C-suite staff: what do you mean? They’re just meat tools. One tool is the same as any other tool. See this is why I make the big bucks. I am have much smart brain.
"You can’t just throw new people at that problem": Bethesda devs doubt future Elder Scrolls and Fallout games will have the same "quality level", after losing seasoned staff to Xbox cuts
Submitted 18 hours ago by GamingBot@lemmy.zip [bot] to gaming@lemmy.zip
Comments
Asafum@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Fucking “quality level”
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
Well I think Obsidian will be better able to do a Fallout game than Bethesda, but oof yeah maybe fire Emil and Todd, if you want to start fixing Bethesda’s problems.
See the primary problem with Bethesda is that its leadership are incompetent, and have promoted a hugbox culture with 0 accountability anywhere.
Thats how something like FO76 and Starfield and the FO4 update that broke everything happen.
In case anyone is unaware:
gamingpromax.com/obsidian-new-fallout-game-confir…
Yeah, Asha Sharma told Obsidian to drop basically everything they were doing, and now they’re tasked with making another Fallout game.
Bethesda is also tasked with making a new Fallout game.
… only one of these studios is currently publically pissing and shitting themselves over how difficult that will be.
And its not Obsidian. Haven’t heard much from them.
Probably because they are busy, you know, working.
AgentSeven@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
To be fair, the article makes it sound like Obsidian is going to be doing with Fallout 4 what they did with Fallout 3/NV - use the existing game engine to create an entirely new game - versus what Bethesda is doing, which is updating the whole system to Fallout 5, which presumably would be sharing some work with ESVI.
One of those things would actually be more difficult than the other, though I’d also suspect that Microsoft’s atitude here is driven by Bethesda’s largesse when it comes to ESVI. It’s been discussed to death but a single non-trailer on your biggest tentpole in 10 years in favor of your boss’ seriously mid space game is certainly a… decision.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
Well the last time Obsidian got their hands on the then current Creation Engine, they hot rodded it and got it to do things that Bethesda had stated they wanted to be able to do but couldn’t figure out how to do.
What would a wholly updated FO5 even… have be different? What are the systems that would be reworked?
No one has any idea because no one has mentioned anything at that level of detail, at all, that I’m aware of.
Also what, like, Bethesda is going to somehow make the Creation Engine not a giant pile of shit, with now 15 more years of acculumated technical debt from never doing a full ground up rebuild… ?
Anyway my suspicion is that MSFT is generally pissed at Bethesda for spending stupendous amounts of money over the last decade and a half, making basically one decent game that was a commercial success, one maybe commerical success that was a PR disaster, and then a combo PR+commercial disaster.
That, all in addition to FO5 and ES VI are as best we can tell literally just dreams, concepts of a plan.
Sharma’s job is to make Xbox as profitable as it can be, partially to stem the damage from Xbox itself’s fuckups over the last decade, Spencer’s ‘buy every IP’ plan only works if that leads to actually profitable games…
… but Sharma also has to make Xbox as profitable as it can be to cover for the incredible amounts of money MSFT has spent on AI/LLMs, Windows itself going to shit, mass abandonment of Windows and Windows enterprise software thats been going on in Europe since Trump Round 2 started.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 13 hours ago
Tbh I don’t think obsidian is that good anymore either.
bananabenana@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Pentiment was brilliant AF. Pillars of Eternity II was also amazing. The writing and art direction in these games is the same quality of NV. Outer Worlds was alright, but the DLC was very good.
I’ll support any Obsidian ventures because there’s not really any other studios that make high quality narrative driven games similar to them. Maybe WarHorse Studios or CDPR.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
Tbf I agree that their more recent games haven’t been great… but I do think they are both more lean, and of better quality than Bethesda’s recent slop.
Vespair@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
Greed.
Don’t call them “budget cuts” when they’re performed by entirely profitable companies. Call it what it is, rampant greed.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 6 hours ago
If you make lots of money and save a lot, and your roommate is unemployed and spends tons of money, your apartment might be profitable, but yes ur roommate still needs to balance their budget.
Allegedly, Minecraft has been subsidizing the entire Microsoft games division. If that's actually the case, the question becomes: why? If the game studios aren't profitable except one, isn't it greedy to expect Minecraft's studio to keep paying for them?
Don't get me wrong: I do think there's a greed problem here on Microsoft's part, but it isn't trying to get unprofitable subsidiaries to become profitable. It's the fact that Microsoft bought half the games industry hoping to get massive pricing power by owning many of the best game franchises of all time so they could get us all to rent their library through xbox game pass. The fact that it's failing is unfortunately good on the balance of things.
In that sense, the greed worth attacking isn't the hard times of layoffs when they fail, it's the attempt to leverage game libraries to get us hooked on game subscriptions. That they failed and are now in a bad way is horrible for devs in the short term, bad for gamers in the short term, but ultimately is better for everyone when game subscription stays a niche.
Microsoft already started jamming the price up, if we ended up with a few megacorps renting libraries out to us that's exactly where things were headed.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
Bethesda was profitable too, at minimum until MS purchased them.
itrealgood@mander.xyz 16 hours ago
Meanwhile questline successfully made a great [not elder scrolls] game.
Also, obsidian made the best fallout game.
I’m happy for bethesda that skyrim was such a success but I think the competition is outperforming themshartgargle@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
Maybe they should have thought about that instead of (poorly) porting the same 2 games to every electronic device on earth. Or selling out to Microsoft.
LaBellaLotta@hexbear.net 17 hours ago
Ok but how is this writer using the word “bestest” unironically in the first paragraph. Am I losing my mind?
Chronographs@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
It’s RPS, their tone is usually anything but serious.
shani66@ani.social 16 hours ago
Yeah, i don’t think bethesda have to worry about things getting worse.
meejle@piefed.world 18 hours ago
Wow, and the “quality level” was already pretty bad
tmyakal@infosec.pub 16 hours ago
This was my first thought. If what we’ve been getting out of Bethesda is the good stuff, I’m afraid for what comes next.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
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