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How did Bioware and Bethesda, RPG masters a decade ago, fall so low?

Segafreak

Segafreak

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Oct 27, 2017
2,756
They went from greatness (Mass Effect 1/2/Fallout 3) to releasing absolute shit games with FO76 and Anthem. Both devs were guaranteed 90 Metas, now they're struggling in the 50s/60s. Along the way things like Mass Effect 3 and Fallout 4 happened, but those were really just mediocre and not offensively bad.

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How did both devs change and ruin their reputation so dramatically and why is it by chasing the latest gaaaaaas trends? It's not like traditional RPGs were getting outmoded, on the contrary. Why, if they wanted to do a multiplay Fallout, they just couldn't do a traditional Fallout with co-op and some pvp?
 
Troublematic

Troublematic

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Nov 1, 2017
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They went multiplayer GaaS instead of their core strengths. These are just fundamentally different markets. Why did they go for it? Greed.
 
Kass

Kass

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Oct 27, 2017
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To be fair, it took 73 Fallouts to get to here.

Jokes aside, chasing trends they weren't fit to.
 
Cincaid

Cincaid

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Oct 28, 2017
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Both your examples are studios going outside of their comfort zone to try something new. In both cases it didn't work, and while I have zero interest to play either Anthem or Fallout 76, I think it's healthy and necessary that studios try something new. Hopefully they learned from their mistakes and have gained experience for their next projects.
 
Maxina

Maxina

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Oct 28, 2017
3,308
Anthem and Fallout 76 are both primarily multiplayer focused games. *Thinking*

Edit: They should stick with what works for them, and not chase after the streaming crowd.
 
ethanradd

ethanradd

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Oct 30, 2017
1,910
Honestly I think Bethesda is still alright, 76 seems like an experiment, I'm sure their main games will still deliver. I loved Fallout 4 even though not quite as much as FO3 and NV, it was still great. BioWare on the other hand I have lost faith in the studio, both Andromeda and Inquisition were a miss for me. They were pretty bad.
 
Moff

Moff

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Oct 26, 2017
4,821
It was obvious with Bioware, they have gradually sacrificed RPG for action over the course of two decades and now they have reached pretty much 100% action and 0 RPG.
 
Bear and bird

Bear and bird

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Oct 27, 2017
4,636
Eh. I have my issues with Bethesda's slow output and Fallout 4's more-of-the-samey feel in recent years, but 76 wasn't developed by the RPG team afaik.

Bioware is the one I'm actually worried about out of the two.
 

Deleted member 49535

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I hope The Outer Worlds sells like crazy and their parent companies realize how stupid they were for abandoning that market.
 
Neural

Neural

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Oct 27, 2017
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To be fair with Bethesda, F76 isn't by the same team who made Fallout 4 (which came out a bit more of 3 years ago and has a good metascore) or the TES RPGs. I'm sure The Elder Scrolls VI will be great.
 
skeezx

skeezx

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Oct 27, 2017
20,414
Cincaid said:
Both your examples are studios going outside of their comfort zone to try something new. In both cases it didn't work, and while I have zero interest to play either Anthem or Fallout 76, I think it's healthy and necessary that studios try something new. Hopefully they learned from their mistakes and have gained experience for their next projects.
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yep. they've hardly "fallen" .

.. though five or ten years from now may tell another story
 

Deleted member 49535

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Rodjer said:
Dragon Age 4, TES 6 and Starfield are in development and you are saying EA and Zenimax are abandoning the RPG market? lol
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Switching their focus if you will. Especially BioWare. At least Zenimax didn't use their best team to work on their GaaS crap. EA did. And both seem to be focusing more on action than actual RPG gameplay these days, yes.
 

Deleted member 290

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It saddens me to know we'll never get another game like Morrowind again, a game with so many intricate, hand-placed details, a wealth of lore on offer and greater freedom than any of its successors have provided - I enjoyed Oblivion, I loved Skyrim, but not quite like I loved Morrowind. I don't know if Bethesda have lost the knack as such, but rather that they'll likely never again be prepared to put that much time or effort into an open world as they did with Vvardenfell.
 
Quad Lasers

Quad Lasers

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Oct 26, 2017
3,542
Let's be real here. Bethesda's real focus is on Starfield.

76 was a side project done in collaboration with other arms of Bethesda. But the people who wrote lizardmen lore are probably heads down working on in-game books for you to read about space masturbation or something.
 
Haribo

Haribo

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Oct 27, 2017
979
The Destiny curse...

Cincaid said:
Both your examples are studios going outside of their comfort zone to try something new. In both cases it didn't work, and while I have zero interest to play either Anthem or Fallout 76, I think it's healthy and necessary that studios try something new. Hopefully they learned from their mistakes and have gained experience for their next projects.
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This. Y'all really always wanting developers to clock in everyday making sequels constantly when they can try new things. I'm not mad at them for trying. Hell I'm glad we didn't get Titanfall 3 cause it would've gotten great reviews and flopped again and we'd be sitting here wondering where it all went wrong.
 
jerfdr

jerfdr

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Dec 14, 2017
702
Cincaid said:
Both your examples are studios going outside of their comfort zone to try something new. In both cases it didn't work, and while I have zero interest to play either Anthem or Fallout 76, I think it's healthy and necessary that studios try something new.
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I think that it's healthy only when studios try something new out of the creative desire to try something new (and in that case it's great). But with Anthem and Fallout 76 it's completely obvious that the decision to make these games didn't come from the creative desire to try something new. It came from the publishers' greed; the publishers wanted to go for games with (supposedly) high monetization value. In my opinion, it's the opposite of "healthy".
 
MZZ

MZZ

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Nov 2, 2017
4,381
Bioware seems to be a shell of who they used to be compared to the staff working on ME2. If they are still the same staff, they seem to never were able to adjust to the current generation so I am inclined to believe the frostbite engine stuff was true. Then the writing just isn't up to par anymore. I know their writing leads left but man they aren't doing well on that front. Anthem was supposed to be their bounce back game but here we are wondering if they will even be making a next game. If things don't go well for them, I just hope another studio will pick up on their grand narrative style RPGs. With that said, I am still hoping they will bounce back.

Bethesda's execution of FO76 is just really awful and is a misstep. It's like taking away what was actually good in FO4 and retaining only the worst parts of it. We still have their next games to see how they will fare. I'm not as invested into their franchises but people seem to really like their games.
 

Deleted member 29939

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Fallout 4 is a very good game.
Just dropping this in in case unsuspecting victims get cought in the bubble that is resetera's opinions on Fallout 4 and Skyrim.
 
SCB360

SCB360

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Oct 30, 2017
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I actually think the idea of Fallout '76 was great and did make a lot of sense, it was everything after (I'm still getting bad bugs on it, last night I couldn't even get it to load enemies textures) it was the execution, hopefully the roadmap they posted solves a lot of the issues.

Same with Anthem, I finished the main questline yesterday and I did enjoy it, it just needed more time to develop I think, it feels lacking right now but the potential is there and does have a somewhat interesting universe.

I'm hoping the Division 2 improves on the previous game now for my GaaS fix outside of Destiny 2
 
DocSeuss

DocSeuss

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Oct 25, 2017
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fallout 76 was predominantly developed by battlecry, no? fallout 4 is fun af but continues bethesda's push towards immersive simulations over rpgs
 
-JD-

-JD-

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Oct 27, 2017
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I'd like to think that Fallout 76 is an anomaly, since Fallout 4 was a hit, and Wolfenstein 2 came out the recently to rave reviews.

Bioware stepped outside it's comfort zone and failed. I don't think it's an indicator of a precipitous decline, even after Andromeda (which wasn't handled by the usual ME team).
 
hobblygobbly

hobblygobbly

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Oct 25, 2017
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They both completely forgot about what a RPG is and how to design them, with each game they had stripped so much RPG design/mechanics to the point that for example Fallout has become a shitty generic looter shooter. I don't know if they're simply following a changing market demographic that doesn't want RPGs any more or what, but yeah.

After Fallout 4 I thought maybe Bethesda would have learned the mistakes and return to their strengths, but then Fallout 76 came along, so I am not hopeful for what TES 6 will be like. ZOS already has a very successful GaaS game, it's called Elder Scrolls Online, maybe they should be the GaaS studio and BGS focus on their core singleplayer RPG sandbox strengths.
 
Kissenkopf

Kissenkopf

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Nov 1, 2017
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jerfdr said:
I think that it's healthy only when studios try something new out of the creative desire to try something new (and in that case it's great). But with Anthem and Fallout 76 it's completely obvious that the decision to make these games didn't come from the creative desire to try something new. It came from the publishers' greed; the publishers wanted to go for games with (supposedly) high monetization value. In my opinion, it's the opposite of "healthy".
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You just assuming this so you don't blame the Devs for their mistakes. It was a decision from everybody. From the publisher AND the Developers. Of course EA said to Bioware what to do here and there but not every decision was supervised by them.
They tried something new and failed because that's what happens in life. Sometimes peoples wanna come out of their comfort zone to show everybody that they are not glued to one type of thing. Thats like Michael Jordan going to play Baseball. He thought when he is good at one Sport he will be good at another...but it didn't work out. So here we are with a great Dev who thinks he can do every game he wants and it will be always good but the people they have didn't have enough experience wioth this kind of genre and it failed. It is not always the completly fault of the Publishers when things go wrong but it is the easiest way for some Gamers to think that way.
 

dumbo11

Member
Apr 29, 2018
228
Engine trouble.

Bethesda has an ageing engine which is unsuited to multiplayer games, and little experience of multiplayer issues.
Bioware seem to have failed to invest adequately in engine/technical development since switching to frostbite.

A chronic lack of technical investment compared to their peers.
 
Haribo

Haribo

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Oct 27, 2017
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jerfdr said:
I think that it's healthy only when studios try something new out of the creative desire to try something new (and in that case it's great). But with Anthem and Fallout 76 it's completely obvious that the decision to make these games didn't come from the creative desire to try something new. It came from the publishers' greed; the publishers wanted to go for games with (supposedly) high monetization value. In my opinion, it's the opposite of "healthy".
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What's your source on this because as far as I've heard, and Bioware has talked ALOT about this game, the only thing EA asked them to do was use Frostbite, which is a whole other issue, but the idea for Anthem was entirely Bioware's. We gotta stop pushing the blame off of developers just because they made our favorite cult classic back in the day.

edit: welp yeah Kissenkopf said it way better
 
HellofaMouse

HellofaMouse

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Oct 27, 2017
6,323
i was thinking about the same thing the other day.

andromeda and 4 were both underwhelming games. but anthem and 76 are so bad, they make those earlier games look like masterpieces now
 
Messofanego

Messofanego

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Oct 25, 2017
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I mean, have you looked at the teams? Check mobygames for the credits and see a lot of the narrative people have left. That was their strong suit and what they were known for. Burnout over making franchise sequels. Pressure from publishers to make games in trending genres and practices.
 
Revali

Revali

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Oct 25, 2017
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Bethesda will be fine. Fallout 76 seemed like an experiment to hold players over until Starfield arrives a few years from now. I expect it will resemble TES 4/5 and Fallout 3/4 more than 76.

BioWare exists only in name. The people who made that studio great are long gone. All that's left now is a shell.
 
GranddadFreeman

GranddadFreeman

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May 18, 2018
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It's about action games with RPG elements. Mass Effect 2/Dragon Age 2 should have been everyone's first clues where Bioware was headed.

As much of a Morrowind fanboy as I am, I think Bethesda is aight. Definitely not a fan of the of how Morrowind transitioned into Oblivion but I'm not sure if Fallout 76 can be used as a metric of the company "falling".

Sidenote, I haven't heard of Starfield and I'm intrigued
 
The Silver

The Silver

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Oct 28, 2017
10,760
They chased the money and trends of other games. Prior to FO67 Bethesda mostly iterated and polished what they were already good at. They wanted to he more "modern" and get those GAAS bucks and it backfired. Same with BW except it was a more gradual descent with them chasing trends with every game after ME2, culminating in Anthem.

That said Bethesda is in far better position for a comeback than BW. There's still a lot of goodwill for Elder Scrolls.
 
jem

jem

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Oct 25, 2017
7,762
One failed experiment (Fallout 76) is hardly ruining their reputation.

People will still flock to buy the next BGS title.
 
AllThingsPurple

AllThingsPurple

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Oct 26, 2017
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Seems pretty obvious to me. They kept moving further and further away from the things people loved about their games to the point that each latest release from both studios aren't epic single player RPGs
 
AllThingsPurple

AllThingsPurple

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Oct 26, 2017
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jem said:
One failed experiment (Fallout 76) is hardly ruining their reputation.

People will still flock to buy the next BGS title.
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While it certainly isn't ruined, Fallout 4 was a worse game than 3 for a lot of people. Though people will still flock to the next one in the hope its s return to their previous form.
 
Darkstorne

Darkstorne

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Oct 26, 2017
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Maxina said:
Anthem and Fallout 76 are both primarily multiplayer focused games. *Thinking*

Edit: They should stick with what works for them, and not chase after the streaming crowd.
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The thing I find really ironic about this focus is that streamers are able to make traditionally single player games social. You don't need a multiplayer game to catch a wide social net. Assassin's Creed Odyssey got that, and realized popular GaaS monetization tactics like cosmetic sales, daily quests, weekly challenges etc, still fit beautifully well into an exclusively single player game. Thanks to streaming, photo modes, and social media, you don't need an in-game social hub to show off your character anymore.
 
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