Decline Bethesda Appreciation Thread

[agentorange]

i was p. young and dumb when i first played oblivion, but even then i remember being disappointed after the first waves technology shock wore off. the game looked great from far off, but once you got up close you could everything was muddy and malformed; trying to make it look more realistic ended up backfiring since it draws your attention to the unrealistic flaws. the faces were terrible even at the time, lacking the animation of half-life 2 and vtmb faces. most of the quests were totally uninvolved and amounted to going somewhere and killing stuff. it was just a boring, boring game. hard to even hate it since there is so little energy in it. the only thing i remember having fun with were the hidden quests, which at least played off the strength of the game - the large open world. if only more of the game consisted of stuff that you had to find on your own through exploration, it would at least have mitigated the overpowering dullness.

Edit: oh and Fallout 3 was just straight up terrible. Truly the worst writing I have seen in a game, counting mods and bad translations. nuclear wastelands dont need to be vibrant but jeeeeeeesus pleasus it was like something (not even someone, but some soulless automaton) just brushed the world out in one go then randomly dropped shit into it with no thought. and the metro system - way to make what could have been the only upside to the game, an expansive city environment, into a segmented, repetitive purgatory of banal. fuck you liam neeson. fuck this birthday shit. what the fuck is this shit bethesda you suck at writing why the fuck would you focus the first hour of your game on your worst talent and make it unskippable you dumb motherfuckers. did you play Fallout 2 for 1 hour and decide that the temple of trials was why people loved that game?

 

[DeepOcean]

People focus on the main quest and complain that its bad and then trash the game. That's not how i do it. I just shrug and forget about the main quest - there is a whole world for me to explore, littered with interesting locations.

How I wished that was true.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Heh, I remember these. They really did build anticipation for release incredibly well. My deluxe edition arrived in the mail on the last day of finals for my winter quarter sophomore year of college. I remember being horribly torn between playing the game and studying a bit more for the oral final in honors philosophy class. Ended up blowing off studying further and got through the Imperial sewer before it was to to go to the professor's office for the final. Once there, he had me draw 2 index cards from a stack of 8. The two cards happened to be on articles I HAD studied very closely, and I proceeded to blow him away with erudition, articulation, and preparation. Then I went back to playing. It took about a week or so, about the time full level scaling retardation kicked in, before I started realizing that this game wasn't as good as my first impression.

Even if it would be a good game, it sounds like a kind of game that is best to avoid playing.

 

[RK47]

Too bad you can't play it cause your pc is shit, awor.

 

[Zewp]

Oblivion actually runs on amazingly shit PCs. My shitty netbook can run it and it's only got a GMA x4500 integrated chipset. It looks like ass, but gives 30 FPS throughout. It's not like the game looks better at high graphics anyway.

 

[DalekFlay]

Oblivion runs at 30fps on shitty machine and 30fps on top of the line rigs. It's like magic.

 

[shihonage]

why the fuck would you focus the first hour of your game on your worst talent and make it unskippable you dumb motherfuckers. did you play Fallout 2 for 1 hour and decide that the temple of trials was why people loved that game?

Bethesda employees played Fallout 2?

Hahahahahah

Hahahahhahahahahhahahaha

Hahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhaahahyuckhahahahhaah

 

[adddeed]

Oblivion is a fun game. I'm currently playing it, along with a few graphical mods and a leveling mod. Despite some flaws no other developer does open world fps/rpg as good as Bethesda.

 

[Crooked Bee]

It's just that no other developer does them at all? That's actually the only reason I can imagine people playing Oblivion or Skyrim.

 

[adddeed]

I guess so. There is nothing else quite like TES. And they are moddable. Chances are if there's something you didn't like, you'll find a mod to fix it.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

For one thing, I applaud Bethesda for publishing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corner of the Earth.

I forgot all about that game. How is it?

It's decent. Has some amazing levels (Innsmouth escape and battling the Flying Polyp with the Yith weapon) and many bad levels. But it's the only Lovecraft game with modern graphics on the market so if you're a fan, you have to play it.

Keep in mind that whatever writing was not taken from Lovecraft, it's a rather different league. Protagonist's clueless monologues are especially unbearable.

On the technical side of things, gameplay is clunky and wooden, and it's a game where shooting is a huge part of the game. Everything is peachy with the horror itself, until you acquire a weapon. After that it's duck season of technically shaky shooting harmless hordes of enemies with braindead AI, and any kind of menace and tension dies first.

The game is short though, so if you like Lovecraft you could appreciate this. Or you could just skip it and play Silent Hill again.

 

[DalekFlay]

It's just that no other developer does them at all? That's actually the only reason I can imagine people playing Oblivion or Skyrim.

On consoles especially there is nothing else like them.

 

[octavius]

It's just that no other developer does them at all? That's actually the only reason I can imagine people playing Oblivion or Skyrim.

With the commercial success of the TES games you'd think someone else would try to make a Skyrim clone.
But it seems everyone is into either simple tablet games, or AAA games were most of the focus (and the budget) is on cinematic cutscenes and a "deep" story.
It's really sad really, since I think both books and movies are better mediums for telling story, while "hiking simulators" like Skyrim is something you can only experience through computers.

BTW, check out CRPG Addict's latest blog post. He mentions/quotes you.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Too bad you can't play it cause your pc is shit, awor.

I could play Daggerfall or Morrowind, though.

 

[Infinitron]

BTW, check out CRPG Addict's latest blog post. He mentions/quotes you.

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/darkspyre-won-with-final-rating.html

But don't take my bile as any kind of gospel. This kind of game is likely to inspire both love and hate depending on the bent of the player. In the July 1991 Computer Gaming World, Todd Threadgill loved it. While admitting that the introductory novella had "little impact on the game," he called it "a fine game, well suited to gamers who enjoy true challenges." Somewhere around the middle of the game, remembering her praise of The Dark Heart of Uukrul's abstract puzzles and her disdain for any actual story or dialogue in games, I thought "I'll bet frequent RPGCodex contributor Crooked Bee loved this game," and I wasn't disappointed. In a March 2012 thread, she said it was one of her favorite games, "maybe even the favorite one." So there you go. I'll leave them to their levers and pressure plates and get back to my NPCs, economies, and role-playing options.

That's not true.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I guess so. There is nothing else quite like TES. And they are moddable. Chances are if there's something you didn't like, you'll find a mod to fix it.

if you can fix it, it means it's broken in the first place.
even worse, if you can fix it, why didn't they?

 

[adddeed]

I guess so. There is nothing else quite like TES. And they are moddable. Chances are if there's something you didn't like, you'll find a mod to fix it.

if you can fix it, it means it's broken in the first place.
even worse, if you can fix it, why didn't they?

Broken, according to some. Not according to others. So you can "fix" whatever you think is broken, while others can "fix" whatever they think is broken.

The only thing i fixed was the level scaling, because i didn't like it. I left everything else vanilla. There was never really anything completely broken in the game.

 

[DalekFlay]

That most people loved vanilla Oblivion is undeniable, given that the Xbawks version was by far the highest selling and reviews, and has no mods.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I guess so. There is nothing else quite like TES. And they are moddable. Chances are if there's something you didn't like, you'll find a mod to fix it.

if you can fix it, it means it's broken in the first place.
even worse, if you can fix it, why didn't they?

Broken, according to some. Not according to others. So you can "fix" whatever you think is broken, while others can "fix" whatever they think is broken.

The only thing i fixed was the level scaling, because i didn't like it. I left everything else vanilla. There was never really anything completely broken in the game.

well, also hitler loved kids and puppies. he was an alright guy after all.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I guess so. There is nothing else quite like TES. And they are moddable. Chances are if there's something you didn't like, you'll find a mod to fix it.

if you can fix it, it means it's broken in the first place.
even worse, if you can fix it, why didn't they?

I personally don't care, as long as it's fixed when I get to play.

So there you go. I'll leave them to their levers and pressure plates and get back to my NPCs, economies, and role-playing options.

And romances, don't forget the romances.

 

[abnaxus]

Bethesda opens office in Australia

 

[Turjan]

Bethesda opens office in Australia

Do they hire Neanderthals?

 

[bussinrounds]

The more time you spend on these games, the worse and worse they get.

 

[Gerrard]

Thread is lacking in video content.

 

[tuluse]

I guess so. There is nothing else quite like TES. And they are moddable. Chances are if there's something you didn't like, you'll find a mod to fix it.

I don't like the level scaling, the static world, the annoying dialog minigame, the terrible system of catching the player committing crimes, the banal, boring story, the lack of urgency of a freaking demon invasion, the lack of interesting NPCs, the boring character system, and the lack of consequences to any choice made. Is there a mod that fixes this?