Greymane Posted September 7, 2012 Share Posted September 7, 2012 A quick Google search can turn up more than a few reviews for Hearthfire on the 360 and the general impression from reviewers so far seems to be summed up as "Meh." For a five dollar DLC, you don't expect anything too amazing, but it is a little disappointing to see how underwhelming Hearthfire apparently is. Home building and decoration is sounding extremely uninvolved and far from the modular, highly customizable experience the trailers implied. Adopting children is also looking bland, though that is no shock. Skyrim does not have a history of deep, involving NPCs, but it really sounds like the adopt-a-kid thing is particularly a non-effort. Haven't read much so far about how the radiant quests to defend against marauding bandits and monsters is, but it's hard to see how that could be a redeeming part of the DLC. I was sort of looking forward to Hearthfire and will probably still drop the money on it, but with reservations and no intention of supporting any future underwhelming mini-DLCs. Even at the low cost, there really doesn't sound like any particular advantage to it over the home-building mod already available. If nothing else though, perhaps it will provide more resources for modders to work with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stemin Posted September 7, 2012 Share Posted September 7, 2012 (edited) What do you expect for $5? I would be willing to bet the development costs were considerable for something like this and the console gamers will be quite happy to have something like this. I guarantee the PS3 crowd would love to have it. You should see them raising hell over not getting Dawnguard. Edited September 7, 2012 by Stemin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greymane Posted September 7, 2012 Author Share Posted September 7, 2012 What do you expect for $5? Not much, as I stated originally. Still, I was open to being surprised by something, if not remarkable, at least rock solid and well thought out. Where as the reviews, which are for and by console players, are all coming in a tepid. I'm sure you're right about Hearthfire being a bigger deal for the console players than PC gamers. I like Bethesda though and keep wanting them to catch me off guard and make me pleasantly surprised. Dawnguard did, so I was hoping Hearthfire would too. That's all personal perspective though. I had mostly started the thread to mention that the reviews had started coming out, since it hadn't been brought up yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JanusForbeare Posted September 8, 2012 Share Posted September 8, 2012 I would be willing to bet the development costs were considerable for something like this Yeah, no. Compared to the profits that were made off of the original game, the cost of developing Hearthfire is negligible. Seriously, single mod authors have independently produced similar works, such as Tundra Defense and Adopt a Child, at absolutely no cost. I'm willing to bet that HF only cost Bethesda a few thousand dollars to make - which, in this industry, is peanuts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stemin Posted September 8, 2012 Share Posted September 8, 2012 Yeah, no. Compared to the profits that were made off of the original game, the cost of developing Hearthfire is negligible. Seriously, single mod authors have independently produced similar works, such as Tundra Defense and Adopt a Child, at absolutely no cost. I'm willing to bet that HF only cost Bethesda a few thousand dollars to make - which, in this industry, is peanuts. Single mod authors spend months on a project this big, and then they're at the mercy of testing it themselves and then releasing it on Nexus or Steam where users will report further bug findings that will need to be ironed out. Bethesda's been advertising this since what? May? And it was introduced conceptually during the DICE video back in what? 2011? I seriously doubt they just sat on this the whole time while money was there to be made. Also, the average programmer makes minimum $15/hour (that's more of a breakdown, I would be willing to bet the majority of them are actually salary and some are just contractors), which means they're making an average of $400 apiece minimum take home pay. A few thousand dollars would rack up in a week alone among several programmers. Insert joke here about Bethesda releasing buggy products, but I'm sure this thing had additional hours in bug testing as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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