Fallout Fallout 4 Thread

[Silverfish]

Does the Bethesda Fallout fan base even like Fallout 4 more than 3 and New Vegas?

More than Fallout 3 for certain. New Vegas is weird as the appeal is completely different for each game.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

avalanche makes AA games, not that it can't look better than AAA:

Bethesda doesn’t make AAA games either. At least budget wise, but they do sell like blockbuster titles.

But I’m not really sure of what your point is. Bethesda already hired them in the past. The point was they’re so stupid they had them make a sequel to a post-apocalyptic franchise they own that nobody really knows or cares about instead of making some spin-off title to the post-apocalyptic franchise they own that sales something around 12 and 13 million copies per game. And with how Starfield development went, and with Elder Scrolls 6 being their next title after that, (when is that coming, like 2026/2027?) they probably should’ve been planning for some new single player Fallout game (or games) to come out during the time between 2015 and 2031/2032 (maybe 2030) when Fallout 6 is coming out. Business wise Bethesda is spending a stupid amount of time between titles, especially when they’re the two franchises that support the whole company. It just doesn’t even make any fucking sense. It’s not like they’re in some kind of Rockstar situation where they can sit back in rack in Rockstar levels of GTA Online money, but for some reason Bethesda Game Studios has shifted to a Rockstar timetable when it comes to game releases.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Bethesda doesn’t make AAA games either. At least budget wise, but they do sell like blockbuster titles.

Not true

Elder Scrolls 6 being their next title after that, (when is that coming, like 2026/2027?)

2028

 

[Vic]

TES is the only franchise they haven't completely fucked up yet

 

[Late Bloomer]

TES is the only franchise they haven't completely fucked up yet

Yah because nuBethesda hasn't actually made a TES game yet. They are going push out yet another stinky turd and everyone will say it's a shit game while playing it for 100's of hours.

 

[deuxhero]

The Fallout 4 update was promised over a year ago. They will certainly fuck it up though.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Bethesda doesn’t make AAA games either. At least budget wise, but they do sell like blockbuster titles.

Not true

Elder Scrolls 6 being their next title after that, (when is that coming, like 2026/2027?)

2028

It is true. Or at least it was true until Starfield. I guess you could say Starfield tipped over into being a AAA production. I’m not sure I buy the rumored cost and staff size of Starfield though given Bethesda’s previous titles. Although even at the rumored number, Bethesda still had a vastly smaller team working on Starfield than the amount of people that worked on AAA titles like GTA5, Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Last of Us 2. I think basically every AC game since 2013’s Black Flag (beside the recent Mirage) has had more staff than Starfield.

 

[tritosine2k]

avalanche makes AA games, not that it can't look better than AAA:

.

And why make a car game instead of silver shroud you can also play as ordinary character?

Who cares about avalanche n+1 deferred looking rendering engine that did fuck all with its realtime focus while John's RAGE has unmatched vista and distance rendering? Give me RAGE 1 with prerender weather anytime over "alsoran" deferred engine games.

Homefront 2 has prerender and it was obviously worth it . Will be the same on mobile, realtime AAA was just corner cutting, not even worth giving up MSAA.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Does the Bethesda Fallout fan base even like Fallout 4 more than 3 and New Vegas? I can get Bethesda putting Skyrim on everything, it was by a wide margin the best selling game they ever made. But Fallout 4 sales are pretty similar to Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 - 12.4 million.
Fallout: New Vegas - 11.6 million.
Fallout 4 - 25 million.

https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226290/fallout/

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

avalanche makes AA games, not that it can't look better than AAA:

.

And why make a car game instead of silver shroud you can also play as ordinary character?

Who cares about avalanche n+1 deferred looking rendering engine that did fuck all with its realtime focus while John's RAGE has unmatched vista and distance rendering? Give me RAGE 1 with prerender weather anytime over "alsoran" deferred engine games.

Homefront 2 has prerender and it was obviously worth it . Will be the same on mobile, realtime AAA was just corner cutting.

Given that collection of words I’m going to guess there’s a language barrier issue going on and you’ve got no idea what I was saying. I certainly don’t know what you’re saying.

The previous point was that Bethesda contracted Avalanche Studios Group to make a game. For some reason the game they had them make was Rage 2. Despite Rage 1 selling like shit. What Bethesda should have done, especially if they know they aren’t getting another single player Fallout game out until maybe early 2030, is have Avalanche make some kind of Fallout open world action game instead of some kind of Rage game. They’re both games that take place in post apocalyptic setting, but one series sells, and one series doesn’t sell. Having Avalanche and id make a Rage 2 instead of some type of Fallout spin-off just illustrates how fucking stupid Bethesda is. If Bethesda had them make some Fallout spin-off game (coming out of their Mad Max game) where you can drive around the wasteland in a assortment of vehicles, and fly around the wasteland in airships and vertibirds, it would’ve been met with more than just confusion by the audience they were trying to sell to.

Let’s say you’re running a video game publisher, Okaying projects. You’ve got two different series that are both first person shooters, they’re both open worlds, and they’re both set in a post-apocalyptic world. One of the series shipped 12 million copies in its previous outing, and you don’t think your studio is going to have the next main single player game out in this series for maybe another ten years. The other series your studio kind of killed before buying it up, the last (and at this point only) game in the series maybe sold around 2 million copies, and let’s say it’s been like four or five years since it came out. You’re planning on contracting a studio that makes open world sandbox games to do a new title. Do you have them make a follow-up to the older thing that sold terribly and isn’t well remembered by the few people that even played it, or do you have the same studio make some open world sandbox action game in the setting that’s sold over ten million copies for each of the three games you’ve released in that series so far? I’d say the smart money would be on Avalanche and id making a Fallout: Something. But Bethesda is apparently run by morons, so they had them make Rage 2.

It’s just stupid. Bethesda having them make Rage 2 is like if Midway had Midway Studios Los Angeles make a game exactly like Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, but instead of it being branded as a Mortal Kombat game it was branded as War Gods 2.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Bethesda doesn’t make AAA games either. At least budget wise, but they do sell like blockbuster titles.

Starfield budget started at 200 million $ and only grew higher, most likely to 400 million with marketing costs.

Also 500 devs worked on it for ~ 8 years.

These are AAA numbers if I ever saw any.

Btw: Skyrim budget was around 100 million $ (development & marketing). These are also AAA numbers, especially in reality of 2011.

For comparison an AA title costs from several million (Greedfall costed 5, Deadfire 5,5) up to more than a dozen million $.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Does the Bethesda Fallout fan base even like Fallout 4 more than 3 and New Vegas? I can get Bethesda putting Skyrim on everything, it was by a wide margin the best selling game they ever made. But Fallout 4 sales are pretty similar to Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 - 12.4 million.
Fallout: New Vegas - 11.6 million.
Fallout 4 - 25 million.

https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226290/fallout/

It's kinda terrible to think that FO4 sold 42 times as many copies as FO1, if we are to trust the figures at that site.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Fallout 3 - 12.4 million.
Fallout: New Vegas - 11.6 million.
Fallout 4 - 25 million.

https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226290/fallout/

It's kinda terrible to think that FO4 sold 42 times as many copies as FO1, if we are to trust the figures at that site.

Probably at certain point they stopped tracking F1&2 sales. Remeber that these games were sold in the times when market was much smaller. They were also offered for free on Epic and sold in bundles.

The games were much more influential than the meagre sales numbers would suggest.

 

[ropetight]

Bethesda doesn’t make AAA games either. At least budget wise, but they do sell like blockbuster titles.

Starfield budget started at 200 million $ and only grew higher, most likely to 400 million with marketing costs.

Also 500 devs worked on it for ~ 8 years.

These are AAA numbers if I ever saw any.

Btw: Skyrim budget was around 100 million $ (development & marketing). These are also AAA numbers, especially in reality of 2011.

For comparison an AA title costs from several million (Greedfall costed 5, Deadfire 5,5) up to more than a dozen million $.

F4 was on every cable network for months.
Marketing costs were on par with GTAV, but somehow I doubt development budget was on par.
Bethesda probably doubles devleopment budget with marketing, it uld be interesting to see those numbers separately.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Fallout 3 - 12.4 million.
Fallout: New Vegas - 11.6 million.
Fallout 4 - 25 million.

https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226290/fallout/

It's kinda terrible to think that FO4 sold 42 times as many copies as FO1, if we are to trust the figures at that site.

Probably at certain point they stopped tracking F1&2 sales. Remeber that these games were sold in the times when market was much smaller. They were also offered for free on Epic and sold in bundles.

The games were much more influential than the meagre sales numbers would suggest.

Yeah, for sure the market is enormous compared to what it was mid-90s, but still, I doubt it has expanded by a factor 40, could be wrong and google tells the answer. Not denying their influence, either.

 

[Lord_Potato]

F4 was on every cable network for months.
Marketing costs were on par with GTAV, but somehow I doubt development budget was on par.
Bethesda probably doubles devleopment budget with marketing, it uld be interesting to see those numbers separately.

I read that for Skyrim it was 85 millions for development, 15 for marketing. Don't know about F4.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I read that for Skyrim it was 85 millions for development, 15 for marketing.

Completely unrealistic ratio, to put it mildly.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I read that for Skyrim it was 85 millions for development, 15 for marketing.

Completely unrealistic ratio, to put it mildly.

Different times.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Absolutely not. Skyrim is already past me working in gaming, and at the moment I quit such games would already have 1:1, at least. There's absolutely no way for a big movie or game to have only 15% of total budget spent on marketing.

 

[ropetight]

I read that for Skyrim it was 85 millions for development, 15 for marketing.

Completely unrealistic ratio, to put it mildly.

Yeah, that makes it look like they didn't do much marketing at all besides game journos and conventions for Skyrim at the beggining.
With F4 they upped their marketing game by the order of the magnitude.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Bethesda doesn’t make AAA games either. At least budget wise, but they do sell like blockbuster titles.

Starfield budget started at 200 million $ and only grew higher, most likely to 400 million with marketing costs.

Also 500 devs worked on it for ~ 8 years.

These are AAA numbers if I ever saw any.

Btw: Skyrim budget was around 100 million $ (development & marketing). These are also AAA numbers, especially in reality of 2011.

For comparison an AA title costs from several million (Greedfall costed 5, Deadfire 5,5) up to more than a dozen million $.

I saw those Starfield number, but they’re just someone’s estimated and not actually numbers. Starfield also wasn’t being developed for 8 years, and they didn’t start development until sometime after Fallout 4 was finished in October or November of 2015, and Starfield was finished sometime in August of this year. And even then I doubt they went into full production right away.

I’d be surprised if Bethesda had 500 people working on Starfield. While making Starfield Bethesda Game Studios (which doesn’t have 500 employees) was also doing working on Fallout 76, and we’ve seen footage of them also working on Elder Scrolls 6 back in 2019. For comparison, Fallout 4 had a developed team of just over 100 people, as did Skyrim. I’m not sure going into Starfield they expanded their team size on one title by five while also making two other games at the same time to some degree.

The $200 million budget is just a guess based on the budgets of other games. And I’ve no idea why you’re doubling the estimated budget you can find online.

Did you know in movies a budget of $100 million, and this was in the mid to late 2000s and early 2010s, was considered a mid range movie and not a big budget movie? And that’s just production budget. If Skyrim had a budget of $100 million, I’d guess the majority of that was marketing. Skyrim did have a pretty big marketing push, it was one of the few video games you’d see commercials for on network television. And you almost never see video game commercials on network television where air time cost more. It was that one live-action commercial they did, saw that on tv quite a bit for a while.

 

[Butter]

Starfield: 3903 professionals in the credits

https://www.mobygames.com/game/208288/starfield/credits/windows/?autoplatform=true


Cyberpunk 2077: 3184 professionals in the credits

https://www.mobygames.com/game/128136/cyberpunk-2077/credits/windows/?autoplatform=true


Baldur's Gate 3: 2333 professionals in the credits

https://www.mobygames.com/game/150689/baldurs-gate-iii/credits/windows/?autoplatform=true


The Last of Us Part 2: 2168 professionals in the credits

https://www.mobygames.com/game/1467...t-ii/credits/playstation-4/?autoplatform=true


Deathloop: 1511 professionals in the credits

https://www.mobygames.com/game/172205/deathloop/credits/windows/?autoplatform=true


Skyrim: 782 professionals in the credits

https://www.mobygames.com/game/53545/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/credits/windows/?autoplatform=true


Pillars of Eternity 2: 460 professionals in the credits

https://www.mobygames.com/game/1083...i-deadfire/credits/windows/?autoplatform=true



Guys, I think Starfield might be a AAA game.

 

[Hellraiser]

It's kinda terrible to think that FO4 sold 42 times as many copies as FO1, if we are to trust the figures at that site.

I think this happening was a foregone conclusion already those 15-ish years ago back when Fallout 3 was released and it became apparent that consoletards slurped it up.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Yeah sure, but those scars are reopened, now seeing the numbers again.

 

[Gargaune]

Does the Bethesda Fallout fan base even like Fallout 4 more than 3 and New Vegas? I can get Bethesda putting Skyrim on everything, it was by a wide margin the best selling game they ever made. But Fallout 4 sales are pretty similar to Fallout 3. I’d also think some better looking (with better combat mechanics) updated version of Fallout 3 would generate more hype among their fan base than a updated version of their 2015 game.

An updated Fallout 3, with better looks and mechanics, would be a lot more work than the bunch of bugfixes and minor engine update you'll be getting for Fallout 4. This "next-gen update" is just meant as a cover for introducing the new Creations system, and possibly to help market the upcoming Fallout TV series.

Bethesda doesn’t make AAA games either. At least budget wise, but they do sell like blockbuster titles.

Nah, that's just off, Bethesda's been making near enough the definition of AAA Action-RPGs since Oblivion. They used to be more streamlined in production, pulling it off with slightly smaller teams than most competitors (up until Starfield at least) thanks to their specialised toolset expertise, but their scope, pricing and market perception was firmly in AAA territory. These are the things that define the AAA segment, the customer's end, not the staff count or budget in and of itself, that's indulging in the same fallacy as devs going "stop criticising, we worked really hard on it." The Witcher 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Assasin's Creed and all of those other AAA Action-RPGs were always going up against whatever Bethesda's latest flagship was.