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If only someone else did a similar game, because even though I've played many Bethesda I'd gladly move away if someone else did a better similar experience. Kinda like Life is Strange vs usual Telltale garbage, I'm not a loyalist and would jump ship asap.

Bethesda games are like fast food, a McDonalds burger.

PS: I still can't go back to my FO4 PC version because the game stutters like crazy and the GPU usage is completely fucked up, something that happened one day for absolutely no reason and nothing fixed it.

None of those games have nearly as complex or varied open world...

Oh yeah, Skyrim caves are so unique.

 

[DrArchon]

Here ya go dude

https://youtu.be/K1SZgRL1n4o

God, insufferable is the right word. Hearing part of Brad and Austin's argument being boiled down to "Well, you can't be disappointed in FO4 being janky because Bethesda's games are always janky" just pisses me off so much. That's the kind of excuse you use for not getting mad at your dog for shitting on the rug, not a multi-million dollar company putting out a product with glaring flaws in it.

 

[Mesoian]

The thing is, they *have* done better. Fallout 4 was more stable and polished than Skyrim, which was a step up from Fallout 3, and so on.

If anything, Bethesda is steadily improving in combat and stability.

You can argue the gameplay stuff, of course, but I see no measure where their games are not improving on a technical and stability level with each release.

I would disagree with this. Skyrim was far more stable than Fallout 4 was for me. I had to rely on fanmade mods to stabilize Fallout 4 to a point where I could finish it.

 

[onemanasylum]

Agreed. The gameplay has always been poor imo and now the other elements are getting mediocre as well (see Fallout 4)

Constantly buggy, poorly optimized games too. It's just low quality stuff for a AAA dev and they rely too much on the mod community to make their games good.

That's speaking only of Bethesda developed games though. The stuff coming out of the devs under their publishing title can be great, like Doom and Wolfenstein.

Yep, I mean it's not like the other systems in their games are great either, they are mediocre RPG's, with poor combat and mechanics. I never understood the Bethesda love. I mean other then wandering aimlessly in the samey environments, the games don;t do a lot well.

 

[Euphor!a]

Oh yeah, Skyrim caves are so unique.

Don't be dumb.

 

[Andodalf]

It looks like a list of things a tester would see in his first playtrough

If it was as easy as editing a line of code

:BethesdaJank = NO

They would have done it. They know about it, and it's just how the engine works. Making a new engine would be incredibly difficult, and guess what? it would still have problems and oddities, and over time it would develop more.

 

[Maintenance]

Don't be dumb.

I'm not the one saying Bethesda has worlds that are more "complex or varied", so I'm fine.

 

[Mesoian]

If it was as easy as editing a line of code

:BethesdaJank = NO

They would have done it. They know about it, and it's just how the engine works. Making a new engine would be incredibly difficult, and guess what? it would still have problems and oddities, and over time it would develop more.

But you know what? Just like Telltale, it's fucking well beyond time for them to create or adopt a new engine, because what they have doesn't fly anymore.

 

[RedSwirl]

At this point I've played 100's of hours in Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4. The Jank is Real. I fully agree but it doesn't stop me enjoying my time with their games - right up until Fallout 4 that is. They get away with it because people, including myself, keep buying their games. I'm skeptical now, cough Fallout 4 was a bummer, but it wasn't the jank that got me that way. If there is no jank is it a Bethesda Open World Game? That's a riddle for the ages.

It's because Fallout 4 lacks a lot of what brought people into Bethesda games. It's less about exploration and role play than about clearing dungeons and crafting stuff.

 

[Euphor!a]

I'm not the one saying Bethesda has worlds that are more "complex or varied", so I'm fine.

They are, are you seriously going to argue that GTA5's open world is more complex and varied than Skyrim's?

 

[Arklite]

Felt the same way as OP about Skyrim, playing it two years after release and for like $10. Crashed 10 minutes after the janky ass opening and progress was a gamble from then on. The worlds they create are alluring enough to continue so people forgive, but it's a huge shame they never seem to properly patch in some solutions.

It made me feel a bit guilty when the whole modding compensation idea evaporated on Steam because they really do deserve something for improving these janky, buggy games.

 

[Maintenance]

They are, are you seriously going to argue that GTA5's open world is more complex and varied than Skyrim's?

After what I've played of both, yes.

 

[The Hamburglar]

I avoided fallout 4 because they are still using the same engine. I will play it if someone gives it me for free.

 

[Euphor!a]

After what I've played of both, yes.

Then you probably haven't played much, like the fact you even think that is vaguely reasonable is baffling.

 

[AJ_Wings]

Oh, they definitely don't get a pass around here in GAF. Even back in release, people criticized the shit out of them. There was no honeymoon period for F4.

But yeah, if you're already put off, don't bother further wasting your time with F4.

 

[Maintenance]

Then you probably haven't played much, like the fact you even think that is vaguely reasonable is baffling.

Haha, I've more than 1k hours on both combined, so you're just talking out of your ass again.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

Felt the same way as OP about Skyrim, playing it two years after release and for like $10. Crashed 10 minutes after the janky ass opening and progress was a gamble from then on. The worlds they create are alluring enough to continue so people forgive, but it's a huge shame they never seem to properly patch in some solutions.

It made me feel a bit guilty when the whole modding compensation idea evaporated on Steam because they really do deserve something for improving these janky, buggy games.

I was just thinking this. At least Nexus allows modders to be compensated through voluntary donations. Some of these mods are just off the charts high quality and better thought out than what's in the vanilla game.

It fuels my bitterness about the whole situation.

Then you probably haven't played much, like the fact you even think that is vaguely reasonable is baffling.

I have a hard time believing the world in Skyrim is actually as complex as you are implying. It's huge and there is a lot to explore. It's often beautiful and imaginative. However, that's where the variety stops. When you actually play the game, the environments feel very samey and reskins of different environments you have already been in. There's really not much to do (unless you get mods!). Also, the quests available in Skyrim are IMO pretty mundane and boring. A lot of fetch quests. The sandbox available in a game like GTAV feels more varied and complex by sheer gameplay alone. The amount of things you can do and interact with the world is way more complex and varied than anything I can think of in Skyrim...and I put a ton of time into Skyrim.

 

[the1npc]

I'm more bothered by the horrible implementation of a fully voiced protagonist and god awful main quest in FO4.

Yep the writing and story was garbage

 

[Showaddy]

I'm part of the problem, I was raging at what a broken piece of shit Skyrim on PS3 was after looking forward to it for so long. I still bought the remastered edition recently hoping to finally enjoy it and shock horror; crashes, glitches & 6 year old bugs still unfixed.

Like anyone else I just lap up whatever those incompetent idiots produce. Refused to buy F4 out of principle now.

 

[Euphor!a]

Haha, I've more than 1k hours on both combined, so you're just talking out of your ass again.

You can have as much time played on both of them as you want, it doesn't really change how absurd that idea is.

 

[Fbh]

I'd don't dismiss it.


The jank combined with the terrible combat system in The Elder scrolls make it a mid tier RPG to me.

 

[riotous]

Is this on console or something?

I just did a ~30-40 hour play through of FO4 and didn't see any of those issues.

I've put several hundred hours into Skyrim on PC (doing another play right now) and have had a couple crashes, but no other major problems.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

The jank exists because the of the freedom and openness of their game engine. It's the big trade off of having a huge open world where you can interact with most objects in the game world and how receptive it is to modding.

Literally no other kind of game does what it does. People who value those aspects forgive the jank and until someone else does what it does better, that's pretty understandable imo.

 

[Maintenance]

You can have as much time played on both of them as you want, it doesn't really change how absurd that idea is.

I'm not the one that started the argument about time played though.

Then you probably haven't played much.

¯\_(&#12484_/¯

Is this on console or something?

I just did a ~30-40 hour play through of FO4 and didn't see any of those issues.

I've put several hundred hours into Skyrim on PC (doing another play right now) and have had a couple crashes, but no other major problems.

Nah, PC version can also be garbage. That's not a console exclusive feature.

 

[Euphor!a]

I'm not the one that started the argument about time played though.



¯\_(&#12484_/¯

No you just suggested GTA5's open world is more complex and varied than Skyrim's.

¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[riotous]

Nah, PC version can also be garbage. That's not a console exclusive feature.

But a 6 hour play through seeing all the issues in the PC?

I JUST finished a play through of FO4 a week ago, and saw literally none of that stuff.

 

[AndrewDean84xX]

I don't see it as Bethesda jank. I notice it in just about every open world game. Let's not pretend games like Witcher 3 and GTA 5 are without their large amounts of jank.

 

[Com Truise]

They are, are you seriously going to argue that GTA5's open world is more complex and varied than Skyrim's?

Designing a modern metropolis is a significantly bigger task than making an empty world scattered with copy-pasted dungeons.

 

[Maintenance]

But a 6 hour play through seeing all the issues in the PC?

I JUST finished a play through of FO4 a week ago, and saw literally none of that stuff.

I would finish my play through if I could, but the game suddenly broke and now I can't. So yeah, it can happen. Not everyone will see the same stuff, that's for sure, but it might happen to some.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

But a 6 hour play through seeing all the issues in the PC?

I JUST finished a play through of FO4 a week ago, and saw literally none of that stuff.

Yes, it's on PC. The majority of bugs I encountered in the OP were immediately found in a huge amount of posts when searching on Google.

 

[Tigress]

It's never showed up often enough to bother me.

Pretty much this. I love their games and I know they are janky but their games are fun enough and the jank not bad enough I just overlook it (and honestly judging from what you listed I don't get as many need to start from last save bugs like you seem to have run into). Now... I will say their amount of jankiness is on the bottom of my tolerance level (and I will say I'm pretty forgiving). But they honestly make my favorite games and no one else makes a game like theirs (though using their engine at least one developer made a game better than theirs as it took everything I liked about their games and other than jankiness fixed everything Bethesda does wrong cause I won't say they don't have some big flaws) so in the end that is more important to me as long as the game is playable.

 

[Matt]

You should listen to the 2015(?) Giantbomb GOTY podcast.

That was really something. And I am usually inclined to give developers the benefit of the doubt.

I understand giving Bethesda some more leeway then other devs with different games should get. Fallout and ES are never going to be bug free. But they can be and should be better.

 

[riotous]

Designing a modern metropolis is a significantly bigger task than making an empty world scattered with copy-pasted dungeons.

It's a different style of complexity; in Skyrim I can have 3 dragons fighting me and a bunch of bears... run halfway across the world, run back, and the fight will have been simulated while I was gone and the aftermath guts on the ground.

Not to mention the branching missions, NPC interactions, etc. are totally different.

Graphically GTA V is a more detailed world, beyond that they are completely different experiences / games.

 

[jtb]

Bethesda games are unambitious jankfests. Their lack of ambition and blandness is exactly why they're so popular and why the gaming press can't get enough of them.

 

[onemanasylum]

They are, are you seriously going to argue that GTA5's open world is more complex and varied than Skyrim's?

Creating a huge, vibrant city with all that traffic and pedestrians is pretty damn impressive.

 

[AndrewDean84xX]

Creating a huge, vibrant city with all that traffic and pedestrians is pretty damn impressive.

Which lead to GTA 5 having it's own jank.

 

[Tigress]

Designing a modern metropolis is a significantly bigger task than making an empty world scattered with copy-pasted dungeons.

Uh... no... that doesn't work. GTA isn't trying to do near as many different things in the game as Bethesda's games (there are set things you can do and that is it, Bethesda's engine is set up to do RPG like games that are a lot more complicated...even if Bethesda doesn't really use the engine much for RPG anymore, the potential is there). There's not all sorts of individual items it is keeping track of where they are at all times (and keeping track of if you move it). And they get to model it after a real city (That makes things a lot easier cause they actually have tools they can use and they don't have to design every building from scratch, they already have the design, they just have to translate those buildings into their game engine).

 

[Aaron D.]

It's an aging engine to be sure, but I'm fine with it 'cause I respect all the moving parts under the hood.

Some people just expect an UbiSoft open-world presentation from an engine that has FAR more interlocking systems running in the background.

Their loss, I suppose.

I love Bethesda's unique stamp in gaming.

 

[riotous]

Creating a huge, vibrant city with all that traffic and pedestrians is pretty damn impressive.

GTA games are amazing from a technical perspective; but part of the amazement is the tricks they pull off which includes only rendering/simulating your immediate surroundings. In some older GTA games that meant literally seeing a different set of cars and pedestrians by simply turning your character 180 degrees.

Bethesda games are impressive for a different reason; the scale is a bit more "Real" while the detail is less.

 

[MCN]

Bethesda games are unambitious jankfests. Their lack of ambition and blandness is exactly why they're so popular and why the gaming press can't get enough of them.

Oh tell us more, exalted wise one, of how we are all inferior to your oh-so-refined tastes.

You can accuse Bethesda of a lot of things. Lack of ambition is not one of them.

 

[AWizardDidIt]

Creating a huge, vibrant city with all that traffic and pedestrians is pretty damn impressive.

That's a different kind of complex. It's a sophisticated system of AI routes but the memory only holds onto things within a (relatively) short distance from you. As soon as a pedestrian or vehicle moves a set distance from the player, it disappears and is dropped from memory.

In a Bethesda game if I pick up a rock and put it on one side of the map then I can go to any part of the game world and come back later and that rock is still there. That doesn't seem like a big deal but from a technical perspective it really really is.

 

[Flipyap]

I just feel like large open world Ubisoft games, Rockstar games, and CDPR have made games of similar/greater caliber that don't suffer from these problems in the same way.

All of those studios make games which are less dependent on dynamic AI, random events and piles upon piles of physics objects, all of which have the potential to interfere with quest scripting.
And yet, Ubisoft announced Ass Creed Syndicate with what was effectively an apology for Ass Creed Unity's technical issues. CD Projekt Red was really good about fixing The Witcher 3, but that game suffered from the same issues at launch, and it only got worse when they launched the second expansion, despite the game being much simpler and less dynamic than Bethesda's open worlds.

 

[Aaron D.]

Bethesda games are unambitious jankfests. Their lack of ambition and blandness is exactly why they're so popular and why the gaming press can't get enough of them.

Holy hyperbole, Batman!

This can't be real.

LOL.

 

[Zombie James]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1SZgRL1n4o

"I'm not disappointed because it's always been that way."
"It's part and parcel for this type of game."
"If I buy a Hyundai every three years and it breaks every year after that, again and again and again, when I buy my sixth Hyundai I'm not allowed to say I'm disappointed by that Hyundai."

Good lord.

 

[onemanasylum]

That's a different kind of complex. It's a sophisticated system of AI routes but the memory only holds onto things within a (relatively) short distance from you. As soon as a pedestrian or vehicle moves a set distance from the player, it disappears and is dropped from memory.

In a Bethesda game if I pick up a rock and put it on one side of the map then I can go to any part of the game world and come back later and that rock is still there. That doesn't seem like a big deal but from a technical perspective it really really is.

Not sure your point, GTA's world is detailed and as if not more impressive then Bethesdas for different reasons. It disappearing from memory is irrelevant really, the player won;t care. Maybe bethesda needs to stop wasting resources on things that simply do not serve the player or game at all.

 

[Euphor!a]

Creating a huge, vibrant city with all that traffic and pedestrians is pretty damn impressive.

I never said it wasn't.

 

[onemanasylum]

All of those studios make games which are less dependent on dynamic AI, random events and piles upon piles of physics objects, all of which have the potential to interfere with quest scripting.
And yet, Ubisoft announced Ass Creed Syndicate with what was effectively an apology for Ass Creed Unity's technical issues. CD Projekt Red was really good about fixing The Witcher 3, but that game suffered from the same issues at launch, and it only got worse when they launched the second expansion, despite the game being much simpler and less dynamic than Bethesda's open worlds.

Bethesda's AI is terrible though....Radiant AI was a joke of a marketing term that turned out bad. Bethesda has some of the worst AI i've seen.

 

[jtb]

Oh tell us more, exalted wise one, of how we are all inferior to your oh-so-refined tastes.

You can accuse Bethesda of a lot of things. Lack of ambition is not one of them.

It's not refined taste. It's just a fact: their games just don't evolve. They don't refine their systems. They don't improve their systems. They just create new worlds. And, in many ways, their games have devolved since Morrowind.

The worlds themselves are fine. Some (Skyrim) are better than others (Oblivion). But they've been making the same game for the past 15 years. Sometimes they'll throw some hilariously bad high production value shit at it (their celebrity voice actor fetish never ceases to amaze), but it's still the same game.

Now, if I wanted to compare it to the Witcher 3, which shits on Bethesda's games on every single level: technical, design, mechanics, visual, jank, storytelling, fun; I could. But I won't, because that's not my point and Witcher 3's only come around once a generation, if that.

But it's a double edged sword. I think what Bethesda has done is create a very extensible platform for others to create great content. New Vegas, great. The crazy modding work that has always accompanied their games? Excellent. But Bethesda's core games? Lacking.

Gamebryo is janky as fuck, and Bethesda has never really managed to make core concepts like combat or platforming or puzzles fun within it, despite their games often being built around those things.

 

[Tigress]

I don't see it as Bethesda jank. I notice it in just about every open world game. Let's not pretend games like Witcher 3 and GTA 5 are without their large amounts of jank.

Witcher 3 crashed on me a ton, at least before patches. But, honestly, I'd say both of those games are less janky than Bethesda games (Though I swear in the first 100 hour save files of Bethesda games they didn't crash as much as Witcher did but they had more janky bugs).

But yes, open world games are going to have bugs. And I do think people are ignoring the fact that Bethesda's engine really is designed to be very flexible as well as have to remember a lot of states of things (which is why the bigger the save file the jankier it gets) so it's really doing more than those other games. Like the fact it does not randomly spawn loot on NPCs, what the NPCs are wearing and using are what you'll find as loot (it doesn't just spawn it when they die so all those are items it has to remember and keep track of). Flexibility leads to a lot more different things that could happen that is hard to test for every single instance.

And I for one would not sacrifice what their engine can do for a smoother running game (but I won't complain if they could make it less janky without sacrificing that stuff. Hell, I'll say Fallout 4 does seem to be more stable than their previous games). Some of it is small details but they are small details that are what makes their game unique to me (like for example all items actually being objects in the world that you can drop and put in containers and take out of containers and place around as you wish. I know that's a small thing and most games just put that stuff in background and don't make it interactive cause they don't see it as important but for me it helps add immersion and I love collecting items in the world and displaying them in my "home base" so to speak. I'll spend time just getting them all placed right...e ven though I know the engine is janky enough when I get back to my base there's a good chance it won't load it right and I'll have to redo my decorations).

 

[onemanasylum]

The worst thing IMO is how bad Bethesdas animations are, NPC's look and move like something from a generation or two ago. It is jarring.