Why I dislike Bethesda Games (oblivion/fallout 3) and have low hopes for Skyrim

[Neeshka]

I often hear about Fallout 3 and Oblivion being Goty games. I hear lots of talk about new vegas and how playing such games is a good rpg fix.

I personally tried to give these games a chance but I could never get into them. Not only could I not get into them I actually found them to be absolutely awful.

I guess with Skyrim coming out soon I got a renewed interest and giving these games yet another chance - I installed new vegas a few days ago.

I believe that Bethesda is an extremely lazy developer, going into very rushed releases riddled with very deep flaws and issues that somehow get absurdly high ratings on review sites. It's surprising that websites like gamespot that are often extremely critical about most games routinely giving bethesda games rave reviews.

Bethesda's Gamebryo engine builds:
Gamebryo is often widely known as being the worst game engine in use by triple A titles. It's quite bizarre how faithful bethesda is to such a woefully bad game engine, and problems with the engine tell on every game starting with morrowind up until new vegas.

This sort of ties in with bethesda's own lazy design and development philosophy.

Character models seem to glide across the floor. Head bob mechanics are simply not there, so if you strafe, or if you walk along uneven terrain it feels like your character is just smoothly gliding acroos - this simply feels very unnatural. If you switch to 3rd person view you can actually see this happening, the character *is* actually gliding across. The same is painful to watch with npc's.

Collision/rag-doll physics - something is very wrong here, you'll often find npc's just shuffling up against each other or dead npc's gyrating in space/doors/roofs or flying across for no reason.

Terrible far texture loading - Faraway textures abruptly "pop" into view when they are quite close giving a very awkward experience. In most modern games dev's get around texture loading detail with mipmaps, blurring/fog or other techniques; but bethesda just fails at this.

Bethesda uses an identical npc conversation camera angle in every npc conversation in every single game. The camera awkwardly pans into this frontal face to face shot with the npc which feels extremely artificial.

Lack of beta/alpha testing and rushed releases
Bethesda games seem to be released with numerous bugs and technical problems which just seems like a very low investment into testing and a reliance on community fixes. Their games often crash, savegames get corrupted, graphical errors and so on and so forth. Even a lot of artistic problems could have been fixed by simple testing.

Combat in Oblivion

In oblivion melee combat is incredibly bland and there are literally 2 buttons - attack and block. So basically run around the enemy, attack/block and appropriate and occasionaly drink a healing potion - the AI is terrible so every npc will behave in this way.

Spells is the same as above with the addition of using 1 useful spell and running in circles more to wait for mana to recharge.

There are no cool spells like, say in diablo 2 that actually do a variety of things - no melee combat system, no AI mechanic where enemies try to group up behind you or attack in unpredictable ways. No combo moves or finishers or special attacks. Any modern rpg has these; even dark messiah of might and magic a comparable 1st person combat rpg had infinitely better combat.

Every fight boils down to - running in a circle possibly waiting for resource(mana) to recharge using 1 offensive spell and resuming the circle running. Melee is even blander except you run away to drink/heal.

Combat in Fallout 3/new vegas

In fallout 3/new vegas spells are replaced with guns. Instead of mana, you have the VATS resource recharge time. So yet again, you run around in a circle, wait for VATS to recharge, then hit v (for vats) which pauses the game, click on the head (which is often fiddly and annoying) and spam enter. Then whittle down the enemy. You are rewarded by an excruitiately bad slow motion (with slow motion sound oddly) watching the head explode from almost always a terrible camera angle. I guess this would be entertainment for the "omg explooooshunssss" crowd. This gets old extremely fast.

Bethesda could have kept the game to be completely turn based, or just a pure fps. But they seem to have chosen the worst of both worlds.
VATS is a concept made for isometric 2d games (fallout 1/2) where it wasn't possible to actually aim at specific body parts. But fallout 3 is a first person game in a first person engine. Why on earth would you have to pause the game to aim at specific body parts ? This in itself just destroys all sense of immersion and continuity.

In Fallout 1 and 2 Vats was unique and interesting. Hitting specific body parts unleashed a ton of awesome flavour text.
Critical striking the head could cause the enemies to become delirious or start talking unusually. They were countless of possible details that it could cause.
You could damage someones nervous system and he would start twitching uncontrollaby. You could damage the cpu of a robot and observe plenty of different reactions it could cause.

This however doesn't happen in fallout 3. So the point of using vats is just not there. Although you are forced to use it since it's the most optimal and efficient way to kill anything - manually aiming has absolutely horrendous accuracy and intentionally so compared to using VATS.

Bethesda completly missed the point. All they had to do was translate the flavour text
into 3d animations so that you could actually SEE what effect your hit had. But they
didnt they instead ported the gamepausing targetting screen eventhough they had a combat
system which would work much better without it in the first place. Just take a look at any fps games with different body part shots;
even Borderlands has a semi decent stat based shooting mechanic that shows how your shots happened visually.

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

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

Copy paste development
All game designers reuse code, but Bethesda takes this to a whole new level. Although their games are touted as being huge every place looks very similar and same-y. Indoor and outdoor locales look extremely generic and everything looks like a rehash of the other with differing degress of brown and bloom.
Again, it's Bethesda being lazy and putting minimal effort into creating breathtaking landscapes like, say, witcher 2 or dragon age.

Art
Possibly the biggest problem with art is the very low resolution facial textures. Faces have less detail than trees. This means that every face looks very generic and lifeless. In the case of oblivion npc's look ugly, blankly stare and have a vacant look and are ugly. Females in bethesda games are notably horrible looking.

The same problem is seen in fallout 3.
Because of bad art design the game very rarely feels like a survival experience in a post apocalyptic irradiated world. Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R, metro 2033, or bioshock actually *feel* like post apocalyptic world that immerses you in it. Fallout 3 does not.

UI design issues
1.Nested Tabs
tabs within tabs (oblivion ui, fallout 3 pip boy) - inherently bad design; any ui design course always discourages nested tabbing.
2.Inappropriate use of controls/choosing the wrong control for the task at hand
Things like using guages in place of tabs like in the bottom bar in oblivion. It's not intuitive or immediately apparent.
3.Lack of Tooltips
4.Illogical Metaphors
Shift click to drop items for example. Whyyyyyyy ?
Bizzare inventory selling/buying system. Just compare it with WoW to see how awful it is.
5.Inappropriate Font Size
Massive fonts that allow only a couple of items to be viewable at a time.
6.Limited Hotkey System
7.No custom keybinds
8.Inappropriate use of artwork
Huge artwork segments covering the UI coupled with huge fonts severely limit the actual usable real-estate on screen.
Voice Acting and humor
Blizzard uses high profile voice actors to do limited segments. And then the rest of the voice acting is mind-numbingly bad. Every game bethesda makes is like this. The remaining 95% of the game has utterly awful voice actors that sound uninterested, bored and don't even put in the effort to actually sound different.
Fallout 3 has radio stations that play a very limited sequence ad nauseum. The "3-dog" station genuinely would make anyone cringe it's just incredibly annoying and repetitive. It's not hard to point to other games with good "radio" or music.

It's hard to pinpoint what's wrong with the humor in bethesda games. But it's usually the fact that the "jokes" are simply not funny, or simply just stupid.

AI
As stated before every enemy has an incredibly pathetic AI, so you always run around them, wait, shoot, repeat. Friendly npc's often attack friendly npc's "by mistake", and it's easy to attack friendly npc's by mistake and they turn hostile immediately - because the AI often makes friendly npc's jump between you and the enemy.
Obviously the AI in oblivion/fallout 3 is either unfinished/rushed or just not anywhere like the "radiant AI" that was promised.
Npc's often start fights with each other because 1 npc attacked another by mistake whilst hitting enemies.
Combat AI is very predictable and boring: this adds to the very simplistic combat system again.

Irritating mini-games/side gameplay mechanics
Speechcraft, lockpicking, hacking(fallout 3), alchemy, crafting.
None of these are fun mini-games, they barely make any sense and do not even remotely resemble what they are supposed to be.
Alchemy and crafting involve tons of obscure ingredients with very few information on locations and uses.
Narrative presentation
Lore in both oblivion and fallout 3 is presented in a similar way. The lore is just abruptly thrown at you. There are no cinematics to easily put you into the game, no animated sequences to build the story or set the scene[witcher 2 for example], or cut scenes/painted set pieces [neverwinter nights] to tell the tale.
You are presented with incredibly dull lore read by a bored voice actor which in turns bores you. Irrelevant details completely cloud the direction of the plot.

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

Search type quests often involve finding an item that spans a couple of pixels in the middle of nowhere.
So you go to the place and simply spam the "e" key whilst looking around.
Because the entire environment is shades of black, brown and gray and the item is a slightly lighter shade of gray.
Compare this with sparkly quest items in world of warcraft.

Lack of motivation/reward/objective
Almost every popular game has an in built reward system that keeps you hooked on: that one special item or super weapon to find, that secret area to discover; looking forward to a brand new planet with it's sights and sounds in mass effect 2, watching the story progress in a game like knights of the old republic. Building an incredibly powerful group in baldur's gate 2, witcher 2 or dragon age.

Bethesda games have none of these. There is just no addictive element similar to conventional games.

Huge lapses in logic that destroy immersion
This is mainly applicable to fallout 3, but in general creating a believable and immersive game-world isn't too high on bethesda's priority list.
nma has a very funny "things we learned from fallout" list.
Bioshock did the 50s futuristic style quite well, but somehow a lot of the concepts and humor in this fall flat in fallout 3.

Fallout 3 doesn't feel like a survival game in a world after a nuclear holocaust in any way near what bioshock/stalker/metro2033 does.

Bad main stories

[b][color=red]*** SPOILER ***[/color][/b]
oblivion : common guy(you) sees king murdered, go and close many demon gates, close final gate kill bad guy become hero, new king the end
fallout 3 : setting - 50s futuristic post apoc nuclear wasteland. players finds out a device to remove radiation from water.
gets captured by supercomputer that is opposed to purifying water as it can control humanity with a virus.
player has to activate device that purifies water by killing himself or his female companion in a suicide mission
[b][color=red]*** SPOILER ***[/color][/b]


Anyway I'll list my personal favorite and recommended RPGs:

Baldur's Gate 1 : possibly the best rpg ever made. Tremendous depth, deep and varied strategic gameplay; on the plus side it has immortalized the top-down isometric infinity engine into a thing of beauty that will never really age. Solid story, tons of sub-plots and subquests and character development. Superb music, flawless rendition of the D&D world.

Neverwinter Nights: again bioware stuns with a superb d&d 3rd edition crpg with hauntingly beautiful music and locales. Charming characters, tons of subplots and quests and a very nice 3d adaptation of BG2. Though I felt some of the beauty of BG2 was lost. The graphics are obviously quite dated now.
Knights of the Old Republic (and to a slightly lesser extent kotor 2) : Though the game hasn't aged well,

Neverwinter Nights 2: minus some technical issues, mostly an extension of the 1st game - the mask of the betrayer expansion was very well done.

Dragon Age: A very modern current gen party based crpg. Great game with a very fun party based combat system - tons of polish and very nicely designed locations. However there were a few minor annoyances with inventory management and looting. Great quest system, minimap and so on. The story elements were a bit lacking and the game felt a bit unfinished.

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

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

If you want "guns" in your rpg's or like a more modern theme I'd suggest Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines & Deus Ex.
And then of course mass effect 1 & 2 if you want a modern fps/rpg hybrid shooter.
Or even Bioshock 1/2 (which is more of an fps I'd say). For action RPGs i'd like to suggest diablo 1/2 and jade empire.


TLDR : bethesda games are boring, overrated, full of flaws and awful, there are far far better RPGs to play.
And since this is a WoW board, I find it bizarre that people like beth games after playing WoW.

Although conceptually nice, I have very low expectations for skyrim.

[rayvio]

different people like different games
personally I loved Morrowind, enjoyed Redguard, tolerated Fallout 3 and hated Oblivion. but the modding community managed to turn Oblivion into a game I actually now enjoy. one of the best things Bethesda do is including a construction kit and encouraging players to make and play mods, a lesson I had thought BioWare had also learned until the abomination known as Dragon Age 2 didn't come with a much needed construction kit
Skyrim... I remain hopeful but still sceptical. I have friends who have already pre-ordered so I'll probably try theirs before deciding if I want to buy the game or wait for the modding community to do their magic

[hakujinbakasama]

I think my biggest issue with Fallout is that I would have rather liked a traditional upgrade to the original RTSRPG concept. (Since RTS games are a dying breed)

I agree with most of your statements. I wasn't a fan of Oblivion just by watching someone play it, and New Vegas has an obscene amount of problems.

[Neeshka]

I think my biggest issue with Fallout is that I would have rather liked a traditional upgrade to the original RTSRPG concept. (Since RTS games are a dying breed)

I agree with most of your statements. I wasn't a fan of Oblivion just by watching someone play it, and New Vegas has an obscene amount of problems.

I guess by RTSRPG you mean turn based strategy type RPG i.e. what baldur's gate/icewind dale/fallout 1+2 was ?

But yea all their games play almost identically and are plagued with huge glaring issues.

[hakujinbakasama]

I guess by RTSRPG you mean turn based strategy type RPG i.e. what baldur's gate/icewind dale/fallout 1+2 was ?

But yea all their games play almost identically and are plagued with huge glaring issues.

Correct. I don't really feel Civilization is a RPG but that could also be my lack of playing it to get that feel. It's why I liked the Fallout and Baldur's gate feel of games.

[Neeshka]

I'm actually surprised that RPGs without fps elements are made with such incredibly simplistic combat and dialogue.

Making a game turn based = huge scope of adding strategy/complexity to the combat : Yet fallout 3 combat is ridiculously stale, bland, simplistic and repetitive

Oblivion is real time but there are sooooo many action rpg's with combo points, skill shots, power ups, special attacks, and so forth. Just take a look at WoW, console games, or bioshock/mass effect or even dark messiah of might and magic.

oblivion has none of this.


In fallout 3 & oblivion the story is bad, the combat is bad, the graphical style is bad, the voice acting, the AI, the UI, the narrative, the ending, the locations.

I guess my question is what draws people to the game, if you objectively pick apart the flaws there is just so little to like ....

Does just being sandbox make a game automatically good in some people's minds ?

[Herecius]

Your issues with all of the various ways that the Gamebryo engine works would hit home a lot harder if it weren't for the fact that Skyrim is using a different engine. Just sayin'. Stuff like the fixed camera positions when conversing have been done away with completely for example, allowing you to converse while moving and looking around, even allowing you to simply walk away mid conversation if you feel like it. Combat now has many more options and opportunities to mix different sorts of magic/shouts into it, as well as allowing you to dual wield any combination of weapons and such.

The animation system has also been completely redone... since it's in a totally different engine, now. You can watch some of the vids of the player going into third person and pretty clearly see that it actually looks good, as opposed to Oblivion and Fallout where going into third person looked like absolute ass. As for VATS... well, however awkwardly done it was in Fallout 3 (and I do agree there - VATS always felt weird in the FPS Fallout games), nothing like VATS will be in Skyrim, so no problems there.

On the other hand, the Elder Scrolls games in particular have always been a 'love em or hate em' type of game among gamers, I suppose.

[Deleted]

Just to point out that Bethesda didn't actually develop New Vegas.

I agree their games have many faults but overall I find them wonderful, immersive open world experiences and I will be buying Skyrim.

[Deleted]

Different strokes, eh?

Morrowind is one of the best RPGs of all time, they lost some of that magic when they made Oblivion.
I'd point out that criticisms you have of Oblivion have been addressed for Skyrim, for example conversations no longer lock into the face position and you now have cooldowns (they have been promoted quite heavily so you might want to do some research before starting a thread using criticisms of past games to play down Skyrim)

[hakujinbakasama]

I'm actually surprised that RPGs without fps elements are made with such incredibly simplistic combat and dialogue.

Making a game turn based = huge scope of adding strategy/complexity to the combat : Yet fallout 3 combat is ridiculously stale, bland, simplistic and repetitive

Oblivion is real time but there are sooooo many action rpg's with combo points, skill shots, power ups, special attacks, and so forth. Just take a look at WoW, console games, or bioshock/mass effect or even dark messiah of might and magic.

oblivion has none of this.

I think the problem is the translation from Console concept controls to that of keyboard and mouse for a lot of these sorts of titles. Oblivion would probably have felt better if there was a sense of greater interaction and a couple more attacks, or even a qte system like in God of War. (Not that I'm always a fan of such implantation.)

Personally, a lot of combat systems are just the same systems you've been seeing for nearly 15 years now. ( or the evolution there of) Frankly, I still look back at Grandia II on the Dreamcast with a sense of sadness that it still remains the most energetic after all these years, or the combat system of Secret of Mana and realize that more games could have taken even the slightest que from that.

[OrcsRLame]

Bethesda games have issues and aren't for everyone. But please don't act like Bioware games are any better. And please don't say Dragon Age is polished, it's not. Any Bioware game has way more bugs than any Bethesda game, and Bethesda games are like 130985318792764 times bigger. Dragon Age, (and all Bioware games for that matter) is ridiculously buggy. I could load up my copy right now, play for the next 12 hours, and I will find new bugs that I haven't seen before, even though it would be my 6th playthrough. Games like Oblivion and Morrowind are buggy, but at least I know what bugs to expect, I'm not gonna discover 40 new bugs in Oblivion on one playthrough. Oh btw, here's one for the lawls. When I started playing Dragon Age 2, I immediately ran into an AWESOME bug. After the very first combat in the game, I had this strange little icon on screen, and it didn't want to go away. I shrugged and kept playing. After I finished the starting area, I decided I should save my game... I go into the menu, the save option is grayed out. I then realize that icon on screen is the loading icon. My game was stuck in a permanent state of loading. So I shut the game off, and turn it back on. I try to load the autosave, "This data is corrupted." I was pretty sour, and considered stopping right then and there.

[Rennadrel]

Bethesda and Bioware are two gaming companies I don't get, in that I don't see how people love their games. Mass Effect 1 & 2 are BORING, so was KOTOR and Dragon Age Origins. What makes these games boring? They all have the same style of combat system, mash buttons until you win. Granted Mass Effect is more action based, it's still a really drab and boring title that I just couldn't enjoy. Something about 3rd person shooters where decisions don't really have a huge impact on the story really irks me. I tried to play Oblivion, but it was so dreadfully boring, and yes I noticed many of the animation issues as well. Bethesda needs to stop using that terrible game engine of theirs and either develop a new one or use the Unreal 3 engine.

[Deleted]

I don't like the environments In the Fallout Games. Yucky - Depressing - (Alone)
In Oblivion I approved of the adventure, I approve the side quests, I didn't approve of this national world hate when I kill someone on the other side of the world, but you can't have everything.

[Darkdruidelf]

You complain about oblivion's combat system and then mention baldurs gate...

The main gripe I had with oblivion was that, on the hardest setting, there were only 2 ways, pretty much, where it was possible. Invisibility, get range, attack, summon, invis again. Or 100% chameleon.

Dragon age origins was dreadful. The large amount of tactical pausing required made the combat system clunky and dull, not to mention extremely repetitive.

What I liked most about oblivion was the stealth gameplay. The dark brotherhood stuff was amazing fun.

[Deleted]

The only issue i have with fallout 3 is the amount of quests, that's just a personal gripe because i know a lot of people love that there's so many.

I remember my first time playing i was trying to clear up all the side quests in megaton before i progressed with the main story, i accidentally spoke to the wrong person in rivet city and ended up skipping the main story ahead like 2 stages.

I do like the open world aspect though, i think my perfect game would actually be dragon age 1 combat with the fallout 3 whole exploration thing.

[OrcsRLame]

You complain about oblivion's combat system and then mention baldurs gate... The main gripe I had with oblivion was that, on the hardest setting, there were only 2 ways, pretty much, where it was possible. Invisibility, get range, attack, summon, invis again. Or 100% chameleon. Dragon age origins was dreadful. The large amount of tactical pausing required made the combat system clunky and dull, not to mention extremely repetitive. What I liked most about oblivion was the stealth gameplay. The dark brotherhood stuff was amazing fun.

Did you know that DA:O, while it presents itself as a tactical game, proper party balance and tactics actually makes the game harder? If you're running a 1 person party, enemies are nerfed TO THE GROUND. The easiest way to beat Nightmare mode, is to make the main character a tanking warrior and go for a full magic immunity/dex stacking build. Run two mages and a rogue for massive healing and lockpicking. If you ever get stuck on a fight, kick everyone out of your party, and have your tank solo it. The Archdemon is a lot easier when he summons no adds, doesn't use his fear, doesn't use his knockdown, doesn't grapple the tank, and does mainly spirit damage on a magic immune tank.

[yaij9841]

Not sure what to tell you... though it seems you didn't take any of the Mage Guild lessons seriously if you were only using one "useful" spell. I will agree that the games they develop tend to have some nasty bugs and shit that can screw you over.

Of course elderscroll games seem to have enjoyment based on how much you put into it. I personally enjoyed the level of customization you can have with spells and enchantments (in morrowind moreso than oblivion) and pulling spell combos in basic oblivion with knock downs and AoE. I felt more compelled to explore in any elderscroll game than in say, Mass Effect.

edit:

I just gotta add, I gotta love any game that lets you sneakily kill people with non-combat abilities. Poisoned Apples, madness+rally spells = lols

[Neeshka]

I guess people might misunderstand by what I mean when I say "bad combat".

Well basically let's take WoW.
Every class has a plethora of abilities to press based on the situation. Playstyles for each class are very different. Sometimes the combat is so involved that in a PvE situation you have to actually do quite a bit of reading to figure out the correct way to "hit buttons".

This is one end of the spectrum. I'd say this is a game with a good combat system. Games like WoW, Diablo 2, League of legends (most mmo's/rts/moba type games for that matter).

Most of these games are real time, so there is a skill element too.


Then there's fps games where the real time aiming element is everything, and moving the character and quick aim reflexes/reactions encompass most of the combat. Which can be extremely fun when done well. This is tried, tested, successful and great combat mechanic.

And then there's the RPGs which are a grey area since they are often turn based.

Turn based games often have a lot of additional complexity to the combat (BG2/KOTOR).

In this regard I would say on the combat complexity scale it would be :

DnD rpgs >>>>>> KOTOR >>>>>>>Dragon age >>>>>>>>....>>>>>>Mass Effect>>>Fallout 3/Oblivion

Mass effect is in a weird spot since it's mostly an fps.

purely based off how many different abilities/selections you make during the course of a typical fight in such games.

[hakujinbakasama]

@Neeshka
I think the current mindset I have is that WoWs combat, as a whole, I really crap. I personally feel over the last 3 years they've done everything they can to actually limit the feel of one class to another.

I agree that there does arbitrarily feel to be a "skill" base when looking at other combat systems. While something like WoW does require some reaction time, the windows seem or feel so open that you really have to be a very special monkey mutant to not make them. Other than that, most games fall into the simple precision base. "Press X when Y happens or just mash Z." Like mentioned before, you're classic God of War feel.

[Beyz]

I have no intention of trying to convince you to change your mind OP, but if you compare Bethesdas release version of Oblivion vs. the release version of WoW vanilla, oblivion was definitely way more polished. The graphics we're better, you emerged yourself into the quests more and lots of that stuff. I do however agree that the combat system sucked bigtime.

But really, comparing it to wow and saying that wow is better seems wrong... In general, especially for oblivion, if you compare it to the games that was released at the same time Oblivion, I would say that Oblivion did it better by several miles, same for Morrowind, not necessarily Fallout tho