Fallout 4 Pre-Announcement Bullshit Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[PorkyThePaladin]

I am one of the biggest whiners about Bethesda engines, but what scares me about them is that they don't necessarily suck because Bethesda cannot program good engines. Maybe that's true of some of their engine features, but there are quite a few problems that I had with them that didn't seem to be the result of coding incompetence, but rather resulted from conscious design decisions.

For example, I think the reason the interiors always have to load in their engines/games is because they decided to stuff the interiors with all kinds of useless crap, from pottery to interactive furniture, and thought this was better than having the player seamlessly transition from outside to inside and back, but with less clutter inside (ala Gothic games). Ironically, after seeing about 1000000 interiors in New Vegas for example, I would LOVE to see less crap inside so i don't have to compulsively look through every ammo case and desk, when they have nothing I need.

Likewise, one of the really annoying features in F3/NV combat is the fact that enemies dodge you at medium/short range. That is, when your cursor or iron sights are on them, they will often extremely quickly (at superhuman speeds) strafe to the side in such an unpredictable way that it's not possible to lead them or anything. Fortunately there is a mod out there that removes/minimizes that. But again, this isn't a coding shortcoming, this is a design decision someone at Bethesda made, I guess to make VATs usage more mandatory at closer ranges, never mind that some people might hate VATs.

This is why even if Bethesda, at some point, was to license a higher quality engine, I wouldn't be surprised if their design decisions still managed to lead to all sorts of retardation.

 

[Jarpie]

Likewise, one of the really annoying features in F3/NV combat is the fact that enemies dodge you at medium/short range. That is, when your cursor or iron sights are on them, they will often extremely quickly (at superhuman speeds) strafe to the side in such an unpredictable way that it's not possible to lead them or anything. Fortunately there is a mod out there that removes/minimizes that. But again, this isn't a coding shortcoming, this is a design decision someone at Bethesda made, I guess to make VATs usage more mandatory at closer ranges, never mind that some people might hate VATs.

What mod is that?

 

[Turisas]

they can't recycle the Brotherhood/Enclave plot and they don't strike me as being as capable as Obsidian in making up antagonists.

Forgot about the AntAgonizer, already? There could be a whole legion of Ant-Agonists in Fallout 4.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Likewise, one of the really annoying features in F3/NV combat is the fact that enemies dodge you at medium/short range. That is, when your cursor or iron sights are on them, they will often extremely quickly (at superhuman speeds) strafe to the side in such an unpredictable way that it's not possible to lead them or anything. Fortunately there is a mod out there that removes/minimizes that. But again, this isn't a coding shortcoming, this is a design decision someone at Bethesda made, I guess to make VATs usage more mandatory at closer ranges, never mind that some people might hate VATs.

What mod is that?

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/37141/?

 

[Psquit]

they can't recycle the Brotherhood/Enclave plot and they don't strike me as being as capable as Obsidian in making up antagonists.

Forgot about the AntAgonizer, already? There could be a whole legion of Ant-Agonists in Fallout 4.

I bet they will go with fucking robots and cyborg shit or aliens.

 

[Luzur]

i bet on the Institute of Boston.

 

[Jedi Exile]

I wonder how Beth is going to compete with all other post-apocalyptic games which were released since 2008 (and there were a lot of them, like Rage, Metro, DayZ, The Last of Us etc.) They are all in different genres, true, but they are in some ways similar to Fallout 3 (I think they even tried to copy it) and they are also better.

 

[Nikaido]

I wonder how Beth is going to compete with all other post-apocalyptic games which were released since 2008 (and there were a lot of them, like Rage, Metro, DayZ, The Last of Us etc.) They are all in different genres, true, but they are in some ways similar to Fallout 3 (I think they even tried to copy it) and they are also better.

I'm a lot more curious about how they will handle the transition to next gen. A *large* part of their own marketing since oblivion has been all about the graphics, immershuion!1111!11!!!! and console players (which account for a big % of the current Beth game sales) care a lot when it comes to graphixx11!!!. Unfortunately for Bethesda, there has been a ton of games made on Xbox 360 since Oblivion that have proven that you could make decent environment, shadows and so on AND decent characters/faces and animations on mediocre hardware. When they released Oblivion the game looked impressive (for an Xbox 360 audience). But now they'll have to compete with games (like DA:I) that are based on engines like Frostbite. There is just no hope for gamebryo to achieve anything close to what Frostbite can do. How long will that audience put up with the incredibly horrible animations and character design powered by mediocre facegenerators? I feel like Bethesda's success on consoles is like a one trick, one generation pony and that they will have to go back into classic PC game development or die at some point. I'd be very surprised if they could keep recycling the same old gamebryo shit over into the ps4/x1 generation and get away with it.

 

[racofer]

Bethesda will simply change their moto to "graphics don't make immersion: storytelling, exploration and player freedom does" and everyone will buy it.

 

[Nikaido]

I don't think any of the current console gamers who buy beth games are doing it for the "storytelling".

 

[Jaesun]

99.9% of their playerbase skips the dialogue, so story telling is not something they ever will work on.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

99.9% of their playerbase skips the dialogue, so story telling is not something they ever will work on.

People who bitch on metacritic or create spoofs on youtube sometimes do.

And there's probably a significant number of storyfags on consoles, who Bethesda would rather embrace than alienate.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

 

[Jaesun]

99.9% of their playerbase skips the dialogue, so story telling is not something they ever will work on.

People who bitch on metacritic or create spoofs on youtube sometimes do.

Exactly. These "sometimes" people are not Bethesdas Prime Demographic. They don't give a shit. They still provide exposure to their games.

And there's probably a significant number of storyfags on consoles, who Bethesda would rather embrace than alienate.

There are?

 

[JarlFrank]

I don't think any of the current console gamers who buy beth games are doing it for the "storytelling".

They do care about "arrow in the knee" memes and FUS RO DAH though. Skyrim has been so successful due to the impact it had on internet culture, and references to the game even reached a non-gaming audience through youtube and because everyone was talking about it, ooh it has dragons and funny bugs.

 

[Akratus]

And there's probably a significant number of storyfags on consoles, who Bethesda would rather embrace than alienate.

There are?

'Storyfag' does not imply good taste. Console storyfags might buy games like Fallout 3, Final Fantasies, the Mass Effects, Dragon Ages, maybe the Witcher, L.A. Noire, GTA, etc.

 

[buzz]

People are seriously overestimating the power of GRAPHIX in our day and age. Not only is the current gent not a very advanced step to graphical qualities compared to the previous ones and nothing has yet proven to be impressive, but even in the previous gen the "winners" were almost always the games that gave 0 shits about looking extra-gorgeous, like Call of Duty which pretty much had no graphical advancement in 7 titles during last gen, World of Warcraft, Bethesda games, Minecraft and so on.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

the previous gen the "winners" were almost always the games that gave 0 shits about looking extra-gorgeous, like Call of Duty which pretty much had no graphical advancement in 7 titles during last gen, World of Warcraft, Bethesda games, Minecraft and so on.

It looks like they put in a fair bit of effort to improve the look of their games.

 

[buzz]

Fair bit makes it sound like Skyrim is Crysis-levels of visual fidelity. The game still looks like shit, it's just not incredibly retarded shit, which is not really impressive given it was made 5 years later. Obvious small graphical leaps will be made from game to game, just like Oblivion did compared to Morrowind. But I personally doubt that Fallout 4 is gonna have that uber-juber realistic look or that they will change engines. Nor that I'd would want to, unless the next engine is far more stable and still as moddable.

 

[Broseph]

Art direction makes all the difference. Skyrim is competent in that regard, Oblivious lolfuckno.

 

[Cadmus]

Art direction makes all the difference. Skyrim is competent in that regard, Oblivious lolfuckno.

lol I thought the pictures were oblivion on xbox vs. PC...is it Skyrim?:D:D

 

[DalekFlay]

It looks like they put in a fair bit of effort to improve the look of their games.

This is just console versus PC (or shitty PC versus decent PC). Also a different NPC with less derp-face.

They made a large effort to make Skyrim look better through design, rather than better tech, and it shows. However I would still say neither game holds up to even early Xbox 360 games like Gears of War in the pure graphics category. They sell the game 90% on exploration/messing around and 10% on story.

 

[Nikaido]

People are seriously overestimating the power of GRAPHIX in our day and age. Not only is the current gent not a very advanced step to graphical qualities compared to the previous ones and nothing has yet proven to be impressive, but even in the previous gen the "winners" were almost always the games that gave 0 shits about looking extra-gorgeous, like Call of Duty which pretty much had no graphical advancement in 7 titles during last gen, World of Warcraft, Bethesda games, Minecraft and so on.

Except that :
WoW has always had a comic-style design and never marketed itself as pushing the graphical envelope.
Same for minecraft, and both games have a lot of depth in their gameplay (as opposed to the Elder Hiking Scrolls)
Call of Duty looks good. It doesn't look as good as what you could if you were making a fully optimized PC game, but it looks good. From Black Ops to Ghosts you can't argue against that. Skyrim can barely make for a decent screenshot as is, without mods, but things get seriously bad in game when you look at things like the animations. Do you really think they can get away with that level of animation as a triple A studio on next gen platforms? I doubt it. They aren't some small time niche market indie developer that can garner acceptance for less detailed work.

Oblivion, did in part, market itself, at the time, as pushing the envelope on xbox and had a ton of lying screenshots and videos that had absolutely nothing to do with what they did with the game at release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAI_2QNQ-Ck
The E3 footage in that comparison video isn't even in 1080p (the actual post-release PC footage is) and yet it does look and feel a lot better than the game they actually released.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg&t=2m18s
If you could remember all the message boards at the time, graphics did a LOT to market the game and get some serious word of mouth going around and praising it for its technology.
And one of the most repeated argument to market Skyrim before its release was : "We made a new engine just for Skyrim!" (despite it just being an overly touched up samey gamebryo.)
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/01/18/skyrims-new-engine-detailed

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is going to benefit from an all-new engine, and Bethesda has detailed some of the improvements we can expect from the much-anticipated fantasy RPG.
Dubbed the Creation Engine, Skyrim's new powerhouse brings with it a suite of new tools and tricks that'll ensure this will be Bethesda's most technically impressive game to date.

Look at the hype this kind of thing generates all the time on social media like Reddit :
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ekklm/elder_scrolls_v_skyrim_will_be_using_a_brand_new/

Just look at the great comments a random dumb statement like "Skyrim = BRAND NEW 11!111 ENGINE OVER 9000" generated :

Hear, hear. I was trying not to be shallow, but this news has lifted a weight from my chest.
Quickly, bring more virgins! The first round of sacrifices worked! A few more and they'll announce they'll be using a couple dozen voice actors!
Here's hoping any future fallout games use this new engine as well.
I am actually surprised they did go with a new engine, thank god.
I am going to buy this game and not pirate it.
The only thing I was worried about Elder Scrolls V was that it might seem too much like oblivion. especially if they used the same engine.
What DID drive me nuts about every single thing they have released since Morrowind was the engine. Everything was just too jerky and forced. It was impossible to even consider spending more time in third person than was necessary to take a screen shot of your character. The character interaction, both combat and social were likewise something that belonged in the 90s. A new engine should go a long way towards addressing these problems.
I think this is possibly the best quote to express my elation that Bethesda will not be ruining another game with that horrid engine.

And it goes on and on everywhere in 2011. Just a single statement about the engine and they generated a lot, a friggin lot of goodwill among their own playerbase.
Maybe graphix do not matter in the final game. Maybe the average graphic whore has the memory retention of a goldfish, thus buying the game on lies again and again despite going against their own wishes. But the fact is, they do heavily push their marketing dept into it, and it does work in terms of spreading a lot of word of mouth hype, of board fanboyism and goodwill. It works. Pretending you're going to make a good looking game does wonders.
Of course if your only gaming news source is the codex you're not going to be overly exposed to that kind of crap but the average player is absolutely influenced by what they *think* the game might look like.
Will their lying whoremouth let them stand against games like The Witcher 3 and DA:I on next gen consoles ? I'd think not, but then again, I might just be underestimating the mainstream public.

 

[buzz]

Will their lying whoremouth let them stand against games like The Witcher 3 and DA:I on next gen consoles ? I'd think not, but then again, I might just be underestimating the mainstream public.

I think you really do.You're confusing hype, fake PR speak, bullshots, talk of improving things and so on with actually wanting to impress the players with state-of-the-art graphics.
Watch Dogs looked pretty bad even by last gen's standards, is a totally new IP and yet it fucking sold 4 million copies in a week. Rage was hyped at the next best thing in terms of graphical fidelity,but it essentially ended as a insignificant mediocre fart with lots of issues.
You are working on the assumption that Witcher 3 and DA:I (especially this one) will actually look as good as the scripted trailers make them out to be, especially the console versions which are the big money makers. If anything, Bethesda should be much more afraid of those games tapping into the open-world RPG market, where they pretty much used to be undisputable champions. And on the assumptions that this will significantly sway people into hating a game with less developed technology. That's why I mentioned CoD, it looked okay with compared to other shooters on the market, it was pretty shitty-looking with reused assets and so on. Yet it still dominated the market with no problem.

 

[Infinitron]

Uh he's agreeing with you.