Why is bethesda so bad at writing? why don't they just hire some good writers?

Somebody said dragons?

That said who the fuck even plays paladin anymore now that the monk update gave them the exact same powers only that multiplied by two.
Glass cannon? look at how the glass cannon dodges every single attack with an unarmored AC of 32 while healing himself using Healing Hands every time he gets hit.

I fucking despise DnD

They had a good writer but they were uncomfortable paying him in drugs after they went legit.

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BOF4 is fucking beautiful in every possible way.

Kirkbride wrote Morrowind's plot and the 36 Lessons while tripping face and slamming vodka.

I saw a screenshot on here of some furry autist who modded the game and changed all the dragon names to the correct meaning because he identified as a dragon.

People always name SOTN and Valkyrie Profile as pinnacle of sprite art and animation during PS1 era, but I think that BOF4 deserves no less.

Because Pete Hines is a complete retard and probably doesn't want to have people smarter than him in the company.

Absolutely correct. VP and Xenogears have some beautiful spriting, but BOF4's is some of the best in any video game, ever.

Drugs mother fucker, do you take them?

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Ah.
I only played Skyrim

Probably that.

Godbless the man and his mind.

Post more of these. Salvage this thread.

The one that used to be a ship and shoot weaponized math at other space faring vessels? And is apparently the sister of Pelinal?

It could be worst, like a nintendo thread

no, KINMUNE. The thing that is almost certainly intended to be some sort of technomagic version of the flesh clone people from Doctor Who

Every time I see his stupid face and his stupid fucking smile it makes me mad

the entirety of bethesda is housed by Todd's friends and relatives. Nepotism kills talent.

I'm like 90% sure she used to be a ship. There were even theories the orb of magnus from Skyrim was apparently her old "body"

elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/KINMUNE

Really sounds like what the Flesh were in the Rebel Flesh episode. A synthetically created proxy body used by people for dangerous mining operations, which then goes crazy due to macguffin shit and forms a make shift consciousness out of residual psychic impressions left by it's former operators before eventually turning into a violently unstable shape-shifting monster.

Because Todd hires his friends to work at Bethesda, rather than anyone actually qualified for the positions. Pagilarulo has proven time and time again that he does not even have a basic understanding of plot structure. His story is filled with holes, logical inconsistencies, laziness, and dialogue so straightforward and dull you might as well just have NPCs make grunts that update your quest log. He's done interviews where he flat out states that he ignores the criticism because it doesn't matter, and the games he writes make a ton of money anyway.

Cronyism, my friend, is one of Bethesda's grandest pitfalls.

I challenge you to name one popular series that does not.

Giving a flying fuck (lol, puns) about the different types of dragons doesn't make money for the developers. If you want good writing, read a book; you won't get it from a video game or movie or TV show, because those are VISUAL mediums.

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Because it would mean replacing their entire company.
They would need to hire coders because they are shit at writing and reuse engine since morrowind.
They would need to hire writers because they cannot write a proper game since morrowind.
And the best part:
They already hired ID software to make combat for them in Fallout 4.

If we would get to a point where Bethesda will be just bunch of hired people, their games would actually be good. Combat was only redeemable quality in F4.

I would still play Paladin.
I only played DnD once and had no idea what stats I should take. I created paladin with 6 charisma and I done that while I was most autistic shut-in who couldn't finish proper sentence around people.
It was glorious.

Nice arbitrary rule bullshit set on imagination. How does it feel to be such a no-taste shitter, you fucking cunt?

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Ever since Morrowind Bethesda has spent effort in every TES game retconning anything interesting about their own fantasy world in favor of turning it into another generic, boring fantasy setting indistinguishable from all the rest.

In comparison to FO3 and NV? Sure. Compared to other shooters? It was complete dogshit. If not even id could salvage the gameplay there is no hope for Bethesda and their trash.

Wyverns ARE dragons, you dipshit.
Dragons come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, that they all have 4 legs, 2 wings, 1 head and 1 tail is some sort of recent fantasy bullshit.

Pic related, a Tarasque, which is also a fucking dragon

No I am talking about shooting and heads exploding.
Gameplay itself even combat is bad. Level design is nonexistant, enemies are bullshit. However if you were to take F4 and mod some better environmental designs to it it would be actually good.
Someone actually did it, it is called Frost and makes this game actually better.

You'd still need to fix the damage model so enemies aren't complete bullet sponges, the AI isn't completely retarded, there is actually gun variety, the gunplay isn't so unresponsive, etc.

This actually sounds like something Todd Howard would say in a staff meeting. Why has no one checked those digits yet?

Considering Todd Howard was in charge of the Redguard game the shitty gameplay and writing of Bethesda games starts to make a whole lot more sense.

Physically they're what you'd usually call a wyvern, but Drakengard has wyverns in it's universe and the difference between wyverns and dragons in Drakengard still holds to the usual conventions. That is to say that wyerns are smaller, dumb, incapable of human speech and unable to use magic. The behavioural difference between dragons and wyverns is more important than the physical ones.

I think 6 CHA corresponds to a desfiguration, right?

Fuck you! Todd created Elder Scrolls and Fallout. :^)

Generally speaking aside from the ammount of limbs the main difference between a wyvern and a dragon is that a wyvern is just a giant lizard with wings that can some times spit fire, lightning, ice and/or poison while a dragon is a highly intelligent being that just despises everything that dares touch his shekels.

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He was also in charge of Morrowind.

Even a fool will strike gold once in a lifetime.

It's like reading something from an alternate reality.

Because Bethesda wants to make open world action games where the only story telling is environmental, but they keep trying to make RPG's.

You give them too much credit. They want to write great stories, but the nepotistic dipshits Todd keeps around and Petey's general stupidity mean Bethesda will never produce anything worthwhile in that regard.

FO4 was their attempt to ape New Vegas, look how that one turned out.

What bothered me more than the writing in Skyrim was the voice acting. Hearing the same handful of boring voice actors for every character in the game became grating fast.
It wouldn't have mattered if the game did have good writing, the voice acting would have still ruined it for me. Did they hire more than 5 voice actors for Fallout 4?

i am one of these drones, sadly. it's like a disease i can't get rid of

Who cares about Bethesda? They're no longer the kings of Open World RPGs. CD Projekt stole their thunder.

Don't forget to buy the Witcher 3 GOTY!

There is one way.

BUT IM STILL WAITING FOR BETHESDA'S NEXT MASTERPIECE

but seriously, i acknowledge they're bad games with awful bugs and shitty devs behind them, but i still play them and enjoy them

Wyverns are dragons.

If anyone here is genuinely interested in exploring a couple of possible non-meme reasons why Bethesda is ACTUALLY shit at writing anything decent, i recently saw an analysis video about FO4 that went in depth about a lot of things, including this specific subject.
It was pretty interesting and gave me some insight into what might be happening during development of their games.

Skip to 11:35

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No, they aren't. Wyverns as depicted mythologically and on heraldry have two legs. Dragons are depicted with four. There is a distinction between the two.

Zenimax have a culture of incompetence. Remember that their head animator flunked out of his animation degree twice then got hired into his position for being Todd Howard's friend.

They are dragons, just a different kind

How can you enjoy that shit, especially after Fallout 4.

ALL
I WANT
IS A FALLOUT 4 MOD THAT MAKES THE UI NOT SHIT.

Love these kinds of bideos, thanks man.

i didn't enjoy fallout 4, actaully

That wouldn't fix all the other issues FO4 has, like it not being an RPG in the slightest and gameplay only consisting of roaming and killing.

ALL games are bad at writing, shitbiscuits.

Lmao.
Dwarves aren't midgdets too, OP. Welcome in TES, read the shit wrote by vivec for a clearer understanding!

Where is this heraldry, son?

jokes aside, i was thinking of FO4's writing compared to the Witcher's. Each has their flaws, but FO4 tried to shoehorn a stereotype and part of the fun of Fallout (along with TES) is roleplaying. But the role you play in FO4 is fucking boring. I really don't know why Bethesda thought they could pull it off when people have been saying for years a lot of their writing is already trash. I just could not bring myself to care enough to play it more, good thing I pirated it.

Witcher doesn't have that many dialogue choices either, even the first one outside of a few characters, and Witcher 3 the choices are color coded even to let you know what is side dialogue and what will progress the conversation to the next step. But the role you're playing is done far better, characters are interesting, and dialogue feels realistic.

anyway, as someone who does have a guilty pleasure for TES, I can't say i'm hopeful for TES6 given how FO4 went. would be funny to me if TES6 comes out the same year as Cyberpunk 2077 or some other western rpg that pushes ol' lyin' todd's shit in. Enjoyed shitposting at bethesdadrones when FO4 lost goty awards to Witcher 3.

I think Bethesda got burned with FO4, especially in the story department, but also because of a focus on voice acting and limited (or even more limited) roleplaying opportunities.

The real kicker is that their fanbase obviously wants a game more like Ultima Underworld, that places greater focus on the simulation side of things, or at least that's the impression I've gotten from the more popular mods, yet Bethesda seems to just want to push the simplistic shooter angle.

This game and its dragons are so creative and AESTHETIC I can't even. When I was a kid I just it all too weird but it grew on me and now it's one of my favorite games. still need to finish it in japanese though

Go away Cain, your waifu a shit

I feel like Bethesda suffers from Simpsonsitis.
They used to have good writers at some point who were people that just loved to craft and proved it by making great stuff.
Once those people left, instead of finding someone that they knew was good, they decided to hire "professional" writers with degrees.

Which has made them go down this current road.
The fact these people also don't know how RPGs should work certainly doesn't help either.

because people will buy the game regardless
having to pay more for better writers cuts into the bottom line without a benefit

Today I will remind them:

Peryite is the daedric prince of autism and neckbeards

Same reason Bioware doesn't hire better writers: Because they feel they are big, famous, and important. They believe that they are part of the elite of gaming. The best of the best. And in terms of being companies that can sell the same fucking game in amounts that say worse things about society than them, they are some of the best.

So they end up thinking that they don't have to play by the rules. That they can just do whatever they want and it will work out. Why hire good writers or talented people who might demand and warrant a good wage when you can hire some cunt from The Mary Sue who whines about cyber rape to make sure your game fits the hipster identity politics ideology that everyone in the tech industry is high on?

Why work on a coherent, internally consistent world when you can just overhype the idea that people can play your games "forever"? Why even bother trying to be good when idiots will mistake your laziness for brilliance. "Oh wow! This NPC can be romanced by any species or gender! SO PROGRESSIVE" (and totally not because they forgot to program any sort of limits to that sort of thing)

Who is that beautiful lady on bottom-left? I feel like I've seen quite often in the political cringe stuff.

encyclopediadramatica.se/Ahuviya_Harel
encyclopediadramatica.se/ADF-Fuensalida

Fat sperg retard who is obsessed with Naruto, communism, and LGBTQIAP+3 bullshit. He's like Chris-chan without the sonichu comics, but he does do poorly scrawled political crayon drawings.

Got any more of these?
Preferably over an hour in length.
Any of the fallouts would be great, just for comparison and also because I'm not great at seeing these kinds of things when I play the game myself.

Thanks.

Check his channel, he's done like 30 hours worth of Dark Souls critique. He's actually pretty good and takes the time to play games for a long enough time to form an intelligent opinion. Between him and MatthewMatosis, there's not much in the way of non-pozzed game commentary like this.

That's the problem: I've seen every video from both of them that I care to see.

Aye. The few that were evil kind of okay-ish on a good day went full kool-aid, like Campster/Errant Signal. Others just stopped producing content entirely because the work to payout ratio made is pointless to do videos that the average normalfag wouldn't bother watching because they're too long.

Yeah, I could see the fanbase wanting a more simulation type of deal to some degree. when i play skyrim, i usually end up playing with Frostfall, Alternate Start, and other shit added to make me feel like just a random vagabond dicking about and surviving. At the end of the day, Bethesda games are nothing more than a "get quest do dungeon crawling".

the voiced protagonist also hurt the replayability in FO4 which is where a lot of Bethesda's games get their appeal from, especially TES. In TES I usually have multiple characters, like "this is my vampire mage", or "this is my two-hander", whatever. Do quests and guilds that I think they would do and pass on others. I just don't see FO4 getting a lot of replayability, even with mods, but what do I know I guess. I genuinely detest the game and won't touch it.

It's just not one of their priorities anymore, that's really all there is to it. They could do better writing, but it's much more worth it for them to focus on gameplay and graphics to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I think the reason a lot of people hate Bethesda is because they went from a niche developer to a mainstream one, and in doing so changed their target audience from people like Holla Forums to people like reddit.

but fo4 didn't play well nor looked good. It was the worst looking big budget title that year.

It was still good enough for normalfags.

This guy's whiny fucking voice is killing me. He does that "vocal fry" all the time like a girl from California.

"Dragon" is an umbrella term for large serpents, which includes anything from a canonical winged snake to a half-cat tatzelwurm which has no fucking wings whatsoever.
Stop being retarded.

Bethesda doesn't do good stories because the intent is to make the game big and interesting to explore, and everything else comes second.
There are interviews where it is revealed that people from almost every department had a hand in creating quests. They are mostly simple go-kill-fetch shite, with very little difference between them, but that isn't what matters.

The main problem with Bethesda's stories is that you don't need to prove yourself at all. Most Morrowind players had to go around askind for help from every fucking house and get friends in pretty high up places before they were considered good enough for a drop of Vivec's attention. Oblivion starts and here you are, everybody recognises you and you don't need to put in any legwork. Same goes for Skyrim, FO3 and FO4.

I can't say that Beth can't create interesting storylines, but they can't make them internally consistent due to sheer amount of people involved. It feels like it is all over the place because it was written by hundreds of people. 1,2 and NV were created by much smaller studios, and even then they fucked up the lore quite often mostly talking about 2 here.

It's not that they can't write characters either, they just come off as inconsistent. Nick was very interesting in all his dialogues, but him being a product of the institute and the patchwork main story really brought him down.
If I see that argument about bethesda making supermutants orcs again I'm going to fucking scream, they were retarded enough in 1 and Lieutenant was the odd one out.

Basically, Bethesda is into making exploration games with cool enviroments, and their quests are mostly excuses to make you go see new places. They must not deem it important.

Here is a question: what would you prefer, a game where you have shit writing but interesting locations and gameplay or a game where you have corridors for locations and clicking on enemy until it dies for combat but with a great story? If you answer that question you know which fallout you like.

looks like a fucking chimera to me

I prefer both.

who have we got left? pynchon? ellis? delillo?

Did anybody on 4chan actually like McCain in 2008? I thought they were all on the Freedom Train.
Naturally the Hero of Holla Forums wouldn't know shit about anything, but still.

Well, pretty much. The OG dragons were literally snakes with wings that bullied the shit out of Gilgamesh.

Huh.
Is there any evidence that europeans and asians got their dragons from these?

Well, The Epic of Gilgamesh was the first written document ever found, so I guess it would've influenced the rest of the world somehow.

I should've worded that better.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest literary work ever found.*

No, everyone hated McCain, it was nothing like this election where everyone worships Trump. Everyone was rooting for Ron Paul back then because McCain was a warmonger and Obama was a nigger.

Becaude the video game industry has only had eight good writers, and to my knowledge none of them have worked at or for Bethesda.

I've decided to try to go back into skyrim recently, but no matter how heavily I mod it, so many more flaws glare shamelessly through. It baffles me how a company can make a game this shit with that much backing.
The repetitive dialog, the 4 or so voice actors that do everything, the everything about the game.
Remind me again why it got 9-10 reviews across the board?

I do believe you brought up a critical point: Oblivion off the bat hands you an Amulet of Kings, Instantly making you important. Skyrim, after 2 quests, makes you important, and explains after the fact. Both games say in the beginning go "This is what you are, Here is your enemy, have at it, we NEED you at this very moment without delay." Which in my play through of Oblivion, made me felt like grinding wasn't needed, and I should go to Kavatch with all haste, only to put me in a situation to prove myself a demigod by breaking a siege by going to hell, and then eliminate all combatants in the city, then and there; its quest #2. Skyrim's quest 2: Another demigod feat by killing a Dragon and demonstrate an inhuman ability.

In a different change of pace, In the beginning of Morrowind, you were an just another bloke unknown what was to happen or become of you, all because the Emperor thought you meet the criteria (there were doubts he could be wrong). Only until the end of the rising action of the main quest do you get a glimpse of the servant of your enemy. Until then you are encouraged to grind until you are ready to garb the puzzle box from a ruin with bandits in quest 2.

Break

Other key story flaw, is that none of the plots within Skyrim or Oblivion interact with each other. In one example of Morrowind, the Fighters Guild and Thieves Guild quests are intertwined with a third faction and a (possible) antagonist. The guilds are aware of each other's existence, and even an important detail was that the two use to be very close until the third faction came about and mucked with the Fighter's Guild.

Review bribes, "Bethesda just put a continent into a game" memes, typical Bethdrone forgiveness of each game's horrendous flaws, huge marketing budgets, there's more but those are the first that come to mind.

Forgot to mention: Skyrim makes you important by making you survive an attack from the main antagonist off the bat .

Not to mention plenty of "Oh, that game we gave 9/10 to before? It was trash. This new game though, it's 9/10"

Subtlety, user. Though do appreciate a good cancer joke.

Is he the one who made that cringy picture of Sasuke shooting McCain?

trump has the lowest approval rating, no one likes him except his hard-core cult of personality.

He is the first president to keep the majority of his campaign promises.
Obama promised to shut down Gitmo and pull troops out of the Mid East
He did neither of these things
So far Trump has increased the moratorium on lobbying by congressmen after leaving office enacted the boycott of migrants from countries with known Terrorist problems, and has begun planning for the wall.
His approval rating is low because the media told normalfags that he was Hitler reborn for the last year.

Continental European vs English/Irish/Scottish depictions. The Europeans don't make as much of a distinction

Todd Howard's reaction…
youtu.be/U54qP_GKoF0?t=13m42s

pls step aside

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What are you faggots on about?

Dragons were mentioned in TES lore ahead of time, and the only time a dragon appeared with four legs in any means was Peryite, who is a Daedric Prince, and not actually a dragon. The statue of Akatosh in Ebonheart, in Morrowind, has two legs. When the Avatar of Akatosh shows up at the end of Oblivion, it has two legs. Then there's Nafaliargus, the dragon that shows up in Redguard, and he has exactly two legs.

The Dragonlings in Daggerfall had four little legs, that much is true. But they've also only been mentioned since then as being a different species entirely. You could call this a bullshit retcon, but it's one bullshit retcon out of a bunch of them that all took place in the stages between Daggerfall and Morrowind, when Kirkbride and his drugs were put on the writing staff and things started to get interesting.

The only people who care about the difference betwen a wyvern and a dragon are autistic subhumans.
Dragon sounds better than wyvern so they went with that, it was a good choice.

Like all the ones that said Hillary would win? Top kek.

The writing is just one aspect where they fail completely. Another is to create an interesting world. This is partly because they've been using the same engine since Oblivion and refuse to cough up the shekels for a new one or develop a customized one in-house. They just add some glossy shit to it, but the frankenstein architecture comes through and you get these rocky prefab conglomerate worlds that look like plastic garbage.

So the cheap fucks work with the same old uninspiring engine that can't produce something that looks or feels satisfying. On top of that, they are fundamentally incapable of building an interesting world. Skyrim was a big gray rock of nothing, and Fallout 4 was similar with another theme.

If they stop being such cheap bastards, get a new engine and fire all the mouthbreathers and replace them with actual talent, then they might be able to put out something of quality.

Kirkbride is the only decent contributor to Elder Scrolls lore, and that's only because he had a usable framework to inject his insane ketamine-dream ramblings into.

At this point I'd be more interested in seeing an Elder Scrolls novel from him rather than any new games, but considering C0DA was the text equivalent of Agamemnon Counterpart I seriously doubt his ability to actually write a story on his own.

You can blame Bethesda but a lot of gamers are dumb as a brick and have the concentration and memory skills of a goldfish.

Write something interesting and complicated and it will just go over their heads or worse confuses and triggers them. Don't expect great story and characters from triple A games.