this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
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Skyrim lead designer says Bethesda can't just switch engines because the current one is "perfectly tuned" to make the studio's RPGs (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 10 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

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 they do care if the core gameplay would've been outdated in 2010.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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 37 minutes 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 57 minutes ago)

Starfields core gameplay is actually leagues more refined then prior games on the same engine, feels really good to play, where it lacks heavily is story, which is historically how they made up the difference between the lackluster gameplay.

To clarify a little, I mostly mean the FPS style gunplay.