Fallout 76

[Sly Boots]

This is going to be a train wreck, isn't it?

[Jez]

If this was released 5 years ago it would have been hugely popular. Riding on that new wave of survival type games that had come out then. Maybe it'll take off and be pretty good in time but it's another ongoing commitment that they've signed themselves up for when they will be making other things.

[Wrathbone]

it's another ongoing commitment that they've signed themselves up for when they will be making other things.

Good point. Even if it's given decent support, I can't imagine the likes of Todd Howard (the one person there that gives me any faith in their games) being heavily involved with it after the first six months when he's needed on Starfield and ES6. At that point I expect it will be treated similarly to Elder Scrolls Online, which started badly and has ended up somewhere between reasonable and mediocre.

I keep thinking back to when Bethesda made Oblivion, and before its release I listened to a tonne of interviews with Todd Howard and Pete Hines where they were both eager and excited about what they were making, and they were both obviously strongly invested in the quality of the design decisions they were making. It was fantastic to listen to. By the time we got to Skyrim, Todd and Pete did the interview circuit again and Todd still had that game design fire, but Pete Hines was far more business-oriented. This is going to be great for Bethesda, this is a challenge to our competitors, etc. And now Pete Hines seems to have been entirely consumed by the corporate machine. It's sad to have watched his trajectory from an outside perspective. I do think Todd Howard honestly cares about making a great game, but I get the impression Pete Hines has stomped the corporate boot on him and demanded an online survival sim because that's what the numbers say will make the most money right now.

[Sly Boots]

Maybe made money a few years ago when they started work on it, but it feels like this will be released right when that genre is fading a fair bit. I look forward to the Fallout Battle Royale game in 2025...

[Raid]

Yeah, I guess that's the issue with big studios trying to jump on trends. Their games tend to have longer development cycles so they risk a trend being over by the time they get to a publishing stage. I have to wonder if they're rushing Fallout 76 out the door because the survival game trend ended quite a while ago, hence why they don't seem to have much faith in their own product. Either they just want rid, or they're hoping to capitalise on people growing tired of existing games.

[Jez]

I think the survival type game still has plenty of legs in it but it needs to be something special. I feel that Bethesda are going to push something fairly generic out the door, and hope that their name will carry the products sales. Not for me though.

[Mantis]

They're not going to pick up many players who are tired of the genre by releasing a buggy mess that doesn't do anything all that interesting or new. If anything it will just be an epitah for the genre and really solidfy how much people aren't bothered by it anymore.

[Lee]

For a big studio to jump a bandwagon they have the resources to do it quickly it's the bean counters at the top that say if yay/nae to it. And that's well after the sales figures of said bandwagon is finally at it's peaks. These people never think long term but short term. Hence why they always miss out

For me Todd is becoming more like Peter Molyneux in that they both over hype and sell their games and they come out needing far more work and stuff missing. I can't be the only one coming to that conclusion am I?

[DjchunKfunK]

I don't think Howard hypes BGS games that much, both Fallout 4 and Skyrim mostly hit expectation for me. The games continue to be buggy and there is a discussion to be had around how much that is still acceptable, but that's a separate issue.

I think in Fallout 76's case the hype has hardly been there. Added together with the fact that people are still not clear what this game is about and you have one of the most muted Bethesda releases in a long time.

[Wrathbone]

I can't recall a single time Todd Howard has hyped something to the point of being misleading or an outright lie, which is what Molyneux does (or did, now he's finally shut up).

The bugs have never bothered me that much, save for the rare showstopper. Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are ultimately big scrappy playgrounds, and when you have that level of freedom in terms of what the player can do in and to the world, it's reasonable to expect bugs. Gamebryo doesn't help, admittedly, but these are not linear, polished, narrative-driven games, and it's not entirely fair to hold them to the same level of scrutiny as something more focused. I'd rather they continue with the scrappy sandbox approach and take risks rather than limit freedom for the sake of quality.

That being said, I fully expect Fallout 76 to collapse horribly in technical terms.

[Lee]

You can't? Mind the release hype for Skyrim "those mountains you can walk on them" You can't. haven't you seen the various memes now of Todd brought about from the things he said. Or the Fallout 4 hype of "It just works" about the settlement feature which clearly didn't as it was buggy as hell. I can't trust a word he says as I just see a non balding Peter being interviewed
He is going the same way as Peter did. He's as charismatic and does the same word play in hyping his games.

[The Jackal]

The PC beta launch has shit the bed, apparently, and everyone who pre-loaded and made ready was made to download everything all over again, right as the play-window for today started ticking down.

[Raid]

but these are not linear, polished, narrative-driven games, and it's not entirely fair to hold them to the same level of scrutiny as something more focused.

I disagree with that; a game should be judged on its own merits, sure, but the player experience should always be of concern. Bugs can ruin an experience for me, particularly if, say, something doesn't trigger correctly and I have to repeat twenty minutes of gameplay. I recall coming across a level-breaking bug in the first CoD:Black Ops campaign (which would have forced me to repeat the level entirely), and I put the controller down and never went back to it.

I honestly don't remember coming across a single bug in Breath of the Wild, a game with similar non-linearity, breadth and variety, and it's one of the reasons I hold it in such high regard.

[Wrathbone]

Breath of the Wild is a remarkable achievement, particularly with regards to the lack of bugs. But even with that I don't think it's anywhere near the same sort of bug-prone complexity that Bethesda's open world games have. E.g. The quests in BotW have very little branching possibilities and generally don't interweave with each other, whereas Beth's games having hundreds of quests, most with a large number of trackable factors that depend on all sorts of things, and many of them impact each other. There are exponentially more ways for the quests in Beth games to go wrong than in BotW.

Similarly, the NPCs in BotW are fairly limited in what they do and how you interact with them. If you attack someone in a village, I can't remember exactly what happens but I assume they flail around a bit or admonish you and then go back to what they were doing. If, on the other hand, you attack someone in a town in Skyrim, or steal an apple, or move one of the tens of thousands of items you're not allowed to, the entire town goes berserk. Guards hunt you down and attempt to attack or arrest you depending on your response, which is then tracked in your current and overall crime stats, which impacts responses from other NPCs and factions, etc. I'm not saying it's better or worse than BotW, I'm saying it's demonstrably more complex, and that complexity is what makes it understandably more prone to issues than something streamlined. I'd rather they kept the complexity on the basis that there will be some issues than simplify it to reduce possible issues.

Also... Gamebryo. ¬_¬

[DjchunKfunK]

Yeah BotW is an amazing game, but it is creating a totally different world to the ones Bethesda creates.

Back to Fallout 76.



Good job Bethesda.