The Outer Worlds vs Fallout:76

[zanity]

Ahem- remembering this forum is titled 'general fallout 76 discussion'

 

The world of Fallout fandom has been shaken to its core, and most sane observers think it's 'game over' for Beth. On the back of the total by-design dumpster fire that is Fallout:76 has now come an announcement from Obsidian, and the original creative talent behind the Fallout IP, that a new 'fallout 3'-like title is coming in 2019.

 

The Outer Worlds.

 

The game Todd Howard said could not and should not be made when launching Fallout:76. The game the Toxic Todd Army has told us continuously for the last six months that we should be GLAD Bethesda chose not to make.

 

Now I'll be honest. Having no stake in either company, or any love for Microsoft- the new owners of Obsidian, I would have loved Bethesda to have turned itself around after the dissapointing dumbed down mess that was Fallout 4 (yeah, I have fun in this game like the rest of you but that's DESPITE the massive flaws) and have witnessed Beth announce and then release this season a game like 'The Outer Worlds'. But we all know that did not happen.

 

Instead Beth gave us laughable excuses, and a troll army (led by PAID reputation management people online) that informed us that any criticism of Fallout:76 was a result of "entitled gamer syndrome".

 

Well I think the loyal playerbase of Fallout 3/NV/Skyrim, and to a lesser extent Fallout 4, are entitled to a game like 'The Outer Worlds'. The fanbase, before Todd Howard betrayed them, willingly gave Bethesda BILLIONS of dollars in return for less than a tenth of that in dev costs, accepting titles that were far buggier and less polished than was the standard in AAA gaming. In other words, Beth got away with murder and still won a mostly satisfied following (until 2018).

 

'The Outer Worlds' was obviously made with a fraction of the budget Todd Howard has been able to lavish on his rather mediocre (from an industry quality- not success POV) prior projects and yet already looks far far better.

 

Will 'The Outer Worlds' by moddable like Fallout:4- most unlikely. Remember the devs of 'The Witcher 3' are fans of user mods, but their game engine and tools just don't make for easy modding. Most non-Beth games have the same issue- even if the devs would like a heavy modding scene, the engine that built their game makes the difference.

 

But as we see with Fallout:4 and the horrific and spitefully exploitative Fallout:76, a moddable game also needs to be worth modding. Fallout:4 was a giant step down, mod wise, from Skyrim, simple because the value of modding a world so poor (fo4) is far lesser. The dumbing down of Fallout:4- an act Todd boasted about- makes being in that world for long periods rather pointless.

 

This industry has a long history of certain devs pointing the way, then falling flat on their face as others pick up the reins. Sometimes these original devs continue to churn out ROTTEN IP follow-ups that embarrass the original (like the hopeless Just Cause 3/4 after the brilliant Just cause 2, or the putrid Mafia 2/3 after the astonishing Mafia- the original Mafia devs pointed the way for Rockstar when GTA was a technical joke).

 

Beth is too big to die- but it ain't ever turning out another 'Skyrim'. Starfield, fallout 5, Elder Scrolls 6- forget about it. Beth's future (Beth studios USA- not the foreign indy studios Beth has purchased) is fully dumbed down mobile garbage riddled with loot boxes and microtransactions. Future games that must run on whatever weak source hardware Nintendo has in its new, for the casuals, console.

 

After Todd Howard LOST his subreddit /fo76 (the last bastion of Beth support until the bag issue) he launched /fo76filthycasuals (yes- that's his term NOT my 'insult'- Beth PR has actually named the sub 'filthycasuals'). Many here, being old school out-of-the-loop silly defenders of Bethesda, will not get the significance of Beth's new reddit sub.

 

This 'casuals' vs real gamers is an actual thing- when for instance some fake news mainstream media outlet tells you more females than males play 'computer games' they purposely include and brainless rubbish on a phone where you mindlessly stab at the screen while thinking about the events in yesterday's reality TV show. That's like saying the people who read the 'funnies' in a newspaper are the same as people who read novels.

 

But there's a big difference from previous ages. The 'computer casuals' are also dumb enough to spend money consistently on their faux games via loot boxes and micro-transactions. Not only are the faux games worthless, but they are also pay-to-progress and pay-to-win (or now pay-to-show-of-bling, as with FO:76).

 

So Todd Howard has used the failure of his utterly awful project to 'prove' inside the Zenimax organisation that the only 'mistake' Beth has made was going after the non-casual market. Todd Howard needs to do this because he knows that after 3 years and millions down the drain, Starfield is going nowhere. Beth has neither the skills nor insight to make traditional AAA games for the next console generation from MS and Sony. Todd NEEDS the big bosses at Zenimax to cancel Starfield for him. And turning all the Beth USA studios 100% 'casual' solves all of Todd's current dev issues - gives a failed manager another couple years of breathing room.

 

But the ONLY reason we had to give a damn about internal issues in Bethesda was because no other publisher was doing games in the vein of Skyrim and Fallout. Well now they are, and Beth is no longer all we have thank heaven.

 

Neither Skyrim or Fallout were difficult games to make (in theory) once a publisher chose to go that direction. Well, obviously in the past there was the hardware limitation issue that made open world games a 'pain'- but in today's massive RAM, Ryzen 6-core/12-thread, super GPU age such games no longer have technical limitations (unless you have Beth levels of dreadful coders). Throw your physics on one core, your script system on another- design SCALABLE fundamental data structures for your world- stream properly, handle LOD and occlusion systems properly- you know all the things the Gamebryo engine, no matter how hacked- cannot handle well.

 

The truth is this. A small well-motivated dev team can take on ANY open world title once associated with Bethesda IF they are well funded to do the 'expensive' stuff like getting the writers and voice actors and motion capture that is purely a matter of MONEY. The engine, code and tools are actually now the cheap and relatively easy part. Great hardware does all the heavy lifting. But an open world title, like I said, is a massive money commitment to enable all the 'artistic' elements to be created.

 

People are confused as to whether FO:76 was an 'expensive' or 'cheapo' project for Bethesda. In the end FO:76 is the MOST expensive game Todd has yet produced- but that's only cos, in panic when Starfield FAILED, FO:76 was promoted to take its release spot, and then gained unlimited budget. But the origin of Fallout:76 was a quick/cheap/dirty multi-player mod to Fallout:4 (hence the giant asset flip).

 

I'm sick of even thinking about the internal working's of Todd Howard's Bethesada. Coming games like 'The Outer Worlds' means soon I won't have to ever again. Team Candy Crush will be the only one talking about Beth in a year or so's time- and good luck to them. Let 'casuals' and Bethesda have the best of futures together, and let us real gamers move to devs who deserve our support.

Edited December 7, 2018 by zanity

[zanity]

Sorry to follow my own post- very bad form I know- but...

 

It looks like Todd Howard has gone nuclear after the announcement of 'The Outer Worlds'. All mention of this title is being actively scrubbed from the two subreddits directly under Beth's control /FO76 and /FO76filthycasuals. Beth has directly leaned on the mods of /fallout to ban discussion there too- much to the utter disgust of the users of that subreddit.

 

The same thing will be tried in this forum and on the other ones.

 

Bethesda's bullying should be resisted. That corporation has its OWN forums where than can exert all the control they wish. On the greater Internet, interest in traditional open world Beth games is actually interest in the gaming sub-genre itself. Beth games are modded here to give us more time and more fun in the type of game we like, not more time specifically in Beth's vision of Skyrim or Fallout. The Nexus (nor Reddit) is NOT a corporate extension of Bethesda, no matter what Todd Howard may think.

 

'The Outer Worlds' is, for 90%+ of trad Beth fans, what those fans wanted from Beth this Xmas in the place of the awful FO:76. Do we care who makes our great open world RPG games- I don't. Not when 'loyalty' to a corporation is proven time and time again to be the biggest mistake an ordinary person can ever make. Customers should live in the 'now' and in the 'future' and never the past.

 

To watch Bethesda try to wipe out discussion of 'The Outer Worlds' in the /fallout subreddit disgusts me- in truth said discussion couldn't have a more natural home. /fallout is specifically for gamers who love the idea of role playing in the best possible open-world retro-future dystopina worlds. Indeed 'fallout' is now a generic term effectively like 'to hoover'. Or do people here agree with Todd, and accept 'fallout' means 'asset flip', where the assets of the last game are now behind a paywall in the new one?

 

'The Outer Worlds' looks like the fallout and starfield game I expected from Bethesda back before Todd Howard revealed FO:76 at E3, and informed me that Bethesda was lost for all time. Indeed you can go the the Fallout 4 forum here and STILL read the naive post I wrote BEFORE the E3 reveal describing my expectations of a game just like 'The Outer Worlds' from Todd.

 

I felt certain FO:76 was really a spaceship taking the 'vault dwellers'- unknown to them- to a new post apocalyptic world. A clever link between Fallout and the Starfield to come in 2019. I was extrapolating what i knew a company like Beth could achieve within their technical limitations. And then E3 happened, and as someone with associations with this biz from the time before most of you even knew there was a biz, I instantly knew that Todd Howard had actually sunk Bethesda.

 

'The Outer Worlds', from its reveal, is not an 'astonishing' technical work. It's no RDR2 or Cyberpunk. It is simply what a well motivated reasonably talented group of peeps can turn out. And yet it shines a perfect light on the total disaster that is 2018 Bethesda under Todd's control.

 

The humiliation Todd must be now feeling is beyond all imagination. A game from Fallout's original peeps 'mocking' Beth's inability to ever again meet the desires of its old fan base. In theory Todd shouldn't care, cos his USA studios are now 100% focused on mobile/casual/gaming as a service. But pride is a thing. And even tho Todd is a man who cannot deliver and does not want to deliver, witnessing others deliver and mock him as they do so will be more than he can stand. Imagine what it's like at Beth HQ today.

 

Anyway I'm just annoyed at Beth's attempts to scub mention of 'The Outer Worlds' from any place online Fallout is discussed.

Edited December 7, 2018 by zanity

[TheFriendlyBandit]

Do you have any proof of anything you're jabbering about? You know, other than wild speculation based on second-hand opinion? Seriously, what is your goal here? You're talking about a video game company fumbling it's latest release with the needlessly alarmist tone of a raving street corner derelict. I am in no way defending Bethesda, but you're making it sound like the name Todd Howard will go down in history as worse than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. What do you think any of this non-stop ranting is going to actually accomplish other than piss off the entire forum? And if you absolutely MUST continue your hateful screed, at least keep it to one thread rather than post new thread after new thread, again and again. But that's why you do it, isn't it? To get a bigger audience.

For the love of Christ, just stop with the grandstanding. You amazingly foresaw Fallout 76 being terrible, and lo and behold, for a lot of people it was! You got what you wanted, Bethesda has 'crashed and burned', now your goddamn victory lap is over. But I have a feeling it's more like a victory marathon isn't it?

[chibaking]

TL;DR - Dude what do you get outta writing these pages of nonsense?

[TheFriendlyBandit]

TL;DR - Dude what do you get outta writing these pages of nonsense?

Pretty much. Thanks for summarizing. :laugh:

[Crosstieger]

I want some of the stuff this guy is smoking. Must be good quality

[TheGadget1945]

Jesus wept.