How Skyrim Ruined Bethesda

salutations everybody it is Maddie here today let's talk about Bethesda game studios shall we Bethesda game studios games have always been seismic Daggerfall morind Oblivion Fallout 3 Skyrim for their time these releases were absolute game changers as a near 100 Man team managed to put out the most impressive games at the time in the terms of scale while still keeping them really fun to play and it goes without saying that by this point in time but desda game studios has absolutely earned their reputation during this stretch where they won four Game of the Year Awards in a row and I would say rightfully so it's rare that a game developer can make a single favorite game of all time for you and it's really difficult to do that across multiple series multiple times but the way that Bethesda game studios went back and forth between Fallout and Elder Scrolls ping ponging to what I thought were some of the best games ever made is nothing short of completely incredible in particular the reason that these games Thrive was due to their striking worlds to explore zipping from location to location and discovering something meaningful on your way to the next beat was the the true Quest that made these games tick often times better than anything that could be packed into them content-wise for it was those choices that you made as you explored that would define the water cooler moments as we gathered to talk about how we tackled the latest World from Bethesda game studios Skyrim it needs no introduction at all is arguably Bethesda game studios's most popular video game to date and certainly the most recognizable one on a main stream level so much so that Bethesda has infamously sold it to us well way too many times to count still I love it you love it Skyrim is a once in a generation game and I think it ruined Bethesda today's video is more of a thought exercise to get people looking at Bethesda from a different angle yes Fallout 76 sucks yes Fallout 4 definitely underwhelms some and I could hear arguments on how those games led to the undoing of Bethesda on a creative level certainly but what I want to propose is that Skyrim's magnificence it's long staying power over the course of now two generations how boundless it is and the way technology was utilized to build its content has fundamentally changed the way that Bethesda looks at and creates their own games did Skyrim literally ruin Bethesda like as in financially no not at all hence why they keep selling to us did it ruin them on a level of player satisfaction wise did it ruin them there no people are still playing it to this day but creatively I actually think you can make an argument for that and that's what I'm here to do this wasn't a thought that came to my mind until I spent a couple of months here with Starfield and after which I was looking at the entire Bethesda game studios library and I noticed this inflection point where things dramatically changed with Skyrim and for many it's only been downhill since then now while many of you will undoubtedly disagree and I absolutely welcome that sort of conversation I feel confident I'll be able to get my point across and appreciate you just taking the time to listen so let's stop setting the table and get right into it I feel the best place to begin is analyzing how Bethesda game studios talked about their games in the past versus how they view them now for before I speak as someone who interprets the art that they create right I need to hear how the creators represented their products throughout generations and you'll notice a pretty dramatic transformation in vernacular by Bethesda game Studios from there I'm going to dive into my core arguments on key design decisions in Skyrim that were missed in future games and how it's been almost impossible for Bethesda to replicate things now upon Skyrim success Bethesda naturally wanted to replicate that right like hey you have this game that sells millions of copies and people are still playing it for over a decade that would be kind of nice if we could do it again right except in that same note it's the very designed philosophies that guided Skyrim to that level of success and the subsequent response to those decisions in the game made that seem more and more misconstrued as I hear Bethesda speak about their own products more and more across not just Todd Howard who I know is usually the spokesperson for these games but different developers that were once at Bethesda game studios or still at Bethesda game studios I want to take a look at this interview clip here from Bruce n Smith for those not introduced Bruce n Smith is actually Skyrim's lead designer and he was the Senior Systems lead over on Starfield so he has a lot of experience one of the Bethesda game studios vet an unsung hero in the company and I'll just let this clip do some of the talking before I get into it there was a lot of discussion about the scope of the game the size of the game um at one point I said you know I bet this game would be a lot better if we restricted ourselves to about two dozen solar systems and focus on them the point was made quite legitimately well once you've done one solar system doing a 100 really you're not adding to your work all that much now we're not going to cherry pick too hard but right there is something that if you will to use a term old Bethesda would have pursued what would have made the exploration better because that's Paramount to the success of their games I take full on 3 as an example example of this the game isn't gigantic certainly it's bigger than most but you can spend dozens of hours in it it's not impossible though to see everything it holds like a game such as Starfield one reason Fallout 3 thrives is due to the lower volume of locations which I know may sound like something that doesn't make too much sense to people don't you want more but the difference is each location in Fallout 3 and other Bethesda game Studios open worlds have purpose a reason for them to exist in this world whether it be the corvega car factory or the dun witch building there's a Story to Tell in each of these beyond the quest that you're playing through itself and it's those momentto moment stories whether they be environmentally through terminals through bodies you're seeing on the floor or characters you're speaking with that carry the entire experience Skyrim took that same philosophy and expanded it sure you'd find the occasional Bandit cave but you'd also have the high highs like discovering a dric weapon or something such as the dragon shouts which carried a main pillar of the gameplay formula thus evolving what the dungeons could hold within them and it would excite you every time you approached it Starfield however is Big because it can be it's cool that Bethesda managed to hit a thousand plus planets there is a goal in that a reason for it to be such a way but it doesn't align with WHY bethesda's games are special which Bruce n Smith actually gets into a bit more here so all the core activity takes place in these two dozen in the settled systems region and the rest of it is open space but people love our big games they love that open area to explore so let's go ahead and let him let's go ahead and let him have it in this same breath Bruce does make an argument in defense of the game scale the reason it got so big which I found fascinating the reason being is that when you're making say one solar system for a Starfield a lot of the leg work they say 90% of it was really done where you didn't have any extra work in adding more content to the game but that's where the focus and the key design decisions that are made from Skyrim and before are missing in Skyrim and on at the end Bruce does admit that the exploration didn't come through as well as it could have due to other choices and it's those other choices as I'm saying here that are the key I think that pre Skyrim Bethesda has shown that they probably wouldn't have made this choice but the demand for a quote Universe to live in end quote which we'll get into in a little bit later a self-imposed desire from Bethesda game studios has led to these decisions the reason anyone lives in a Bethesda universe is because of how we approach it not the falsified volume of content here back to Fallout 3 I love that I can exit Vault 101 and gun straight to megaton in one playthrough but the next time I'm going through it I'm actually going to go to Springville school and then I'm going to head over to the super duper market and make my way to Andale from there Oblivion is also a shining example of this too you step out and are greeted by the alien ruins to the north and there's a cave to the east with a sense of openness where you can truly go anywhere we live here not because games are open here you go have at it we live here because we can pick apart the world and explore it how we desire it's the seamless uninterrupted choices of how our journey goes this is an intangible that goes beyond a simple mechanic in any video game many RPGs are defined by the character focused choices you make and those are amazing for that very reason I think of favorite games of mine like Dragon Age Origins Mass Effect it's about the characters you interact with and how the Paragon and Renegade system which Define Shepherd's actions will Define the reactions of the characters around you and obviously shape the story games like Fallout 3 certainly have that when you can nuke something like Megaton where you actually have an impact on characters living there but there isn't room for a random ice ball in Oblivion or Fallout 3 these dungeons these areas these interactions need to count Starfield scale Starfield being big because quote we like openness end quote is a fundamental misunderstanding of what many fans dig it's not the aimless wandering it's about trusting and understanding that Bethesda understands that we need to find something of Interest as we're going from point A to point B and that while Bethesda thinks it's cool something else we'll get into later we often times don't think it's cool just to find the random ice ball and go hm nice okay moving on and that lack of seeing eye to eye is something that is starting to play out more and more as you listen to more and more interview quotes that we're going to highlight here like this one from Todd Howard about Graphics when talking on the Lex been podcast the graphics are very very important to us because and we always push them because when you're doing the kind of things we do where you step into a virtual world it does have to have that moment of wow this is this feels real I've never experienced this and it's okay I think it's okay to let just like the time settle meaning you step out just how does the wind sound how are the trees moving how are the clouds moving um I enjoy strolling and watching the sunset you know how does it land over the water like it doesn't have to be like hey let's go let's finish a quest let's go kill things let's figure out the next step let's level up like I like The Quiet Moments a lot and I think you when you play our games you can tell we spend a lot of time on them um then you watch like the weather roll in um I think that's just part of being being that character being that person in that space those moments that quiet time is vital to the success of a Bethesda game studios game when you're wandering from point A to point B it's almost like an entirely different experience unto itself a meta game if you will of course the momentto moment action within a location say again the Springville school is fun but it's when you're going from the Springvale school to Andale to the super duper Market as you're wandering you don't know who's going to approach you what problems going to be thrown your way but more importantly that downtime wasn't really about absorbing the graphics or how the wind was blowing it was about the opportunity of seeing something in the distance pointing it out and going I'm going to go investigate that and that carried on from Fallout 3 into Sky it was evolved even further you saw the highest of high mountains and you thought I can climb that and that's where the graphics were important in draw distance not in the wind blowing not going to dismiss it not in the sun setting it was about that downtime that was giving us a moment to catch our breath after a long dungeon and see what's next on the horizon it wasn't like say a Ubisoft game where it was constantly begging for your attention throwing a new Waypoint on your map every two seconds something that it's not just Ubisoft anymore many AAA games do everything Todd says does matter when it comes to Graphics but only to a certain extent that trade-off made for Starfield the game that he was describing on that clip during The Lex Freedman podcast is a choice that wasn't made for games before Skyrim Fallout 3 for example looks brown and green everywhere I think it's beautiful in its own really weird way but for industry standards it's nowhere near punching above its weight class and that was totally fine for Skyrim reaching a Vista was part of the gameplay experience in Starfield it's just a graphical presentation if you ask me there's no denying that Starfield is a beautiful game it's just not why I play these games and that level of detail in my opinion and you may disagree complet complely I think some of the high detail clutter in Starfield is one of the parts that makes the experience great when you're exploring in first person but it only goes so far when you're tied down with an engine that's known for interactivity and not pushing bleeding edge graphics and before you assume anything about me no you already know I'm a big defender of the creation engine many people want to have all the interactivity of creation engine but then have some of the bleeding edge Graphics of say dice's frostbite engine it's like no you can't really have both of those you can't have your cake and eat it too when it comes to the creation engine and that's just not me saying so Todd Howard said it back in 2018 that with games today and where technology is you can do anything you just can't do everything and words to live by if you ask me an indie game developer as this is a sentiment we share around our own team to make sure there's no feature creeping that we stay focused on what makes our game strong and I feel like with Starfield with Fallout 4 especially with Fallout 76 I do feel like there was a little bit of less Focus here from Bethesda game game studios on what made their worlds their universes special those fine details like whistling of wind Fidelity Etc doesn't matter as much in a game like Skyrim because of the tone that's captured through its weather through the music and the culture that enriches the world you're in not accounting for also the factions you encounter the many dungeons you crawl through it creates a combined look and feel that doesn't necessarily need those finer details to make it feel like a world you live in to achieve aeve a simulation at least that's always been my takeaway and Todd described much of that before Skyrim came out so let's take a listen to this clip where he was being interviewed by Jeff Keeley before Skyrim had even come out uh what do you think is unique about Skyrim compared to the previous Elder Scrolls games I think overall the tone of it even though we're doing a you know a traditional or classic Fantasy game um Skyrim the province of the Nords it's it's more rugged it has Snowy Mountains it has Tundra so just the whole flavor of the world um it's something that you at first feels like okay I can wrap my hands around this but then as you get into it has this unique culture um and then the history of the Nords of Skyrim along with dragons really makes it something that we've wanted to do in a fantasy game not just create but play you know have these epic battles against Dragons using their language so from a visual standpoint it's Unique and then from a gameplay standpoint with the dragons it's it's really really something cool as the vernacular of Bethesda game studios shifts you'll also notice that they've turned their attention to one word one word that I think encapsulates perfectly what they're going for and it's again because of that success Skyrim had and how they're chasing it that desire to be in a world for 10 plus years but not getting why that word is simulation and they used it a ton when talking about Starfield and its marketing achieving a simulation when talking about past games in a post Skyrim world it was about achieving a simulation and not in the way like how it was once described as a quote Han Solo simulator no I'm talking about the game is a simulation of what a Sci-Fi Universe would be like even future games are now a part of this description as Todd wants Elder Scroll 6 to be the quote Ultimate Fantasy World simulator end quote and starting with Skyrim and going back to morn I would actually use the word experience to define a Bethesda game studios game why would you chase simulation over experience however and what does experience actually mean for me it goes back to the first time I played Skyrim which is I know a very distant memory for many of us but you don't hold any save file closer to your heart in a bgs game that comes out than your first one and with Skyrim I remember playing 300 plus hours of the game in the vanilla form just on a first save file alone which was unfathomable at the time if you didn't have multiplayer attached to your game the amount of content and quality there was an experience because it wasn't time wasted everything felt purposeful everything was placed with reason and the things that were done procedurally were done in such a clever manner that not a single moment of time spent in Skyrim felt wasted whereas in Starfield I could spend 600 hours in the game but arguably 400 of those hours would be chewed up by just procedural content and that to me is time wasted so there's a difference between a simulation and an experience and I think the pre- Skyrim era was creating experiences moving forward however because of Skyrim's sense of endlessness due to that procedural content that was interwoven into it every bgs game had to seek this sense of endlessness of boundlessness Skyrim brought in procedural quest lines my favorite example of this is restoring the Thieves Guild to its former glory the game sends you out into its world to steal from the citizens of Skyrim and alter a few ledgers while you're at it now was it something that people would call filler nowadays I would say so but this is what I meant by the camouflage and that the Busy work had a purpose to it and more importantly an end goal a reason for doing the busy work and upon restoring the thieves gold there was a reason and a reward for all of your efforts I look at Fallout 4 the game after after Skyrim and see how Bethesda took the technology and content building system a little too far naturally we don't need to think too much for this Preston garvey's Infamous settlement missions are good for a beam no doubt but also sered as the perfect example of how those quests watered down the experience they were endless literally endless there was no reason for you to keep doing them they just let you play without purpose but desda saw you liked procedural in Skyrim went okay here's more without understanding why and look I've studied that Asda game Studios for as as long as I can remember uh this is a team that's always used procedural content it isn't just something that's been used for the first time in Starfield take Oblivion for example Oblivion used procedural generation to form cidel the terrain of which you would walk upon and then the content would be built upon that in a handcrafted manner for Starfield much of the procedural generation is the content for Fallout 4 much of the procedural generation is the content and lud is another area they did this in which I find to be the most overlooked in the Bethesda Community Skyrim brought popularity to bethesda's rare weapons and armor in fact this was my first real step into the YouTube scene in a major way where you can find on my channel now if you look up Mr Maddy rare weapons and armor guides you can find tons and tons of guides this was my first real Splash into YouTube so it's special to me and I know it's special to a lot of people just cuz I look at the viewership of the videos like people love that stuff and love hunting down the unique weapons and armor in a bgs game finding the likes of the MCE of molak ball or Dawn breaker just it felt incredible there was a quest tied to these or a dungeon at the very least your efforts again were rewarded time was well spent games like Fallout 4 76 and Starfield all watered that down to cheap Legendary Weapons or Rarity tiers that prioritize quantity over quality again it feels like Bethesda looked at our love of a unique Loot and said okay here's more again without understanding why we love them it's like a person with True Heart understanding like you like this thing but they get you the wrong gift or they do the wrong thing there's another reason though that Bethesda approaches their games after Skyrim in a more boundless way this game cannot end it needs to be sustained for a decade plus and that's because of today's game development climate you have to look no further than the weight between Skyrim and Elder Scroll 6 Skyrim came out in 2011 and with its absolute insane success on a critical and Commercial level there was no doubt that Elder Scroll 6 was on the way I think all of us can agree though when we first played Skyrim and we were loving it we didn't think we'd be waiting this long for the next entry in the series and naturally expectations built and so that's where Bethesda goes back to their self-imposed we've got to build a universe a simulation that you can live in for a decade not understanding why we place the ironaton in the first place it's not because of the pure simulation factors from Fidelity to wind to the color of the sky it's because of the content and the meaningful exploration that's within it as you go from area to area that is the important distinction between experience and simulation now In fairness Bethesda has gone on record to say that this weight wasn't ideal for them when it came to Elder Scroll 6 I'm sure they would have wanted to deliver it sooner and I respect that as creatives they wanted to do something new like Starfield first before going on to Elder Scroll 6 otherwise they may have never done it however I also don't want to paint Bethesda as villains here I say this not to protect them but because I think it's like two people just not seeing eye to eye as I said earlier if there's one thing that's consistent among all these interviews that we're going over here it's that Tod always says this one thing in each one I saw take a listen to this interview he did with IGN before the release of Fallout 3 when talking about adding more action to the game as well as changing the camera angle for Fallout 3 compared to Fallout 1 and 2 um I mean there's still some tactical stuff in it it's really what what excites Us in terms of what's going toen have the biggest impact to you when you're playing the game and and you're this character so that's you know the main reason for first person is that you know I want you to touch the world and and make it feel real and I just think the emotional impact of that is much greater but then mean you can really pull the camera back in third person and play it that way if you want to get a better sense of your surroundings one thing that's important to note again because Bethesda has been consistent and it just may not be in ways that we want to be is Todd mentions here in this fall 3 interview the same thing that he's been saying for every single game for as long as I can remember we want you to reach out be able to touch the world feel the things within it right and that goes down to the interactive objects all throughout the environment but as technology evolves and ideas evolve but the this view of what an interactive world is gets Amplified in ways that may actually Leech from the stuff that made the games fun to play so while Fidelity and wind and tone and weather was a major Focus for Starfield on a visual front given that it's Bethesda game Studio's best looking game yet it may have actually taken away from some of the other things that made Skyrim beautiful that made Fallout 3 beautiful oblivion beautiful and so on so there is the argument there that the core philosophies remain strong even to this day but that perhaps with technology evolving it's the ways that they're explored that have not synchronized well with some fans not all it's really that opening sentence but I wanted to provide full context of what he was talking about it's that opening sentence that Todd leans into here where he says how it's what we want to make that we think would be cool that we think people would like right and for many games we saw eye to eye but thda game studios liked making a certain game that many people like and I don't think that's changed while you look online at the conversation you'd think that Starfield is an Abomination and a complete failure and for many In fairness it was an absolute let down it certainly is a pretty mixed game but they they haven't necessarily lost their Mojo it's that the things they prioritize the things that they think are cool that they like that they want to do on their checklist don't match up anymore with the design philosophies that guided those pre- Skyrim games and it was after Skyrim that they magnified the things that maybe we didn't like as much about Skyrim I love many things about the game the exploration the questing the rare weapons and armor but procedural content maybe not my favorite and that was a core pillar of the creation of the content in Fallout 4 76 as well as Starfield in a way that it wasn't previously used for Bethesda typically it was environmentally and when it made its way into content it was done in a manner that was elegant woven in in a way that pushed the experience forward and it was not necessarily endless certainly it could bloat your hour count a little bit but there was purpose behind it right there was a reason to get the thieves guild restored to its former glory and there was an end result in all of that however taste evolve and I think what Bethesda game Studio thinks is cool isn't always going to be what people are looking for in their games don't get it twisted again Starfield is Awesome with how it focuses on quests and talking yet it also lets you blast spaceships out of the sky but you wouldn't be blamed for thinking the conversation in the game is soured currently and I think it just goes to show that the decisions made by Bethesda early on with things like exploration as we talked about with the Bruce and the Smith interview or properly understanding what was loved and the little things like loot are missed here in a game like Starfield and it all dates back to Skyrim where those design decisions were at their most magnified where people were seeing them most and living together in Perfect Harmony it's not impossible for Bethesda game studios to do that again and I'm not out here to try to act like Starfield is the complete failure that I think much of the internet is determined to make it feel like I just look at Bethesda pr- Skyrim and what they focused on and what they're doing now post Skyrim and I don't know if it's fatigue or the desire of game developers to want to just do something new constantly and sometimes missing the mark on what their fans want but Bethesda game studios games have an undeniable DNA in them and it's a shame that over time release after release you can feel that it's still a bgs game but some of that spirit is gradually fading out time in time out again these are games that I've still spent hundreds of hours in So at the certain point I have to say well mission accomplished you win bgs but I thought again this would be a fun thought exercise to look at how Bethesda was before Skyrim when Skyrim came out and then the 6s Skyrim brought them but also how they changed how they looked at their games because of the development Cycles as well as the core design pillars that they just didn't seem to fully understand what we loved about them so that's it ladies and gentlemen naturally I'm sure many of you disagree many of you may agree I'm looking forward to hearing all the discourse down below take excellent care of yourselves and I will see you in the next video Stay Sexy stay active I love you all peace

Channel: MrMattyPlays

Views: 163,676

Keywords: skyrim, how skyrim ruined bethesda, skyrim review, skyrim retrospective, starfield, starfield review, starfield vs skyrim, bethesda, mrmattyplays, mrmattyplays bethesda

Id: oD6sIBLst5k

Length: 26min 45sec (1605 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 22 2023