Bethesda planning a survival overhaul. Has hell frozen over?

[ZigzagPX4]

Maybe there's some kind of rivalry, I dunno. I don't pay much attention to anything Bethesda staffers say on social media, and Obsidian have always seemed pretty professional about their dealings with Bethesda.

I don't go out of my way to look at what Bethesda says on social media either - don't need to. The feeling that they have some sort of opposing force against New Vegas is just... there. Besides, I meant more of a one-sided rivalry, I imagine Obsidian themselves don't really care.

 

[Crni Vuk]

No open rivalry I guess, as that doesn't make sense and it would hurt both their position, Bethesda and Obsidian. However, I would not be surprised if there is some attitude inside the teams. I mean you know, people talk to each other, in meetings, at lunch etc. And obviously they also talk about their own projects and the competition out there. And it would be foolish to think that people like Todd or the developers at Obsidian don't have an opinion about it. Doesn't mean they outright hate everything, or that they can't acknowledge the good work of others, but, we are talking about stuff like pride in your work and all that. Todd and Emil probably do see their works as master pieces and maybe even deep quality RPGs. And to be at Bethesda and looking at what Obsidian achieved in 18 months, with all the DLCs and aditional content thrown in after release, must have also stirred up some discussions.
But anyone outside of Bethesda making serious RPGs must feel strange when looking at F4 for example, at least about some of it's features, like the ones that saw criticism, I mean the dialog wheel? And there are enough voices out there that even question F4 to be a true Fallout game. And the remove-dialog-wheel mod out there really exposed how ... atrocious and severely limited the dialog in F4 really is.

 

[Millim]

There's probably some bitterness on Obsidians behalf due to be screwed in terms of pay, saying that, I think both Bethesda and Obsidian could work together again.
It really doesn't make sense for them not to.
New Vegas was essentially a power house for the series, it went from 3 which was massively popular to NV which gave it substance. 4 disappointed a lot of people, and there's many people on the Fallout facebook pages and even on the Bethesda forum itself who prefer NV. People want NV and it would be ridicules and a downright shitty business move for Bethesda to not let Obsidian have another shot on Fallout.
Obsidian have said they are willing to do another game, people want another game so I don't think there's enough bitterness to really affect anything.
If Bethesda have something against people liking another game over theirs, then maybe they should stop releasing sub-par games. You can't have your cake and eat it all the time.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I think both Bethesda and Obsidian could work together again.
It really doesn't make sense for them not to.

The problem is it doesn't make sense that Fallout 4 is an action-FPS with a dialogue wheel, but Bethesda made that decision anyway. So even if letting Obsidian make a New Vegas 2 type spinoff makes financial sense and would definitely gain them brownie points with the ACTUAL Fallout fans, I have lost all faith that these people make good decisions when they can just rake in money from fanboys by releasing paid mods as DLC.

The Fallout series is going to be driven into the ground unless an actual RPG studio is allowed to make a spinoff that can distract from the Action FPS that is Fallout 4.

 

[Dr Fallout]

The problem is it doesn't make sense that Fallout 4 is an action-FPS with a dialogue wheel, but Bethesda made that decision anyway. So even if letting Obsidian make a New Vegas 2 type spinoff makes financial sense and would definitely gain them brownie points with the ACTUAL Fallout fans, I have lost all faith that these people make good decisions when they can just rake in money from fanboys by releasing paid mods as DLC.

The Fallout series is going to be driven into the ground unless an actual RPG studio is allowed to make a spinoff that can distract from the Action FPS that is Fallout 4.

I'm hoping we see a spin off based on the original games, aka isometric and turn based. This is mainly because it can clean all Bethesda influences, with the dialogue wheel and other bullshit.

 

[MercenarySnake]

I'm hoping we see a spin off based on the original games, aka isometric and turn based. This is mainly because it can clean all Bethesda influences, with the dialogue wheel and other bullshit.

That would be nice but there might be trouble due to the big ol shit stain Bethesda has left on the Fallout name.

 

[Izak]

I'd like to see an isometric Fallout game that takes place directly after Fallout 2, one that's set in an alternate timeline from Fallout 3, that way Obsidian/Inxile could usurp Bethesda and take everything good from the lore (they'd have to let Bethesda keep NV but there are casualties in war so whatever).

 

[ZigzagPX4]

That would be nice but there might be trouble due to the big ol shit stain Bethesda has left on the Fallout name.

Disclaimer - the rant is about people in general, and not specifically you, @MercenarySnake, but I quote you because you're the one who set off my point.

I've never really seen the issue, with any series in gaming, of when a series has many bad sequels in it for one period of time. People keep going up in their arms about how the prequels "ruined" Star Wars but I've never found that it makes sense to be upset about the entire series rather than just, say, rewatching the original trilogy. How does what future installments do to an IP affect the old ones?

I've never understood the concept of someone "ruining a series", and probably never will. If you take a series I liked and made a really bad game within that series, it's just a bad game, I'll just not play it and wait for another good one. I don't see the point in calling it a "permanent stain" or "forever corrupted", nothing is perfect and mistakes only serve to teach lessons for the future. In fact, I feel like every series of movies or games should have at least bad one to set the stage for improvements in the future.

I know the case with Bethesda is unique in that they're not improving and it just keeps going downhill, but if one day a company like Obsidian gets it back and makes a Fallout 2 successor, I find it (no offense, if that counts for anything) absolutely idiotic and absurd to look back on Fallout 4 and think "fuck, that game existed". So it existed, and what's wrong with that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing!

Personally, I feel it's an inane case of stupidity in logic to think of series has being "forever ruined" because one installment of it was bad. There is no such thing.

Sorry about that. Personal pet peeve that really sets me off. Everyone has one.

 

[Izak]

Franchises can be ruined by bad entries though, while Fallout 4 hasn't killed the Fallout series it has the potential to in the same way the prequels had the potential to kill the Star Wars franchise. All you have to do is establish an awful precedent in a franchise to ruin future installments, the prequels could have turned Star Wars into a series about wooden dialogue and non-sensical politics, Fallout 4 could turn the Fallout series into a linear set of Radiant quests- hence ruining the series.

 

[MercenarySnake]

Disclaimer - the rant is about people in general, and not specifically you, @MercenarySnake, but I quote you because you're the one who set off my point.

I've never really seen the issue, with any series in gaming, of when a series has many bad sequels in it for one period of time. People keep going up in their arms about how the prequels "ruined" Star Wars but I've never found that it makes sense to be upset about the entire series rather than just, say, rewatching the original trilogy. How does what future installments do to an IP affect the old ones?

I've never understood the concept of someone "ruining a series", and probably never will. If you take a series I liked and made a really bad game within that series, it's just a bad game, I'll just not play it and wait for another good one. I don't see the point in calling it a "permanent stain" or "forever corrupted", nothing is perfect and mistakes only serve to teach lessons for the future. In fact, I feel like every series of movies or games should have at least bad one to set the stage for improvements in the future.

I know the case with Bethesda is unique in that they're not improving and it just keeps going downhill, but if one day a company like Obsidian gets it back and makes a Fallout 2 successor, I find it (no offense, if that counts for anything) absolutely idiotic and absurd to look back on Fallout 4 and think "fuck, that game existed". So it existed, and what's wrong with that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing!

Personally, I feel it's an inane case of stupidity in logic to think of series has being "forever ruined" because one installment of it was bad. There is no such thing.

Sorry about that. Personal pet peeve that really sets me off. Everyone has one.

Not forever ruined just that if say Obsidian decided to create another Fallout under Bethesda they would have to go by their inane twisted logic like the "radiation goo shooting glowing ghoul zombies", the "ghouls never needing to eat and living in graveyards because herp derp zombies", their silly addition of lore now with the release of Fallout 4. I don't say it's 100% ruined..it's just that if we do ever get another Obsidian Fallout it will be a nice change of pace from the wacky Fallouts from Bethesda but the Bethesda decline seeping into the game will make it even harder to appreciate it. So in conclusion, they are slowly driving the Fallout name further into the ground to the point that not even Obsidian could possibly salvage the mangled remains to create a sequel to New Vegas without the wacky lore forced into the mix.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

Not forever ruined just that if say Obsidian decided to create another Fallout under Bethesda they would have to go by their inane twisted logic like the "radiation goo shooting glowing ghoul zombies", the "ghouls never needing to eat and living in graveyards because herp derp zombies", their silly addition of lore now with the release of Fallout 4. I don't say it's 100% ruined..it's just that if we do ever get another Obsidian Fallout it will be a nice change of pace from the wacky Fallouts from Bethesda but the Bethesda decline seeping into the game will make it even harder to appreciate it. So in conclusion, they are slowly driving the Fallout name further into the ground to the point that not even Obsidian could possibly salvage the mangled remains to create a sequel to New Vegas without the wacky lore forced into the mix.

Okay... why would they have to if the full ownership returns to them? Is there some legal obligation to never render someone's work non-canon or something? I doubt it. X-Men Days of Future Past basically made all of the first X-Men movies non-canon, and since that was a pretty high-profile film from a very popular and well-known series, that kind of demonstrates that there probably isn't a legal obligation. They could just declare all of Fallout lore from Bethesda non-canon.

Franchises can be ruined by bad entries though, while Fallout 4 hasn't killed the Fallout series it has the potential to in the same way the prequels had the potential to kill the Star Wars franchise. All you have to do is establish an awful precedent in a franchise to ruin future installments, the prequels could have turned Star Wars into a series about wooden dialogue and non-sensical politics, Fallout 4 could turn the Fallout series into a linear set of Radiant quests- hence ruining the series.

I get that series can be run into the ground if they get that bad, but Fallout 4 seems very unlikely to fail - it goes off the original rail, sure, but it is not a trainwreck - the sales prove that. I doubt it will get shelved anytime soon, which means it's always possible to turn the series right around.

What annoys me is if one bad entry was in the history of the series whereas the series itself has resumed being good again, there's always countless people who will complain to no end about the existence of the bad one, and it's just one of those things that really set me off. It just doesn't matter, existing as one of the most frustratingly pointless concerns of all time. I know this isn't the case of Fallout just yet, but like I said, there are certain things that are so ridiculous in concept that I just go off on rants about it.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Look at the Turtles as franchise, what it was in the begining, and what it is today. Yes, franchises can change in a way, where the original fans don't even want to be ever associated with it.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

Look at the Turtles as franchise, what it was in the begining, and what it is today. Yes, franchises can change in a way, where the original fans don't even want to be ever associated with it.

Like I said, if they're dead series, they don't fit into my category of frustrations. It's the one that survive a mishandling and still have fans who consider the series "impure" now that it has had a bad installment. Fallout is not even close to dead, so I don't see the point in arguing the same thing about it, either.

Besides, in my opinion, if it isn't banned everywhere, it isn't dead. It's just hibernating and waiting for revival. You'll find it very hard to convince me otherwise that it's sane in any way to consider an entertainment series "stained" or "scratched" or even "ruined".

Seems like a pointless thing to get worked up over, but it's a pet peeve of mine, mainly because it's very similar to an argument on a different subject that I have a strong aversion to. Now can we get back to whatever topic I ran us off?

 

[whirlingdervish]

I'd start to claim on the impurity of a series or IP when the crappy installments begin to equal or outnumber the installments of higher quality.

Final Fantasy is already there for me, along with the Tomb Raider franchise and a couple others that I loved back in the day.

TES is well on it's way to that slippery slope, and one more Fallout game in the current vein will tip the scales depending on your views regarding FO:Tactics. FO3, FO4 and FOBOS, oh my!

 

[Dr Fallout]

I'd start to claim on the impurity of a series or IP when the crappy installments begin to equal or outnumber the installments of higher quality.

Final Fantasy is already there for me, along with the Tomb Raider franchise and a couple others that I loved back in the day.

TES is well on it's way to that slippery slope, and one more Fallout game in the current vein will tip the scales depending on your views regarding FO:Tactics. FO3, FO4 and FOBOS, oh my!

The end is coming! For soon all franchises will be ruined!

 

[ZigzagPX4]

I'd start to claim on the impurity of a series or IP when the crappy installments begin to equal or outnumber the installments of higher quality.

In most cases, I don't find too much to be wrong with that.

If the bad outnumbers the good then of course that's definitely justification to go mad. A single stain on the couch doesn't ruin it. Covering the entire thing in stains probably will.

Final Fantasy is already there for me, along with the Tomb Raider franchise and a couple others that I loved back in the day.

While I did enjoy the latest Tomb Raider (though it was admittedly bland), Square Enix has been going downhill with everything lately.

In addition to Final Fantasy as you've already mentioned, see the new HITMAN episodic system that is basically a blatant attempt at cashgrabs, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's failed "Augment Your Pre-Order", and Just Cause 3 being poorly optimised and unpolished in general because they tried to jam always-online leaderboard social crap into the game and the dev team had to fix it the best they could.

Then there was the attempt to turn Hitman into a linear, cinematic game with Absolution, the attempt to cash-in on mobile games with Deus Ex: The Fall, Sleeping Dogs sequel being some bland MMO that no one asked for and ended up getting cancelled, and of course, the new Thief, which was as well-recieved by the classic Thief fans as Fallout 4 was recieved by NMA.

The end is coming! For soon all franchises will be ruined!

If two publishers ruining all their franchises signified the end of the world, then EA and Ubisoft should've brought it upon us already.

We'll be seeing more franchises down the drain before the day is done, but in my opinion, even the best series in their top form can't stay fresh forever. Games used to be good not because the sequels were dedicated, but because they were left discontinued while new IPs were constantly built. That's why there are so many old IPs for publishers to dig up and ruin - they were never closed off because devs were always pursuing new ideas, good or bad.

Even Fallout in good hands like with Black Isle/Obsidian would've gotten stale, eventually - there is no series in the world that can sustain itself forever, it has to end at some point. I would say that all Bethesda did was accelerate the process by tenfold. It may be time for a spiritual successor at this point.

 

[Spacemunkey]

Survival beta patch notes:
Fallout 4 1.5 Survival Beta
We’re excited to announce that overhauled Survival Difficulty is now available for beta testing on Steam. This update will be available on consoles next month.

New Features
New Survival difficulty

• Survival adds additional challenges including no fast travel, saving only when you sleep, increased lethality, diseases, fatigue, danger and more.
  
• Characters set to Survival difficulty appear under their own Character Selection filter
  
• Survival difficulty characters are not backward compatible with the 1.4 version of Fallout 4. If you opt out of the Beta, do not use Survival character saved games.

Fixes

• General stability and performance improvements
  
• Fixed rare crash related to reloading a save that relies on Automatron
  
• Fixed issue with the robot workbench camera not moving properly immediately after canceling out of the menu
  
• Fixed issue with perks being repeatedly added when reloading a saved game while in robot workbench
  
• Fixed issue with Ada not properly traveling to an assigned settlement
  
• Robots can now be assigned as settlement vendors
  
• Fixed issue with "Appropriation" where blueprints would not appear properly if the container had already been looted prior to getting the quest
  
• In "Nuclear Option," entering the Institute using the targeting helmet on Power Armor no longer inadvertently causes the player to go into combat, and become stuck in the Institute
  
• Fixed distance check with Robotics Expert perk

 

[Ragemage]

snip

 

[Spacemunkey]

I felt the need to quote my favorite comment from the Steam page.
X41823t SAID:
"What a load of shite, go fck yourself betshita for making a shitty game and leaving it to modders to do the fucking game for ya you god damn scrubs, oh and Todd you're a god damn CUCK!"

 

[Ediros]

I felt the need to quote my favorite comment from the Steam page.
X41823t SAID:
"What a load of shite, go fck yourself betshita for making a shitty game and leaving it to modders to do the fucking game for ya you god damn scrubs, oh and Todd you're a god damn CUCK!"

I think I would like this guy.

Anyway, Betheshit has got no god damn clue that their definition of survival is not enjoyable at all.

No saving in game, where crashes bugs, glitches are all over the place? Oh so you killed 1000 raiders, got best armour but didn't sleep to save then fuck you.

No fast travel in a world filled with scaling, respawning enemies and absolutely no interesting locations. At least the vertibirds have got some sort of use before they crash and kill you.

Diseases like the mole rat disease? No thank you, I don't want legendary flu that sets all special at one. And the only way to cure it is killing ten legendary opponents and eating their flesh. It is also spread by all enemies, who are immune to it, except you.

Magical damage boost by adrenaline as if we needed more magic and lore breaking.

You have got 10 perception then shut up. Without a scope you will never know where are they.

I would add more but it is too painful to read.