Bethesda: "No one can match us"

Anything that was good about Fallout 3 (and I don't think it was all bad, although it wasn't a patch on FO1 or 2) was and is obscured in the shitstorm of piss-poor PR and shallow, juvenile statements released by Hines and co. leading up to the release of FO3 and beyond. This was only compounded by the unbelievably servile and fawning mainstream gaming media, whose questions amounted to various reiterations of "why are you guys so awesome?"

My blood still boils at the memory of the one gaming journalist who had the balls to ask Bethsoft about killable children at the showcase of their demo a while back, only to be greeted with the loaded, strawman challenge of "do you really want to be able to kill children?" Way to miss the point and misrepresent his question. With devs like this, the abortion that was Little Lamplighter was inevitable.

And the claim that Bethsoft are the best in the business at quests, open-ended worlds and dialogue(!) just shows how high on their own bullshit they are. A lot of side-quests in FO3 were fairly decent, but it's a matter of public record that their dialogue was awful.
 
Ausir said:
Great why don't they use that instead.
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Well, it's a choice between an old engine they know well and have modified to their needs vs. a new engine they'd have to learn how to use from scratch.
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Which they even with all that experience can not use to its full potential when you consider the many errors, glitches and issues that are not related to bugs occur in their engine like bad animations, low textures or bad faces which at some point the community come up with things that look miles better then what Bethesda has done already since Morrowind.

I mean I can see and understand the reason to stay with some engine you are familiar with. But at some point as developer and programmer anyway you HAVE to switch to new soft and hardware. Its part of the job to familiarize with new technology particularly now as almost every new year you have changes in many areas. Bethesda should really very fast either go for a better education in their animation department OR hire new people with experience in that field. They definetly should go for IDs new technology AND experience. I mean it really is a great opportunity now since they all more or less work now under the same umbrella. And you can say about ID what you want but they always made games with good visuals, animations and pretty bug free even.

PlanHex said:
...Then why'd it take 4 years to make Fallout 3 when it's basically Oblivion with a paint job?
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It still takes a lot of time to do new models, objects and different textures and also chnge parts of the engine for the game. but I think its more a issue that they copy pasted the "design principles" and "gameplay aspects" from Oblivion together with the issues of the engine (mind you some of the errors and glitches you encounter in Fallout 3 are almost exactly the same one as already seen in Oblivion and have been known for a long time the editor for F3 also shares a lot of the "issues" from Oblivion as well ...). If Fallout 3 would be at least a completely "new" game for it self I think one could at least say they tried something new at least. But actualy Fablivion I mean Fallout 3 shares a lot of common aspects with Oblivion when it comes to the whole "idea" what Bethesda imagines to be a RPG from the way how the quests work in Fallout 3, to the dialogue screen and combat meele attacks look and work almost to 100% as they did in Oblivion same to the armor values. By the way you know a good Fantasy RPG for Todd is to sit on a horse back and kill things, while Fallout is all about nuclear explosions and violance ...

Bethesda should have changed their focus from RPGs to shooters already a long time back as they fitt a lot more to their whole idea about games. Though for shooters today to be succesfull you need a really known name (like Unreal, Doom 3, Quacke etc.) that people know and all Bethesda did so far was some obscure Terminator game and you also need very taltented developers around the visuals, with animations and graphic cause thats what usualy sells a shooter. With RPGs that share somewhat both designs you are in Bethesdas case at least always on the save side. If one would complain about the RPG aspect, you just can say "Duh, its a action game!" and if its not pleasing the shooter/action players you can tell them "Duh, its a RPG!". That pretty much invalid ANY kind of criticms.
 
I mean I can see and understand the reason to stay with some engine you are familiar with. But at some point as developer and programmer anyway you HAVE to switch to new soft and hardware.
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Well, the developers of GameBryo will probably also release new versions of their engine.
 
JR Jansen said:
Gamebryo is so outdated. Hey, maybe we should use that as an argument for their next game.
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To be specific their version of the Gamebryo engine is outdated. The newer versions in games like Warhammer Online and Blood Bowl work fine.
 
I honestly don't care much about the animations. I think they should work on bringing back Z-axis movement (for the ES games), enhancing the environmental interactivity, and decreasing the number of loading points. I'd be more interested in seeing ladders, destructible doors, and breakable windows than prettier animations in the next Fallout.
 
Wow, this is a shrill thread.

I would much rather have them spend their time and money refining the base game that is there, rather than starting from scratch with a new engine.

Unless of course someone can finally develop something where you can shoot through flimsy walls and smash concrete with a super sledge.
 
Herr Mike said:
Unless of course someone can finally develop something where you can shoot through flimsy walls and smash concrete with a super sledge.
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Someone - yes. But if the best in the business (Bethesda) haven't done it, it's either 1) outdated 2) not immersive enough 3) do you really want to? 4) just not possible.
 
Yup, Red Faction Guerilla is really outdated with it's sledge smashable walls and being able to shoot through wood.
They really should of stick with what Beth do instead as it is so innovative such as not being able to shoot through gaps in wooden walls or jump through broken windows.
 
Though thats not some issue with the engine you can with enough work and access to the source code manage to get bullet penetration and/or destruction of the enviroment in almost any usual game engine you want.

I remember mods for UT99 that included such things even when still today quite many people say "its not possible with the UT engine". It definetly is possible. It just means more stress to the hardware (if not done very carefully) and most programmers or modders and gamedevelopers try to avoid that as it means a lot of work and testing and they eventualy dont see a to huge benefit out of it not for every game at least. One should for example not forget that bullet penetration works both ways so it puts the player in some harm as well since he can not use everything as cover anymore, not even a usual car is enough cover for bullets with high velocity like from rifles and such. And many devs want to avoid that kind of frustration or stress to the player.

It just shows somewhat the "shift" games like Fallout did now from a more "tactical" RPG where bullet penetration definetly would have fit now in to a "shooter" like RPG where bullet penetration is not even wanted by many or its developers at least since it might ruin the thing that is in their eyes the best fun, exploding heads.
 
Ashley seems to be hanging out with Hines a bit too much.

When you start to believe your own hype, you're in big trouble.

As for PS3 owners, I can't speak for anybody but myself, but I won't be buying this game again. I had it for 2 weeks, and that was enough for me.

"Best at what you do?" If "making crap games" is what you do, I can't argue much.
 
Per said:
Ashley Cheng: We’ve been building on top of Gamebryo for the past 8 years. There is no replacement for the learning and iteration that goes into building technology for that long. An engine is simply a tool. Anybody can use a paint brush and paper – it’s how you use it to create your art. It is the same with game engines.
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Oddly enough, the guy knows about this problem, but can't or don't want to see that they have it.
 
the engine isnt the problem, its the people making content for the engine that is the problem.

plus, they know what the limitations are for the xbrick, if they upgraded the engine and all the visuals, it wouldnt work for the xbox anymore and that is unacceptable.
 
well that was one of their explenations for the "simplfication" of the "NPC AI" which everyone knows as the glorious Radiant AI in Oblivion to what now everyone can see today compared to the promo videos they have shown on the E3.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL8pyOP0VQI[/youtube]

From what I can remember one of their statements was that the AI was to powerfull for the X-box and that it was kinda "to smart" for its own good (thiefs stealing from merchants and such).

Though if I see how MUCH it was simplified compared to their demo video I have seriously doubts that they ever done any AI that was not heavily scripted and dumb from day 1 and have not lied about the AI and its features in the first place. Strange enough regardless that it was hyped a lot you never seen any review even here in germany mentioning that it was bad in the game while when Doom 3 was released the AI was somewhat called a "issue" in some gaming magazines when I have to ask my self, how much intelligence do you expect from zombis and brainless deamons anyway?
 
TheWesDude said:
plus, they know what the limitations are for the xbrick, if they upgraded the engine and all the visuals, it wouldnt work for the xbox anymore and that is unacceptable.
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That's not true at all, engines can be optimized greatly in order to provide higher quality content with the same hardware. It actually would be fine for them to use the same engine if they did significant optimization (which would require rewriting and replacing much of the legacy code).
 
Crni Vuk said:
stuff
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I remember being so hyped when I saw this video, you would think if they just turned the A.I. "down" that it could be "modded back" to this video level, I don't think it ever was though.


instead we get this


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KN7cKO8-P0[/youtube]
*everyone eating quietly* *KATHWACK* *Edgar flies into his mudcrab soup* *everyone continues eating unphased*

so reaal :shock:
 
Jidai Geki said:
Anything that was good about Fallout 3 (and I don't think it was all bad, although it wasn't a patch on FO1 or 2) was and is obscured in the shitstorm of piss-poor PR and shallow, juvenile statements released by Hines and co. leading up to the release of FO3 and beyond. This was only compounded by the unbelievably servile and fawning mainstream gaming media, whose questions amounted to various reiterations of "why are you guys so awesome?"
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I can only agree.

one or two people here (who I had a few "arguments" with a long time ago) might remember how positive I was towards Fallout 3. I even pre-ordered the collector's edition. but after watching every interview, reading every preview and following the updates and news on here, I got more and more disgusted with Bethesda and their PR machine, cancelled my pre-order and decided not to bother with the game.

I would have had much more respect for the game if it wasn't for all this shit surrounding it.
 
I think even without tourn based combat this community would have welcome a new Fallout 3 with open arms if it had auctualy an well designed and thought out plot that is somewhat in its spirit close to Fallout 1/2.

Though what we got sounded like written for 12 year old gamers.
 
Crni Vuk said:
I think even without tourn based combat this community would have welcome a new Fallout 3 with open arms if it had auctualy an well designed and thought out plot that is somewhat in its spirit close to Fallout 1/2.

Though what we got sounded like written for 12 year old gamers.
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This community here would have welcomed a well designed RPG game with a decent plot in the spirit of FO2 even if it's name was "My Post-Apoc Pony".
 
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