The Bethesda-Hate Phenomenon

With Skyrim nearing release, the hatred toward Bethesda seems to have swelled to 'epic' proportions of late. One such culprit is rpgcodex - essentially anything that is Bethesda related is met with a curious hostility (but to be fair, just about any news item at the codex is met with hostility, so you must take this with a grain of salt). But this isn't limited to just the codex. It happens a bit here at RpgWatch and a few other sites I frequent.

I've never really understood the general contempt toward Bethesda that some sites have merged into their actual culture. And the same goes for some of the company's leaders, such as Todd Howard.

I've been gaming for a really long time and while hatred toward some companies is warranted - such as the disdain toward EA and how they ruin every RPG property they acquire, other hatred, such as the one toward Bethesda - I'm left a bit confused. I've played every TES game to date. I was also a beta tester for Daggerfall - please don't condemn me, us beta testers gave plenty of feedback to Bethesda at the time that the game needed to be 'cooked' longer because there were still too many bugs.

Bethesda is by no means perfect. Each of their games have pros and cons. But unlike so many people out there, I really admire the company and (gasp) I even admire Todd Howard and some of their other people who get interviewed regularly.

First off, they're still around, in-tact, and making the games they love to make - single player RPGs - for this alone I am personally greatful. They have resisted pressures to be acquired in ways that would not let them focus on the games they want to make. They have resisted pressures to jump on the MMO bandwagon. Yes, they have re-oriented themselves with a console focus BUT they jump through hoops to bring the PC community the ability to mod their games - a community they describe as being quite small compared to the console community - the PC community tends to perceive the mod-ability of their games as a sort of entitlement (more of a sign of the times than anything else really) when in fact we should be a lot more greatful for it given that our platform is in quite the minority (according to Bethesda) and yet they take the time, money, and resources to get modding tools to us - and the modding tools themselves are quite polished relative to other modding tools.

Next, the games themselves, love em or hate em, are sincere attempts to create highly polished sandbox gaming worlds - no small task to say the least. I loved Arena and Daggerfall. I was sort of 'meh' about Morrowind (I'm certainly in the minority here). I liked Oblivion better than Morrowind - though it sort of lacked a 'soul' in many respects. And I have to say I'm looking forwad to skyrim.

What I admire the most about Bethesda is that, more than any other company in the U.S., they seek to really perfect the 'sandbox gaming' RPG - a benchmark they admittedly state as impossible to reach. And this direction isn't short term, it has persisted since 1994 with the introduction of Arena. Striving for this impossible perfection is why I think a great number of us are still interested in this series - because maybe 'this time' they'll get it just right…

A lot of people get hung up on gameplay features they don't like which then turns into hatred for the company. I myself have things I bitch about with each of their games. But I sometimes feel that the hatred is way out of whack with the reality of the company, their leaders, and their games in general. Us, as a community of single player RPG lovers, cannot even agree on all that much. Yet we expect developers to perfectly 'nail' a game where we will all sing in unison that the perfect RPG has been created. It's never going to happen and then we (as a group) hate them for it. It's just bizzare.

I recently came across a thread that was really chiding and just generally tearing down Todd Howard. So I actually took a few hours to watch numerous interviews this man has done over the years since the development of Morrowind. While he is guilty of hype and over-promising, I find him to be quite articulate and visionary. In general, from the video interviews I've watch, I find his strengths far outweigh his weaknesses. I'm left wondering how on earth this guy is so hated on the net.

Anyway, I thought this might be a fun topic of discussion and I'm curious about the thoughts on this by others that frequent RPGWatch. For those of you who will shout and scream that I'm just an ignorant fanboy, here, I will do it for you…

I'M JUST AN IGNORANT FANBOY.

With that out of the way… discuss!

My eyes hurt after reading all that.

Yeah, the hate is strong at certain forums I agree, but I think it's relatively mild here. In fact, I would argue that Bioware get a lot more hate nowadays.

We have a lot of TES fans here, and while I wouldn't call myself a fanboy, I've certainly enjoyed most of the time I've spent with Bethesda games. I like Morrowind and FO3 quite a bit, and I plan on giving Oblivion another shot in the near future.

I've been messing around with the Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul lately, and I'm looking forward to doing a replay of that game soon. I'm even thinking of doing a TES marathon, in which I'll play Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim one after the other.

And yes.. I'm excited about Skyrim, even though I don't plan on playing it upon release.

I wished we stopped talking about companies and instead talked about the principal people responsible for our games. If I had the skills I would very much like to make a gaming site that focused on the developers. A sort of cross between linkedin and mobygames, crowdsourced by gamers. I know atleast one tried but backed down.

TL;DR, but suffice it to say they do themselves no favors sometimes with their hype machine that tends to write checks that they can't cash.

There's also ridiculous comments that Todd makes like saying that $60 is too expensive for games, except for their game of course. There are far better ways to phrase that you feel your game gives an excellent value for the money by providing many hours of play time that don't come off sounding like an arrogant douche.

The whole threatening to sue an indie developer for using the word "scroll" ain't helping their image much either.

My theory is that every things begins to becomes hated - from a certain size on.

I have sometimes the feeling as if peoples were feeling that something that exeeds a certain size iis just "wrong" and/or "dangerous" - nd tht these subconscious "feelings" or even "perceptions" are put out by the conscious prt of the person via masked by "hatred".

They made good games once - now the make stupid games and lots of money. Todays market works this way. This doesen't mean I have to like it.

I like TES games.

Isnt that all that matters?

Oblivion is the culprit.

Lots of promises which were not delivered upon (remember this one?).
Introduction of quest markers, fast travel (ok, at least players have to "discover" the locations first and it´s not like it´s particularly engaging to run around anyway given the vanilla´s uninspired world design, but it´s also possible to fast travel to all major cities right from the start), quest pop-ups at every step, console-ish interface, almost no choices, all factions easily available in one playthrough, extremely linear quest design, etc.
Some of this stuff may not seem as ridiculous now when a lot of it has already become a norm (no doubt also thanks to Oblivion), but situation was quite different back then. I bet that the major reason why we both couldn´t praise Dragon Knight Saga enough in the other thread was the game is relatively lacking most of the above stuff.
Lazy handling of lore.
Add some hilarious stuff like "I saw a mudcrab the other day", "you can´t sit on owned chair", the fact Baurus totally doesn´t suspect a player to be emperor´s murderer, persuasion minigame, etc.
And then there´s the rigid level scaling of course.

However, what I think contributed to the "hate phenomenon" the most was the near unanimous praise the game received upon its release from game critics who pretty much ignored the game´s flaws all across the board.

It may not be the worst cRPG ever, but thanks to its wide recognition it simply works really well as a symbol of "dumbing down" on one hand and corruption of gaming journalism on the other, at least that´s how I see it.
Troika shut the doors, Oblivion gates opened, basically .

I also think that these "hate movements" positively contributed to a more general awareness of the game´s flaws, which consequently resulted in various improvements in Fallout 3 (though I think it´s still a rather painfully mediocre game, at least its vanilla iteration).

I expect a lot of "Rybicki Maneuvering" in the upcoming months .

There is always plenty of hate to go around for the industry leaders. In the RPG genre the leaders are Bethsoft and Bioware. I suspect that a large group of haters hate them simply for being prominent, much like many haters of Apple/Microsoft/NY Rangers/whatever.

My own opinion of Bethsoft has made a rollercoaster ride.

On one hand I always thought Bethesda are competent. Their post-Daggerfall games are stable and they meet their design goals. On the other hand I was p-d at Oblivion as it made me realise that those goals arent necessarily what I seek in a game, but Fallout 3 sort of redeemed them.

Now I see them (and Bioware whose games I tend to rate slightly higher) as Hollywood producers. I get competent craftsmanship that I will enjoy as long as I have realistic expectations. Both devs stick to their formulae (some good, some annoying).

I'm always torn. Some of their decisions cause massive nerd-rage, yet I have to admit I've invested plenty of time in all of their products (except for Redguard. Somehow missed that one entirely) and will probably invest plenty more time into Skyrim & future products.

The Hatred towards Bethsoft & TES precedes Oblivon, DeepO. Both on the Codex as well as on the RPGdot, I remember that clearly because I became involved on both sites after MW's release as a fanboy defending the franchise
Well, I think one reason was that TES was, due to its increasing success, seen as a major culprit leading mainstream games away from the classic RPG formula towards more action, more GFX, less depth, more console sales. Arguably, th may even be true. But as others have pointed out, they were, from the beginning, rather alone in their own specific niche, the real time, single player, first person, sandbox RPG - that is also a truth. But, as Alrik points out, the big guys always attract the most heat.

Another issue is that they changed enough from game to game to always piss off a significant proportion of their former fanbase. Hell has no wrath, like a fanboy betrayed!

I'd say that it's definitely best to ignore the previews for games these days. The hype is really over the top for just about every major game. It's super easy to build your expectations beyond reason due to that stuff.

DeepO said:

Oblivion is the culprit.

Lots of promises which were not delivered upon (remember this one?).

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That was exactly the beginning of the end of my Bethesda love affair. Man was I ever looking forward to Oblivion after seeing that video. It seemed like a dream to me. The perfect RPG with fleshed out believable NPCs who appear to go about their business and have their own lives. Basically, Ultima 7 brought into the modern age and maybe even enhanced.

Then I played the game. It was like WTF? I've been bamboozled!

GhanBuriGhan said:

Hell has no wrath, like a fanboy betrayed!

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Indeed.

swaaye said:

I'd say that it's definitely best to ignore the previews for games these days. The hype is really over the top for just about every major game.

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Agreed but the more connected we are, the harder and harder that is to do. In the old days we basically had print ads and some vague articles in magazines. These days the hype is difficult to avoid, particularly if you frequent gaming sites such as this one that regularly post news articles.

I just love the word "bamboozled"!
I agree - radiant AI was not a bad thing, but that video and the Hype over that feature in general were a huge mistake.

I critisized Bethesda a lot in the past. That said I have played ALL their games.

I'm not critisizing them for the things they have done, I'm critisizing them for the things they haven't done.

Nehrim and OSCURO'S OBLIVION OVERHAUL are the proof that Oblivion could have been really good at release day.

I loved every game until Daggerfall. Then the time of streamlining and super autoleveling and mini dungeons began.

The question I asked myself over and over again after playing vanilla Morrowind and vanilla Oblivion: "what could have been …"

Fortunately the modders answered my question.

Thanks for all the feedback so far. The news lately has been sort of 'ho hum' - at least for me anyway, and I was hoping to get an interesting thread to pass the time for whoever wants to participate.

JDR13 said:

My eyes hurt after reading all that.

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Sorry about that and the TL;DR from Motoki - just wanted to talk about something interesting!

Alrik Fassbauer said:

My theory is that every things begins to becomes hated - from a certain size on.

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Zaleukos said:

There is always plenty of hate to go around for the industry leaders.

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I feel the same way. I've always thought of it in my mind as 'top dog syndrome.' Top Dog Syndrome basically means that whoever is the 'top dog' of anything will be hated by a lot of people simply because of being the 'top dog.' You could swap out say Donald Trump with someone else to take his place as a top player in real-estate and that person will be equally despised.

Yes there are a lot of criticims we can make about Bethesda, their games, their hype and so on. But I have a feeling in my gut that tells me if Bethesda wasn't the 'top dog' single player RPG maker in the U.S., then whoever else it would be (if anyone) would be equally hated.

DeepO said:

Oblivion is the culprit.

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I'm not so sure. I remember the hatred that was the Compuserve forum during Daggerfall's development and the hatred on the official forums during Morrowind's development. The hatred on the official forums pre and post Oblivion just seemed more of the same to me really.

HiddenX said:

Nehrim and OSCURO'S OBLIVION OVERHAUL are the proof that Oblivion could have been really good at release day... The question I asked myself over and over again after playing vanilla Morrowind and vanilla Oblivion: "what could have been …"

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You see, here is where we as gamers tend to perhaps get it wrong (not you personally HiddenX, but us as a gamer community) - it's easy to monday-morning quarterback anything... my wife does it all the time

We tend to chastise Bethesda for what 'could have been' instead of perhaps finding happiness that they give out modding tools for other people to create new (and sometimes better) content.

I loved Morrowind and like many people played it for hundreds of hours despite the flawed leveling mechanics. I love the tools that they provide. Heck I spent 2 years building additional tools for Oblivion and I never even finished the first Oblivion portal in the game. The fact that the community had to provide tools to mod is another topic but then few other companies do any better.

The game/tools were definitely flawed but just about better than anything else any other RPG has delivered. They are just open enough that you can fix many problems yourself. Dont like big fonts, there is an app for that. Dont like the horrible inventory, fix the inventory.xml file. Some of these are do require some developer type skills but it can be done. Many other games are not nearly as flexible and I love that about their games.

I like your comment about the games being sincere attempts and agree. They did way over promise Radiant AI and several other features. I think they genuinely wanted and tried to make it happen but the developers just were not up to the task.

In the end the current hate is part "familiarity breeds contempt" and nobody roots for Goliath. If they could just have the marketing match the reality (or vice versa) then there would probably be fewer frustrated gamers.

DeepO said:

Oblivion is the culprit.

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TheMadGamer said:

I'm not so sure. I remember the hatred that was the Compuserve forum during Daggerfall's development and the hatred on the official forums during Morrowind's development. The hatred on the official forums pre and post Oblivion just seemed more of the same to me really.

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I think a better measure is how a game stands the test of time and how it's remembered. There will always be some backlash before and after.

I can honestly say that in the places I visit these days Morrowind is remembered fondly and Oblivion for the most part (there are some people who are exceptions of course) is not. There's a poll here on this site that seems to very much reflect that sentiment. Even Daggerfall seems to be regarded somewhat fondly as ambitious but flawed.

I also think mood and atmosphere plays a part and in that regard Morrowind seems to get a pass on a lot of other things just because it had a really unique atmosphere.

I feel like Oblivion whitewashed everything and made it totally generic. It's the kind of atmosphere we have all seen 1,000 times before and will see 1,000 times again. While I realize the Imperial province is never going to be as different as the Dark Elves land, the lore prior to Oblivion painted Cyrodiil as much more Roman than some token architecture in one city and a couple of pieces of plate armor. It also had the province as a jungle.

They definitely could have gone a more unique route but intentionally chose generic fantasy to appeal to as many people as possible. I understand the economics of that decision, but artistically you just lose something.

Okay now I am being TL;DR so I'll shut up.

TL;DR but I can guess what it says anyway. Guess what? You can love something and still criticize it's flaws.

My last two posts here have both been calling Bethesda idiots. But in reality one was aimed at their legal dept. (the Scrolls copyright thing) and the other was their marketing dept. (charging $150 for the CE).

I actually love all of Bethesda's games that I've played (their's directly and the one's they just helped publish). I either pre-ordered or bought day 1 Morrowind & expansions, Oblivion & expansion, Fallout 3, FO:NV, & Call of Cthulhu: DCotE. And I'll be pre-ordering Skyrim & RAGE. And yes I know they're only publishers for several of those.

I will still call them idiots when they or some part of their company does something I think is stupid.

Are their RPG's perfect? Hell no, they're more like action-adventure games with some character development. But they fill a niche and are fun as hell (especially once they get modded). If they ever decide to put out an RPG and NOT release the editing tools I doubt I'd pay full price for it. But I don't think they're dumb enough to ever do that.

Bethesda made a game scored 95% and was hailed as the "next generation", even though it's skeleton was a rather simple game.

The generated content made the game appear large at first glance but after 1-2 days the spell was broken and you begun to see the predictable pattern behind what you saw on screen.

Despite the radiant AI, there was almost no social realm. No culture differences between cities, no NPC's to care for, no companions. I quickly ended up feeling alone. Spending a moment thinking on the games by Bioware, Obsidian and Bioware my brain flows with memorable companions and NPC's. Spending a moment thinking on Oblivion I just can't remember that many.

Dialogue was notoriously poor, usually offering only 2 alternatives, with very few if any cases that your characters skills or attributes contributed to the dialogue.

The amount of quests in total were surprisingly few considering the size of the game. There were also almost no quests that offered decisions for how to continue or finish them. The waypoints contributed to the feel that you were mostly in for the ride, solving quests by using your legs rather than your brain. It was rare that you had to think or even listen to what a NPC had to say. I found myself shutting off my brain rather quickly, just following the directions in the hud.

Overall the game was poorly written. The overarching plot offered no surprises and you probably do not remember what the game was about. There were no philosophy in the game, nothing that provoked thought. It was mostly silly or cliché. At least they gave you a few good laughs but that's it.

So much for Oblivion. How about Fallout 3? Well, F3 was a definite improvement, however, now when you can compare with FNV on the side it's glaringly obvious how oversimplistic F3 is and even if F3 definitely improves dialogue and increase the amount of quests in the game, it's still no way near what we find in the RPG's we love the most.

Now, in comparision to Bioware… Bioware really dropped when it comes to gameplay, but they are still masters in making you connect to the story and it's characters and it's often philosophical content make you think. Bethesda do not have this skill. They have developed a really good engine, they simply don't know how to use it.