henke on 20/11/2015 at 06:43
Yeah there's also a bit of framerate drop on the PS4 when looking through scopes outside. Um, not much I can do about that in the options I'm afraid. I suppose I can always just cry about it. It'll be harder to see the stuttering THROUGH MY TEARS!
Jason Moyer on 20/11/2015 at 10:31
Weirdly I never ever get framerate drops outside, but I've had a few on occasion inside when there was lots of dynamic lighting action going on.
While I'm thinking about it, here's a great article about Bethesda's studio culture and the tradeoff between making games with the scope that they do vs the lack of polish: (
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/fallout-4-bugs/)
I keep seeing people comparing FO4 to the Witcher 3, and aside from W3 having 2.5 times as many people working on it, it also doesn't allow nearly the player freedom that the newer Bethesda games do. W3 is an action RPG in an open world; Bethesda used to make those (see TES 1-3) but have moved on to making worlds with some RPG bits thrown in there. And unlike other open world games, I can actually put a pile of time into a Bethsoft game (or Fallout NV) without being bored out of my mind.
Ostriig on 20/11/2015 at 11:32
I get that people would want to assess one against the other, looking at The Witcher 3 as something between Fallout 4 and, say, Dragon Age: Inquisition, in terms of mechanical structure, but I'd argue that CDPR's game would rather sit somewhere in between DA:I and GTA V in most respects. Broadly, they're open-world RPGs, but The Witcher 3 has less in common with Fallout 4 or Skyrim than it does with those other two titles.
That's more my speed, to be frank, I got more satisfaction from TW3 at the same early mileage than from FO4 - which I am overall loving so far, flaws notwithstanding - but it's not a simple comparison.
Nameless Voice on 20/11/2015 at 14:25
Hmm, interesting article.
I'm not sure I fully agree with it, though.
The problem with Bethesda's games isn't their bugs or their lack of polish in edge areas.
It's more the lack of polish in core game areas, a lack of cohesion in game systems, and just terrible, terrible writing.
I think a big part of it is isn't that they don't have enough people to polish, but that they don't give the people that they do have enough time to polish. I'm sure the developers would have liked to fix some of the nastier and more obvious issues, but their games tend to feel rushed, like the developers weren't given enough time to fix things properly.
Having a team of individuals with little oversight is great in terms of designing areas in the world, making quests, and so on; but not having oversight in world theme is a bad idea, especially in something with an already-established setting. That's probably a large part of why the Bethesda's Fallout games have jarringly unrealistic game worlds that don't "fit" with Fallout lore - the designers just built what they felt like, with no oversight to make sure what they built actually fit the world.
As for writing - I don't think there's much that they can do to improve that other than hiring more full-time writers. The current formula simply isn't working there.
Phatose on 20/11/2015 at 18:42
Is there any way to get a proper reflex sight on a pipe rifle, instead of the ridiculous 2 screws and a ring one they call reflex? I've got loads of .38 ammo which I'd prefer to use first, but the sights on that thing suck, and the .38 conversion for combat rifles requires gun nut 4 - which you can't even get til level 38, by which point I don't expect to need it.
Judith on 20/11/2015 at 19:59
I agree with NV here on the article: thinking like that just makes Bethesda have their own category of a game, where they always win. In the end, the audience doesn't care how big the team was. It's the final results that matter most, as in other media. Nobody cares how many people will mix your debut album, as long as it's good. Bethsoft staff kind of lives in their own world, where they slowly work on what they have, but you can't just ignore what other people in your industry are doing. And they're doing much better job.
By the way, Emil Pagiarulo is the their lead writer since Fallout 3, and he's an ex-LGS employee. I wonder how the things would turn out if they had Jordan Thomas instead.
Nameless Voice on 20/11/2015 at 21:38
Something else: RPGs are always buggy. They are massively complex games with tons of possibilities, no one can have tested them all. I don't think I've ever played one that didn't have at least a few bugs.
But you know who else had a small team? The original Fallout team, yet their game was much more polished in terms of writing, setting, coherence, gameplay, balance.
On the one hand, I'm tempted to say "okay, they didn't need to spend as much on graphics in those days", but... I'm not even sure. Making all those sprites must have been a huge amount of work, just a different skill set. Plus, we didn't have as good tools back then.
What about Larian? Divinity: Original Sin feels more polished than Bethesda's games despite being from a very small company (I'm seeing an employee count of 40 for Larian, though that figure may be outdated.)
faetal on 20/11/2015 at 23:18
I'm not sure it's possible to make something with as many variables as a Bethesda game and not have a fuck load of bugs.
Judith on 21/11/2015 at 11:02
Bugs don't bother me that much, it's a big virtual world to explore. But, low quality of writing, go-fetch-kill quests, and some, almost random changes to UI and controls... All of it sends a clear message: we're not sure of what we're doing, we just build huge beautiful worlds, and put a lot of stuff there, hoping for the best.
Ostriig on 21/11/2015 at 15:27
I've yet to see much that I'd file under bugs, to be honest. Bugs are development errors that result in unintended behaviours, my bellyaching's been with stuff that is working per design. So, for instance, the Lone Wanderer perk working despite having Dogmeat along or subtitles and lipsync skipping lines, those are bugs. Eh. The key binding or inventory listing, though, are down to shortcomings in interface design, and even stuff like mechanics failing on uncapped framerates I wouldn't consider a bug in the strict sense - it's poor coding practice and a surprising from an experienced developer like Bethesda, but it occurs when the game's run outside of release parameters, regardless of what we think of said parameters.
Otherwise, I gotta say the game seems fairly solid technically, I haven't had any crashes nor have I run into a heap of glitches so far. At least not any severe ones.
On an unrelated note - bleh, load times.
