Yeah, that is pretty much right. 8 hours a day of running into the same thing over and over. Imagine playing your favorite game, but only level 2, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for a month.

I will say, I would have killed to be testing this title. Not because I want to play it before anyone else, but because there is SO MUCH CONTENT that some really weird things can happen that will never happen in the real world, either because of what is in the game, or because of what the testers have to do to break it. It's like a totally different game than the one you buy, because the goal is totally different. Synths and mutants and raiders are obstacles to overcome to get to that valley where, for some reason, grenades bounce like a pinball and cause the audio to go crazy. Why? Because this one rock has the wrong hit detection.

Most likely, many Fallout 4 testers were assigned an area of play, and were responsible for doing everything possible, regardless of if any player would ever do it, in that area. Some testers could get assigned to check out all the Vault-Tec vaults in the game, others would be focusing on settlement building, more on finding every nook and cranny and NPC in Boston proper that could cause problems, and some would be given the 100% completion task, which can be loads of fun and a nightmare all in it's own.

There would also be times where their leads would go "Ok, everyone. test what you want these next few weeks. We think it is pretty stable and want to see how long-term progression works, so don't use any debug commands, hacks or cheats. See what ways there are to get to *Quest mark X* that we might not have covered."

Oh yeah, and a lot of the bugs in Bethesda's games just come up from the nonlinear aspect. You can do almost an quest in any order, and sometimes there are buggy consequences for a quest if another quest is at a specific stage that creates conflicts. It can get crazy. In Skyrim, Season Unending would freak out if you were at a certain point in the civil war. And it had a lot more freak-out potential beyond that. And then there was freaking Blood on the Ice. I can't decide between Blood on the Ice and Beyond the Beef for the title of buggiest quest.

All bugs wont be fixed. That goes without saying.

But I think f4 will be in better shape than the competition when it comes to bugs despite it being huge and open

I have never successfully completed Blood on the Ice, even bludgeoning my way through it with console commands. I'm lucky if I can even start the quest.

I agree.

A Bethesda game is never late. Nor is it early. It arrives precisely when it means to.

Ha! I love it.

You've got to see this mod then (Silt Striders) :
http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42267
It let's you take scenic trips on siltstriders, you can even drop off them at any point in your travels between cities. You can also see once in a while a siltstrider embark on a journey or coming back from one. It's just so good.
/completely off topic suggestion is over now/

All we have to decide is what to do with the game that is given to us.

There are other forces at work in this world, besides the work of development, QA and launch.

Bethesda was meant to make the game. In which case, we were also meant to play it.

And that is an encouraging thought.

Comfortable thought indeed, although I can name people who are already uncomfortable with many different aspects of the game - valid nonetheless.

it's the same engine as Morrowind, Oblivon, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Vegas..

Yeah.. Morrowind..

I personally was not impressed with ONE guy sitting on a couch testing..

I was thinking more a room full of people on various setups testing..

No, it is not the same engine. Each BGS game has used a different engine, especially after they bought the source code for Gamebryo when Emergent went bankrupt.

Morrowind used the NetImmerse engine (this is where the .NIF file format comes from, of course). NetImmerse was the precursor to Emergent's Gamebryo.

Gamebryo, tweaked with BGS' additions, was used for Oblivion and a slightly different version was used for Fallout 3. Gamebryo was also used for Civilization IV, another highly regarded and extremely complex and demanding game.

Emergent went bankrupt and Bethesda bought the source code so that they could own the engine. It is the ONLY engine that can do what they do, particularly having hundreds or even thousands of interactive objects in an open world setting. The ability to freely interact with hundreds or thousands of objects in the world is what makes BGS games much more alive than any other company's products. In fact, Pete Hines pointed out this requirement in a recent interview when he was asked if they had considered using idTech 5 (he replied that they did not because the idTech engine cannot handle having hundreds or thousands of interactive objects within a game world even though it does do other things well such as FPS mechanics).

By the time Skyrim was made, BGS had rewritten pretty much all of the source code of Gamebryo (and the original NetImmerse, of course). They dubbed their engine "Creation Engine" because it is no longer anything but their own work. As a comparison, this is the same as something like Microsoft's acquisition of Spyglass' Mosaic web browser and renaming it "Internet Explorer" as they rewrote most or all of the original code to launch their own web browser software product. It's not an uncommon practice for one company to acquire something from another and then rework it and rename it into their own product.

(Edit: corrected Sunsoft to Spyglass).

Yeah and Unreal 4 is the same engine as the old terrible first Unreal I know.

People will never learn.

Does this mean it will run on Windows 10?

Lol, if it was the same engine as Morrowind then someone really needs to mod in dynamic settlements, radiant AI, and Radiant Story into that game.

The funny thing about building settlements, though, is that's exactly where the Creation Engine shines over other engines. Gamebryo was designed for games with dynamic worlds, like Civ IV or the Tycoon games; where the game world is built from smaller pieces that can be added onto the world during runtime.

Bethesda picked NetImmerse for Morrowind because their worlds are modular; lots of smaller pieces that snap together in different ways to create new environments. Every cave, Nordic ruin, or vault uses the same architecture kit; they just assemble them differently, and then get creative with the lighting effects and clutter to give each location more identity. It's how they can design such a huge world in a reasonable timeframe, but it also means their games make way more drawcalls than another game like Mass Effect or Dishonored. That and all of the small clutter items (physics enabled as of Oblivion) are where the Creation Engine has the advantage.

As already mentioned in this thread there isn't much left of Netimmerse/Gamebryo in Skyrin anymore. It was used as middleware with a lot of other stuff in their own engine.

Oh, I know, I'm just talking about why they went with the engine in the first place. Creation may not be that much like Gamebryo any more, but the advantages haven't changed.

I hope so Spirited Treasure. I updated to Win 10 yesterday after my computer kept pestering me!

I actually dont mind it, it loads up super quick. 7 seconds to my login screen.

I should of rephrased myself. I didnt really play Morrowind because im generally not a fan of Fantasy rpgs. I prefer say a Deus Ex to a Dragon Age and a X Com style of strategy rpg to a Baldurs Gate. Im more a scifi guy.

Oblivion I played because I got it as part of a bundle. I dont know that it bored me, but I just wasnt into it. Occasionally though Ill really enjoy a Fantasy rpg. Gothic 2 I did a lot. No idea why. I enjoyed Wasteland 2 a lot recently and Pillars of Eternity sorta got me into Fantasy rpgs again.

Its strange though, in my teens I really enjoyed games in the Might and Magic series. But even those had scifi elements in them.

If it's finished then could we get some system requirements?

https://youtu.be/pbUcmdDYcPA?t=3s

Because it's not finished, it's just finalized. It's feature complete and everything has been built. Now it's all about bug squashing and optimization. Until they know how much they can optimize and improve performance of what they've built, they can't determine what will be required to play it with acceptable performance. They would clearly like it to be able to run on as many machines as possible, and I'm sure part of what they are doing now is trying to make it run better on weaker machines.

They'll release this 22nd October, if it follows the pattern of Skyrim and Fallout 3.

Pretty sure they said it'd release on November 10th.

He was talking about releasing system reqs, not the game.

Oh man...Knock on wood, but wouldn't that just be a kick in the pants.

Windows 10 just came out, a lot of people have upgraded because it's free and 8 svcks, and then on release, suddenly there's a compatibility issue on PC and it's Arkham Knight all over again.

...Fingers crossed this is not the case.