Bethesda Needs Another Masterpiece

i don't think it's a secret to anyone that elden ring has been a huge hit it's a massive open world role-playing game that is already heavily suggested to be game of the year which got us thinking about another company that makes very different games than from software but is also in the market of making massive open world rpgs [Music] [Music] bethesda game studios creator of beloved hits like skyrim and fallout 3 are releasing their next game this november by the way some people think that bethesda game studios releases more games than they actually do it's kind of confusing bethesda is also a publisher so some people think they make these games they don't they make these games starfield which is the team's first new series since the elder scrolls has a lot to compete with when stacked against a game like eldon ring even though they're very different role-playing games but just losing game of the year isn't the real worry for bethesda when it comes to the release of starfield bethesda isn't facing financial troubles or the threat of the company closing in fact their studios and publishing company are more secure than ever after being acquired by microsoft even before then bethesda was not selling games poorly by any means but they have lost something that can't be easily measured by something like sales numbers their reputation when we talk about bethesda's reputation it's not that as gamers were divorced with bethesda but they're sleeping on the couch tonight coming off of skyrim that's your line coming off of skyrim no no coming off of skyrim bethesda was receiving more mainstream recognition than ever but the game was not without its criticism skyrim was a great game but it was full of bugs and performance issues at launch especially on the ps3 however following its release bethesda had become the company when talking about aaa rpg games they were the first to strike a balance between depth and accessibility for the general gaming public especially in western markets now this balance we're talking about is usually because a lot of role-playing games can be extremely inaccessible to the average person they require a lot of time thought and patience that you really need to engage the player in your game to get from somebody and especially in 2011 the average person playing games wasn't really looking for that deep of an experience i feel like a lot of rpgs had a lot of menus you had to navigate through and bethesda designed it very well to avoid having to do any of those things right you're usually just in your menus to drop dragon bones so you can walk around fast but now i think uh tastes have changed a little bit you see something like eldon ring and you see a lot of new people enjoying not only a from software game but deep elements of rpg for the first time i'm one of them but since the skyrim era bethesda's reputation as the king of big rpgs has slipped and fallen at least just a little so how did that happen well it's not really one game that failed in a massive way it's kind of just a bunch of small criticisms and trends that have gone unchanged for a time bethesda's reputation you know isn't getting flushed down the toilet some could say flushed away tony i would yeah i would say that's a good way to say it yeah tony you remember the flushed away video game that you got me as the only christmas gift we ever got each other and i got you avatar the video game uh that and you loved avatar and you got me flushed away the video game i had no way of knowing it was gonna be bad it seemed like i've never seen flushed away though why would i want that as a gift because then you're going into the story fresh bethesda games have been famously buggy at launch for pretty much every launch in the last 20 years can i help you at first their style of game a 3d first person rpg had never been done before so the amount of bugs was a product of innovation but as the bugs persisted while bethesda grew the tolerance for them shrank hey you are finally awake especially after a massive success like skyrim most of the gaming community was thinking they definitely fixed their bug problem right and then fallout 4 comes out and it's just kind of as buggy as skyrim was and the difference between every single game release is you can point to the millions of dollars they made on the last release and hope that they put that money toward making their games not as buggy but also to check the gaming community real quick that is a valid frustration that they have but buggy games aren't always the result of greed or a lack of talent from the team there's so many factors when a bunch of people collect to make the best game possible that can still go wrong so it's always weird to me when people try and suggest that a team is lazy for not fixing their bugs because people are most likely working their ass off with a lot of crazy time constraints to make the best game possible for you and it doesn't always work out but also like i said as a consumer you are right to be frustrated if you paid for a product that isn't done aside from the bugs another trend gamers are getting frustrated with in bethesda games is the lack of improvement when it comes to graphics and animations right you look at a game like uncharted which is obviously a linear experience and not an open world game but we would describe the uncharted series as more of a blockbuster the animations are better than most games that captures the facial performances are incredible you're riding down hills in a jeep you're falling out of planes trying to escape a clock tower as it crumbles above you uncharted will take you for a wild ride much like a really good blockbuster would and i would describe bethesda games as more of a stage play where characters just kind of stand around and say lines for the most part we need to move now up through the tower let's go wow that was very intense i really felt the intensity i got chills man chills down my from my from my head to my toes my my toes are freezing but that's not to say there aren't cool moments in bethesda games there are it's just that a lot of the industry has improved these kind of sequences and bethesda seems to be left behind in their presentation of these kind of things even in a game like the new god of war they have these cinematic sequences that blend directly into actual gameplay it merges the storytelling directly into playing something bethesda rarely does but should really adopt yeah and obviously god of war is more linear uncharted is a more linear game but even open world games like horizon forbidden west or elden ring or a first person rpg much like bethesda games dying light 2 had really incredible animations i think dying light 2 is actually a really good example because it is a first person game with an open world but they seem to still incorporate a lot of first person animation sequences into their storytelling so one of the biggest factors for starfield is that all video games take longer to make now than they used to especially aaa games people loved fallout 4 but they didn't love it like they loved skyrim and people just have a bad taste in their mouth from the fallout 4 and fallout 76 era we are not saying these games are bad or that you can't enjoy them they are just not riding high like they did after skyrim which means every year that passes the pressure for starfield to be good grows starfield is going to be an indicator for where bethesda heads as a company when fallout 4 was released most people still liked them it's not like fallout 4 you know dropped the company in the public perception like crazy but they were definitely given criticism by fans over certain things the thing is why would they need to change those things when fallout 4 was selling better than skyrim why would you change the formula if your company is making money fallout 4 has got to be the most successful game we've ever launched in our company's history more than skyrim in terms of like what we did but part of it is just that phenomenon of well you have some level of experience and interaction with the with the game already so starfield is the first game after their formula has been really put under a microscope and criticized by the public and bethesda is aware of this too they're not stupid it's why at e3 2019 when they talked about fallout 76 and starfield they also announced elder scrolls 6 probably 10 years too early they're basically saying hey you guys remember skyrim right you guys remember when you liked us because i mean actually if you guys brought it up we're selling skyrim again we love skyrim we love skyrim elder scrolls will be a huge game with the public and starfield is going to be a good indication if bethesda will continue to follow its same trends or really start to push the boundaries again and that's the only reason why bethesda's reputation has been heard is the lack of improvement in bugs uh graphics and animation yeah i think that's it you know honestly it's not even that bad yep um is that music what is that what am i getting loud i don't know [Music] [Music] and all that's left is a buggy mess of systemic designs that never seems to work together and regularly contradicts itself [ __ ] broken it is as if bethesda didn't even test their 100 a year 13 a month subscription fallout 76 was a massive pr failure for bethesda fallout 76 a type of game we'd never done before had a lot of difficulties at launch and we got a lot of well-deserved criticism there's so much you could talk about for fallout 76 and if you want a good video on it internet historian made a fantastic video on fallout 76. there were so many controversies and failures that happened with fallout 76 in bethesda that the gaming community started to kind of turn on bethesda in a way that we hadn't seen before their almost perfect reputation was damaged more than it ever had been before people went from having bethesda games be a must buy for them to being a little bit more cautious about trusting the company also a small quality thing that we didn't mention is we absolutely love towns in bethesda games oh my god towns and bethesda games are one of the highlights of exploring their world you walk into a town there is conflict there is storytelling there is atmosphere and culture it's a really great experience but in fallout 4 they tried a new settlement system where you could build your own base and attract other npcs to come live in your town that you created but there were a lot of them and they replaced the plots of land that would have been bethesda's curated towns with culture and story and everything else i said which good on them for trying something new it just happened to steamroll some of our favorite parts of their games and that's the important thing we don't want to fault them for trying something new in the last game we just want to make sure that they learn and know that that wasn't worth what they sacrificed for yeah and we're not saying take out any settlement building maybe you can have your own base somewhere but please don't take out my towns bethesda give us time give us towns give us towns give us time [Music] bethesda game studios has still made some of the most influential games of all time and the office in maryland didn't even fully work on 76 and fallout 4 wasn't a disaster 76 was half made by them at most so let's not forget the potential this company has can we let you guys in on a little bit of a gamer secret guys gather round come in here get in here we don't want starfield to be bad shockingly i want the games i play to be good it's almost like i don't have fun when i'm playing a game that isn't fun we've been watching a ton of footage and discussions bethesda has released about starfield for this video and we're cautious about some of the things they're saying because let's be honest as gamers we've been burned before by them but a lot of it sounds really good like it really does in our opinion the creation engine the program used to make and run bethesda games was clearly outdated and holding back the potential of what could happen in their games it seems to be a major source of the bugs graphics and animation limitations that we talked about one of the big reasons we're so optimistic is that bethesda announced in the starfield trailer that they're now on creation engine 2 which promises a better set of tools to make and run starfield and the games beyond that we've always allowed the player to you know to create really interesting unique characters this game we've definitely severely leveled up the tech is based on scanning of real world models they also seem to be improving their system for capturing faces and facial animations because holy hell they've been behind the rest of the industry on that similar to the photogrammetry we do in our landscapes we're kind of applying the same thing to our to our people as well because it's not just the appearance of your player and all that but you know we want all the personal interactions of npcs other characters in the game to be as impactful as possible and for that you have to believe these are real people you're a real person interacting with real people starfield could come out follow the formula bethesda knows works sell well and also disappoint a good deal of fans but is that what any of us actually want it's easy to hate on a company especially when they've slipped and fallen from grace a little bit but we really hope that's not what happened while watching all the roundtable talks and interviews bethesda posted we couldn't help but have hope for starfield and the company's future listen we realize those videos they post to youtube are ads it's advertising but the company seems to be full of a close-knit group of veterans that made the hits we love mixed with excited young developers that were inspired by those games there's definitely this core group who's been working together for decades and knows how to make a bgs game and then there's this you know new generation of game developers who are coming in and working at bgs who grew up on those games those people made they frequently talk about how comfortable they are with being creative as a team that has stayed intact for so long which is pretty rare in this industry members of bethesda seemed genuinely excited to start a brand new franchise and break out of the formula people were getting tired of and todd howard has become a bit of a meme along with being a legend in the gaming industry even though there have been promises in advertising made by todd that didn't exactly meet reality um being that we are bethesda um everything gets a bit big so as of last week were over 200 endings that is not an exaggeration every time we see him in an interview or discussion he just seems really intelligent and like a genuine person obviously we don't know him but todd just got away with words god he's so smooth and handsome and charming god we don't know much about starfield yet but the way they talk about it makes us hopeful that bethesda will make another game that will be talked about for many years so even though the last few years have been rough bethesda has shaped the industry in ways that cannot be measured we've loved a lot of their games and i know there's a good chance that at least one of their games has meant a lot to you too morrowind oblivion fallout 3 skyrim and fallout 4 have all proved that they're capable of making experiences that mean a lot to so many people for different reasons and we would love to see that happen again [Music] you

Channel: Burback

Views: 711,413

Keywords:

Id: q-_SS4OYHZs

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2022