Bethesda Shows Where Their Priorities Are (Patch 1.6 New)

RangerBoo said:
Valenwood? Oh no, the next Elder Scrolls game will take place in Hammerfell. Think about it. Hammerfell is mostly a massive desert which means Bethesda, in their infinite laziness, won't have to put a lot of work into making the worldspace and since Hammerfell is mostly inhabited by the Redguards, who are the black race in the Elder Scrolls world, means that they will get heaps of praise from the gaming media for being "progressive" and "diverse" and anybody who says otherwise is a racist and a closed minded bigot. Bethesda can both be lazy and get recognition at the same time if they make ES6 take place in Hammerfell. Its the choice that allows them to have their cake and eat it too.
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It's interesting, because I think a lore-accurate portrayal of Hammerfell would have the potential to be truly bold and progressive in its depiction of race relations and black people in a genre that so often neglects them - but perhaps not in the way that most liberal reviewers would expect. To quote one of the key brains in imagining all the Hammerfell and Redguard lore, the very talented and very insane Michael Kirkbride:

No, I was actually referring to The Black Panthers and their radicalism.

As some people know I'm not really a fan of the United Colors of Beneton approach to Tamrielicreation, which smacks of white guilt and offensery rather than some holistic form of beautiful inclusion. Thus, it's my fault that the Asian analogues got eaten. Oops. Looks like others are bringing 'em back, though. But I promise my choice had nothing to do with Yellow Peril, it had to do with co-opting "coolness of color" without thinking about it intelligently and compassionately.

(Hunkers down for the flame.)

That said, when I started writing Redguard I really thought about how unique the black people of Tamriel were: they came in and kicked ass and slaughtered the indigenes while doing so. They invaded. It was the first time I had encountered the idea of "black imperialism"...and it struck me big time, as something 1) new, 2) potentially dangerous if taken as commentary, and 3) potentially rad if taken as commentary.

Who knows. AVault did say it had a story worthy of being on stage, and Michael Mack (Cyrus) once thanked me for giving him words that "Black folks don't get to say" (referring to Cyrus' speech and the reversal of Son to the Father)... which broke my heart and made me puff my chest all at the same time.

Which is a long way of saying: panther-love.
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What in the world would the gaming press make of black imperialism?
 
Irwin John Finster said:
Don't blame me. They're the ones implying it. See previous quote.
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Implying, but it using that terminology more or less is dishonest.
Mr Fish said:
I think that by Bethesda fans he means "fan-fan", not casual fan or just "oh yeah I like their games"-fan. No, proper fan-fan. Like "oh my god Bethesda are fucking awesome! FO4 is their greatest game yet!"-fan. I doubt those kinds of fans are in the hundreds of thousands.

Even so, I still agree with you Zyax, it is an over-generalization. We know those kinds of fans will eat up a Bethesda product and ask for seconds but that don't mean that they are incapable of enjoying a game like Planescape or Fallout 2.
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Izak said:
Their target audience clearly isn't into that type of thing, to say literally every single one of their fans would hate it is a generalisation, but they clearly aren't aiming to satisfy those people.
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Yes, I can see that the target audience is clearly not meant to be those old school fans. I really think nobody should "tolerate" those exessive types of fans, of literally anything, be it Bethesda, Obsidian, or any developer or publisher. They make everyone look like shit.
 
RangerBoo said:
But that would require reading and reading is too hard now a days with gamers or at lest that's what Pete Hines thinks.
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Just wait till he comes out with his next concepts, where they announce that thinking is too hard!

Tom Bishop said:
What in the world would the gaming press make of black imperialism?
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Nothing, because Beth would never go down that route. To hard to write. To easy to missunderstand. Nothing to gain from it in form of visuals - marketing value = zero. If it can't be hamfisted into you brain, than it is no morale that fitts in a Bethesta game!
 
MercenarySnake said:
Just test their fans by seeing how long they can sit through games like Fallout 1, Planescape: Torment, Morrowind, New Vegas, etc before they explain how they got p. bored of all the reading.
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Well, I personally would be considered a "Bethesda fan" I guess and enjoy 3 out of 4 of those games listed.
 
Zyax said:
Well, I personally would be considered a "Bethesda fan" I guess and enjoy 3 out of 4 of those games listed.
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We don't have a problem with Bethesda fans. Honestly.
Some of us have only a problem with people telling us that Bethesda saved Fallout. Or that their Fallout games are the best representation of Fallout. As long you don't do that, you will be fine. I hope :P.
 
I was a bethesda fan until fallout 4. Skyrim was dumbed down, but not quite to the critical limit. I personally didn't enjoy it though.

Fallout 4 went way over that line. It's clear that actual Fallout RPG fans are no longer considered in designing their games. They're making gimmicky crafting games with amateur, childish writing and dialogue for casuals that never played fallout.

In my opinion Fallout 4 was not made for fans of any previous fallout game.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
We don't have a problem with Bethesda fans. Honestly.
Some of us have only a problem with people telling us that Bethesda saved Fallout. Or that their Fallout games are the best representation of Fallout. As long you don't do that, you will be fine. I hope :P.
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I would't say that, because I don't really think that it's my place to say. In my personal opinion, I prefer the 3d Fallout games, but that's because I find the gameplay more enjoyable, but if someone prefers the isometric classics, that's more than fine with me.
Irwin John Finster said:
In my opinion Fallout 4 was not made for fans of any previous fallout game.
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While I don't fully agree with that, I do think they took several missteps with Fallout 4. I, however, personally do enjoy both 4 and the rest of the games. It would be nice if they let Obsidian have another crack at it, hopefully if nothing else so that they could see what mistakes they made, not sure if the publisher would allow for that though.
 
Zyax said:
I would't say that, because I don't really think that it's my place to say. In my personal opinion, I prefer the 3d Fallout games, but that's because I find the gameplay more enjoyable, but if someone prefers the isometric classics, that's more than fine with me.
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There is no problem with personal preference. One just has to make a difference between his preference and the intention behind a design. For example why GRRM made his story, Game of Thrones set in a medieval fantasy setting with swords and dragons, instead of space with ships and lasers. Maybe even better, why he chose a more realistic narrative for his books. Or why the developers of Doom chose a first person perspective and why the developers of Fallout chose turn based combat. Quite often I would say, the originators of their work didn't decide for it out of accident.
 
It's not like they were going to add anything serious. However long they had serious people working on the game ended a long time ago. It's not just shit story, system, etc: I can still kill myself easily by running and jumping. Not like some rationalised 5% chance to trip and fall, just abrupt death, ragdolling bafflingly (in Havok™) in slo-mo and going "MOOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOO".
 
Zyax said:
In my opinion Fallout 4 was not made for fans of any previous fallout game.
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While I don't fully agree with that, I do think they took several missteps with Fallout 4. I, however, personally do enjoy both 4 and the rest of the games. It would be nice if they let Obsidian have another crack at it, hopefully if nothing else so that they could see what mistakes they made, not sure if the publisher would allow for that though.
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I don't know how you can look at Fallout 4, then compare it to FO1, 2, New Vegas and even FO3, and not conclude that Bethesda did anything but target a whole new audience with 4. Fallout 3 was a reboot designed to get the fans of the original games back into the series, and while we can argue that it came off as a weak effort, at least it was clear that they did make an effort. New Vegas was a much stronger effort to connect to the original games, and again, at least Bethesda made an effort, even if they did farm out development to Obsidian.

With Fallout 4, they threw any pretense at appealing to the established fans out the window, and decided to use the Fallout name to make a lazy cash grab designed by the marketing gurus to appeal to the widest audience possible.
 
Shardik said:
(snip)
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Just looking at the copies sold info alone shows that, basically, 2 out of 3 Fallout 4 players are new. I dunno how that happened - I didn't follow the marketing or whatever - but there was a huge influx of players, which I guess we can basically say are mostly 'casual' or 'mainstream', and voilà.
 
Danuis said:
Just looking at the copies sold info alone shows that, basically, 2 out of 3 Fallout 4 players are new. I dunno how that happened - I didn't follow the marketing or whatever - but there was a huge influx of players, which I guess we can basically say are mostly 'casual' or 'mainstream', and voilà.
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influx/efflux/reflux, same deal.

MOOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOO.
 
Danuis said:
Just looking at the copies sold info alone shows that, basically, 2 out of 3 Fallout 4 players are new. I dunno how that happened - I didn't follow the marketing or whatever - but there was a huge influx of players, which I guess we can basically say are mostly 'casual' or 'mainstream', and voilà.
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I think a lot of them came from Skyrim, which brought Bethesda to the attention of a huge number of people who had never played their games before.
 
Danuis said:
Just looking at the copies sold info alone shows that, basically, 2 out of 3 Fallout 4 players are new. I dunno how that happened - I didn't follow the marketing or whatever - but there was a huge influx of players, which I guess we can basically say are mostly 'casual' or 'mainstream', and voilà.
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That's the impression I get whenever I check any Fallout 4 content online with comments on it. Barely literate people praising FO4 as the best game they have ever played and plenty of insults (and general derision) to anyone who criticizes them. I have a feeling that a large number of people jumped onto to the hype train due to the glam and glitter of the presentation of last year's E3 conference that made FO4 seem like a good thing. I base this idea on how I felt after the Spike TV Video Games' first announcement of Skyrim and how hyped it left me for Skyrim before inevitable disappointment (I was a young and naive fool in the past).

People often jump onto something because of hype and often stay to defend it until the hype dies down. The cycle repeats for any new over-hyped product. It's a vicious cycle that never ends until critical thinking sets in.
 
Shardik said:
I think a lot of them came from Skyrim, which brought Bethesda to the attention of a huge number of people who had never played their games before.
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Yea, looking at that info, it seems Skyrim brought in 19 new players for every 1 Morrowind player in the TES series. Marketing! Influx! Ab etc!
 
Shardik said:
Fallout 3 was a reboot designed to get the fans of the original games back into the series, and while we can argue that it came off as a weak effort, at least it was clear that they did make an effort.
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I disagree, if 3 was an effort to attract old fans then it wouldn't have played like an Elder Scrolls game; they clearly made an effort in their marketing but beyond that the game was aimed at Oblivion fans (which was obviously the better demographic to market to from a business point of view).
 
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