Sarkus said:
You act like this was all a big like on Bethesda's part. As someone who was around here when Bethesda first acquired the rights to do Fallout 3, you can't pretend that the reaction by this community was anything but overwhelmingly negative.
I never said it was. I was talking about Bethesda's attitude towards us, not vice versa.
Though overwhelmingly negative is a harsh term. Anyone who has been here since the start would remember the period when we actually enforced, by rule, the "wait and see" policy, strictly banning all jumping to conclusions on Bethesda having the license. It's funny how people conveniently forget that.
Sarkus said:
No matter what details or decisions Bethesda revealed, the response was almost always to express outrage.
Was it?
Reaction to the PIPBoy design? Positive. Reaction to the news Emil was the lead designer? Positive. Reaction to a number of things in the demo, including world design? Positive. Reactions to the teaser concept art and trailer? Mixed, but positive. As recent as
this? Positive with footnotes, until Bodybag derailed it.
I am sick and tired of people's selective memories. We have been consistent all along. When Bethesda bought the license, what did I majority of us say? That we
feared that Bethesda would turn this into a FP RT game. What did Bethesda do? Turn it into a FP RT game.
Don't come to me complaining about us jumping to conclusions. Yes, we did express our fears early, perhaps too early. But guess what? All those fears came true. I personally waved the flag of "wait and see", until Roshambo ran in to push my face into reality and tell me I was being a naive fool by hoping Bethesda would not make stupid decision. He may have been overly negative, but guess what? He was also right.
So what's up with you telling me Bethesda "can't bother to listen to complaints" anymore when we have been very clear about what we prefer? From the start, all we have done is digest all sides of the Fallout franchise. Not just the setting, which Bethesda prefers, no, all sides of it. Gameplay, narrative, mechanics, setting, you name it. We're not even pretending to know design better than anyone, we're simply distilling.
What you're basically saying is that Bethesda shouldn't bother to listen to us because what we have to say doesn't fit what they want to do. Fine. But then don't pretend that's because we're overly critical or because we hate Bethesda.
There is a core to Fallout that we have been trying to distil for years. Bethesda ignored that effort to go their own way. That's fine, they own the license, that's their choice. But our message isn't a destructive one, it's a constructive one. We're not complaining because of what Bethesda does, we're complaining of what they don't do. If Bethesda held up the flag of Tim Cain's p&p vision, we wouldn't be in this mess.
It's all that simple. It's nonsense to state that it is Bethesda who has to move on from the same complaints over and over, when all we have done is provide an alternative view of what the franchise should be. It's nonsense to try and hold them up as the victim here, when it's not actually about them at all, it's about what the franchise actually is, as opposed to what Fallout 3 is.
This isn't the Codex. We don't hate Bethesda for what they are. Except the Codexers amongst us, none of us would actually care about Bethesda. It's the Fallout franchise we, collectively, care about. The moment you actually realise that, the moment you start to understand what our relationship with Bethesda actually is. Because "you all just complain a lot" is only part of it, not the whole. Not by a long shot.
