@@kyleadelaideExactly, he is not even acknowledging the fact the helicopter OBVIOUSLY took off just fine and flew for however long before ending up upside down. Just another helicopter hater #helihaterhell
@@lostree1981 Totally agree. Emil didn't work for 27 years in a Hostess Twinkie Factory for people to treat him this way. Imagine if they crashed the helicopter on the moon.
I once knew a helicoptor mechanic. I said to him 'wow you must be real smart to do that job' His reply 'nope a trained monkey could do my job all I do is follow the log book and replace parts at the rated hours'. They dont actually diagnose and fix stuff like a car mechanic. If they swap in a new part and it doesnt start they send it back to the factory. And move onto the next. It was kind of surprising but also a life lesson in how clinical some roles are that you think are not.
I'd love to ask that Emil dude one question: "I don't work at the Twinkie factory. Am I allowed to eat a Twinkie and decide it doesn't taste good?" His analogy doesn't make a lick of sense, it's embarrassing.
Because if he thinks that's true, then the flip side of that must also be true. "I played this video game, and I loved it!" 'Hey man, are you a game developer? Do you know what it takes to make a video game? Then how can you sit there and say you loved it then?' Lol.
I can't imagine any other job where you'd use the difficulty of the job as an excuse to the customer for why you failed at it. "My new roof leaks" "Yea , shit is hard. Have to use ladders and everything. See ya later"
Starfirld is litterally a test to see if they can use procedural generation to replace the entire studio when it comes to shitting out the new elder scrolls game.
Lol, the fact that daggerfall had better procedural generation than starfield lmao. Since atleast in DF, the dungeons are likely different each time, instead of the same dungeon for all the planets.
Theres no way it took as long as it did to develop when modders are already releasing complete overhaul mods a year later. Im willing to bet most of the "development cycle" was just an attempt to build a mountain of hype...And pay off every game review institution for a perfect or near perfect rating.
@@candlestyx8517 This. When you look at it, it only has 3 planets (or holds), and the 1000 planets are just.... a very weak implementation of their radiant quests. A part of me thinks that they had hoped Starfield would be received well enough that the 1000 planets would be "real estate" for mod-added locations, considering alot of quest mods in Skyrim would occupy the same spaces.
The steam awards was a coup by 4chan to make fun of/bring light to certain games; Starfield being awarded was a slap in the face because it has zero innovation, boring story, and dull gameplay; steam reviews reflected this, adding salt in the wound. For labor of love, it was awarded to RDR2, which has been dropped support by rock star 2-3 years ago, making fun of them giving it love despite the community saying to f-ing fix the game and give it updates for the past 2-3 years. So overall, do not have loyalty to these brands, all have sold out for quick and easy cash.
What happened? After 20+ years working at Bethesda the senior management couldn't sell their stock and retire without taking a massive loss to the company. So when Microsoft came around looking for IPs, Bethesda sold Microsoft on their great engine and brand new IP. You see, if the senior staff in a company sell their stock, the company stock fails. But if the Bethesda stock is converted to Microsoft stock and the Bethesda executives become Microsoft employees, they can then retire after their contracts with no loss of income because Microsoft's stock won't care that a couple of acquired employees retire. So that is what Starfield is. A trinket of an idea that Bethesda sold Microsoft on, and the hurdle the Bethesda executives faced before they could leave. What we got was the "Minimal Contractual Obligation" Bethesda had to fill before the senior management could leave, and it shows. A hurried collection of cobbled ideas that resembled more of an asset turnover for how well they worked together, it fulfilled the legal definition of a 'game' and a week after it's release, probably once it cleared Legal, they cashed out & retired.
Look at how fast Jeff Gardener and Purkey left to go do their own creative things after they got their buy out bonuses. They had IDGAF money at that point and didn't want to stay on a sinking ship.
It seems that, and I hate to say it, Microsoft needs to be more hands on with their owned game publishers and studios and developers like how Nintendo is (with everyone except The Pokémon Company/Creatures Inc./ Gamefreak and the new Mario Sports/Party developers of course). I trust Nintendo to do it as their internal devs create amazing games, but Xbox hasn't been like that for a long time. Mojang, Bethesda (except Id Software), Activision/Blizzard, and especially 343 Industries need major supervision to make sure they're making product for Xbox, PC, and mobile that is high quality and worth their prince on release day. Knowing Microsoft they won't do that, only thing they'll intervene on is forcing censorship according to recent reports. I miss when Xbox had a bunch of great games on the original Xbox and Xbox 360, what happened. PlayStation isn't much better which is also sad. Only console manufacturer left with a bunch of great high quality exclusives is Nintendo and even they have issues, like being too slow/stubborn to adapt to change for better and for worse.
Just to point out, Bethesda only published fallout new vegas, they didn't work on it. It had the series creator and multiple people from 1 and 2 on team with great writers. Thats why its so highly regarded. Dont give Bethesda credit for something they didn't do. Especially since new vegas is actually a very good game. Todd already tries hard enough to make people believe he was the creator of the fallout series when thats far from it.
Not to be the devil's advocate but you could argue they did contribute a bit considering not only did they allow the game to exist but they reused assets from FO3 which Bethesda made, gameplay is very much similar but improved and the engine and mechanics are improved from FO3. But yes Obsidian did make it themselves, using what BGS had started already.
When astronauts landed -they tried moving because they had no idea what would happen and found they were lighter and could move and bounce pretty easily Gathered materials for research Gave a speech on the moon Decorated the place Left In starfield you can only do the gather materials bit and your literally more sluggish than those astronauts
No that was the weirdest excuse ever like those ppl just landed on the fucking moon I’m sitting on my couch watching a screen like we’re allowed to be bored with a low quality game
The astronauts on the Moon were the first humans to ever go there. Also the Moon is very different from the Earth, there is no place on Earth that looks and feels like the Moon. What Bethesda did, it did a 1000 Moons which felt pretty much the same, there was someone there before you, who left some artifacts, sometimes there are other people around, some ships in orbit and what not. It doesn't feel at all like you're exploring a new, never visited place. Also there is no impact of what you did, people don't talk about your exploration, nobody cares "you've been there", nobody cares you explored that moon. It's like you did nothing, even collecting materials and resources there, means nothing. The whole game seems pointless, it feels like a theme park where, you can't touch anything and even if you touch something it doesn't matter. You literally have 0 impact on people and surroundings, in that game you have less impact than you have in the real world. I mean putting that comment here I have more impact on the real world than in Starfield doing whatever (great thing). Starfield is like a movie, you watch it without having any real interaction or impact on the surrounding world. Even in some very old games you have impact on the world, a real story progression and what not... in Starfield everything looks superficial and not connected to anything else.
The writer should be fired…. Just look at red dead 2. Some of the best writing, and character development of any game ever made. And it’s largely regarded by fans and critics as one of the best games ever made.
I think Bethesda has never truly recovered from the Fallout 3/New Vegas comparisons, which completely exposed their design philosophy and approach to game making. Those two games, despite being so similar, yet so different, really opened a lot of peoples' eyes to how Bethesda crafts their games. And they've had some stiffer competition in the open world RPG genre in the 2010's. People aren't content with Bethesdaslop: janky mechanics on an aging engine that is being stretched too thin to do things it was never designed for, boneheaded world building, strangely constricted quest design (ie. the quest First Contact, why can't you just kill the rich people?), too many essential marked NPC's because Todd Howard doesn't want you playing outside of his sandbox.
If it wasn't for Bethesda we wouldn't have the New Vegas we all know and love, Real fans enjoy Fallout 1,2,3 New Vegas, 4 and even 76. Also Bethesda has said that they loved New Vegas and Todd Howard has said he loves new Vegas, look at all the NCR products on their store site and refrences to New Vegas in Fallout 4. Also Tim Cain, one of the creators of fallout, is good friends with Todd Howard and loves What Bethesda has done with the series
@@acfan9384 And why would I care if Tim Cain thinks that? It's a meaningless appeal to authority. If, while he was alive, Enzo Ferrari had come out and said he loved the Ford Pinto and thought it was the height of engineering and style, it would only mean that despite being instrumental in the development of some of the most iconic automobiles he had terrible taste and opinions on cars outside of his company.
I'd say CD Projekt Red did this to them. Witcher 3 made Fallout 4 look very average, then Cyberpunk 2077 became everything a modern Bethesda game should be, albeit a couple of years after launch.
@@millabasset1710 Really, that's what you got out of that? Something that was neither said, nor implied? It doesn't matter how many games Tim Cain has made, it's a useless appeal to authority. People in positions of authority and experience can have terrible taste and opinions, shocking news at 11.
Bethesda is totally disconnected from the reality of gaming, and has no clue how hard it is to eat their products without puking or falling into a coma.
or suffering things falling off..... I mean i lied to my GF last night "baby that's a detachable penis" she left me..... but seriously even Obsidian exposed BGS for what they are and we all ignored it....well cus we still fukking bought skyrim 100 times and fallout 4....ugh
It's funny how they claim we as gamers don't know how game development works but it looks like they also don't know that countless other AAA and even AA/III studios are over a decade ahead of them in several things. If they don't change, adapt and innovate.. by the time ES6 comes out it will be so bad and out of date it will be disatrous. Starfield already pissed of many loyal fans so they better get their shit together.
@@valentinvas6454 Erena = 2d all of tamriel rendered daggerfall = 3d all of tamriel rendered Morrowind = only Vvardenfell of the whole morrowind rendered [not a whole realm], also deep RPG Oblivion = only Cyridil rendered, also kinda watered down skyrim = 1 province and shallow game ESO = by using old XB gfx but slightly cleaned up most of temriel rendered and some other realms, still not a god RPG, relies on others yet punishes groups so...very kaka! fallout 3 = decent RPG, fit the game simple story but only 1 major city that the wasteland is centered on but 2 major communities as player hubs fallout 4 = learned nothing from new vegas yet signs of that game are present 2 pre-existing trading hubs, you build the rest and shallow as F RPG and game systems, makes F3 look like a masterpiece..a little F76 - empty even with NPC's game, nonexistent RPG shitty gameplay on all levels, limited base building but can pick up and go on a whim not saying anything people don't already know but if BGS hasn't learned from others they'll not learn from their own mistakes... all they learned from New Vegas is Obsidian with a handicap can out dev BGS.... I will say this though, back when bethesda made those 2 forgotten adventure games, those were made cus some of the devs liked that style of game but elder scrolls is a RPG series and that was the lesson learned, that's why morrowind was what it was.... so the big corrected mistake and shift in what they did as a studio also became the start of an ever downward spiral into losing more of the elements that shaped the games.... you think they can revamp the studio that fast?? you think they even identify a problem?? I honestly think they see it as "oh people hate us now, that sucks" my stupid ass said skyrim sucked but fallout 4 will be fun.....oh how wrong i was but goddamn if i had only looked harder there was other games to play....that's my problem to get over though nobody likes thinking the worst but at a certain point you have to admit the truth
"KISS" or also known as "I don't want to work too much, just make some cookie cutter bullshit and jam it into the story, our audience is ret -*- arded enough that they will just eat it, like they always have and always will"
I like simple stories. But Emil's way is just... too goddamn boring. I can just find a random modder in Skyrim and play a custom quest made with a better story. Emil's story writing philosophy is literally 5 steps down compared to a random modder.
@@TheSilentVoid_ There seems to be a misconception simple stories and crap stories. Simplicity doesn't mean to "dumb down" your idea or world or lore or whatever, it means to make it easier to the consumer to digest and process. If anything, simplifying a story and not losing anything important in the process is a challenge. What Emil thinks about "simplicity" is that it should be "simple for him to make a story", when TRUE SIMPLICITY means "simple for US to understand". His meaning of "KISS" is not "KEEP IT SIMPLE" but instead it's "KEEP IT SHIT".
@@DarkOmegaMK2 I agree with this. Like if your idea of simple is boring and uninterested and riddled with half baked plans, what the hell are you doing in the department of writing?
@@TheSilentVoid_ And not only that, but he's giving a talk on writing advice, these are people that are learning how to write a plot for a video game and already the lessons they are learning are super crap.
Here are some fun facts to keep in mind to not be exited about TES6 (some of these you've brought up and I'm very thankful for that) - As long as Emil is lead anything, we won't get proper RPG storylines, I don't even want him in Quest design, the Dark Brotherhood was pretty good but had some serious issues regarding you as player not being able to NOT do the obviously forged Deaddrop contracts and question wtf you're doing. Another railroad just like Emil loves doing. - Jeremy Soule won't be composing for TES6 unless some actual real miracle happens. -The guy responsible of the environmental storytelling (leveldesign) has left BGS, so I'm not even surprised when I hear about there only being 20 or so PoI's in SF. - Their main dev team aren't masters at papyrus and they can't handle this engine, its been visible since Oblivion, got exposed in Skyrim (the dragons operate on a system of animations, this is why dragonriding is an absolute joke of a mechanic), Fallout4 was stripped of not just RPG options but visual details (guns magically appear in your hands, armor is one large piece), and really got out of control with SF, I bet Starfield had more detail and mechanics but they all stripped those out because they couldn't make it work due their incompetency. Remember that modders have made a working buggy in the NewVegas version of the engine, and there was a dragon riding mod that gave people true control over the dragonflying for LE Skyrim. I'm glad this video wasn't 20 minutes bashing on the engine, like many fall into, because thats not the issue, the issue is the devs behind it just aren't good programmers. This is a terrible thing because now the only capable people in that office are the visual artists, and the engine can't even show their work properly.
The engine is pretty much a red herring that BGS 100% benefit from. As if said engine is some kind of mustache-twirling villain and not the software made by BGS.
Lol what? In Fallout 4 we got modular armor pieces (arms, legs, torso and head) that can be mixed with other armors and few clothes, but in Bethesda fashion in order to deal with clipping they just limited you what clothing items you can wear with armor and straight cut out the holster system (which got implemented back by modders)
The worst thing about Starfield is that I'm no longer excited for Elder Scrolls 6. In fact, I would rather prefer if Bethesda hired bunch of well-known and talented modders and let them do it for them. I have zero confidence that Bethesda can pull it off and make ES6 a great game, let alone a masterpiece like Skyrim was.
Skyrim wasn't a master piece of you played the prior games you would see the downward trend that was in place since oblivion. Skyrim was just the first game for alot of people so they don't know any better. It was shallow as an rpg
Skyrim was my first RPG/Bethesda game so obviously I have fond memories and nostalgia. But in no way can it ever be considered a "Masterpiece". The highest praise I could reasonably give Skyrim is that it's alright.
I can't wait to see how much of a "next generation RPG" Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be. We might even get a companion that has a personality that isn't "generic good guy who enjoys helping people". Or even be able play for ten minutes without having to see a loading screen. Oh, and you know what else would be cool? An inventory system that isn't terribly designed. Imagine that! Oh man I better update my PC so it'll be able to handle that masterpiece.
I am so worried about the future of ES6. I loved Oblivion, it was my entry point into the series when I was about 14 years old. Skyrim was also great, even if they did dumb down the gameplay and mechanics somewhat. But it was fun to explore! ES6? If Emil Pagliarulo is in charge, the project will be dead in the water. He has gone on record saying ignore the reviews and that Design Documents are... Outdated...
The amazing thing about “Baldur’s Gate 3” is that it’s not even open world. But it FEELS open world, because of how layered and in depth the storytelling is. And “The Witcher 3” is open world, but the storytelling is so deep and layered, with so many twists and reveals with even the fetch quests.
And to think he does have experience with writing he is in a great position to learn and improve, then processes to shoot himself in the foot. "This is how it's done folks"
I have a friend who is a screen writer and she had a great quote for the Emil philosophy "If you only write what you know, you better be reading what you don't know"
In case anyone hasn't yet noticed this over the years, Bethesda Game Studio is the real world equivalent of Vault Tec in the Fallout games. The very same unscrupulous behavior.
@@houstonswisha143 I didn’t say that it was. I have over 6k hours invested into the game, somewhat embarrassing to admit. I bought it the day it released. But Bethesda has a proven track record that’s undeniable across all of their games for having problems. And they’ve done little to fix things despite hearing from the public about it.
Emil: We don't make quality story and writing for our games because players are gonna skip it all anyway. Players: *Skip all the story because it's awfully written and boring af
The problem is Todd Howard. Morrowind was a generational leap, the blueprint for modern open world games, and the formulae for Bethesda games moving forward. Todd was the visionary behind that, but the problem is that rather than continually pushing the envelope like Morrowind did, innovation was abandoned in favour of the safer iteration that all BGS games since have suffered from. You can only iterate so far before it becomes stale and that's what's lead to their decline. They lack a vision, they lack bravery, they're scared of taking risks, of innovating, pushing the envelope to new limits, and have become far, far too dependent upon the modding community to finish their games.
Emil's the kind of guy who got told one time that someone didn't play games for the story, and decided that he needed to talk down to his audience forever as a result because they're all idiots and not worth his effort.
I'm convinced that Emil must have benefitted from Nepotism, in some way. Somehow, some way, he must have gotten attached to someone of prominence in the video game writing community, and he must have milked that connection for all it was worth, and kept "failing upwards." And Starfield won an award? For "innovation"........? No awards show is sacred after that.
It was popular vote... Most likely scenario is that 4chan decide to make a prank on Starfield, and give a slap on their face with a prize they obviously didn't deserve...
@efxnews4776 I believe that, but that's just kind of dumb and doesn't really do anything but help Bethesda in the end. Most casual gamers aren't going to know that it was a prank and will buy the game because of it.
At least in the short term, Starfield has likely succeeded in the way that matters to bean counters. It has sold well. As long as the game brings in the money, they don't care about criticism. Of course, this might hurt the company in the long run, but bean counters seldom look beyond the next three months. Gamers need to take some responsibility for the situation with this game, and with the industry in general. If companies feed us crap, and it sells well and brings in the cash, they will keep feeding us crap. I bet a lot of the people complaining about Starfield either pre-ordered the game or bought it shortly after launch. Bethesda already had a checkered history thanks to Fallout 76, so why did you do this? In the lead-up to launch, I could see what was happening. Encouraged by Bethesda's masterful marketing techniques, the game got hyped up. They mostly limited advance review copies to known friendly reviewers, and they didn't give these reviewers enough time to properly evaluate the game, so early reviews were generally positive. Gamers swallowed all of this and parted with their money. A few cynics like me sat back and watched while all of this predictably led to what we are seeing today. I still haven't bought it, and if I do, it will be in a few years after it has been fixed up a bit and is available at a sale price. If everyone did this, the company would panic, and they would face two choices: shape up, or go down the toilet. Sadly, I predict that the same cycle will start up again as the release date for Elder Scrolls VI approaches - it will get hyped up, loads of people will pre-order it, the game will be mediocre, gamers will whine with impotent fury, and the bean counters at Bethesda will be happy because they will have met their financial targets. I'm sure plenty of people will buy all of the microtransactions too, so we will see no end to this miserable parade of nonsense. I've been a gamer since the 1970s, and I don't remember ever being so disgusted with my fellow gamers for what they allow these companies to get away with. In what other industry are companies consistently rewarded for releasing broken products and scams? If you don't like broken games and ripoffs, stop buying them.
Elder Scroll 6 is going to be a must wait till it’s a playable game and the mods make it fun. Unlike Fallout London which I am excited for and will bet the people behind it will bring out a well done fully cooked game.
Gamers taking responsibility is paradoxical fallacy. Must people who buy bethesda products are or at some point were terrible consumers who just buy things to fill voids in their lives, jangle keys and bright colors in their faces, or having fun. I'd say escapism but bethesda makes me want to experience reality because the gameplay sucks.
"What they know" is games and other forms of escapism. It's games that are based on games that were based on games that were based on games. This is the issue with modern art of all forms: it's "fans" regurgitating content they consume as opposed to creating art that is being facilitated through life experience/personal strife.
Skyrim came out when I was 14. I loved it and still do but I’ll never forget watching every bit of pre-release content I could find for it in anticipation. I vividly remember Todd saying that working jobs like chopping wood, could boost the local economy or you could do things to sabotage it… that was never in the game and it was foreshadowing for how I’d grow to feel about him.
Boy do I disagree that starfield doesnt do anything "offensively wrong" I think its offensive to our intelligence to have the capitol city of a space faring humanity be smaller than my hometown, surrounded entirely by absolute desolate empty plains of nothingness. New Vegas city had more outer limit sprawl than this supposed metropolitan. I think its offensively wrong to have the constellation faction be as inept and impotent as explorers as they are, They poses a single ship, In a world where ships seem to be about as easily obtainable as cars in our modern day. I think its offensive that every single companion has the exact same boring morality, and by extension, mostly identical personality. People site the companions as being varied in personality, I must have missed an entire other half of the companion quests in this game, because I dont get that at all. Backstories and clothing dont make up someones personality differences. Its offensive that they made points of interest spread thousands of meters apart and give you no land vehicles to explore the surface in this space exploration game. Its offensively wrong that Bethesda has only regressed, never improved themselves in the past 20 years.
The really offensive part is at the end of the game. The player is given the option of asking "who created the plot devices?" The NPC answers with something like "You answered your own question, the creators create things". It's like Emil set out to make a line more insulting than Fallout 4's "It's complicated, you wouldn't understand" and he succeeded.
"just as greedy and bad as other western developers..." Dude, BGS is at the TOP of that list for me, closely followed by Ubisoft. After what the did with 76, they deserve an award for scummiest company ever.
@@Damian-cilr2 tbf ZeniMax should be here instead of BGS, because they just follow orders from above, and ZeniMax is the reason why we have games like 76, Wolfenstein Youngblood, why PREY never got a sequel, why we got DEATHLOOP, and Redfall.
According to Emil’s logic, the 1986 US Challenger explosion that cost the lives of seven astronauts shouldn’t be viewed as a tragedy/failure because it assuredly took tens of thousands of hours of combined work from the aforementioned astronauts, as well as astrophysicists, engineers, management, etc. Every person with a RATIONAL BRAIN ASSUMES that there was LOTS OF WORK put into an endeavor or product, but if that product/endeavor EXPLODES 73 seconds after it launches, it still ultimately means there was an OVERSIGHT or ERROR in some capacity which required additional work to CORRECT (meaning it doesn’t suddenly VOID all the work already completed but NO ONE IS GOING TO CARE if that finished project can’t fully and reasonably accomplish what it was originally intended for).
We all know what happened... Gaming got too big..too profitable...and too ideological. It stopped being a bunch of guys in a small studio creating what they love. And the proof is right in front of all of us. No one in their right mind would say gaming is better now than it was 20 years ago. No one. It peaked in 2015, and its been all down hill from there.
I stopped at Fallout 4 and couldn’t even finish that. Before Starfield came out, I was excited for TES 6. After it came out, I am a little worried about TES 6.
As someone who gave Bethesda the benefit of the doubt for a longtime and was hyped for Starfield, yea I think TES 6 gonna be a dumpster fire and I’ve been waiting forever for it
If you’re making a game I think having a document is hella important. It’s like writing an essay with no direction. You need that list of things that you’ll need and make sure to keep it in that direction. That’s so stupid it helps to keep things organized.
I think they genuinely started wanting to go big and ambitious. But as the years went by, development was getting harder, and the Creation Engine 2 was showing its limits, somebody at BGS abruptly stood up at their workstation cubicle, pissed off and exasperated, shouted "fuck it, I'm tired. Let the modders fix it, god DAMN IT!" Todd must've overheard the dev from the Chess Club lounge down the hall and thought, "Yeah..... I guess. I mean, our fans are kinda stupid and eat whatever bullshit I feed em because I'm Todd 'The Godd' Howard - Bethesda magic, and shit. Fuck it, I'm calling the marketing team. We're going gold up in dis bitch!" Thus, Starfield. I know I went all hyperbolic at the end, but I can't believe at least a version of that didn't actually go down that way. Something obviously went wrong during those 8 yrs of development.
Bethesda wanted to drop it in 2021 on 11.11 and apparently Microsoft said no fix it. Redfall is an example of Bethesda saying fudge it it's gamepass day one, they get what they are given.
It doesn't help that people kept paying for Skyrim over and over for 12 years. That sent a message to Bethesda that they don't need to innovate, unfortunately.
I don’t think so. Bethesda made the game they wanted and sold enough to not care. They enough of casual mindless players and cult followers that they will never care. Be ready for a similar next game.
Similar to Halo fans when Joe from Bungie returned, not realising that he was just the PA to quell the irate fans. I've witnessed this pattern come in full circle several times over the years, and gamers continue to fall for it.
I think you're overlooking the laziness and apathy of a company who releases bad unfinished games. You perceive this as an oh we're so sorry oopsie... This is a willing act of malice on the developers. They have consistently benefitted from bad behavior. This creates a bad habit of enabling further bad behavior. Because it quite literally has paid off before. Because of simpleton folk who don't think very far but sure don't mind spending money for bad products from untalented companies. Pre order tes6. You won't be disappointed.
I'd really like for someone to do a video comparing the employee credits of each BGS game. I think the decline is really as simple as that. Why do the new games suck? Because the good devs all left. It isn't even the same company anymore.
It is that way with Blizzard. Blizzards payment is bad, environment pretty toxic if you believe the reports and the good devs a long gone. So wouldnt be a surprise if its the same with another company producing AAA-games. It puzzles me though, why a billion dollar company does pay so bad, rumours are 40 to 50% less than standard.
Exactly. Bduh is nothing but a few temps left, making junk dlc from in-game items. I never even considered getting starfield...I mean, did people forget about 76? 😂
TES IV: Oblivion was the first Bethesda Game I ever played (As well as the very first rated M for Mature game I ever played.). My only RPG experience prior to oblivion was in the Kingdom Hearts games and Final Fantasy 10 on the PS2. The intro gave me chills and when I exited the sewers for the first time my jaw dropped and my mind was completely blown away. I can remember playing all day nonstop throughout the summer of 2007. It along with Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim made me want to pursue a career in game design. When Fallout 4 was released, I saw that Bethesda was starting to fall behind the times (Though I still enjoyed Fallout 4 for what it was, just not as much as previous Beth titles.) When Fallout 76 was first announced, I wasn't hooked at all, not because I thought it was going to suck (this was before it was released) but because I wasn't interested in an online Co-Op shooter, so I instead bought RDR2 that year. I considered getting Starfield for Christmas 2023 but ended up getting Cyberpunk 2077 instead since I heard that It was finally playable. Needless to say it Cyberpunk blows Starfield out of the water in every aspect, which in comparison looks like something from the Xbox 360/PS3 era. Bethesda thinks they're still top dog in the open world RPG genre even though their game design philosophy has barely evolved since Skyrim(In some cases it actually has regressed), and you can tell this from the loading screens present in level transitions, to the camera zooming in on NPCs when having a conversation, and the stability and performance.
@@Seoul_Soldier I'm the exact same, they ha E been dumbing sh*t down since oblivion and people praise Skyrim even though it's very shallow. The downward trend has been happening for a while
While I largely agree, to suggest that Todd Howard isn't damaging Bethesda products, is only a spokesperson and only sometimes exaggerates is like saying water is only a little wet, and if you try to walk on it, you will "probably" sink like a stone. Todd is as responsible for the disaster that was Starfield and certainly for Fallout 76 as anyone else, particularly because he was the one sitting at the top, saw the train wrecks coming and did nothing to stop it.
'Write what you know' is actually good advice... AT THE START OF A PROJECT. Expanding upon that is absolutely paramount to creating something, even slightly, engaging. What feels like a bigger miss is the no design document. What in the actual flying monkey fucks? That's insanity...
Yeah how do they expect to have cohesive vision of the world and not just have a bunch of random stuff mashed together. Bethesda seems like they want to create immersive worlds which seems like the worst thing to try and create without a design document. Like maybe you could make it work if the game/work is segmented in different worlds/stages which don't need to fit together because they are separated by a hub world or such and then have smaller groups just work on their own thing and then try to get it to fit together at the end. Which probably could work fine from a writing perspective but I can't see it working well when it comes to introducing and building upon game mechanics.
I do so much research in order to write more. Obscure 19th century firearms development, 100 year war intrigue, old taxation methods, European corpse medicine, tank development, symptoms of vampirism and more absolytely random subjects. As a writer you have to be willing to learn in order to grow.
if you were making a game with literally 4 people you need a design document how the hell does a triple A studio not do this??? how do these games work at all??????
What gets me is that Pete Hines tells fans not to ask questions and Todd Howard embraced his history as a lazy scam artist and both just expect people to be mindless consumers.
what’s really sad for me is that no other games scratch that role playing itch like the elder scrolls/fallout games do. knowing that i’ll probably never experience the same feeling i felt my first time playing those games
Playing Skyrim with the nolvus modlist and the alternate start brought back that feeling of awe and wonder for me, it feels like a whole new game but with a rush of nostalgia
Try enderal, its a game made by modders using skyrim as the base. Completely new map, leveling and magic system. The main story is great and your choices actually matter. Its basically to skyrim, what fallout nv is to fallout 3.
@@cmoney163 idk it was good but as a trans woman it definitely needed more lgbtqia+ in its medieval fantasy world. It didn't really represent modern audiences and was ruining my emersion and it was extremely disphoric for me.
I'm just waiting for the dumpster fire that will be the Fallout TV show. Like, Amazon and Bethesda IS IGNORING the lore for that LA-Boneyard area. That and their version of Fallout is stagnant.
Bethesda probably never cared about the lore of Fallout. They bought the rights from Interplay. Bethesda technically only made 3 Fallout games and published New Vegas. Inter Play created Fallout, former Inter Play devs created Obsidian who developed New Vegas who were given 18 months to release New Vegas.
@@maulressurected4405 They dont care about the lore of elder scrolls either, all the people that actually wrote the lore were gone by the time oblivion shipped. They're just playing with the bones of what greater men created.
I am mad Obsidian was rejected when they offered to make Elder Scrolls and Fallout spin offs for Bethesda. They release like 1 or 2 games every decade, Elder Scrolls 6 was pushed back to at least 2028 because of Starfield, we won’t see a Fallout game in at least a decade. We could’ve gotten smaller but fun spin offs while Bethesda works on massive scale games but no. Bethesda parades victories long past and believes they are still the shit when they haven’t done anything new that captures that feeling from 2002-2011.
The first 2 writing tenets aren't that different from what I learned in my screenwriting class. We were also taught "write what you know." But that doesn't mean you can ONLY write what you know, it means that it helps to draw from your own life experiences to make the stories more relatable and believable. We also learned, "simple stories, complex characters." But that was for writing for films, so I'm not sure how well that translates to writing for games.
Yea, the problem isn't with the 2 writing tenets, the problem is that emil is a shit writer. This is really not that different in games, except that you have a more active role. You can look at any number of great narratives in games ("Disco Elysium" stands out in recent years) to see that this is true.
Funny you should mention films because I was just thinking about this analogy the other day. Making a video game is very comparable to making a movie. You need actors (player and NPCs). You need sets, locations and decor (game visual design) and you need a good script (game story/narrative). Movie studios hire great actors, pay good writers to write amazing scripts and hire set designers, costume designers,/CGI artists to build the world. Starfield ended up being a bad movie/game because it's lacking at least two of those things, a well written script and good actors. It may look visually better than past Bethesda games, but it's missing two crucial ingredients that make a great movie/game. This doesn't account for the need of the right medium for your project. The movie Avatar would look like crap if it was made using claymation animation. It looks amazing because of the CGI animation. Starfield plays so badly because of it's outdated medium, the Creation Engine 2. There are bugs in Starfield that were present back in Fallout 3.
I'm an aspiring writer that constantly succumbs to procrastination, and even _I_ can debunk this Emil guy's points. 1. K.I.S.S. - At the start, this is fine. Getting the narrative outline written out and properly planned _should_ be done in a simple matter. But he fails to see the next step: ACTUALLY PUTTING MEAT ON THE BONES. The OUTLINE can simple, but then you have to go in and find ways to MAKE it complex and engaging. 2. "Write What You Know" - I honestly believe that this is a fallacy. Do you really think that, for example, the writer of the Star Wars: X-Wing novels actually had experience flying a futuristic space-plane to shoot bad guys? Do you think that the writer of James Bond has experience being a super-spy? Do you think JK Rowling has experience being a Chosen One wizard? That GRR Martin had experience being a medieval nobleman fighting over a shitty metal chair? That Sir Doyle had experience being the world's greatest detective? The idea of "write what you know' is, bluntly, bullshit; and we _need_ to stop perpetuating this myth. It can _help_ if you have some experience with something you're writing about (romance, for example), but it's _NOT_ a requirement. 3. "Great Games Are Played, Not Made" - Someone still has to make that great play experience, idiot. On one hand, he has a bit of a point. There are _tons_ of people that, even in games like Oblivion and Skyrim, will just skip the story in order to get on with the gameplay. THE PROBLEM WITH THAT IS THAT THEY'VE ALREADY PLAYED THROUGH THE STORY DOZENS OF TIMES PRIOR. A lot of the videos where people skip dialogue are usually challenge runs with a hard set of rules or speedruns where they're trying to complete the game as fast as possible. 3.5. "Players don't like Story" - In a franchise like, for example, Call of Duty, not many people _do_ care about the story; because it's usually just tacked on as something to do when the multiplayer servers are offline. But Role-Playing Games are different. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout set high expectations for their games' stories. But BGS has lost the plot; literally and figuratively. Skyrim's Alduin questline is mid because you're just ordered around when _you're_ supposed to be the hero, and the Civil War questline is has plotholes so large you could fly Odahving through them. Fallout 3 was, again, mid. Fallout 4 was a poor man's ripoff of New Vegas without knowing how or why NV worked. And just as PS3 has no games, 76 has no story.
They are not monetizing mods to compensate modders, it is to get a cut from mod sales while doing zero work. People that fall for this disappoint me. Its why I don't publish my mods I just use them for myself.
Skyrim for me, although I greatly enjoyed it, I know it was because the many, many modds to make enjoyable and playable No more BGS since and I will not@@TomDabektv
To be honest, I've found the combat system in Skyrim to be not just mediocre, but downright boring... especially for magic users, where the balance was so poor that modding was essential for a better experience. And now, 12 years later, in Starfield, the combat balance is still terrible. Like Bethesda's previous games, enemies become more like sponges as the game progresses, and your grenades become practically useless. It's not just about making different mistakes; it seems they are fundamentally unable to adjust the game balance properly.
"To be honest, I've found the combat system in Skyrim to be not just mediocre, but downright boring..." I'm glad this opinion gaining some momentum because it's simply the truth. Not only Skyrim but Fallout series in its entirety too. I recently got some nostalgia itch and decided to play Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4 again. I couldn't enjoy the experience without modding and tweaking the difficulty beyond the point of no return. Especially the Fallout 3. What do I mean by that? I mean actually wanting to use drugs or other alternative buffs regardless of the weapon and armor. Actually having to develop some sort of strategy when going into combat etc. Bethesda does one thing good and that's the template. I played games like Dishonored, Metro, Witcher, Dark Souls and everytime, I could aproach these games in a different way, in a different strategy. Either there was a challenge or a different decision to make. For Fallout and Skyrim? Just get a powerful enough weapon, mash the left mouse button until the enemy stops moving and repeat. Story never was powerful enough to carry the combat (excluding New Vegas). So what's there to do other then moving from one place to another? I still got no answer for that. All Bethesda games have that "first playthrough" magic and as soon as the game ends, it dissappears. That's the "template" for you. It's great for modders to work on but god awful for players. Thank god for modders and I'm gonna be little selfish when I say that, thank god Bethesda released Starfield in this awful state. Now it's clear for me: It took me like 6 games to realise that Bethesda is bad at developing quality video games, simply put. Now I'll wait for their next 6 releases and observe the situation. I got Starfield for free with my new GPU purchase and I was still mad as hell. I had no desire to play after 2 hours of walking from one place to another. I can't imagine paying full price for that got garbage.
I remembered a certain game streamer lamenting, "The difficulty of adjusting the difficulty level is high!" (facepalm). And isn't New Vegas essentially the fifth game, since it's a game by a different production company using the Fallout 3 engine? Bethesda has been throwing everything at the users, from additional content to even bug fixes, by distributing the Creation Kit. However, with Starfield, the foundation was so terrible that many mod creators have given up on it, making me realize that a minimum level of quality is indeed necessary. I've been looking forward to TES6 for a long time, but to be honest, I think I'll wait for a sale or until a good set of mods comes out before diving in.@@ibrahimguler6177
I've come to realise that Bethesda have no passion for making games. The fact that they won't listen to feedback points to this. As well as Emil and his presentation. I mean I doubt he is the only person at Bethesda who is this way. They never got better at their craft. Instead they got better at marketing their crap. So sad for me as a former fan of their games.,
I hear that Bethesda is bad now because they are stuck in the past, but imo, if they truly were stuck in the past than they would still make decent games because games like Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, etc, still hold up pretty well. It would still be frustrating to not see change, but at least it wouldn't be offensively bad. The real problem is that they are simply getting worse in almost every area on top of not innovating or wanting to change. Starfield is the first singleplayer bgs rpg that did not improve literally any aspect of their previous games besides graphical fidelity. Even Fallout 4, despite its downgrades to dialogue and rpg elements, still improved things like companions, looting, customization, and combat.
22:07 he copy and pastes the first two points from a book on film screenwriting that I read in college. Syd Field, Rules on Screenplay I think. This is interesting as these rules pertain to the popularized 3 act structure 90 minute format found in many films in the 80s and 90s. I think we figured out why homies stories don't work, they are stretched farther than mama murphy's jet-laced Prydwen. The fact he implies that they are "personal" and liek something he figured out is so fucking cap. Dude quoted my professor verbatim. Not sure if you touch on this point, haven't finished the video yet, but I think this is worth mentioning. The dude is writing rpg scripts with "rules" that worked for writing satisfying theaterical movies. I think this point is worth mentioning.
I heavily disagree that starfield is “mid”, what about it is mediocre actually? Shooting mechanics? Maybe I’ll give it that, maybe. Exploration? Way below mediocre. Animations? Yeah mediocre, a decade ago. Voice acting? Mediocre at times, absolutely atrocious most of the time. Dialogue? Do I need going? There’s nothing “mid” about this game, it’s below mid. When I think about a mediocre game I think idk, greedfall, a overall good game with big flaws that bring it down, it does some things well, others poorly, good voice acting and decent writing, but clunky combat, imo starfield has no redeeming qualities, none whatsoever.
Well, Emile in regards to KISS and writing is right but wrong. He's right because, yeah, a lot of people when they play a Bethesda game don't care that much about the main story. But he's wrong in that the reason for that is because often the main story is not that great. Good Bethesda games are mainly good because of the incredibly immersive world. If Emile and the people at Bethesda wrote a better main story then people would probably care about collecting bobbleheads less than playing through it. Edit: I will say, there is an alternative way to interpret this. Which is that he was making a broader point about player interactivity with the narrative and that the player doesn't always follow the writers' expectations and you have to write towards that. Which would be a fair point, but the paper airplane line may not have been the best way to put that. Also, to be fair, I don't think something like making NPCs essential is a great way to handle player interactivity with the narrative. Although that may have nothing to do with Emil. I think you misunderstood "write what you know" as a principle though. Although maybe Emile misunderstood it too, idk. I haven't seen the talk. "Write what you know" is an age old saying when it comes to writing though and it's solid. And a lot of good writers swear by it. But it doesn't come down to only writing the specific things you have experiences with. What it comes down to is finding some sort of personal or emotional thing to grab on to when writing something that comes from your own experience. Like you've probably never been a dwarf in a magical fantasy world navigating the politics of a country. But what you probably HAVE dealt with is feeling insecure or rejected or outcast. And so you can use those feelings to inform your writing for that dwarf in that fantasy world. And you can make it more real and powerful because those feelings are things you know.
Also his understanding of "keeping it simple" is just so stupid. Keeping something simple doesn't mean "dumb it down", it means "Make something easier to digest, make sure your core idea is communicated to the viewer/player". For example, comparing two (arguably) antagonistic factions from Bethesda games: >The Legion from F:NV: You understand right away that they are a threat to the region, that they enslave and have no qualms about slaughter. But later on you find out that this type of dominance is necessary because, in the eyes of the Legion, it provides true safety and stability to the unified land. These ideas are important for the narrative so the player can understand that the faction is not "evil for the sake of being evil". >The Institute from F4: The enigmatic organization that is feared and hated in the region. Everyone is paranoid due to them kidnapping, killing and replacing people with Synths. You don't really see much of them until later into the game, except that they are evil and then you go into their base and learn... Nothing, they babble about how it is for the good of humanity but aside from that they don't give you more reason or depth as to WHY they do this, what are their ideals, their end goal, SOMETHING. Due to this, the only place they have for the player is "generic bad guy". What Emil fails to grasp is that "keeping something simple" doesn't mean that you should half ass your fucking job, it's simplicity for the READER not the WRITER.
Exactly! He essentially can not see the forest from the trees. If people rip every page of your story out and make paper airplanes out of it, it is because your story is not engaging enough! That is his failure as a writer, not the players fault.
@@DarkOmegaMK2 God, dont even get me started on the Institute. I LOVE the Institute. Or i love the idea of the Institute to be more precise. But it has soooo much wasted potential that it almost literally hurts. The ONLY faction in the post apocalyptic wasteland that is still actually developing new technology! That in and of itself is already amazing. But so little is actually done with it! Basically there is only one quest in the entire game that demonstrates to the player how the Institute can actually be positive for the Commonwealth. And that is the Warwick homestead crop experiment. The player is not even told what the Institutes long term goal is even if you side with them. Beyond just getting their reactor running and kicking the BoS out of the Commonwealth, there is no longer term plan or goal that the Institute seems to be working towards.
@@sebastijanglozinic8630 completely agreed. The idea of an enigmatic entity is good. Except they didn't realize that you have to drop the mystery eventually.
I stop caring about a story if it's bad. Emil is a defeatist pessimistic loser. Definitely the right man to be at bethesda. The boy they deserve giving mouth breathers what they want.
There was issues with the Power Armor Helmet that came with the $200 collectors edition also had mold issues on the inner lining padding for the helmet. My sister had to get her helmet replaced as well as the shitty west tek bag.
I like when businesses tell us how hard it is as if we as customers would care. If it's so hard for you to make a working product, I'll take my business somewhere else
Yeah, designing and building apartment buildings is hard, designing and building cars is hard, if either of those were to come out unfinished or partially broken would that fly? Nope.
26:22 "Write what you know." What Emil does not understand is you write your story, but add in stuff you know if it helps enhance your story or adds a little authenticity. It does not mean you can't still take on topics you don't know much about or never experienced . We can't possibly know about everything on earth let alone fictional science fiction or fantasy.
Elder Scrolls is my favourite game franchise and it breaks me heart to see it so mistreated. What will be 15/16 years between games is absurd. But I'm at the point where I don't care now, because I know TES 6 will be terrible. Bethesda don't care. I wish TES would go to a developer who actually cares.
Starfield was a mistake. In its place there should have been a Unreal engine 5 TES 6 a full decade after the release of Skyrim. A simple search for "Unreal Engine 5 graphical demo" shows what kind of Elder Scrolls game we could play TODAY, if only Bethesda had worked hard to master the best tech and to make the game everyone of their customers really wants.
Bet you'll go back on those words when Elder scrolls 6 is just as awesome as skyrim. Also nothing wrong with taking years to make games, it's a lot of work that you fans don't seem to realize, better to wait and get an amazing product then rush it and have a terrible product
You actually had to ask for the canvas bag. I bought the collectors edition of FO76, and wasn't informed that there was a replacement bag. It could have been that my parents bought it for me, but I still had to ask. And to the credit of the customer service agent I talked to, they got me one even though I missed the deadline.
Outer worlds and starfield are basically the same game except one slightly better written. Other than that they’re both like virtual clam chowder, boring, bland, and mid
Emil also admitted in the talk that he doesn’t care or respect canon, it’s so frustrating as canon helps keep a world making sense, I tried Starfield and quit it when I met the group, the game wasn’t fun or interesting etc, gameplay was the worst and most painful I’d ever tried
You're absolutely right in saying they won't change their behavior. And I can give you the main reason: Consumers are too lazy/complacent to speak out with anything but a keyboard. Don't like the way they're going with their games? Tell them WITH YOUR WALLETS. Refuse to buy their shit games until they shape up! If you bought Starfield sight unseen, if you shelled out $200 for a fucking canvas bag? YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
We loved the WORLDS BGS made. They weren't really good writers, and were only average at their visual design in any one item, but damn did they know how to build a WORLD. And now, they went and made... this.
Saying they made something is too generous. All the planets were soulessly and mindlessly generated without even basic rules to prevent repetition and tedium.
It's makes more sense to view Bethesda as a company that makes interesting, but ultimately boring and buggy tech demos (Elder Scrolls 1&2, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Starfield) and stumbled into a few good games in the middle (Morrowind, Fallout 3, Skyrim)
They need a complete engine overhaul because they have been using a modified engine from previous titles when that engine does not really function well with newer platforms. They are essentially using a toolbox with tools that are poorly designed for what they are currently trying to use it for.
Yeah on top of that they tried to make a procgen space exploration game on that engine which is the antithesis of what kind of engine should be used to make that kind of game. Starfield was doomed before development started.
yeah and they know this too back when they made fallout 76 they had interviews where they said they were fighting a engine that was poorly sueted for what they wanted it to do the whole time.@@honeybadger6275
The problem is that Bethesda has been doing the minimum effort to keep their engine running, rather than properly keeping it up to date. It's a noticeable contrast between Bethesda and a company like From Software or Valve. Both of the latter us their own engines, but you won't be finding the same bugs from twenty years ago either.
Great video on Starfield. I've watched so many of these already and yours def stands out from the usual commentary since you touched on Emil's ted talk. Didn't even know about that I'd be hard pressed to believe anyone is genuinely optimistic for the release of ES6 after playing Loadingfield. At least for me, the baseline standard they have to meet game design wise is a project similar to CP2077. What makes me even more skeptic about ES6 is we have mod packs for Skyrim that pretty much elevates or reforms the way you play the game. Nolvus is a great example. That's another standard I'm expecting from a "nExT gEn" BGS game that'll be coming out in the latter half of the 2020's.
Elder Scrolls 6 will sadly still sell like gangbusters. Why? Because it's a recognizable franchise and the fanboys will happily open their mouths for the manure shovel.
Appreciate your input. I feel like so much of what you said in the video and in your responses to comments rings true for me. I've played Skyrim 800+ hours, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4 (like 650 hours on 4).....and I was so hyped for Starfield...and was so disappointed - though I sloughed to 200 hours of playing) - that I wrote my first ever review (it was negative) on Steam. In the two months since then my thoughts have congealed and this is how I explain it to family/friends - Starfield feels like the team at Bethesda were like the scientists at Jurassic Park. They saw this new technology - ai generated planets, and ran with things without ever asking if they should. Honestly, they could have made this game after Skyrim. I mean think about it - with all of the load screens, with inability to fully explore a planet, with the ability to actually fly onto/off of a planet etc., there's no reason they couldn't have done this game with the technology they had between Skyrim and Fallout 4. Of course, what they don't say directly is that what they didn't have was the ai to build the planets for them so they didn't have to craft 1,000+ planets themselves. The team there seems to have forgotten, or maybe never understood because FO 4 was way less incredible than Skyrim, that it's the elements of open exploration, hand crafted environments, good story lines, and surprises that made Skyrim great. As many other commentators said here and in other video reviews online, and I've said the same thing to other first before seeing these comments, they could have made a game with 10 planets, each with maps the size of Skyrim, each featuring a different type of atmosphere/biomes..... and even leaving in the same bad writing style, the same stupid main quest (which is basically skyrim in space), leaving in the same repetitive space battles, etc....and the game would be 10, 50, 100x better. 99% of gamers understand that the technology to make a game with a 1,000 + planets all with the same look/feel of a hand crafted environment like Skyrim (or event FO 4) doesn't exist yet - they're a company and need to make money so they can't hire 10,000 developers, artists, etc. and they can't build a game that only .000001% of the gaming population can afford to buy a machine to run it on. Lastly, I think the game proves how they've lost their way because leaving aside all the damn bugs that should have been caught in testing, if they had been truly open to feedback/reviews during the making of it, they would have learned that the game is empty and people don't want an empty game. Not from Bethesda. This wasn't supposed to be a "space simulator".....so again they could have stuck with much smaller planet count, focused on story and exploration, and people would have been satisfied. I mean heck, they weren't event hard working enough to program in different spawn points/options for bad guys and loot in the ai generated locations. Like at least if every time I encountered an "Abandoned research tower" or a "Deserted UC listening post" or any of the 30-40 choices the system picks from and the bad guys and the loot wasn't always in the same place.....it would have been 2x more enjoyable. How lazy/stupid are you as a AAA game developer to not think that poor choices like that wouldn't lead to angry customers. And then, to top it off, they started telling players online that no, we don't understand how to play the game. Like wtf. Every top executive should be canned for this. This is worse than the Pinto, Gremlin, Delorean, and every other car that flopped combined.
The speech that the lead writer gave speaks of not appriciating the players ability to follow complicated storylines. This guy clearly looks down on the players and thinks they are not worth the effort. Also the building aspect is pretty horrible in fallout games and it is even more horrible in Starfield. Either Bethesda management learns to be more humble or I think they have a very rude awakening ahead of them. Also not writing a game based reference book just seems lazy. It is like the lead writer wants to get by with less work.
12:59 Ahhhh, the Great Canvas Shortage of 2018. They were brutal times. The shortage was so bad that global superpowers almost came to conflict to secure the ever rarer material.
Bobby Kotick happened. Then, he made Todd Howard his vassal. Greed attracts greed. You should have known after Howard walked on Stage and lied through his teeth about how great Fallout 76 was going to be.
What makes me laugh is that people actually thought Starfield would be good, despite how bad Fallout 4 and 76 were, and their constant re-releasing of Skyrim. And now, even more of the old BGS team, the ones who did the work, are gone. ES6 is going to be absolute rubbish.
I disagree on one thing: todd howard is not a mere spokesperson. he IS bethesda, the producer and director and leader of the entire studio! I forgot which interview it was but he said ALL the decision made during the game development goes through HIM and HIM only. Also, look for a video in yt about someone asking what type of writers bethesda wants in their ranks, Todd basically says the exact same KISS nonsense that emil talked about. Emil is still hired because todd agrees with him. Todd is not humble guy, he is a compulsive liar filled with hubris, and bethesda today is just a full manifestation of Todd's personality.
I fell in love with Bethesda back in 2010 when I first played Fallout 3 GOTY Edition. I loved them so much, I bought New Vegas, Elder Scrolls Skyrim and Fallout 4 on launch and I loved them unconditionally. But since 2018 with Fallout 76, my love for them has long died. Such a shame, that a company that made me feel hopeful for most of my generation fell this hard into a Corporate abyss. Just sad.
you've got to wonder if they even bothered to code Starfield from the ground up or if it's merely a creation engine asset flip with procedural generation generating planets every time you fast travel with very few cities in between. Not to mention the threadbare Skyrim clone story. I don't even understand why we still defended their use of the creation engine despite its age painfully showing with each subsequent release, I know it was because of the quality of their games, but no other company would get the same treatment. Every other game company out there uses the newest and best technology and Bethesda has the resources and money to build a new engine, especially under Microsoft.
25:33 I guess Emil forgot about Morrowind and the Nerevarine. Which I suppose is more 'biblical' and 'Messiah' like than the Dragonborn is, or all of Skyrim's story is. But, considering I only found evidence that he worked on Bloodmoon for that game, and not the main content I can only imagine he forgot.
You do know that most of the developers that made skyrim no longer work there right? It's just like redfall. The reason why it's so bad is because after prey 70% of the staff left Arkane Austin. Because they didn't wantna make red fall. You can't compare the old games to the new because the staffing is different. Most of the good talent is gone.
The guys opening the dark plastic Nuba Cola Dark bottle are also featured in Internet Historian’s Fallout 76 video. They sample the rum and one says “Can I swear? I should be able to, it’s our show.” Can’t remember any more than that.
the decline started when they stopped the solid support for games if you released a bad game on CD/DVD you be screwed out of business if you release an unfinished game on the cloud the idiots who pre paid will wait for you to fix it you just let the negative feedback and the modders guide you on what to fix AKA other people do your job while you get paid fully
During my first playthrough of Starfield I think the only part I enjoyed was the Crimson Fleet faction quest, I felt it was better than the main quest yet I was still disappointed that the Constellation companions hated that I sided with them.
I’m not a game developer, I’m also not a helicopter pilot but if I see a helicopter upside down in a tree I know somebody goofed
Have you not considered how hard they were trying when they flew it and how difficult helicopter pilot school is though?
@@kyleadelaideExactly, he is not even acknowledging the fact the helicopter OBVIOUSLY took off just fine and flew for however long before ending up upside down. Just another helicopter hater #helihaterhell
@@lostree1981 Totally agree. Emil didn't work for 27 years in a Hostess Twinkie Factory for people to treat him this way. Imagine if they crashed the helicopter on the moon.
Kobe Bryant Agrees.
I once knew a helicoptor mechanic. I said to him 'wow you must be real smart to do that job' His reply 'nope a trained monkey could do my job all I do is follow the log book and replace parts at the rated hours'.
They dont actually diagnose and fix stuff like a car mechanic. If they swap in a new part and it doesnt start they send it back to the factory. And move onto the next.
It was kind of surprising but also a life lesson in how clinical some roles are that you think are not.
I'd love to ask that Emil dude one question: "I don't work at the Twinkie factory. Am I allowed to eat a Twinkie and decide it doesn't taste good?" His analogy doesn't make a lick of sense, it's embarrassing.
Because if he thinks that's true, then the flip side of that must also be true. "I played this video game, and I loved it!" 'Hey man, are you a game developer? Do you know what it takes to make a video game? Then how can you sit there and say you loved it then?' Lol.
"This plane crashed, something's wrong."
"Are you an aircraft engineer or pilot? No? You don't get to judge, then!"
@@ALLMINDmercenarysupportsystemBoeing Silently exits
He's a hack, and I firmly believe he's the biggest problem at Bethesda next to Todd himself.
Emil destroyed bethesda
I can't imagine any other job where you'd use the difficulty of the job as an excuse to the customer for why you failed at it.
"My new roof leaks"
"Yea , shit is hard. Have to use ladders and everything. See ya later"
"Yeah, the light dimmer doesn't always work, but it's very difficult to wire, so you should appreciate that it works at all even some of the time."
Leaking roof? That... is not a bug, it is a Feature!
"My roof is leaking, but I'm not a roofer, so what the hell do I know?"
@@Atmux
keep it simple stupid! just put a bucket under it and pray to your god and hope for the best lol.
As a roofer, I find that hilarious😅
Starfirld is litterally a test to see if they can use procedural generation to replace the entire studio when it comes to shitting out the new elder scrolls game.
AI produces trash.
@sethblank3139oh really? May I have a source?
Lol, the fact that daggerfall had better procedural generation than starfield lmao. Since atleast in DF, the dungeons are likely different each time, instead of the same dungeon for all the planets.
Theres no way it took as long as it did to develop when modders are already releasing complete overhaul mods a year later. Im willing to bet most of the "development cycle" was just an attempt to build a mountain of hype...And pay off every game review institution for a perfect or near perfect rating.
@@candlestyx8517 This. When you look at it, it only has 3 planets (or holds), and the 1000 planets are just.... a very weak implementation of their radiant quests.
A part of me thinks that they had hoped Starfield would be received well enough that the 1000 planets would be "real estate" for mod-added locations, considering alot of quest mods in Skyrim would occupy the same spaces.
The steam awards was a coup by 4chan to make fun of/bring light to certain games; Starfield being awarded was a slap in the face because it has zero innovation, boring story, and dull gameplay; steam reviews reflected this, adding salt in the wound. For labor of love, it was awarded to RDR2, which has been dropped support by rock star 2-3 years ago, making fun of them giving it love despite the community saying to f-ing fix the game and give it updates for the past 2-3 years. So overall, do not have loyalty to these brands, all have sold out for quick and easy cash.
and there are people out there who think these votes were serious lol. mostly PS fanboys who have no clue what's going on.
😂😂😂 I fucking love 4chan
@@5226-p1e Xbox fanboys who somehow love Starfield also thought the reward was genuine. The brain rot is everywhere.
@@Seoul_Soldier
i'm no xbox fanboy either, i'm on PC not some console peasant.
@@5226-p1e Fangirl cult sure does.
What happened? After 20+ years working at Bethesda the senior management couldn't sell their stock and retire without taking a massive loss to the company. So when Microsoft came around looking for IPs, Bethesda sold Microsoft on their great engine and brand new IP. You see, if the senior staff in a company sell their stock, the company stock fails. But if the Bethesda stock is converted to Microsoft stock and the Bethesda executives become Microsoft employees, they can then retire after their contracts with no loss of income because Microsoft's stock won't care that a couple of acquired employees retire.
So that is what Starfield is. A trinket of an idea that Bethesda sold Microsoft on, and the hurdle the Bethesda executives faced before they could leave. What we got was the "Minimal Contractual Obligation" Bethesda had to fill before the senior management could leave, and it shows. A hurried collection of cobbled ideas that resembled more of an asset turnover for how well they worked together, it fulfilled the legal definition of a 'game' and a week after it's release, probably once it cleared Legal, they cashed out & retired.
Damn. If true, it all makes sense now. The game lacks a soul for good reason now
Look at how fast Jeff Gardener and Purkey left to go do their own creative things after they got their buy out bonuses. They had IDGAF money at that point and didn't want to stay on a sinking ship.
On spot 🎯
It seems that, and I hate to say it, Microsoft needs to be more hands on with their owned game publishers and studios and developers like how Nintendo is (with everyone except The Pokémon Company/Creatures Inc./ Gamefreak and the new Mario Sports/Party developers of course). I trust Nintendo to do it as their internal devs create amazing games, but Xbox hasn't been like that for a long time. Mojang, Bethesda (except Id Software), Activision/Blizzard, and especially 343 Industries need major supervision to make sure they're making product for Xbox, PC, and mobile that is high quality and worth their prince on release day. Knowing Microsoft they won't do that, only thing they'll intervene on is forcing censorship according to recent reports. I miss when Xbox had a bunch of great games on the original Xbox and Xbox 360, what happened. PlayStation isn't much better which is also sad. Only console manufacturer left with a bunch of great high quality exclusives is Nintendo and even they have issues, like being too slow/stubborn to adapt to change for better and for worse.
Just to point out, Bethesda only published fallout new vegas, they didn't work on it.
It had the series creator and multiple people from 1 and 2 on team with great writers. Thats why its so highly regarded.
Dont give Bethesda credit for something they didn't do. Especially since new vegas is actually a very good game.
Todd already tries hard enough to make people believe he was the creator of the fallout series when thats far from it.
Yup and didn't Bethesda screw over Obsidian by not paying them.
@@maulressurected4405 they got paid, but Bethesda supposedly shafted them on the bonus if they got a score of 85. They got 84 :/
@@maulressurected4405 Morrowind was the last game Bethesda made when they had integrity.
Todd Howard is and always has been a lying charlatan.
Not to be the devil's advocate but you could argue they did contribute a bit considering not only did they allow the game to exist but they reused assets from FO3 which Bethesda made, gameplay is very much similar but improved and the engine and mechanics are improved from FO3. But yes Obsidian did make it themselves, using what BGS had started already.
Emil is the worst hack in an industry filledwith hacks.
I think those astronauts that landed on the moon would soon be bored if they had to explore another 999 planets all the same as the barren moon.
When astronauts landed
-they tried moving because they had no idea what would happen and found they were lighter and could move and bounce pretty easily
Gathered materials for research
Gave a speech on the moon
Decorated the place
Left
In starfield you can only do the gather materials bit and your literally more sluggish than those astronauts
No that was the weirdest excuse ever like those ppl just landed on the fucking moon I’m sitting on my couch watching a screen like we’re allowed to be bored with a low quality game
The astronauts on the Moon were the first humans to ever go there. Also the Moon is very different from the Earth, there is no place on Earth that looks and feels like the Moon. What Bethesda did, it did a 1000 Moons which felt pretty much the same, there was someone there before you, who left some artifacts, sometimes there are other people around, some ships in orbit and what not. It doesn't feel at all like you're exploring a new, never visited place. Also there is no impact of what you did, people don't talk about your exploration, nobody cares "you've been there", nobody cares you explored that moon. It's like you did nothing, even collecting materials and resources there, means nothing. The whole game seems pointless, it feels like a theme park where, you can't touch anything and even if you touch something it doesn't matter. You literally have 0 impact on people and surroundings, in that game you have less impact than you have in the real world. I mean putting that comment here I have more impact on the real world than in Starfield doing whatever (great thing). Starfield is like a movie, you watch it without having any real interaction or impact on the surrounding world. Even in some very old games you have impact on the world, a real story progression and what not... in Starfield everything looks superficial and not connected to anything else.
The writer should be fired…. Just look at red dead 2. Some of the best writing, and character development of any game ever made. And it’s largely regarded by fans and critics as one of the best games ever made.
Astronauts at least had a moon buggy to play with!
I think Bethesda has never truly recovered from the Fallout 3/New Vegas comparisons, which completely exposed their design philosophy and approach to game making. Those two games, despite being so similar, yet so different, really opened a lot of peoples' eyes to how Bethesda crafts their games. And they've had some stiffer competition in the open world RPG genre in the 2010's. People aren't content with Bethesdaslop: janky mechanics on an aging engine that is being stretched too thin to do things it was never designed for, boneheaded world building, strangely constricted quest design (ie. the quest First Contact, why can't you just kill the rich people?), too many essential marked NPC's because Todd Howard doesn't want you playing outside of his sandbox.
If it wasn't for Bethesda we wouldn't have the New Vegas we all know and love, Real fans enjoy Fallout 1,2,3 New Vegas, 4 and even 76. Also Bethesda has said that they loved New Vegas and Todd Howard has said he loves new Vegas, look at all the NCR products on their store site and refrences to New Vegas in Fallout 4. Also Tim Cain, one of the creators of fallout, is good friends with Todd Howard and loves What Bethesda has done with the series
@@acfan9384 And why would I care if Tim Cain thinks that? It's a meaningless appeal to authority. If, while he was alive, Enzo Ferrari had come out and said he loved the Ford Pinto and thought it was the height of engineering and style, it would only mean that despite being instrumental in the development of some of the most iconic automobiles he had terrible taste and opinions on cars outside of his company.
I'd say CD Projekt Red did this to them. Witcher 3 made Fallout 4 look very average, then Cyberpunk 2077 became everything a modern Bethesda game should be, albeit a couple of years after launch.
@@WyqnoI don’t know, Tim Cain only made Fallout.
@@millabasset1710 Really, that's what you got out of that? Something that was neither said, nor implied? It doesn't matter how many games Tim Cain has made, it's a useless appeal to authority. People in positions of authority and experience can have terrible taste and opinions, shocking news at 11.
Bethesda is totally disconnected from the reality of gaming, and has no clue how hard it is to eat their products without puking or falling into a coma.
or suffering things falling off.....
I mean i lied to my GF last night "baby that's a detachable penis" she left me.....
but seriously even Obsidian exposed BGS for what they are and we all ignored it....well cus we still fukking bought skyrim 100 times and fallout 4....ugh
Bethesda is food poisoning
It's funny how they claim we as gamers don't know how game development works but it looks like they also don't know that countless other AAA and even AA/III studios are over a decade ahead of them in several things. If they don't change, adapt and innovate.. by the time ES6 comes out it will be so bad and out of date it will be disatrous.
Starfield already pissed of many loyal fans so they better get their shit together.
@@valentinvas6454 Erena = 2d all of tamriel rendered
daggerfall = 3d all of tamriel rendered
Morrowind = only Vvardenfell of the whole morrowind rendered [not a whole realm], also deep RPG
Oblivion = only Cyridil rendered, also kinda watered down
skyrim = 1 province and shallow game
ESO = by using old XB gfx but slightly cleaned up most of temriel rendered and some other realms, still not a god RPG, relies on others yet punishes groups so...very kaka!
fallout 3 = decent RPG, fit the game simple story but only 1 major city that the wasteland is centered on but 2 major communities as player hubs
fallout 4 = learned nothing from new vegas yet signs of that game are present 2 pre-existing trading hubs, you build the rest and shallow as F RPG and game systems, makes F3 look like a masterpiece..a little
F76 - empty even with NPC's game, nonexistent RPG shitty gameplay on all levels, limited base building but can pick up and go on a whim
not saying anything people don't already know but if BGS hasn't learned from others they'll not learn from their own mistakes...
all they learned from New Vegas is Obsidian with a handicap can out dev BGS....
I will say this though, back when bethesda made those 2 forgotten adventure games, those were made cus some of the devs liked that style of game but elder scrolls is a RPG series and that was the lesson learned, that's why morrowind was what it was....
so the big corrected mistake and shift in what they did as a studio also became the start of an ever downward spiral into losing more of the elements that shaped the games....
you think they can revamp the studio that fast?? you think they even identify a problem?? I honestly think they see it as "oh people hate us now, that sucks"
my stupid ass said skyrim sucked but fallout 4 will be fun.....oh how wrong i was but goddamn if i had only looked harder there was other games to play....that's my problem to get over though
nobody likes thinking the worst but at a certain point you have to admit the truth
@@valentinvas6454 Bethesda is not a AAA studio, it only identifies itself as such.
"KISS" or also known as "I don't want to work too much, just make some cookie cutter bullshit and jam it into the story, our audience is ret -*- arded enough that they will just eat it, like they always have and always will"
I like simple stories. But Emil's way is just... too goddamn boring.
I can just find a random modder in Skyrim and play a custom quest made with a better story. Emil's story writing philosophy is literally 5 steps down compared to a random modder.
@@TheSilentVoid_ There seems to be a misconception simple stories and crap stories. Simplicity doesn't mean to "dumb down" your idea or world or lore or whatever, it means to make it easier to the consumer to digest and process. If anything, simplifying a story and not losing anything important in the process is a challenge.
What Emil thinks about "simplicity" is that it should be "simple for him to make a story", when TRUE SIMPLICITY means "simple for US to understand".
His meaning of "KISS" is not "KEEP IT SIMPLE" but instead it's "KEEP IT SHIT".
@@DarkOmegaMK2
I agree with this. Like if your idea of simple is boring and uninterested and riddled with half baked plans, what the hell are you doing in the department of writing?
@@TheSilentVoid_ And not only that, but he's giving a talk on writing advice, these are people that are learning how to write a plot for a video game and already the lessons they are learning are super crap.
@@DarkOmegaMK2
Well he certainly earned his title of lead designer. Cause he certainly lead them away from good writing.
Here are some fun facts to keep in mind to not be exited about TES6 (some of these you've brought up and I'm very thankful for that)
- As long as Emil is lead anything, we won't get proper RPG storylines, I don't even want him in Quest design, the Dark Brotherhood was pretty good but had some serious issues regarding you as player not being able to NOT do the obviously forged Deaddrop contracts and question wtf you're doing. Another railroad just like Emil loves doing.
- Jeremy Soule won't be composing for TES6 unless some actual real miracle happens.
-The guy responsible of the environmental storytelling (leveldesign) has left BGS, so I'm not even surprised when I hear about there only being 20 or so PoI's in SF.
- Their main dev team aren't masters at papyrus and they can't handle this engine, its been visible since Oblivion, got exposed in Skyrim (the dragons operate on a system of animations, this is why dragonriding is an absolute joke of a mechanic), Fallout4 was stripped of not just RPG options but visual details (guns magically appear in your hands, armor is one large piece), and really got out of control with SF, I bet Starfield had more detail and mechanics but they all stripped those out because they couldn't make it work due their incompetency. Remember that modders have made a working buggy in the NewVegas version of the engine, and there was a dragon riding mod that gave people true control over the dragonflying for LE Skyrim.
I'm glad this video wasn't 20 minutes bashing on the engine, like many fall into, because thats not the issue, the issue is the devs behind it just aren't good programmers. This is a terrible thing because now the only capable people in that office are the visual artists, and the engine can't even show their work properly.
Finally someone else who sees what I see 😂
The engine is pretty much a red herring that BGS 100% benefit from. As if said engine is some kind of mustache-twirling villain and not the software made by BGS.
I genuinely don't think there's even 20 pois in starfield, the real amount is probably less than 10 when I played it
Lol what? In Fallout 4 we got modular armor pieces (arms, legs, torso and head) that can be mixed with other armors and few clothes, but in Bethesda fashion in order to deal with clipping they just limited you what clothing items you can wear with armor and straight cut out the holster system (which got implemented back by modders)
I mean let’s be real, the engine is absolutely an issue. It’s just not the only issue.
The worst thing about Starfield is that I'm no longer excited for Elder Scrolls 6.
In fact, I would rather prefer if Bethesda hired bunch of well-known and talented modders and let them do it for them.
I have zero confidence that Bethesda can pull it off and make ES6 a great game, let alone a masterpiece like Skyrim was.
Skyrim wasn't a master piece of you played the prior games you would see the downward trend that was in place since oblivion. Skyrim was just the first game for alot of people so they don't know any better. It was shallow as an rpg
😂 skrim was not a master piece 😅
It was so empty and repeated dungeons with the same loot .
I played it to hell .
Skyrim was my first RPG/Bethesda game so obviously I have fond memories and nostalgia. But in no way can it ever be considered a "Masterpiece".
The highest praise I could reasonably give Skyrim is that it's alright.
Skyrim was not a masterpiece. It was a piece.
Skyrim was not a masterpiece. BGS has only actually made 1 masterpiece and it was TES3 Morrowind.
I can't wait to see how much of a "next generation RPG" Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be. We might even get a companion that has a personality that isn't "generic good guy who enjoys helping people". Or even be able play for ten minutes without having to see a loading screen. Oh, and you know what else would be cool? An inventory system that isn't terribly designed. Imagine that! Oh man I better update my PC so it'll be able to handle that masterpiece.
You need to double or even triple upgrade your machine so it shows not 16x the detail but 32x.
I am so worried about the future of ES6. I loved Oblivion, it was my entry point into the series when I was about 14 years old.
Skyrim was also great, even if they did dumb down the gameplay and mechanics somewhat. But it was fun to explore!
ES6? If Emil Pagliarulo is in charge, the project will be dead in the water. He has gone on record saying ignore the reviews and that Design Documents are... Outdated...
Calling it now. Elder Scrolls 6 is just going to be a microtransactions storefront masquerading as an RPG.
LMAO
If Emil writes another game then I give up on them. Obsidian knows what Bethesda fans want, why cant Bethesda figure it out?
The amazing thing about “Baldur’s Gate 3” is that it’s not even open world. But it FEELS open world, because of how layered and in depth the storytelling is. And “The Witcher 3” is open world, but the storytelling is so deep and layered, with so many twists and reveals with even the fetch quests.
23:58 - As a writer & creator myself I am so disgusted by his "process" ... This speaks volumes, get these fake writers outta their offices.
i love the part where he says he didnt think he HAD a process and never thought about it before the TED talk - like WHAT? lolol
@@jesterssketchbook probably one of the worst TED talks for authors & creators
My reaction to Pagliarulo and people like Moffat. How do they get their jobs? They are obviously incompetent.
@@jesterssketchbook Seriously, as an amateur writer I need several reference documents to make anything larger than a short story.
And to think he does have experience with writing he is in a great position to learn and improve, then processes to shoot himself in the foot. "This is how it's done folks"
I have a friend who is a screen writer and she had a great quote for the Emil philosophy "If you only write what you know, you better be reading what you don't know"
In case anyone hasn't yet noticed this over the years, Bethesda Game Studio is the real world equivalent of Vault Tec in the Fallout games. The very same unscrupulous behavior.
They are not doing human experiments....yet
Ya more or less there seeing how will react an what will fall for.
@@lyrethedragon playing starfield is a human experiment tbh
I think u people are just complainign too much, fallout 4 wasn't terrible
@@houstonswisha143 I didn’t say that it was. I have over 6k hours invested into the game, somewhat embarrassing to admit. I bought it the day it released. But Bethesda has a proven track record that’s undeniable across all of their games for having problems. And they’ve done little to fix things despite hearing from the public about it.
Emil: We don't make quality story and writing for our games because players are gonna skip it all anyway.
Players: *Skip all the story because it's awfully written and boring af
Starfield suffers from losing to No Man’s Sky on almost every metric
Agreed
The problem is Todd Howard. Morrowind was a generational leap, the blueprint for modern open world games, and the formulae for Bethesda games moving forward. Todd was the visionary behind that, but the problem is that rather than continually pushing the envelope like Morrowind did, innovation was abandoned in favour of the safer iteration that all BGS games since have suffered from. You can only iterate so far before it becomes stale and that's what's lead to their decline. They lack a vision, they lack bravery, they're scared of taking risks, of innovating, pushing the envelope to new limits, and have become far, far too dependent upon the modding community to finish their games.
Agree. Emil's a narcissist.
Emil's the kind of guy who got told one time that someone didn't play games for the story, and decided that he needed to talk down to his audience forever as a result because they're all idiots and not worth his effort.
I'm convinced that Emil must have benefitted from Nepotism, in some way. Somehow, some way, he must have gotten attached to someone of prominence in the video game writing community, and he must have milked that connection for all it was worth, and kept "failing upwards."
And Starfield won an award? For "innovation"........? No awards show is sacred after that.
It was popular vote...
Most likely scenario is that 4chan decide to make a prank on Starfield, and give a slap on their face with a prize they obviously didn't deserve...
@efxnews4776 I believe that, but that's just kind of dumb and doesn't really do anything but help Bethesda in the end. Most casual gamers aren't going to know that it was a prank and will buy the game because of it.
It's never been a secret that Emil is good friends with Todd Howard. It's how he got the job to begin with.
@@antthomas7916 if you see mostly negative on reviews and still think the award is legitimate that's on you, it was very clearly a joke.
@@antthomas7916 RDR2 got labor of love lol, the entire thing was rigged by chan goons
What do you mean? Starfield got its deserved "Most Innovative Gameplay" of the year. With the 12 year old gameplay and engine
At least in the short term, Starfield has likely succeeded in the way that matters to bean counters. It has sold well. As long as the game brings in the money, they don't care about criticism. Of course, this might hurt the company in the long run, but bean counters seldom look beyond the next three months.
Gamers need to take some responsibility for the situation with this game, and with the industry in general. If companies feed us crap, and it sells well and brings in the cash, they will keep feeding us crap. I bet a lot of the people complaining about Starfield either pre-ordered the game or bought it shortly after launch. Bethesda already had a checkered history thanks to Fallout 76, so why did you do this? In the lead-up to launch, I could see what was happening. Encouraged by Bethesda's masterful marketing techniques, the game got hyped up. They mostly limited advance review copies to known friendly reviewers, and they didn't give these reviewers enough time to properly evaluate the game, so early reviews were generally positive. Gamers swallowed all of this and parted with their money. A few cynics like me sat back and watched while all of this predictably led to what we are seeing today. I still haven't bought it, and if I do, it will be in a few years after it has been fixed up a bit and is available at a sale price. If everyone did this, the company would panic, and they would face two choices: shape up, or go down the toilet. Sadly, I predict that the same cycle will start up again as the release date for Elder Scrolls VI approaches - it will get hyped up, loads of people will pre-order it, the game will be mediocre, gamers will whine with impotent fury, and the bean counters at Bethesda will be happy because they will have met their financial targets. I'm sure plenty of people will buy all of the microtransactions too, so we will see no end to this miserable parade of nonsense.
I've been a gamer since the 1970s, and I don't remember ever being so disgusted with my fellow gamers for what they allow these companies to get away with. In what other industry are companies consistently rewarded for releasing broken products and scams? If you don't like broken games and ripoffs, stop buying them.
Elder Scroll 6 is going to be a must wait till it’s a playable game and the mods make it fun. Unlike Fallout London which I am excited for and will bet the people behind it will bring out a well done fully cooked game.
Amen!
Gamers taking responsibility is paradoxical fallacy. Must people who buy bethesda products are or at some point were terrible consumers who just buy things to fill voids in their lives, jangle keys and bright colors in their faces, or having fun. I'd say escapism but bethesda makes me want to experience reality because the gameplay sucks.
*Pokémon theme song starts playing*
Gaming has become mainstream, and more and more new gamers will buy these products, without knowing the drop in quality and complexity
'Write what you know' is a good adage, but a good writer strives to know a lot, and what they don't know, they research.
"What they know" is games and other forms of escapism. It's games that are based on games that were based on games that were based on games. This is the issue with modern art of all forms: it's "fans" regurgitating content they consume as opposed to creating art that is being facilitated through life experience/personal strife.
It just works... Consume product.. Next unfinished game comes, rinse and repeat.
Typical reddit gamers, Playstation and Xbox subs are embarrassing, no standards whatsoever
Skyrim came out when I was 14. I loved it and still do but I’ll never forget watching every bit of pre-release content I could find for it in anticipation. I vividly remember Todd saying that working jobs like chopping wood, could boost the local economy or you could do things to sabotage it… that was never in the game and it was foreshadowing for how I’d grow to feel about him.
Boy do I disagree that starfield doesnt do anything "offensively wrong"
I think its offensive to our intelligence to have the capitol city of a space faring humanity be smaller than my hometown, surrounded entirely by absolute desolate empty plains of nothingness. New Vegas city had more outer limit sprawl than this supposed metropolitan.
I think its offensively wrong to have the constellation faction be as inept and impotent as explorers as they are, They poses a single ship, In a world where ships seem to be about as easily obtainable as cars in our modern day. I think its offensive that every single companion has the exact same boring morality, and by extension, mostly identical personality. People site the companions as being varied in personality, I must have missed an entire other half of the companion quests in this game, because I dont get that at all. Backstories and clothing dont make up someones personality differences.
Its offensive that they made points of interest spread thousands of meters apart and give you no land vehicles to explore the surface in this space exploration game.
Its offensively wrong that Bethesda has only regressed, never improved themselves in the past 20 years.
The empty areas in New Vegas did indeed have substance and meaning. Definitely not the way Bethesda did it with Starfield.
Its offensive that they charged $70-100 for what is effectively an alpha test.
💯
The really offensive part is at the end of the game. The player is given the option of asking "who created the plot devices?" The NPC answers with something like "You answered your own question, the creators create things". It's like Emil set out to make a line more insulting than Fallout 4's "It's complicated, you wouldn't understand" and he succeeded.
"just as greedy and bad as other western developers..." Dude, BGS is at the TOP of that list for me, closely followed by Ubisoft. After what the did with 76, they deserve an award for scummiest company ever.
EA and Activision are worse, actually Ubisoft is Far worse than Bethesda.
@@it2spooky4me79 nah i'd argue they're about equally bad,though bad in different ways.
@@Damian-cilr2 tbf ZeniMax should be here instead of BGS, because they just follow orders from above, and ZeniMax is the reason why we have games like 76, Wolfenstein Youngblood, why PREY never got a sequel, why we got DEATHLOOP, and Redfall.
According to Emil’s logic, the 1986 US Challenger explosion that cost the lives of seven astronauts shouldn’t be viewed as a tragedy/failure because it assuredly took tens of thousands of hours of combined work from the aforementioned astronauts, as well as astrophysicists, engineers, management, etc.
Every person with a RATIONAL BRAIN ASSUMES that there was LOTS OF WORK put into an endeavor or product, but if that product/endeavor EXPLODES 73 seconds after it launches, it still ultimately means there was an OVERSIGHT or ERROR in some capacity which required additional work to CORRECT (meaning it doesn’t suddenly VOID all the work already completed but NO ONE IS GOING TO CARE if that finished project can’t fully and reasonably accomplish what it was originally intended for).
We all know what happened... Gaming got too big..too profitable...and too ideological. It stopped being a bunch of guys in a small studio creating what they love. And the proof is right in front of all of us. No one in their right mind would say gaming is better now than it was 20 years ago. No one. It peaked in 2015, and its been all down hill from there.
I stopped at Fallout 4 and couldn’t even finish that. Before Starfield came out, I was excited for TES 6. After it came out, I am a little worried about TES 6.
Fallout 4 is an extremely good game if you play it like a shooter.
I’m more then worried I’m sure it will be meh at best
As someone who gave Bethesda the benefit of the doubt for a longtime and was hyped for Starfield, yea I think TES 6 gonna be a dumpster fire and I’ve been waiting forever for it
Just a little worried? I would be extremely concerned lol
You are way more optimistic than me. I already decided Old Man's Roll 6 will be trash, if it even come out.
If you’re making a game I think having a document is hella important. It’s like writing an essay with no direction. You need that list of things that you’ll need and make sure to keep it in that direction.
That’s so stupid it helps to keep things organized.
I think they genuinely started wanting to go big and ambitious. But as the years went by, development was getting harder, and the Creation Engine 2 was showing its limits, somebody at BGS abruptly stood up at their workstation cubicle, pissed off and exasperated, shouted "fuck it, I'm tired. Let the modders fix it, god DAMN IT!"
Todd must've overheard the dev from the Chess Club lounge down the hall and thought, "Yeah..... I guess. I mean, our fans are kinda stupid and eat whatever bullshit I feed em because I'm Todd 'The Godd' Howard - Bethesda magic, and shit. Fuck it, I'm calling the marketing team. We're going gold up in dis bitch!"
Thus, Starfield.
I know I went all hyperbolic at the end, but I can't believe at least a version of that didn't actually go down that way. Something obviously went wrong during those 8 yrs of development.
Bethesda wanted to drop it in 2021 on 11.11 and apparently Microsoft said no fix it.
Redfall is an example of Bethesda saying fudge it it's gamepass day one, they get what they are given.
It doesn't help that people kept paying for Skyrim over and over for 12 years. That sent a message to Bethesda that they don't need to innovate, unfortunately.
I don’t think so. Bethesda made the game they wanted and sold enough to not care. They enough of casual mindless players and cult followers that they will never care. Be ready for a similar next game.
Similar to Halo fans when Joe from Bungie returned, not realising that he was just the PA to quell the irate fans.
I've witnessed this pattern come in full circle several times over the years, and gamers continue to fall for it.
I think you're overlooking the laziness and apathy of a company who releases bad unfinished games. You perceive this as an oh we're so sorry oopsie...
This is a willing act of malice on the developers. They have consistently benefitted from bad behavior. This creates a bad habit of enabling further bad behavior. Because it quite literally has paid off before. Because of simpleton folk who don't think very far but sure don't mind spending money for bad products from untalented companies.
Pre order tes6. You won't be disappointed.
"Sixteen times the loading screens..." can be said about Starfield
I'd really like for someone to do a video comparing the employee credits of each BGS game. I think the decline is really as simple as that. Why do the new games suck? Because the good devs all left. It isn't even the same company anymore.
I just keep pointing to 1 source of most of Bethesda issues, Emil Pagliarulo. They seriously need to fire him, like yesterday.
@@Spacefrisian Todd Howard's habit of simplifying and removing mechanics, in what was once a CRPG, certainly contributes to the decline.
Studio of Theseus
It is that way with Blizzard. Blizzards payment is bad, environment pretty toxic if you believe the reports and the good devs a long gone. So wouldnt be a surprise if its the same with another company producing AAA-games. It puzzles me though, why a billion dollar company does pay so bad, rumours are 40 to 50% less than standard.
Exactly. Bduh is nothing but a few temps left, making junk dlc from in-game items.
I never even considered getting starfield...I mean, did people forget about 76? 😂
TES IV: Oblivion was the first Bethesda Game I ever played (As well as the very first rated M for Mature game I ever played.). My only RPG experience prior to oblivion was in the Kingdom Hearts games and Final Fantasy 10 on the PS2. The intro gave me chills and when I exited the sewers for the first time my jaw dropped and my mind was completely blown away. I can remember playing all day nonstop throughout the summer of 2007. It along with Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim made me want to pursue a career in game design.
When Fallout 4 was released, I saw that Bethesda was starting to fall behind the times (Though I still enjoyed Fallout 4 for what it was, just not as much as previous Beth titles.) When Fallout 76 was first announced, I wasn't hooked at all, not because I thought it was going to suck (this was before it was released) but because I wasn't interested in an online Co-Op shooter, so I instead bought RDR2 that year.
I considered getting Starfield for Christmas 2023 but ended up getting Cyberpunk 2077 instead since I heard that It was finally playable. Needless to say it Cyberpunk blows Starfield out of the water in every aspect, which in comparison looks like something from the Xbox 360/PS3 era.
Bethesda thinks they're still top dog in the open world RPG genre even though their game design philosophy has barely evolved since Skyrim(In some cases it actually has regressed), and you can tell this from the loading screens present in level transitions, to the camera zooming in on NPCs when having a conversation, and the stability and performance.
This is almost my EXACT experience, and it absolutely breaks my heart.
And I was the crazy one to think Starfield is gonna be mid, before early access.
BGS has proven to stagnate than anything.
People called me crazy when I said that everything after Morrowind was a step down. Who's crazy now?
@@Seoul_Soldier That's what ive been saying for years, you can plot those games by release date on a graph and its a downward trend.
For real man lmao I remember telling people it was prob gonna be mid af and the backlash was insane lol
@@Seoul_Soldier I'm the exact same, they ha E been dumbing sh*t down since oblivion and people praise Skyrim even though it's very shallow. The downward trend has been happening for a while
While I largely agree, to suggest that Todd Howard isn't damaging Bethesda products, is only a spokesperson and only sometimes exaggerates is like saying water is only a little wet, and if you try to walk on it, you will "probably" sink like a stone. Todd is as responsible for the disaster that was Starfield and certainly for Fallout 76 as anyone else, particularly because he was the one sitting at the top, saw the train wrecks coming and did nothing to stop it.
Yep, he's complacent in all of this.
@@Atmux and emil...their lead writer...
Well lets just say he's not the sharpest tool in the shed,infact he's the least sharp tool in the shed.
'Write what you know' is actually good advice... AT THE START OF A PROJECT. Expanding upon that is absolutely paramount to creating something, even slightly, engaging. What feels like a bigger miss is the no design document. What in the actual flying monkey fucks? That's insanity...
Yeah how do they expect to have cohesive vision of the world and not just have a bunch of random stuff mashed together. Bethesda seems like they want to create immersive worlds which seems like the worst thing to try and create without a design document.
Like maybe you could make it work if the game/work is segmented in different worlds/stages which don't need to fit together because they are separated by a hub world or such and then have smaller groups just work on their own thing and then try to get it to fit together at the end. Which probably could work fine from a writing perspective but I can't see it working well when it comes to introducing and building upon game mechanics.
I do so much research in order to write more. Obscure 19th century firearms development, 100 year war intrigue, old taxation methods, European corpse medicine, tank development, symptoms of vampirism and more absolytely random subjects.
As a writer you have to be willing to learn in order to grow.
if you were making a game with literally 4 people you need a design document how the hell does a triple A studio not do this??? how do these games work at all??????
The Emil dude is painfully incompetent.
'Write what you know' is good advice for academic papers, not fiction.
What gets me is that Pete Hines tells fans not to ask questions and Todd Howard embraced his history as a lazy scam artist and both just expect people to be mindless consumers.
what’s really sad for me is that no other games scratch that role playing itch like the elder scrolls/fallout games do. knowing that i’ll probably never experience the same feeling i felt my first time playing those games
Playing Skyrim with the nolvus modlist and the alternate start brought back that feeling of awe and wonder for me, it feels like a whole new game but with a rush of nostalgia
BG3 scratched that itch for me lol
Try enderal, its a game made by modders using skyrim as the base. Completely new map, leveling and magic system. The main story is great and your choices actually matter. Its basically to skyrim, what fallout nv is to fallout 3.
You saying shit like this with BG3 existing is crazy lmao
@@cmoney163 idk it was good but as a trans woman it definitely needed more lgbtqia+ in its medieval fantasy world. It didn't really represent modern audiences and was ruining my emersion and it was extremely disphoric for me.
0:11 I’m already concerned by your suggestion that they developed fallout new Vegas. It’s not a Bethesda game.
I'm just waiting for the dumpster fire that will be the Fallout TV show. Like, Amazon and Bethesda IS IGNORING the lore for that LA-Boneyard area. That and their version of Fallout is stagnant.
Bethesda probably never cared about the lore of Fallout. They bought the rights from Interplay. Bethesda technically only made 3 Fallout games and published New Vegas. Inter Play created Fallout, former Inter Play devs created Obsidian who developed New Vegas who were given 18 months to release New Vegas.
I knew it would be trash from the first promo art that they released because it was ai generated
Showing lack of effort with their first step
@@maulressurected4405 They dont care about the lore of elder scrolls either, all the people that actually wrote the lore were gone by the time oblivion shipped. They're just playing with the bones of what greater men created.
I can only guess what the exhilarating plot will be… Person leaves vault to search for missing family member… It will truly be a magnum opus lmao
Can't wait for something, if it doesn't exist to you. Just ignore it. I would never watch that. 😮
I am mad Obsidian was rejected when they offered to make Elder Scrolls and Fallout spin offs for Bethesda. They release like 1 or 2 games every decade, Elder Scrolls 6 was pushed back to at least 2028 because of Starfield, we won’t see a Fallout game in at least a decade. We could’ve gotten smaller but fun spin offs while Bethesda works on massive scale games but no. Bethesda parades victories long past and believes they are still the shit when they haven’t done anything new that captures that feeling from 2002-2011.
The first 2 writing tenets aren't that different from what I learned in my screenwriting class. We were also taught "write what you know." But that doesn't mean you can ONLY write what you know, it means that it helps to draw from your own life experiences to make the stories more relatable and believable. We also learned, "simple stories, complex characters." But that was for writing for films, so I'm not sure how well that translates to writing for games.
Yea, the problem isn't with the 2 writing tenets, the problem is that emil is a shit writer. This is really not that different in games, except that you have a more active role. You can look at any number of great narratives in games ("Disco Elysium" stands out in recent years) to see that this is true.
Funny you should mention films because I was just thinking about this analogy the other day. Making a video game is very comparable to making a movie. You need actors (player and NPCs). You need sets, locations and decor (game visual design) and you need a good script (game story/narrative). Movie studios hire great actors, pay good writers to write amazing scripts and hire set designers, costume designers,/CGI artists to build the world. Starfield ended up being a bad movie/game because it's lacking at least two of those things, a well written script and good actors. It may look visually better than past Bethesda games, but it's missing two crucial ingredients that make a great movie/game. This doesn't account for the need of the right medium for your project. The movie Avatar would look like crap if it was made using claymation animation. It looks amazing because of the CGI animation. Starfield plays so badly because of it's outdated medium, the Creation Engine 2. There are bugs in Starfield that were present back in Fallout 3.
RPGs should not be simple, that goes aganist the whole point of the genre
The trouble with a lot of modern entertainment is that “write what you know” doesn’t work all that well for people with zero life experience.
@@josie_the_valkyrie That’s a great point.
I'm an aspiring writer that constantly succumbs to procrastination, and even _I_ can debunk this Emil guy's points.
1. K.I.S.S. - At the start, this is fine. Getting the narrative outline written out and properly planned _should_ be done in a simple matter. But he fails to see the next step: ACTUALLY PUTTING MEAT ON THE BONES. The OUTLINE can simple, but then you have to go in and find ways to MAKE it complex and engaging.
2. "Write What You Know" - I honestly believe that this is a fallacy. Do you really think that, for example, the writer of the Star Wars: X-Wing novels actually had experience flying a futuristic space-plane to shoot bad guys? Do you think that the writer of James Bond has experience being a super-spy? Do you think JK Rowling has experience being a Chosen One wizard? That GRR Martin had experience being a medieval nobleman fighting over a shitty metal chair? That Sir Doyle had experience being the world's greatest detective? The idea of "write what you know' is, bluntly, bullshit; and we _need_ to stop perpetuating this myth. It can _help_ if you have some experience with something you're writing about (romance, for example), but it's _NOT_ a requirement.
3. "Great Games Are Played, Not Made" - Someone still has to make that great play experience, idiot. On one hand, he has a bit of a point. There are _tons_ of people that, even in games like Oblivion and Skyrim, will just skip the story in order to get on with the gameplay. THE PROBLEM WITH THAT IS THAT THEY'VE ALREADY PLAYED THROUGH THE STORY DOZENS OF TIMES PRIOR. A lot of the videos where people skip dialogue are usually challenge runs with a hard set of rules or speedruns where they're trying to complete the game as fast as possible.
3.5. "Players don't like Story" - In a franchise like, for example, Call of Duty, not many people _do_ care about the story; because it's usually just tacked on as something to do when the multiplayer servers are offline. But Role-Playing Games are different. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout set high expectations for their games' stories. But BGS has lost the plot; literally and figuratively. Skyrim's Alduin questline is mid because you're just ordered around when _you're_ supposed to be the hero, and the Civil War questline is has plotholes so large you could fly Odahving through them. Fallout 3 was, again, mid. Fallout 4 was a poor man's ripoff of New Vegas without knowing how or why NV worked. And just as PS3 has no games, 76 has no story.
They are not monetizing mods to compensate modders, it is to get a cut from mod sales while doing zero work. People that fall for this disappoint me. Its why I don't publish my mods I just use them for myself.
It always cracks me up when people talk about Skyrim as some sort of peak Bethesda has been falling from
Dog that was morrowind
Great video man. I'll never buy another bethesda game. Fallout 4 was the last game I bought. I'm done with them.
Also stopped after that dumpster fire called Fallout 4. End of an era
Skyrim for me, although I greatly enjoyed it, I know it was because the many, many modds to make enjoyable and playable
No more BGS since and I will not@@TomDabektv
They are about to try and sell you the 3, and 4 "remasters." 🤢
@@TomDabektv Fallout 4 was awesome
@@richardmaccotta4341 If you needed that many mods to Enjoy Skyrim, sounds like you rely to much on mods, seriously the vanilla game was great
To be honest, I've found the combat system in Skyrim to be not just mediocre, but downright boring... especially for magic users, where the balance was so poor that modding was essential for a better experience.
And now, 12 years later, in Starfield, the combat balance is still terrible. Like Bethesda's previous games, enemies become more like sponges as the game progresses, and your grenades become practically useless. It's not just about making different mistakes; it seems they are fundamentally unable to adjust the game balance properly.
"To be honest, I've found the combat system in Skyrim to be not just mediocre, but downright boring..."
I'm glad this opinion gaining some momentum because it's simply the truth. Not only Skyrim but Fallout series in its entirety too. I recently got some nostalgia itch and decided to play Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4 again. I couldn't enjoy the experience without modding and tweaking the difficulty beyond the point of no return. Especially the Fallout 3. What do I mean by that? I mean actually wanting to use drugs or other alternative buffs regardless of the weapon and armor. Actually having to develop some sort of strategy when going into combat etc.
Bethesda does one thing good and that's the template. I played games like Dishonored, Metro, Witcher, Dark Souls and everytime, I could aproach these games in a different way, in a different strategy. Either there was a challenge or a different decision to make. For Fallout and Skyrim? Just get a powerful enough weapon, mash the left mouse button until the enemy stops moving and repeat. Story never was powerful enough to carry the combat (excluding New Vegas). So what's there to do other then moving from one place to another? I still got no answer for that.
All Bethesda games have that "first playthrough" magic and as soon as the game ends, it dissappears. That's the "template" for you. It's great for modders to work on but god awful for players. Thank god for modders and I'm gonna be little selfish when I say that, thank god Bethesda released Starfield in this awful state. Now it's clear for me: It took me like 6 games to realise that Bethesda is bad at developing quality video games, simply put. Now I'll wait for their next 6 releases and observe the situation. I got Starfield for free with my new GPU purchase and I was still mad as hell. I had no desire to play after 2 hours of walking from one place to another. I can't imagine paying full price for that got garbage.
I remembered a certain game streamer lamenting, "The difficulty of adjusting the difficulty level is high!" (facepalm). And isn't New Vegas essentially the fifth game, since it's a game by a different production company using the Fallout 3 engine? Bethesda has been throwing everything at the users, from additional content to even bug fixes, by distributing the Creation Kit. However, with Starfield, the foundation was so terrible that many mod creators have given up on it, making me realize that a minimum level of quality is indeed necessary. I've been looking forward to TES6 for a long time, but to be honest, I think I'll wait for a sale or until a good set of mods comes out before diving in.@@ibrahimguler6177
@@ibrahimguler6177 Bethesda never made New Vegas, also New Vegas is NOT a fps, its an rpg, so the shooting mechanics where an after thought.
I've come to realise that Bethesda have no passion for making games. The fact that they won't listen to feedback points to this. As well as Emil and his presentation. I mean I doubt he is the only person at Bethesda who is this way.
They never got better at their craft. Instead they got better at marketing their crap. So sad for me as a former fan of their games.,
They got better at milking their delulu fanboys
Such a shame they own elderscolls and fallout both franchises that will NEVER see their peak with Bethesda. What a waste of
i am a hobby developer who hasn't even really learned how to do it yet and i have a fucking "game design document"...
Because you have professional ethics and standards. When you go to work it isn't baby fun time ha ha wee 😊 game design is funnnn
Boeing is going the same way😢, "planes are flied not made"
Whistles are assassinated, not blown
I hear that Bethesda is bad now because they are stuck in the past, but imo, if they truly were stuck in the past than they would still make decent games because games like Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, etc, still hold up pretty well. It would still be frustrating to not see change, but at least it wouldn't be offensively bad. The real problem is that they are simply getting worse in almost every area on top of not innovating or wanting to change. Starfield is the first singleplayer bgs rpg that did not improve literally any aspect of their previous games besides graphical fidelity. Even Fallout 4, despite its downgrades to dialogue and rpg elements, still improved things like companions, looting, customization, and combat.
22:07 he copy and pastes the first two points from a book on film screenwriting that I read in college. Syd Field, Rules on Screenplay I think. This is interesting as these rules pertain to the popularized 3 act structure 90 minute format found in many films in the 80s and 90s. I think we figured out why homies stories don't work, they are stretched farther than mama murphy's jet-laced Prydwen. The fact he implies that they are "personal" and liek something he figured out is so fucking cap. Dude quoted my professor verbatim. Not sure if you touch on this point, haven't finished the video yet, but I think this is worth mentioning. The dude is writing rpg scripts with "rules" that worked for writing satisfying theaterical movies. I think this point is worth mentioning.
I heavily disagree that starfield is “mid”, what about it is mediocre actually? Shooting mechanics? Maybe I’ll give it that, maybe. Exploration? Way below mediocre. Animations? Yeah mediocre, a decade ago. Voice acting? Mediocre at times, absolutely atrocious most of the time. Dialogue? Do I need going? There’s nothing “mid” about this game, it’s below mid. When I think about a mediocre game I think idk, greedfall, a overall good game with big flaws that bring it down, it does some things well, others poorly, good voice acting and decent writing, but clunky combat, imo starfield has no redeeming qualities, none whatsoever.
Bethesda was always overrated af.
Well, Emile in regards to KISS and writing is right but wrong. He's right because, yeah, a lot of people when they play a Bethesda game don't care that much about the main story. But he's wrong in that the reason for that is because often the main story is not that great. Good Bethesda games are mainly good because of the incredibly immersive world. If Emile and the people at Bethesda wrote a better main story then people would probably care about collecting bobbleheads less than playing through it.
Edit: I will say, there is an alternative way to interpret this. Which is that he was making a broader point about player interactivity with the narrative and that the player doesn't always follow the writers' expectations and you have to write towards that. Which would be a fair point, but the paper airplane line may not have been the best way to put that. Also, to be fair, I don't think something like making NPCs essential is a great way to handle player interactivity with the narrative. Although that may have nothing to do with Emil.
I think you misunderstood "write what you know" as a principle though. Although maybe Emile misunderstood it too, idk. I haven't seen the talk.
"Write what you know" is an age old saying when it comes to writing though and it's solid. And a lot of good writers swear by it. But it doesn't come down to only writing the specific things you have experiences with. What it comes down to is finding some sort of personal or emotional thing to grab on to when writing something that comes from your own experience. Like you've probably never been a dwarf in a magical fantasy world navigating the politics of a country. But what you probably HAVE dealt with is feeling insecure or rejected or outcast. And so you can use those feelings to inform your writing for that dwarf in that fantasy world. And you can make it more real and powerful because those feelings are things you know.
Also his understanding of "keeping it simple" is just so stupid. Keeping something simple doesn't mean "dumb it down", it means "Make something easier to digest, make sure your core idea is communicated to the viewer/player".
For example, comparing two (arguably) antagonistic factions from Bethesda games:
>The Legion from F:NV: You understand right away that they are a threat to the region, that they enslave and have no qualms about slaughter. But later on you find out that this type of dominance is necessary because, in the eyes of the Legion, it provides true safety and stability to the unified land. These ideas are important for the narrative so the player can understand that the faction is not "evil for the sake of being evil".
>The Institute from F4: The enigmatic organization that is feared and hated in the region. Everyone is paranoid due to them kidnapping, killing and replacing people with Synths. You don't really see much of them until later into the game, except that they are evil and then you go into their base and learn... Nothing, they babble about how it is for the good of humanity but aside from that they don't give you more reason or depth as to WHY they do this, what are their ideals, their end goal, SOMETHING. Due to this, the only place they have for the player is "generic bad guy".
What Emil fails to grasp is that "keeping something simple" doesn't mean that you should half ass your fucking job, it's simplicity for the READER not the WRITER.
Exactly! He essentially can not see the forest from the trees.
If people rip every page of your story out and make paper airplanes out of it, it is because your story is not engaging enough! That is his failure as a writer, not the players fault.
@@DarkOmegaMK2 God, dont even get me started on the Institute. I LOVE the Institute. Or i love the idea of the Institute to be more precise. But it has soooo much wasted potential that it almost literally hurts.
The ONLY faction in the post apocalyptic wasteland that is still actually developing new technology! That in and of itself is already amazing. But so little is actually done with it! Basically there is only one quest in the entire game that demonstrates to the player how the Institute can actually be positive for the Commonwealth. And that is the Warwick homestead crop experiment.
The player is not even told what the Institutes long term goal is even if you side with them. Beyond just getting their reactor running and kicking the BoS out of the Commonwealth, there is no longer term plan or goal that the Institute seems to be working towards.
@@sebastijanglozinic8630 completely agreed. The idea of an enigmatic entity is good. Except they didn't realize that you have to drop the mystery eventually.
I stop caring about a story if it's bad. Emil is a defeatist pessimistic loser. Definitely the right man to be at bethesda. The boy they deserve giving mouth breathers what they want.
I am genuinely bewildered that they don't use a design doccument.
Like, WHAT THE FUCK?????
SERIOUSLY WHAT???
There was issues with the Power Armor Helmet that came with the $200 collectors edition also had mold issues on the inner lining padding for the helmet. My sister had to get her helmet replaced as well as the shitty west tek bag.
Only on the gamestop edition.
I remember that...truly horrifying.
Bethesda actually makes me sick. 🤢
@@rwberger6 funny she didn't get it from gamestop.
It's Emil, I'm telling you. It's difficult to believe a single individual could do so much damage but he has. It happened.
I like when businesses tell us how hard it is as if we as customers would care. If it's so hard for you to make a working product, I'll take my business somewhere else
Yeah, designing and building apartment buildings is hard, designing and building cars is hard, if either of those were to come out unfinished or partially broken would that fly? Nope.
26:22 "Write what you know." What Emil does not understand is you write your story, but add in stuff you know if it helps enhance your story or adds a little authenticity. It does not mean you can't still take on topics you don't know much about or never experienced . We can't possibly know about everything on earth let alone fictional science fiction or fantasy.
Elder Scrolls is my favourite game franchise and it breaks me heart to see it so mistreated. What will be 15/16 years between games is absurd. But I'm at the point where I don't care now, because I know TES 6 will be terrible. Bethesda don't care. I wish TES would go to a developer who actually cares.
Same, I wish they would sell the fallout and TES I.P
Starfield was a mistake. In its place there should have been a Unreal engine 5 TES 6 a full decade after the release of Skyrim.
A simple search for "Unreal Engine 5 graphical demo" shows what kind of Elder Scrolls game we could play TODAY, if only Bethesda had worked hard to master the best tech and to make the game everyone of their customers really wants.
Bet you'll go back on those words when Elder scrolls 6 is just as awesome as skyrim. Also nothing wrong with taking years to make games, it's a lot of work that you fans don't seem to realize, better to wait and get an amazing product then rush it and have a terrible product
@@acfan9384 holy fuck
@@acfan9384 stop glazing for greedy companies which don't care about you, except your wallet.
You actually had to ask for the canvas bag. I bought the collectors edition of FO76, and wasn't informed that there was a replacement bag. It could have been that my parents bought it for me, but I still had to ask. And to the credit of the customer service agent I talked to, they got me one even though I missed the deadline.
It's strange that Obsidian, who made Fallout NV, also made Outer Worlds and I felt that the game has similar points to Starfield
The writing in outerworlds is much better.
I found Outer worlds had great dialogue but the gameplay was meh
I think the people who made NV weren't around anymore by the time of OW.
I don't KNOW if that's true, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.
@@BigVorstI know for a fact several people left the studio by then but indont remember who anymore.
Outer worlds and starfield are basically the same game except one slightly better written. Other than that they’re both like virtual clam chowder, boring, bland, and mid
Pagliarulo's big personal "ethos" is really just a set of instructions for how to specifically and intentionally be shallow and uncreative...
Emil also admitted in the talk that he doesn’t care or respect canon, it’s so frustrating as canon helps keep a world making sense, I tried Starfield and quit it when I met the group, the game wasn’t fun or interesting etc, gameplay was the worst and most painful I’d ever tried
Fallout 4 wasn't the end of BGS games having branching paths, Morrowind was.
Everyone is afraid to say this but it’s so true.
For me its Skyrim or Oblivion
I'm a writer, and his rules for his writing are absolutely terrible. It's terrible to see and I'm worried bout ES6 or any new fallout
You're absolutely right in saying they won't change their behavior. And I can give you the main reason: Consumers are too lazy/complacent to speak out with anything but a keyboard. Don't like the way they're going with their games? Tell them WITH YOUR WALLETS. Refuse to buy their shit games until they shape up! If you bought Starfield sight unseen, if you shelled out $200 for a fucking canvas bag? YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
We loved the WORLDS BGS made. They weren't really good writers, and were only average at their visual design in any one item, but damn did they know how to build a WORLD.
And now, they went and made... this.
Too true...
Saying they made something is too generous. All the planets were soulessly and mindlessly generated without even basic rules to prevent repetition and tedium.
It's makes more sense to view Bethesda as a company that makes interesting, but ultimately boring and buggy tech demos (Elder Scrolls 1&2, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Starfield) and stumbled into a few good games in the middle (Morrowind, Fallout 3, Skyrim)
Yeah I think this is what I need. I just feel confused, conflicted and dumbfounded otherwise.
They need a complete engine overhaul because they have been using a modified engine from previous titles when that engine does not really function well with newer platforms. They are essentially using a toolbox with tools that are poorly designed for what they are currently trying to use it for.
Yeah on top of that they tried to make a procgen space exploration game on that engine which is the antithesis of what kind of engine should be used to make that kind of game. Starfield was doomed before development started.
yeah and they know this too back when they made fallout 76 they had interviews where they said they were fighting a engine that was poorly sueted for what they wanted it to do the whole time.@@honeybadger6275
The problem is that Bethesda has been doing the minimum effort to keep their engine running, rather than properly keeping it up to date. It's a noticeable contrast between Bethesda and a company like From Software or Valve. Both of the latter us their own engines, but you won't be finding the same bugs from twenty years ago either.
agreed@@Mirthful_Midori
@@Mirthful_Midori Bare minimum effort with everything, since Morrowind.
Im so sick of seeing that generic pistol aiming animation the npcs have
Great video on Starfield. I've watched so many of these already and yours def stands out from the usual commentary since you touched on Emil's ted talk. Didn't even know about that
I'd be hard pressed to believe anyone is genuinely optimistic for the release of ES6 after playing Loadingfield. At least for me, the baseline standard they have to meet game design wise is a project similar to CP2077. What makes me even more skeptic about ES6 is we have mod packs for Skyrim that pretty much elevates or reforms the way you play the game. Nolvus is a great example. That's another standard I'm expecting from a "nExT gEn" BGS game that'll be coming out in the latter half of the 2020's.
Elder Scrolls 6 will sadly still sell like gangbusters. Why? Because it's a recognizable franchise and the fanboys will happily open their mouths for the manure shovel.
Appreciate your input. I feel like so much of what you said in the video and in your responses to comments rings true for me. I've played Skyrim 800+ hours, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4 (like 650 hours on 4).....and I was so hyped for Starfield...and was so disappointed - though I sloughed to 200 hours of playing) - that I wrote my first ever review (it was negative) on Steam. In the two months since then my thoughts have congealed and this is how I explain it to family/friends - Starfield feels like the team at Bethesda were like the scientists at Jurassic Park. They saw this new technology - ai generated planets, and ran with things without ever asking if they should. Honestly, they could have made this game after Skyrim. I mean think about it - with all of the load screens, with inability to fully explore a planet, with the ability to actually fly onto/off of a planet etc., there's no reason they couldn't have done this game with the technology they had between Skyrim and Fallout 4. Of course, what they don't say directly is that what they didn't have was the ai to build the planets for them so they didn't have to craft 1,000+ planets themselves. The team there seems to have forgotten, or maybe never understood because FO 4 was way less incredible than Skyrim, that it's the elements of open exploration, hand crafted environments, good story lines, and surprises that made Skyrim great. As many other commentators said here and in other video reviews online, and I've said the same thing to other first before seeing these comments, they could have made a game with 10 planets, each with maps the size of Skyrim, each featuring a different type of atmosphere/biomes..... and even leaving in the same bad writing style, the same stupid main quest (which is basically skyrim in space), leaving in the same repetitive space battles, etc....and the game would be 10, 50, 100x better. 99% of gamers understand that the technology to make a game with a 1,000 + planets all with the same look/feel of a hand crafted environment like Skyrim (or event FO 4) doesn't exist yet - they're a company and need to make money so they can't hire 10,000 developers, artists, etc. and they can't build a game that only .000001% of the gaming population can afford to buy a machine to run it on. Lastly, I think the game proves how they've lost their way because leaving aside all the damn bugs that should have been caught in testing, if they had been truly open to feedback/reviews during the making of it, they would have learned that the game is empty and people don't want an empty game. Not from Bethesda. This wasn't supposed to be a "space simulator".....so again they could have stuck with much smaller planet count, focused on story and exploration, and people would have been satisfied. I mean heck, they weren't event hard working enough to program in different spawn points/options for bad guys and loot in the ai generated locations. Like at least if every time I encountered an "Abandoned research tower" or a "Deserted UC listening post" or any of the 30-40 choices the system picks from and the bad guys and the loot wasn't always in the same place.....it would have been 2x more enjoyable. How lazy/stupid are you as a AAA game developer to not think that poor choices like that wouldn't lead to angry customers. And then, to top it off, they started telling players online that no, we don't understand how to play the game. Like wtf. Every top executive should be canned for this. This is worse than the Pinto, Gremlin, Delorean, and every other car that flopped combined.
@ 24:00
wow it literally sounds like he hates working at bgs and hates the players themselves because they "won't even care about his stories"..
He probably met one guy who said he skips all cutscenes in games and was traumatized lmao
6:52 What is the music? I know its from Persona but i cannot find it! ;v;
The song is called "Tension" from Persona 5
@@Atmux THANK YOU!
The speech that the lead writer gave speaks of not appriciating the players ability to follow complicated storylines. This guy clearly looks down on the players and thinks they are not worth the effort. Also the building aspect is pretty horrible in fallout games and it is even more horrible in Starfield. Either Bethesda management learns to be more humble or I think they have a very rude awakening ahead of them. Also not writing a game based reference book just seems lazy. It is like the lead writer wants to get by with less work.
12:59
Ahhhh, the Great Canvas Shortage of 2018. They were brutal times. The shortage was so bad that global superpowers almost came to conflict to secure the ever rarer material.
Bobby Kotick happened. Then, he made Todd Howard his vassal. Greed attracts greed. You should have known after Howard walked on Stage and lied through his teeth about how great Fallout 76 was going to be.
He's always lied Todd is the same guy who years ago said fallout 3 had 200 endings or more
Yeah. 76 was all I needed to close the door in their face.
They also never even created Fallout...just ruined it.
What makes me laugh is that people actually thought Starfield would be good, despite how bad Fallout 4 and 76 were, and their constant re-releasing of Skyrim. And now, even more of the old BGS team, the ones who did the work, are gone. ES6 is going to be absolute rubbish.
I disagree on one thing: todd howard is not a mere spokesperson. he IS bethesda, the producer and director and leader of the entire studio! I forgot which interview it was but he said ALL the decision made during the game development goes through HIM and HIM only. Also, look for a video in yt about someone asking what type of writers bethesda wants in their ranks, Todd basically says the exact same KISS nonsense that emil talked about. Emil is still hired because todd agrees with him. Todd is not humble guy, he is a compulsive liar filled with hubris, and bethesda today is just a full manifestation of Todd's personality.
I fell in love with Bethesda back in 2010 when I first played Fallout 3 GOTY Edition. I loved them so much, I bought New Vegas, Elder Scrolls Skyrim and Fallout 4 on launch and I loved them unconditionally. But since 2018 with Fallout 76, my love for them has long died. Such a shame, that a company that made me feel hopeful for most of my generation fell this hard into a Corporate abyss. Just sad.
you've got to wonder if they even bothered to code Starfield from the ground up or if it's merely a creation engine asset flip with procedural generation generating planets every time you fast travel with very few cities in between. Not to mention the threadbare Skyrim clone story.
I don't even understand why we still defended their use of the creation engine despite its age painfully showing with each subsequent release, I know it was because of the quality of their games, but no other company would get the same treatment. Every other game company out there uses the newest and best technology and Bethesda has the resources and money to build a new engine, especially under Microsoft.
25:33 I guess Emil forgot about Morrowind and the Nerevarine. Which I suppose is more 'biblical' and 'Messiah' like than the Dragonborn is, or all of Skyrim's story is.
But, considering I only found evidence that he worked on Bloodmoon for that game, and not the main content I can only imagine he forgot.
Let's just say since I bought Starfield my anticipation for Elder Scrolls 6 is near non existent now. 😂
Yeah all hype for ES 6 has gone down the toilet, will probably be another mid af game to pass or buy when it’s half price lol
Todd Howard is the modern day Peter Molyneux
You do know that most of the developers that made skyrim no longer work there right? It's just like redfall. The reason why it's so bad is because after prey 70% of the staff left Arkane Austin. Because they didn't wantna make red fall. You can't compare the old games to the new because the staffing is different. Most of the good talent is gone.
Exactly. People, and even rich ignorant scum, seem to think studios make games. 😂 That's why they pay billions for them. 😂😂😂
The guys opening the dark plastic Nuba Cola Dark bottle are also featured in Internet Historian’s Fallout 76 video. They sample the rum and one says “Can I swear? I should be able to, it’s our show.” Can’t remember any more than that.
You mentioned Fallout New Vegas, but bethesda didnt develop that game, the just published it
Imagine your doctor making a mistake and they just say "being a doctor is hard and you have no idea how hard it is". Lmao
the decline started when they stopped the solid support for games
if you released a bad game on CD/DVD you be screwed out of business
if you release an unfinished game on the cloud the idiots who pre paid will wait for you to fix it
you just let the negative feedback and the modders guide you on what to fix AKA other people do your job while you get paid fully
During my first playthrough of Starfield I think the only part I enjoyed was the Crimson Fleet faction quest, I felt it was better than the main quest yet I was still disappointed that the Constellation companions hated that I sided with them.