Anybody else stumped by Bethesda suddenly losing the plot?

[Turnikman228]

Really? Not even one of them? Damn man, you might be missing out. I mean, most Bethesda games are dog s**t when they first release, but once they're patched and more importantly, modded, you've got yourself a solid game. I'd say try Oblivion with the OOO mod (Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul), Fallout 3 with the FWE mod (Fallout Wanderers Edition) and Fallout New Vegas with the Project Nevada mod. There has to be something you'll enjoy among those 3.

Appreciate the gesture my friend but, I'm not really into fantasy settings (dragons, elves etc) nor Fallout' s version of post apocalypse. (I am more into military and historical stuff alongside a few exceptions like RAGE and HeXeN but those are straight shooters anyway=my speed) Its just not my thing. I had friends who also wanted me to get into Fallout (the isometric ones) and it was too slow for my taste. Long story short, first Fallouts=not my speed, later ones=not my thing. Didn't like the lore, story, mechanics and gameplay from what I saw. Thanks again for your gesture.

[Aidy]

Played Fallout 3, 4, and Skyrim and didn't find them buggy at all, certainly no more than any other AAA games I've played. Quite enjoyed Fallout 4 and Skyrim (well over 100 hours on both), don't know what all the fuss is about. Maybe the forum needs split so PC gamers can talk about the only two things they ever talk about, frame rates and modding, and the console gamers can talk about the actual games.

[Aidy]

Wow, someone using a strawman argument that I said there were no bugs in those games when I clearly said no such thing. I really didn't predict that response at all!

[fenrif]

Nice strawman. I never said that you said there were no bugs in their games though, did I?
Guess you didn't predict this response at all, huh?

[Aidy]

Then what did you mean by your comment "If you didn't notice any bugs in Skyrim or Fallout 3/4 then you need to start laying off the crack pipe."? That's the kind of thing I would say to someone who said they didn't notice any bugs in Skyrim or Fallout 3/4.

Being accused of making strawman arguments because I call out your strawman argument. Wow! I never expected that response!

[Sylentmoogle]

It seems to me like Bethesda just one day decided it wanted to set itself on fire.

[fenrif]

I don't even want to talk about FO76, we all know what's wrong with it and everything surrounding it. I'm instead wondering if anybody has any theories on how a company with so much experience and so many iconic games can totally lose the plot overnight. Has there been a major take over of the company? Have key members of the decision-making staff been replaced?

Previously their biggest transgression was the mod workshop which they mostly handled well... I mean... they didn't FORCE us to use their crappy workshop or pay for mods we could download for free (though every update thereafter did keep breaking the script extender mod, which was a pain). And their biggest problem before that was that their games were bugtastic messes that modders had to fix, but we just accepted this was the way things were with Bethesda... the games were good so we let it slide. In fact, the bugs became a charming part of the TES/FO experience.

It's like they went from healthy to the final stages of terminal illness but with no period of decline between the two.

It wasn't overnight. This has been a thing for over a decade. You just didnt notice it for some reason.

[Matcam89]

I would say that the past games although buggy - Were still pretty amazing games. I enjoyed Oblivion, Fallout3, Skyrim, New Vegas and Fallout 4. The biggest issues i faced in those games were quest markers not appearing or important characters missing or not functioning the way they should which would require a restart. But nothing that made those games unplayable or anything that would take away the fun from the game.

The best glitches or bugs i experienced were New Vegas - Nothing like walking around and having a scorpion drop from the sky, Dead peoples heads spinning, Enemies walking above the ground, People randomly getting flung or fall through the ground lol good times

[Animusisters]

Listen to the wrong voices, make wrong decisions. Or as people refer to it nowadays.

Get woke, go broke.

[xadu]

It is not just Bethesda. It is happening with all the major game developers companies.

Is not an accident. There are corporations with billions in budget, which want to brainwash society (all around the world), so they need propaganda tools, and games are a major tool to get the public wanted.

The dudes that made the elder scroll and fallout series are no more working at Bethesda. They are working on other games and other companies.
So, don’t expect Bethesda to correct itself. It is not going to happen. It is a different company, with different people, and different values.
If you want good games, follow the programmers, not the companies.

That corporation don't recognize that men and women are different. Fundamentally, biologically, different.
So they don't understand and cannot accept that men do different things than women. Enjoy different things than women, and his work has different market value. Men produce and consume different things.
That’s not acceptable to an ideology which wants everybody to be uniform, think the same, and be the same. They suppress diversity on the “name of diversity”.

They go to great lengths to suppress truth. For example Theodore Preston Hill’s published a mathematical paper about Darwin’s variability hypothesis, and they pursued the mathematician across many universities and deleted his paper from already published scientific magazines, because the science implied that a small percentage of men are smarter than most women. Preston Hill’s paper was deleted from existence, in the same way that Stalin's soviet government deleted people from older photographies to hide his entire existence. You need to burn a mountain of money to do what they did to Preston Hill.
They put his ideology over reality, so they lose contact with reality, and that’s why they behave in crazy ways.

They do the same with movies. For example, they bought Star Wars, because they value it as a propaganda tool, and replaced every male character for a female. All males are bad people. All females are so good at everything that they don’t have flaws, and don’t need training. They don’t understand why men like star wars. They have prejudices, so they make a product which is dull, dumb and boring, because his prejudices are, that men watch dull, dumb and boring movies.
They don’t understand movies, and they don’t understand games. They only see that movies and games are popular, loved, and a great, influential business.

[Damian Cunliffe]

(psst, politics)

[Aidy]

The dudes that made the elder scroll and fallout series are no more working at Bethesda. They are working on other games and other companies.
So, don’t expect Bethesda to correct itself. It is not going to happen. It is a different company, with different people, and different values.
If you want good games, follow the programmers, not the companies.

I used a wiki to find the people who worked on Fallout 4 and spent a few minutes researching each of them to see what they are doing now. Shall we begin? (TL;DR you're wrong)

People in green are people who appear to still be working at Bethesda accoring to their own twitter\linkedin\reddit etc accounts.

People in blue are people that I couldn't determine the current employment status of, but whose most recent work I could find was relatively recent and at Bethesda.

People in red are people that no longer work at Bethesda, again according to their own twitter\linkedin etc.

People in nomal text are people I didn't bother researching.

Game Director - Todd Howard
Lead Programmer - Guy Carver
Lead Artist - Istvan Pely
Lead Designer and Writer - Emil Pagliarulo
Production Director - Ashley Cheng
Lead Producer - Jeff Gardiner
Audio Director - Mark Lampert
Senior Producers - Craig Lafferty
Producers - Angela Browder, Kevin Kauffman, Nathan McDyer, Phil Nelson, Andrew Scharf
Lead Gameplay Programmer - Christopher Rodriguez
Lead Graphics Programmer - Scott Franke
Lead Interface Programmer - Erik Deitrick
Lead Animator - Josh Jones
Lead Level Design - Joel Burgess
Director of Casting & Production - Timothy Cubbison
Music Composer and Producer - Inon Zur
Programming
Gameplay Programming - Ryan Ashford, Ken Cockerham, Paul Graber, Ahn Hopgood, Steve Meister, Brian Robb, Dan Teitel, Craig Walton, Jay Woodward
Systems Programming - Shannon Bailey, Eric Braun, Joel Dinolt, David DiAngelo, Joseph DiAngelo, Mike Dulony, Jason Hammett, Jason Hasenbuhler, Ryan Lea, Mike Lipari, Jeff Lundin, Henning Seljenes
Graphics Programming - Jonathan Bilodeau, Jeff Sheiman, Orin Tresnjak
Additional Programming - Jonathan Burke, Brett Douville, Chris Doyle, David Fox

[Baron Baldric]

Everyone likes the conspiracy theories, the reality is that Bethesda copied Fortnite business model in the same way that Battlefield 5, shareholders pressed them to get more profits.

[xadu]

I used a wiki to find the people who worked on Fallout 4 and spent a few minutes researching each of them to see what they are doing now. Shall we begin? (TL;DR you're wrong)

Fallout 4 is already a derivative work using Fallout 3 assets

[Aidy]

Fallout 4 is already a derivative work using Fallout 3 assets

Fallout 76 was derivative of Fallout 4. Fallout 5 will be derivative of Fallout 4. What's your point?

[Slothcat]

Fallout 76 was derivative of Fallout 4. Fallout 5 will be derivative of Fallout 4. What's your point?

A more accurate observation might be that a majority of Bethesda's games are a derivative of an outdated and buggy engine.

[Aidy]

A more accurate observation might be that a majority of Bethesda's games are a derivative of an outdated and buggy engine.

Irrelevant. I was tackling his argument that the people involved in Fallout are no longer at the company.

[SnarkyJay]

I enjoyed Morrowind and Skyrim. I skipped Oblivion for some reason. I also enjoyed Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Fallout 4 I wasn't as crazy about. I am not sure why they are shitting the bed lately, but I would look to the parent company Zenimax as possibly having a role in pushing games out well before they are ready, with "features" like online and microtransactions that nobody wanted. I know Zenimax was founded by the founder of Bethesda, so theoretically, they should have good ethics, but in today's AAA industry who the hell knows.

[twidget]

... Is not an accident. There are corporations with billions in budget, which want to brainwash society (all around the world), so they need propaganda tools, and games are a major tool to get the public wanted. ...