Bethesda's Technical Hurdles

Post » Tue May 17, 2011 11:00 am

Is it natural to expect MUCH more from Bethesda, who are not an indie studio, and who are suposedly sitting on a mountain of gold after the success of Oblivion and F3?

The problem as I see it is that Beth can't compete with more specialized games in their level of detail. Tes has stealth, but can't do it like Thief because a stealth oriented game will always be more refined in stealth than a game that just happens to have some stealth in it. It can't compete with Crysis in graphics. It's just one of the downsides of making a game set in a huge open world where you can do a lot of things and interact with a load of objects. It will be good in some aspects, satisfactory in others and bad in others.
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patricia kris
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 9:24 am

To be honest, the ability to optimise your graphics setting (low, medium, high) which is included in all PC games in order to avoid alienating audiences with high/low end rigs and, well, The Elder Scrolls Construction Set seem like some pretty sweet perks for PC to me. Personally, I'll be upgrading my PC to get Skyrim on that instead of a 360 just for the Construction Set perk. Now, can you honestly say that PC gamers get nothing? I mean, come now, on the consoles there is a minimum adaptability. You get what you're given. On PC, you can tinker with everything.

Straight off the bat, you can edit the draw distance to mesh with your hardware. That means you can extend it way beyond the scope of console hardware. In a similar vein, PC textures can be edited then modded in. PC gamers get one fantastic perk - a mutable game. The stock game may be tailored to the lowest common denominator (consoles and low-end PCs) but the tools to evolve way, way beyond that are provided as a compensation. Look at what has been accomplished with Morrowind (Better Bodies and many more), and especially Oblivion. Some of the mods for Oblivion are truly astounding. Just mull that over before clicking the 'Post Thread' button in future, yeh? :)
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Steve Bates
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 9:43 am

The problem as I see it is that Beth can't compete with more specialized games in their level of detail. Tes has stealth, but can't do it like Thief because a stealth oriented game will always be more refined in stealth than a game that just happens to have some stealth in it. It can't compete with Crysis in graphics. It's just one of the downsides of making a game set in a huge open world where you can do a lot of things and interact with a load of objects. It will be good in some aspects, satisfactory in others and bad in others.


Only downside is that the world is apparently not that huge now... right?

Only thing I can think of is that Skyrim will be more unique, detailed, have more quests and more places than other games. That must be what is kind of crippling a bit of the technical stuff.
Still I'd really want PC's to be able to have more possibilites... like DX 11.

No offense Bethesda, but DX 9 in near 2012 for a game-series that is known to be really great-looking in terms of graphics... it would be kind of humiliating (technical-wise) I think.
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David Chambers
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 1:01 am

It's funny to me that the original post promotes PC users while at the same time dismissing people without newer PC hardware.

It's only good that the consoles have held stuff back in my opinion. It in effect makes the amount of people that will be able to play on the PC much larger, which is better than catering to a minority that has dumped heaps of money on great hardware in my opinion. They already said more powerful machines can use higher resolution and better anti-aliasing, and that's fine with me.
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Marine x
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 2:01 pm

The problem as I see it is that Beth can't compete with more specialized games in their level of detail. Tes has stealth, but can't do it like Thief because a stealth oriented game will always be more refined in stealth than a game that just happens to have some stealth in it. It can't compete with Crysis in graphics. It's just one of the downsides of making a game set in a huge open world where you can do a lot of things and interact with a load of objects. It will be good in some aspects, satisfactory in others and bad in others.


I agree with this. It's like they say "Jack of all trades, master of none."
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Tarka
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 4:28 am

Only downside is that the world is apparently not that huge now... right?

Rumoured to be the same size as Oblivion, which was itself far larger than Morrowind. This is horizontally speaking of course. Factor in the idea that Oblivion's map was relatively flat (due to the majority of the map forming a basin and flood plain) limiting it's playable area. Now factor in Skyrim's onward and upward ethos that has been displayed (terrible pun there considering:) regarding the landscape. Skyrim is mountainous. It's famous for them. They're really tall. This has a couple of major impacts. 1) You can't see right across the map, making the area feel larger. 2) As well as going from across the map, you can scale up and down peaks, which will probably be specifically designed with this in mind (as opposed to being giant props, as in Oblivion).

Of course, this is just idle speculation, as is the rest of this thread. Not to mention the fact that it is the same size as Oblivion coming from an unconfirmed unofficial source. Make of that what you will. Beth will have learned from their past mistakes however. Count on that (see transition from Oblivion, to FO3, to NV).
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Mel E
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 3:06 am

What puzzles me the most is the "no extra shiny" for the pc. Other people can do it...

...modders with no financial incentive, no time, and no formal training can manage it.


Surely the fact that PC players have the opportunity to mod and download mods is an extra?
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Christie Mitchell
 
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Post » Mon May 16, 2011 10:57 pm

Only downside is that the world is apparently not that huge now... right?

Yes, with those huge mountains it is likely to be even more cramped, but I have faith (until I see the contrary) that the devs realized that before us and adjusted other components, such as character's speed, vertical development and natural obstacles to correct this effect. Morrowind did it right, perhaps Skyrim will too. Running from left border to right in Oblivion in 15 minutes was definitely not cool. That's smaller than my childhood village.
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Benji
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 6:06 am

Designing advanced game engines is hard work. It takes years and a lot of money, and unlike modern game design, which can be accomplished with a large staff working in parallel for AAA games, the engines themselves are still very much the masterpieces of a single mind, and these minds are not easy to come by.

The engine used by Morrowind/oblivion/skyrim represents a large investment, not just in dollars, but in the time and knowledge that has grown around it. Combined with the fact that their tech works well enough for the games they make, is limited by the current hardware, and is expected to sell very well regardless may have meant that a fundamental change was not prudent.

Bethesda is a business, if you disagree with their reasoning, vote with your wallet. I didn't buy/play any of the Fallout games because of their choice of engine, and I may eventually decide the same with Skyrim.
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OnlyDumazzapplyhere
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 1:37 pm

The engine used by Morrowind/oblivion/skyrim represents a large investment, not just in dollars, but in the time and knowledge that has grown around it. Combined with the fact that their tech works well enough for the games they make, is limited by the current hardware, and is expected to sell very well regardless may have meant that a fundamental change was not prudent.

Every 2011 game is limited on current hardware, that's a truism. If others can push things, Bethesda can too. They have the intel, the tradition, the money, and this time around they've had the same hardware for the entire development process, unlike during Oblivion.
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Ally Chimienti
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 2:12 am

This is something that I'm curious about because with the Radiant AI the NPC's will do more but if we learned from Oblivion the AI packaging doesn't always work like it's suppose too. For example Jensine staying open 4 hours later or that Khajitt from Bravil that keeps going up to Bruma.
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Chris Cross Cabaret Man
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 10:57 am

Honestly, while not exactly photo-realistic, the graphics for Oblivion and both of Bethesda's Fallout games were absolutely amazing. Not only were they amazing BUT they allowed the average PC player to enjoy the game AND they allowed people with PCs less than a year old to max the detail sliders. So what you got was not perfection but rather something that was very, very, very good which, in my opinion as a gamer, is absolutely perfect. I like being able to buy a game, load it up and max the sliders and feel like I'm getting the optimal play experience. I don't want to play at 'medium low' because some guy who makes $50,000 a year more than me wants to play with hardware that 95% of the population can't afford until it's outdated. My only graphical complain about Bethesda games is that the sunrise looked too similar to the sunset in Fallout: New Vegas, which disoriented me and broke my immersion a bit, but that's nitpicking isn't it?

I would be perfectly content with graphics maybe slightly better than New Vegas, albeit with better lighting and shading (which they have stated they are improving). I just want a believable world. I would rather they spend their time and budget on more CONTENT and more OPTIONS for my role-play experience than on some super tessellation texture cruncher that makes the perfect apple. What good is the perfect looking apple if you never interact with it? what good are perfect character models if you can only load three of them at once?

For reference, this is coming from a guy with a 3.2ghz quad core, 8gigs of ram, a gtx460 and a performance motherboard all in a custom-built system. That's my rig for the next year at least and when TES V comes out I'll be playing on that rig. I want the game maxed on that platform because anything beyond that is just pushing hardware sales and not working toward good gameplay.

I think Bethesda has a great philosophy and implementation when it comes to designing games to be played NOW rather than in five years when people can run them.

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Joey Avelar
 
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Post » Tue May 17, 2011 3:55 am

So far I can determine that the PC version of fallout new vegas was only 10% of total sales. The 360 was reported as 60%. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-10-25-uk-chart-fallout-new-vegas-wins-big

This might explain the Xbox having exclusive DLC rights for the first one released. I am still looking for other articles to verify these figures, though.

It would seem that the PC isn't that important to the bottom line, so they aren't going to waste resources to cater to such a small portion of their customers.
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Manuel rivera
 
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