Which Oblivion Dev Lied The Most?

[Blahblah Talks]

In the moderators opinion, the thread was nothing but trolling. Does anyone have a copy of the thread? I would be interested in seeing how the topic was presented.

 

[Twinfalls]

They didn't tell lies, they told Fables.

 

[Ladonna]

Probably because this campaign has had a slow effect on sales for the game. Haven't you seen a slow reaction against the starstruck first impressions of the game?

The new laws have been ordained at Bethesda. Dissent will not be tolerated. Young minds cannot bear to hear failure....It would be like...NOT BEING ABLE TO LEAD EVERY FACTION!!111!!

Think of the Children Avatar!

 

[Darkflame]

In the moderators opinion, the thread was nothing but trolling. Does anyone have a copy of the thread? I would be interested in seeing how the topic was presented.

I didn't save a copy, but it was presented exactly how it was here - same topic and same quotes...

Soon followed by fanboy's crying and screaming "Stop, please stop!!!", before good ol' summer locked it with one of her usual witty excuses that the truth can hurt sometimes too much.

 

[Blahblah Talks]

In the moderators opinion, the thread was nothing but trolling. Does anyone have a copy of the thread? I would be interested in seeing how the topic was presented.

I didn't save a copy, but it was presented exactly how it was here - same topic and same quotes...

Soon followed by fanboy's crying and screaming "Stop, please stop!!!", before good ol' summer locked it with one of her usual witty excuses that the truth can hurt sometimes too much.

Well, that is obviously too large of an OP for that forum. Really, as Lumpy pointed out, some of those quotes are not lies, and some of them are opinions (e.g. Pete: "Honestly, and this is just my opinion, I think the hardcore RPG guys are going to love what we have in store for them in Oblivion.") That might make him an idiot, but not a liar.

It probably would have been better to strip out all but the most egregious lies, and then ask a slighltly less attacking question, like, "Which of these statements led to the most disappointment for you when you played Oblivion?"

 

[Micmu]

There is no place for "personal opinions" here.
They are selling the product, so everything that comes out of their mouths is PR, bullshit or not.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

'Honestly, and this is just my opinion, I think you will enjoy eating shit. Give it a try.'


Point is, just because someone says "this is just my opinion", it doesn't mean that he's not lying, because it's not necessarily the person's real opinion.

There are two explanations for the Devs themselves lauding such a flawed game:

- Usual PR bullshit
- Pygmalionism (where the creator falls in love with his creation)

 

[suibhne]

This thread is my new favorite forever and ever.

 

[Lumpy]

According to Black Isle Studios, Planescape was supposed to have factions that gave you great benefits, new friends, but new enemies as well. This wasn't the case.
It also said that party members would frequently intervene in conversations. They didn't do that too frequently.
They said that you would visit Sigil, Carceri, the Outlands, Baator, the Negative Plane, and many others. Those were basically the only ones.
And other things.
It's reasonable that, after you've been working on a game for a long time, you'll over-appreciate it. It doesn't show that the devs are lying, just that everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Lumpy is just trolling and presenting one-sided posts. Please lock him up moderators.

 

[Blahblah Talks]

'Honestly, and this is just my opinion, I think you will enjoy eating shit. Give it a try.'

Point is, just because someone says "this is just my opinion", it doesn't mean that he's not lying, because it's not necessarily the person's real opinion.

Sure, but when someone says, "I don't recall" when asked if they ordered Ollie North to sell arms to Iran to fund the Contras, you kind of have to give him a pass.

Do you have any evidence to suggest that this is not Pete's true opinion? If not then we have to take what he said at face value and conclude that he is an idiot. But I wouldn't say that he is a liar (based on that statement alone).

 

[Vault Dweller]

It's reasonable that, after you've been working on a game for a long time, you'll over-appreciate it. It doesn't show that the devs are lying...

I guess you are right, Lumpy. I suppose when they said that we will be surprised by the quality of dialogues, they were actually sarcastic and clever.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

Do you have any evidence to suggest that this is not Pete's true opinion? If not then we have to take what he said at face value and conclude that he is an idiot. But I wouldn't say that he is a liar (based on that statement alone).

I never said that wasn't his true opinion... I was just raising a point.
That is that you can't blindly trust someone's opinion, because that opinion itself might be a lie. Realistically, when you can't know if what a person is saying is true or not, you should take a look at the person giving it, and try to figure out if his opinion is worth a shit in the real world. In the case of Pete, his opinion isn't worth peanuts (because he's biased, and an asshole).

 

[suibhne]

According to Black Isle Studios, Planescape was supposed to have factions that gave you great benefits, new friends, but new enemies as well. This wasn't the case.

...Um. Wow, you're wrong.

It also said that party members would frequently intervene in conversations. They didn't do that too frequently.

Relative to the other games at that time, they did.

They said that you would visit Sigil, Carceri, the Outlands, Baator, the Negative Plane, and many others. Those were basically the only ones.

Fair enough.

And other things.

Nice cop-out. Admit it: you only cited PS:T because you think it's a Codex sacred cow.

It's reasonable that, after you've been working on a game for a long time, you'll over-appreciate it. It doesn't show that the devs are lying, just that everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt.

For chrissake, they weren't trying to articulate their delicate, most innermost feelings about their videogame love-child. They were advertising for it in public venues. You know, to sell copies, make money.

 

[Top Hat]

They didn't tell lies, they told Fables.

Truly, truly excellent.

I don't understand why people bother defending lies. Either the lie was intentional or it wasn't. If it was intentional, there's no real point in defending it. If it was unintentional, then the liar should either shut up or make sure of the facts next time. Regardless of the intention of the person making the statement, it's still a lie. I'm not too sure about opinions, but let's face it: Pete probably doesn't give a fuck about hardcore unless it applies to whipping Todd, dressed up as a female dog, while he is clad in leather and latex.

I've noticed that as advertising has increased, generally product quality has dropped. You used to be able to buy a good heavy table that would last your family 500 years unless you were unfortunate to get termites. Now tables are pathetically light plastic/light wood pieces of crap that won't survive your lifetime, let alone that of your children.

I think this is because it used to be that nobody advertised, you just bought from people who had good reputations for producing product X. You also knew who to stay away from because their reputation was bad. The hilarity is, with the Internet and search engines, there's no real need to advertise: make up a webpage and include all the necessary details about your product. If your product is good, your reputation will increase and your profile on the search engine results will move up.

But, of course, people are too stupid to realize this; they'd much rather pay some liar $200 K a year than spend probably half that on making their product better.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

This is fucking funny as hell. I think now and forever, we should have a program that automatically interprets what a dev says into what they realy mean.

 

[Blahblah Talks]

I never said that wasn't his true opinion... I was just raising a point.

Fair enough.

That is that you can't blindly trust someone's opinion, because that opinion itself might be a lie. Realistically, when you can't know if what a person is saying is true or not, you should take a look at the person giving it, and try to figure out if his opinion is worth a shit in the real world. In the case of Pete, his opinion isn't worth peanuts (because he's biased, and an asshole).

Sure. You when evaluating a statement, you need to take a look at the source and think why it would say what it said. But in this case, we are evaluating pre-release statements after the release. The OP presented them as "lies". All that Lumpy and I are pointing out is that a good portion of these statments are not lies. People here seem to want to paint Bethesda with broad strokes. "Oblivion was a terrible RPG. They dumbed it down for console kiddies. Everything they say is a lie." Now, we may agree on the first two parts of that, but the third is demonstably untrue.

 

[denizsi]

I think what matters most is that some people, who got dissappointed later, made their mind to buy the game based on the exact things they said, which turned out to be not that way and totally different.

Can you say that your video card has x million this, y amount of that, does z mhz and ship a different product and say "we changed our minds" ? Whether it's true that they changed their minds or not and can you justify that as a simple change of mind? Not really a good example I know but all it matters is if the customer is really getting what he was led to believe.

I don't remember ever reading something like "we did this before and told everyone about it, but we later decided to change it" from Beth, except for the fucking soft real-time shadows for objects.

[Todd] "As you play, you start to figure out what you can do with these NPCs, and how you can influence their behavior, and when doing a quest, it really comes into play. A simple 'get the diamond from that guy...' quest can be done in hundreds of ways now."

You can get the diamond while jumping, sneaking, running, walking, running and jumping, backwalking, sidewalking, swinging a sword, a hammer, punching the air etc... so this is by all means true.

 

[franc kaos]

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "I'm sorry, but what part of "without losing our hardcore rpg fans" don't you understand?"
[MrSmileyFaceDude] "You'll be reading LOTS of stuff.
[MrSmileyFaceDude] "Just because you can attempt to bribe someone does not mean they'll automatically accept it."
[MattRyan] "If everything was leveled then you'd have no fear of anything in the game ('I can beat everything!') We plan on scaring the heck out of the player by higher level creatures."
[MrSmileyFaceDude] "Oblivion is an extremely rich, complex game with a tremendous amount of depth, compelling quest lines, interesting NPC characters, a huge variety of player character types and intricate character progression set in a huge, varied game world.

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "you can enter every interior."
Lumpy wrote: WTF again? Which interior can't you enter?

The Orrery.

If lumpy is right and most of the devs didn't lie, but things had to be cut then I want the game they were talking about, NPCs that steal and lie and remember the players actions, more ways of completing questlines (tho someone is modding that in now), brand new books (like more information about the Ayleid race), and consistent lore from the previous games.

I also expected (due to the secrecy surrounding the Daedra realms), to explore more than one hell based realm (which itself seemed rooted in a <small> physical world), (compare to Ultima Underworld2's non physical realm which looked more like a 4 dimensional nightmare).

 

[Jim Kata]

They didn't tell lies, they told Fables.

LOL

Fable I should be based on being a game exec who is a pathological liar who makes people believe a really shitty game will be the best thign ever.

 

[Baphomet]

This is fucking funny as hell. I think now and forever, we should have a program that automatically interprets what a dev says into what they realy mean.

All developer comments can be translated to "I wish I didn't have to work 80 hours a week to make someone else millions; all the while putting my name on uninspired crap."

 

[Token Nug]

This is fucking funny as hell. I think now and forever, we should have a program that automatically interprets what a dev says into what they realy mean.

All developer comments can be translated to "I wish I didn't have to work 80 hours a week to make someone else millions; all the while putting my name on uninspired crap."

That could be why Ken Rolston quit... Though, he had to be making a lot of money.

 

[Human Shield]

Can you say that your video card has x million this, y amount of that, does z mhz and ship a different product and say "we changed our minds" ? Whether it's true that they changed their minds or not and can you justify that as a simple change of mind? Not really a good example I know but all it matters is if the customer is really getting what he was led to believe.

It is called Bait and Switch. Direct promotions aren't allowed to change but interviews are just BS heaven (manufacturers don't do interviews about canned peas). Demos usually speak louder then words.

And it isn't even good enough like movies where the celebrities just show a clip on a talk show and ramble on off-topic and where there are big-name critics that get heard when they pan big-budget stuff.

But the kid using mommy's money isn't going to care if the game gets dull and he just throws it on his pile of junk.

 

[obediah]

Lumpy is just trolling and presenting one-sided posts. Please lock him up moderators.

Oh, come on he's providing some context against the rather one-sided codex oblivion-hate orgy.

Don't get me wrong, those oblivion quotes are a gas after playing the game. Put quite a few of them are just run-of-the-mill developer hype, that are only funny because we hate the game. A paired down version of that list might make a pretty damning argument that the developers inteaded to mislead. But who cares? We all know Betheda is shit, and will make more shit. It's time to put down the stick and walk away from the horse.

 

[Wysardry]

It's time to put down the stick and walk away from the horse.

But the ragdoll physics make it fun to carry on beating it. :D