I almost spit my drink out at the irony of Tom Howard telling us that it's the gamers that need to upgrade their hardware, not them that needed an actual modern game engine to achieve what they were going for. I really gave Starfield an honest chance, even bought it day one no questions asked, but when CDPR dropped Phantom Liberty and in contrast saw what they were able to accomplish, I woke up and realized I was just being gaslit to hell and back and never went back to Starfield. It's a true crying shame, man. I miss the old Bethesda.
Hiring on nepotism is terrible for any company or institution.. but even that is exponentially better than what these companies are doing… hiring on “diversity” “inclusion” “equity”
For the ancient engine, it was irresponsibly large indeed. At this stage, with the company tarnishing it's imagery constantly, the only positive PR they could spin around is to tease they are going to change the engine. I don't know, let it "leak" on purpose that Bethesda is currently testing the Unreal engine or something like that (even if it's lie, just a smoke screen), see the reaction of the public (the media can go to hell), if it's extremely positive (which is predictable), then go for it, abandon the jurassic engine and try something else
@@RRRRRRRRR33 The engine is dated for sure, but the writing/gameplay problems won't miraculously go away with a better engine. Starfield has some of the most bland, boring world-building and story, and the companions are milquetoast and bland as everything else. This game is so sterile and unimaginative is ridiculous.
@@Rapunzel879 This is the part that people don't want to accept. Bethesda games aren't bad because of the creation engine. They're bad because Bethesda can't write stories anymore.
@@Rapunzel879 Yeah, I think that the engine thing is a red herring. You only need to look at Fallout for that; New Vegas is an extremely buggy and rough game, but has a huge legacy because of the quests & dialogue's stellar quality. Fallout 4 was a huge leap ahead in gameplay for BGS, but hardly feels like it because of how much worse its writing and especially main quest is. Far Harbor showed just how thin the line is that separates FO4 from being a genuinely great RPG.
@@Rapunzel879 Sure, a new engine will not miraculously fix bad writing (just look at Kojima through the years), but if the engine works just right, the gameplay can improve dramatically. Capcom is a good example, they always had the talent, but they struggled a lot in the PS3 generation, working with terrible engines, etc.. at the moment they introduced the ReEngine, suddenly their devs had a legit toolbox to work with, here it comes RE7, RE2, Dragon's Dogma 2, Path of the Goddess, etc.. It's hard to judge because the creation engine is so horrendous, who knows if Bethesda ever had the talent or they were simply incompetent working with a crappy engine (most likely the case, considered how the modders 90% of the time provides better content than Bethesda itself, I guess the solution is to hire this people instead of taking advantage of free labor with zero legal repercussions)
They stole money from their biggest fans with fallout 76, and now they say things like The astronauts weren't bored when they explored the empty moon. There is nothing worth saving.
Personally for me, at this point. I don’t think they can be redeemed with any other titles if they have that lack luster of a writer. I’m gonna be sticking to the older games that were wrote by the same person but expect for FNV.
I love 76 now and ESO, got over 4k hours in the both of them. I think people have come to hate Bethesda so much that the things they have fixed do not get acknowledged because of past failures.
@@Krachbumm-Ente Emil is the lead writer at Bethesda and was essentially in charge of the narrative direction of Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Starfield. In other words, he has directed the overall narrative for the games with arguably the worst stories that Bethesda has ever told. He was the writer for the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion, which was widely regarded as one of the best questlines in the game. It seems that he has been coasting off of that rep for decades while failing to write anything good in the meantime. Many people who are fans of the older games (whether those are the pre-Bethesda Fallout games or older TES games) have been pretty critical of his writing and leadership abilities. Despite this, he remains in a prominent leadership role at Bethesda, even though he is clearly not suited for the position. He has demonstrated talented writing before, but he seems to need a lead writer above him to keep him organized and curb his worst tendencies.
@@Killsburydoughboy Thank you for the elaborate answer. I did like the Fallout 3 and 4 story, it wasn't amazing but it was good enough and the Dark Brotherhood questline is just chef kiss perfection. Pitty that he apparently can't pull this kind of story telling of anymore
Are you talking about Kirkbride? I think i heard something about that. They need to fire Emil and hire Kirkbride full time as lead writer, Bethesda would instantly dwarf every other studio in writing if they did that lmao.
While it is a dumb thing to say, there is a grain truth to it. You don't need to be a chef to say you don't like something, but if your criticisms are things like "I don't like fish, you should have used beef instead" or "I think this chicken should have been cooked medium rare", I would also ask you to please stop talking if you don't know anything about cooking. And there absolutely are criticisms of this caliber leveled against games. I've seen people criticize Elden Ring for not having swimming or BotW-style climbing.
It has almost nothing to do with the consumer, they're laundering money and receiving grants for funding. Dustborn being financed by the Norwegian government for example. Not buying them will help, but everyone's already ahead of you.
Far Harbour being quoted for what they wanted to do is crazy. Part of what made Far Harbor interesting was that it directly addressed how shallow the "choices" of the base game were. All they took from that was "make a landmass the size of Far Harbor"
Really, it backfires really hard on them because it *BROADCASTS* that they do not even understand why Far Harbor was popular. They have no idea what they're doing or what their audience wants, they got lucky once with a lead designer that understood that, and now the guy that led development of Far Harbor has left the company and they're just stabbing in the dark about what people might actually want.
@@Longknife Will Shen also complained in a interview within the last year about the miscommunication occurring during the development of Starfield and how they were half assing the main story and that they barely came up with an ending in time for release, which was probably the original release in 2022. Edit: And that is the reason Nesmith is saying people, fans, or customers need to lower expectations for ES6. It is more because they no longer have the talent that made good BGS games at BGS.
I made a now (in)famous reddit post calling out Emil years ago, and now I occasionally get stalked (online only) and harassed for it. I wish I could feel vindicated now, but instead I'm just annoyed that there are somehow people that still can't see it. The guy is a nepotism hire that's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay above his level of competency, and the worst part is that for as bad as he is at his job, we are not seeing the full problem. The fact the company chooses to keep EMPLOYING HIM is evidence the people above him probably aren't great at their jobs either.
Can you elaborate on why you consider his role at Bethesda to be nepotism? At LGS he was one of the best designers on Thief 2. Then at BGS he made one of the best received quest lines in Oblivion and tried to give that game stealth mechanics comparable to Thief (didn’t succeed in that regard). His prominent role at BGS is due to past successes. That said, it’s been 15 years since he’s made anything good. I think he’s been promoted way past his competency level.
@@SongOfStorms411 For clarity: I've heard X amount of times that Todd and Emil were friends before Bethesda, but I cannot actually recall the source on it there. I'll just say you'll hear this from time to time. Beyond that though, even if that WEREN'T true, it's hard to imagine Emil being in his position *without* nepotism. As an initial hire, sure, that could be understandable. The guy has been catching criticism for like 14 years now though, there are MULTIPLE public speeches with Emil seemingly broadcasting incompetence at his job, and yet he's one of the most important people at Bethesda. If you trust he's word, much of Starfield's core lore, world-building and writing for the major events/main quest was him and Todd bouncing ideas off each other. (I believe a Polygon interview was the source here) I've often joked the guy must be super likable in person, because I cannot imagine another reason to keep him around. However, what's more alarming: Kurt Kuhlmann was previously referred to by other employees at Bethesda as their encyclopedia for Elder Scrolls lore, and that when they needed to look up something in the lore for storywriting, they'd source "Kurt's Brain." Well, suddenly Kurt was "encouraged" to leave Bethesda, according to Michael Kirkbride, who seemed very troubled by the news. If it were just Kurt, we could write it off as him potentially being difficult to work with, but multiple recognizable names at Bethesda left the company upon the completion of Starfield. I cannot link it here because RUclips hates links, but I happened to catch Kurt's LinkedIn profile showing recent activity where he was liking an article critical of how Emil was being dismissive of fans lukewarm response to Starfield. Could be nothing, of course, but when we have: 1) The internet has actively screamed their low satisfaction with Emil for over 10 years, including loving the EXACT piece of DLC he didn't lead for. (Far Harbor) 2) Somehow he remains in his position with no issues whatsoever, including now being a top 3 developer in the company hierarchy. (his description) 3) Multiple big names leaving the company while making it clear there were "ego clashes" (Bruce Nesmith's interview + the fact Kuhlmann was "encouraged" to leave), whilst Emil is still comfortably there in his lead role, while also being the *ONLY* Bethesda employee that is oddly defensive of Starfield Then yeah...I mean I hate to speculate on one hand, but where there's smoke, there's often fire, and smoke has been absolutely POURING out of Emil's direction for ages now. He's not going to be the sole source of all Bethesda's problems (honestly, the people keeping him where he's at are questionable too, for starters), but he's easily the most egregious in the sense we *KEEP COMPLAINING ABOUT HIM* and how bad of an impression he leaves, and absolutely nothing changes.
"The biggest, richest space simulation RPG that anyone could imagine." Fucking **what?** EXCUSE ME? I'm meant to ve vacuuming. I literally did a double take, stopped, grabbed my phone to type this out because of how... It's be titanically offensive if it wasn't so *absurd!* Biggest? There's barely anything there! Proc-Gen does *not* count! It can't! Otherwise, all you need is for someone to make some 2D thing and turn up the dials! Rich? In their creaking geriatric of an engine? Fucking Hell, X4 has a complete system of supply chains- from Mining to refining to production of increasingly complex goods, when are then used to build and supply ships. *You can build your own -fleets- in that game! Really? Really? Is the limits of your imagination *Starfield?* I suppose it would explain a lot, and also means that you should never touch a creative field *ever again.* If Starfield is the limits of your imagination- go into accounting.
Tbh I soon as I saw they were using proc gen I felt dismay, it's a lazy sub par way to add content imho , I noticed when playing SF pirate base layouts made no sense, like they were created by an insane person
@@RichardPhillips1066the worst part is they already learned this lesson with Oblivion with the copy pasted instances. It’s why Skyrim was marketed as having an entire team dedicated to hand crafting its dungeons.
@@RichardPhillips1066 Those, like other PoI, are handcrafted. Hence why you see the exact same thing over and over again... with even the enemies and items in the same locations. Those things having some procedural generation is one of the things Starfield desperately needs. Of course, it would need to be done well, not the barest passable level and then somewhat superficially polished. Points of interest need to be interesting. Otherwise, well, as the very people in game say, exploration is dead. Of course, it needs to go beyond not seeing the same thing over and over again. You also need systems that reward exploration. Like if mods requires exploration, if you could get certain cool guns only through exploration... The planets and such, though, those are procedural generation. But they did that poorly as well. Because Bethesday just did everything to the lowest passable level.
The places they DID make are terrible. Look at Mars and Titan. They're supposed to be busy colonies, but are a few dingy rooms and I have no idea where the people would even live. Even the entrances look like what would be side-tunnels used for maintenance access.
My favourite part about Starfield is landing on a barren planet, completely hostile to any life, and seeing an NPC walk out of an outpost without their spacesuit as if they’re going outside to get some fresh air. Todd and Emil really hit this one out of the park.
Emil and Todd are the major reasons why I have no faith in the next titles. The creation engine is that minor reason why I have no faith in their next titles. They don’t learn. They don’t listen. And they don’t progress. I’m done with um
The creation engine is just the wood that’s made the coffin, Emil and Todd are the coffin nails. If only one of these things were the problem they could be fixed, but together they’ve left the studio in a stubborn gridlock.
I resisted for a long time calling Emil out for being the cause of downfall of Bethesda, and while there is definitively blame to pass around, he feel like "toxic positivity" personified.
@@JimTheCurator I am pretty sure, that he does not do it "singlehandedly". I am convinced that this is the opinion of the top management, not of himself alone.
He's always been a hack writer, FO4 was a good game at times, but the story and narratives of the factions was so imcomprehensibly stupid I never played the story ever again. Relentless retcons and stupid motivations and sick of him being hired on projects.
The writing was on the wall about Emil all the way back in Fallout 4. There was a lot of potential for Fallout 4 to be a fantastic game. But we have a main story writer who can't write a coherent main story and lead designer who can't design and doesn't want to lead. The result was a game that couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
WHY does Bethesda ever let this Emile guy TALK? Seriously! He is SO tone deaf, insulting to the intelligence of gamers, and so loudly signalling his thin skinned anger at even the most constructive criticism, that he represents a genuine threat to Bethesda’s brand! He clearly feels contempt for fans, certainly their opinions or the customer’s desires. Who pats themselves on the back when they fail like him? And who CARES about HOW the sausage is made, when it tastes like dog meat? If he genuinely believes that other studios could not have done a FAR better job, he’s flatly, empirically wrong about that. Todd, just stop him from talking! He’s hurting your brand and your wallet.
Funny that the very same person responsible for the one aspect (writing) which has been consistently subpar for 20 years is the one that they let represent Bethesda the most.
"This sausage that's stuffed exclusively with old cheese and dirt is our greatest dish yet. Don't believe your lying taste buds, they're too unrefined to taste the effort that elevates the cheese-dirt sausage beyond the quality of a kobe steak."
For the sausage stuff, worth noting as well, that those of us that have made games also think Starfield is pretty bad, and thanks to our experiences in the field, can make some pretty well educated guesses as to why it is that way. Hint: it's due to poor design and management.
Neither Fallout nor The Elder Scrolls were created by Todd Howard. He just acquired or inherited them, yet they're widely beloved. The only IP he created himself ended up being a total disaster. I think that's telling.
30 years ago, when he made first person terminator games work on limited hardware, he proved why he deserves a job in the games industry... he hasn't really evolved since, I fear.
He was still the director for the most widely acclaimed games in The Elder Scrolls franchise. Daggerfall was an amazing game, but when Todd Howard became director from Morrowind and onwards, the series exploded in popularity. The Elder Scrolls before Howard became director were also fairly generic fantasy games, they lacked a lot of personality and lore that fleshed out the game world and turned it into something unique to that franchise. Todd Howard deserves criticism, but criticism shouldn't come at the cost of ignoring or minimizing his previous accomplishments.
@fillsbury8304 You can't tell me that the same man who created Morrowind also created Oblivion and Skyrim. The latter two's settings were entirely generic, compared to the truly alien, unique Morrowind, and the games were progressively dumbed down. You can credit him for making the games increasingly accessible by making them, also, increasingly bland, though.
@@lunavarion Well, I can tell you, because he did. Howard was game director on Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, and a dev on Daggerfall. Oblivion and Skyrim were more generic, but the lore was still unique to The Elder Scrolls, compared to the games prior to Morrowind. On top of that, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim were some of the most immersive RPGs of all time, which is the hallmark of the series. I too prefered Morrowind over Oblivion and Skyrim, but I still played the heck out of them. I've lost count of the amount of times I've played any of those 3 games and completely lost track of time. Again, he deserves major criticism for the last several years, but he still directed some of the most influential and beloved RPGs of all time. If your criticism starts with taking away his previous accomplishments, he's never going back to when he did things right.
The fact that modders have said they don't want to mod the game because it's boring says a lot about the reception of Starfield and the current state of Bethesda, barely anyone is talking about the DLC and even less people are still talking about the game as a whole. I think my favorite thing that came from Starfield was seeing Todd sitting awkwardly at the Game Awards watching every other game get praised and awarded while Starfield wasn't even mentioned.
plus the FREAKS who moderate nexusmods will probably delete it for some reason anyways so why bother. (Terrible website BTW and zero games should be using it as their ONLY mod platform, sure using it as an option is fine but it should not be the monopoly it currently is for most triple-A trash games' mod scene)
0:50 "It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but what is?" Morrowind is "not everyones cup of tea." Oblivion and fallout 3 too. Just maybe. But skyrim? Fallout 4? Starfield? Those are made to be consumed by everybody. You dumbed them down and made them generic to appeal to everybody. It doesnt appeal to everybody? Thats the only person this game was made for. It isn't an amazing space sim. It doesn't have amazing shooting. It isn't super immersive. It fails on each individual metric.
I really think Skyrim could’ve been so much more in depth from launch if they had included more magic stuff, from oblivion and morrowind to Skyrim there is way less spells and magic stuff. Otherwise, Skyrim really was the best of both worlds. If Bethesda put that quality out now we wouldn’t be having this conversation, while Skyrim was dumbed down it was still damn good. And in the case of Fo4 a voiced protagonist was the downfall of that game, they really axed every good bit of dialogue and choice that we all were accustomed to since the OG fallout games. Skyrim marked the start of dumbing things down, I’ll stand by it being an amazing product though, but they never should have gone dumber than that.
Emil genuinely believes that he is never wrong. People complimented him on his writing of a few quests in ES:Oblivion and he's been terminally huffing his own farts ever since.
No, its his own damn arrogance. He gets triggered if you claim there are ANY inconsistencies between his writing and stuff from Fallout 1 and 2. Or how you dont have the right to call out bs since "you dont work in the industry so you have no room to complain since you dont make games". IM NOT JOKING on that one. You want to see someone break down his writing, Creetosis has 2 videos on Emil. especially that recent Tweet thread that he made telling us " the customer" that we can basically f*** off.
@@MLPDethDealr32 he's not just arrogant. He's fucking LAZY. And he has a bunch of shitty ideas about what the gamer do with the writing in video games, that is used to justify the laziness and mediocrity in order not to put too much effort in a solid and cohesive story to tell.
This is what toxic positivity is. It's refusing to admit that ideas didn't work. It's refusing to say that your game engine doesn't work for certain kinds of games. It's refusing to say that you have a talent crisis. They not only pretend that everything is fine but they go further and pretend like they've never done better in their lives. That is PURE DELUSION.
@@martymcyourflysdown6872 so it's bad? It costs 30 dollars bro lol, I could have bought dawnguard and dragonborn for that price and one of them is twice shattered space.
Why should they care if the games are any good. The stock changed to microsoft, not bethesda, so if bethesda dies, the sock won't because it's microsoft now.
Oblivion and Fallout 3 are not even that good. I think many Bethesda fans either live on denial or they are too attached with nostalgia. I only finished Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4, but I played (and drop) Oblivion, all of these games are extremely flawed even with tons of mods, especially the writing and rpg elements
"Microsoft" has nothing to do with Bethesda's downfall, you are just down-playing it. Sometimes game developer studios lose some key people, and the others just go mad with ego. It just works.
Can’t spell it without *PAG* either. I don’t even think it’s a word, but if _pag_ was a word, specifically a noun, then he’d definitely be whatever a _pag_ is.
Nah lol ubisoft just hire alot of new dei people . While Bethesda got lazy and started smelling their own salt and believe eveything they realease are gold
The irony part is Ubisoft once publish two Bethesda games it's Morrowind (PAL) and Oblivion (on PS3 EU) which is during 2000s that the time Ubisoft at it's peak and Bethesda start rising. Now them both are fxxx up.
@khanhnguyen-tt3ff I'm sorry, but that's some hard coping there. Bethesda is recently getting flak for the bs cuz of 76 and Starfield while ubi has a extremely large history of games either getting axed for tax write offs to what recently might be investors calling out market manipulation for stocks by making intentional "middling" games. Removing dei wouldn't have made Star Wars Outlaws a better game. It's part of the symptom, not the cause. Both of these companies need a wake-up call cuz leads aren't getting punished for screw ups. But stop making it easy to call criticism "haters" with comments like these.
I love Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but I want Bethesda to fail, otherwise they will never learn. Todd needs to f'ing retire. Emil needs to get fired asap.
The fact that Pagliarulo is still in this position after he's produced so much slop is really baffling. Is he married to the main shareholder at Bethesda?
High school buddies with Todd, has kept appointing him as lead writer for all their games since Fallout 3. Todd and Emil are one of the biggest examples of nepotism in the industry.
@@LawrenceMurphy-vu9vu Pete Hines brought Emil to the studio. And Pete PR to the whole world of Todd Howard as a genius. (although all his genius is that under his formal leadership was a team of geniuses who invested everything in Morovind) This is not the first time I meet that Emil studied with Todd, but does not converge on the dates of birth.
It was definitely where the spread of the rot became most evident. The story and character handling was absolute steaming dogshit on a vomit sundae, the factions were nonsensical and the vaunted settlement system was so clunky and basic it felt like they just ported the Morrowind creation kit into the game UI. But the world was still very atmospheric and interesting to explore, the feel of it was there, you could lose yourself in it and actually want to try to build those settlements. Far Harbor and Nuka-World even felt like it was healing a little, with writing being notably less dogshit and even more engaging and interesting areas to explore and lose yourself in (I loved the fog islands in particular). But then... all goes downhill, Fallout 76 is a pipe dream of non-gamers and hubristic devs, they tried to fix it with base-Fallout 4 level (i.e. dogshit) writing later, and every next release they make is a step down, with Starfield as the shitty crowning achievement of failure.
@@cattrucker8257 When there are minecraft mods that give a better base-building experience and were made in mere months by a single dev, you know you dropped the ball.
@@Zorothegallade-rpg Honestly that settlement system was my first big "Something's going terribly wrong at Bethesda..." moment, even before I realized just how dogshit the writing of the entire game is. You run into it so early on, it's almost literally mandatory to do it a little, and it just hits you in the face like a bucket of sewage how slapdash and not even remotely polished it is, it's like an alpha concept version of a system left in the final game.
I wonder how much of this issue comes from Bethesda higher-ups actually believing they're making great games. And how much of this comes from Bethesda higher-ups thinking it's more economically efficient to trick people that they're making good games instead of actually making good games.
I think it’s a combination of factors: 1. Becoming disconnected from what their audience wants and actually liked about their games 2. Losing the ability to deliver the type of experience that made their prior games compelling due to their most talented people leaving and not being replaced. 3. Having the wrong people in positions of leadership or otherwise doing jobs they’re not capable of doing (ie Emil). 4. The inability to clean house (Todd protecting Emil). 5. A dysfunctional corporate culture that prevents innovation or the ability look critically at their work. Maybe this is toxic positivity or maybe it’s something else. 6. A business model that allows them to insulate themselves from the consequences of making bad products by creating and then farming pent up demand for their core IPs. 7. A player base that has been much too lenient with them up until now. Maybe there are more factors but this is what I could think of right now.
The case of a studio way too high on its own supply. This is the studio that had Amazon money thrown at their Fallout IP and the only thing they bothered to prepare for it was a patch to break their most recent game.
The Elder Scrolls 6 will be a minimum effort, made by people who have "retired in place" and have long since lost passion for their work. Expect nothing and you will still be disappointed.
remember when people started criticizing Emil in full force before Starfield came out, and then a mysterious wave of "HEY STOP BEING MEAN TO EMIL >:(" spread around the internet? I hope they paid the shills well lol
Anyone with passion and ambition could not make a game like Starfield. Lowest effort slop I've played in a while. I was let down by Fallout 4 and thought Bethesda would right the ship. But Starfield is the worst parts of Fallout 4, amplified, with none of the good. Not only could they not redeem themselves, they actually made something way worse. With all the limitless potential that 1 a new ip has with lore, world building etc, etc and 2 a space setting has, my god, it just... they're gone. It all ended with Skyrim. RIP
Passion and ambition doesnt equal quality and talent. You can be as passionate and ambitious as you want, without the talent and qualitative high work you will always produce shit. Shit you may be passionate about but in the end its shit.
The saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is hilariously ironic when it comes to Bethesda. Because everything is fucking broke, they never fix it, they break more stuff stumbling around like toddlers. AND...this is the entertainment industry. You always have to improve. This is just sad honestly. I use to adore Bethesda and defend everything they did. But now it's just an ex girlfriend feeling xD
@@maofria1452 I don´t think that if Elder Scrolls 6 flop that it will Microsoft will keep them open . The will follow Ubisoft and Bioware to the grave .
@@nygeriunprence They already ruined the lore with Fallout 3, and its sequels 4 and 76. The TV show is inconsequential to the damage already done by three games released before it.
Thank you, this needs to be said more. I was offered Starfield for free by someone who still plays 76, and I refused. I knew it was going to be bad, I just didn't think I'd have overspent $0.
Emil has no talent because a talented person wouldn't have fallen to this extreme. It took me two seconds to figure out how to make 1000 planets a little more interesting. He is an embarrassment to writing, and gaming.
I don't want 3 IPs with Bethesda. It takes 5 or 6 years to make a game, it was already too much to wait 10 years for a sequel, with 3 it will be 15 years. And I want the games to be good, not hot garbage!
Nah pull the IP let a young hungry studio so something Bethesda is dead has been for years siphoning off borrowed goodwill of years past problem is it's all gone @@fireballs7346
"It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but what is?" If they'd truly stuck to that line of thinking, instead of making the game accessible to the broadest possible audience, Starfield might have ended up a quality product.
@@Kris.G It's like a restaurant trying to sell every type of food rather than a specific type, instead of doing one thing well, you do everything badly. And then you have less customers because anyone who wants a type of food will just visit the place that does it good instead.
It's never gonna happen, he's a butt-buddy to Todd and Todd-man makes final decisions. Similarly, Todd will never be outed, he might retire, or will stay with the ship until the bitter end.
I'm a game dev. I started in QA and I climbed to Game Design. Since 2015 the Games as a Service took over and stagnated the industry. Games cost more and more due to; Gigantic Manegerial Verticles, unmotivated devs, and a disappointed audience. Programmers have 0 idea what the audience wants; Artists have 0 idea what the audience wants; Executives have 0 ideas what the audience wants; Game Designers DON'T WANT to know what the audience wants; All games should have been at the level of BG3 right now. :(( The industry needs to die!
I was posting about Bethesda's downfall and lack of creative vision + willingness to innovate technologically when I was in high school. I graduated in 2013.
Yep. They should have done away with NetImmerse-based engines (Gamebryo and Creation) after New Vegas, granted New Vegas was most likely on Gamebryo because the fuckers only gave Obsidian a year and a half to develop it, but they KNEW the engine was a hunk of shit, especially when made with 32-bit systems in mind. They KNEW it was buggy and unstable, and by 2012 most home computers that people were playing any games on were 64-bit. I believe consoles were also 64-bit by then. But no. They choose to re-hash Gamebryo as Creation and use it for Skyrim. Still 32-bit, still buggy as fuck, and still painfully limited. Then, in 2015 with Fallout 4, Creation. Buggy as fuck, painfully limited, but FINALLY 64-bit so now you don't get low memory crashes every 5 minutes despite having over half as much RAM as the game's entire file size. Currently? Creation. In TES: VI? Probably Creation. Bethesda is fucking stupid, they could be hailed as heroes of the gaming industry but through their greed and hubris have become one of its greatest villains, alongside EA and Ubisoft.
@@Kris.G 3 millions copies for a triple AAA game coming from the studio who made Skyrim is terrible. BG3 has sold 15 millions copies according to its CEO and it was 7 months ago. With a $200 million budget, the sales wouldn't be enough to break even. The real figure has to be higher, even if we have to account the revenue coming from game pass subscriptions. Still, this game was supposed to be the kind of game that would make people buy Xbox and be in terms of success, similar to Skyrim. Not only it's not even close, but Bethesda has lost what little customer goodwill they somehow managed to retain after the awful Fallout 76.
@@guillaumeroussel8633 it's not 'terrible'. I get that you want the game to fail desperately but that's just your cope. I'm not interested in your cope. Starfield sold well. It had 10mil players on launch. Whether people enjoyed the game or not, is a different matter. But IT... SOLD... WELL. Not the cashcow they expected maybe, but not a failure either.
@@Kris.G I'm not coping, I'm just stating facts and you don't seem to be aware of the usual amount of sales from AAA games. Fallout 4 sold 12 millions copies in 24 hours when it was released, Assassin's Creed Valhalla did the same in 6 months. Call of Duty games sell way more than 10 millions copies in one year. 3 millions is also way behind what the annual releases of FIfa and NBA2k do. Starfield, according to the 3 millions copies sold figure you gave (I think the game sold more btw) is a weak performance for a AAA game. A 3 million sales figure alone is meaningless when it's not compared to something else and to its budget and development time. 3 million is way less than what Bethesda games usually sell and is quite under what other AAA games sell. I don't really how you can consider being considerably under the usual sale target of games of similar budget is selling well. It's not catastrophic like Star Wars outlaws, but it's not anywhere close of the expectations a Bethesda game has. If you still disagree, give some AAA games that have sold 3 millions copies in one year. You'll see that they aren't many of them, and that reaching 10 millions copies with a $200 millions budget is the norm, even generic ubisoft open world games could do it.
@@guillaumeroussel8633 They're less concerned about sales and more with player count since they operate under xbox and gamepass now. That's why you see them tweet about player counts these days not sales. With gamepass involved starfield also pulls similar numbers as bg3, you can check through xbox's most played list and starfield has been there consistently. The raw numbers fluctuate of course but that's true for all games at varying levels.
- Todd & Co. do not care about the quality of their game - They don't respect your time and experience with it - They don't respect your business as a paying customer - They don't respect your feedback as a player of THEIR game So, why should we extend the same courtesy to a company who clearly doesn't give a sh*t?
does it needs to be saved? its like fighting to save "manual" ploughs when tractors started to become a thing, or closer to us... saving dial-up and fighting against high speed optics. Why do it? As for this Emile dude, back in a day I made a calculator, using Basic, and it worked perfectly, no bugs at all, so I got every right to criticize, since I created a piece of soft that worked. Reading his interview its obvious that he knows pretty much nothing about gaming industry and gamers, he most likely played a very different game... maybe used LSD or something?
Emil has said in an interview that he doesn't play other people's games. And I understand why he doesn't because if he did, he would come to realize what he's done is hot garbage. Literally a legend in his own mind.
@@kurt9395 Can you recall what kind of interview Emil said this? However, Todd also does not play other games if these are not sports games, or races. Perhaps he also played in RDR2 and that's it. Todd has not played RPG since 1994
@@kurt9395 Many creators in their arrogance believe that you should not get acquainted with other people's creativity - because it allegedly can affect their "uniqueness". But in fact, they are simply afraid that their ideas are not as good as they think.
@@YarGolubev I don't remember exactly which interview Emil said that. I don't think it's the one where he talks about story and how his decision to have no more and no less than four dialog choices for every response made the dialog writers' job harder than it had to be. What I do remember is how he says there's no point in bothering to write a good story because people will ignore it and spend their time building settlements. I couldn't believe it when he said that. Or I could be mixing it up with the Todd interview.
I can't remember who it was, but several months back someone put up a poll on RUclips asking where the next Fallout game should be set, with options like New York, and I'm positive that I wasn't the only one who wrote in "Obsidian".
Unfortunately Obsidian isnt what they used to be either. Not that they are a bad studio now but the people that made the Fallout games are largely no longer there.
@@kenpachi1989most of the people from Obsidian who made masterpieces like Fallout New Vegas aren’t there anymore. And Avowed looked kinda underwhelming to me, I don’t feel very confident in them either. If it was the same Obsidian that made New Vegas, I absolutely would believe in them
@@chidori0117 Microsoft can always bring back those old devs, just drop a truck of money on their heads and that's it, problem solved. Also Obsidian did slipped a little bit with Outer Worlds imo, this dev team always deliver solid 8 out of 10 experiences at minimum, Outer Worlds was bellow that level... but here it comes Pentiment with one of the best narratives of 2023, toe to toe with Baldur's Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2, so Obsidian still have a lot of fuel on their tanks. Avowed looked bad at first, but the world of mouth from "journalists" and "streamers" are shifting to a more positive tone, so who knows, maybe this game and Outer Worlds 2 will be be able to reach the high standards of the company yet again. I really don't care as much because I dislike first person melee combat, so I am not super hyped for Avowed AND I think they are committing a huge mistake of not renaming this game to Pillars of Eternity - Avowed. Microsoft has a very interesting rpg world at their disposal, they can produce the next Baldur's Gate 3 and then some, spin-offs based on Eora and etc.. but as usual, the Xbox game division is allergic to money and success
@@kenpachi1989 hey, you’re entitled to your opinion. And I’m not dead set that it’ll be bad. But I’m just not really a big fan of modern Obsidian. I just never felt excited about Avowed. I feel like the Outer Worlds didn’t look that great, maybe to some it was good but it felt like a worse version of Fallout in space. I only was ever a fan of Obsidian for their work on New Vegas. Hopefully Bethesda will stop being pricks and let Obsidian make Fallout and Elder Scrolls spin off games between releases, like they offered ages ago. And maybe the team will still be good, or stick to their previous design processes and they can make more Fallout New Vegas like games for the Elder Scrolls and Fallout. The gaming industry is just in a really depressing state right now, I think everyone can agree on that at least.
Emil calling Starfield the "best space simulation game out there" is positively hilarious. SPORE BACK IN 2010 was a better space simulator than Starfield is today, and don't even get me on actually good space simulators like EVE Online or No Man's Sky...
Kris why are you posting such weak b8? I told you to step up your game. If you ant backing up your hot takes with at least 2 paragraphs of at least believable or opinion based bullshit, imma have to slap you.
The only thing he says that's actually true is that this dlc (and Starfailed in general) is giving players what they deserve. I mean, if you are still buying Bethesda games after the bs that was 76 and Fallout 4 before it then you deserve to be treated like this. Because you obviously can't help yourself and will continue buying this trash no matter what.
For those people, the saying should be « Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me! Fool me for the 15th time, I’m so proud of being fooled by you, Todd! »
why are always we the ones who get blamed for these studios delivering bad products ? toxic gamer minority here small group of haters there ... and so on ... is there noone who can refelct and see what the problem is ?
They act like they are the single, mother of yours with 4 kids, trying to feed you the best she can, "this is the best we can do with this engine", "it ha slimitations". You ungrateful kids. They forget that they have the money to build a new engine.
I don’t understand people. Bethesda has been shit for near 15 years. People were just somehow blind to this. The best “Bethesda” game WASN’T even made by Bethesda. It was Obsidian.
This. People praise Fallout 3 but it was absolutely disappointing compared to Fallout 1 and 2, full of inconsistencies and retcons to the lore. And don't get me started on the main story ending...
Bethesda's last truly good game was Skyrim. Although that was actually dumbed down from FO3, which in some respects was dumbed down from Oblivion, many still feel Morrowind is their best game. I don't think anyone puts anything after Skyrim as their favorite game, or "best" in any respect, apart from FO4 which arguably has the best feeling combat.
@@richardsims5158 I'm sorry but Skyrim wasn't a good game. It was an OK modding platform. Seriously go and play that game again without mods. Not the re-released, filled with fan-content 6 years after the fact editions, go play base Skyrim again. It's really not good.
@ThoraeJenkins I played base Skyrim for over a year before I got mods for it. I adored it. Looking back, it has obvious flaws, but I liked it despite that.
I think Behesda is free falling ever since the Oblivion days (the name is fitting), when you take in consideration how Persona 4 was released in the same year of Oblivion... and later a even more crazy expose, Witcher 2 was released in the same year of Skyrim, lol how can you reach the conclusion that Bethesda was ever up to standards? Not even as a rpg, but the sandbox elements either. A bunch of Bethesda apologists mention how Morrowind is this amazing game, I can't really judge because I've never played this game, but ever since Oblivion I played all of their stuff (only finished Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4 infested with mods) and ALL of them are very flawed, the writing especially, it's awful. Nowadays we have to pretend Bethesda was always amazing and they are imploding just now? C'mon now, always overrated and incompetent, blatantly taking advantage of the modding community (free labor with zero legal consequences)
I don't want ES 6 or FO5 to be good. I've lost all the love i have for Bethesda. Milking Skyrim for 10+ years? Then giving us Fallout 4 which is the least fallout feeling game ive ever played with railroady dialog options. Then the shitter that is Starfield. Yeah, i want the next games to be so bad that they just eat crow and pull a Concord and cancel them.
Yeah, there are multiple big game publishers that I think needs to shut down and fail in order for the game industry to heal and start making quality games again
@@fakskis it’s not terrible. But it was dumbed down and disappointing after 3 and NV. It’s like whichever season of game of thrones made you realize it was going wrong before season 8. Fallout 3 is amazing though if you haven’t played it either. The tale of two wastelands mod is the best way to play 3 and NV btw. Definitely worth your time.
Devils advocate here, but Skyrim sold each and every time that happened and still has an insane amount of players. Is it milking when it’s also something people want?
Btw if you want a world to "live in" start Satisfactory. I don't know what happened, but I no longer have friends, or family, there is only lizard doggo. Life itself only exists to further my pursuit of automation. I sleep and I dream of Mercer spheres. I wake and open the game before I even pee. pls help
No new ideas, just rehash the same, terrible dialogue, awful facial animations. These people have given up imo. They don't want to produce anything of worth because the end of gaming is in sight and they know it. The same with movies, rehash, rewrite unwind the core and make it ESG/DEI. Destroy beloved titles simply because they can and are having a blast upsetting the fan base, all the while gaslighting and still people buy this stuff. Shattered Space looks like it was a cut faction from the base game imo. Why introduce it in the base game and then not explore it, that says to me they intended to split it off to sell as a DLC. 🤷♀
I think it's less "given up" and more "they've been complacent for a while and now got suckerpunched by reality", and looking at it from Bethesda's POV, it makes sense. Since the days of Morrowind they've been essentially making and selling the same rehashed game on the same buggy engine. For every innovation they do in each game, they strip out or simplify a mechanic, and disregard what the old teams that since moved on did before them. And they've been rewarded for this behavior so far. Yes, the fans of Daggerfall were upset with the changes made to Morrowind, but hey, the company was saved from closing, the audience of new players vastly outnumber the old fans, and sales are doing better than they've ever done before. Yes, the fans of Morrowind were upset with the changes made to Oblivion, but hey, we've released to critical acclaim, the number of new players/fans vastly outnumber the old fans, and sales are doing better than they've ever done before. Repeat some variation of that over and over (disregarding Fallout 76 and ESO since neither are core games of theirs, and are made by their parent company with help from all other divisions IIRC, tho i could be wrong) until we get to Starfield which got an underwhelming reception, a new player base that not only doesn't outnumber the old fans, they're also looking at their older titles and drawing comparisons, and sales are doing pretty bad, all things considered. Even tho they're doing exactly what they did when they made Skyrim a success....not understanding that you can do too much of something (in this case cutting and streamlining mechanics instead of building on and improving them) and that if something worked in 2006, then it worked in 2006. It might work in 2008 or 2011, but might not fly all the way in 2024. Reminds me of the quote from one of the Fallout 76 dev: “Bethesda is a big company that thinks it’s a small company,” with a mentality of “well, this worked in the ‘90s, so we’re just gonna keep doing it.” I don't think it's them mostly pretending either, from their POV, they went from releasing banger after banger each doing better than the last and everyone loving them, hailing them as industry darlings, and yeah some people complained about the quality and some erm, controversies, but it was like a small vocal minority that was mostly disenfranchised fans yelling at the void....to the reception of Starfield.
Just because they did not have time to polish to the release. But for the next year they have even more content with starborns Which were also cut out of the release and will be disclosed later
artist maybe, but their game design is literally the worst part, and Emil is Lead Designer. bethesda needs to clean house completely and get new everything. Todd and Emil should retire and never touch a game again. wouldnt say their artist are top either though, just passable, last time they did anything interesting art-wise was Morrowind, everything since then is pretty classic generic Fantasy, or generic post-apocolyptic, and now pretty boring generic space style. and inside all those games, are the same useless props you see everywhere copy pasted, only a handful of weapons and armor, and re used assets everywhere.
Nah game design is bad. Ship building and the rest of the game is so disconnected. Just how the main quest in fallout 4 and settlement building where completely isolated from each other. It’s so strange to have mechanics that should feed off each other seperated to such a degree
@@JNJNRobin1337 Starfield was an overhauled engine. The engine is just fundamentally flawed, architecturally flawed, graphically flawed, performance flawed. They don't have the experience nor the ability to rewrite it into a modern engine.
I've never understood the way people like him try to talk up their games. If I decide I really dislike the game after several hours, him showing up on an interview saying it's actually fun isn't going to make me go "Oh ok, changed my mind! I guess I loved it, I'll go play more!" What does he think he's accomplishing by making an absolute clown of himself?
Ever since Fallout 4 Todd Howard's self-esteem is just delirious, and naturally he's surrounded himself with like-minded people. If this comes as a surprise to anyone I don't know what to say. The biggest mystery is why Microsoft keeps dumping money on companies like these.
Bethesda has been on a downfall since Oblivion. Every game they released kept watering down the experience to get a broader audience. They were still good games, Fallout 4 even if i hated it as a fallout rpg was a good game. Then 76 happened, and now Starfield. And it's not just the watering down but also blantant incompetence.
The elephant in the room is that it's not "watering down" that people don't like. Later Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3, NV, and 4 pivoted to a more Action RPG focus over the old-school turn-based/real time "turn-based" formulas of FO 1/2, Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind. The thing people don't like is called Woke. A word that Woke people try to water down the definition of (despite them having invented the term) but that everyone knows exactly what it means. Starfield is BORING not because you don't randomly miss your shots based on a statblock.
@@KopperNeoman plenty of people hate starfield without knowing anything about the woke stuff in the game (which there 100% is, like the whole colonization speech given to you by a dead black man). I wouldnt just say everyone is aware of all the cancer in the game and that they're hating it cause theyre super aware. There are very easy to spot, surface level glaring problems with the game that normies will point out
@@KopperNeoman Baldur's Gate 3 is way more "woke" than Starfield. You can change gender, have female body with male genitals or vice versa, almost every character is bisexual, you choose your pronouns and whether you identify as male, female or neither regardless of your body, etc. etc. Starfield's problems have got absolutely nothing to do with being "woke". (From the way you write, I'm pretty sure you don't even know the original meaning of woke, it means "to be alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination". No so-called "woke person" is trying to water down that meaning)
Biggest problem I have with bethesda is that they've barely updated their core systems. Accidentally pick up a plate and everyone attacks you? That's how it's been since morrowind.
if bethesda games were 25 bucks, huge worlds filled with a small amount of good content, and a really good platform for modding, I would have no problem with it. but their games are some of the most expensive, even Skyrim over a decade later, and they regularly break their own mods with updates. Nobody wants. They are so close to understanding the point, which is the frustrating part.
I'd really love it if Microsoft just tells Bethesda they don't have time to wait for them to finish Elder Scrolls before working on Fallout 5 so they're passing Fallout 5 to Obsidian.
@@dychostarrhonestly it doesn't even have to be obsidian they just have to hire back a bunch of the people that worked on New Vegas im pretty sure most of them left obsidian years ago
@@illuminotme825 Obsidian said they're willing to work on a fallout game but can't do it right now due to avawoed and outer worlds 2. So microsoft needs to find another studio.
I get what you mean but we don't deserve it. We deserve a good product as we are the customers and we don't owe them anything. The wallet stays closed. The stick is being deployed.
I think they're basically saying that they are making games to please their shareholders. And as long they were able to deliver to them, they are fine. All criticism is, for them, just hate. Nothing to do with rational thinking, or sanse of taste.
Interesting that Pagliarulo started on Oblivion which for most OG Elder Scrolls fans is the point where the series turned bad. I'd still put the main blame on Howard though, it was the Howardization aka dumbing down, conveniencialization and shallowization that gave the games after Morrowind that big success with wider audiences until they finally overdid it and ended up with those boxes of meaninglessness even those wider audiences are bored with. Turning the Elder Scrolls lore and mechanics into a shallow puddle was easy, but now dredging it and bringing back depth will require fresh personnel. Because Howard and Pagliarulo have only made it shallower for their whole careers.
Back in Morrowind's day, people thought it was a dumbing down of Daggerfall. The problem that people actually DON'T LIKE is far more recent than a simple "casualisation of RPG mechanics" - it's all in the DEI.
I remember there was an interview with him, where he said, that he wanted to implement some of the Thief mechanics, like moss arrows, water arrows and other stuff, but didn't, because he knew modders would do it for them. And of course, he was right.
Their goal is to create a brand called Starfield not a game. The original Elder Scrolls or Fallout they were trying to make a game , the brand evolved of itself.
Yeowch.... that interview is uhh, not a good look... He sounds like a legit narcissist. And when you combine Emil's words, with how upset and out of touch Todd was when Starfield did not win GOTY, it is very clear that Bethesda are in an echo chamber and have become delusional. "Bethesda RPG, which is very specific to them and that people love" And that is why Bethesda were so harrowed by Fallout New Vegas. Seeing another company make a Bethesda game better than they could was an existential crisis for them.
This is normal bethesda. They always learn the wrong lessons from their games. Be it post morrowind, post Oblivion and so on. Its just people kept proving their mindset right and they spoke about this even. How their decisions might be disliked but they keep selling more so theyre clearly correct. This has been a rot in the studio for decades. Its surprising people only now see it. None of this is remotely new.
I agree its the same people at bethesda and lucasfilm. These out of touch toxic positivity people that can no longer tell a turd from a chocolate bar that are running the show and these franchises into the ground.
"out of touch toxic positivity people that can no longer tell a turd from a chocolate bar" Oh, they can tell the difference, alright. They're just upset because their customer base has also (finally) learned to tell the difference, and have rejected the turd.
I'm done with any future Fallout games anyway after the way they completely trashed the lore in the Amazon show. It would be fine except for the fact that they're going to bring that trashed lore into the games.
I feel like I've been ahead of the curve on Bethesda's hubris ever since they released a Fallout 4 Game of the year edition... in 2015... the year Witcher 3 Wild Hunt came out...
Witcher 3 was the one game that got me to uninstall Skyrim. Even with a premade character like Geralt or Ciri, IT still tells a better story then anything Bethesda has released.
Fallout 4 in 2015: *Borderlands-esque cartoony pastel graphics* "LOOK HOW REALISTIC WE ARE!" The Witcher 3, also in 2015: "This game looks photorealistic" The Witcher 3 in 2024: "Why does real life look like its graphical settings are on medium?"
What I hate the most is how snob Microsoft looked. I remember when Sarah Bond said it was the most anticipated RPG of the last decade. I know it's not everyones cup of tea, but at that time, Nintendo had just released Tears of the kingdom. Bethesda is full of themself.
The issue is both Todd Howard and Emil Pagliarulo have always shown pretty strong signs of a tendency towards a Megalomaniac Narcissistic (and almost Psychopathic) form personality with some delusional schizophrenic tendencies. What's been happening was implied since 20 years ago. I've been describing this situation since TES IV Oblivion, 20 years ago, and all relevant events just keep adding up every single day and perfectly demonstrating I wasn't catastrophising, I was just properly describing the unfolding of events. Emil's best works come from an era when he wasn't so egotistically self-absorbed with his self-perceived godly superiority over all other human beings (back then he was obese, then he lost 250 pounds and convinced himself he's the most important Chad on Earth). Todd Howard's best work comes from an era when he didn't have any power and no-one would listen to him.
Emil has always been bad But then he was not the main one. And his trash - was disguised as the good work of everyone else. Todd was good in administering. But he believed that he is a genius
I don't get it. Starfield is just more of the same crap they've always done. Why is the bad writing, the bad characters, the bad gameplay systems, the crappy UI, the stupid quests and the overall jankiness a problem now, but somehow everyone still has fond memories of FO3 and Skyrim, games that were every bit as bad (or actually worse) in pretty much every regard? Did the semi-compelling Open World exploration stuff really effectively paper over the fact that Beth RPGs have always been kind of garbage?
To answer your question, kind of. And to build on an answer, Skyrim and fallout 4 were outdated in most ways upon release but Bethesda games have only continued to fall farther behind
The Games are evolving Dude, from other Studios, Bethesda Games were Always chunky and bugged plagued, but Back 20-15 years ago it was "Hightech and peak of what is possible" , fresh and unique. But Back then they had good Storys, evil paths ect, now you Take todays Bethesda Games, with the Same crap 15-20 years ago but you Take good Storys and the RPG expirience Out of it, all you get is just a blund, boring buggy mess. People are tired of it. Rightfully so. Bethesda never evolved Out from it, These people legit living in the years from 2000-2010 xD
Because youre wrong. Skyrim and all the other Fallout games have amazing memorable characters that people love to this day. Average writing =/= Bad writing, and Starfield is just plain bad writing while the other games are serviceable. Bethesda has always been about freedom and exploring a world and Starfield is unique that it abandons everything Bethesda is good at it and replacing it with nothing.
@@UltimegaSeven No, I'm not wrong. They were always bad. FO:NV had great characters but that wasn't made by Bethesda. FO3 had idiots like Three Dog. If that's your idea of a great character, then you're obviously the target demographic.
Call me a Morrowind boomer if you want but they've been declining badly since Skyrim. The only reason Skyrim got so popular was the circumstances under which it was released. That console generation brought in a lot of kids/casuals that had never experienced anything like that. It had a lot of good qualities, but overall was seriously inferior to earlier games in the series. Hot take, Starfield isn't that far away in overall quality from Skyrim and FO4.
I love Skyrim, but it is extremely basic for its writing, quest design, combat, watered down rpg systems. It's only popular for how accessible it is while makes things seem grander than they really are. Goes to be known as biggest open world ever for its time even tho Oblivion was bigger, Morrowwind was bigger, especially Daggerfall was bigger.
Skyrim has to be literally carried by mods bc the game genuinely sucks vanilla. I've been saying this for years at this point, but Bethesda fanboys are like actual sheep.
@@darksungwyndolin8305 As an Elder Scrolls fan, I will insist that the same is true for Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion. They're amazing due to their skeletons, and all need mods to flesh those skeletons out.
The problem with the whole Emil drama is that people blame him specifically for everything. Emil may be really bad at his job but he's still just one man. Even if we speak just about the writing of the games, the only reason why Emil does so much damage is because people above him, those who make decisions, look at everything he's doing and say "looks great". The problem isn't just Emil, it's the entirety of Bethesda. The truth its that Bethesda didn't go downhill, it was never good in the first place and in recent years they simply got so complacent that there's no way to deny that anymore.
@@kenpachi1989 Yes. The reason why people remember their older games fondly isn't because of their quality, it's because there simply wasn't anyone else who was making similar things. Bioware before Mass Effect was making much-much better games, but they simply didn't have this large open world. Their only real competitor was Gothic.
But here is what business - in Starfield's credits, only one writer is indicated - Emil (there is another freelance person, but from his words, he edited Emil's texts) 500 studio people - and only one writer! In the witcher3 - there are 20 of them! In BG3 - there are 30 of them! What was there in Morrowind from at least 5! Emil simply threw all those who wanted to write scripts from the studio The last whom he threw out - was Kurt Kulman
@@YarGolubev Do you really believe that Emil could write the entierety of Starfield alone with one other guy helping him? I sure don't. Narrative writing is hard, man. I know cause I did it before. If there were only 2 people writing it, it still wouldn't have released.
@@BIGESTblade just go to the credits of the game. There are only 2 writers! :) You don't have to take my word for it. And yes, there are a couple more people - they wrote on linkedin that they worked on the lyrics in Starkfield. But I didn't find them in the credits.
As the head of a tiny studio, my company is putting out a demo of our game soon so we can get feedback on what people like/dislike so that we can make changes.
Hubris is a slow and insidious killer. Remember to like if you liked the vid, and subscribe for more.
But I enjoy your hair and your content, this is quite a pickle.
I almost spit my drink out at the irony of Tom Howard telling us that it's the gamers that need to upgrade their hardware, not them that needed an actual modern game engine to achieve what they were going for.
I really gave Starfield an honest chance, even bought it day one no questions asked, but when CDPR dropped Phantom Liberty and in contrast saw what they were able to accomplish, I woke up and realized I was just being gaslit to hell and back and never went back to Starfield. It's a true crying shame, man. I miss the old Bethesda.
"The bad reviews are a good sign, actually." ...I mean, wow.
''Remember to like if you liked the vid, and subscribe for more.'' Hubris indeed.
yeah you are right ...
I knew Bethesda was doomed forever when Todd Howard looked surprised that Baldur's Gate 3 beat Starfield at the Game Awards.
I had to look that video up and my god i died laughing, that false smile hides all the pain he felt haha
Nailed it
And yet despite such a massive slap in the face that showed what kind of games people absolutely love, he still continues to push slop
It really makes you wonder if people at Bethesda (including Todd) even play games at all. I'd bet real money they don't.
wait what, was he actually surprised or is it your view
Emil proves exactly why hiring on nepotism and never holding that person accountable is the absolute worst thing you can do for any company.
Accountability is the fine line between a broken company and successful enough to see the next fiscal year.
or government
Hiring on nepotism is terrible for any company or institution.. but even that is exponentially better than what these companies are doing… hiring on “diversity” “inclusion” “equity”
I was bethseda cuck i would never want to hear anything bad about bethseda but after starfield and its dlc...i guess cucking for them is over
Kenpachi, there is no excuse for your Anti-Whitism. DEI harms White bodies at an institutional level. Grow up and heal your hate please.
"The biggest space game on Xbox"
No Man's Sky is LITERALLY right there.
No-no, they meant that they take the most space.
@@BlowBow2lmao good point
@@BlowBow2hahaha 150GB shiteware
No man's sky is boring slop but atleast I actually had SOME fun with it unlike starfiield
@@Sassy_Witch Yeah of course......we have an expert here 😂
"You can't criticise Boeing, sure our doors can fall off, but do you have any idea how hard it is to make a jet plane?" -- head engineer, probably.
Well, we know what happens to Boeing whistle blowers.
Sure we trapped two astronauts in low Earth orbit, but do you have any idea how hard it is to go to space?
@@Arizona-ex5ytyea you can’t say nothing bout Boeing or else they’ll kick me in the teeth feed me knuckle sandwhiches till I submit
"Okay, so our planes have gotten significantly more unsafe and unstable, but have you seen how diverse our workforce has become?"
Oh, I assure you it's not the engineer. It's someone chasing profits. Management.
Starfield was lauded by Bethesda as being "irresponsibly large". It turned out that it was only irresponsibly bad.
For the ancient engine, it was irresponsibly large indeed. At this stage, with the company tarnishing it's imagery constantly, the only positive PR they could spin around is to tease they are going to change the engine. I don't know, let it "leak" on purpose that Bethesda is currently testing the Unreal engine or something like that (even if it's lie, just a smoke screen), see the reaction of the public (the media can go to hell), if it's extremely positive (which is predictable), then go for it, abandon the jurassic engine and try something else
@@RRRRRRRRR33 The engine is dated for sure, but the writing/gameplay problems won't miraculously go away with a better engine. Starfield has some of the most bland, boring world-building and story, and the companions are milquetoast and bland as everything else. This game is so sterile and unimaginative is ridiculous.
@@Rapunzel879 This is the part that people don't want to accept. Bethesda games aren't bad because of the creation engine. They're bad because Bethesda can't write stories anymore.
@@Rapunzel879 Yeah, I think that the engine thing is a red herring. You only need to look at Fallout for that; New Vegas is an extremely buggy and rough game, but has a huge legacy because of the quests & dialogue's stellar quality. Fallout 4 was a huge leap ahead in gameplay for BGS, but hardly feels like it because of how much worse its writing and especially main quest is. Far Harbor showed just how thin the line is that separates FO4 from being a genuinely great RPG.
@@Rapunzel879 Sure, a new engine will not miraculously fix bad writing (just look at Kojima through the years), but if the engine works just right, the gameplay can improve dramatically. Capcom is a good example, they always had the talent, but they struggled a lot in the PS3 generation, working with terrible engines, etc.. at the moment they introduced the ReEngine, suddenly their devs had a legit toolbox to work with, here it comes RE7, RE2, Dragon's Dogma 2, Path of the Goddess, etc.. It's hard to judge because the creation engine is so horrendous, who knows if Bethesda ever had the talent or they were simply incompetent working with a crappy engine (most likely the case, considered how the modders 90% of the time provides better content than Bethesda itself, I guess the solution is to hire this people instead of taking advantage of free labor with zero legal repercussions)
They stole money from their biggest fans with fallout 76, and now they say things like The astronauts weren't bored when they explored the empty moon.
There is nothing worth saving.
I wouldn't be bored playing Starfield if I knew if I died in the game, I'd die IRL. That shit's a buggy mess, I'd be terrified!
100% agree. Fallout 76 was the clearest sign to me that they no longer cared about their players. That was the moment they lost my loyalty.
The people who bought F76 and Starfield were suckers.
Personally for me, at this point. I don’t think they can be redeemed with any other titles if they have that lack luster of a writer. I’m gonna be sticking to the older games that were wrote by the same person but expect for FNV.
I love 76 now and ESO, got over 4k hours in the both of them. I think people have come to hate Bethesda so much that the things they have fixed do not get acknowledged because of past failures.
One of the leads in Skyrim said they quit Bethesda because Emil refused to allow any ideas not his. 😢
Can you give me a quick rundown and explain who this Emil guy is?
@@Krachbumm-Entepretty sure he is the lead writer on the game
@@Krachbumm-Ente Emil is the lead writer at Bethesda and was essentially in charge of the narrative direction of Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Starfield. In other words, he has directed the overall narrative for the games with arguably the worst stories that Bethesda has ever told.
He was the writer for the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion, which was widely regarded as one of the best questlines in the game. It seems that he has been coasting off of that rep for decades while failing to write anything good in the meantime.
Many people who are fans of the older games (whether those are the pre-Bethesda Fallout games or older TES games) have been pretty critical of his writing and leadership abilities. Despite this, he remains in a prominent leadership role at Bethesda, even though he is clearly not suited for the position. He has demonstrated talented writing before, but he seems to need a lead writer above him to keep him organized and curb his worst tendencies.
@@Killsburydoughboy Thank you for the elaborate answer. I did like the Fallout 3 and 4 story, it wasn't amazing but it was good enough and the Dark Brotherhood questline is just chef kiss perfection. Pitty that he apparently can't pull this kind of story telling of anymore
Are you talking about Kirkbride? I think i heard something about that. They need to fire Emil and hire Kirkbride full time as lead writer, Bethesda would instantly dwarf every other studio in writing if they did that lmao.
The "you don't makes games, so you can't criticize them" is the dumbest argument, ever. I also don't have to be a chef to know if my food taste good.
Can you imagine a chef saying that if everyone who eats his food says it's bad, that it's THE CUSTOMER'S fault?
I mean if I rip a big fart how you gonna come in my house and complain about the smell am I right? 💨
I'm not a vet, but I know dogsh1t when I step in it!
I cant build a helicopter or even fly one, but if I see a helicopter in a tree, I know someone somewhere fucked up
While it is a dumb thing to say, there is a grain truth to it. You don't need to be a chef to say you don't like something, but if your criticisms are things like "I don't like fish, you should have used beef instead" or "I think this chicken should have been cooked medium rare", I would also ask you to please stop talking if you don't know anything about cooking.
And there absolutely are criticisms of this caliber leveled against games. I've seen people criticize Elden Ring for not having swimming or BotW-style climbing.
Newsflash: STOP BUYING SHITTY AAA GAMES and the whole problem magically goes away
It has almost nothing to do with the consumer, they're laundering money and receiving grants for funding. Dustborn being financed by the Norwegian government for example.
Not buying them will help, but everyone's already ahead of you.
Name the problem! It starts with a W, ends with an E, and is pretty OK in the middle.
Yes it really is that simple concord shut down in 8 days let’s do that again and again.
Wehaaayyy \o/
At this point, Bethesda is like McDonald. Not very good but yet many people go there.
Far Harbour being quoted for what they wanted to do is crazy.
Part of what made Far Harbor interesting was that it directly addressed how shallow the "choices" of the base game were.
All they took from that was "make a landmass the size of Far Harbor"
They think 'players want bigger worlds' means 'more empty space', not 'more DEPTH'.
Really, it backfires really hard on them because it *BROADCASTS* that they do not even understand why Far Harbor was popular. They have no idea what they're doing or what their audience wants, they got lucky once with a lead designer that understood that, and now the guy that led development of Far Harbor has left the company and they're just stabbing in the dark about what people might actually want.
I believe the principal writer from far harbour quit shortly after the launch of starfield. Read into that what you will
@@ilcorvo9559 William Shen, and yes he did.
@@Longknife Will Shen also complained in a interview within the last year about the miscommunication occurring during the development of Starfield and how they were half assing the main story and that they barely came up with an ending in time for release, which was probably the original release in 2022.
Edit: And that is the reason Nesmith is saying people, fans, or customers need to lower expectations for ES6. It is more because they no longer have the talent that made good BGS games at BGS.
I made a now (in)famous reddit post calling out Emil years ago, and now I occasionally get stalked (online only) and harassed for it.
I wish I could feel vindicated now, but instead I'm just annoyed that there are somehow people that still can't see it. The guy is a nepotism hire that's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay above his level of competency, and the worst part is that for as bad as he is at his job, we are not seeing the full problem. The fact the company chooses to keep EMPLOYING HIM is evidence the people above him probably aren't great at their jobs either.
can you share the link to that reddit post for us not familiar
@@MithrevanYT deletes links
@@Mithrevan Its a pinned comment on Creetosis channel fyi. He's got two vids on how bad Emil's writing is. you can check there if you need.
Can you elaborate on why you consider his role at Bethesda to be nepotism? At LGS he was one of the best designers on Thief 2. Then at BGS he made one of the best received quest lines in Oblivion and tried to give that game stealth mechanics comparable to Thief (didn’t succeed in that regard).
His prominent role at BGS is due to past successes. That said, it’s been 15 years since he’s made anything good. I think he’s been promoted way past his competency level.
@@SongOfStorms411 For clarity: I've heard X amount of times that Todd and Emil were friends before Bethesda, but I cannot actually recall the source on it there. I'll just say you'll hear this from time to time.
Beyond that though, even if that WEREN'T true, it's hard to imagine Emil being in his position *without* nepotism. As an initial hire, sure, that could be understandable. The guy has been catching criticism for like 14 years now though, there are MULTIPLE public speeches with Emil seemingly broadcasting incompetence at his job, and yet he's one of the most important people at Bethesda. If you trust he's word, much of Starfield's core lore, world-building and writing for the major events/main quest was him and Todd bouncing ideas off each other. (I believe a Polygon interview was the source here)
I've often joked the guy must be super likable in person, because I cannot imagine another reason to keep him around.
However, what's more alarming: Kurt Kuhlmann was previously referred to by other employees at Bethesda as their encyclopedia for Elder Scrolls lore, and that when they needed to look up something in the lore for storywriting, they'd source "Kurt's Brain."
Well, suddenly Kurt was "encouraged" to leave Bethesda, according to Michael Kirkbride, who seemed very troubled by the news. If it were just Kurt, we could write it off as him potentially being difficult to work with, but multiple recognizable names at Bethesda left the company upon the completion of Starfield. I cannot link it here because RUclips hates links, but I happened to catch Kurt's LinkedIn profile showing recent activity where he was liking an article critical of how Emil was being dismissive of fans lukewarm response to Starfield.
Could be nothing, of course, but when we have:
1) The internet has actively screamed their low satisfaction with Emil for over 10 years, including loving the EXACT piece of DLC he didn't lead for. (Far Harbor)
2) Somehow he remains in his position with no issues whatsoever, including now being a top 3 developer in the company hierarchy. (his description)
3) Multiple big names leaving the company while making it clear there were "ego clashes" (Bruce Nesmith's interview + the fact Kuhlmann was "encouraged" to leave), whilst Emil is still comfortably there in his lead role, while also being the *ONLY* Bethesda employee that is oddly defensive of Starfield
Then yeah...I mean I hate to speculate on one hand, but where there's smoke, there's often fire, and smoke has been absolutely POURING out of Emil's direction for ages now. He's not going to be the sole source of all Bethesda's problems (honestly, the people keeping him where he's at are questionable too, for starters), but he's easily the most egregious in the sense we *KEEP COMPLAINING ABOUT HIM* and how bad of an impression he leaves, and absolutely nothing changes.
"The biggest, richest space simulation RPG that anyone could imagine."
Fucking **what?** EXCUSE ME?
I'm meant to ve vacuuming. I literally did a double take, stopped, grabbed my phone to type this out because of how... It's be titanically offensive if it wasn't so *absurd!*
Biggest? There's barely anything there! Proc-Gen does *not* count! It can't! Otherwise, all you need is for someone to make some 2D thing and turn up the dials!
Rich? In their creaking geriatric of an engine? Fucking Hell, X4 has a complete system of supply chains- from Mining to refining to production of increasingly complex goods, when are then used to build and supply ships. *You can build your own -fleets- in that game!
Really? Really? Is the limits of your imagination *Starfield?* I suppose it would explain a lot, and also means that you should never touch a creative field *ever again.*
If Starfield is the limits of your imagination- go into accounting.
I audibly chuckled at the ending of this comment.
Tbh I soon as I saw they were using proc gen I felt dismay, it's a lazy sub par way to add content imho , I noticed when playing SF pirate base layouts made no sense, like they were created by an insane person
@@RichardPhillips1066the worst part is they already learned this lesson with Oblivion with the copy pasted instances. It’s why Skyrim was marketed as having an entire team dedicated to hand crafting its dungeons.
@@RichardPhillips1066 Those, like other PoI, are handcrafted. Hence why you see the exact same thing over and over again... with even the enemies and items in the same locations. Those things having some procedural generation is one of the things Starfield desperately needs. Of course, it would need to be done well, not the barest passable level and then somewhat superficially polished. Points of interest need to be interesting. Otherwise, well, as the very people in game say, exploration is dead. Of course, it needs to go beyond not seeing the same thing over and over again. You also need systems that reward exploration. Like if mods requires exploration, if you could get certain cool guns only through exploration...
The planets and such, though, those are procedural generation. But they did that poorly as well. Because Bethesday just did everything to the lowest passable level.
The places they DID make are terrible.
Look at Mars and Titan. They're supposed to be busy colonies, but are a few dingy rooms and I have no idea where the people would even live. Even the entrances look like what would be side-tunnels used for maintenance access.
Bethesda’s mistake is assuming that gamers will accept the excuses give to their shareholders that don’t play games.
Nailed it.
They don't even assume that. It's just excuses for shareholders. That whole attitude is designed to fool shareholders who doesn't even touch games
@@VolkanKucukemrewell, wonder that I have something in common with shareholders! Because I won’t be either going forward.
My favourite part about Starfield is landing on a barren planet, completely hostile to any life, and seeing an NPC walk out of an outpost without their spacesuit as if they’re going outside to get some fresh air. Todd and Emil really hit this one out of the park.
Emil and Todd are the major reasons why I have no faith in the next titles. The creation engine is that minor reason why I have no faith in their next titles. They don’t learn. They don’t listen. And they don’t progress. I’m done with um
The creation engine is just the wood that’s made the coffin, Emil and Todd are the coffin nails.
If only one of these things were the problem they could be fixed, but together they’ve left the studio in a stubborn gridlock.
I resisted for a long time calling Emil out for being the cause of downfall of Bethesda, and while there is definitively blame to pass around, he feel like "toxic positivity" personified.
He might literally pull the whole company down singlehandedly.
Which is a crazy thing to think about.
@@JimTheCurator I am pretty sure, that he does not do it "singlehandedly". I am convinced that this is the opinion of the top management, not of himself alone.
He's always been a hack writer, FO4 was a good game at times, but the story and narratives of the factions was so imcomprehensibly stupid I never played the story ever again. Relentless retcons and stupid motivations and sick of him being hired on projects.
Pretty sure they’re crappy games of recent or what is the problem
The writing was on the wall about Emil all the way back in Fallout 4. There was a lot of potential for Fallout 4 to be a fantastic game. But we have a main story writer who can't write a coherent main story and lead designer who can't design and doesn't want to lead. The result was a game that couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
WHY does Bethesda ever let this Emile guy TALK? Seriously! He is SO tone deaf, insulting to the intelligence of gamers, and so loudly signalling his thin skinned anger at even the most constructive criticism, that he represents a genuine threat to Bethesda’s brand!
He clearly feels contempt for fans, certainly their opinions or the customer’s desires. Who pats themselves on the back when they fail like him?
And who CARES about HOW the sausage is made, when it tastes like dog meat? If he genuinely believes that other studios could not have done a FAR better job, he’s flatly, empirically wrong about that.
Todd, just stop him from talking! He’s hurting your brand and your wallet.
Funny that the very same person responsible for the one aspect (writing) which has been consistently subpar for 20 years is the one that they let represent Bethesda the most.
"This sausage that's stuffed exclusively with old cheese and dirt is our greatest dish yet. Don't believe your lying taste buds, they're too unrefined to taste the effort that elevates the cheese-dirt sausage beyond the quality of a kobe steak."
It’s what happens when you mix personal relationships and business.
Either you tank the relationship, the business, or both.
Todd isn't much different.
For the sausage stuff, worth noting as well, that those of us that have made games also think Starfield is pretty bad, and thanks to our experiences in the field, can make some pretty well educated guesses as to why it is that way. Hint: it's due to poor design and management.
Neither Fallout nor The Elder Scrolls were created by Todd Howard. He just acquired or inherited them, yet they're widely beloved. The only IP he created himself ended up being a total disaster. I think that's telling.
30 years ago, when he made first person terminator games work on limited hardware, he proved why he deserves a job in the games industry... he hasn't really evolved since, I fear.
The sad pathetic part is he sees himself as Steve Jobs. The difference is when Jobs made a presentation, he had a good product behind him.
He was still the director for the most widely acclaimed games in The Elder Scrolls franchise. Daggerfall was an amazing game, but when Todd Howard became director from Morrowind and onwards, the series exploded in popularity. The Elder Scrolls before Howard became director were also fairly generic fantasy games, they lacked a lot of personality and lore that fleshed out the game world and turned it into something unique to that franchise.
Todd Howard deserves criticism, but criticism shouldn't come at the cost of ignoring or minimizing his previous accomplishments.
@fillsbury8304 You can't tell me that the same man who created Morrowind also created Oblivion and Skyrim. The latter two's settings were entirely generic, compared to the truly alien, unique Morrowind, and the games were progressively dumbed down. You can credit him for making the games increasingly accessible by making them, also, increasingly bland, though.
@@lunavarion Well, I can tell you, because he did. Howard was game director on Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, and a dev on Daggerfall. Oblivion and Skyrim were more generic, but the lore was still unique to The Elder Scrolls, compared to the games prior to Morrowind. On top of that, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim were some of the most immersive RPGs of all time, which is the hallmark of the series. I too prefered Morrowind over Oblivion and Skyrim, but I still played the heck out of them. I've lost count of the amount of times I've played any of those 3 games and completely lost track of time.
Again, he deserves major criticism for the last several years, but he still directed some of the most influential and beloved RPGs of all time. If your criticism starts with taking away his previous accomplishments, he's never going back to when he did things right.
The fact that modders have said they don't want to mod the game because it's boring says a lot about the reception of Starfield and the current state of Bethesda, barely anyone is talking about the DLC and even less people are still talking about the game as a whole.
I think my favorite thing that came from Starfield was seeing Todd sitting awkwardly at the Game Awards watching every other game get praised and awarded while Starfield wasn't even mentioned.
It's BORING! So FUCKING BORING
-The Silverback
plus the FREAKS who moderate nexusmods will probably delete it for some reason anyways so why bother.
(Terrible website BTW and zero games should be using it as their ONLY mod platform, sure using it as an option is fine but it should not be the monopoly it currently is for most triple-A trash games' mod scene)
0:50 "It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but what is?" Morrowind is "not everyones cup of tea." Oblivion and fallout 3 too. Just maybe. But skyrim? Fallout 4? Starfield? Those are made to be consumed by everybody. You dumbed them down and made them generic to appeal to everybody. It doesnt appeal to everybody? Thats the only person this game was made for. It isn't an amazing space sim. It doesn't have amazing shooting. It isn't super immersive. It fails on each individual metric.
I really think Skyrim could’ve been so much more in depth from launch if they had included more magic stuff, from oblivion and morrowind to Skyrim there is way less spells and magic stuff. Otherwise, Skyrim really was the best of both worlds. If Bethesda put that quality out now we wouldn’t be having this conversation, while Skyrim was dumbed down it was still damn good. And in the case of Fo4 a voiced protagonist was the downfall of that game, they really axed every good bit of dialogue and choice that we all were accustomed to since the OG fallout games.
Skyrim marked the start of dumbing things down, I’ll stand by it being an amazing product though, but they never should have gone dumber than that.
Starfield doesn't have its own unique personality. The Outer Worlds came out years ago.
I hate The Outer Worlds but that game did have personality.
I think Todd wanted to out do them 😆
Outer world doesn't have its own personality. It's basically a worse New Vegas with a borderland paintjob.
@@Thesavagesouls and yet thats even better then Starfield
@@Thesavagesouls You’re being too kind. It’s more like if Redditors made Mass Effect but with Borderlands aesthetics.
Two options, either he's pretending because it's his job, or he doesn't know what video games are.
Its definitely pr talk
@farmsalot1233 no, Emil believes it. If you've seen the professional talks he gives, he really believes every word. The delusion is off the charts.
Emil genuinely believes that he is never wrong. People complimented him on his writing of a few quests in ES:Oblivion and he's been terminally huffing his own farts ever since.
No, its his own damn arrogance. He gets triggered if you claim there are ANY inconsistencies between his writing and stuff from Fallout 1 and 2. Or how you dont have the right to call out bs since "you dont work in the industry so you have no room to complain since you dont make games". IM NOT JOKING on that one. You want to see someone break down his writing, Creetosis has 2 videos on Emil.
especially that recent Tweet thread that he made telling us " the customer" that we can basically f*** off.
@@MLPDethDealr32 he's not just arrogant. He's fucking LAZY. And he has a bunch of shitty ideas about what the gamer do with the writing in video games, that is used to justify the laziness and mediocrity in order not to put too much effort in a solid and cohesive story to tell.
This is what toxic positivity is. It's refusing to admit that ideas didn't work. It's refusing to say that your game engine doesn't work for certain kinds of games. It's refusing to say that you have a talent crisis. They not only pretend that everything is fine but they go further and pretend like they've never done better in their lives. That is PURE DELUSION.
Amen
Shattered Space isn’t that bad, It just completely sucks ass in the quest and performance department.
Just like Jinkx Monsoon said in their commericial: "Delusion, Convince Yourself!" Emil is delusional at this point.
@@martymcyourflysdown6872 so it's bad?
It costs 30 dollars bro lol, I could have bought dawnguard and dragonborn for that price and one of them is twice shattered space.
The game is more incomplete than bad.
Microsoft Zenimax "Bethesda" is not the Bethesda that made Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Not that fallout 3 was any good as a fallout game. The last true rpg Bethesda ever made was morrowind
Why should they care if the games are any good. The stock changed to microsoft, not bethesda, so if bethesda dies, the sock won't because it's microsoft now.
Oblivion and Fallout 3 are not even that good. I think many Bethesda fans either live on denial or they are too attached with nostalgia. I only finished Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4, but I played (and drop) Oblivion, all of these games are extremely flawed even with tons of mods, especially the writing and rpg elements
"Microsoft" has nothing to do with Bethesda's downfall, you are just down-playing it.
Sometimes game developer studios lose some key people, and the others just go mad with ego. It just works.
Morrowind was when I dipped out
Can’t spell Emil Pagliarulo without the word *LIAR.*
Can’t spell it without *PAG* either. I don’t even think it’s a word, but if _pag_ was a word, specifically a noun, then he’d definitely be whatever a _pag_ is.
@@jeremytitus9519poop ass gamer
Emil Pegulo there
I can't spell it, period.
Bethesda and Ubisoft look alike.
Nah lol ubisoft just hire alot of new dei people . While Bethesda got lazy and started smelling their own salt and believe eveything they realease are gold
The irony part is Ubisoft once publish two Bethesda games it's Morrowind (PAL) and Oblivion (on PS3 EU) which is during 2000s that the time Ubisoft at it's peak and Bethesda start rising.
Now them both are fxxx up.
@@khanhnguyen-tt3ff you're as smart as a rtarded monkey
@khanhnguyen-tt3ff I'm sorry, but that's some hard coping there. Bethesda is recently getting flak for the bs cuz of 76 and Starfield while ubi has a extremely large history of games either getting axed for tax write offs to what recently might be investors calling out market manipulation for stocks by making intentional "middling" games.
Removing dei wouldn't have made Star Wars Outlaws a better game. It's part of the symptom, not the cause. Both of these companies need a wake-up call cuz leads aren't getting punished for screw ups. But stop making it easy to call criticism "haters" with comments like these.
Spiderman pointing at Spiderman.
I love Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but I want Bethesda to fail, otherwise they will never learn. Todd needs to f'ing retire. Emil needs to get fired asap.
it's not me who's out of touch
it's the millions of gamers around the world who are -emil pagliarulo 2024
The fact that Pagliarulo is still in this position after he's produced so much slop is really baffling. Is he married to the main shareholder at Bethesda?
Todd's friend.
High school buddies with Todd, has kept appointing him as lead writer for all their games since Fallout 3. Todd and Emil are one of the biggest examples of nepotism in the industry.
@@LawrenceMurphy-vu9vu Pete Hines brought Emil to the studio.
And Pete PR to the whole world of Todd Howard as a genius. (although all his genius is that under his formal leadership was a team of geniuses who invested everything in Morovind)
This is not the first time I meet that Emil studied with Todd, but does not converge on the dates of birth.
Fallout 4 was the turning point for Bethesda. It wasn't the worst game ever just meh since then its just been trash.
It was definitely where the spread of the rot became most evident. The story and character handling was absolute steaming dogshit on a vomit sundae, the factions were nonsensical and the vaunted settlement system was so clunky and basic it felt like they just ported the Morrowind creation kit into the game UI. But the world was still very atmospheric and interesting to explore, the feel of it was there, you could lose yourself in it and actually want to try to build those settlements. Far Harbor and Nuka-World even felt like it was healing a little, with writing being notably less dogshit and even more engaging and interesting areas to explore and lose yourself in (I loved the fog islands in particular). But then... all goes downhill, Fallout 76 is a pipe dream of non-gamers and hubristic devs, they tried to fix it with base-Fallout 4 level (i.e. dogshit) writing later, and every next release they make is a step down, with Starfield as the shitty crowning achievement of failure.
@@cattrucker8257 When there are minecraft mods that give a better base-building experience and were made in mere months by a single dev, you know you dropped the ball.
@@Zorothegallade-rpg Honestly that settlement system was my first big "Something's going terribly wrong at Bethesda..." moment, even before I realized just how dogshit the writing of the entire game is. You run into it so early on, it's almost literally mandatory to do it a little, and it just hits you in the face like a bucket of sewage how slapdash and not even remotely polished it is, it's like an alpha concept version of a system left in the final game.
It was more of test the skyrim pyshics, power armor and building rather than story driven.
Every BGS game post-Morrowind has been worse than the previous game released. Fallout 3 being the exception. This has been going on since 2006.
I wonder how much of this issue comes from Bethesda higher-ups actually believing they're making great games. And how much of this comes from Bethesda higher-ups thinking it's more economically efficient to trick people that they're making good games instead of actually making good games.
I think it’s a combination of factors:
1. Becoming disconnected from what their audience wants and actually liked about their games
2. Losing the ability to deliver the type of experience that made their prior games compelling due to their most talented people leaving and not being replaced.
3. Having the wrong people in positions of leadership or otherwise doing jobs they’re not capable of doing (ie Emil).
4. The inability to clean house (Todd protecting Emil).
5. A dysfunctional corporate culture that prevents innovation or the ability look critically at their work. Maybe this is toxic positivity or maybe it’s something else.
6. A business model that allows them to insulate themselves from the consequences of making bad products by creating and then farming pent up demand for their core IPs.
7. A player base that has been much too lenient with them up until now.
Maybe there are more factors but this is what I could think of right now.
Problem is, some of us keep falling for it and buying it. I wish I had waited but I was convinced it was going to be amazing.
@@euskryhtbnfvse4i7ehs4hnvf You’re in good company my dude.
The case of a studio way too high on its own supply. This is the studio that had Amazon money thrown at their Fallout IP and the only thing they bothered to prepare for it was a patch to break their most recent game.
The Elder Scrolls 6 will be a minimum effort, made by people who have "retired in place" and have long since lost passion for their work.
Expect nothing and you will still be disappointed.
remember when people started criticizing Emil in full force before Starfield came out, and then a mysterious wave of "HEY STOP BEING MEAN TO EMIL >:(" spread around the internet?
I hope they paid the shills well lol
Yeah, for example, that idiotic NeverKnowsBest video.
Astroturfing bethesda bots
this is what happens when you make games for shareholders and not people who actually play them
Anyone with passion and ambition could not make a game like Starfield. Lowest effort slop I've played in a while. I was let down by Fallout 4 and thought Bethesda would right the ship. But Starfield is the worst parts of Fallout 4, amplified, with none of the good. Not only could they not redeem themselves, they actually made something way worse. With all the limitless potential that 1 a new ip has with lore, world building etc, etc and 2 a space setting has, my god, it just... they're gone. It all ended with Skyrim. RIP
I think you've hit on it. Fallout 4 had it's great parts, but Starfield only emulates the worst aspects of it.
oblivion*
Skyrim was the Canary in the Coal Mine.
Passion and ambition doesnt equal quality and talent. You can be as passionate and ambitious as you want, without the talent and qualitative high work you will always produce shit. Shit you may be passionate about but in the end its shit.
The saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is hilariously ironic when it comes to Bethesda. Because everything is fucking broke, they never fix it, they break more stuff stumbling around like toddlers. AND...this is the entertainment industry. You always have to improve. This is just sad honestly. I use to adore Bethesda and defend everything they did. But now it's just an ex girlfriend feeling xD
You don't need to be a writer to be able to read, but a writer needs to be able to read. This guy can't.
This guy cannot even make words beautifully.
"Why did DB succeed? .... uuu uu mmmm" I'm a good boy ""
Rip Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls 6
people who expected anything from f5 and tes6 after f76 are a joke, proof that negative IQ is real.
I have some hope that Fallout 5 could be good if Todd, Emil and their yes men leave the studio after the Elder Scrolls 6 flop
@@maofria1452nah they already ruined the lore with the tv show
@@maofria1452 I don´t think that if Elder Scrolls 6 flop that it will Microsoft will keep them open . The will follow Ubisoft and Bioware to the grave .
@@nygeriunprence They already ruined the lore with Fallout 3, and its sequels 4 and 76. The TV show is inconsequential to the damage already done by three games released before it.
I'm sorry but if people didn't see the direction Bethesda has chosen to go after F76, then they only can blame themselves.
*after Oblivion
I saw it with Fo4
Thank you, this needs to be said more. I was offered Starfield for free by someone who still plays 76, and I refused. I knew it was going to be bad, I just didn't think I'd have overspent $0.
@@Azerkeux This. The cartoonization and infantilization of the series.
@@ShadowXII so you didn't play it at all?
Emil has no talent because a talented person wouldn't have fallen to this extreme. It took me two seconds to figure out how to make 1000 planets a little more interesting. He is an embarrassment to writing, and gaming.
I don't want 3 IPs with Bethesda. It takes 5 or 6 years to make a game, it was already too much to wait 10 years for a sequel, with 3 it will be 15 years. And I want the games to be good, not hot garbage!
i would say ftist and formost get emil out of writing department
Nah pull the IP let a young hungry studio so something Bethesda is dead has been for years siphoning off borrowed goodwill of years past problem is it's all gone @@fireballs7346
I think TES/Fallout should go to Obsidian. Close Bethesda proper and elevate their game studios.
Who cares what YOU want? I want 3 IPs. I want Starfield, but I want it good!
@@ElyonDominus lmao, so they can release mediocre uninspiring games like The Outer Worlds? No thanks.
"It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but what is?" If they'd truly stuck to that line of thinking, instead of making the game accessible to the broadest possible audience, Starfield might have ended up a quality product.
Making games for 'wider audiences' results in those games not selling well, thus reaching fewer people. A paradox.
@@Kris.G It's like a restaurant trying to sell every type of food rather than a specific type, instead of doing one thing well, you do everything badly.
And then you have less customers because anyone who wants a type of food will just visit the place that does it good instead.
Emil needs to go if there is any hope for Elder Scrolls VI
It shows that it's more than just Emil, my guess that it's a large majority that need to be replaced.
It's never gonna happen, he's a butt-buddy to Todd and Todd-man makes final decisions. Similarly, Todd will never be outed, he might retire, or will stay with the ship until the bitter end.
Todd and Pete Hines too.
Actually just throw out the entire writing team.
@@Zorothegallade-rpg Pete hines already retired last year.
@@piccoloatburgerking Good, the small fry is out. The two sharks in the pond won't be so easily convinced I'm afraid...
I'm a game dev.
I started in QA and I climbed to Game Design.
Since 2015 the Games as a Service took over and stagnated the industry.
Games cost more and more due to; Gigantic Manegerial Verticles, unmotivated devs, and a disappointed audience.
Programmers have 0 idea what the audience wants;
Artists have 0 idea what the audience wants;
Executives have 0 ideas what the audience wants;
Game Designers DON'T WANT to know what the audience wants;
All games should have been at the level of BG3 right now.
:((
The industry needs to die!
@@kenpachi1989 he won't be missing much. Game devs are one of the most underpaid people out there for the work and effort they put in to entertain.
@@kenpachi1989triple AAA? Yes. Indie and double AA? Still a chance
just keep buying indies like bg3. avoid these garbage cashgrabs
Turn based, overly sexualised and overrated? Nah I'm good
no just buy good games instead of average watered down slob that people put out. Focussing on bad games instead on good games is bad
I was posting about Bethesda's downfall and lack of creative vision + willingness to innovate technologically when I was in high school.
I graduated in 2013.
Yep. They should have done away with NetImmerse-based engines (Gamebryo and Creation) after New Vegas, granted New Vegas was most likely on Gamebryo because the fuckers only gave Obsidian a year and a half to develop it, but they KNEW the engine was a hunk of shit, especially when made with 32-bit systems in mind. They KNEW it was buggy and unstable, and by 2012 most home computers that people were playing any games on were 64-bit. I believe consoles were also 64-bit by then.
But no. They choose to re-hash Gamebryo as Creation and use it for Skyrim. Still 32-bit, still buggy as fuck, and still painfully limited. Then, in 2015 with Fallout 4, Creation. Buggy as fuck, painfully limited, but FINALLY 64-bit so now you don't get low memory crashes every 5 minutes despite having over half as much RAM as the game's entire file size.
Currently? Creation. In TES: VI? Probably Creation. Bethesda is fucking stupid, they could be hailed as heroes of the gaming industry but through their greed and hubris have become one of its greatest villains, alongside EA and Ubisoft.
The game got no negative feedback after we excluded the negative feedback
It’s amazing to see people exemplify the tale of Narcissus in such a modern example.
If it was a "small minority" they should have no issues with sales right... right?
They had no issues with the sales. Starfield sold 2.5-3mil copies so far.
@@Kris.G 3 millions copies for a triple AAA game coming from the studio who made Skyrim is terrible. BG3 has sold 15 millions copies according to its CEO and it was 7 months ago.
With a $200 million budget, the sales wouldn't be enough to break even.
The real figure has to be higher, even if we have to account the revenue coming from game pass subscriptions.
Still, this game was supposed to be the kind of game that would make people buy Xbox and be in terms of success, similar to Skyrim.
Not only it's not even close, but Bethesda has lost what little customer goodwill they somehow managed to retain after the awful Fallout 76.
@@guillaumeroussel8633 it's not 'terrible'. I get that you want the game to fail desperately but that's just your cope. I'm not interested in your cope. Starfield sold well. It had 10mil players on launch. Whether people enjoyed the game or not, is a different matter. But IT... SOLD... WELL. Not the cashcow they expected maybe, but not a failure either.
@@Kris.G I'm not coping, I'm just stating facts and you don't seem to be aware of the usual amount of sales from AAA games.
Fallout 4 sold 12 millions copies in 24 hours when it was released, Assassin's Creed Valhalla did the same in 6 months.
Call of Duty games sell way more than 10 millions copies in one year. 3 millions is also way behind what the annual releases of FIfa and NBA2k do.
Starfield, according to the 3 millions copies sold figure you gave (I think the game sold more btw) is a weak performance for a AAA game.
A 3 million sales figure alone is meaningless when it's not compared to something else and to its budget and development time.
3 million is way less than what Bethesda games usually sell and is quite under what other AAA games sell. I don't really how you can consider being considerably under the usual sale target of games of similar budget is selling well.
It's not catastrophic like Star Wars outlaws, but it's not anywhere close of the expectations a Bethesda game has.
If you still disagree, give some AAA games that have sold 3 millions copies in one year.
You'll see that they aren't many of them, and that reaching 10 millions copies with a $200 millions budget is the norm, even generic ubisoft open world games could do it.
@@guillaumeroussel8633 They're less concerned about sales and more with player count since they operate under xbox and gamepass now. That's why you see them tweet about player counts these days not sales. With gamepass involved starfield also pulls similar numbers as bg3, you can check through xbox's most played list and starfield has been there consistently. The raw numbers fluctuate of course but that's true for all games at varying levels.
- Todd & Co. do not care about the quality of their game
- They don't respect your time and experience with it
- They don't respect your business as a paying customer
- They don't respect your feedback as a player of THEIR game
So, why should we extend the same courtesy to a company who clearly doesn't give a sh*t?
does it needs to be saved? its like fighting to save "manual" ploughs when tractors started to become a thing, or closer to us... saving dial-up and fighting against high speed optics. Why do it?
As for this Emile dude, back in a day I made a calculator, using Basic, and it worked perfectly, no bugs at all, so I got every right to criticize, since I created a piece of soft that worked. Reading his interview its obvious that he knows pretty much nothing about gaming industry and gamers, he most likely played a very different game... maybe used LSD or something?
Emil has said in an interview that he doesn't play other people's games. And I understand why he doesn't because if he did, he would come to realize what he's done is hot garbage. Literally a legend in his own mind.
Pretty much. Companies like Bethesda, Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft... They're all getting a reality check now that they have actual competition.
@@kurt9395 Can you recall what kind of interview Emil said this?
However, Todd also does not play other games if these are not sports games, or races. Perhaps he also played in RDR2 and that's it.
Todd has not played RPG since 1994
@@kurt9395 Many creators in their arrogance believe that you should not get acquainted with other people's creativity - because it allegedly can affect their "uniqueness".
But in fact, they are simply afraid that their ideas are not as good as they think.
@@YarGolubev I don't remember exactly which interview Emil said that. I don't think it's the one where he talks about story and how his decision to have no more and no less than four dialog choices for every response made the dialog writers' job harder than it had to be. What I do remember is how he says there's no point in bothering to write a good story because people will ignore it and spend their time building settlements. I couldn't believe it when he said that.
Or I could be mixing it up with the Todd interview.
I can't remember who it was, but several months back someone put up a poll on RUclips asking where the next Fallout game should be set, with options like New York, and I'm positive that I wasn't the only one who wrote in "Obsidian".
Unfortunately Obsidian isnt what they used to be either. Not that they are a bad studio now but the people that made the Fallout games are largely no longer there.
The problem with this is that the two best writers for New Vegas, Chris Avellone and John Gonzalez, aren't with Obsidian anymore
@@kenpachi1989most of the people from Obsidian who made masterpieces like Fallout New Vegas aren’t there anymore. And Avowed looked kinda underwhelming to me, I don’t feel very confident in them either. If it was the same Obsidian that made New Vegas, I absolutely would believe in them
@@chidori0117 Microsoft can always bring back those old devs, just drop a truck of money on their heads and that's it, problem solved. Also Obsidian did slipped a little bit with Outer Worlds imo, this dev team always deliver solid 8 out of 10 experiences at minimum, Outer Worlds was bellow that level... but here it comes Pentiment with one of the best narratives of 2023, toe to toe with Baldur's Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2, so Obsidian still have a lot of fuel on their tanks. Avowed looked bad at first, but the world of mouth from "journalists" and "streamers" are shifting to a more positive tone, so who knows, maybe this game and Outer Worlds 2 will be be able to reach the high standards of the company yet again. I really don't care as much because I dislike first person melee combat, so I am not super hyped for Avowed AND I think they are committing a huge mistake of not renaming this game to Pillars of Eternity - Avowed. Microsoft has a very interesting rpg world at their disposal, they can produce the next Baldur's Gate 3 and then some, spin-offs based on Eora and etc.. but as usual, the Xbox game division is allergic to money and success
@@kenpachi1989 hey, you’re entitled to your opinion. And I’m not dead set that it’ll be bad. But I’m just not really a big fan of modern Obsidian. I just never felt excited about Avowed. I feel like the Outer Worlds didn’t look that great, maybe to some it was good but it felt like a worse version of Fallout in space. I only was ever a fan of Obsidian for their work on New Vegas. Hopefully Bethesda will stop being pricks and let Obsidian make Fallout and Elder Scrolls spin off games between releases, like they offered ages ago. And maybe the team will still be good, or stick to their previous design processes and they can make more Fallout New Vegas like games for the Elder Scrolls and Fallout. The gaming industry is just in a really depressing state right now, I think everyone can agree on that at least.
Emil calling Starfield the "best space simulation game out there" is positively hilarious. SPORE BACK IN 2010 was a better space simulator than Starfield is today, and don't even get me on actually good space simulators like EVE Online or No Man's Sky...
NMS is not a good space simulator. Just like Townscaper is not a good city sim.
Kris why are you posting such weak b8? I told you to step up your game. If you ant backing up your hot takes with at least 2 paragraphs of at least believable or opinion based bullshit, imma have to slap you.
It's funny, the only time I remember Starfield exists is when news breaks about how it's getting worse..
The only thing he says that's actually true is that this dlc (and Starfailed in general) is giving players what they deserve.
I mean, if you are still buying Bethesda games after the bs that was 76 and Fallout 4 before it then you deserve to be treated like this. Because you obviously can't help yourself and will continue buying this trash no matter what.
For those people, the saying should be « Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me! Fool me for the 15th time, I’m so proud of being fooled by you, Todd! »
why are always we the ones who get blamed for these studios delivering bad products ? toxic gamer minority here small group of haters there ... and so on ... is there noone who can refelct and see what the problem is ?
They act like they are the single, mother of yours with 4 kids, trying to feed you the best she can, "this is the best we can do with this engine", "it ha slimitations". You ungrateful kids.
They forget that they have the money to build a new engine.
I don’t understand people. Bethesda has been shit for near 15 years. People were just somehow blind to this.
The best “Bethesda” game WASN’T even made by Bethesda. It was Obsidian.
This. People praise Fallout 3 but it was absolutely disappointing compared to Fallout 1 and 2, full of inconsistencies and retcons to the lore. And don't get me started on the main story ending...
Bethesda's last truly good game was Skyrim. Although that was actually dumbed down from FO3, which in some respects was dumbed down from Oblivion, many still feel Morrowind is their best game. I don't think anyone puts anything after Skyrim as their favorite game, or "best" in any respect, apart from FO4 which arguably has the best feeling combat.
@@richardsims5158 I'm sorry but Skyrim wasn't a good game.
It was an OK modding platform.
Seriously go and play that game again without mods.
Not the re-released, filled with fan-content 6 years after the fact editions, go play base Skyrim again.
It's really not good.
@ThoraeJenkins
I played base Skyrim for over a year before I got mods for it. I adored it. Looking back, it has obvious flaws, but I liked it despite that.
I think Behesda is free falling ever since the Oblivion days (the name is fitting), when you take in consideration how Persona 4 was released in the same year of Oblivion... and later a even more crazy expose, Witcher 2 was released in the same year of Skyrim, lol how can you reach the conclusion that Bethesda was ever up to standards? Not even as a rpg, but the sandbox elements either. A bunch of Bethesda apologists mention how Morrowind is this amazing game, I can't really judge because I've never played this game, but ever since Oblivion I played all of their stuff (only finished Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4 infested with mods) and ALL of them are very flawed, the writing especially, it's awful. Nowadays we have to pretend Bethesda was always amazing and they are imploding just now? C'mon now, always overrated and incompetent, blatantly taking advantage of the modding community (free labor with zero legal consequences)
I don't want ES 6 or FO5 to be good. I've lost all the love i have for Bethesda. Milking Skyrim for 10+ years? Then giving us Fallout 4 which is the least fallout feeling game ive ever played with railroady dialog options. Then the shitter that is Starfield. Yeah, i want the next games to be so bad that they just eat crow and pull a Concord and cancel them.
Watch out. Idiots are coming to tell you failout 4 is the best game EVAR!
Yeah, there are multiple big game publishers that I think needs to shut down and fail in order for the game industry to heal and start making quality games again
@@Fred-rv2tu Fallout 4 is my most played Fallout game (I've never played New Vegas but I know it's great), but I wouldn't recommend it
@@fakskis it’s not terrible. But it was dumbed down and disappointing after 3 and NV. It’s like whichever season of game of thrones made you realize it was going wrong before season 8. Fallout 3 is amazing though if you haven’t played it either. The tale of two wastelands mod is the best way to play 3 and NV btw. Definitely worth your time.
Devils advocate here, but Skyrim sold each and every time that happened and still has an insane amount of players. Is it milking when it’s also something people want?
Btw if you want a world to "live in" start Satisfactory. I don't know what happened, but I no longer have friends, or family, there is only lizard doggo. Life itself only exists to further my pursuit of automation. I sleep and I dream of Mercer spheres. I wake and open the game before I even pee.
pls help
Satisfactory, Factorio, Rimworld and Kenshi have joined the chat, and brother, your social life is about to get its holes expanded.
"It doesn't matter what your favorite is, it's not Starfield". That pretty much sums the game up as well as anything I've heard.
No new ideas, just rehash the same, terrible dialogue, awful facial animations. These people have given up imo. They don't want to produce anything of worth because the end of gaming is in sight and they know it. The same with movies, rehash, rewrite unwind the core and make it ESG/DEI. Destroy beloved titles simply because they can and are having a blast upsetting the fan base, all the while gaslighting and still people buy this stuff.
Shattered Space looks like it was a cut faction from the base game imo. Why introduce it in the base game and then not explore it, that says to me they intended to split it off to sell as a DLC.
🤷♀
I think it's less "given up" and more "they've been complacent for a while and now got suckerpunched by reality", and looking at it from Bethesda's POV, it makes sense.
Since the days of Morrowind they've been essentially making and selling the same rehashed game on the same buggy engine. For every innovation they do in each game, they strip out or simplify a mechanic, and disregard what the old teams that since moved on did before them. And they've been rewarded for this behavior so far. Yes, the fans of Daggerfall were upset with the changes made to Morrowind, but hey, the company was saved from closing, the audience of new players vastly outnumber the old fans, and sales are doing better than they've ever done before. Yes, the fans of Morrowind were upset with the changes made to Oblivion, but hey, we've released to critical acclaim, the number of new players/fans vastly outnumber the old fans, and sales are doing better than they've ever done before. Repeat some variation of that over and over (disregarding Fallout 76 and ESO since neither are core games of theirs, and are made by their parent company with help from all other divisions IIRC, tho i could be wrong) until we get to Starfield which got an underwhelming reception, a new player base that not only doesn't outnumber the old fans, they're also looking at their older titles and drawing comparisons, and sales are doing pretty bad, all things considered.
Even tho they're doing exactly what they did when they made Skyrim a success....not understanding that you can do too much of something (in this case cutting and streamlining mechanics instead of building on and improving them) and that if something worked in 2006, then it worked in 2006. It might work in 2008 or 2011, but might not fly all the way in 2024. Reminds me of the quote from one of the Fallout 76 dev: “Bethesda is a big company that thinks it’s a small company,” with a mentality of “well, this worked in the ‘90s, so we’re just gonna keep doing it.”
I don't think it's them mostly pretending either, from their POV, they went from releasing banger after banger each doing better than the last and everyone loving them, hailing them as industry darlings, and yeah some people complained about the quality and some erm, controversies, but it was like a small vocal minority that was mostly disenfranchised fans yelling at the void....to the reception of Starfield.
Just because they did not have time to polish to the release. But for the next year they have even more content with starborns
Which were also cut out of the release and will be disclosed later
Emil's gaslighting comments are a simplistic rallying cry to the fanboi's, investors and fools
Lol true bethesda fan boys will always be there to eat out bethesdas axx .
B.G.S. needs professional writers. The artists, and designers are top tier. The writing in the last few tittles is for 8 year old children.
they also need to overhaul their engine fundamentally
or just use a new one
artist maybe, but their game design is literally the worst part, and Emil is Lead Designer. bethesda needs to clean house completely and get new everything. Todd and Emil should retire and never touch a game again.
wouldnt say their artist are top either though, just passable, last time they did anything interesting art-wise was Morrowind, everything since then is pretty classic generic Fantasy, or generic post-apocolyptic, and now pretty boring generic space style. and inside all those games, are the same useless props you see everywhere copy pasted, only a handful of weapons and armor, and re used assets everywhere.
I don't know... the assault rifles and trains look total trash in Fallout 4.
Nah game design is bad. Ship building and the rest of the game is so disconnected. Just how the main quest in fallout 4 and settlement building where completely isolated from each other. It’s so strange to have mechanics that should feed off each other seperated to such a degree
@@JNJNRobin1337 Starfield was an overhauled engine. The engine is just fundamentally flawed, architecturally flawed, graphically flawed, performance flawed. They don't have the experience nor the ability to rewrite it into a modern engine.
I've never understood the way people like him try to talk up their games. If I decide I really dislike the game after several hours, him showing up on an interview saying it's actually fun isn't going to make me go "Oh ok, changed my mind! I guess I loved it, I'll go play more!" What does he think he's accomplishing by making an absolute clown of himself?
Ever since Fallout 4 Todd Howard's self-esteem is just delirious, and naturally he's surrounded himself with like-minded people. If this comes as a surprise to anyone I don't know what to say. The biggest mystery is why Microsoft keeps dumping money on companies like these.
Bethesda has been on a downfall since Oblivion. Every game they released kept watering down the experience to get a broader audience. They were still good games, Fallout 4 even if i hated it as a fallout rpg was a good game. Then 76 happened, and now Starfield. And it's not just the watering down but also blantant incompetence.
The elephant in the room is that it's not "watering down" that people don't like. Later Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3, NV, and 4 pivoted to a more Action RPG focus over the old-school turn-based/real time "turn-based" formulas of FO 1/2, Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind.
The thing people don't like is called Woke. A word that Woke people try to water down the definition of (despite them having invented the term) but that everyone knows exactly what it means. Starfield is BORING not because you don't randomly miss your shots based on a statblock.
@@KopperNeoman plenty of people hate starfield without knowing anything about the woke stuff in the game (which there 100% is, like the whole colonization speech given to you by a dead black man). I wouldnt just say everyone is aware of all the cancer in the game and that they're hating it cause theyre super aware. There are very easy to spot, surface level glaring problems with the game that normies will point out
@@KopperNeoman Baldur's Gate 3 is way more "woke" than Starfield. You can change gender, have female body with male genitals or vice versa, almost every character is bisexual, you choose your pronouns and whether you identify as male, female or neither regardless of your body, etc. etc.
Starfield's problems have got absolutely nothing to do with being "woke".
(From the way you write, I'm pretty sure you don't even know the original meaning of woke, it means "to be alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination". No so-called "woke person" is trying to water down that meaning)
I look forward to buying "Starfield: Titanium Edition: Director's Cut: Complete Experience" in 2030 for $0.99 on Instant Gaming.
Poor Emil has just OD'd on his own bullsh*t.
Biggest problem I have with bethesda is that they've barely updated their core systems.
Accidentally pick up a plate and everyone attacks you? That's how it's been since morrowind.
if bethesda games were 25 bucks, huge worlds filled with a small amount of good content, and a really good platform for modding, I would have no problem with it. but their games are some of the most expensive, even Skyrim over a decade later, and they regularly break their own mods with updates. Nobody wants. They are so close to understanding the point, which is the frustrating part.
Just hope that Microsoft has another one of their studios take advantage of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls IPs.
I'd really love it if Microsoft just tells Bethesda they don't have time to wait for them to finish Elder Scrolls before working on Fallout 5 so they're passing Fallout 5 to Obsidian.
@@illuminotme825this honestly would be a smart idea. Only assuming Obsidian has the man power to do it of course since they have their own games.
@@dychostarrhonestly it doesn't even have to be obsidian they just have to hire back a bunch of the people that worked on New Vegas im pretty sure most of them left obsidian years ago
@@illuminotme825 Obsidian is bad now
@@illuminotme825 Obsidian said they're willing to work on a fallout game but can't do it right now due to avawoed and outer worlds 2. So microsoft needs to find another studio.
People might not like it, but Emil is kinda right; Shattered Space is what Bethesda customers deserve
I get what you mean but we don't deserve it. We deserve a good product as we are the customers and we don't owe them anything. The wallet stays closed. The stick is being deployed.
@@Kris.GSo... It seems pretty evident that Bethesda's opinion about its community is very low
I think they're basically saying that they are making games to please their shareholders. And as long they were able to deliver to them, they are fine. All criticism is, for them, just hate. Nothing to do with rational thinking, or sanse of taste.
@@leandrolezcano9524 delusion when confronted with reality makes people irrational and defensive -> Emil P.
@@Kris.G I agree
Todd used to be an asset for Bethesda. Now he is a liability.
Interesting that Pagliarulo started on Oblivion which for most OG Elder Scrolls fans is the point where the series turned bad. I'd still put the main blame on Howard though, it was the Howardization aka dumbing down, conveniencialization and shallowization that gave the games after Morrowind that big success with wider audiences until they finally overdid it and ended up with those boxes of meaninglessness even those wider audiences are bored with.
Turning the Elder Scrolls lore and mechanics into a shallow puddle was easy, but now dredging it and bringing back depth will require fresh personnel. Because Howard and Pagliarulo have only made it shallower for their whole careers.
Back in Morrowind's day, people thought it was a dumbing down of Daggerfall. The problem that people actually DON'T LIKE is far more recent than a simple "casualisation of RPG mechanics" - it's all in the DEI.
I remember there was an interview with him, where he said, that he wanted to implement some of the Thief mechanics, like moss arrows, water arrows and other stuff, but didn't, because he knew modders would do it for them. And of course, he was right.
Emil began work with the DLC for Morrowind
Bloodmoon(2002-2003)
The best thing Bethesda ever did was let Obsidian do fallout new vegas
Their goal is to create a brand called Starfield not a game. The original Elder Scrolls or Fallout they were trying to make a game , the brand evolved of itself.
Bethesda didnt create Fallout, Black Isle and Interplay did. Get it right.
I fear what they'll "cook" for TES VI.
a woke half finished mess.
💩
@@user-ip6wq7vr7m Sounds about right... sadly enough
They had a working prototype for the game a year ago.
Same engine, same slop.
They're gonna burn the kitchen down💀
Yeowch.... that interview is uhh, not a good look...
He sounds like a legit narcissist. And when you combine Emil's words, with how upset and out of touch Todd was when Starfield did not win GOTY, it is very clear that Bethesda are in an echo chamber and have become delusional.
"Bethesda RPG, which is very specific to them and that people love"
And that is why Bethesda were so harrowed by Fallout New Vegas. Seeing another company make a Bethesda game better than they could was an existential crisis for them.
What has Bethesda learned? Absolutely nothing.
Bethesda was too far gone when Skyrim came out. Todd is a bad game developer. He always was.
They needed a wake up call before Starfield launched.
They had plenty of it but chose to ignore it.
This is normal bethesda. They always learn the wrong lessons from their games. Be it post morrowind, post Oblivion and so on. Its just people kept proving their mindset right and they spoke about this even. How their decisions might be disliked but they keep selling more so theyre clearly correct.
This has been a rot in the studio for decades. Its surprising people only now see it. None of this is remotely new.
I agree its the same people at bethesda and lucasfilm. These out of touch toxic positivity people that can no longer tell a turd from a chocolate bar that are running the show and these franchises into the ground.
"out of touch toxic positivity people that can no longer tell a turd from a chocolate bar" Oh, they can tell the difference, alright. They're just upset because their customer base has also (finally) learned to tell the difference, and have rejected the turd.
You articulated your points very well. Glad I found your channel!
I'm done with any future Fallout games anyway after the way they completely trashed the lore in the Amazon show. It would be fine except for the fact that they're going to bring that trashed lore into the games.
NCR gets nuked because they can't be bothered to make a show where the world is rebuilding itself. So they just destroyed the world a second time.
IGN couldn't help themselves from giving the expansion their classic 7/10
Emil has ruined every Bethesda game he’s written for, absolute hack writer who’s only still employed because he’s friends with his boss Todd
Gives me a good reason to be thankful for the old games.
All the new ones regress together with their studio policies.
I feel like I've been ahead of the curve on Bethesda's hubris ever since they released a Fallout 4 Game of the year edition... in 2015... the year Witcher 3 Wild Hunt came out...
Witcher 3 was the one game that got me to uninstall Skyrim. Even with a premade character like Geralt or Ciri, IT still tells a better story then anything Bethesda has released.
Fallout 4 in 2015: *Borderlands-esque cartoony pastel graphics* "LOOK HOW REALISTIC WE ARE!"
The Witcher 3, also in 2015: "This game looks photorealistic"
The Witcher 3 in 2024: "Why does real life look like its graphical settings are on medium?"
The art style and map was one of the few good things about fallout 4 @@lsswappedcessna
Emil's Ego just won't allow him to accept criticism.
I wouldn't even give ten cent for it 😁
Ba dum tish
That's the thing. They worked hard, while they should have worked smart.
What I hate the most is how snob Microsoft looked. I remember when Sarah Bond said it was the most anticipated RPG of the last decade. I know it's not everyones cup of tea, but at that time, Nintendo had just released Tears of the kingdom. Bethesda is full of themself.
The issue is both Todd Howard and Emil Pagliarulo have always shown pretty strong signs of a tendency towards a Megalomaniac Narcissistic (and almost Psychopathic) form personality with some delusional schizophrenic tendencies. What's been happening was implied since 20 years ago.
I've been describing this situation since TES IV Oblivion, 20 years ago, and all relevant events just keep adding up every single day and perfectly demonstrating I wasn't catastrophising, I was just properly describing the unfolding of events.
Emil's best works come from an era when he wasn't so egotistically self-absorbed with his self-perceived godly superiority over all other human beings (back then he was obese, then he lost 250 pounds and convinced himself he's the most important Chad on Earth).
Todd Howard's best work comes from an era when he didn't have any power and no-one would listen to him.
❤
Emil has always been bad
But then he was not the main one. And his trash - was disguised as the good work of everyone else.
Todd was good in administering. But he believed that he is a genius
I don't get it. Starfield is just more of the same crap they've always done. Why is the bad writing, the bad characters, the bad gameplay systems, the crappy UI, the stupid quests and the overall jankiness a problem now, but somehow everyone still has fond memories of FO3 and Skyrim, games that were every bit as bad (or actually worse) in pretty much every regard? Did the semi-compelling Open World exploration stuff really effectively paper over the fact that Beth RPGs have always been kind of garbage?
To answer your question, kind of. And to build on an answer, Skyrim and fallout 4 were outdated in most ways upon release but Bethesda games have only continued to fall farther behind
Yes
The Games are evolving Dude, from other Studios, Bethesda Games were Always chunky and bugged plagued, but Back 20-15 years ago it was "Hightech and peak of what is possible" , fresh and unique. But Back then they had good Storys, evil paths ect, now you Take todays Bethesda Games, with the Same crap 15-20 years ago but you Take good Storys and the RPG expirience Out of it, all you get is just a blund, boring buggy mess. People are tired of it. Rightfully so. Bethesda never evolved Out from it, These people legit living in the years from 2000-2010 xD
Because youre wrong. Skyrim and all the other Fallout games have amazing memorable characters that people love to this day. Average writing =/= Bad writing, and Starfield is just plain bad writing while the other games are serviceable. Bethesda has always been about freedom and exploring a world and Starfield is unique that it abandons everything Bethesda is good at it and replacing it with nothing.
@@UltimegaSeven No, I'm not wrong. They were always bad. FO:NV had great characters but that wasn't made by Bethesda. FO3 had idiots like Three Dog. If that's your idea of a great character, then you're obviously the target demographic.
Call me a Morrowind boomer if you want but they've been declining badly since Skyrim. The only reason Skyrim got so popular was the circumstances under which it was released. That console generation brought in a lot of kids/casuals that had never experienced anything like that. It had a lot of good qualities, but overall was seriously inferior to earlier games in the series.
Hot take, Starfield isn't that far away in overall quality from Skyrim and FO4.
Yeah, Bethesda has had the same problems for decades, they are just getting more glaring.
I love Skyrim, but it is extremely basic for its writing, quest design, combat, watered down rpg systems. It's only popular for how accessible it is while makes things seem grander than they really are. Goes to be known as biggest open world ever for its time even tho Oblivion was bigger, Morrowwind was bigger, especially Daggerfall was bigger.
Skyrim has to be literally carried by mods bc the game genuinely sucks vanilla. I've been saying this for years at this point, but Bethesda fanboys are like actual sheep.
@@darksungwyndolin8305 As an Elder Scrolls fan, I will insist that the same is true for Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion. They're amazing due to their skeletons, and all need mods to flesh those skeletons out.
For what it's worth I actually liked Skyrim more than Oblivion, but whatever... It's not like I'm crazy about either of them anyway.
The problem with the whole Emil drama is that people blame him specifically for everything. Emil may be really bad at his job but he's still just one man. Even if we speak just about the writing of the games, the only reason why Emil does so much damage is because people above him, those who make decisions, look at everything he's doing and say "looks great". The problem isn't just Emil, it's the entirety of Bethesda. The truth its that Bethesda didn't go downhill, it was never good in the first place and in recent years they simply got so complacent that there's no way to deny that anymore.
@@kenpachi1989 Yes. The reason why people remember their older games fondly isn't because of their quality, it's because there simply wasn't anyone else who was making similar things. Bioware before Mass Effect was making much-much better games, but they simply didn't have this large open world. Their only real competitor was Gothic.
But here is what business - in Starfield's credits, only one writer is indicated - Emil (there is another freelance person, but from his words, he edited Emil's texts)
500 studio people - and only one writer!
In the witcher3 - there are 20 of them!
In BG3 - there are 30 of them!
What was there in Morrowind from at least 5!
Emil simply threw all those who wanted to write scripts from the studio
The last whom he threw out - was Kurt Kulman
@@YarGolubev Do you really believe that Emil could write the entierety of Starfield alone with one other guy helping him? I sure don't. Narrative writing is hard, man. I know cause I did it before. If there were only 2 people writing it, it still wouldn't have released.
@@BIGESTblade just go to the credits of the game. There are only 2 writers! :) You don't have to take my word for it. And yes, there are a couple more people - they wrote on linkedin that they worked on the lyrics in Starkfield. But I didn't find them in the credits.
@@YarGolubev I do believe you that this is what credits say. I do not believe the credits themselves.
To be clear, New Vegas and its dlc were all not developed by Bethesda, that was Obsidian.
Bethesda was the publisher
As the head of a tiny studio, my company is putting out a demo of our game soon so we can get feedback on what people like/dislike so that we can make changes.
They've been like this, since FO4. "The fans don't know what they're talking about!", "Just be quiet, and buy product!".
They've entered a vicious cycle where they keep rewarding themselves for their own shitty practices.