Noclip documentary about Bethesda - Some Fallout stuff

The_Proletarian

The_Proletarian

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
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Earlier this week Noclip published a documentary about Bethesda that contains at least some of interest to Fallout fans. The documentary is pretty shallow but that's the price of access.

You'll find most of it in this thread. But I'll highlight a few things for you:

1) Morrowind was a surprisingly huge success on consoles and later games were developed with the console market in mind. That's the main cause of the dumbing down. They give examples of how they cut a lot of dialog to be able to fit Oblivion on disc.

2) Development of Oblivion was very long and costly. Hence ZeniMax thought it a good idea to have more than one project going at the same time. Bethesda was asked what they wanted to do, Todd wanted Fallout, and one year later he got it.

3) Fallout 4 wasn't set in Boston originally. At one point they were even thinking San Fransisco, it's mentioned that they asked Obsidian to remove one line in New Vegas about San Fransisco being totally nuked. They wanted the bay area to be an option for future games.
 
Here's Part 2 about the development of Fallout 76:



Previously Bethesda has been lying about the creation engine being a new engine and not gamebryo but here they outright say that it's ancient and that there's still code left in it from the Morrowind days.

There are no humans in the game since vault 76 is the first one to open after the war. However there is a new type of raider ghouls to replace human enemies.

West Virginia wasn't nuked so that explains all the trees.

This game is to be regarded as the multiplayer of Fallout 4.
 
Proletären said:
There are no humans in the game since vault 76 is the first one to open after the war. However there is a new type of raider ghouls to replace human enemies.

West Virginia wasn't nuked so that explains all the trees.
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These explanations for the setting are so silly that it raises plenty of questions:
If West Virginia wasn't nuked... How did the people there all died in 25 years? If it wasn't nuked, how did the mutants got their mutations? How did raider ghouls appeared there?
Why wasn't West Virginia nuked if it contained important governmental and military infrastructure? It seems it has plenty of nuke silos for example.
 
MasterworkStone said:
It's actually shocking to hear them acknowledge people saying it's been nothing but down hill since Morrowind.
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It's just makes things worse. They know a lot of people say their games have been going downhill since Oblivion and yet, they do mothing to change that. They just follow the money and what the casuals want.

It's made even more worse because Morrowind was a success. But no, we can't have some of the money, we need ALL of the money.
 
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Proletären said:
3) Fallout 4 wasn't set in Boston originally. At one point they were even thinking San Fransisco, it's mentioned that they asked Obsidian to remove one line in New Vegas about San Fransisco being totally nuked. They wanted the bay area to be an option for future games.
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Imagine all the retcons if Bethesda had set a game in San Francisco. <_<
 
Norzan said:
It's just makes things worse. They know a lot of people say their games have been going downhill since Oblivion and yet, they do mothing to change that. They just follow the money and what the casuals want.

It's made even more worse because Morrowind was a success. But no, we can't have some of the money, we need ALL of the money.
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"The Casuals" are a boogeyman created as an all-purpose reason for why games are bad to avoid giving them complex reasons, which might result in the developer of said games not being seen as evil, which is why "The Casuals" exist, to certify that developers who make bad games are just evil.

Not trying to take Bethesda's side here, but the noclip documentaries tell a different story than what you tell, it seems like money comes second to their own ideas.
 
MasterworkStone said:
"The Casuals" are a boogeyman created as an all-purpose reason for why games are bad to avoid giving them complex reasons, which might result in the developer of said games not being seen as evil, which is why "The Casuals" exist, to certify that developers who make bad games are just evil.

Not trying to take Bethesda's side here, but the noclip documentaries tell a different story than what you tell, it seems like money comes second to their own ideas.
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Except when they literally said they included full voice acting in Oblivion because "that's what the kids want". It wasn't for any artistic choice or any personal motivation, it was because that's what casuals want.

The inclusion of full voice acting was one of the reasons why they removed a lot of stuff from Morrowind, because full voice acting takes a lot of space on the disc. They rather sacrifice a lot of stuff that was in the previous game, stuff that a lot of people liked, just to put something the "kids want".

The casuals aren't a "boogeyman", they are a thing that factually exist and a lot of companies tend to, right at the start or at some point, try to pander to them because they tend to be the majority. Because they just want all of the money.

You're not gonna tell me they stripped and removed features from their recent games out of "artistic choice" because that's just plain wrong.

And of course in a documentary they are not gonna try to look bad by saying stuff like "we removed this feature from the previous game because it's dumb". They have a reputation to mantain. So i would take a lot stuff from these documentaries with a big grain of salt.
 
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What's truly annoying about the stripping of content is that the reasons for it no longer exist. There's no reason to remove conversations, choices, and quest branches from a game due to disk space limitations. New Vegas is proof of that. At this point I get the feeling Bethesda's more factory than dev team. Churn out a profitable product and make the bosses happy.

They had a chance with Falloutt 76. They could've focused on the RPG stuff and used the clunky though workable Creation Engine to make a proper Fallout game. Far Harbor dlc shows they still have a sliver of fun in them. But no, they had to squander the neat looking map and monster selection on a building/PvP game. How boring.
 
Proletären said:
3) Fallout 4 wasn't set in Boston originally. At one point they were even thinking San Fransisco, it's mentioned that they asked Obsidian to remove one line in New Vegas about San Fransisco being totally nuked. They wanted the bay area to be an option for future games.
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What the shit. Ruining Frisco? Fuck em all to death, I say.
 

The uncut version with Julian LeFay mentioned instead of focusing on anecdotes with Todd.

Noclip are shills and only produce advertising in disguise of documentaries and behind the scenes.
 
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