and 11 years. If fallout 5 or ES6 gets anything but stellar reviews, I'm out. I'm talking 100% glowing. If they're not that, I'll wait till Todd is begging for change on the street before I give Bethesda another dime.

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  • [–] 1 point 21 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 child)

    I don't believe that Obsidian will be using CE3, I believe they will use the same engine as FO4/Starfield. I don't think they will be tasked with pushing the technology further now any more than they were tasked with it for FONV. They may extend it a bit (like how they added weapon mods in FONV) but their focus will only be on releasing an entertaining title quickly (and I think the whole idea to bring Obsidian in was a great decision on Microsoft's part). I think the other group will be tasked with moving the engine forward for FO5 and ESVI.

    I agree with your assessments of both FO76 and Starfield. I played them both, but only because I got free accounts for both of them, FO76 on Xbox and Starfield I got a month's worth of free Game Pass and played it via streaming. They're both terrible. FO4 was also pretty terrible, imo. I've enjoyed replaying the Oblivion remaster more than anything they've done since Skyrim. So, I'm also not holding my breath for what comes next and you might be 100% right, but I do like the Obsidian angle for this reason, if nothing else: the competition will put Todd's incompetence on display. Todd's not the only game in town now, and for the first time in over a decade, he might be feeling some heat.

    Edit: if they do use the FO4 engine, I hope they correct every stupid mistake they made in FO4 the way you can do it yourself with mods.

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  • [–] 2 points 18 hours ago (1 child)

    CE3 is already done and they've been using it on ES6 for a few years now. Starfield was 2 and FO4 was CE1. I doubt they'd hinder the game by going that far back. The Todd said the new one is really speeding up the process, and we know Asha Sharma wants this stuff as fast as possible. Now, Todd might want to keep it close to the vest, and not give Obsidian the newest toys, but it might not be up to him. And I really hope it isnt. But the furthest back I could see it going is 2. which looks amazing in still frames but soulless in movement, and once again, awful at face movement.

    So at worst it would be 2 but I really think it may be CE3. Microsoft wants the money and it'd be harder for a lot of people to justify buying a new game with a 4+ year old engine let alone 15+ years.

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 child)

    Sorry, I hadn't heard anything about CE3 being done. I knew CE1 was Skyrim, I didn't realize that FO4 was still considered to be on CE1, it was a pretty big step up, I'm surprised. So CE2 is Starfield, my thought process still stands, which is: I wouldn't be surprised if they used Starfield as the basis for the Obsidian project, in much the same way as they used FO3 for FONV.

    Anyway, it's not important whether they use CE3 or however it washes out, I'm just actually excited by Obsidian doing a new Fallout. Todd can suck it.

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  • [–] 2 points 16 hours ago

    Hey no worries on not being caught up on everything, I just have no social life anymore. Like I said, you might be right on CE2 just from Todd being petty. And yeah I agree on being amped for the obsidian game. One of the devs said you should be hurting inside from some of the choices they want you make.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago*

    Yeah I mean like... a full on conversion at the level of Fallout London or something like that, but with access to more 'guts' of the engine... done by pros?

    Yeah, I'd bet Obsidian can do something like that, at the least, and it would be broadly better than FO4, again at the least.

    Also my absolute random bet for FO5/ES6 will be radiant enemies along the line of Spore creatures, hahahah!

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Tbh I don't think obsidian is that good anymore either.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Pentiment was brilliant AF. Pillars of Eternity II was also amazing. The writing and art direction in these games is the same quality of NV. Outer Worlds was alright, but the DLC was very good.

    I'll support any Obsidian ventures because there's not really any other studios that make high quality narrative driven games similar to them. Maybe WarHorse Studios or CDPR.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    The one in thinking of most recently was Avowed. Really didn't care for the writing in that one. It felt like a big step down to me. Ironically the action game parts felt better than previous obsidian games I'd played.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    Tbf I agree that their more recent games haven't been great... but I do think they are both more lean as a studio, and their recent games have been of better quality than Bethesda's recent slop.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    That's not saying much. Fallout 4 wasn't the best game in the world but it's the last time I've had any fun at all with a Bethesda game. 76 wasn't even a game to me. More like what meta tried to do with VR than a game. It's digital and you create a character but it's just a hangout with stuff to do. That sounds like a game, but it didn't feel like one.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

    I completely agree.

    FO4 showed to me that they are fundamentally unserious about Fallout as like, a setting of stories, and also that they have no idea how to make compelling gameplay.

    Addictive maybe, sure, but not interesting.

    I never understood why anyone would play FO76 at all. Just a mess, better alternatives existed at the time for very similar gameplay.

    Yeah lol, FO76 is a game the way like, a dead MMO or SecondLife is a game hahaha, its a ... digital space, hahaha!

    What I've said in the past and I still think is that they should have, for FO4 done either:

    A) totally drop the base construction schtick, completely redraft the main story, make it a lot more compelling.

    Or

    B) nearly totally drop the main story, and go full in on the base construction schtick. Other major factions have bases they are building and maintaining, they get different kinds of blue prints, need different kinds of resources, have different styles of overarching like strategic AI governing what the factions act like, what they value materially... turn the game into much more of a procedurally generated like, active sim, of a wasteland.

    But they split the diff and went for half baked versions of both, and basically it was bland and boring.

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  • [–] 2 points 23 hours ago (1 child)

    Accurate. It was the best shooter in all of fallout games. So much so that I forget vats even exists or often that it's even a fallout game.

    I do like settlement building but you're right that it seems half baked. Shit doesn't fit together like it should.

    And you're right that they can't do compelling gameplay. I mostly play FO4 because you do get OP so quickly. I use it as stress relief more than anything. I've gotten the spray and pray as early as level 7. 7! So I just go around mowing down super mutants and raiders. It would normally piss me off how fast it repopulates them to 100% but that's all they are to me, targets to run down.

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  • [–] 2 points 23 hours ago*

    Like its kinda sad that it is the best shooter FO in terms of controls and basically movement/weapon feel and such...

    But like, HL2 exists. FEAR exists. TitanFall 2 exists. Literally: 'insert retro boomer shooter here' exists.

    Congrats guys, good job, you made a solid, basic FPS, with tons of weapon customization (that barely actually matters in gameplay).

    While also like, how is any of this supposed to be balanced with your RPG character system?

    Auto balancing removes the point, there are basically no enemies or situations that actually demand you have a certain kind of build and/or strategic/tactical approach to defeat a certain enemy or scenario.

    The whole point of a traditional western rpg is that the choices you make about your character's build/skill progression govern the options you'll have in future situations.

    But FO4 basically neuters the entire concept of this. Its genuienly baffling. They're just flair, they're damn near entirely pointless.

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