Fable 3 was even worse than 2 and 1... by a lot. definitely rushed

But thats not what Bethesda is all about. They spend 5 or so years on each Elder Scrolls. They give it all of their love, like it were their only child, and they end up with nothing less than a game far superior to any RPG we have experienced.

EDIT: Some game franchises have the ability to just change a couple things, rush it to the market with a cool new title, and they will be consistent best sellers (Call of Duty, Halo). Some games try to follow thier lead and they fail miserably (Fable/DA2). And some game developers know what their game is all about, and what their fans like, so they wouldn't make such a stupid mistake (Bethesda)

Something like DA:O and DA2 shouldn't be even mentioned in the same sentence with Bethesda titles.

Lol. You bought Dragon Age?

There are two good RPG series.

The Elder Scrolls
Fallout

The End. In my opinion there are plenty of 'decent' rpgs out there, but they all look up to the Elder Scrolls. Seriously I wish there was a game that could compete, so I had more to play in between TES and FO releases.

Bungie takes its time with games. A long lag time between each of the halo games. Call of Duty comes out with a new game every year...

There is Bethesda, positioned..
here

And then we have the rest of the game developer companies..

Not here...

Not here...

Not here...

But here

Bethesda can do everything right because they have passion for the games, they are big fans themselves and they love what they are doing. Bethesda has once Skyrim comes out, developed 2 games in 5 years. DA series were developed in much shorter time frame and it was not bethesda, and the gameplay was basically exactly the same as in origins.

My conclusion, Skyrim will be much better than the other games other companies make, because they spend a lot of time on them.

There's a couple you forgot:

Baldur's Gate 1+2 (NOT dark alliance)
Earthbound
Final Fantasy (i don't count the online titles)

Halo rushed? I think not. Halo Combat Evolved: November 15, 2001, Halo 2: November 9, 2004, Halo 3: September 25, 2007, Halo Reach September 14, 2010.

I wouldn't call a three year development cycle a rush. Especially when you take into account Halo being a shooter. Whereas Elder Scrolls is a huge open world RPG. Three years is certainly enough time for a Halo game.

*ODST Released in 09 but that was more of a smaller spin-off so I don't count it. And Halo Wars was made by a different studio.

I agree on the Fable point though.

okay okay, i was wrong about halo. they just all feel the same to me. (especially halo 2, 3 and ODST)

EDIT: they must spend all that time thinking of the story.

REACH was an improvement though.

Well, they do take the story and the universe very seriously. :spotted owl: I'd say they got better and better with Reach being the pinnacle. Mainly because the flood were not in it!!! :flame:

I guess I'm oldskool, I still think that Halo 1 was by far the best. singleplayer and multiplayer.

and as for the Flood, they were pretty good in Halo 1 (except the library).

Try The Witcher, you'd be amazed...

I was going to say I wouldn't call halo CE old school but it has almost been 10 years now. That's crazy. :icecream:

My main problem with the flood is they just run straight at you like crazy space zombies. It just becomes a really repetitive slog. Especially on legendary :shrug:

It was a time before online multiplayer was big. when playing videogames with your friends meant you were all at the same house... being social. I miss those days... and that's why I consider myself oldskool

I agree with that. I still prefer gathering a bunch of buddies over at someone's house to play multiplayer games. But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate being able to pop into a big team battle game of Reach any time I want without having to system link a bunch of consoles.

I hardly ever buy games that i dont know. So only games im looking forward this year is Skyrim and MW3

MW3.... you mean BF3. :trophy:

So much bias in this topic.

There's still to be a Bioware game that Isn't good( Da2 came close), so does a Bethesda game and a Blizzard game.

All three made RPG's that I really loved, but the best of all is for sure the ME series, can't wait for the Third game ( I still love you Bethesda)

If Bethesda stopped making quality (in my opinion) rpg's I'd die. For cereal. I don't play MMORPGs and Bioware have gone the path of svckiness along with selling about half their games as seperate DLC so that only really leaves Bethesda as a competent RPG making company.

Edit to say: God, how I wish someone would make a game like Arcanum.

Well BW dev cycles used to be longer as well. Only the 2 games completely developed under EA have been short(ME2, DA2). DA:O and ME1 for instance had much longer development times.

I also agree with the general sentiment of the OP, there are so few developers these days interested in just making a great game instead of hitting some arbitrary sales number. That's one of the reasons why I love Beth and their games, they do it cause they love it, not because they love the pay off (which I am sure they love that to :biggrin: just not as a motivating factor).

That completely outrageous.

Of course there's the other end of the extreme: Blizzard and Duke Nukem Forever.
On topic: I think it was a mistake on Bioware's part to sell over to EA of all companies :ermm: . Now they reap what they've sown - a steady decline in reputation.

Will Skyrim be a rush job? No.

Will Skyrim feature design decisions similar to those so heavily criticised in DA2? Possibly. I hope Todd and co. are taking notice of the backlash directed towards DA2, especially from those pointing out that pushing accessibility too far loses more fans that it creates - fans both existing and potential, a user metacritic score of 2.9 at one point is not good for sales.

One thing I have noticed in the Skyrim interviews so far are the continual references to Morrowind, thinking back to pre-release Ob mention of Mw was anathema. I like to think, hope, dare to dream this is a good thing, but it could be nothing more than political posturing pursuant of potential purchasers.

Oh yes, youre quite right.
Games these days cant hold a candle to those of the 80's.

Ive been a gamer all my life, and Im not young.
In the old days there were no fancy graphics or sound and gamemakers seriously had to make some effort into making a good game.
These days its all flash and no substance. A game like Fable 2 wouldve flopped horribly in the 80's.
Because its just a bad game, and the lack of fancy decoration wouldve made that painfully obvious.

The number of expensive modern games Ive bought only to be either dissapointed by how short they were, or to be dissapointed by how awful they are is staggering. They also usually have 0 replayability.

Reviewers are bought in my opinion. I remember jade empire winning game of the year.
Im sorry, but jade empire is not a good game.
Its small and short, it has very few options and the gameworld is linear like a platform game.


The last really good game Ive played, a game where I thought the advances in technology werent just used to flash things up in order to hide the terribleness, but instead to make an awesome game, is Morrowind.

Oblivion went a lot of steps in the wrong direction.
It did almost everything I just described above.

I try to have faith in Bethesda. After all, they still have a lot of clout left over with me from Morrowind, something wich Oblivion didnt reduce that much.
I hope that Skyrim will be a return to what made them great.
If Skyrim follows the trends Oblivion started I shall never buy another bethesda game, its that simple.

Im going to buy Skyrim as soon as it hits the shelves, something I never do.
But its the last chance.

The latest interview with Todd seems to point that they're aiming to bring some of the good stuff back from Morrowind. Don't give up hope.

Glad to see people feel the same way. So many rubbish games out. I'm not sure what Bioware are doing, didnt they see what EA did to Westwood studies, man the old Command and Conquer games rocked. Square-enix killing off eidos, Supreme commander 2 was a mess. Hell Square-enix are killing themselves off. Square-soft was x10 times better. Actvision lets make the same game over and over again and not change a thing! (COD).
How did Black ops sell so well!? its a carbon copy of the previous game but with a few different textures, with rubbish servers.

Mostly you have to blame the simple minded folk who keep buying these crappy games.