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An Incomplete History Of Bethesda Game Studio Titles
- Thread starter Huntn
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I’ve got Skyrim on both Steam and GOG and it’s set on the latter not to update. I hate that Steam is now forcing games to update! 😡
Thanks op, great thread.
I came to bgs quite late only first playing Skyrim 6 years after it was released.
(Hey, I’m a Mac user & my mbp could only just about run the original Skyrim on win10 by then!).
Skyrim is of course, their masterpiece and anyone who even vaguely likes rpg games and open world games should play it.
Skyrim itself looks amazing even on the original 2011 version. And the best open game world ever twinned with the best ost music ever - well it’s quite a combination and as you play you’ll get some incredibly memorable moments, as Skyrim itself really is the main character of this game.
The main story is epic. It does have some flaws though, in that you can become the leader of not one but four guilds - whatever your spec (my stealth archer with barely leveller magic of any school, becomes the leader of the melee focussed warrior’s guild. Ok).
Fallout 4 was my next and is a big big favourite of mine. Let’s call it ‘Skyrim with guns’)
The main story is compelling (you do need to suspend your disbelief at some points and enjoy the ride though).
Boston and the commonwealth is full of personality and a really memorable setting, beautifully realised. Some great evocative music too - although not as good as Skyrim’s but then what other ost could be?
Some great factions, side missions, companion characters and some wonderful dlcs (far harbor is the best).
Highly recommended.
Fallout 76 was next.
Unlike the op, I do like it a lot.
Thankfully the adapted ageing fallout 4 Engine could only handle 24 players per instance & as the map is so huge the game is more or less like a single player game most of the time.
Did I mention the map? Appalachia / West Virginia is stunningly realised and it’s absolutely huge. Again, it has some incredibly evocative music.
The back story as to what happened in Appalachia is v v great & you get to learn all about it via the original main quest… which somewhat confusingly, is now set a year before the new primary quest featuring npcs & they both take you to the same places. Doh.
Some gripes. No companions which is a shame. Appalachia can feel mighty lonely if you play it as a single player game (which most people do when levelling). The fallout 4 engine it uses is looking old (and is capped out at 1440p).
I then went back and played fallout new Vegas, which even with mods, felt too old in this decade and a game of a different era. I hope we get a really good remaster with modern features to accompany s2 of the tv show.
Next up starfield. Like the op, I was hugely disappointed and it makes me concerned for the future of bgs.
The pros:
The hard sci nasapunk game world looks great. Some fantastic companions with great voice acting. Some fun side quest chains. Combat is good. Voiced player character leads to immersive conversations with proper cut scenes.
The cons:
the main story starts off well and then falls off a cliff. Mostly ‘ok’ writing and dialog. The attempt to make a (mostly) hard sci game has really constrained them.
The load screens. So many load screens which just kills the immersion. This is ridiculous in a game from 2023 especially when cyberpunk 2077 has barely any.
The game world. Lots of instances with fast travel baked in and is unavoidable. No exploring a huge map for you, just desolate planets with nothing much going on.
Dull and unimmersive. Npcs still talk to you from the waist up, like they did in oblivion. And the player character is silent, which makes it feel stilted. Again, compare with cyberpunk. Bgs seem to think it’s amazing for the player to be able to have key conversations with npcs wherever you’d like, but this is no good when the npc is facing away from you.
Did I mention that the game still has the same sort of bugs as Skyrim, which was forgiveable in a hugely ambitious game from 2011, but not in 2023?
It’s a hugely disappointing game which is basically unfixable as the core mechanic - lots of tiny instances that you need to to fast travel to - is at the centre of it.
Then oblivion remaster which I’m currently playing. I have to stay it’s disappointing. Without nostalgia fuelling me, what we get is a game that feels like it’s from 2006 but with better visuals. Better. Not great. All the time I’m playing it I’m wishing that they basically had redone everything in the style of Skyrim.
I’d still like to play a redone fallout new vegas though. And fallout 3.
To finally finish up though - I’ve loved playing bgs’ games but I’m concerned that they have lost their way and still think that skyrim is the gold standard when games with other studies are leapfrogging past them.
For me, I had an incredible time playing cyberpunk 2077 (in 2024 - it needed a lot of fixing until phantom liberty came out) with its immersive story, npcs and scenes plus incredible graphics and character models with fantastic writing and voice acting - and a fully voiced player character!
Compared to starfield that even with a number of patches is still only just a ‘good’ - and only just about good - game. I’d only recommend it to someone who is already paying for games pass though.
So whilst I’m looking forward to TES 6 and fallout 5 - I’m not confident that bgs can deliver anymore. Let’s see.
I came to bgs quite late only first playing Skyrim 6 years after it was released.
(Hey, I’m a Mac user & my mbp could only just about run the original Skyrim on win10 by then!).
Skyrim is of course, their masterpiece and anyone who even vaguely likes rpg games and open world games should play it.
Skyrim itself looks amazing even on the original 2011 version. And the best open game world ever twinned with the best ost music ever - well it’s quite a combination and as you play you’ll get some incredibly memorable moments, as Skyrim itself really is the main character of this game.
The main story is epic. It does have some flaws though, in that you can become the leader of not one but four guilds - whatever your spec (my stealth archer with barely leveller magic of any school, becomes the leader of the melee focussed warrior’s guild. Ok).
Fallout 4 was my next and is a big big favourite of mine. Let’s call it ‘Skyrim with guns’)
The main story is compelling (you do need to suspend your disbelief at some points and enjoy the ride though).
Boston and the commonwealth is full of personality and a really memorable setting, beautifully realised. Some great evocative music too - although not as good as Skyrim’s but then what other ost could be?
Some great factions, side missions, companion characters and some wonderful dlcs (far harbor is the best).
Highly recommended.
Fallout 76 was next.
Unlike the op, I do like it a lot.
Thankfully the adapted ageing fallout 4 Engine could only handle 24 players per instance & as the map is so huge the game is more or less like a single player game most of the time.
Did I mention the map? Appalachia / West Virginia is stunningly realised and it’s absolutely huge. Again, it has some incredibly evocative music.
The back story as to what happened in Appalachia is v v great & you get to learn all about it via the original main quest… which somewhat confusingly, is now set a year before the new primary quest featuring npcs & they both take you to the same places. Doh.
Some gripes. No companions which is a shame. Appalachia can feel mighty lonely if you play it as a single player game (which most people do when levelling). The fallout 4 engine it uses is looking old (and is capped out at 1440p).
I then went back and played fallout new Vegas, which even with mods, felt too old in this decade and a game of a different era. I hope we get a really good remaster with modern features to accompany s2 of the tv show.
Next up starfield. Like the op, I was hugely disappointed and it makes me concerned for the future of bgs.
The pros:
The hard sci nasapunk game world looks great. Some fantastic companions with great voice acting. Some fun side quest chains. Combat is good. Voiced player character leads to immersive conversations with proper cut scenes.
The cons:
the main story starts off well and then falls off a cliff. Mostly ‘ok’ writing and dialog. The attempt to make a (mostly) hard sci game has really constrained them.
The load screens. So many load screens which just kills the immersion. This is ridiculous in a game from 2023 especially when cyberpunk 2077 has barely any.
The game world. Lots of instances with fast travel baked in and is unavoidable. No exploring a huge map for you, just desolate planets with nothing much going on.
Dull and unimmersive. Npcs still talk to you from the waist up, like they did in oblivion. And the player character is silent, which makes it feel stilted. Again, compare with cyberpunk. Bgs seem to think it’s amazing for the player to be able to have key conversations with npcs wherever you’d like, but this is no good when the npc is facing away from you.
Did I mention that the game still has the same sort of bugs as Skyrim, which was forgiveable in a hugely ambitious game from 2011, but not in 2023?
It’s a hugely disappointing game which is basically unfixable as the core mechanic - lots of tiny instances that you need to to fast travel to - is at the centre of it.
Then oblivion remaster which I’m currently playing. I have to stay it’s disappointing. Without nostalgia fuelling me, what we get is a game that feels like it’s from 2006 but with better visuals. Better. Not great. All the time I’m playing it I’m wishing that they basically had redone everything in the style of Skyrim.
I’d still like to play a redone fallout new vegas though. And fallout 3.
To finally finish up though - I’ve loved playing bgs’ games but I’m concerned that they have lost their way and still think that skyrim is the gold standard when games with other studies are leapfrogging past them.
For me, I had an incredible time playing cyberpunk 2077 (in 2024 - it needed a lot of fixing until phantom liberty came out) with its immersive story, npcs and scenes plus incredible graphics and character models with fantastic writing and voice acting - and a fully voiced player character!
Compared to starfield that even with a number of patches is still only just a ‘good’ - and only just about good - game. I’d only recommend it to someone who is already paying for games pass though.
So whilst I’m looking forward to TES 6 and fallout 5 - I’m not confident that bgs can deliver anymore. Let’s see.
I mean this isn't new at all. Automatic updates have been a part of Steam since the beginning. Back when I only had dial-up and installed games from discs every update was a huge annoyance.
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
Not sure what's happening with Starfield, but it seems the game is withering on the vine
The game on steam is shedding hundreds of players per month
My take is that Bethesda's stated (yes they said as much in an interview), that Starfield was intended to be Skyrim in space. Instead of 1 world to explore, we'd have over a thousand worlds to explore. The problem is that in skyrim you had POIs (Points of Interest) all over the place, you were rewarded when you walked and explored and avoided fast travel. With Starfield, each world seemed only have a one, two, maybe three POIs, and even then they were literally copies, the same buildings, the same enemies, the same things. On top of that, you have a crap ton of loading screens, its painful to travel in starfield.
I've stopped playing, I think I may have made it NG+ 6 maybe more, I've not played it for so long, I can't remember where I left off.
As for the DLCs, Todd Howard made it a point that he regretted the low DLC count for Fallout 4 and envisioned many more for starfield, yet it took a year for the first DLC to land and it was quite a bit smaller then any of the DLCs from fallout 4.
Far harbor was released 6 months after FO4 hit the ground, 3 months later Nuka World was available - two large DLCs in 9 months, where as Starfield's first DLC was 12 months and much smaller.
Even if the next DLC is significantly larger, I suspect it will be too little too late, especially since the studio has geared up to focus their attention on the next elder scrolls game.
No, unless I’m sadly confused, on Steam there used to be a setting/choice to not keep games updated, because for some older games I remember making that choice. 🤔
dmccloud
macrumors 68040
DLSS (especially the version baked into 50-series GPUs) introduces input latency, which can be a killer in FPS multiplayer titles. At higher (raw) framerates, the latency is mitigated to a certain extent, but once you are running 1440 or higher resolutions, the latency increases as the real framerate decreases.
For a long time Steam was the only game service I used and I specifically remember on Steam being able to tell a game to update or not update...something along the lines of "keep game updated" or "not". I did this with Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines. Here's some possible evidence (maybe not) that I'm not losing my mind:
Is it possible to entirely disable updates for a game on Steam?
I thought I'd found information about this before, but now it seems gone. Is it possible to disable updates on a Steam game? I'd like to play an old version of a single-player game, because the most
GOG, it's there for sure. 😳
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Nope. Never there. They used to call the update on launch setting "Do not update this game automatically" confusingly which is why you probably thought that. You can see that here:For a long time Steam was the only game service I used and I specifically remember on Steam being able to tell a game to update or not update...something along the lines of "keep game updated" or "not". I did this with Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines. Here's some possible evidence (maybe not) that I'm not losing my mind:
Is it possible to entirely disable updates for a game on Steam?
I thought I'd found information about this before, but now it seems gone. Is it possible to disable updates on a Steam game? I'd like to play an old version of a single-player game, because the mostgaming.stackexchange.com
GOG, it's there for sure. 😳
Is there any way to stop Steam downloading updates?
How can I get Steam to stop downloading updates automatically as soon as an update is released for a game like CS:S? It's just that I am running on mobile broadband at the moment and Steam loves t...
Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines is pretty old. I think the latest official patch predates the Steam release. So there was nothing to update.
Thanks for your patience. 🙃 Yes, that's it, what I'm thinking of "do not update automatically" thinking all along it stopped games from updating period. That's kind of a misnomer, if it's still going to automatically force the update on your game when you try to play it...Nope. Never there. They used to call the update on launch setting "Do not update this game automatically" confusingly which is why you probably thought that. You can see that here:
Is there any way to stop Steam downloading updates?
How can I get Steam to stop downloading updates automatically as soon as an update is released for a game like CS:S? It's just that I am running on mobile broadband at the moment and Steam loves t...
Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines is pretty old. I think the latest official patch predates the Steam release. So there was nothing to update.
Thinking it would stop games from updating, I turned that off with VampireMB, because it needed a 3rd party patch update to get it to run on the PC, whatever OS was current at the time, because it was so old and I did not want Steam messing with it, even if a game update was basically never going to happen. But for another game, Fallout 4, it seemed to matter much more. 🤔
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Queen6
macrumors G5
VtMB you can do a lot...Nope. Never there. They used to call the update on launch setting "Do not update this game automatically" confusingly which is why you probably thought that. You can see that here:
Is there any way to stop Steam downloading updates?
How can I get Steam to stop downloading updates automatically as soon as an update is released for a game like CS:S? It's just that I am running on mobile broadband at the moment and Steam loves t...
Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines is pretty old. I think the latest official patch predates the Steam release. So there was nothing to update.
1 Copy & past base GOG game, delete all the GOG files as no need for them
2 Install Unofficial Patch VTMBup115rc15.1 (opt for the shaders & SDK)
3 No Intro Videos, game boots faster (optional)
4 HQ music tracks
5 HQ audio/effects - Sound Overhaul-295-0-2-1713006427
6 Posters Mod (optional)
Results in a far more immersive experience. Can play with the graphic's however the game engine has a hard limit which is difficult in the extreme to work around.
Q-6
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
This video highlights the lowlights from Bethesda,
- Fallout 4's anniversary edition has been embarrassingly horrible, new bugs, old bugs, the mods not even working
- Fallout 76's Burning Springs update (one that Bethesda marketed as their largest update ever) broke the game, it was down for 2 days and there's a crap ton of new (and old bugs). That largest update's new quest is short, like 2-3 hours.
- Starfield, no updates, still a incomplete buggy game, their promised second DLC is vaporware.
- Oblivion Remastered was their one bright star but even that release had bugs and issues.
- Elder's scrolls - we'll not see this game until 2027 at the earliest though if I were a betting man, I'd put the time line closer to 2028 or even 2029
Plutonius
macrumors G4
The development team, management, etc. are different from when the games we originally liked were developed.
Rather than focusing on the name Bethesda and what memories we have of it, people should recognize this is a different company.
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
I have to agree with the points made in this video, he's been a self described bethesda fanboy. The magic is gone, and they just can't seem to get out of their way. They released a FO4 patch recently, didn't do much, I don't believe it includes the mod size increase, and its just a poor result. Skyrim for the switch 2 had issues.
Where was the promised starfield update, fallout 76 was down for a day and 1/2 because of their update earlier this month.
I was a big fan of bethesda games, but I'm really at a point that if I hear of a new update, or release it will just net a hohum attitude. I still play FO4, and FO76, but overall I'm largely disappointed
Where was the promised starfield update, fallout 76 was down for a day and 1/2 because of their update earlier this month.
I was a big fan of bethesda games, but I'm really at a point that if I hear of a new update, or release it will just net a hohum attitude. I still play FO4, and FO76, but overall I'm largely disappointed
Queen6
macrumors G5
Non-Euclidean
macrumors 6502a
Yes you can have a companion. There are several to choose from.
I always end up with the Eyebot. 3rd from left, hovering. You can acquire him incredibly early in the game (2nd town). You get storage upgrades (all of them do) and sensor/perception upgrade. I always play shooters/snipers so I want that perk. He has one heck of a backstory in a DLC.
I also get most of the others and leave them parked in the casino suite.
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Non-Euclidean
macrumors 6502a
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
ES6 is looking to be released closer to 2029 then 2027. Add 5+ years for FO5 to be developed, and we're looking at a time line of 2035. I cannot hold out hope, or have any expectation for a game that is probably 10 years away.
I gave, FNV it’s shot and sadly it did not grow on me, a little to primitive graphically for me. Skyrim which I’ve recently restarted and F4 are more where the graphics need to be, for me. I also gave Morrowind a shot too sometime ago. It’s too hard to go back and enjoy at this point. 😔Yes you can have a companion. There are several to choose from.
I always end up with the Eyebot. 3rd from left, hovering. You can acquire him incredibly early in the game (2nd town). You get storage upgrades (all of them do) and sensor/perception upgrade. I always play shooters/snipers so I want that perk. He has one heck of a backstory in a DLC.
I also get most of the others and leave them parked in the casino suite.
What Bethesda had going for it in both Skyrim and Fallout 4 is a very immersive atmosphere, in great part because of the music that enhances mystery, emotions, excitement, mood along with an outstanding narrative and dialog. Just that music makes me feel like I’m on a grand adventure. 🙂 In Starfield, not so much, in fact a great disappointment.
Queen6
macrumors G5
No need to wait and miles better than anything Bethesda has released in a decade or likely ever will do at this point...
Q-6
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Why do I think that too much $$$ is the issue and becoming too big for one’s britches? 🤔