Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

[unseenmage]

https://youtu.be/7hRljZhtGdo
Not that I give him any more weight than anyone else on the net, but there it is.

...

As someone who's already concious of where my money goes (read as poor, I call myself a bargain bin gamer) nothing in the video was really news to me.

I've had a friend or two recommend 76 to me but they are young'ins with disposable incomes who tend to hop on hype trains a bit much for my taste so I'd taken their recommendation with a big fat grain of salt.

Doom saying aside, I do wonder whether any software will ever be preplaytested and 'finished' to any real standard ever again in this age of constant updates and content additions.

I suspect that even the idea of DLC will blur with that of functional updates given time. That every game will be an 'app game' eventually. But that's just my own doom and gloom speaking.

[Rodin]

I've seen some stuff about the engine from elsewhere, and it all seems pretty damning. The engine was fine back in 2002 - in fact, it was impressive. The problem is that it is no longer fit for purpose because the technology has advanced. All Bethesda games have loading screens all over the place because the games weren't designed to handle worlds of the size that has become standard. The cities have to be in their own loading zone because the number of NPCs has grown enough to make the game unstable if they aren't.

The re-use of assets has been noticeable for some time. New Vegas pulled most of its assets from Fallout 3, which already made them look dated as there's a 2 year gap between the games. However, a lot of the clutter and textures dated all the way back to Oblivion. Pulling items from a 4 year old game in a different genre (Fantasy v Sci-Fi) was downright shameful, and they got a lot of scorn for it at the time. Fallout 76 just proves they haven't learned - for every screenshot that looks beautiful, there's a screenshot where I couldn't tell you if it was from 76 or from Fallout 4, because the assets used are the exact same ones. It would not surprise me to learn that some of the clutter is pulled straight from Fallout 3, with a new coat of paint at best.

They need a new engine before going any further, but I see no evidence that they intend on doing so. Fallout 76 is a warning sign, but I suspect they're going to crash and burn sooner or later.

[Balmas]

I've seen some stuff about the engine from elsewhere, and it all seems pretty damning. The engine was fine back in 2002 - in fact, it was impressive. The problem is that it is no longer fit for purpose because the technology has advanced. All Bethesda games have loading screens all over the place because the games weren't designed to handle worlds of the size that has become standard. The cities have to be in their own loading zone because the number of NPCs has grown enough to make the game unstable if they aren't.

The re-use of assets has been noticeable for some time. New Vegas pulled most of its assets from Fallout 3, which already made them look dated as there's a 2 year gap between the games. However, a lot of the clutter and textures dated all the way back to Oblivion. Pulling items from a 4 year old game in a different genre (Fantasy v Sci-Fi) was downright shameful, and they got a lot of scorn for it at the time. Fallout 76 just proves they haven't learned - for every screenshot that looks beautiful, there's a screenshot where I couldn't tell you if it was from 76 or from Fallout 4, because the assets used are the exact same ones. It would not surprise me to learn that some of the clutter is pulled straight from Fallout 3, with a new coat of paint at best.

They need a new engine before going any further, but I see no evidence that they intend on doing so. Fallout 76 is a warning sign, but I suspect they're going to crash and burn sooner or later.

I disagree. The engine isn't the problem. It's with management that bows to marketing, an apathetic dev team, rushed game releases, and a willingness to ship games with the attitude that they can patch it later.

To paraphrase a video that Gopher put out a few days ago: imagine if Bethesda licensed the engine to Obsidian, and they made a perfect new Fallout game. Imagine a New Vegas sequel with roleplaying, with hours of quests that affect both others' disposition and the world around you, with new factions that are interesting and varied instead of the same rehashed factions shoehorned in to make marketing happy. Would the engine be a problem in that game?

[factotum]

All Bethesda games have loading screens all over the place because the games weren't designed to handle worlds of the size that has become standard. The cities have to be in their own loading zone because the number of NPCs has grown enough to make the game unstable if they aren't.

That doesn't make sense. Oblivion in 2006 had instanced cities, but it certainly didn't have as many NPCs in, say, the Imperial City as Vivec in Morrowind did--and Vivec was entirely non-instanced, you could walk anywhere in it without a loading transition. Whatever reason they chose to introduce instanced cities was, it wasn't because of the number of NPCs.

[Aeson]

That doesn't make sense. Oblivion in 2006 had instanced cities, but it certainly didn't have as many NPCs in, say, the Imperial City as Vivec in Morrowind did--and Vivec was entirely non-instanced, you could walk anywhere in it without a loading transition. Whatever reason they chose to introduce instanced cities was, it wasn't because of the number of NPCs.

Not that I disagree with you, but the overwhelming majority of the NPCs in Vivec are in interior cells (along with pretty much everything else), and unless you're using a mod that changes things they're also more or less just there - at most patrolling back and forth over some short distance inside the cell. Vivec might not be an instanced city in the way that any of the major cities of Oblivion is, but it's also not that far off from it.

[OutOfThyme]

I disagree. The engine isn't the problem. It's with management that bows to marketing, an apathetic dev team, rushed game releases, and a willingness to ship games with the attitude that they can patch it later.

To paraphrase a video that Gopher put out a few days ago: imagine if Bethesda licensed the engine to Obsidian, and they made a perfect new Fallout game. Imagine a New Vegas sequel with roleplaying, with hours of quests that affect both others' disposition and the world around you, with new factions that are interesting and varied instead of the same rehashed factions shoehorned in to make marketing happy. Would the engine be a problem in that game?

I'll agree with that. The engine being incredibly outdated is a symptom, but the corporate culture in Bethesda itself seems to be the issue. It's just sad that they have the Fallout license.

[Anteros]

I disagree. The engine isn't the problem. It's with management that bows to marketing, an apathetic dev team, rushed game releases, and a willingness to ship games with the attitude that they can patch it later.

To paraphrase a video that Gopher put out a few days ago: imagine if Bethesda licensed the engine to Obsidian, and they made a perfect new Fallout game. Imagine a New Vegas sequel with roleplaying, with hours of quests that affect both others' disposition and the world around you, with new factions that are interesting and varied instead of the same rehashed factions shoehorned in to make marketing happy. Would the engine be a problem in that game?

Yes, the engine would still be a problem. It would be a huge lodestone around the neck of an otherwise excellent game. The game you're describing sounds good, but it would be even better with an engine that isn't garbage.

[Thomas Cardew]

I'll agree with that. The engine being incredibly outdated is a symptom, but the corporate culture in Bethesda itself seems to be the issue. It's just sad that they have the Fallout license.

A poor craftsman blames his tools sure; but a good craftsman buys the best tools he can get. I worked at a company where management basically refused to spend money on fundamental equipment. We were trying to do scientific research with the equivalent of two rocks and a stick. If Bethseda is going to make games it needs to the tools to do it; part of that is updating the engine.

[druid91]

A poor craftsman blames his tools sure; but a good craftsman buys the best tools he can get. I worked at a company where management basically refused to spend money on fundamental equipment. We were trying to do scientific research with the equivalent of two rocks and a stick. If Bethseda is going to make games it needs to the tools to do it; part of that is updating the engine.

I mean.... to be entirely honest. I think a lot of the complaints about the engine are nonsensical.

Is Tetris a bad game just because it's old? Is Oblivion? Is the fact that it's been used before make it bad?

Bethesda's issue isn't the engine.

[The_Jackal]

I mean.... to be entirely honest. I think a lot of the complaints about the engine are nonsensical.

Is Tetris a bad game just because it's old? Is Oblivion? Is the fact that it's been used before make it bad?

Bethesda's issue isn't the engine.

Eh. I'm solidly in the middle of this. The problems with the Creation Engine are not make-believe. Changing to a better engine, like IdTech 6, would likely help a great deal. What no one outside of Bethesda knows is how much work and money that would entail, and what trade-offs would be necessary to accomplish it. Doing such a thing tends to go solidly against the grain of what most business leadership people would be inclined to support. Business stakeholders tend to have a laser-like focus on features, so fundamental design changes and underlying platform innovation tends to suffer in most operations. Would going to IdTech 6 make loading screens go away? Probably. Does that matter for showing a good demo in front of the E3 audience? Not so much.

[unseenmage]

Eh. I'm solidly in the middle of this. The problems with the Creation Engine are not make-believe. Changing to a better engine, like IdTech 6, would likely help a great deal. What no one outside of Bethesda knows is how much work and money that would entail, and what trade-offs would be necessary to accomplish it. Doing such a thing tends to go solidly against the grain of what most business leadership people would be inclined to support. Business stakeholders tend to have a laser-like focus on features, so fundamental design changes and underlying platform innovation tends to suffer in most operations. Would going to IdTech 6 make loading screens go away? Probably. Does that matter for showing a good demo in front of the E3 audience? Not so much.

Tetris does not compare. Might as well compare Monopoly to Fallout while you're at it.

[Rynjin]

I mean.... to be entirely honest. I think a lot of the complaints about the engine are nonsensical.

Is Tetris a bad game just because it's old? Is Oblivion? Is the fact that it's been used before make it bad?

Bethesda's issue isn't the engine.

Are you willing to pay full price $60 plus a season pass for OG Tetris? If the guy that made Tetris spawned 7 other games using the same "engine" as Tetris, each more constantly strained, less stable, and prone to bugs and crashing than the last due to the limitations of the engine having been reached long since, would you consider the smart action to be never to upgrade?

Should we judge new games not based on the market standard of today but by how they compare to Tetris?

Eh. I'm solidly in the middle of this. The problems with the Creation Engine are not make-believe. Changing to a better engine, like IdTech 6, would likely help a great deal. What no one outside of Bethesda knows is how much work and money that would entail, and what trade-offs would be necessary to accomplish it. Doing such a thing tends to go solidly against the grain of what most business leadership people would be inclined to support. Business stakeholders tend to have a laser-like focus on features, so fundamental design changes and underlying platform innovation tends to suffer in most operations. Would going to IdTech 6 make loading screens go away? Probably. Does that matter for showing a good demo in front of the E3 audience? Not so much.

Absolutely incorrect to the reality of the industry. For a long time, and still ongoing in some circles, the problem with the ever increasing budget of games that "justified" the increased monetization was that a lot of publishers/developers insisted on reinventing the wheel with every new release; every new game needed its own unique engine. It was a big selling point.

Not making a new engine and abandoning the Creation Engine was NOT a decision of the higher-ups at Zenimax. For most of the Creation Engine's lifespan, the execs WANTED people to waste time making a new engine for no real reason. It was a badge of honor and prestige to create a new engine for every game.

It is clearly a choice by the Bethesda dev and design teams, not Zenimax. For a good while, it was a good move; there was no real reason to change engines between Oblivion and Fallout 3, or arguably even New Vegas.

By the time Skyrim came around though, its limits had been reached. By Fallout 4, the continued use was laughable.

[Triaxx]

I don't know I'd say that, considering F4's so stupidly stable. But that might be the 64-bit jump. I mean... in all the 553 hours I played I had two crashes that weren't the mods fault.

[Rynjin]

I don't know I'd say that, considering F4's so stupidly stable. But that might be the 64-bit jump. I mean... in all the 553 hours I played I had two crashes that weren't the mods fault.

It's the 64 bit jump; Special Edition Skyrim is very stable as well.

The problem is Fallout 4's assets all look and feel wildly outdated. Faces are still atrocious (made all the more noticeable by the better lighting and more expressions they tried to give them), and the number of meaningful features and choices is very low, likely because so much dev time was taken up by the stupid settlement system (whose clunkiness also shows the engine's age. As simple as the system is it should not be as hard to build your settlement neatly and nicely as it was to decorate a room back in Oblivion).

Physics are still wonky, and still lead to the frustrating issues of key items sometimes falling under the map or being shoved under random **** due to an explosion going off in the general vicinity of the room.

Even little things, like the short period of blackness initiated when aiming into a scope, which mods like this fix, add up after a while, and most are symptoms of not using a newer, sleeker engine that doesn't have to use the weird workarounds and jury rigged solutions to common problems that Bethesda games have.

The fact that animals still doofily jump at people to attack, even, would likely not be a thing in a newer engine, because newer engines can handle newer and better animations more easily. as modders can attest, animating **** in the Creation Engine is a big pain in the ass.

[DigoDragon]

Tetris does not compare. Might as well compare Monopoly to Fallout while you're at it.

Well, Monopoly often ends in a wasteland of useless paper money and broken friendships, so that's something in common.


I'd agree that upgrading to a more modern engine would be a good move.

[Mechalich]

I think Fallout 4 was an acceptable use of the Creation engine, back when that game went into development the decision to squeeze out one more game while also working on a new engine that would presumably be deployed in the next Elder Scrolls title made sense. Instead they created Fallout 76, which only functions by eliminating things that strain the engine (like moving NPCs), often in ways that cripple the gameplay (the game has limits on how many objects it can track without crashing, which is largely responsible for the game's inventory horrors).

One would hope that Bethesda is already working on a new engine to handle any future games, but it's hard to be hopeful at this point.

[Triaxx]

I honestly think that's one of the reasons TES6 is so far off, so they have time for an engine revamp. Or new engine.

Then again, as has been pointed out, it'd be hard on mod support going to a totally new engine. Then again if they did as before where they give us their tools, it shouldn't be too bad.

[factotum]

Bethesda's issue isn't the engine.

No, it's not: it's their complete lack of any quality control. Things like accidentally releasing the details of many of their users to other users isn't because their game engine is bad, it's because they don't seem to care about testing anything properly before doing it.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

In other words: Fixing the engine couldn't hurt, but ultimately isn't the underlying problem.

[Anteros]

In other words: Fixing the engine couldn't hurt, but ultimately isn't the underlying problem.

At least not the largest problem. There's no denying that their engine is garbage though. If some new franchise was putting out games in this engine without 20+ years of nostalgia and a huge gaming company name attached to them they'd go bankrupt after one release.

[Caelestion]

There's no denying that their engine is garbage though.

Clearly, this discussion shows that there is.

[Brookshw]

At least not the largest problem. There's no denying that their engine is garbage though. If some new franchise was putting out games in this engine without 20+ years of nostalgia and a huge gaming company name attached to them they'd go bankrupt after one release.

Personally I'm completely unconcerned with the engine. Maybe its just me, but I'm not as impressed or concerned with cutting edge graphics etc, compared to good story and game play which I'm getting.

[Erloas]

Personally I'm completely unconcerned with the engine. Maybe its just me, but I'm not as impressed or concerned with cutting edge graphics etc, compared to good story and game play which I'm getting.

The main point made about the engine isn't graphics, it is all the bugs and limitations that the engine brings to the game and design. They aren't using the engine because it is great for storytelling or offers unique gameplay options, they're using it so they can reuse as much as possible from the previous games. It would at least be something if using an older, and well known to the developers, engine meant they could release a highly optimized and very well polished game.

[The_Jackal]

Are you willing to pay full price $60 plus a season pass for OG Tetris? If the guy that made Tetris spawned 7 other games using the same "engine" as Tetris, each more constantly strained, less stable, and prone to bugs and crashing than the last due to the limitations of the engine having been reached long since, would you consider the smart action to be never to upgrade?

Should we judge new games not based on the market standard of today but by how they compare to Tetris?

Well said.

Absolutely incorrect to the reality of the industry. For a long time, and still ongoing in some circles, the problem with the ever increasing budget of games that "justified" the increased monetization was that a lot of publishers/developers insisted on reinventing the wheel with every new release; every new game needed its own unique engine. It was a big selling point.

First of all, ascribing motivations to technology decisions is opinion and conjecture, and not fact, unless you're the party making the actual decision. But in any case, the phenomenon you refer to of "new" engines is just marketing-speak. "New" engines aren't new, they're just a different version number, with some added features. But not all 3D engines are created equally, and some have fallen by the wayside, while others have continued to scale well with new technologies. Others still are the benchmarks against which other 3D engines are compared.

Not making a new engine and abandoning the Creation Engine was NOT a decision of the higher-ups at Zenimax. For most of the Creation Engine's lifespan, the execs WANTED people to waste time making a new engine for no real reason. It was a badge of honor and prestige to create a new engine for every game.

This is true and false; by which I mean that technology decisions are made or not made by product and technology teams. They specify the features they want, and work together to make technology decisions to deliver the product they want to make and sell. Leadership gets pitched a number of ideas, but very rarely makes granular decisions as to how features are implemented. What they do often do is shoot down ideas that are time-consuming and expensive, for reasons which are obvious. The marketing fluff that is fobbed off on the captive video-game press can be told any line of BS with regards to the newness of a game engine. Increment the version number, implement a new feature which was put into the pipeline graphics card manufacturers years ago, and bang, "New" engine.

It is clearly a choice by the Bethesda dev and design teams, not Zenimax. For a good while, it was a good move; there was no real reason to change engines between Oblivion and Fallout 3, or arguably even New Vegas.

By the time Skyrim came around though, its limits had been reached. By Fallout 4, the continued use was laughable.

I don't know that you actually know this. To be fair, I don't know this either. Without access to the source code, and expert knowledge and research, we don't know whether some of the more offensive bugs in Creation can be fixed without abandoning the entire underlying foundation of the CAD program it's based on. What I do know, and you do too, is that there are other 3D engines on the market which don't suffer such problems as crazy physics glitches when you uncap frame-rate. But we don't know what other trade-offs one needs to make in terms of how Bethesda games are created, in order to adopt such an engine. Would Blizzard's unnamed proprietary engine they use for Overwatch cleanly handle a room full of hundreds of interactive objects, in the way that Creation can? Would IdTech 6? Unreal? Lithtech?

I don't know I'd say that, considering F4's so stupidly stable. But that might be the 64-bit jump. I mean... in all the 553 hours I played I had two crashes that weren't the mods fault.

We clearly have different experiences of the game. My Fallout 4 playthrough, completely vanilla, not one single mod, has had quite a sprinkling of CTD problems.

The problem is Fallout 4's assets all look and feel wildly outdated. Faces are still atrocious (made all the more noticeable by the better lighting and more expressions they tried to give them), and the number of meaningful features and choices is very low, likely because so much dev time was taken up by the stupid settlement system (whose clunkiness also shows the engine's age. As simple as the system is it should not be as hard to build your settlement neatly and nicely as it was to decorate a room back in Oblivion).

That's mostly art direction and game design decisions, rather than engine, I fear.

Physics are still wonky, and still lead to the frustrating issues of key items sometimes falling under the map or being shoved under random **** due to an explosion going off in the general vicinity of the room.

Clipping and map design problems, mostly. The inability to run at any framerate other than 60 FPS is an engine problem, however.

Even little things, like the short period of blackness initiated when aiming into a scope, which mods like this fix, add up after a while, and most are symptoms of not using a newer, sleeker engine that doesn't have to use the weird workarounds and jury rigged solutions to common problems that Bethesda games have.

If you can fix it with a mod, it is by definition not an engine problem, just an bad implementation. Problems with the engine can only be fixed by replacing the engine.

The fact that animals still doofily jump at people to attack, even, would likely not be a thing in a newer engine, because newer engines can handle newer and better animations more easily. as modders can attest, animating **** in the Creation Engine is a big pain in the ass.

I assume that what modders don't often get access to is motion capture tools that the pros use, but in any case, animations are also not tightly coupled with the 3d Engine, unless you're using some kind of ragdoll system which interacts with the world via physics, which I doubt Fallout's combat animations do. Rather, I suspect the lunge attacks on dogs is more of an aesthetic decision to account for the unpredictable angles against which a dog might attack a target. After all, they need that bite animation to work against a regular sized person and a twenty foot tall supermutant behemoth. Now you either have a choice of making a unique animation for every creature combat matchup possible, or you just make one kind of generic looking one that is reasonably convincing against all enemies. Guess which one they settle on?

No, it's not: it's their complete lack of any quality control. Things like accidentally releasing the details of many of their users to other users isn't because their game engine is bad, it's because they don't seem to care about testing anything properly before doing it.

Exactly. Bethesda, I feel, has gotten away with lots of buggy games with the understanding that they were playing in a niche no one else occupied, and they supplied the tools for the community to patch their games for them. Viewed cynically, it's a pretty clever notion. However, that approach fell to pieces when they decided to get into a game with other competitors, and in a niche where community mods weren't feasible. Result: Fallout 76 == Dumpster Fire.

The main point made about the engine isn't graphics, it is all the bugs and limitations that the engine brings to the game and design. They aren't using the engine because it is great for storytelling or offers unique gameplay options, they're using it so they can reuse as much as possible from the previous games. It would at least be something if using an older, and well known to the developers, engine meant they could release a highly optimized and very well polished game.

There has been some asset re-use between Skyrim and Fallout 4, but it was mostly pretty minimal. I won't deny Fallout 76 is rife with asset re-use, but given its alleged provenance as an aborted coop addon for Fallout 4, that shouldn't be surprising. In that vein, I make out Fallout 76 to have much more in common with Skyrim Special Edition, ie: A cynical attempt to get players to pay twice for the same game.

There's a lot of talk in this thread which seems as though people think that an engine is like a part you can replace, like a new box-spring for your bed. It's really not like that. It's the underlying technological design foundation of your entire game. That's why "new" engines rarely are new. They're just modified over time, like any other piece of software. To illustrate by way of analogy, going from Windows XP to Windows 7 is a modification of the underlying design. Going from Mac OS9 to Mac OSX was a complete change of the fundamental design. When we talk about the change of the Bethesda 3D engine, we should be talking about a complete refactor of the underlying code supporting the game, otherwise the discussion is kind of meaningless.

[Triaxx]

I'm compelled to ask what your specs are.

Also only one was the classic: Ooh, your engine has slipped on a Banana peel and died. The other was a long countdown to 1 FPS then a hard freeze for 5 minutes then death. No idea what happened there.

[The_Jackal]

I'm compelled to ask what your specs are.

Also only one was the classic: Ooh, your engine has slipped on a Banana peel and died. The other was a long countdown to 1 FPS then a hard freeze for 5 minutes then death. No idea what happened there.

Intel Core i5-6600k @3.5Ghz
16 GB RAM (DDR4)
GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Nothing fabulous or fanciful. It's a few years old now, but I see no reason it can't last another 2-3 years before I refresh.

[ArlEammon]

If given the choice between buying Fallout 76, or getting kicked in the balls 76 times, which horror should I choose?

[Triaxx]

I have an AMD FX-6300, 750Ti, and 16GB of Ram. So that's weird.

[SZbNAhL]

If given the choice between buying Fallout 76, or getting kicked in the balls 76 times, which horror should I choose?

Nobody would be forcing you to play it, so it's really just a case of whether you'd be willing to pay however much it costs to avoid testicular violence. I believe the term there is "mugging", and most people go for the payment option.

[Mando Knight]

The problem is Fallout 4's assets all look and feel wildly outdated. Faces are still atrocious (made all the more noticeable by the better lighting and more expressions they tried to give them),

Bethesda's always had weird faces. Fallout 4 was their first game where I thought the presets were at least passable enough to just make minor tweaks and go... and the less we talk about Oblivion faces, the better.