Haha, I should have known better than insulting everyones favourite gaming genre. No offence meant, folks, you can continue enjoying Bethesda games. Just not my cup of tea. I am arguably an old-school RGP veteran and the way they "redefined" RPGs pretty much sucks all the job out of the genre for me. Luckily we have companies like Larian who offer innovation while staying true to the spirit of great storytelling and player choice.
Well, starting from clunky gameplay, awkward core mechanics, and repetitive location design, I found pretty much everything in that game to be disappointing. I remember how I was exited about the announcements and the Radiant AI in particular — which later ended up a bunch of NPCs wondering around scripted routes and constantly bumping into each. There was this episode I remember, how during a gaming convention event Howard was very exited to point out the details on a salmon filet mesh from the game, praising the attention to detail, but in the end that's kind of where the attention to details has ended. Great skill from individual artists, but seemingly little vision or clue how to fit things together in a coherent, immersive way.
And I think this kind of sums up problem with Bethesda games to me. They are like a Potemkin village — impressive visuals on a large scale, promising adventure and exploration, but there just isn't that much behind the facade. It's like you see this amazing detailed castle from afar, but when you come closer it turns out to be a cardboard cutout. What I value a lot in an RPG is the immersion, but Bethesda games — after the initial awe has dissipated — are just full of clunkiness and inconsistencies (take all the bodies in raider camps or huge car graveyards in Fallout games — none of them make sense and are extremely unrealistic). You can see that they had a bunch of reasonable concepts worked out in creative meetings, but then the management just lumps them together without actually ensuring that the things fit. And that locations tend to be really repetitive (like explore one cave in Skyrim and you've pretty much seen them all) doesn't help either.
This formula worked for Morrowind, simply because there was nothing quite like it at a time, so while the game kind of felt like a quest database tacked on top of a sandbox engine and had a certain wooden delivery, it was still enjoyable and awe-inspiring. But with later games the concept didn't work for me anymore. And they made a bunch of choices that really rubbed me off. Like the level scaling (particularly bad in Fallout games) or lack of player agency (the famous "we don't want to penalise players for dialog choices"). Fallout 1/2 are some of my all time favourite RPGs, so seeing Bethesda's formula (which is pretty much the antithesis of those games) applied to them was really painful for me.
It's true, I can't play it. I do own a PS5, but it's likely to stay an Xbox exclusive for all eternity. I was worried that I might be missing out, but again looking at the reviews and gameplay makes me realise that I probably wouldn't like it. it's the thing about Bethesda — I tend to get exited about their projects, because they are so good at marketing, but the final results always disappoints me.
Sure, Bethesda is very popular. I do understand that a lot of people find the idea of their games appealing. I mean, I also find the idea appealing. It's the execution I can't stomach.
