Bethesda's Lore Recons

[Someguy37]

Good god, the man is like a reverse George Lucas, instead of adding pointless crap into movies that are fine, he removes good sounding stuff from a very bland game.

>Removing districts of D.C. that had nothing, when people wildly complained that D.C. already had too many districts with nothing in the vanilla game, is removing content that sounds good.
>Removing a battle scene that the game engine couldn't support, preventing the game from being non functional, is removing content that sounds good.
Whut?

By that logic Obsidian are the ultimate reverse George Lucas, they haven't made a single game where 90% of the game wasn't cut.

 

[naossano]

What about this list of retcons ?

I got as many of the ones that made sense from this thread and other sites. It's likely incomplete, but if you want a better list get unlazy. :p

I wish the OP was keeping tracks.
Here, we have so many people adding retcons into the list, but who the hell would want to check so many pages ?

But thanks for that summary.

 

[zegh8578]

Good god, the man is like a reverse George Lucas, instead of adding pointless crap into movies that are fine, he removes good sounding stuff from a very bland game.

>Removing districts of D.C. that had nothing, when people wildly complained that D.C. already had too many districts with nothing in the vanilla game, is removing content that sounds good.
>Removing a battle scene that the game engine couldn't support, preventing the game from being non functional, is removing content that sounds good.
Whut?

By that logic Obsidian are the ultimate reverse George Lucas, they haven't made a single game where 90% of the game wasn't cut.

1. Nobody complained about FO3 having too much content. You're just making stuff up on the spot.
2. The engine could support it. It supported Liberty Prime and other battle scenes. You're just making stuff up on the spot.
3. 90% was it? Why not go for 99,9%? Your credibility is crashing through the floor.

 

[Someguy37]

1. Nobody complained about FO3 having too much content. You're just making stuff up on the spot.
2. The engine could support it. It supported Liberty Prime and other battle scenes. You're just making stuff up on the spot.
3. 90% was it? Why not go for 99,9%? Your credibility is crashing through the floor.

Now this is just revisionist history.
1. The whole metro systems and downtown D.C. districts thing was one of the singularly most complained about parts of Fo3. Its still complained about too this day, with people saying they don't want to go through all that stuff again because its just tedious shit. I recall numerous people saying they wouldn't even buy Fallout 4 if they had to go through a single metro to reach any part of Boston because it was that hated. I don't see why you expect having twice as much of it to have improved anything.

2. The Liberty Prime battle only ever had like 8 actual NPCs on the screen at any given time. We are talking about having to guide the entirety of Rivet City, as well as have tons of Enclave soldier's attacking. New Vegas already showed why that is a bad idea. The game engine chugged so hard they have to give everyone at the second battle face masks to reduce engine strain of not having to animate the NPC's mouth just to make it work, and certain areas behaved so poorly they didn't even bother to try to navmesh them, and instead used weird NPC nets that constantly respawned the NPC if they got stuck because the game engine just couldn't do it. Now you are suggesting they add even MORE NPCs to a single battle? and expect it to work? You have no idea how gamebryo works. Fallout 3 didn't even support quad core CPUs, and New Vegas barely managed it even WITH quad core support.

3. http://jul.rustedlogic.net/thread.php?id=15410 Its not 90%, but its a lot

 

[Crni Vuk]

It's true though, Beth isn't good at tweaking and working with their engine to it's limits, they already failed at Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim with providing a realistic and believable battle and towns. There are never many NPCs around and dramatic effects simply don't happen in their games. They provide people with cave simulators, hikking games and gameplay focused on wandering around. That's what they do best. And what many of their players seem to love. For what ever reason.

Expecting something they can't deliver from them is kinda silly.

Bethesda isn't into tech stuff, they create content. Not testing it or even pushing the boundaries. That's best left to other developers, that actually know how to do it.

 

[zegh8578]

The Rivet City population is allready rumaging around in Rivet City, everyone together, without much hastle. During the wedding they're all there.
When envisioning a "large scale Enclave attack", I'm obviously not imagining 10 000 Enclave NPCs descending onto the area, but maybe 3...

Obviously, the quest would probably have bugged itself to hell, but so did a bunch of other quests, regardless of how intensive they were.

 

[Someguy37]

snip

Actually, the Skyrim engine can support battles of up to 250 peoples 250 people and run reasonably well. They chose not to make them that large because playtesting revealed people didn't find them fun because it just a slog of NPCs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2DshotexMU

The Rivet City population is allready rumaging around in Rivet City, everyone together, without much hastle. During the wedding they're all there.
When envisioning a "large scale Enclave attack", I'm obviously not imagining 10 000 Enclave NPCs descending onto the area, but maybe 3...

Obviously, the quest would probably have bugged itself to hell, but so did a bunch of other quests, regardless of how intensive they were.

Rivet City is split into like 5 different maps, so it only ever loads like 1/5 of the population at any given time. And no, many NPCs, specifically like all the guards, don't sow up for the wedding.

I think it was more on the scale of the liberty Prime battle, but with all the rivet city guys thrown in.

I didn't have that many quest bugs in Fo3, more crashes then anything, still cant play either Fo3 or NV due to how often they crash.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Yes, it's so much more immersive to have a civil war with 10 people attacking a town with 20 citizens and 10 town guards. I could think of more ways to make it feel massive without the player killing 1000 NPCs. But that would actually require effort, a good narrative, intelligent quest design, more than just go to point a, kill everyone.

So they just continue to make cave simulators instead.

But, honestly it also looks shitty in Skyrim to have to many NPCs trying to whack each other with swords and axes, since Bethesdas combat and NPC animations are attrocious, and it leads to all sorts of bugs and issues - modders tried it.

Like I said. I agree with you! They are not good at such things. It's probably best for them to continue with making cave simulators and hikking games. With F4 they even got a new one. Tower-Exploration. Since a lot of Fallout 4s content is now moving in a vertical direction with those skyscrapers full of Raiders and Super Mutants.

 

[omegaspruz]

They probably can do it, if they script every single NPC to do a particular task, thus turning the battle into one huge set piece. But that's more railroading.

 

[Crni Vuk]

You don't have to. All you have to do, is actually create the narrative. The player has not to take an active part in everything. For example, Dragon Age 1, as many issues as the game has, but the presentation is pretty good. The first few missions of the game start with a war going on, where thousands of troops are fighting each other right under you. And the game has a few of those situations where you see troops marching in to battle, or a siege going on while you sneak in to the town or what ever.

If you can't bend the engine to your narrative, than you have to bend the narrative to your engine. It can work. But it takes effort. Good writers. Good designers.

 

[omegaspruz]

Well in that case even on Gamebryo its a peace of cake. Search for all the different Machinimas on Fallout and Elder Scrolls, some things are breathtaking. The problem with Bethesda is that they want the player to take action in everything. If they were willing to do cutscenes, that shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

You don't have to. All you have to do, is actually create the narrative. The player has not to take an active part in everything. For example, Dragon Age 1, as many issues as the game has, but the presentation is pretty good. The first few missions of the game start with a war going on, where thousands of troops are fighting each other right under you. And the game has a few of those situations where you see troops marching in to battle, or a siege going on while you sneak in to the town or what ever.

If you can't bend the engine to your narrative, than you have to bend the narrative to your engine. It can work. But it takes effort. Good writers. Good designers.

Dragon Age: Origins definitely did a good job making it feel like a large, heavily populated battle within the constraints of the game engine. The final battle of New Vegas always bothered me because there were a total of probably 5 to 8 NPCs in this allegedly "epic battle of Hoover Dam," But the developers still did a bang up job working with it and making it play out well despite that constraint.

Gamebryo's most obvious flaw in my experience playing their games has been the sheer lack of NPCs in scenes which really call for a large population.

 

[Someguy37]

Gamebryo's most obvious flaw in my experience playing their games has been the sheer lack of NPCs in scenes which really call for a large population.

That's more been a problem with consoles then the engine.

I mean, the engine does chug a bit once you get up to the 200+ NPC battles, but even as far back as Morrowind, the engine was able to support up to 1000NPCs in the loaded area at one time before it simply stopped applying AI to them.

A lot of the Hoover Dam stuff was also due to maxing out the consoles as well. There is also the problem that most people have shit PCs also, if Steam survey stats are to be believed.

 

[MercenarySnake]

You don't have to. All you have to do, is actually create the narrative. The player has not to take an active part in everything. For example, Dragon Age 1, as many issues as the game has, but the presentation is pretty good. The first few missions of the game start with a war going on, where thousands of troops are fighting each other right under you. And the game has a few of those situations where you see troops marching in to battle, or a siege going on while you sneak in to the town or what ever.

If you can't bend the engine to your narrative, than you have to bend the narrative to your engine. It can work. But it takes effort. Good writers. Good designers.

Dragon Age: Origins definitely did a good job making it feel like a large, heavily populated battle within the constraints of the game engine. The final battle of New Vegas always bothered me because there were a total of probably 5 to 8 NPCs in this allegedly "epic battle of Hoover Dam," But the developers still did a bang up job working with it and making it play out well despite that constraint.

Gamebryo's most obvious flaw in my experience playing their games has been the sheer lack of NPCs in scenes which really call for a large population.

Same thing with "cities" consisting of around 10 people with a few houses and a place for the Jarl.

 

[omegaspruz]

Here is a question to everyone:

Would you prefer a witcher style open world, where you can have hundreds of NPCs but them all lack character and have little to now interactivity. Meanwhile having very well written few characters who are quest givers and have names(duh!)

Or a Fallout 3 style open world, where you have town such as Rivet City with 10 NPCs(yes there are more, not the point) but everyone has 20 scripts attached to them so they interact with the environment and go to sleep in their designated beds etc etc.

I am personally divided. Sometimes the static nature of Witcher may pull you out, but because of the tight story of Geralt it always pulled me back in.

 

[omegaspruz]

You don't have to. All you have to do, is actually create the narrative. The player has not to take an active part in everything. For example, Dragon Age 1, as many issues as the game has, but the presentation is pretty good. The first few missions of the game start with a war going on, where thousands of troops are fighting each other right under you. And the game has a few of those situations where you see troops marching in to battle, or a siege going on while you sneak in to the town or what ever.

If you can't bend the engine to your narrative, than you have to bend the narrative to your engine. It can work. But it takes effort. Good writers. Good designers.

Dragon Age: Origins definitely did a good job making it feel like a large, heavily populated battle within the constraints of the game engine. The final battle of New Vegas always bothered me because there were a total of probably 5 to 8 NPCs in this allegedly "epic battle of Hoover Dam," But the developers still did a bang up job working with it and making it play out well despite that constraint.

Gamebryo's most obvious flaw in my experience playing their games has been the sheer lack of NPCs in scenes which really call for a large population.

Same thing with "cities" consisting of around 10 people with a few houses and a place for the Jarl.

To be fair I always thought it was just Bethesda laziness.

 

[Askorti]

Here is a question to everyone:

Would you prefer a witcher style open world, where you can have hundreds of NPCs but them all lack character and have little to now interactivity. Meanwhile having very well written few characters who are quest givers and have names(duh!)

Or a Fallout 3 style open world, where you have town such as Rivet City with 10 NPCs(yes there are more, not the point) but everyone has 20 scripts attached to them so they interact with the environment and go to sleep in their designated beds etc etc.

I am personally divided. Sometimes the static nature of Witcher may pull you out, but because of the tight story of Geralt it always pulled me back in.

I will go with Gothic, with lots of NPCs with AI attached to them. And that was well over a decade ago...

 

[PossibleCabbage]

The final battle of New Vegas always bothered me because there were a total of probably 5 to 8 NPCs in this allegedly "epic battle of Hoover Dam," But the developers still did a bang up job working with it and making it play out well despite that constraint.

The thing to keep in mind is that the entire battle doesn't take place at the Dam itself. Per the NCR Radio broadcast, the Legion also attacks north of the dam (Camp Golf) and south of it (Novac). It's just that the Courier can only be in one place at a time. The Legion likely learned their lesson from the last time where pretty much their entire army was lured into the Boulder City trap, so they weren't going to commit all of their forces to the frontal assault, and the NCR's reconnaissance indicated they needed to defend more than just the dam.

 

[omegaspruz]

Admittedly I have never played Gothic. I should check it out.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Here is a question to everyone:

Would you prefer a witcher style open world, where you can have hundreds of NPCs but them all lack character and have little to now interactivity. Meanwhile having very well written few characters who are quest givers and have names(duh!)

Or a Fallout 3 style open world, where you have town such as Rivet City with 10 NPCs(yes there are more, not the point) but everyone has 20 scripts attached to them so they interact with the environment and go to sleep in their designated beds etc etc.

I am personally divided. Sometimes the static nature of Witcher may pull you out, but because of the tight story of Geralt it always pulled me back in.

Or a Fallout 4 world, with hundreds of NPCs that all lack character and have little to no interactivity while having zero well-written characters who dole out MMORPG grind quests!