Rumor: Bethesda has been in turmoil since the death of their CEO

[Decado]

Haha, Starfield is delayed.

I'm hearing a bunch of interesting shit, including:

1) The place has been in turmoil since their CEO Altman died a few years ago.
2) There are company-wide issues with management, for example with Shinji Mikami leaving Tango, apparently there are major disagreements/power struggles including how to integrate with Xbox/MSFT.
3) Pete Hines was made Head of Global Publishing but nobody knows what that means exactly
4) People really phoned it in over Covid. Especially a lot of the higher ups who got paid millions when the company was acquired by MSFT (Altman took care of a lot of people, he was by all accounts a good dude). But high level employees were doing crazy shit like calling into meetings from the Caribbean properties they had bought. Just a total lack of give-a-shit
5) Todd Howard is apparently one of the only guys left over there in a senior position who actually wants to make video games.

 

[Basshead]

Haha, Starfield is delayed.

I'm hearing a bunch of interesting shit, including:

1) The place has been in turmoil since their CEO Altman died a few years ago.
2) There are company-wide issues with management, for example with Shinji Mikami leaving Tango, apparently there are major disagreements/power struggles including how to integrate with Xbox/MSFT.
3) Pete Hines was made Head of Global Publishing but nobody knows what that means exactly
4) People really phoned it in over Covid. Especially a lot of the higher ups who got paid millions when the company was acquired by MSFT (Altman took care of a lot of people, he was by all accounts a good dude). But high level employees were doing crazy shit like calling into meetings from the Caribbean properties they had bought. Just a total lack of give-a-shit
5) Todd Howard is apparently one of the only guys left over there in a senior position who actually wants to make video games.

Interesting, yet not surprising. If you don’t mind, would you share where you came about this information? I am curious to read more myself…thank you!

 

[EvilWolf]

Haha, Starfield is delayed.

I'm hearing a bunch of interesting shit, including:

1) The place has been in turmoil since their CEO Altman died a few years ago.
2) There are company-wide issues with management, for example with Shinji Mikami leaving Tango, apparently there are major disagreements/power struggles including how to integrate with Xbox/MSFT.
3) Pete Hines was made Head of Global Publishing but nobody knows what that means exactly
4) People really phoned it in over Covid. Especially a lot of the higher ups who got paid millions when the company was acquired by MSFT (Altman took care of a lot of people, he was by all accounts a good dude). But high level employees were doing crazy shit like calling into meetings from the Caribbean properties they had bought. Just a total lack of give-a-shit
5) Todd Howard is apparently one of the only guys left over there in a senior position who actually wants to make video games.

5 is the saddest thing I've heard in a while. I hope he finds a new developer if Bethesda eats shit. 3 is easily the final nail in the coffin though, Hines is literal cancer. If Microsoft knew what they were doing they would get rid of that dead weight clown.

 

[Spectacle]

Hines is literal cancer. If Microsoft knew what they were doing they would get rid of that dead weight clown.

What makes you say that? From what I've seen he's a master of his craft; getting kids to buy popamole.

 

[Zibniyat]

Haha, Starfield is delayed.

I'm hearing a bunch of interesting shit, including:

1) The place has been in turmoil since their CEO Altman died a few years ago.
2) There are company-wide issues with management, for example with Shinji Mikami leaving Tango, apparently there are major disagreements/power struggles including how to integrate with Xbox/MSFT.
3) Pete Hines was made Head of Global Publishing but nobody knows what that means exactly
4) People really phoned it in over Covid. Especially a lot of the higher ups who got paid millions when the company was acquired by MSFT (Altman took care of a lot of people, he was by all accounts a good dude). But high level employees were doing crazy shit like calling into meetings from the Caribbean properties they had bought. Just a total lack of give-a-shit
5) Todd Howard is apparently one of the only guys left over there in a senior position who actually wants to make video games.

Good, let it burn. I hope the entire company goes under. And Todd is a piece of shit too, producing at best disgusting mediocrity.​

 

[Silverfish]

And Todd is a piece of shit too, producing at best disgusting mediocrity.

You say that now, but after another seven or eight iterations, Skyrim will be an all-time classic.

 

[Zibniyat]

And Todd is a piece of shit too, producing at best disgusting mediocrity.

You say that now, but after another seven or eight iterations, Skyrim will be an all-time classic.

(I am pretty sure you are joking, but still I want to respond.)

Skyrim was always an irredeemable garbage (except music, Jeremy Soule is a master of his craft, possibly the only reason justifying the existence of Skyrim) which nothing will ever fix. Nothing can fix the absolute indignity of mediocrity and retarded quests, retarded plot, retarded factions and retarded worldbuilding that shits on such quality as shown in Morrowind for instance. Even Oblivion had more diverse and at least more amusing quests than this disaster. Imagine being Bethesda Softworks, with so much potential and so much money, and not being able to hire a small team to make quality content for it.​

 

[Lemming42]

Skyrim accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do - offer the player an open-world sandbox focused around exploration and combat, with some quests thrown in that are largely an excuse to get a lore tidbit and visit a big dungeon (this is every TES game post-Daggerfall). The writing is retarded and annoying most of the time but it's also deliberately in the background and doesn't typically intrude upon the player's main experience with the game, which is exploring the world of their own accord.

I do think that Todd has a genuine passion for videogames, but is simultaneously flanked by both the realities of big-budget game production* and a total lack of skill on his own part**.

*the Making of Oblivion documentary perfectly showcases his disgruntlement with Oblivion's LOTR-knockoff setting
**hence him coming in and fucking Morrowind's combat up at the last minute, among other things

People on here probably won't like this, but Fallout 3 (and Oblivion before it) really does feel like a passion project to me, the problem being that it's made by dickheads with no writing ability at all and very minimal skills at anything else. But I do feel like Todd genuinely wanted to bring Fallout into 3D, and the world is full of so many hidden details and easter eggs and out-of-the-way things and big ideas (most of which suck) that you can tangibly feel that the developers loved what they were making, even if you think the end result is shit. None of that same passion can be felt in Fallout 4, a game in which every miserable second of gameplay oozes with a lack of care on the part of the developers and a "let's just make something that might sell" attitude. Skyrim feels like a middle-ground - you can tell the designers had fun, but the game also makes some of the same mass-market concessions that doomed later Bethesda projects.

Todd has probably found himself in a position where the gulf between the games he'd like to create and the games that Bethesda are actually putting out has grown to Grand Canyon proportions. His exhaustion in that Starfield announcement is palpable. How much has Bethesda's team grown since Todd first joined as an Arena playtester? He's gone from a situation where he was in charge of, I assume, a relatively small, focused and passionate team 20 years ago to a situation where he's in charge of a bloated multi-million dollar corporation in which the hope of being able to make anything even slightly unique or original is nonexistent. His misfortunes are probably mostly self-inflicted, but it's still a shame.

 

[Slaver1]

People are going to end up revaluing Cyberpunk 2077 at this rate. It's sitting on a non too lofty perch as an RPG but somehow still manages to drop a turd here or there on the competition unless you happen to be a fan of the latest Dark Souls itineration or really like Harry Potter.

Feels as though the generational shift from GenX to what we have now along with tail effects of the ubiquitous "crunch" narrative that was doing the rounds for some time are really being felt and making video games at the professional level, even with all the improved tools available, is becoming something of a lost art. Then there's the dark cloud of BlackRock and Globohomo looming over every high-level Dev team which furthers constricts their capacity to make true, unfettered art.

 

[HammyTheFat]

Haha, Starfield is delayed.

Again? Did they push the date back from this September? It's been delayed like three times already.

Good, let it burn. I hope the entire company goes under. And Todd is a piece of shit too, producing at best disgusting mediocrity.

Rude. Maybe skyrim is exactly the sort of game he wanted to make.

 

[KateMicucci]

Haha, Starfield is delayed.

I'm hearing a bunch of interesting shit, including:

1) The place has been in turmoil since their CEO Altman died a few years ago.
2) There are company-wide issues with management, for example with Shinji Mikami leaving Tango, apparently there are major disagreements/power struggles including how to integrate with Xbox/MSFT.
3) Pete Hines was made Head of Global Publishing but nobody knows what that means exactly
4) People really phoned it in over Covid. Especially a lot of the higher ups who got paid millions when the company was acquired by MSFT (Altman took care of a lot of people, he was by all accounts a good dude). But high level employees were doing crazy shit like calling into meetings from the Caribbean properties they had bought. Just a total lack of give-a-shit
5) Todd Howard is apparently one of the only guys left over there in a senior position who actually wants to make video games.

This is consistent with what I've heard from my source who is familiar with Bethesda's thinking. He said that they are also not working on TESVI at all because they're "bored" with the setting. They might license it out but they won't develop it themselves. He did not specify who exactly was bored of the setting, whether it was Todd or the team in general.

 

[Gargaune]

This is consistent with what I've heard from my source who is familiar with Bethesda's thinking. He said that they are also not working on TESVI at all because they're "bored" with the setting. They might license it out but they won't develop it themselves. He did not specify who exactly was bored of the setting, whether it was Todd or the team in general.

In all fariness, TES is a pretty boring piece of fiction, it's one of the most popular examples of utterly generic high fantasy. Let's be real, people loved the likes of Oblivion and Skyrim for the giant worlds they got to explore, not their dull, meandering lore. Starfield's probably gonna be the same, the only BGS IP that's got any sort of "cool" factor is the Fallout they bought off Interplay.

If I became king of Microsoft tomorrow, I'd have Bethesda ditch the high fantasy altogether and buy them Funcom as a Christmas present. Then Todd A. Howard could finish what Robert E. Howard started.

 

[KateMicucci]

high fantasy

 

[unseeingeye]

(Altman took care of a lot of people, he was by all accounts a good dude)

This is the same guy who manipulated Bethesda's founder Christopher Weaver out of his own company, was intimately involved with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal, and consequently was permanently barred from banking? Perhaps the sycophants at Bethesda sung only praises of their boss, but everything I'd ever learned of that guy gave me the impression that he was a major douchebag.

 

[Zombra]

Random thought. If it's true Bethesda are bored with TES, they're kind of victims of their own success - people expect TES VI to be even wider (i.e. more floor space) since every game in the mainline series has been larger than the last.

Imagine instead if they used their resources to make something like Battlespire 2, the biggest dungeon crawl ever made (yet smaller and more focused than Skyrim), packed with a dozen "interior biomes" and clashing factions of daedra worshipers, with different endings depending on whether you wanted to wipe certain factions out, destroy the whole tower, or simply escape ...

 

[Zariusz]

Random thought. If it's true Bethesda are bored with TES, they're kind of victims of their own success - people expect TES VI to be even wider (i.e. more floor space) since every game in the mainline series has been larger than the last.

Imagine instead if they used their resources to make something like Battlespire 2, the biggest dungeon crawl ever made (yet smaller and more focused than Skyrim), packed with a dozen "interior biomes" and clashing factions of daedra worshipers, with different endings depending on whether you wanted to wipe certain factions out, destroy the whole tower, or simply escape ...

Technically every game since Morrowind was smaller than Daggerfall, also im not sure but while Oblivion and Skyrim are bigger than Morrowind when looking at available area, their scale was smaller than that game.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

TES is a pretty boring piece of fiction, it's one of the most popular examples of utterly generic high fantasy.

Even in its current state, TES universe is easily one of the best fantasy settings ever

 

[EvilWolf]

This is consistent with what I've heard from my source who is familiar with Bethesda's thinking. He said that they are also not working on TESVI at all because they're "bored" with the setting. They might license it out but they won't develop it themselves. He did not specify who exactly was bored of the setting, whether it was Todd or the team in general.

In all fariness, TES is a pretty boring piece of fiction, it's one of the most popular examples of utterly generic high fantasy. Let's be real, people loved the likes of Oblivion and Skyrim for the giant worlds they got to explore, not their dull, meandering lore. Starfield's probably gonna be the same, the only BGS IP that's got any sort of "cool" factor is the Fallout they bought off Interplay.

If I became king of Microsoft tomorrow, I'd have Bethesda ditch the high fantasy altogether and buy them Funcom as a Christmas present. Then Todd A. Howard could finish what Robert E. Howard started.

TES is actually a pretty decent piece of fiction, the issue is that the writing has gone downhill with each game and outside of each game's plot there isn't much going on in the background to pad out the lore. TES has pretty much stagnated, lore wise, since Morrowind.

 

[unseeingeye]

TES is actually a pretty decent piece of fiction, the issue is that the writing has gone downhill with each game and outside of each game's plot there isn't much going on in the background to pad out the lore. TES has pretty much stagnated, lore wise, since Morrowind.

This is what I think, though I'd add that if taken out of the context of being part of the game, the lore introduced in Oblivion through Knights of the Nine was interesting.

 

[KateMicucci]

This is me speculating, because he didn't get into detail of why they're bored of TES: I don't think it's TES in particular. It's wizards and warriors in general. Nobody at Beth has ever said anything to indicate that they have a real interest in fantasy settings. Beth prefers settings with guns, robots and drugs.

Random thought. If it's true Bethesda are bored with TES, they're kind of victims of their own success - people expect TES VI to be even wider (i.e. more floor space) since every game in the mainline series has been larger than the last.

Imagine instead if they used their resources to make something like Battlespire 2, the biggest dungeon crawl ever made (yet smaller and more focused than Skyrim), packed with a dozen "interior biomes" and clashing factions of daedra worshipers, with different endings depending on whether you wanted to wipe certain factions out, destroy the whole tower, or simply escape ...

That'd be cool but it's also a totally different game from what people want and expect mainline TES to be.

 

[Zibniyat]

because they're "bored" with the setting

Translation: spent developers who have neither the imagination nor the will to turn it into something worthwhile, and new, young American developers are most certainly of inferior stock compared to many before.

On the other hand I too would be bored of it for real if I wasted my life and humanity working on or playing such things like Elder Scrolls Online.​

 

[Decado]

(Altman took care of a lot of people, he was by all accounts a good dude)

This is the same guy who manipulated Bethesda's founder Christopher Weaver out of his own company, was intimately involved with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal, and consequently was permanently barred from banking? Perhaps the sycophants at Bethesda sung only praises of their boss, but everything I'd ever learned of that guy gave me the impression that he was a major douchebag.

Sure, but that's all business. I don't know about the "manipulated Christopher Weaver" thing, guys get ousted from their own companies all the time. But the rest of it? Shit, I'd love to have a CEO who was out there hustling on my behalf, sells the company to MSFT, and cuts me a check for a few million because he knows I was integral to the sale. I'd take that over a "nice guy" every day of the fucking week. Easily.

 

[dreughjiggers]

If the 1% who want to make good games are pulling the 99% across the finish line, who got into games because they wanted a job where they could be lazy and grift, then I'm not sure if their acquisition will help. Those useless eaters are probably job-secure in the colossal money machine that is Microsoft.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

In all fairness, TES is a pretty boring piece of fiction, it's one of the most popular examples of utterly generic high fantasy.

The more conventional provinces of Tamriel are firmly in the realm of pulp fantasy, where countries or regions are based on a historical equivalent to provide color and cultural depth, at the expense of not being terribly original. High Rock is Britain/France, Hammerfell is the Islamic Maghreb, Skyrim is Scandinavia, and Cyrodiil is Roman Italy. The three elven provinces are already highly weird and unconventional fantasy setting, as demonstrated in Morrowind with its insectoid fauna, mushroom flora, and distinctive, sui generis Dunmer culture; the lore on Summurset Isle and Valenwood (such as A Dance in Fire) indicates they are similarly strange. Black Marsh, home of the lizardmen Argonians, and Elsweyr, home of the catpeople Khajiits, are even further out there. And that's without getting into Michael Kirkbride's background lore for the setting, or the oddities provided for The Elder Scrolls Online by Lawrence Schick.

 

[Puukko]

I actually like the fact that TES appears generic on the surface and gets pretty damn crazy the deeper you dig. We only get bits and pieces of that in the games, of course. Definitely one of my favorite settings, with tons of potential that'll never get realized.

Of course, for modern Bethesda to add even a modicum of that depth and weirdness into Starfield would be a miracle.