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Ever since Oblivion, the flagship titles have become more expansive, with more gameplay options, but very rarely have they taken features out (and let’s not have the “it is dumbed down”-discussion, while features have changed they have not been removed). The thing is really that Bethesda’s flagship titles are not really ditching anything while moving to implement popular features. Larger budgets and brand recognition could keep them riding along on their own coattails for years to come. Of course, it may be that that won’t matter for a long while. They aren’t going to be able to set themselves apart from the competition as much as they used to. And while crafting and building games may be less common on console, there are still more and more high quality, simulationist open world games, like the new Zelda, Phantom Pain, or any Far Cry game.īasically, Bethesda is moving away from the one thing they’ve been good at for decades (massive, detailed single player RPGs in persistent worlds) in order to follow the herd that grazes in the wake of Minecraft. Of course, there are so far a lot fewer on console, but I imagine that will change. You can already find dozens of open world fantasy crafting games on Steam. This seems likely to put them in competition with more and more similar games. Not saying that building a castle isn’t fun, but the point is that you will find an increasingly vast number of games that let you do that. The only reason they get away with this is because they’re the only studio that can offer this kind of gameplay. The important thing is that there’s no point in attempting to modernize their engine without first addressing the systemic problems with their development process. Honestly, if anyone else ever figured out to make a Skyrim-esque experience Bethesda could find themselves in serious trouble. Sound levels are random and many locations lack a soundscape. The texture resolutions are hilarious inconsistent in a way that wastes tons of graphics memory but also leaves important scenery looking blurry. And of course the games have always been prone to crashes.Īnd then there are the problems that aren’t really the fault of the engine, but are nevertheless pervasive in their games. The triggers for starting quest events and conversations feel like they’re governed by a random number generator. The level-load that happens between interior and exterior locations is pretty anachronistic. Their physics engine is prone to ridiculous mishaps.
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Their stealth AI is embarrassing by today’s standards. This is not to say their engine couldn’t use some work. My column this week is about Bethesda’s reputation as a bug factory and why replacing their game engine wouldn’t fix that.