Bit of a poor word choice in this: Instead of calling New Vegas a "Bethesda game" I should have really specified that it's a game made with Bethesda's IP and game formula, but developed by a different dev studio (Obsidian) and how they were able to do a better job with it.

This is a really different video from what I've made in the past but I wanted to try it out, just thought the comparison between these two quests was interesting. Let me know if you think I should do more videos like this, talking about or comparing specific examples of game design that I find interesting. Okay thanks bye.

Outer Wilds does it better too, allowing you to bludgeon Hornfels to death for the launch codes

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

mobius digital games HATES player choice??? in the sidequest where chert is kidnapped and tied up by the nomai why cant i pickpocket the keycard off of solanum???

@King_Sad_Boy

10 ай бұрын

It's so wild to me how much hate people give the outer wilds. Genuinely a great game and better than Starfield in just about every metric.

Totally agree. It feels like nothing you do in Starfield has much consequence. And every planet you go to has the same stuff; you can land on an inhabited, tropical planet, and there's two animals on the entire world??

@xen-42

7 ай бұрын

I miss old Bethesda games where you'd always see something off in the distance that you can go visit. Now if you see something it's a randomly generated bandit camp or whatever with no real point

My two recommendations for games that actually let you do everything and get away with it are Baldur's Gate 3 (pretty sure you can just murder everyone in the whole game) and Weird West (some invincible people, but at least they have a lore reason for being invincible). Basically yeah I wanna be able to murder innocent people in every open world game.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Yeah for real, not that I'm likely to even do it in most of my playthroughs since being evil makes me feel bad, but without it the feeling of player-choice is lessened.

Ooh a game design essay A diary with exactly the information we needed? How convenient!

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

While a bit contrived it's 100% better than making a random otherwise unimportant guy immortal. I can suspend my disbelief about a convenient journal, less so for a man who does not react to me setting him on fire

You should play Baldur's Gate 3 Not only does the game allow you to, for example, pickpocket quest items, but the world even acknowledges you did so. If the NPC tries to give you the stolen quest items, he'd go like "What the?? i'm sorry, it seems I've misplaced the item and can't give it to you" or something like that. And if you kill characters who have important info for the player, they'll have letters with the info or you can cast Speak With Dead on their corpse and still get the info.

@xen-42

7 ай бұрын

Oh yeah that's definitely a game I've been meaning to play, really cool to hear how they deal with these issues by working around what the player might do! Hopefully seeing the success of Baldur's Gate 3 it'll be something Bethesda can learn from in the future

starfield was developed in about 8 years if not longer new vegas was made in just a year and a half nuff said

@King_Sad_Boy

10 ай бұрын

Starfield is a fine game. Distinctly mid on every level. Fun, playable, but nothing particularly good or interesting. But, when you take into account the development time and the year it was released in, holy fuck this is a dumpster fire. And it looks worse than a modded game of skyrim 5 years ago.

@dyliokhan3946

10 ай бұрын

@@King_Sad_Boy Don't know why you calling Starfield a fine game. Game is very bad in story, bad gameplay, shit writing, essential/unkillable npc's, very bad or the lack of RPG content, choice doesn't matter nor have any much consequences, mediocre world building, bad exploration, mediocre space combat, shit companions/followers. This is coming from someone who used to play Bethesda games (Not 76, fuck that shit game), hell Fallout 4 is better and more enjoyable than Starfield despite being a bad game.

@blowfish1702

10 ай бұрын

Made in a year and a half by a team using an engine they'd never touched before 😂

@King_Sad_Boy

10 ай бұрын

@@dyliokhan3946 Starfield is a solid 6.5 out of 10. It''s definitely above average and anyone calling Starfield total dogshit is high. It's not a good game, but it's also not a bad game. It's just mid as fuck. Very bland.

The thing to keep in mind, is New Vegas was made by Obsidian, Bethesda wasn't involved in the writing. Sure New Vegas uses Bethesda's engine, and setting, but that's pretty much the extent of their influence.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Yeah definitely, so it's not a comparison of a "decline" in Bethesda's game design between two games, just a general comparison between two companies. Them sharing an engine and mechanics makes the comparison pretty valid I think, since we can specifically look at how each company considers quest essential NPCs and how they use pickpocketing and NPC inventories.

@JohnDoe-dr9ff

10 ай бұрын

@@xen-42Bethesda has a history of making crappy quests though. Skyrim and Fallout 4 have the same issue as Starfield’s quests.

@alfred265

10 ай бұрын

Thats not true. Obsidian came on and finished New Vegas. Bethesda had the a lot of it done or foundations built and set.

@yum9918

10 ай бұрын

​​@@alfred265The story is 100% Obsidian. It not only is pulled as sequel to Fallout 2 (which Obsidian has some lead members that worked in it), it is derived from Van Buren concepts (ditto, made by some people from Obsidian before they made Obsidian).

@blowfish1702

10 ай бұрын

It seems implicit throughout that that was in mind. The video highlights what CAN be done with the same game engine with limited development time vs how Bethesda has failed to grow after using the same engine for two decades 😂

so true . kinda reminds me of outer wilds.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

wow good point i never thought about it that way

Starfield quests are just like Skyrim and Fallout 4. Any answer results in the same outcome. Bethesda doesn’t do RPG quests that are impactful anymore. The studio hasn’t done so in over a decade.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Probably the worst harbinger of this was how Fallout 4 changed dialogue options down to yes, enthusiastic yes, sarcastic yes, and no (still yes)

@JohnDoe-dr9ff

10 ай бұрын

@@xen-42 Bethesda should have just made one response. That would have been funny. You have the choice to choose ONE way to respond. 😂 The impression I’ve gotten in Starfield is the responses have no impact on how dialogue progresses. The answers only (have a chance) impact companion reaction.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Yeah true, which seems doubly strange because with the new game plus mechanic they're incentivizing us to play again and realize just how little the dialogue options matter.

@JohnDoe-dr9ff

10 ай бұрын

@@xen-42 Yeah, NG+ seems…redundant. I don’t see myself playing this game a second time after beating it. I’ve yet to see ANY decisions/quests that have locked me out of dialogue or opportunities with some other faction.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

@@JohnDoe-dr9ff Reminds me of how it's totally fine to be both a UC Vanguard soldier or wtv while also being a Freestar Ranger. That right off the bat defeats the purpose of doing a second run to side with a different faction, even with the pirates you get to do all their quests just with a slight difference at the end for who you side with.

New Vegas isn't a Bethesda game, it's an Obsidian game. You could take virtually any Obsidian RPG and compare it to any Bethesda RPG and you would get the same outcome. Obsidian is known for responsive and nuanced quest design and Bethesda is known for not really caring about it.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Yeah fair point, I regret the throwaway line of it being a "Bethesda game" when what I really meant to show was what another dev team (Obsidian) was able to do using Bethesda's IP and game mechanics, since both titles have the same setup for quests, essential NPCs, and pickpocketing

toddslop.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

todd howard provides only the finest slop ofc

I mean this is one of many reasons why New Vegas is my fav game of all time. (par with Skyrim)

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Love Skyrim, only 50 more years until Elder Scrolls 6!

StarMid

why is 90% of the dialog in the game someone coming off as a rude cnt. I legit don't like the NPCs because they are justrude/snarky try hards. At least the pirates it was par for the course but I didn't like the UC or anyone because they always have to give you some kind of lip. Like why couldn't I kill the forgettable POS who runs neon? He threatened to kill me, alright I will shoot him? O wait my bullets go through him like a ghost. So many times it was just a crazy lack of choice like the D bag corpos on the resort planet. My choices are murder the colonists, slave them or come up with 40gs and buy them a grav drive. So I can kill women and children but not the slaver resort owners. Real fun.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Yeah I completely agree, especially about Benjamin Bayu on Neon, I'd try to kill him every time I saw him and was just waiting for there to be a quest where they finally let us get rid of him but nope. You'd think he'd at least have some amazing security or something to stop people just shooting him, guess you don't need that when you're immortal

it is indeed A game made by BETHESDA. but isnt redfall too?

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Good point, Bethesda rpg then? Is Redfall an rpg? Bethesda game engine game? Although even then New Vegas was on Gamebryo while Starfield is Creation Engine 2. I kinda mispoke making that specific comparison, just that they are both sort of Bethesda main-line RPGs (although NV was made by Obsidian)

New Vegas? The game made by the same company that made Outer Wilds?! The Outer Worlds by Mobius Digital is way better!

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

nuh uh outer wilds by obsidian is the best game ive ever played in the "outer" franchise

Bethesdas entire design philosophy seems to be "just do...enough", is there a functioning quest system? Sure. Did they go the extra mile with any of it? Not a chance. That's the game all over, it functional but it's bland/boring with it.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Yeah, really seems to be the case. Which is fine enough like I did have fun with the game but man, imagine what it could have been

you can clearly tell the game sucks by how you talk about it in the past tense. skyrim is almost always talked about in present.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Skyrim will live forever so long as modders exist and new smart fridges are released for Todd Howard to port it too. I really hope that they can get Starfield to that state with some good updates or DLC, but I'm afraid it's just fundamentally flawed

I wish FONV was never released

Bethesda didn’t make Fallout New Vegas, btw. Obsidian Studios made New Vegas.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

Yeah you're right I misspoke there, just meant it's another Bethesda-style RPG in a Bethesda-ish game engine

@JohnDoe-dr9ff

10 ай бұрын

@@xen-42 All good. Nothing wrong with comparing them, and I completely get what you’re saying. You could easily compare the quests of Starfield, Skyrim, and Fallout 4. They’re all the same. Choices just don’t matter. :/

Eeeeeeeeeh...I'm gonna be honest, while I would agree with you that Starfield has issues with player choice and making it feel like it matters...you probably picked the most nitpicky of nitpicky reasons for your argument lol.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

How so? I think that essential NPCs make no sense in unimportant side quests, not really a nitpick there. And having NPC inventories actually reflect what they're holding just makes sense to me. I think especially with them putting pickpocketing behind a perk instead of just being a base feature kind of means its even more important that they make it actually viable, since now its fully taking one of my level ups instead of being a throwaway action I can improve by investing in sneak, which is a broadly useful skill.

@fantomas1770

10 ай бұрын

cope harder, todd's adoring fan

@GameWyrm

10 ай бұрын

@@fantomas1770 By Azura by Azura by Azura, you said his name! Oh, I am truly blessed to be in the presence of one familiar with the one, the only, Great Todd Howard! In all seriousness, I just feel there were far better examples to pick to get xen's point across, lol.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

nuh uh

@marcusbergman6116

10 ай бұрын

​@@xen-42for instance by choosing a side quest that not many players even find and comparing itwith a MQ from the first three hours of New Vegas? :P literally the only thing they have in common is "guy in handcuff". But which would a dev spend more time on?

First of all, New Vegas isn't Bethesda it's Obsidian. Secondly I think it's disingenous to compare a small side quest with the first half of a main quest, and thirdly, the guy wouldn't just carry around the code in his pocket for a place he hasn't been to or thought of in decades. You get the code encrypted through the main quest; which you'd known if you had paid attention. You literally needed three encrypted slates. Really bad takes in this video ngl.

@xen-42

10 ай бұрын

I don't see what's disingenuous. It's a side quest, it doesn't matter. Why is the NPC "essential" when its so unimportant? Just make me fail the quest if I kill him then. If anything, New Vegas has more reason to make Deputy Beagle essential than Starfield did, because he plays a part in their important main quest. For your other complaint, you're talking about a completely different part of the quest line. I'm talking about the key to enter Galbank, not the encrypted slates. This is when you first go to Akila city and there's a bank heist in progress. The sheriff gives you a key to unlock the door only after you go through 3 sets of dialogue. He does not have this key in his inventory if you try to pickpocket him. I agree though that I shouldn't have left in a throwaway line saying it's a "Bethesda" game, I meant that it's incredibly similar being a Bethesda IP, similar engine, lot's of Bethesda assets, etc, but yes is made by a different dev team.