To be fair, fallout 4 was the most disappointing game that year in context. I don't know what Brad and Austin were talking about, likely because it had just come out a few weeks earlier and the luster hadn't worn off.
Going and back and finally playing it now for the first time with all the patches and its amazing how much of Jeff's and Austin's arguments still hold up. Jeff's especially. Fallout 4 is the best Bethesda's games have ever been, yet somehow the most disappointing. What a bizarre thing.
@@Dezmixbe Oblivion was ahead of its time way back when. It was an amazing experience. Fallout 4 was a middle of the road rpg in a year that was filled with good games. If it wasn't called fallout, the game would've been ignored.
@@MrYouarethecancer I disagree - if it didn't have the Fallout name attached to it, it would've been hailed as a masterpiece because it wouldn't be saddled with decades of pre-existing expectations. No one hates Fallout as much as Fallout fans.
"You can't expect them to throw another 500 mil at the problem to solve it." Meanwhile, a few modders fix the entire game for free within a few months.
I disagree with this years later. Games are more broken than ever. In the past we used to say "Sony games are always perfect at launch and so is Nintendo". Sony games come out kind of broken now. Horizon Forbidden West... God of War Ragnarok had some stuff. Returnal... damn. Pokemon for Nintendo, I know they don't own them but it was a game that never came out broken. Now development cycles are SO LONG. So now I give Fallout 4 a SUPER pass. Look at CD Projekt Red. People would use Witcher 3 so make fun of Fallout 4, now look at Cyberpunk (it's a great game according to some) but it's broken. I disagree with this idea "he was so right!". Nah Bethesda was just one of many to come. Fallout 4 is a great game.
Random encounters have fixed spawn points, sounds like Vinny encountered a bug. And yes I have used their creation kit with which you can go round the 'world' and see the spawn points.
I have some experience in development and, though I am not familiar with Bethesda's tech, I can tell you even as a novice that implementing something like that borders on trivial.
@@blakecaminos9120 have you heard of QA? The game is broken. Still. My game broke while I was in the fucking cryo pod at the beginning. I couldn’t get out.
Seanjkbs helps that Fallout 4 had so many points to layer on top of each other. Brad and Austin's argument amounted to "youre right but ehhhh come onnnnnnnn"
I've come back to this every year and am stunned at how right Jeff, Vinny and Alex were, and how dead wrong both Brad and Austin were. How on earth can you argue that Jeff and Co should have expected LESS from one of the biggest modern game publisher/developers because what they put out for Fallout 4 was virtually identical in ambition and scope to Oblivion almost ten years prior to this discussion taking place. The amount of broken, busted, janky, unpolished and straight up bad game design and development decisions Austin and Brad were willing to apologize for is genuinely very shocking. Fallout 4 was 100% the most disappointing game of that year.
Why does Brad always get personal with his arguments? "You can't make that argument you aren't a game developer." He gets really fucking nasty with these terrible arguments, basically saying if you didn't make the game you aren't in a position to say shit about it and you should just consume it because it is what it is. Bethesda relies on the community to fix bugs still. Just think about that, and then think about Brad's arguments. Bethesda fixes a couple of bugs, generally only the biggest ones after a couple of months and usually that causes more bugs to appear. These games are held together by modders and the community and Brad has the gall to say someone can't have an opinion on the game since they didn't develop it? Give me a fucking break.
I think the argument that you should just accept that their games are always broken falls apart when you consider the fact that there are fan made mods that fix a lot of the issues found in them.
Jesus this might be a late response but it's absolutely the perfect way to shut this down. Skyrim mods have appeared to make it a straight up better game and less buggy, and while you can't always point to mods that have hindsight on their side, you can certainly expect more when you realize what's possible via nodding
@@amaridesu1141 Brad saying that the tech isnt there is almost infuriating People fix these games for free and Bethesda clearly takes their fanbase for granted
@@amaridesu1141 A little late again, but I think it's clear the Bombcast crew don't really know any of the mod scene. They made some jokes about clean faces and whatnot, but given their befuddlement when player settlements/homes were announced at E3 and Jeff's stated confusion here about who was asking for them, it's clear they don't know what some of the most popular mods were for Skyrim let alone Fallout were.
I have to agree with Jeff and Vinny. Saying people should expect glitches is bullshit. Especially if they're game breaking. I've been playing thoroughly enjoying these games since morriowind on the OG Xbox. I waited specifically till I knew some patches would get pushed.
This whole "we can never expect to get a better quality game than this" is literally the type of thinking that burdens the human race. Morrowind was incredible when it came out, but this tired engine's seams have burst way too long ago. Jeff is right.
Dude people making excuses for corporations, and trying to dismiss valid criticism is why we have modern AAA games. You vote with your wallet, and people vote for low quality.
Coming back after Starfield.. Jeff and Vinny are absolutely right. To sit there and say "we shouldn't be disappointed because it's Bethesda, and that's what is expected" is a joke. It's what has led to such an apathetic industry that just throws out the same tripe again and again, with little to NO improvement. Bethesda is a disaster, and has stagnated since 2011.. That's 13 years ago for god's sake.
People act like Bethesda is still some under dog game studio when they are making a shitload of money. They've made these kinds of games for years, and while they will be janky, they should be more stable experiences. I agree with Jeff and Austin; I think something needs to change for the next Elder Scrolls/Fallout
@The Legend 27 Returns to RUclips Because of Fallout 76 or did something else happen? I haven't kept up with Bombcast or even gaming news at all, and a lot changes in four years
@The Legend 27 Returns to RUclips Oh absolutely, when I saw Fallout 76 get announced I was like "They can't make a single player game work, how do they expect to make a multiplayer game?". My comment was more along the lines of something has to give, they can't keep making buggy ass games BUT they proved me wrong. And I'm with you, Elder Scrolls 6 doesn't have me excited, nor does their Starfield game or whatever.
I love this segment. The 'game of the year podcasts' from 2015 were the best ever IMO. I like Fallout 4 but I still listen to this episode every few months, such a good deliberation.
Funny coming back to this after Starfield's launch, which had an extra year of polish and launched in a generally more stable state than FO4. Brad playing the "game dev is complex" card and claiming to know more than Jeff (who's been in the industry longer than him btw) is so annoying.
Agreed that game broke all the time for me. It was worse than leaving the shelter and having immersion be broken. I couldn't leave my cryo pod. I played for two hours just trying to leave the vault. inexcusable.
+Gregory Gergerian (GoldGreg) I had one of my supposedly immortal companions die in a raider attack on a settlement. By the time I noticed Hancock's headless corpse sitting crumpled behind a wall, 6 hours had passed. Seemed like an interesting character, but fuck if I'll ever know because that game is linear garbage that I don't want to replay.
I would have been more with Vinnie if he didn't just keep harping on that one point about npcs busting right out the gate. But I guess he didn't play much more than that so had no other point of reference. But yeah they talk over his initial NPC experience like 8x in half an hour...
Austin just seems to have such low standards for what makes something disappointing or not. Jeff is disappointed that Bethesda is still making games with the same problems, and Austin is saying he never expected them to change it in the first place. It feels so cynical to say "well yea i expected it to be a buggy, broken mess but hey at least the companions do stuff this time."
How is that cynical? That's what those games are. This isn't Austin fighting for Fallout 4 to make GOTY, but fighting to keep it off of the disappointing top 3 list, because it's expected for these games to be jank.
@@jebus9001 But at this time, because it was the first of this type of game built from the ground up for a new console generation and years since the last one, there was hope that a lot of these problems were finally going to be fixed. Of course, the counter argument was that, "If you'd seen the trailer, you shouldn't have expected that." but there was still hope.
I mean as Jeff said, that excuse is not enough. They've been using the same engine since the previous generation, should they actually put work into a new engine a lot of these issues would improve. Their refusal to innovate makes this a disappointment moreso than just the game being ehhh.
The low expectations coming out of Brad and Austin are baffling. Why the fuck did Bethesda get this cushy-ass pass on stuff NO other developer gets? They're not some tiny studio. They're not the Hyundai of videogames.
Actually, Brad has always given this break to AAA games. I swear he gave out a higher percentage of 5 star reviews than anyone else I have ever seen, particularly in the 2008-2012 era.
Coming back to this after the release of Starfield, I find it interesting alot of Brad and Austin's arguments here are, "as Bethesda fans we have learned to lower our standards." I'm glad Todd Howard has found people willing to sacrifice their personal tastes for his buffet of mid content.
Every time I come back to this I am again just baffled by Brad's and Austin's attitude. They're basically saying to a person who gets into a relationship with someone with an abusive past: 'well, you shouldn't have expected him not to hit you.'
I think both parties are right. The tech is something no one outside development could understand, so they enjoy the games limitations and all. That's enough for some people.
@@blakecaminos9120 There are literally mods for PC that fix a lot of the engine's bugs. If hobbyists can do it, the developers are either too lazy or too incompetent to do so as well.
@@seinfan9 I doubt it's devs being too lazy. It's that they "NEED" to push these games out at the deadline they arbitrarily set, and any problems QA finds, or things the devs can't complete, are ignored, or are handwaved off, as "we'll patch it, it's fiiiiiine!" And given how many people, like Brad, have reviewed their games glowingly, without even mentioning how buggy the games are, often to the point of being unable to complete, for all these years, they COULD just ignore those issues, because players trusted reviewers.
Almost 8 years later and I'm still irrationally mad that Brad and Austin went so hard to bat for broken ass Fallout. Also surprised that Jeff and Vinny didn't point out that somehow Rockstar managed to build a massive world with GTA V that didn't feel like it was held together with spit and duct tape
I don't understand how people have this romanticized version of what Bethesda games are in their head. It's a meme how popular it is to hate on Skyrim these days, but there are also people who unironically laud it as a masterpiece and will defend it to their dying breath despite the flaws being so self evident.
when it comes down to it. take the first 5 minutes out of the game with the flash back and the story is just fallout three with the person you are looking for being reversed.
Why do people settle for mediocrity from Bethesda? It feels like an abusive relationship that you actively refuse to believe that the person treating you bad is actually bad
No idea how they could act like the jank in that game was just part and parcel with open world games. There have been bigger worlds just as complex that had fewer bugs and were less glitchy. Fuck, *any* Ubisoft open world is less of a mess than Fallout 4. Even Skyrim, for as bad as that got sometimes, was nowhere near as bad as FO4.
Say what you want about Dragon Age Inquisition but bugs in that game were few and far between. Same with Dragon's Dogmada. Austin and Brad had this grand "technology isn't there yet" romanticist argument but that's objectively wrong. The architecture and engine Bethesda uses isn't there and likely never will be, but they could always you know, make a new engine on different architecture. Obsidian devs publicly bitched about how shitty it was to work on New Vegas because the code was fucking terrible and they needed Bethesda to send them solutions to do even basic stuff.
I seriously think we'll only have a bug-free, jankless Bethesda game when we reach sentient-A.I. levels of technology. Then we would have the artificial consciousness DM our video game to keep track of every minute detail.
Jimmy what does it have in common with Mass Effect other than the things that ME took from older Western RPGs like the original Fallouts? Outerworlds had player choice through actual dialogue trees that are affected by stats and routes of the game being able to be solved or circumvented entirely due to various skills you could upgrade. Companions having their own quests attached to them was around long before Mass Effect. Players dictating what happens in a world due to their choices was around long before ME. Some of its combat mechanics are a bit like Mass Effect, but on the whole the game felt far more like a classic Fallout game to me. An open world doesn’t define what Fallout is.
I'd say it was totally unacceptable and ridiculous because the game literally was unfinishable for me and a lot of other people if they chose the minutemen path and Jeff is right about the car analogy
+Cyco Miles 4/5 was for the PC version. Consoles got 3/5. A 3/5 registers as a 60 on Metacritic. Jeff voiced all these same concerns in the review, so maybe go read that? Anyway, the fanboys weren't happy about a A 3/5, and it culminated in Rooster Teeth saying Jeff must be an elitist who eats cheese and drinks wine while reviewing games.
Fallout 4 was totally barebones. The main story was super shallow, there was extremely few side quests. Four dialogue choices that all do the same thing. It's terrible and I doubt the DLC will give it any saving grace.
Fallout 4 was the first time I realized how bad a game's story was AS I played it. I'm not an english major, OR smart, but I've had some "waiit a minute" realizations after beating a game... but DURING Fallout 4 it was apparent to me how bad things were. Notably you take over the Institute with some truly world changing technology. Sure it HAD been used for bad, but you're in charge. The whole thing is yours. You can use it for good! Great? No. You gotta nuke it. Not only do you throw away all that tech, but you fuckin set off another nuke, more rads, more ghouls etc etc. Mindblowingly bad. Arguably worse than Fallout 3 not letting you send the radiation proof dude into the room full of radiation.
@@weggles Bethesda is absolutely obsessed with letting players set off nukes because they dont understand the most fundamental premise of Fallout: NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE THE MOST HORRIFIC THING HUMANS HAVE EVER INVENTED AND THEY SHOULD NEVER, *EVER* BE USED.
Austin, sorry, was a bit full of shit on the quality of the companion stuff. Yes, the characters have stories that you find out about over time, but its not like you bond with them over multiple really cool character-centric side missions, you fucking level up your social link by doing shit like picking 100 locks and then you get a canned spiel about their backstory that you never even get to see. Its really low quality stuff and the fact that Austin used this facet of the game as a major defense against Fallout 4 being disappointing is ridiculous. Basically, the game has characters...woo.
the biggest problem is Bethesda has no incentive to improve. No one's making anything close to similar to their Elder Scroll or Fallout games, they're the only game in town for Triple A open world RPG of their caliber. There are other open world RPGs but nothing that's the flavor of these games so they ain't sweating
+Keihzaru I don't feel there's enough overlap between what Bethesda does for it's open world RPG and Witcher 3. A Bethesda RPG feels more like losing yourself in the smaller details like the little towns with it's clockwork citizens going about their lives and being able to move their silverware around while they aren't looking. It's not just crafting potions and weapons with side quests that have involved narrative. Bethesda games put so much money and detail on what is essentially a useless feature that no sane company would actually try to mimic it but it gives those gam that unique feel but that's probably just my perspective and complete bullshit
Inz0mbiac Which is my point, Witcher 3 offers a more involved world and more substantial content than Fallout 4. I don't even get how people are getting 400 hours out of this game, the content is extremely repetitive and the rewards all blend together because of the Lego gun system they have now.
+Inz0mbiac Shenmue has way more interactivity than most other games, they wasted a ton of money on it and it has a super small impact. I'd rather get good dialogue systems and way more quests than developers waste time making it so I can pick up tin cans.
Few notes. Random encounters have fixed spawn locations. Fallout 4 had no official Story Writers (Witcher 3 had 5). Bethesda is notorious for their lack of formal testers and unwillingness to fix even basic bugs - see the 'unofficial patch' list. It's not even things like 'oh, this was a one-off bug', there are bugs/errors that are static and will always occur. Look up the weight of combat armor pieces. Try and remove a mod from Synth armor.
Honestly, I think this is an incredibly valuable discussion - Jeff is arguing for what should be, Austin is arguing for what is. That's, like, the alpha and omega of life.
I wanted to love Fallout Jeff, Vinny and Alex are right. Here's where Bethesda jank is inexcusable: when I can't leave the cryo pod. I spent the entire game doing Minutemen shit but Preston was so glitched I never got a flare gun and he was never a companion option. This is the most broken game I've played.
I'll agree with Brad that preventing all bugs likely isn't possible, but implementing systems to account for these errors is. You could have something check that the player character has dropped below a certain Y coordinate, find the ground above them, and warp them back up. You could design some system would run some sort of check to ensure a quest has no become in-completable. There are possible fixes for some of these problems that are not "find every instance of every bug" and instead are "implement systems to catch when these occur, and return the game to a playable state"
You have to remember, they weren't arguing that the game isn't bad or not broken or anything like that. They are purely arguing that the game was not Top 3 Disappointments of the year. Because these games are always fucking broken. The argument is that the disappointment shouldn't really rate compared to the others, because it shouldn't be a surprise that Bethesda shipped another broken-ass fucking game. They're not defending the game by any means, relax.
Who was the defending the game here? Even assuming that you can get away with something if you hadn't promised to fix it, (which is bullshit), problems become less forgivable as time goes on and standards improve. Previous Bethesda games have been able to get away with this partially because of the level of freedom they've offered the player, but at this point, when you have a game like the Witcher 3 with while offers considerably less freedom, but a massively more polished experience, this level of sloppiness is inexcusable.
+Herb Sewell I spent an hour replaying the opening of the game because every time I tried doing it I couldn't exit the cryo pod. Preston never gave me a flare gun and I spent hours upon hours doing quests to beef up the minute men. He also never let me ask him to be a companion.
I see a lot of "Jeff is right" and, yeah, five years later he's still right . . . But we should all recognize this segment of history for what it is . . . The moment Dan became the voice of reason almost twenty minutes in . . . Dear god.
...Brad's assertion that "it's probably not possible, and if it is, it's going to inhibit choice and freedom across the board in the game" just isn't true, and demonstrably so if you asked anyone who is good at modding these games. What you do is basically a form of digital triage, where you put in invisible limitations at key parts of the game - like the beginning of the game, or when things are meant to be cinematic and focused on the story. When those scenes happen, custom A.I and world-rules are in effect, ensuring that the presentation is in tact. As soon as it's "safe to release the player from the scene" those rules are no longer in place. Then you hope that the presentation of that story will be strong enough that the player won't be bored enough to clown around in the scene, and discover that "the reigns have been temporarily restricted quite a bit", and a seemless progression into "do anything anywhere" for the player happens. ("wow that was really cinematic and engaging, I'll get to that quest later, cause now I want to run up that hill, and see what's up there"). Given that this is criticism that's easy to gather - and something very tied to the brand of your company - the solution is obviously to map out which "key parts" are the most in need of this kind of triaging and subsequent temporary limitations. This is obviously completely irrelevant criticism to get into now 7-8 years later, but it seems like a silly point to argue given that Skyrim's modding scene at the time showed pretty clearly that there's a lot of things you "can do", on a beat-per-beat or scene-for-scene basis, without turning the whole game into a corridor-walker. It's not a binary switch between one or the other; it's a question of "is there due diligence here in how things are elegantly threaded between invisibly reigning in possibilities during cinematic/presentation, and easing those limitations in moments when the player is meant to be truly free to do whatever?" Much like good editing in film, it works best when these artificial transitions are completely invisible to the player, and the overall illusion of the world being endlessly vast is intact, and maintained. ..obviously, the first couple of hours - where 95% of the players will spend their time - are more crucial to keep an eye on (especially for press-reasons, when you show off the beginning of the game).
Lol listening to this thing a couple of weeks after cyberpunk came out, it sounds so familiar, like oh the game is fine cause my expectations were low and Jeff like but they promised way more and you'd think they'd work out all the problems after such a long development time. Lol
Relistening to this now Starfield has finally come out and my agreement with Jeff has only increased. I'm lucky to have been accessing Starfield through Game Pass because if not, I would be a happy purchaser. The game is not just hampered by technical limitations, but a mediocrity of design I'm finding staggering.
i don't think nate would be surprised that everything is irradiated given he saw the nukes go off and was running to a shelter because the nukes were coming.
I got 50+ ours into Fallout 4 and then got stuck with bugs where for example, my 100 lock picking skill wouldn't work on locks that required 90-100 lock picking. So then I resorted to trying to use console commands to lower my lock picking skill and then reapply it to see if I could fix the problem to no avail. I don't understand how something like that can break in a 'AAA' game. I still want to finish the game, but I think I'll have to start over from scratch at some point, and that's a big commitment to redo 50 hours of stuff.
I think Bethesda did try new things that required a lot of work. Voiced protagonist, new conversation system, modular world building, new crafting system, modular weapons and armor, better combat design and streamlining character progression. It just so happens that a lot of the stuff they worked on did not make the game much better. Hopefully they learn some lessons and make their next games on better technology. I don't think anyone on the team wanted to make a bad or average game. They took risks and some of it didn't pan out.
I was confused when they took Evolve and Tony Hawk 5 off the list until I saw the angle they were going for. Fallout 4 should have taken it and Jeff was spot-on: They make the same janky-ass game every single time because they know they're going to get barrels of money from people who are somehow afraid of asking for something better. One of the most overrated games ever. Been loving all of the podcasts and these game discussions though.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
"If it was a car the government would step in, because people would be dying."
Jeff Gerstmann on Fallout 4.
Bob Taylor Jeff is the fucking man!
Based as hell.
😎😎😎
Austin Walker brought the best out of Jeff.
Lots of these discussion points were ringing in my head again with Starfield.
It's funny hearing this now after 76 came out....
BRAH 😂😂😂😂😂🤣
To be fair, fallout 4 was the most disappointing game that year in context. I don't know what Brad and Austin were talking about, likely because it had just come out a few weeks earlier and the luster hadn't worn off.
Jeff was right.
THEN YOU ARE SOFT
no you be soft
Ubisoft.
JEFF WAS RIGHT 2015 NEVER FORGET
+Marcus Meissner Makes up for how wrong he was in 2011. Skyrim > Saint's Row.
+Tony Mishler Jeff was right all along, The Row win all.
I love how Dan hardly says anything for 20 minutes then meaningfully redirects the conversation.
very surprised by that
Dan during the game of the year discussions has been pretty consistent in being one of the most thoughtful contributors to discussion.
When Dan isn't playing up his "nefarious sloppy idiot" role, he actually knows his shit and generally has good things to say
Jeff came out swinging.
Ripping and tearing like a boss.
😎
Jeff is right. I like Fallout 4 a lot, but Jeff is right.
Going and back and finally playing it now for the first time with all the patches and its amazing how much of Jeff's and Austin's arguments still hold up. Jeff's especially.
Fallout 4 is the best Bethesda's games have ever been, yet somehow the most disappointing. What a bizarre thing.
@@Dezmixbe Oblivion was ahead of its time way back when. It was an amazing experience. Fallout 4 was a middle of the road rpg in a year that was filled with good games. If it wasn't called fallout, the game would've been ignored.
@@MrYouarethecancer no dude base building rules
@@cole1714 I fuck with base building but I’d prefer dialogue and story choices that matter along with better factions.
@@MrYouarethecancer I disagree - if it didn't have the Fallout name attached to it, it would've been hailed as a masterpiece because it wouldn't be saddled with decades of pre-existing expectations. No one hates Fallout as much as Fallout fans.
"You can't expect them to throw another 500 mil at the problem to solve it."
Meanwhile, a few modders fix the entire game for free within a few months.
The Bethesda method. They don’t have to make these games perfect because their fans will do it
I disagree with this years later. Games are more broken than ever. In the past we used to say "Sony games are always perfect at launch and so is Nintendo". Sony games come out kind of broken now. Horizon Forbidden West... God of War Ragnarok had some stuff. Returnal... damn. Pokemon for Nintendo, I know they don't own them but it was a game that never came out broken. Now development cycles are SO LONG. So now I give Fallout 4 a SUPER pass. Look at CD Projekt Red. People would use Witcher 3 so make fun of Fallout 4, now look at Cyberpunk (it's a great game according to some) but it's broken. I disagree with this idea "he was so right!". Nah Bethesda was just one of many to come. Fallout 4 is a great game.
Jeff and Vinny are right.
theyre not, fallout 4 is bad but it wasnt the biggest disappointment of that year
Vinny was right, you could easily make a perimeter that prohibits things like that from happening. Brad is talking out of his arse.
do you have experience in development and thoroughly understand Bethesda's tech?
It just needed a better introductory sequence to the world, but Bethesda gives so little fucks about consistent writing that it's embarassing.
Random encounters have fixed spawn points, sounds like Vinny encountered a bug. And yes I have used their creation kit with which you can go round the 'world' and see the spawn points.
I have some experience in development and, though I am not familiar with Bethesda's tech, I can tell you even as a novice that implementing something like that borders on trivial.
@@blakecaminos9120 have you heard of QA? The game is broken. Still. My game broke while I was in the fucking cryo pod at the beginning. I couldn’t get out.
Jeff is right.
Bethesda apologists have always been the fucking worst.
30 minutes of heated argument only for Toy Soldiers to get it in the end. Goddamn, I love Giant Bomb's GOTY discussion.
My god Jeff can argue well.
Seanjkbs helps that Fallout 4 had so many points to layer on top of each other. Brad and Austin's argument amounted to "youre right but ehhhh come onnnnnnnn"
@@ThatLadKev
It was pretty pathetic on their part.
Jeff has that Reno Energy.
I've come back to this every year and am stunned at how right Jeff, Vinny and Alex were, and how dead wrong both Brad and Austin were.
How on earth can you argue that Jeff and Co should have expected LESS from one of the biggest modern game publisher/developers because what they put out for Fallout 4 was virtually identical in ambition and scope to Oblivion almost ten years prior to this discussion taking place.
The amount of broken, busted, janky, unpolished and straight up bad game design and development decisions Austin and Brad were willing to apologize for is genuinely very shocking. Fallout 4 was 100% the most disappointing game of that year.
I believe carnies would call Brad and Austin "marks" for how utterly quick they were to gulp down the nonsense. It reeked of fanboyism, lol.
Couldn’t agree more. Their arguments aged like milk.
It's crazy that the only people having this debate were the GiantBomb staff. I'm happy it was these guys though.
Why does Brad always get personal with his arguments? "You can't make that argument you aren't a game developer." He gets really fucking nasty with these terrible arguments, basically saying if you didn't make the game you aren't in a position to say shit about it and you should just consume it because it is what it is.
Bethesda relies on the community to fix bugs still. Just think about that, and then think about Brad's arguments. Bethesda fixes a couple of bugs, generally only the biggest ones after a couple of months and usually that causes more bugs to appear. These games are held together by modders and the community and Brad has the gall to say someone can't have an opinion on the game since they didn't develop it? Give me a fucking break.
Gatekeeping
I miss THIS Jeff Gerstmann
I think the argument that you should just accept that their games are always broken falls apart when you consider the fact that there are fan made mods that fix a lot of the issues found in them.
Jesus this might be a late response but it's absolutely the perfect way to shut this down. Skyrim mods have appeared to make it a straight up better game and less buggy, and while you can't always point to mods that have hindsight on their side, you can certainly expect more when you realize what's possible via nodding
@@amaridesu1141 Brad saying that the tech isnt there is almost infuriating
People fix these games for free and Bethesda clearly takes their fanbase for granted
@@amaridesu1141 A little late again, but I think it's clear the Bombcast crew don't really know any of the mod scene. They made some jokes about clean faces and whatnot, but given their befuddlement when player settlements/homes were announced at E3 and Jeff's stated confusion here about who was asking for them, it's clear they don't know what some of the most popular mods were for Skyrim let alone Fallout were.
Boy listening to this at the end of 2018 is quite entertaining. Jeff was correct years ago and it finally took till FO76 for others to see that.
2018: Austin thinks Fallout 76 is karma for him defending Bethesda during this conversation.
I have to agree with Jeff and Vinny. Saying people should expect glitches is bullshit. Especially if they're game breaking. I've been playing thoroughly enjoying these games since morriowind on the OG Xbox. I waited specifically till I knew some patches would get pushed.
This whole "we can never expect to get a better quality game than this" is literally the type of thinking that burdens the human race. Morrowind was incredible when it came out, but this tired engine's seams have burst way too long ago. Jeff is right.
22:00 for the "people would be dying" quote.
Dude people making excuses for corporations, and trying to dismiss valid criticism is why we have modern AAA games. You vote with your wallet, and people vote for low quality.
Coming back after Starfield.. Jeff and Vinny are absolutely right. To sit there and say "we shouldn't be disappointed because it's Bethesda, and that's what is expected" is a joke. It's what has led to such an apathetic industry that just throws out the same tripe again and again, with little to NO improvement. Bethesda is a disaster, and has stagnated since 2011.. That's 13 years ago for god's sake.
People act like Bethesda is still some under dog game studio when they are making a shitload of money. They've made these kinds of games for years, and while they will be janky, they should be more stable experiences. I agree with Jeff and Austin; I think something needs to change for the next Elder Scrolls/Fallout
@The Legend 27 Returns to RUclips Because of Fallout 76 or did something else happen? I haven't kept up with Bombcast or even gaming news at all, and a lot changes in four years
@The Legend 27 Returns to RUclips Oh absolutely, when I saw Fallout 76 get announced I was like "They can't make a single player game work, how do they expect to make a multiplayer game?". My comment was more along the lines of something has to give, they can't keep making buggy ass games BUT they proved me wrong. And I'm with you, Elder Scrolls 6 doesn't have me excited, nor does their Starfield game or whatever.
I love this segment. The 'game of the year podcasts' from 2015 were the best ever IMO. I like Fallout 4 but I still listen to this episode every few months, such a good deliberation.
Brad was so ignorant meanwhile Jeff was totally on point
Funny coming back to this after Starfield's launch, which had an extra year of polish and launched in a generally more stable state than FO4. Brad playing the "game dev is complex" card and claiming to know more than Jeff (who's been in the industry longer than him btw) is so annoying.
Truer in 2023 than it ever was
Totally on Jeff and Vinny's side, 100 percent agree with both of them.
Agreed that game broke all the time for me. It was worse than leaving the shelter and having immersion be broken. I couldn't leave my cryo pod. I played for two hours just trying to leave the vault. inexcusable.
+Gregory Gergerian (GoldGreg) I had one of my supposedly immortal companions die in a raider attack on a settlement. By the time I noticed Hancock's headless corpse sitting crumpled behind a wall, 6 hours had passed. Seemed like an interesting character, but fuck if I'll ever know because that game is linear garbage that I don't want to replay.
I would have been more with Vinnie if he didn't just keep harping on that one point about npcs busting right out the gate. But I guess he didn't play much more than that so had no other point of reference. But yeah they talk over his initial NPC experience like 8x in half an hour...
Just checking in after Starfield gameplay was shown lol this exact conversation played in my head when it was shown.
"Yeah but that's the consumers standpoint on it!"
Jesus christ Brad you tool what are you saying here
Austin just seems to have such low standards for what makes something disappointing or not. Jeff is disappointed that Bethesda is still making games with the same problems, and Austin is saying he never expected them to change it in the first place. It feels so cynical to say "well yea i expected it to be a buggy, broken mess but hey at least the companions do stuff this time."
I would have just pointed out that New Vegas had far better companions and Bethesda’s attempt was far inferior and lifeless in comparison.
How is that cynical? That's what those games are. This isn't Austin fighting for Fallout 4 to make GOTY, but fighting to keep it off of the disappointing top 3 list, because it's expected for these games to be jank.
@@jebus9001 But at this time, because it was the first of this type of game built from the ground up for a new console generation and years since the last one, there was hope that a lot of these problems were finally going to be fixed. Of course, the counter argument was that, "If you'd seen the trailer, you shouldn't have expected that." but there was still hope.
This guy. Built from the ground up! 😂
I mean as Jeff said, that excuse is not enough. They've been using the same engine since the previous generation, should they actually put work into a new engine a lot of these issues would improve. Their refusal to innovate makes this a disappointment moreso than just the game being ehhh.
The low expectations coming out of Brad and Austin are baffling. Why the fuck did Bethesda get this cushy-ass pass on stuff NO other developer gets? They're not some tiny studio. They're not the Hyundai of videogames.
Actually, Brad has always given this break to AAA games. I swear he gave out a higher percentage of 5 star reviews than anyone else I have ever seen, particularly in the 2008-2012 era.
Coming back to this after the release of Starfield, I find it interesting alot of Brad and Austin's arguments here are, "as Bethesda fans we have learned to lower our standards." I'm glad Todd Howard has found people willing to sacrifice their personal tastes for his buffet of mid content.
Every time I come back to this I am again just baffled by Brad's and Austin's attitude. They're basically saying to a person who gets into a relationship with someone with an abusive past: 'well, you shouldn't have expected him not to hit you.'
Can't wait for the poetry to rhyme listening to this convo after Starfield and TESVI
Wow, listening the this after Fallout 76 really puts things in a whole new light.
Who’s here after season 1 ended - but had Jeff’s voice in the back of their head when you’re like “maybe I’ll play this finally?”
God Jeff was so right...
I can't believe the half-assed arguments Brad and Austin come up with to defend the bs in these games.
I think both parties are right. The tech is something no one outside development could understand, so they enjoy the games limitations and all. That's enough for some people.
@@blakecaminos9120 There are literally mods for PC that fix a lot of the engine's bugs. If hobbyists can do it, the developers are either too lazy or too incompetent to do so as well.
@@seinfan9 I doubt it's devs being too lazy. It's that they "NEED" to push these games out at the deadline they arbitrarily set, and any problems QA finds, or things the devs can't complete, are ignored, or are handwaved off, as "we'll patch it, it's fiiiiiine!" And given how many people, like Brad, have reviewed their games glowingly, without even mentioning how buggy the games are, often to the point of being unable to complete, for all these years, they COULD just ignore those issues, because players trusted reviewers.
Jeff has played a metric butt-ton of video games and it shows. He knows what should just be there at a given time and what evolves games.
"game that allows this level of possibility." what level of possibility? the game looks like it runs the most mechanical way possible.
Almost 8 years later and I'm still irrationally mad that Brad and Austin went so hard to bat for broken ass Fallout. Also surprised that Jeff and Vinny didn't point out that somehow Rockstar managed to build a massive world with GTA V that didn't feel like it was held together with spit and duct tape
I don't understand how people have this romanticized version of what Bethesda games are in their head. It's a meme how popular it is to hate on Skyrim these days, but there are also people who unironically laud it as a masterpiece and will defend it to their dying breath despite the flaws being so self evident.
I continue to stand by Jeff on this.
Its 2018 and Jeff is still right
2023 now.
Going back, and it's incredible that in this conversation *DAN* is the one making the most sense.
Dan is the most intelligent bomber besides Gerstmann.
when it comes down to it. take the first 5 minutes out of the game with the flash back and the story is just fallout three with the person you are looking for being reversed.
Fallout 4 is like the most 7/10 game of all time.
fallout 4 has one of the most boring gameplay loops ever especially in a bethesda game
Use literally any other engine.
GO JEFF
Why do people settle for mediocrity from Bethesda? It feels like an abusive relationship that you actively refuse to believe that the person treating you bad is actually bad
No idea how they could act like the jank in that game was just part and parcel with open world games. There have been bigger worlds just as complex that had fewer bugs and were less glitchy. Fuck, *any* Ubisoft open world is less of a mess than Fallout 4. Even Skyrim, for as bad as that got sometimes, was nowhere near as bad as FO4.
Say what you want about Dragon Age Inquisition but bugs in that game were few and far between. Same with Dragon's Dogmada. Austin and Brad had this grand "technology isn't there yet" romanticist argument but that's objectively wrong. The architecture and engine Bethesda uses isn't there and likely never will be, but they could always you know, make a new engine on different architecture. Obsidian devs publicly bitched about how shitty it was to work on New Vegas because the code was fucking terrible and they needed Bethesda to send them solutions to do even basic stuff.
I seriously think we'll only have a bug-free, jankless Bethesda game when we reach sentient-A.I. levels of technology. Then we would have the artificial consciousness DM our video game to keep track of every minute detail.
"Then you are SOFT" still hits hard
Bethesda disgraced themselves with this release.
Brad said he was only 10 hours in at this time, did he ever end up going back to it?
JEFF WAS RIGHT
10:47 Hold my Outer Worlds.
Outer Worlds comes out and proves Jeff was absolutely right about this.
Yea no shit
Jimmy what does it have in common with Mass Effect other than the things that ME took from older Western RPGs like the original Fallouts? Outerworlds had player choice through actual dialogue trees that are affected by stats and routes of the game being able to be solved or circumvented entirely due to various skills you could upgrade. Companions having their own quests attached to them was around long before Mass Effect. Players dictating what happens in a world due to their choices was around long before ME. Some of its combat mechanics are a bit like Mass Effect, but on the whole the game felt far more like a classic Fallout game to me. An open world doesn’t define what Fallout is.
I didn't like Outer Worlds, but at least I could play it.
Man this discussion is especially poignant considering what's happened with Fallout 76.
I'd say it was totally unacceptable and ridiculous because the game literally was unfinishable for me and a lot of other people if they chose the minutemen path and Jeff is right about the car analogy
god i love this convo so much
Stop Giving Bethesda a Free Pass 2K16
+Nick Robinson (Babylonian) When the game came out they gave it 4/5.
They got their money and now 2 months later they criticize it.
+Cyco Miles 4/5 was for the PC version. Consoles got 3/5. A 3/5 registers as a 60 on Metacritic. Jeff voiced all these same concerns in the review, so maybe go read that? Anyway, the fanboys weren't happy about a A 3/5, and it culminated in Rooster Teeth saying Jeff must be an elitist who eats cheese and drinks wine while reviewing games.
RetroHelix I stand corrected.
@babylonian invite Vinny or Jeff Bakalar on cool games Inc.
+RetroHelix I unsubscribed from their videos after that. They had had the fucking audacity to complain about Jeff's review after wearing pip boys
Fallout 4 was totally barebones. The main story was super shallow, there was extremely few side quests. Four dialogue choices that all do the same thing. It's terrible and I doubt the DLC will give it any saving grace.
Fallout 4 was the first time I realized how bad a game's story was AS I played it. I'm not an english major, OR smart, but I've had some "waiit a minute" realizations after beating a game... but DURING Fallout 4 it was apparent to me how bad things were. Notably you take over the Institute with some truly world changing technology. Sure it HAD been used for bad, but you're in charge. The whole thing is yours. You can use it for good! Great? No. You gotta nuke it. Not only do you throw away all that tech, but you fuckin set off another nuke, more rads, more ghouls etc etc. Mindblowingly bad. Arguably worse than Fallout 3 not letting you send the radiation proof dude into the room full of radiation.
@@weggles Bethesda is absolutely obsessed with letting players set off nukes because they dont understand the most fundamental premise of Fallout: NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE THE MOST HORRIFIC THING HUMANS HAVE EVER INVENTED AND THEY SHOULD NEVER, *EVER* BE USED.
"it just works"
Austin, sorry, was a bit full of shit on the quality of the companion stuff. Yes, the characters have stories that you find out about over time, but its not like you bond with them over multiple really cool character-centric side missions, you fucking level up your social link by doing shit like picking 100 locks and then you get a canned spiel about their backstory that you never even get to see. Its really low quality stuff and the fact that Austin used this facet of the game as a major defense against Fallout 4 being disappointing is ridiculous. Basically, the game has characters...woo.
+JudasOmaha90 Agreed, also, fuck Strong. gets pissed because i have to open locks and want to sneak.
Just coming back here, after hearing about the starfield jank.
Bruh same
Same also lmao
the biggest problem is Bethesda has no incentive to improve. No one's making anything close to similar to their Elder Scroll or Fallout games, they're the only game in town for Triple A open world RPG of their caliber. There are other open world RPGs but nothing that's the flavor of these games so they ain't sweating
+Inz0mbiac Witcher 3.
+Keihzaru I don't feel there's enough overlap between what Bethesda does for it's open world RPG and Witcher 3. A Bethesda RPG feels more like losing yourself in the smaller details like the little towns with it's clockwork citizens going about their lives and being able to move their silverware around while they aren't looking. It's not just crafting potions and weapons with side quests that have involved narrative. Bethesda games put so much money and detail on what is essentially a useless feature that no sane company would actually try to mimic it but it gives those gam that unique feel but that's probably just my perspective and complete bullshit
Inz0mbiac
Which is my point, Witcher 3 offers a more involved world and more substantial content than Fallout 4. I don't even get how people are getting 400 hours out of this game, the content is extremely repetitive and the rewards all blend together because of the Lego gun system they have now.
+Inz0mbiac Shenmue has way more interactivity than most other games, they wasted a ton of money on it and it has a super small impact. I'd rather get good dialogue systems and way more quests than developers waste time making it so I can pick up tin cans.
Few notes. Random encounters have fixed spawn locations.
Fallout 4 had no official Story Writers (Witcher 3 had 5).
Bethesda is notorious for their lack of formal testers and unwillingness to fix even basic bugs - see the 'unofficial patch' list.
It's not even things like 'oh, this was a one-off bug', there are bugs/errors that are static and will always occur. Look up the weight of combat armor pieces. Try and remove a mod from Synth armor.
Honestly, I think this is an incredibly valuable discussion - Jeff is arguing for what should be, Austin is arguing for what is. That's, like, the alpha and omega of life.
And now we have Fallout 76.
Arkham knight on pc had less bugs and there was such outcry that they've had to pull the game for over 6 months ffs
Less overall bugs of course because the scope was much smaller. The reason it got pulled because the performance was abysmal regardless of the system.
This is peak giant bomb. I don't have anyone I know that would argue about this stuff for 30 min with me. These guys care about games as much as I do
I miss the real Fallout games, pre-Bethesda.
I don't miss them. I just finished the fresh-cut Wasteland 2.
12:52 Jeffs Final Form
I wanted to love Fallout Jeff, Vinny and Alex are right. Here's where Bethesda jank is inexcusable: when I can't leave the cryo pod. I spent the entire game doing Minutemen shit but Preston was so glitched I never got a flare gun and he was never a companion option. This is the most broken game I've played.
I'll agree with Brad that preventing all bugs likely isn't possible, but implementing systems to account for these errors is. You could have something check that the player character has dropped below a certain Y coordinate, find the ground above them, and warp them back up. You could design some system would run some sort of check to ensure a quest has no become in-completable. There are possible fixes for some of these problems that are not "find every instance of every bug" and instead are "implement systems to catch when these occur, and return the game to a playable state"
wrong, preventing those bugs is possible
It's 2025 and going into Quincy STILL crashes me to desktop
Their design choices limit them, not the tech. Damn Austin and Brad are so far up their own asses here is insane.
Brad annoyed me lol
You have to remember, they weren't arguing that the game isn't bad or not broken or anything like that. They are purely arguing that the game was not Top 3 Disappointments of the year. Because these games are always fucking broken. The argument is that the disappointment shouldn't really rate compared to the others, because it shouldn't be a surprise that Bethesda shipped another broken-ass fucking game. They're not defending the game by any means, relax.
Who was the defending the game here? Even assuming that you can get away with something if you hadn't promised to fix it, (which is bullshit), problems become less forgivable as time goes on and standards improve. Previous Bethesda games have been able to get away with this partially because of the level of freedom they've offered the player, but at this point, when you have a game like the Witcher 3 with while offers considerably less freedom, but a massively more polished experience, this level of sloppiness is inexcusable.
+Herb Sewell I spent an hour replaying the opening of the game because every time I tried doing it I couldn't exit the cryo pod. Preston never gave me a flare gun and I spent hours upon hours doing quests to beef up the minute men. He also never let me ask him to be a companion.
Watch this space for December 2018
I see a lot of "Jeff is right" and, yeah, five years later he's still right . . . But we should all recognize this segment of history for what it is . . . The moment Dan became the voice of reason almost twenty minutes in . . . Dear god.
...Brad's assertion that "it's probably not possible, and if it is, it's going to inhibit choice and freedom across the board in the game" just isn't true, and demonstrably so if you asked anyone who is good at modding these games.
What you do is basically a form of digital triage, where you put in invisible limitations at key parts of the game - like the beginning of the game, or when things are meant to be cinematic and focused on the story. When those scenes happen, custom A.I and world-rules are in effect, ensuring that the presentation is in tact. As soon as it's "safe to release the player from the scene" those rules are no longer in place.
Then you hope that the presentation of that story will be strong enough that the player won't be bored enough to clown around in the scene, and discover that "the reigns have been temporarily restricted quite a bit", and a seemless progression into "do anything anywhere" for the player happens. ("wow that was really cinematic and engaging, I'll get to that quest later, cause now I want to run up that hill, and see what's up there").
Given that this is criticism that's easy to gather - and something very tied to the brand of your company - the solution is obviously to map out which "key parts" are the most in need of this kind of triaging and subsequent temporary limitations.
This is obviously completely irrelevant criticism to get into now 7-8 years later, but it seems like a silly point to argue given that Skyrim's modding scene at the time showed pretty clearly that there's a lot of things you "can do", on a beat-per-beat or scene-for-scene basis, without turning the whole game into a corridor-walker.
It's not a binary switch between one or the other; it's a question of "is there due diligence here in how things are elegantly threaded between invisibly reigning in possibilities during cinematic/presentation, and easing those limitations in moments when the player is meant to be truly free to do whatever?"
Much like good editing in film, it works best when these artificial transitions are completely invisible to the player, and the overall illusion of the world being endlessly vast is intact, and maintained.
..obviously, the first couple of hours - where 95% of the players will spend their time - are more crucial to keep an eye on (especially for press-reasons, when you show off the beginning of the game).
Lol listening to this thing a couple of weeks after cyberpunk came out, it sounds so familiar, like oh the game is fine cause my expectations were low and Jeff like but they promised way more and you'd think they'd work out all the problems after such a long development time. Lol
This was difficult to listen to. Brad and Austin are so wrong it hurts.
Relistening to this now Starfield has finally come out and my agreement with Jeff has only increased. I'm lucky to have been accessing Starfield through Game Pass because if not, I would be a happy purchaser. The game is not just hampered by technical limitations, but a mediocrity of design I'm finding staggering.
i don't think nate would be surprised that everything is irradiated given he saw the nukes go off and was running to a shelter because the nukes were coming.
If Cyberpunk 2077 was made by Bethesda, it would have gonna a free pass. Bethesda games are shockingly poorly made.
These conversations are great.
12:52 is when Jeff throws the gauntlet down
I got 50+ ours into Fallout 4 and then got stuck with bugs where for example, my 100 lock picking skill wouldn't work on locks that required 90-100 lock picking. So then I resorted to trying to use console commands to lower my lock picking skill and then reapply it to see if I could fix the problem to no avail. I don't understand how something like that can break in a 'AAA' game.
I still want to finish the game, but I think I'll have to start over from scratch at some point, and that's a big commitment to redo 50 hours of stuff.
if only they knew how much worse it could get...
phew...i was dreading uploading this myself
I think Bethesda did try new things that required a lot of work. Voiced protagonist, new conversation system, modular world building, new crafting system, modular weapons and armor, better combat design and streamlining character progression. It just so happens that a lot of the stuff they worked on did not make the game much better. Hopefully they learn some lessons and make their next games on better technology. I don't think anyone on the team wanted to make a bad or average game. They took risks and some of it didn't pan out.
Bethesda needs to stop trying to do new things until they figure out how to do the old things
Jeff was so right
I was confused when they took Evolve and Tony Hawk 5 off the list until I saw the angle they were going for. Fallout 4 should have taken it and Jeff was spot-on: They make the same janky-ass game every single time because they know they're going to get barrels of money from people who are somehow afraid of asking for something better. One of the most overrated games ever.
Been loving all of the podcasts and these game discussions though.
very interesting after recent events with fo76, seems like bethesda hasnt grown as a game developer at all