General Gaming News

[Wrathbone]

It’s a proper mess, by most accounts. I’ve been playing Fallout 4 on PC for the last week and made sure that I didn’t use any mods that use the script extender because that has inevitably broken, along with all mods that depend on it. Nevertheless, the update has disabled the mods I was using. Thankfully my save still works, whereas others have been less lucky.

Coincidentally, my dad has been playing it on Xbox at the same time. He’s just gone to one of the new locations only to find that it’s missing a bunch of textures, with giant red exclamation marks in their place. It’s hilarious that the next gen update was delayed by over a year and this is the state it’s in. I love Bethesda RPGs, but fuck me, only they could take a game that the community has spent years fixing and improving, forcibly break all that, then proudly throw in some new content that they’ve also broken. Great work, lads, top quality as always!

[Snowy]

It is a spectacularly bad patch. Considering the size of Bethesda their approach to quality control is mesmerisingly shit. They all know that the TV series is being made which could bring a revamped interest in a whole series of games the most recent of which (discounting FO76 because, well, it is wank right?) has had some basic stuff omitted for years and has been left to the community to fix. Why has this patch not been in the works for fucking ages, undergoing intensive testing and getting polished to a high gloss and released ahead of or at the same time as this gargantuan marketing boost is released on Prime? How many gaming IPs get put on the map like this ffs?

I was itching to play FO4 again before the credits rolled on the first episode. I reinstalled, but it just wouldn't work in 32:9 so have been biding my time waiting on the patch. Downloaded on Thursday evening, fired the game up, set it to 32:9 5120x1440 resolution, and started a new game. The first issue I come across is when I get to naming my character - the field to do so is off the screen because they haven't re-sized the UI to run at this resolution. I fixed it - quit, restarted in a lower windowed res, did my stats and name, saved, quit, went back to the proper res and carried on. Fuck me though, what an incredibly basic thing to have not even tested (or worse tested and decided that it was not worth fixing).

If I released something in that state, I could well lose my job. If I released something in that state with the eyes of the world on it (OK exaggeration, but hey here's potentially a whole new wave of potential customers for Bethesda and they release this shit???) then I would expect to be fired. Apparently Nexus Mods saw almost DDOS levels of demand for FO4 mod content since the TV show was released.

What a bizarre company. That they have never addressed their 'don't give a fuck' attitude to quality control has always amazed me, but to retain it while they get this publicity boost is absolutely bananas. They should adopt a strapline for their company - I suggest Bethesda - Ehhhhh that'll do...

[Alan]

Apparently Fallout 76 has a button to boost you past the early levels. I’m a wee bit curious of it because of that. Maybe one day….

I started New Vegas a month or so ago. I never played it because Fallout 3 was shit and left such a bad taste then it went to the “I’ll try it one day” category. I didn’t get that far in it but I’m so pig headed that I stopped playing to not be one of the “let’s play fallout because of the show” folk.

[Animalmother]

I tried 76 about a year or so ago, gave up after a few hours as it was shite. Doubt that's changed.

Apparently the update was ready to come out last year but they delayed it until the release of the TV show. Did they just sit on it for a year without using that time to refine it? It's Bethesda, stupid question! I see a lot of sites recommending not downloading the update or roll back to a previous version, which is apparently a ball ache on Steam.

[DjchunKfunK]

It is a spectacularly bad patch. Considering the size of Bethesda their approach to quality control is mesmerisingly shit. They all know that the TV series is being made which could bring a revamped interest in a whole series of games the most recent of which (discounting FO76 because, well, it is wank right?) has had some basic stuff omitted for years and has been left to the community to fix. Why has this patch not been in the works for fucking ages, undergoing intensive testing and getting polished to a high gloss and released ahead of or at the same time as this gargantuan marketing boost is released on Prime? How many gaming IPs get put on the map like this ffs?

I was itching to play FO4 again before the credits rolled on the first episode. I reinstalled, but it just wouldn't work in 32:9 so have been biding my time waiting on the patch. Downloaded on Thursday evening, fired the game up, set it to 32:9 5120x1440 resolution, and started a new game. The first issue I come across is when I get to naming my character - the field to do so is off the screen because they haven't re-sized the UI to run at this resolution. I fixed it - quit, restarted in a lower windowed res, did my stats and name, saved, quit, went back to the proper res and carried on. Fuck me though, what an incredibly basic thing to have not even tested (or worse tested and decided that it was not worth fixing).

If I released something in that state, I could well lose my job. If I released something in that state with the eyes of the world on it (OK exaggeration, but hey here's potentially a whole new wave of potential customers for Bethesda and they release this shit???) then I would expect to be fired. Apparently Nexus Mods saw almost DDOS levels of demand for FO4 mod content since the TV show was released.

What a bizarre company. That they have never addressed their 'don't give a fuck' attitude to quality control has always amazed me, but to retain it while they get this publicity boost is absolutely bananas. They should adopt a strapline for their company - I suggest Bethesda - Ehhhhh that'll do...

I don't think this patch is really aimed at people playing on PC, they seem to have focused mostly on console stuff from what I have seen. Also I think the media, and by extension perhaps Bethesda, have done a poor job of communicating what this is. There seems to have been a general feeling that this was going to be some massive patch that fixed loads of long standing issues when really it's just a graphics/resolution boost with a couple of bug fixes.

[Wrathbone]

I don't think this patch is really aimed at people playing on PC, they seem to have focused mostly on console stuff from what I have seen.

That's the most dismaying thing about it - they've bust a load of stuff on PC for little to no tangible benefit. They've added a smattering of Creation Club mini-quests and loot, but that's about it.

[Animalmother]

Coincidentally, my dad has been playing it on Xbox at the same time. He’s just gone to one of the new locations only to find that it’s missing a bunch of textures, with giant red exclamation marks in their place.

Have come across this. There's some new weapons available where the model doesn't render so you're holding nothing and shooting red exclamation marks at people. The stuttering is also getting very annoying, the game freezes for a second or two at random times but seems to be worse in the settlements.

[Wrathbone]

I’ve also had stuttering, as well as multiple crashes to desktop since the update. Had played for about 30 hours prior to update with none of those issues.

[Snowy]

A load of old fanny

I don't think this patch is really aimed at people playing on PC, they seem to have focused mostly on console stuff from what I have seen. Also I think the media, and by extension perhaps Bethesda, have done a poor job of communicating what this is. There seems to have been a general feeling that this was going to be some massive patch that fixed loads of long standing issues when really it's just a graphics/resolution boost with a couple of bug fixes.

Dude the bloody thing was 14Gb. And they have been sat on it by all accounts for a year waiting for the TV show to be released. Why the fuck haven't they been polishing it to a high gloss for the past year? Like I say, if I signed off something so riddled not just with bugs but with really fucking obvious bugs that even the most cursory suite of test scenarios would flag, I would genuinely expect to be sacked. This is (allegedly) a AAA developer, there is absolutely no excuse here.

[Animalmother]

Microsoft's "hands off" approach to the game studios they own is bizarre. This is how we get utter shit like Redfall, dull old shit like Starfield and buggy shit like Fallout. Maybe setting quality standards to studio heads would be a good start. Also allowing a TV studio make a show of your flagship IP that's so utterly disconnected from the source material wasn't such a good idea either. Nobody's rushing to play Halo by all accounts.

[DjchunKfunK]

A load of old fanny

I don't think this patch is really aimed at people playing on PC, they seem to have focused mostly on console stuff from what I have seen. Also I think the media, and by extension perhaps Bethesda, have done a poor job of communicating what this is. There seems to have been a general feeling that this was going to be some massive patch that fixed loads of long standing issues when really it's just a graphics/resolution boost with a couple of bug fixes.

Dude the bloody thing was 14Gb. And they have been sat on it by all accounts for a year waiting for the TV show to be released. Why the fuck haven't they been polishing it to a high gloss for the past year?

Money. Hard to justify spending a lot of resources on testing a patch for a nine year old game.

[Animalmother]

Anyone else not able to open the Mods section today? Just says "operation could not be completed". Mods I have already installed are still working though.

[Hatredsheart]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/starf ... this-fall/

[Sly Boots]

It's hard to imagine anyone being that bothered about that :/

[DjchunKfunK]

It's hard to imagine anyone being that bothered about that :/

I think there will be plenty of people looking forward to it. Starfield is one of those games about which the agenda was set by the people who didn't like it and ignores the thousands of people who did like it. Because the general consensus was that it would be a hit in the same way Skyrim was when it wasn't that was spun into it being a game nobody liked.