There is a tendency when dunking on Bethesda games, to criticize them from the lens of their failure to be like other RPGs- The Witcher 3 is more cinematic and refined, Baldur's Gate 3 more densely written, Fallout 1 more actually good, so on and so forth. The truth is that Bethesda games suck much more tragically and pathetically on their own terms than in comparison to other games, Todd Howard who began his career with monumental works of termite art in the end forsook the dream of the Bethesda game. The dream of the bethesda game was always to create a holodeck, a simulation for you to inhabit totally- 'Why the hell would I pick up a spoon?' someone asks, perfectly reasonably expecting game mechanics to exist for gameplay reasons, but it's just that you can pick up spoons because it's something a person is able to do. Personally I think this dream is perhaps misguided, but nevertheless they pursued it, which is admirable in its own right.
"With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created."
The message you receive upon killing a crucial NPC points towards the commitment towards the holodeck dream, it will continue on even if you totally fuck up, and indeed there are generally ways around the death of those crucial NPCs provided you understand the simulation.
And fear of people misunderstanding the simulation is what drove bethesda to make many crucial NPCs invulnerable in Oblivion, you never know when you're actually in a simulation or not anymore, even as the NPC AI had become much more sophisticated with schedules, likes, dislikes and habits, the places you could engage shrunk, and then even the ambitious NPC AI in subsequent games was stripped back for ever more presentable and simpler systems, to the point of Starfield doing deliberately what Morrowind had done out of technical limitations 20 years prior: 24/7 vendor NPCs with no schedules, likes or dislikes, who exist only in service of the player.
But maybe most telling of all, was that in Fallout 4 they decided that the player need a good reason to pick up a spoon.
"With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created."
The message you receive upon killing a crucial NPC points towards the commitment towards the holodeck dream, it will continue on even if you totally fuck up, and indeed there are generally ways around the death of those crucial NPCs provided you understand the simulation.
And fear of people misunderstanding the simulation is what drove bethesda to make many crucial NPCs invulnerable in Oblivion, you never know when you're actually in a simulation or not anymore, even as the NPC AI had become much more sophisticated with schedules, likes, dislikes and habits, the places you could engage shrunk, and then even the ambitious NPC AI in subsequent games was stripped back for ever more presentable and simpler systems, to the point of Starfield doing deliberately what Morrowind had done out of technical limitations 20 years prior: 24/7 vendor NPCs with no schedules, likes or dislikes, who exist only in service of the player.
But maybe most telling of all, was that in Fallout 4 they decided that the player need a good reason to pick up a spoon.
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@Scamsley
Absolutely, for all of its very deliberate back steps I think the new AI systems of Oblivion were a natural evolution from Morrowind. I think expanding the ways a player could progress the game without as much dungeon crawling combat would also be really beneficial. STALKER is a really good touch point for Bethesda games that is rarely cited I think, though the narrower scope gives them a much clearer direction in terms of what elements should be simulated in the first place, a mix of more simulation elements and denser RPG abstractions at the same time would have worked best, even at the cost of combat and gamefeel improving less, it would be an easy trade.
Absolutely, for all of its very deliberate back steps I think the new AI systems of Oblivion were a natural evolution from Morrowind. I think expanding the ways a player could progress the game without as much dungeon crawling combat would also be really beneficial. STALKER is a really good touch point for Bethesda games that is rarely cited I think, though the narrower scope gives them a much clearer direction in terms of what elements should be simulated in the first place, a mix of more simulation elements and denser RPG abstractions at the same time would have worked best, even at the cost of combat and gamefeel improving less, it would be an easy trade.
The object picking up mechanic obviously serves the mechanic of stealing shit unlike in any other game. And roleplaying somebody who steals is one of the main avenues of roleplay -- one of the core decisions you make.
@RUINISM I didn't say picking up objects was a useless mechanic I said picking up spoons was worthless, which it is, there's dozens if not hundreds of clutters items with an atrocious weight/value ratio, it would have been easier to simply only to make some objects collectible by the player and generally this is the model followed by other games where stealing is a mechanic. This oddity of Bethesda games where you could collect countless useless objects was such a weird element that the huge minds at penny arcade deigned to comment on it back in the day
@Herbert It's not useless unless you deem the game's currency as useless. Now whether it is worth the technical price that Bethesda pays for having it in the game due to the fact they structure their engine around it is another matter (and one where I would budge), but it is not useless: it enables players to roleplay as (petty) thieves. Oh, and decorate their homes, lol.
Whether Penny Arcade has made fun of it or not doesn't really pertain to the matter of the design.
Whether Penny Arcade has made fun of it or not doesn't really pertain to the matter of the design.
@RUINISM role playing a petty thief who collects near worthless household items is objectively a wildly ineffective way to play the game. Understand that this is not a criticism, this is part of what made these games Holodecks, and turning all of these items into crafting items for upgrades to weapons in Fallout 4 is an example of moving away from the holodeck towards creating a more ordinary videogame
Scamsley
16 days ago
Possibly the best assessment of Bethesda's downfall though, honestly. Do you think there's a world in which Morrowind's dream could've been better realized, if Bethesda did not go down their doomed path? Maybe something like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., focusing more on the direct mechanical simulation?