Why I dislike Bethesda Games (oblivion/fallout 3)

[Neeshka]

So yeah, when pointing out retarded writing, you actually need to point out WHY it is retarded, i.e "Have you seen my dad, a middle-aged guy?" or the fact that a robot, a super mutant and a ghoul all cannot go and turn on the McGuffin Device because radiation would hurt them too much or sth.

O yeah definitely. I didn't really dwell on the storytelling aspect much at all and I guess I could have elaborated a lot more on the bad writing, the plot holes, the absurdities/lapses in logic and so on.

My main gripes were with other gameplay issues mainly combat and overall design.

I thought I mentioned the ending in fallout 3 but yeah that was a major wtf moment; why couldn't fawkes or the robot just enter the radioactive room.
A lot of the dialogue with 3 dog felt really terrible.
like :
"Hey nifty America, it's me, your President John Henry Ghahaha gotcha! Three Dog here, how's everyone doin'?"
"Cause one dog ain't enough and two is too low, it’s me, Three Dog."
"What rhymes with shoes, and often gives you the blues? That's right, it's time for the cashews! Okay, that doesn't really rhyme... How about news?" - another example of terrible writing + failtown humor.

Personally I found the writing in Vampire masquerade a lot better (the characters at least stood out and felt more unique), and obviously other games like BG2. The dialog choices also felt a lot more limited in Fo3.

I found things like building a town (megaton) around an inactive nuclear bomb was really bizarre and illogical. And then suddenly out of nowhere they ask a complete stranger (you) to fix the bomb.

There are tons of npc's that you can talk to that give an identical conversational tree giving the exact same information. Again totally unnecessary copypasta development.

The characters don't seem to have a personality, it just "feels" wrong. But this is not just the actual writing but the animations and lackluster models too.

There are a lot of bad humor elements in the game but then again american humor in general has some awful products (the endless supply of unfunny "family" sitcoms).

They overuse the voice actors and so large chunks of it are unprofessionally done.

 

[Neeshka]

Witcher 2: Possibly the best current-gen RPG. This is basically what dragon age 2 should have been. Superb combat, superb character/plot development and spectacular graphics.

Icewind Dale 1/2: Not as great as the above, but if you liked BG2, you should give this a whirl, it has less rp elements and narrative subplots but it's a very solid d&d party based combat game, with the undying infinity engine and jeremy soule doing the music.

If your goal was to fit in, you missed it by this much^

Well I really really liked Baldur's gate 2; so I was looking for games that were made with a very similar build of the infinity engine.

I understand that IWD2 is more of a pure D&D turn based strategy/hack and slash game.
But I liked the music, the setting and the combat (which is similar to BG2)

Another thing I understand that Dragon age has issues with repetitive looting, boring areas like the dwarf city but isn't it still one of the better recent RPGs ? I know DA2 was bad that much is obvious.

People tell me that the codex abhors Bioware. But compared to bioware isn't bethesda simply a lot worse ? Particularly in terms of polish and production value aspects.

There really isn't a plethora of choices when it comes to fantasy RPGs in the last few years.

 

[Angthoron]

Bethesda, Bioware, Blizzard. They're all B.


I'd actually say that IWD 1 with expansion is better than IWD 2, which, while is quite alright, is more of a "Let's cash in on this quick and save our sinking ship" effort than a genuine exercise of game design. Still, I liked it for what it was, and it was definitely less of a let-down sequel for me than BG2 was for BG1 (my expectations of a game named Icewind Dale to be SET in Icewind Dale were fulfilled, at least!)

Speaking of humour and Fallout, Old World Blues DLC for New Vegas actually does the whole humour pretty well. It's very much in line with Fallout/2's often bizarre jokes, and while it can get juvenile ("Foot penises") it's delivered in such a manner that it's actually, well, funny. Of course, funnies aren't universal, but I didn't smile a single time in Fallout 3, while OWB had me chuckle quite a few times so far.

 

[Regdar]

I understand that IWD2 is more of a pure D&D turn based strategy/hack and slash game.
But I liked the music, the setting and the combat (which is similar to BG2)

Either you haven't played IWD, or don't understand the difference between real-time with pause and turn-based. Fallout and ToEE are examples of turn-based. Every Bioware RPG is RTwP.

Another thing I understand that Dragon age has issues with repetitive looting, boring areas like the dwarf city but isn't it still one of the better recent RPGs ? I know DA2 was bad that much is obvious.

Some have praised it for its C&C. It also has good writing as far as Bioware games go, although the overarching plot and the setting itself is riddled with cliches and "inspirations" from other fantasy settings. And while I accept the points above, they don't make up for tedious combat and lousy, half-assed character development. Focusing one one or two stats, top-tier skills being inferior to the ones you start the game with, some skills being overpowered, more than half the skills you get to choose from being useless, potion-chugging and much more are just unacceptably lazy game design. In a game where 99% of hostile encounters are unavoidable, combat like that is a serious detriment to enjoyment and replay value. Having a whopping three classes to choose from doesn't help either.

Speaking of replay value, I believe I saw a mod on the nexus that skipped most combat areas of the game for you so you can see new dialogue paths and endings. Japanese "unlock 'em all" mentality.

People tell me that the codex abhors Bioware. But compared to bioware isn't bethesda simply a lot worse ? Particularly in terms of polish and production value aspects.

Comparing Bioware and Bethesda is like arguing which is better - movies with Dolph Lundgren or movies with Steven Seagal. It just isn't done in bohemic circles such as the Codex.

There really isn't a plethora of choices when it comes to fantasy RPGs in the last few years.

Knights of the Chalice.

 

[Delirius]

You've got a lot to learn, newfag.

I don't post much but even I can tell.

 

[Stinger]

Vanilla New Vegas has plenty of funny moments too. Mr Fantastic was one of my favourite characters.

 

[Black Bart Charley]

AND THE WHEELS KEEP ON TURNING!

 

[DraQ]

cool spells like, say in diablo 2

Wat.

No, seriously, wat?

Of all games with some sort of magic system you had to pick up D2 as an example of interesting one?
Besides, while the complaint is true for OB (which sucks balls, just like Skyrim will), Morrowind (and before that Daggerfall) had pretty diverse array of effects, including utility magic that helped your mage feel like a wizard rather than mobile artillery emplacement disguised as a dude in bathrobe. MW also included spellmaker, and while premade spells generally sucked, you could make some rather interesting stuff by yourself.

Character stats and perks are not really a standard paradigm like Dnd or intuitive like mass effect/deus ex/bioshock/vampire masquerade etc.
It's hard to tell what stat affects what and you have to wade through tons of completely useless perks and abilities. The amount of useless perks/features is just mind boggling (star signs in oblivion for example - as a new player it's impossible to know why it would be relevant).

The biggest peculiarity with bethesda games is level scaling of you relative to enemies. Enemies seem to level up along with you, so that you can go anywhere. However this basically reduces the incentive to even level ....

That's a property of Oblivious and possibly FO3 (couldn't be arsed to play it), not older beth's games. This also applies to most of your other criticisms.

Morrowind had some levelled lists, but they were fairly subtle and levelling up was a necessity if you wanted to not get raped, unless you count excessively cheesy alchemy exploits.

UI design issues

That's what you get for developing your UI for shitstained consoles.
Morrowind (PC version) had one of the better interfaces ever made.

Irritating mini-games/side gameplay mechanics (...) alchemy

Alchemy is not a minigame. You simply choose ingredients to combine.

Awful quest tracking
Annotated maps with symbols on minimaps are commonplace on all rpgs.
Bethesda likes to use an utterly peculiar flat scale compass and a terribly annotated map.
So often you will wander around aimlessly with no clue where your objective is.

No, seriously.

People unable to get around even with moronic 'pizza slice' and incessant popups displaying walkthrough constantly in their face should be shot for their own good.

I agree that the quwest tracking is awful, but the worst thing about it is that it reduces quests to "follow the red/green pizza slice", while you claim that it's not holding your hand nearly enough. Are you fucking retarded?

Compare this with sparkly quest items in world of warcraft.

Actually, nevermind, forget I ever asked.

Yes, you are.

Baldur's Gate 1 : possibly the best rpg ever made.

Tremendous depth, deep and varied strategic gameplay; on the plus side it has immortalized the top-down isometric infinity engine into a thing of beauty that will never really age. Solid story, tons of sub-plots and subquests and character development.

No, seriously. FYI, BG1 is just slightly behind oblivious in terms of being complete clusterfuck of utter, multi-aspect suck, and that's largely because near the end it somewhat dials its coma inducing banality down.

Claiming it's excellent, let alone the best is pretty much like putting briefs on your head and running around the street, jumping people carrying groceries and pooping in their bags.

 

[Neeshka]

cool spells like, say in diablo 2

Wat.

No, seriously, wat?

Of all games with some sort of magic system you had to pick up D2 as an example of interesting one?
Besides, while the complaint is true for OB (which sucks balls, just like Skyrim will), Morrowind (and before that Daggerfall) had pretty diverse array of effects, including utility magic that helped your mage feel like a wizard rather than mobile artillery emplacement disguised as a dude in bathrobe. MW also included spellmaker, and while premade spells generally sucked, you could make some rather interesting stuff by yourself.

Both oblivion and fallout 3 have a very simplistic and repetitive combat system.

It's not that diablo 2 has the best spell system, but it's real time and there is a very decent number of abilities that you use based on the situation; whereas in fallout 3/oblivion it's 2-3 abilities with the "circle round the enemy and wait for x resource to recharge".

World of warcraft has a pretty diverse spell system too. I'm not sure what it is with certain people on the codex but just blanket dismissing *any* mention of WoW seems quite strange.
They do have a very well developed and evolved combat system and the core gameplay is really quite good.

My point is with so many places to learn "good" combat from; both for fps and rpg games; bethesda totally fucked it up for both oblivion and fallout 3.

In any video game it's really not a bad idea to hold the player's hand for at least the first area or few levels. Then you can ramp up the difficulty. Having an unnecessary set of annoyances or obscure and unintuitive set of features at the start will scare away most gamers and frustrate those who would even want to endure it. It's just bad game design.

For example in the very first few quests in fallout new vegas you are sent to get a xandrake root. The root is hidden somewhere around the schoolhouse and you have zero clue what it looks like. To find it you assume it's somewhere around the schoolhouse. So you run around looking for 3-4 pixels that look slightly different from the rest on a texture map that is already very brown and badly done. So you basically run around face down spamming the use key everywhere that seems slightly off.

Do you really think that is a good starter quest to pull people into your game ?


No, seriously. FYI, BG1 is just slightly behind oblivious in terms of being complete clusterfuck of utter, multi-aspect suck, and that's largely because near the end it somewhat dials its coma inducing banality down.

Claiming it's excellent, let alone the best is pretty much like putting briefs on your head and running around the street, jumping people carrying groceries and pooping in their bags.

Hang on, BG2 isn't one of the best RPG's ever made ?
I'd really like to see your list of good rpg's.

That's a property of Oblivious and possibly FO3 (couldn't be arsed to play it), not older beth's games. This also applies to most of your other criticisms.

I stated in my initial post that I was talking about recent bethesda games; so that would be oblivion and fallout 3, and new vegas (which isn't technically a beth game but w/e).
There's a lot of hype about skyrim, but it's clear that it will take a lot of influence from design decisions made in oblivion and Fo3/vegas.

About the stat system:
The thing is D&D is an established system so we know what everything in it means.
If a game wants to make a new stat system it should at least make an effort to make the system be coherent and make sense. There should at least be some recommendations and a way to know how each stat translates into something in the game.

In both oblivion and fallout 3 there's a "conversation" or "tell me about yourself" that asks completely irrelevant questions that translate into stats. So every time you do this you end up with a wonky build that you have to fix. This whole step is completely unnecessary and detracts from the flow of the game.

And then there's a ton of useless stats/perks.

about alchemy:
I didn't say it was a mini-game. Anyway the thing is at the very beginning of the game you are barraged with a ton of completely useless potions and a ton of useless ingredients. It's not intuitive at all. There's no way to figure out where you can get a certain ingredient or which ingredient will be useful initially.
So yet again the gameplay here reduces to madly spamming the use key every time you go near any vegetation model in the game. Half of these aren't clickable so you end up spamming the use key for no reason.
In Oblivion you get athletics skill so you end up spamming jump to level it while running around - is this really a good idea to implement in a game ?

 

[pocahaunted]

NWN1 praise, spotted trolling miles away.

 

[Neeshka]

NWN1 praise, spotted trolling miles away.

You didn't like hordes of underdark or shadows of undrentide ?

 

[Jaesun]

What in the fuck is this thread about?

 

[CorpseZeb]

Morrowind (PC version) had one of the better interfaces ever made.

C'mon... One can say many good thing about Morrowind, but it's UI is not among them. I'm sorry, have you ever tried to wear a ring or something (if you managed to find one in your inventory first...)? I put Morrowind UI into the clunky ones, not the better ones. Better ones, for example, would be M&M 6+, Divinity series +, BG+. Frankly, I liked MM6 the most, especially for punished factor if you are an compulsive garbage collector...

 

[DraQ]

Both oblivion and fallout 3 have a very simplistic and repetitive combat system.

Whch is completely irrelevant to what I just said, as I was referring to magic, not combat in general. Yes, Beth's combat tends to be bad and it tends to get worse.

It's not that diablo 2 has the best spell system, but it's real time and there is a very decent number of abilities that you use based on the situation; whereas in fallout 3/oblivion it's 2-3 abilities with the "circle round the enemy and wait for x resource to recharge".

For starters, abilities in D2 were never particularly diverse, especially considering that you had to focus on relatively few to be powerful. Plus, D2 pretty much epitomizes rechargeable resource x. See that blue ball in the corner?

In any video game it's really not a bad idea to hold the player's hand for at least the first area or few levels. Then you can ramp up the difficulty. Having an unnecessary set of annoyances or obscure and unintuitive set of features at the start will scare away most gamers and frustrate those who would even want to endure it. It's just bad game design.

And what is obscure and unintuitive in beth's games, even the newer, shit ones? Apart from retarded stuff like level scaling everything is rather painfully simple.

Hang on, BG2 isn't one of the best RPG's ever made ?

Baldur's Gate 1 : possibly the best rpg ever made.

Hang on, Baldur's Gate 1 is Baldur's Gate 2?
M:

I stated in my initial post that I was talking about recent bethesda games; so that would be oblivion and fallout 3, and new vegas (which isn't technically a beth game but w/e).
There's a lot of hype about skyrim, but it's clear that it will take a lot of influence from design decisions made in oblivion and Fo3/vegas.

It is also pretty clear it will be shit as well. They took out stuff like Attributes and Spellmaker, for instance.
And I'm not sure about NV - it's still on my to play list, so I can't speak from experience, but it was made by Obsidian and Codex seems to like it.

About the stat system:
The thing is D&D is an established system so we know what everything in it means.
If a game wants to make a new stat system it should at least make an effort to make the system be coherent and make sense.

Which is where D&D utterly fails. I don't care if system is popular among PnP crowd - D&D has retarded ambiguous attributes like Wisdom, retarded stats meaning two or more completely different things - for example AC, which represents both armour and dodge, and is generally a huge clusterfuck of wut.

OTOH Strength, Speed, Endurance, Agility, Willpower, Intelligence and Luck pretty much epitomize clarity.
Sure they were better implemented in MW and DF, but then again, I'm not defending oblivious nor trying to claim that it isn't turd. It's just your choice of counterexamples that is fucking baffling.

In both oblivion and fallout 3 there's a "conversation" or "tell me about yourself" that asks completely irrelevant questions that translate into stats.

Wait, what.

No seriously, I can't make heads or tails out of what are you trying to say.

about alchemy:
I didn't say it was a mini-game. Anyway the thing is at the very beginning of the game you are barraged with a ton of completely useless potions and a ton of useless ingredients. It's not intuitive at all. There's no way to figure out where you can get a certain ingredient or which ingredient will be useful initially.

Newsflash: In an open-structured game, "beginning" can be very relative. Besides, if forced to choose between some verisimilitude and intuitiveness I always take the former. I'm not the kind of person who runs to mommy whenever game throws more than one ingredient, quest, magic effect or whatever at at the time. More so - I fucking despise such people as they are one of the main roots of the decline.

Same with hard to notice objects congruent with the overall scenery and retarded sparkling shit.

In Oblivion you get athletics skill so you end up spamming jump to level it while running around - is this really a good idea to implement in a game ?

@CorpseZeb:

Freely movable, resizeable, hideable and pinnable windows are pretty much autowin in terms of interface. Sure, some things could be improved, but overall it's one of the most intuitive, flexible and convenient GUIs I've ever seen in an RPG.

 

[Mastermind]

and before that Daggerfall) had pretty diverse array of effects, including utility magic that helped your mage feel like a wizard rather than mobile artillery emplacement disguised as a dude in bathrobe.

Oblivion had about the same number of utility effects as daggerfall. Only things I really miss are levitate and slow fall.

OTOH Strength, Speed, Endurance, Agility, Willpower, Intelligence and Luck pretty much epitomize clarity.
Sure they were better implemented in MW and DF,

There is little difference between the shitty implementation of attributes in oblivion and the shitty implementation of attributes in morrowind. So little difference in fact that it cannot be credibly stated it's better in morrowind.

That's a property of Oblivious and possibly FO3 (couldn't be arsed to play it), not older beth's games.

Almsot everything in Daggerfall was level scaled.

 

[Neeshka]

In both oblivion and fallout 3 there's a "conversation" or "tell me about yourself" that asks completely irrelevant questions that translate into stats.

Wait, what.

No seriously, I can't make heads or tails out of what are you trying to say.

Ok I'll elaborate further. In oblivion and fallout 3, also in new vegas; when you start a new game; after the introductory bullshit you have a conversation with a "father figure" type npc.

You get to know some of the backstory (but since it's beth the telling of the tale sucks).

Towards the end of this conversation, when you are about to leave the room; you get to choose skills/talents/perks etc.

In each game to do this there are 2 ways :
1) You are posed with various situations/riddles and you answer them. "Someone steals a piece of shit from a village toilet. WHAT DO YOU DO ?". Dumb crap like that.
Based on the answers you are given a set of stats/abilities.

2) After the above you can choose to reallocate the stats the game chose for you.

Typically (1) chooses completely retarded abilities spells, so you end up always resetting everythin g. My point is that this same shit happens in every beth game, so either fix (1) by giving players a sensible starter set or do away with the "conversation/riddle" crap completely.


I think we're looking at the games from entirely 2 different perspectives. I am looking at the game more from a developer/game design PoV, and also looking at things like UI design, AI and general good coding practices and professionalism (hence the sloppy coding, bugs, face tex resolution etc)

You on the other hand are looking at it from a strict roleplaying hardcore-ness PoV.

I personally enjoy difficult games, and I'm not saying beth games should be casualized more at all. In fact they tend to cater to console kiddies (especially in fallout 3).

Most people I talk to that believe that Fo3 is "THE BEST GAME EVER", typically constantly talk about how satisfying VATS is and to get headshots. When we all know how completely awful vats is.

Like when you talked about finding objects in the game world.

Same with hard to notice objects congruent with the overall scenery and retarded sparkling shit.

The thing is bethesda didn't do this to make the game hardcore. It actually wasn't their design goal at all. It was just complete sloppiness and/or bad testing.
The scenery in the game is itself pretty awful - everything is basically "brown and bloom" in a generic wasteland copy-pasted as nauseum. Having to run all over the place in a shitty un-fun environment to look for that 1 item that we have not a clue about visually isn't good game design.

In any case gather x items or kill x boars is in itself very unoriginal and mmo-eque quest design. In a single player RPG they can easily do a lot better.

 

[Neeshka]

Almsot everything in Daggerfall was level scaled.

I haven't played daggerfall. Haven't played morrowind since it came out way back in 2002.
I should give them a try along with fallout 1 and 2.

 

[DraQ]

Towards the end of this conversation, when you are about to leave the room; you get to choose skills/talents/perks etc.

In each game to do this there are 2 ways :
1) You are posed with various situations/riddles and you answer them. "Someone steals a piece of shit from a village toilet. WHAT DO YOU DO ?". Dumb crap like that.
Based on the answers you are given a set of stats/abilities.

2) After the above you can choose to reallocate the stats the game chose for you.

Typically (1) chooses completely retarded abilities spells, so you end up always resetting everythin g. My point is that this same shit happens in every beth game, so either fix (1) by giving players a sensible starter set or do away with the "conversation/riddle" crap completely.

Well, in oblivious it tried to help you choose your class based on the skills you used during the beginning. It was badly implemented, since you had no opportunities to use many of them, but it wasn't a bad idea.

In earlier TES games you had "answer questions" mode as an option. I consider it more of a curiosity, than actually useful thing, but I allowed it to select my class when I first played Morrowind and I didn't complain (then again, there were no crippled classes in MW).

I think we're looking at the games from entirely 2 different perspectives. I am looking at the game more from a developer/game design PoV, and also looking at things like UI design, AI and general good coding practices and professionalism (hence the sloppy coding, bugs, face tex resolution etc)

You on the other hand are looking at it from a strict roleplaying hardcore-ness PoV.

No, I merely look from the point of internal consistency, but it's not like I haven't proposed computationally simple methods of fixing stuff like use-based mechanics. I can look at games from the PoV of a coder, but broken code is a given in any beth's game.

As for faces in oblivious, a picture is worth a thousand words.


Like when you talked about finding objects in the game world.

The thing is bethesda didn't do this to make the game hardcore.

No, they did it because it was no-brainer. Even for Bethesda.

Of course, xander roots were made by Obsidian, but that merely makes us drop the "even" part.

 

[Mastermind]

Almsot everything in Daggerfall was level scaled.

I haven't played daggerfall. Haven't played morrowind since it came out way back in 2002.
I should give them a try along with fallout 1 and 2.

Daggerfall is the shittiest one in the series. Play Arena instead.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

My main problem with Bethesda games (and I include the great one: "Morrowind") is that, apart from their fatal flaws (such as the level-scaling in "Oblivion", the copypasta fiesta of "Daggerfall" or the endless subways in "Fallout 3"), they are quite engrossing in the beginning and then become terribly boring: I didn't finish any of them. And I did finish "Fallout New Vegas".

PS: I don't particularly like Mastermind for he gets too much kicks from being a contrarian, but for me he's right on the fact that "Daggerfall" is a snooze-fest.

 

[racofer]

What in the fuck is this thread about?

 

[DraQ]

Almsot everything in Daggerfall was level scaled.

I haven't played daggerfall. Haven't played morrowind since it came out way back in 2002.
I should give them a try along with fallout 1 and 2.

Daggerfall is the shittiest one in the series. Play Arena instead.

The shittiest one is oblivious. Arena is the second shittiest.

MW and DF are teh sex, though they do have their fair share of problems.