FF:Enhanced_Reality
Member
I'd like to talk about Bethesda and their games for a moment. I used to be a huge fan of their games for a time. I was introduced to Oblivion on PS3 by a friend and followed them really closely from there. Fallout was a franchise I likely never would have played if they hadn't made Fallout 3 and I think it was great having large scale western RPG's coming from this studio that had their kind of trademark things from art style, to the engine and those lovable little glitches etc. We know that Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 are coming in the future but I want to just go back to the glitches and talk about the technical side of Bethesda games.
I learned pretty quickly that Bethesda games had a lot of little glitches that seemed like part of the charm of their games. But here lies one of my big problems. I still want to buy Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 but if Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 are anything to go off then... I really don't think I will. Those little glitches pretty quickly evolved into bigger and more heinous ones with each title and whilst I was loving Fallout 4, I lost all of my progress, everything I had done because of a glitch that couldn't be solved and previous save files were not helping. The mission where you go to meet a scientist in the irradiated wasteland wouldn't work for me because every time I got to the end location, the character I needed to speak too just spoke to me like the average NPC and the mission progress wouldn't trigger regardless.
Games like this require a lot of investment from gamers and no matter how I tried to work around it, it just wasn't working. I lost over 100 hours of gameplay and I couldn't bring myself to play again because I was happy with the story that I had played and honestly I couldn't remember how to get back to where I was, all the choices I had made and settlements that I had built. But you could kind of see it with each new game that Bethesda made. The glitches and technical problems were just getting worse and worse and it's not like I think these are bad games, I really do enjoy them but it's hard to enjoy the story and gameplay when the game in some places just physically does not work.
Flash to Fallout 76 and it just hit a wall. I promised myself I wouldn't buy it until it was stable and it still isn't stable... not only that, but members who paid for their exclusive FO76 service had even worse problems... personally I blamed the game engine but Kotaku and Mr Schrier made it clear, apparently that the engine isn't the issue, even though the Creation engine is just a hugely modified version of Gamebryo and you just have to admit that there's a big problem. Quality assurance doesn't seem to exist as incredibly annoying issues are present at launch and for a long time after. But having played Witcher 3 Game of the Year and seeing just how well everything worked that I can't accept the old excuse of 'Well it's such a big game, you expect some issues right!?'
I'm not sure new consoles are going to really help the problem Bethesda face here. I would like to buy future Bethesda games but if the declining technical quality is any idea of what the future holds then I can't see myself buying future games until the final editions come out and I can play them as stable as possible. It's embarrassing for developers when the majority of the fixes for games come from fans and mods rather than the developer themselves. I think if they came out and said something like they're going to use Unreal Engine or something that I would be really interested in what they have to show but I would hate to buy another Bethesda release to find out that there are major issues. Especially when I couldn't even play Skyrim for months when it came out due to fact that it just crashed on my rig in the opening. Took many updates before it worked.
For fans of Bethesda games, do you plan on playing Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 at launch? Or are you going to wait like I am to see just how well the games perform before playing them?
I learned pretty quickly that Bethesda games had a lot of little glitches that seemed like part of the charm of their games. But here lies one of my big problems. I still want to buy Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 but if Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 are anything to go off then... I really don't think I will. Those little glitches pretty quickly evolved into bigger and more heinous ones with each title and whilst I was loving Fallout 4, I lost all of my progress, everything I had done because of a glitch that couldn't be solved and previous save files were not helping. The mission where you go to meet a scientist in the irradiated wasteland wouldn't work for me because every time I got to the end location, the character I needed to speak too just spoke to me like the average NPC and the mission progress wouldn't trigger regardless.
Games like this require a lot of investment from gamers and no matter how I tried to work around it, it just wasn't working. I lost over 100 hours of gameplay and I couldn't bring myself to play again because I was happy with the story that I had played and honestly I couldn't remember how to get back to where I was, all the choices I had made and settlements that I had built. But you could kind of see it with each new game that Bethesda made. The glitches and technical problems were just getting worse and worse and it's not like I think these are bad games, I really do enjoy them but it's hard to enjoy the story and gameplay when the game in some places just physically does not work.
Flash to Fallout 76 and it just hit a wall. I promised myself I wouldn't buy it until it was stable and it still isn't stable... not only that, but members who paid for their exclusive FO76 service had even worse problems... personally I blamed the game engine but Kotaku and Mr Schrier made it clear, apparently that the engine isn't the issue, even though the Creation engine is just a hugely modified version of Gamebryo and you just have to admit that there's a big problem. Quality assurance doesn't seem to exist as incredibly annoying issues are present at launch and for a long time after. But having played Witcher 3 Game of the Year and seeing just how well everything worked that I can't accept the old excuse of 'Well it's such a big game, you expect some issues right!?'
I'm not sure new consoles are going to really help the problem Bethesda face here. I would like to buy future Bethesda games but if the declining technical quality is any idea of what the future holds then I can't see myself buying future games until the final editions come out and I can play them as stable as possible. It's embarrassing for developers when the majority of the fixes for games come from fans and mods rather than the developer themselves. I think if they came out and said something like they're going to use Unreal Engine or something that I would be really interested in what they have to show but I would hate to buy another Bethesda release to find out that there are major issues. Especially when I couldn't even play Skyrim for months when it came out due to fact that it just crashed on my rig in the opening. Took many updates before it worked.
For fans of Bethesda games, do you plan on playing Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 at launch? Or are you going to wait like I am to see just how well the games perform before playing them?
