Dr Fallout
Centurion
Always weak.
Wasted Potential
- Thread starter Empty09
- Start date
I didn't say that.
Let me put it in another way.
Warren Spector was the director of Deus Ex, yes, but he was also the director of Invisible War, basically the Oblivion to the original's Morrowind. And he then made Epic Mickey, which was full of faults that he saw as selling points and so didn't bother to try to fix them in the sequel.
Todd Howard was the director of Morrowind, then he made Oblivion and he now will never leave Oblivion.
Warren's ego stop him from seeing his faults, Howard's simplicity stop him from making them even more blatant.
Again, I'm not seeing how this is defending FO4's boring, vapid world with shallow mechanics.
Todd will
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
Howard's ego is actually making his games worse everytime. He seems to worry more about WOWing shill journalists than actually delivering a good game or at least actually making a proper Fallout game.
At least Warren Spector has a good game under his belt....
At least Warren Spector has a good game under his belt....
Morrowind was a game he worked on, yes. But he was not creating the loore or concepts for it. Those already existed with the source material. He continued the work of other people, instead of creating his own franchise. And the first project he worked on, was a licence based on the Terminator franchise. He doesn't seem to be an overly creative guy. But he seems to know what actually sells, I have to give him that. He is aparantly a very skilled business man. So Bethesdas success as gamedeveloper today, is probably most of his work. No doubts about that.
The other side, would be Timothy Cain I guess. Extremly creative, very experienced as designer, any of his games have been focused to deliver deep and engaging role playing experiences. And not just with one kind of gameplay, but actually in different mediums, from top down with turn based, like Fallout and Temple of Elemental Evil to real time and first/third person with Vampire - The Masquerade. But, I guess it seems, he was not a very great buisness man.
Just compare the portfolio of Tim with Todd, and it becomes apparant that Todd is what I would describe as a, one trick ponny, with a keen senses on, what sells.
Well, you will hardly find a game developer out there who hasn't created at least ONE failure or bland product. That's simply how it goes. Hellgate London was a rather mediocre Diablo clone for example. But, it doesn't change the fact that Brevik was part of a team that made one of the most popular action games out there, which most probably defined a whole genre even. In my opinion, this deserves a lot of respect I would say. And gives him some credit.
I just question the quality that was still left in Morrowind from previous Elder Scrolls works to be Todds work actually, as I feel that given the source material, he was actually responsible for the decline of the Elder Scrolls as a whole. Elde Scrolls was Weavers baby. It is hard to say how much of Weaver was still in Morrowind. However, if I remember correctly he was still President of Bethesda Softworks during the development of Morrowind. Nonetheless, the change from Daggerfall to Morrowind was quite huge in some parts. And most of the changes, can be probably directly releated to Todd and his experience with one of his previous projects:
(...)
Perhaps most distressing to fans of Arena and Daggerfall was the lack of roguelike elements. In lieu of creating a massive roguelike world, Morrowind instead shifted to a comparatively small, hand-crafted static world centered around the island of Vvardenfell in the province of Morrowind. Cited reasons for doing so was an attempt at making more unique NPCs and quests. While in some cases this was accomplished effectively, there were still far too many filler NPCs to give the impression of a fully functioning virtual world. The tradeoff between the roguelike Daggerfall and hand-set Morrowind wasn't enough, and players ended up with a much smaller world to explore.
Character skills were also pulled back from the 38 skills in Daggerfall to 27 in Morrowind. Most of the communication skills were removed, leaving only Mercantile and Speechcraft. Most of the old communication-based skills were language skills for most of the species of Tamriel. Contrary to first impressions, however, high language skills mostly reduced the likelihood of creatures attacking you on sight as opposed to actually allowing you to speak with them. Instead of taking the opportunity to support these skills and giving them an interactive application, they were removed.
Much of these changes can be attributed to to Todd Howard's sudden promotion to Design Lead on the project. His experiences with the Terminator shooters could be seen as Bethesda effectively turned the Elder Scrolls series from an adventure game with roleplaying elements into a shooter with roleplaying elements.
(...)
http://www.nma-fallout.com/showthread.php?175874-Don-t-Buy-the-Hype
And it is not much of a surprise, that Oblivion was even more of a simplification to Morrowind, which culminated in to Skyrim and now from Fallout 3 to Fallout 4. That's a rather telling progression in my opinion.
I am just saying, if I ceated a deep and complex RPG experience rooted in some PnP concept, he is not the kind of person that I would trust to make a sequel to that. But, if I bought a franchise like Fallout and wanted to sell it to as many people as possible, than I would probably chose him. This seems to be where his skills as developer are. Changing something so it suits the needs of the masses.
The other side, would be Timothy Cain I guess. Extremly creative, very experienced as designer, any of his games have been focused to deliver deep and engaging role playing experiences. And not just with one kind of gameplay, but actually in different mediums, from top down with turn based, like Fallout and Temple of Elemental Evil to real time and first/third person with Vampire - The Masquerade. But, I guess it seems, he was not a very great buisness man.
Just compare the portfolio of Tim with Todd, and it becomes apparant that Todd is what I would describe as a, one trick ponny, with a keen senses on, what sells.
Well, you will hardly find a game developer out there who hasn't created at least ONE failure or bland product. That's simply how it goes. Hellgate London was a rather mediocre Diablo clone for example. But, it doesn't change the fact that Brevik was part of a team that made one of the most popular action games out there, which most probably defined a whole genre even. In my opinion, this deserves a lot of respect I would say. And gives him some credit.
I just question the quality that was still left in Morrowind from previous Elder Scrolls works to be Todds work actually, as I feel that given the source material, he was actually responsible for the decline of the Elder Scrolls as a whole. Elde Scrolls was Weavers baby. It is hard to say how much of Weaver was still in Morrowind. However, if I remember correctly he was still President of Bethesda Softworks during the development of Morrowind. Nonetheless, the change from Daggerfall to Morrowind was quite huge in some parts. And most of the changes, can be probably directly releated to Todd and his experience with one of his previous projects:
(...)
Perhaps most distressing to fans of Arena and Daggerfall was the lack of roguelike elements. In lieu of creating a massive roguelike world, Morrowind instead shifted to a comparatively small, hand-crafted static world centered around the island of Vvardenfell in the province of Morrowind. Cited reasons for doing so was an attempt at making more unique NPCs and quests. While in some cases this was accomplished effectively, there were still far too many filler NPCs to give the impression of a fully functioning virtual world. The tradeoff between the roguelike Daggerfall and hand-set Morrowind wasn't enough, and players ended up with a much smaller world to explore.
Character skills were also pulled back from the 38 skills in Daggerfall to 27 in Morrowind. Most of the communication skills were removed, leaving only Mercantile and Speechcraft. Most of the old communication-based skills were language skills for most of the species of Tamriel. Contrary to first impressions, however, high language skills mostly reduced the likelihood of creatures attacking you on sight as opposed to actually allowing you to speak with them. Instead of taking the opportunity to support these skills and giving them an interactive application, they were removed.
Much of these changes can be attributed to to Todd Howard's sudden promotion to Design Lead on the project. His experiences with the Terminator shooters could be seen as Bethesda effectively turned the Elder Scrolls series from an adventure game with roleplaying elements into a shooter with roleplaying elements.
(...)
http://www.nma-fallout.com/showthread.php?175874-Don-t-Buy-the-Hype
And it is not much of a surprise, that Oblivion was even more of a simplification to Morrowind, which culminated in to Skyrim and now from Fallout 3 to Fallout 4. That's a rather telling progression in my opinion.
I am just saying, if I ceated a deep and complex RPG experience rooted in some PnP concept, he is not the kind of person that I would trust to make a sequel to that. But, if I bought a franchise like Fallout and wanted to sell it to as many people as possible, than I would probably chose him. This seems to be where his skills as developer are. Changing something so it suits the needs of the masses.
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Earth
Vault Senior Citizen
So...
Is there a case to be made that Todd Howard ruined not only Fallout, but The Elder Scrolls series as well?
Is there a case to be made that Todd Howard ruined not only Fallout, but The Elder Scrolls series as well?
I would say that's pretty obvious.
Earth
Vault Senior Citizen
It's only recently that I've noticed the correlation between Todd and Emil joining Bethesda and the increased suckiness of their games, so apologies if I'm not quite as with it as some of the people here.
farchettiensis
First time out of the vault
-The main character? The intro was beautiful, and what ensued was just... wasted, really, because nothing followed. It's like you're telling a story, and then you go like 'boom!, 200 years, wakes up, gotta find sonny'. That sucks hugely.
-Factions. You don't to go all New Vegas style (which I think is awesome), but come on, this is total garbage.
-Companions. Forgettable, annoying.
I'd say... pretty much everything envolving lore, or its total absence, narrative, character or story writing. It's shallow, and linear. Plus, Bethesda wasted potential not being able to properly imagine a post-apocalyptical world. Besides that, I miss being able to recognize places. In F3, this was a good, though far from ideal, thing, but in F4 (though I've only been to the area twice in real life) it just looks random to me. Beth had no vision whatsoever, and it's design seems, at times, random and fallout-ish.
-Factions. You don't to go all New Vegas style (which I think is awesome), but come on, this is total garbage.
-Companions. Forgettable, annoying.
I'd say... pretty much everything envolving lore, or its total absence, narrative, character or story writing. It's shallow, and linear. Plus, Bethesda wasted potential not being able to properly imagine a post-apocalyptical world. Besides that, I miss being able to recognize places. In F3, this was a good, though far from ideal, thing, but in F4 (though I've only been to the area twice in real life) it just looks random to me. Beth had no vision whatsoever, and it's design seems, at times, random and fallout-ish.
Dr Fallout
Centurion
There are no landmarks in Fallout 4, well there are but they're few and spread between. I loved in NV how I could spot various camps, bases and statues from the distance, enabling me to use them as landmarks for my exploration.
Spacemunkey
Vault Senior Citizen
I know that the combat zone has been said, but I think it goes further than that. I took a bounty to kill some raiders and ended up in the I think Southie Speakeasy full of more raiders and a boxing ring. The thing that made me think that an entire fighting circuit may have been planned was that Piper had ambient dialogue when we walked in saying something along the line of "You could find a worse place to get a drink." I can't say if there are more boxing rings around for sure but this would have been a lot more welcome, for me anyway, then base building.
Canaris
First time out of the vault
Whole fucking game is one big wasted potential.
Dr Fallout
Centurion
Imagine if instead of base building we got ALL the cut content and then some/.
MercenarySnake
Kept you waiting huh?
But then there would only be like..what four settlements and a bunch of rundown one house places? The game is desolate in terms of interaction(and no not with being able to pick up every damn thing you can shovel down your bras and underpants). As in NPCs, quests, dialogue, and then some.
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Dr Fallout
Centurion
Cut content adds entire areas that can be interacted with.
MercenarySnake
Kept you waiting huh?
Why would they cut it? Don't tell me another incoming Fallout Restoration patch. Only this time it's more like for bringing half the game back.
Dr Fallout
Centurion
Oh I see it coming... the Fallout Restoration DLC, 29.99 bucks!
MercenarySnake
Kept you waiting huh?
"Sorry we half assed everything about the game but atleast you can buy this DLC for the rest of the half assed features we cut out of the game!"
Dr Fallout
Centurion
And guess what! It's part of a trilogy...
Khannis
Rebuilding America
Well, at least two half-asses make a whole ass! Right?