• switchboard_pete@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    counterpoint: if it isn’t the engine holding them back, then everyone left is just fundamentally bad at designing games (i’m not counting “let’s just copy what we designed last time” as design), and that’s worse

    • CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      then everyone left is just fundamentally bad at designing games

      Obviously. The problem with Bethesda was never the damn engine, they’ve been consecutively dumbing down their games ever since Oblivion. The only anomaly was New Vegas made by Obsidian, which are actually competent at making RPGs and even with the dated FO3 engine at the time they managed to make one of the best games ever. The problem was never the engine, it’s their game design philosophy.

      • switchboard_pete@fedia.io
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 month ago

        the average player doesn’t care about crunchy rpg systems. they do care if the core gameplay would’ve been outdated in 2010.

        bethesda doesn’t seem to be able to improve the core gameplay because the engine can’t cope.

        even if you fixed the writing and tossed out the awful procedural generation in favor of hand-crafted environments, at it heart it’s still going to play like a stripped down borderlands 1

        • CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 month ago

          bethesda doesn’t seem to be able to improve the core gameplay because the engine can’t cope.

          No, Bethesda can’t improve because they keep catering for the lowest common denominator, engine has never had anything to do with it, it never has. They don’t need a complex RPG system with a ton of flashy new things; New Vegas wasn’t complex, it was fairly streamlined as far as RPGs go, what they need is better writers and better game designers that know how make interesting worlds, quests, characters and gameplay mechanics.

          even if you fixed the writing and tossed out the awful procedural generation in favor of hand-crafted environments, at it heart it’s still going to play like a stripped down borderlands 1

          Because they’ve been dumbing down their games since forever, bring back more robust roleplay with more actions and consequences, fully fleshed out mechanics, get better writers. Just look at Fallout: London, despite the bugs everyone that has played it agrees it’s the best “Bethesda game” since New Vegas, another game that wasn’t actually made by Bethesda. I’ll repeat: the problem was never the engine.