Yes, Bethesda's being greedy in an industry led by EA, Ubisoft, and trends like annual release schedules, microtransactions, always-online, etc. Seems more like they've reached a point where the publisher lets them design the game exactly how they want to design it, and release it with confidence that it will be a GotY contender.

If Bethesda was truly chasing the money, they would have released a repaint of Morrowind every year since they hit it big. it would have microtransactions and pre order DLCs. And there would be absolutely no changes to the gameplay so it doesnt frighten away the base they've established.

Its pretty obvious that's not what they do.

They did cave to the multiplayer gimmick, it's called The Elder Scrolls online

Which is quite a sagacious decision, as they don't risk the reputation of the single player series while still attempting to reach the multiplayer demographic.

I also wouldn't rule out it's interpolated inclusion in the future, they make a multiplayer mode for each one of their games as it is during development.

Every company is to some extent impelled to make money, but some companies are content with making enough money to create what they want even if it's quite modest in finances and ambition (like Atlas and NIS America).While Bethesda will seemingly do what they can to make as much as they can, with artistic endeavor being subordinated, as evidenced in the streamlining of both TES and Fallout.

Didn't one of the CoD devs actually get death threats for making a slight change to how one of the guns worked in a sequel? I mean, I thought this community was harsh on change, but jeez.

If they done that people would be bored and fatigued of TES, BGS much like Rockstar have perfected the philosophy of protracted absence and then capitalizing on it with considerable hype.

Bethesda and Rockstar games are among, if not thee best selling games of all time (especially GTA V and Skyrim).

It doesn't suprise me. The internet is full of people who get very obsessed with videogames and feel completely entitled to have the game made for them and not the developers. Then they start up with the insults for the change saying that its dumbing down, that the developers are just selling out and not making a game for themselves (???) all so that they can make it out that their tastes are superior to the direction the game is going and feel so much superior to everyone else that they liked it "before it was cool"

Not as much as Call of Duty, the best selling videogame franchise of all time. And if they truly wanted the money and werent interested in making a game for themselves, they would be chasing the call of duty yearly cash and overwhelming DLC sales which far outweigh the major blockbusters they make every three years.

And they're also among the most critically acclaimed. I daresay the most influential, too.

Artistic endeavor subordinated? How...? Are we watching the same Fo4 trailers/gameplay?

I understand that a small group of people are unhappy with the game's direction, but it's incredibly foolish to say the direction they're taking is artistically inferior because it doesn't align with niche qualities.

http://kotaku.com/death-threats-follow-small-call-of-duty-tweak-888324886

Yes. It's the saddest thing I have ever seen.

**More gems: http://kotaku.com/5897154/the-nasty-twitter-hate-sent-to-the-former-face-of-call-of-duty

X-Rebirth is a great example of a game that was "dumbed down" so that they could get more money.

The developers were basically ordered by the publisher to simplify their game for a wide range release and the developers were full of resentment for it. They didnt care about what they were making, and it showed: The game is terrible in more ways than dumbing down. Nearly everything good about X3 had been removed, and even though really awful bugs are a trademark of Egosoft they were much worse and they were never fixed in the years after release since once again, driven by corporate greed and not by developer passion.

That game is sitting at 33 on metacritic, has 3,289 reviews on Steam as negative versus 1,513 and was a giant sales bomb once everyone realized what was going on. It is hated by fans and critics alike, and now the X-universe name is such posion that there wont even be a console release of X-Rebirth, much less a full on X4 that everyone was hoping for. That is what a series dying because of corporate greed looks like, it is not millions of loving fans and massive critical acclaim all around the world.

Time and resources wasted on voiced protagonist could've gone into adding more the game itself.

Of course they are, both GTA and TES are in part designed to appease as many people as possible, coupled with a marketing strategy that circumvents fatigue (which annual releases of Skyrim HD or Morrowind HD would jeopardize) and it's understandable how they can attain such feats.

Jesus. Im not a big fan of COD, especially nowadays, but that is stone bloody cold.

The internet does terrible things to people. Its hard to see the people on the internet as real people behind a keyboard and not a sentient Telvanni Banner or literally JC Denton. I know im guilty of it.

The dialog should be handled how Bethesda have planned to handle it.....they should then be judged on the finished product. The last thing they should do is start making major changes to a 'finished' game.

It's not inferior, it just doesn't seem to be as important as the ability to put the game in as many peoples hands to Bethesda.

Complexity and challenge are minority pleasures, which are and have been eschewed by Bethesda.

Fallout 4 is a quintessential example of this streamlining, and accessibility.Whether it be the expungement of skills, the new dialogue system or the new voiced protagonist which is clearly an attempt to conflate the success of something like the last of us with their previous success.

Allowing them to suffuse into another demographic of gamers.

Definitely voting for the last one, the less my character talks outside of my control the better.

Keep it as is - We hardly know anything about the system or what the VA sounds like and conveys. I'm open to this new implementation and actually interested.

That said, using Witcher 3 as an example - In one scenario I had an option to say "quiet down" and Geralt conveyed it as "If you don't shut up I will kill you next". I thought to myself, "seriously?" Lol.

I am even more concerned with how this new feature will be implemented into future titles though. Elder Scrolls for example.

ESO is curious, because they attempted to scratch the multiplayer itch of Elder Scrolls without interfering at all with what Bethesda Game Studios does - Zenimax Online Studios is a completely different group of developers. The fact that Beth models multiplayer early on in every RPG they work on, and then eventually decide to dump it only seems to confirm that they have control over their artistic direction.

They aren't "dumbing down" their games for more money. They're trying to cut straight to the core of the experience, and come up with systems that make sense out of the box and engage the player. They're also just trying new things; they screw up a lot, but they don't often make the same mistake twice. A lot of what we argue over in the forums is really not that important; all of the depth and complexity in the world couldn't save a game from poor storytelling, or level design. And I find a lot of games (particularly older RPGs) are fun to play in spite of their clunky and esoteric mechanics, like Fallout 2 or Daggerfall, because the experience itself makes up for it.

The way Todd Howard described his design philosophy in interviews and keynote speeches is always consistent with what Bethesda puts out, and it has been since he took the lead with Morrowind. And the devs have frequently justified their design choices in interviews; they give answers when asked, but you don't have to like them. I see no "artistic subordination" here.

lol MP was a gimmick when it was played via split screen now its a whole industry in itself.

do you even know how much a game like fallout 4 would of cost to make? the voice acting alone would of cost more then fo1/2 entire budget alone so of course they want to make as much money as possible and you do release the more profit they make on this game means more they can pump in to the next game. lol command & conquer (RIP) was streamline to death fallout isn't even near that, all beth has done is removed the broken/useless systems or changed them so they work and even tried new things out.

I'm just of the opinion that it would be wise to let people see what their PC is gonna say. I've seen people make comparisons to LA Noire paraphrasing, and LA Noire had the issue of translating "coerce" into "doubt" in the final product, which led to these completely explosive statements.

To each their own. I'm not one to play rpgs with the need to be intellectually challenged, I prefer them for the exploration, journey, story, etc; I fill the intellectual stimulation void with 4x strategy games (Civ, Total war, Endless Space, Anno, etc). But, I won't dismiss those that search for complexity in various genres.

As far as skills not being present, I just can't find myself saying that anything "complex" was lost. I was on the fence regarding this change, but with a higher focus on perks and SPECIAL I'm willing to give it a chance. I never viewed skills as this complex mechanic, rather they were rudimentary and incredibly basic in function. That's a different matter though, and for a different topic.

For me, the voiced protagonist is perhaps an attempt to mimic the impact of critically acclaimed protags in like TLOU or GTA V (as you've also said). It's easy to cast that in a negative light, but I can easily bring it into a positive light by highlighting that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I'll reserve judgement until I've fully played through the game, though. It's easier to critique artistic directions/decisions when it actually has context.

You make good points though, I won't deny that.

My point is that at this stage its more realistic to be talking about DLCs or Mods, since its already finished its highly unlikely that a few people complaining about a game they haven't played or even seen in great detail is going to convince anybody that its a good idea to mess around with the dialog.

See the Witcher is an example of why this is a bad idea for FO4. In The Witcher you are not playing your character, you are playing the Witcher. In FO4 you are supposed to be able to play anybody you want, not Geralt of Rivia, not Commander Shepard, not Hawke, but your own character. The voiced PC does not cater to a PC of your own creation.

Guess it varies by person. Personally, I'm playing The Dragonborn every time I play Skyrim (regardless of six, race, and alignment), just like I played Cmdr Shepard in Mass Effect (regardless of six, race background, alignment), and will be playing The Sole Survivor in FO4 (etc, etc, six, race, alignment). In all of those cases, I pick the character I want, and forge their path through the game that the devs have given me. (The Neraverine, The Champion of Cyrodiil, The Lone Wanderer.....) So I don't really see much difference in FO4 compared to the previous games.

As you might imagine, those "alternate start / live another life / play as Joe Random Farmer Dude" mods have never really seemed interesting, as I don't have a problem with the character/beginning each of Beth's previous games has given us. I understand that their marketing statement "play who you want, how you want" has always been within the bounds that the game gives us, not a blanket absolute statement.

I think that Witcher 2 is a good example of why it's bad for FO4 ~but not for any of the reasons you give. Clearly Bethesda has defined the PC into a very narrow personality; with arbitrary facial features. FO4 hems in the PC more than any other Fallout title did, or even FO3.

But the reason it's bad is simply because you see snippets of dialog that don't necessarily expand into what the snippet of text might imply. I (very loosely) recall a time in W2, where Geralt was talking to a peasant, and the innocuous dialog choice I picked saw him threaten to kill the guy, and a fight to the death commenced. Other times I had no idea what would come out of his mouth ~based on those silly rephrased 'Gist of it' notations we got.

In Planescape we got full dialog options, with subtle and not so subtle ramifications from them... Some were lies, others insults; others stat based insights; others were full events that the player enacted through the PC. In FO4 I expect yes/no/maybe/and psycho... But it sounds like I might never be certain of which one of them I just picked. (That is unless option #4 is always the snarky one; and/or always color coded yellow.)

I dunno, for dialog in Fallout 2 I often felt like I didn't have much choice in the options I got. I could be a huge ass, or incredibly polite, or I could be an idiot and only have access to idiot dialog. I remember once, the only dialog options I had were "Goodbye" and a pop-culture reference that continued the conversation. In terms of the actions we could take, role-playing was fine, but the dialog options in the older Fallouts weren't really open for letting us role-play in radically different ways. I could do a "Wasteland Don Quixote" playthrough in any of the Fallout games, where I role-play a delusional madman that thinks he's a knight-errant in a medieval fantasy setting, but the dialog itself would never accommodate that. Doesn't stop me, though.

As for dialog topics not matching what the character actually says, we have yet to see how Bethesda handles this. I can't imagine they got this far into development without having internal talks about it; it's a common complaint in basically every game that handles dialog this way. Chances are they'll try, but a few outrageous statements will be poorly described and slip through the cracks. And that's all it takes to sour people on it, really.