Them not giving review copies out makes sense now, apparently the PC port of dishonored 2 is buggy.

[TrulyBritish]

snippity snip

If bethesda cared about the state of game journalism, then they could, you know, blacklist the sites they feel are unethical (which I'm fairly certain they did to Kotaku) and support sites they did like rather than completely cutting them out.

 

[DoPo]

But it's a Bethesda game.

No, it's made by Arkane Studios.

 

[StatusNil]

Ignoring the fact that caveat emptor pretty much hasn't applied in most countries law for decades, I'm pretty sure the argument becomes null when companies are actively taking steps to prevent customers from being informed pre-purchase by, say, preventing reviews coming out before launch.

"Caveat emptor" as a basic commonsense principle. And it's only preventing being informed pre-purchase if for some reason you are held at gunpoint and forced to purchase at the moment of release. Most people, I daresay, are not. The consumer is not powerless to act with elementary prudence, and it would be a very "pro-consumer" thing indeed to exercise that power now and then.

But that's a general principle. The point regarding this thread is that its premise is mistaken in this specific instance. Not giving out early review copies will do nothing to alert people to a substandard PC version of a multiplatform game when those early copies would have been on console, as they routinely are. What's the outcome there? Batman: Arkham Knight all over again.

If bethesda cared about the state of game journalism, then they could, you know, blacklist the sites they feel are unethical (which I'm fairly certain they did to Kotaku) and support sites they did like rather than completely cutting them out.

Unfortunately they couldn't, much as I'd prefer them to. Because that would only lead to a huge outcry about favoritism.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Bethesda didn't make the game so expecting a buggy mess shouldn't really be expected. However, with news of a 9GB Day 1 patch, it was obvious the game wasn't quite polished when it went gold. With PCs obviously having millions of different hardware configurations, there's obviously going to be more PC issues than console issues...

Even informed people could have been surprised this time, Bethesda games are known to be buggy, as in games made by the developer bethesda. This is not a Bethesda game, this is a game made by Arkane studios and published by Zenimax that renamed itself bethesda publishing.

So far, games published by Bethesda have not really been that buggy, not like elder Scrolls and Fallout games, Doom and Wolfenstein were mostly problem free, so was Dishonored 1, people expect Fallout and Elder Scrolls to be buggy, not literally any game Bethesda publishes.

It's still anti-consumer, your opinion on games reviews notwithstanding, because even the state of reviewing currently would have caught the bugginess of this game before release, so it did hurt consumers judging by the number of returns on Steam and the general surprise at the state of the game, people that are familiar with Dishonored 1 expected similar performance, as both the developer and the publisher are the same.

There really isn't any basic common sense that would indicate that this release would be buggy, especially among informed gamers, for one, its not actually made by Bethesda, and the first game, published by the same publisher, did not have these issues, and Bethesda's previous release with no early review copies, Doom, released very stable on PC, and only had a mediocre multiplayer holding it back.

The only people that saw this coming are people that think any and every Bethesda game is buggy by default, unaware that the developer and the publisher are two different entities, so people confusing Fallout and Elder Scrolls for the entirety of the publisher's properties, not realizing that Arkane's first game was very stable, and Doom and Wolfenstein were both stable as well, even their shitty games like Rage and Rogue Warrior were stable on release.

Doesn't a 9GB Day 1 patch scream the game wasn't polished when it went gold?

If bethesda cared about the state of game journalism, then they could, you know, blacklist the sites they feel are unethical (which I'm fairly certain they did to Kotaku) and support sites they did like rather than completely cutting them out.

99% of reviewers don't review games properly at all so you'd have to blacklist them all basically, which Bethesda kinda did. I don't think Bethesda did this to "fix" video game journalism as I'm sure it was done to serve their interests. I do think they may have did this to stop the whole Metacritic obsession seen on the much more popular game forums, which I do feel hurt game sales if said game gets like 2 points lower than other game that just released. Now, I'm not at all saying I think most reviewers are unethical, I just feel game reviews have evolved into some really weird point to where reviewers and gamers think reviews are supposed to be "objective" somehow. You'll see people say on forums that XYZ game is at least an 8.5, that 8.0 review from ABC site is just plain wrong. Remember way back during the EGM magazine days when each game got reviewed by 3 different people? There was more not only score difference but there was also much greater difference of opinion between just the THREE reviews than there is now with 100+ Metacritic reviews. Just look at Metacritics for games like GTAV or Uncharted 4, both games I'd only give at best a 5/10 to but there's only 1 negative and 1 mixed review across 178 reviews. Look at FFXIII (a love/hate game) and there's only 1 negative review out of 83 reviews. Out of those 3 games across 200+ reviews, there's only 2 negative reviews. Going to Rottentomatoes and looking up a beloved and considered a classic movie like Ghostbusters, there's 2 negative reviews for it (out of 60+). Raiders of the Lost Ark has 4 negative reviews (out of 70+). Isn't that just insane when you think about it? 2 negative reviews for Ghostbusters and only 2 negative reviews for Uncharted 4, GTAV, and FFXIII combined. With games there's far more to criticize too as you have everything to rate that a movie does (story, characters, writing, etc.) and the actual game portion on top of that. I doubt you'll find any of say Yahtzee's legit criticism of GTAV in any of those reviews on Metacritic. Heck, I remember lots of people not really digging GTA4 that much and yet it sits at a 98. The gap between the average gamer's opinion on a game and the review consensus is quite mammoth. For me as a consumer (and lots of other gamers too), reviews are completely useless and are more than anything advertisements for games instead of actual criticism.


There was a post here not that long back with loads of research into the scoring of video games and it's quite drastic compared to any other medium. Here it is if you want to check it out:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.872132-In-defense-of-the-number-a-note-on-video-game-review-scores

 

[DoPo]

"NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB or better "

This is a fucking lie on their store page.

It's listed as minimum. According to

Spoiler: This video

it's not unplayable. Although apparently the guy even set the brightness to lower, so it's a bit hard to see.

Music fans don't have to do this. Movie fans don't. They might get a shit product, but they know the fucking thing will play.

Unless, you know that music CD damages their computer. Which has happened. Or it might infect their system [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal] but no biggie, right? That's the same DRM that you could literally patch [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/21/gaffer_tape_trips_up_sony_drm/] to bypass it, by the way.

Oh, how how quick are you to anger and forget actual history.

 

[sageoftruth]

"Caveat emptor" as a basic commonsense principle. And it's only preventing being informed pre-purchase if for some reason you are held at gunpoint and forced to purchase at the moment of release. Most people, I daresay, are not. The consumer is not powerless to act with elementary prudence, and it would be a very "pro-consumer" thing indeed to exercise that power now and then.

There is one thing no one has really mentioned yet. This policy actually does effect those who can resist the temptation to jump in and get the game on day one, namely because this practice affects the reviews themselves. When a new game comes out, being among the first people to create a review for the game is a big advantage, since releasing a review too late will cause you to lose the attention of a huge chunk of the gamer base.
Because of this, reviewers will be tempted to sacrifice valuable research and play time to get a review out nice and early. Allowing them to try the game out before launch gives them the time they need to create a comprehensive review before launch day, when all eyes will begin scouring the net for reviews.

 

[StatusNil]

"NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB or better "

This is a fucking lie on their store page. Please, tell me more about how "Caveat Emptor" applies to false advertising, and why we should be happy that thousands of other gamers, just like us, have been scammed on a game that wasn't even finished, just to rake in the pre-orders and the post-exam pre-Christmas sales? Please tell me why we should be happy that someone got away with something shitty? Isn't that all you guys do? Draw red lines about how someone may have been shitty somewhere? Isn't Anita Sarkeesian a con artist because she solicited donations, and recieved far more than her goal? How the fuck do you defend this, which actually is a scam?

Or is it only about people you don't like? Are we all "gamers" until you decide fuck the rest of us, fuck the consumers who bought early, thinking they might get a working product (Like that's fucking unreasonable), fuck the vast majority of gamers, because the only reason this shit works is because they're the majority? What exactly makes you better than them? Why is it that condemning death threats and SWATing started years of bullshit, but consumer advocacy doesn't get shit, and you shitting on the majority of gamers because "Caveat Emptor", when people are dealing with a literally non-functioning product. One which has been falsely advertised. You're literally shitting on people for buying games at release, and you think any of you have the right to be butthurt about people calling out poor behaviour? What you have implied is far worse.

Come on, tell me about your consumer revolt. Tell me about consumer rights. 'Cause it sounds like you've picked the exact opposite of that.

And no, I didn't buy the damn thing. I waited, but the point is, we shouldn't have to wait to wonder if it performs. Music fans don't have to do this. Movie fans don't. They might get a shit product, but they know the fucking thing will play. You're defending a standard lower than any accepted, and you have no respect for hardworking people who've spent their hard earned money on an expensive item for their relaxation, and have been cheated.

Hm, sorry?

How in the world have I said false advertising is acceptable? I'm seriously puzzled. I pointed out that a console review would not have protected anyone from just such an eventuality, again as we saw with Arkham Knight. When have you last seen an early review of a multiplatform game that warned the consumer of performance issues on PC?

It sounds like you're angry, but yelling at me about it is hardly going to help. Good for you for waiting, though.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Good work guys! Sure is great that they kept it under wraps until it dropped! Good thing we didn't give writers a few days with it to work it out and make videos, write reviews, man! Like Bethesda said, this is definitely the reason that Doom was popular. Was it because it was a good, polished game that was fun? Nah, it was because we didn't do an advance review, that's why this broken game will be equally loved if we smack our paying customers with how broken it is by suprise.

Bethesda not allowing early reviews literally makes no difference because the state of video game criticism is so inept and awful. Right now, the Metacritic for Dishonored on PC (92) is literally sitting higher than the PS4 version (91).

Praise Bethesda for not having you base your purchasing decision of inept "professional" reviews!!!

 

[Laughing Man]

Hold on let me get this straight. Bethesda don't give out review copies so I buy the game based on my experience of the last game and it turns out to run like shite.

What do I do,

1). Rage
2). Rage
3). Rage some more
4). Get a Steam refund, get my money back, stop acting like an overprivileged kid and come back to the game when or if it gets fixed.

My god it's a tough one ain't it.

So Bethesda don't give out review copies big fucking deal, you have two choices

1). Wait one day after release and then search the internet for reviews, fuck I did that with Colonial Marines and was finding information about how much trash the game was an hour after it was released.
2). Pre order, play it and if it's trash refund it.

We don't live in the late 90s any more guys you can refund your distro purchased games and you don't have to wait a month for a magazine review to appear to know if a game is 'good'. So yeah it's a shitty policy that Bethesda have introduced but it's hardly like they are stealing your money.

Just to rub salt in to the wounds I pre order Dishonored 2, it runs without issue on my PC and it actually a really rather good game... but here's the thing you don't have to take mine, review Jims, Gamer Teds, or Youtube Spanners opinion on that you can buy it yourself try it and if you don't like it refund it.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

Lol the only thing that I am surprised by is that people are surprised about a game being released buggy in the year 2016.

Doubly so a Bethesda game.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

"You can return it if it's broken" isn't a compelling counter argument to "they stopped allowing people to tell us it's broken".

For one thing, it doesn't help people who buy physical media or (in the case of Steam) play the game too long.

For another, video game publishers don't deserve defending when they fuck up. If you take into account a company's reputation to buy a game, aka: games published by Bethesda but not made by Bethesda run well at launch, and then Bethesda makes it so that problems with their next game at launch become invisible, that's not a good thing. That's not something to be defended.

That does nothing but screw the consumer.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Wait, is it actually buggy or just poorly optimized? I heard a lot about the latter, but not much in regards to the former.

 

[Worgen]

Bethesda didn't make the game so expecting a buggy mess shouldn't really be expected. However, with news of a 9GB Day 1 patch, it was obvious the game wasn't quite polished when it went gold. With PCs obviously having millions of different hardware configurations, there's obviously going to be more PC issues than console issues...

Even informed people could have been surprised this time, Bethesda games are known to be buggy, as in games made by the developer bethesda. This is not a Bethesda game, this is a game made by Arkane studios and published by Zenimax that renamed itself bethesda publishing.

So far, games published by Bethesda have not really been that buggy, not like elder Scrolls and Fallout games, Doom and Wolfenstein were mostly problem free, so was Dishonored 1, people expect Fallout and Elder Scrolls to be buggy, not literally any game Bethesda publishes.

It's still anti-consumer, your opinion on games reviews notwithstanding, because even the state of reviewing currently would have caught the bugginess of this game before release, so it did hurt consumers judging by the number of returns on Steam and the general surprise at the state of the game, people that are familiar with Dishonored 1 expected similar performance, as both the developer and the publisher are the same.

There really isn't any basic common sense that would indicate that this release would be buggy, especially among informed gamers, for one, its not actually made by Bethesda, and the first game, published by the same publisher, did not have these issues, and Bethesda's previous release with no early review copies, Doom, released very stable on PC, and only had a mediocre multiplayer holding it back.

The only people that saw this coming are people that think any and every Bethesda game is buggy by default, unaware that the developer and the publisher are two different entities, so people confusing Fallout and Elder Scrolls for the entirety of the publisher's properties, not realizing that Arkane's first game was very stable, and Doom and Wolfenstein were both stable as well, even their shitty games like Rage and Rogue Warrior were stable on release.

Doesn't a 9GB Day 1 patch scream the game wasn't polished when it went gold?

If bethesda cared about the state of game journalism, then they could, you know, blacklist the sites they feel are unethical (which I'm fairly certain they did to Kotaku) and support sites they did like rather than completely cutting them out.

99% of reviewers don't review games properly at all so you'd have to blacklist them all basically, which Bethesda kinda did. I don't think Bethesda did this to "fix" video game journalism as I'm sure it was done to serve their interests. I do think they may have did this to stop the whole Metacritic obsession seen on the much more popular game forums, which I do feel hurt game sales if said game gets like 2 points lower than other game that just released. Now, I'm not at all saying I think most reviewers are unethical, I just feel game reviews have evolved into some really weird point to where reviewers and gamers think reviews are supposed to be "objective" somehow. You'll see people say on forums that XYZ game is at least an 8.5, that 8.0 review from ABC site is just plain wrong. Remember way back during the EGM magazine days when each game got reviewed by 3 different people? There was more not only score difference but there was also much greater difference of opinion between just the THREE reviews than there is now with 100+ Metacritic reviews. Just look at Metacritics for games like GTAV or Uncharted 4, both games I'd only give at best a 5/10 to but there's only 1 negative and 1 mixed review across 178 reviews. Look at FFXIII (a love/hate game) and there's only 1 negative review out of 83 reviews. Out of those 3 games across 200+ reviews, there's only 2 negative reviews. Going to Rottentomatoes and looking up a beloved and considered a classic movie like Ghostbusters, there's 2 negative reviews for it (out of 60+). Raiders of the Lost Ark has 4 negative reviews (out of 70+). Isn't that just insane when you think about it? 2 negative reviews for Ghostbusters and only 2 negative reviews for Uncharted 4, GTAV, and FFXIII combined. With games there's far more to criticize too as you have everything to rate that a movie does (story, characters, writing, etc.) and the actual game portion on top of that. I doubt you'll find any of say Yahtzee's legit criticism of GTAV in any of those reviews on Metacritic. Heck, I remember lots of people not really digging GTA4 that much and yet it sits at a 98. The gap between the average gamer's opinion on a game and the review consensus is quite mammoth. For me as a consumer (and lots of other gamers too), reviews are completely useless and are more than anything advertisements for games instead of actual criticism.


There was a post here not that long back with loads of research into the scoring of video games and it's quite drastic compared to any other medium. Here it is if you want to check it out:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.872132-In-defense-of-the-number-a-note-on-video-game-review-scores

Ok, then how would you review games? You say gta5 is only worth a 5, what do you base that on? What makes a game worthy of a high score. Cause right now it just sounds like you're saying they aren't reviewing games right since you don't agree with the score.

 

[DoPo]

Lol the only thing that I am surprised by is that people are surprised about a game being released buggy in the year 2016.

Doubly so a Bethesda game.

It's made by Arkane Studios.

Wait, is it actually buggy or just poorly optimized? I heard a lot about the latter, but not much in regards to the former.

I'm not entirely sure what OP means by "buggy", either. I think it's actually supposed to say "poorly optimised". I've encountered two bugs so far:
- minor - NPC speech sometimes sounds louder than it should when they are far away. You can clearly see they are outside of earshot but you might still hear them mumble to themselves. Not sure if it's a bug or a feature, though, but I'd classify it as a bug.
- slightly bigger - in the fifth mission, taking the non-lethal path might net you kills. Definitely a bug but there are workarounds

Spoiler: Very mild spoiler

The level has witches and two of them are near the beginning of the level hiding in an alley. If you knock them out and later out take out the main target of the level non-lethally these two witches die. They definitely should NOT die, however. Option 1 is to just avoid them and come back later. Option 2 is to shoot a sleeping dart in their unconscious bodies before taking out the target - this lets them survive.

There are a couple of other extremely minor, so I don't list them along with the above, because I think the above will be patched, these might not and it'd be fine: 1. I've seen blood flies trapped behind walls. Visible with Dark Vision and there is a couple. Happened twice or so. 2. Sometimes you can use Far Reach on a wall and "climb" onto a slight bump in a wall that shouldn't be climbable. If you stay still, you eventually fall, if you try to move towards the wall, you might or might not fall. It's not a very reliable mechanism to climb stuff.

 

[Erttheking]

Lol the only thing that I am surprised by is that people are surprised about a game being released buggy in the year 2016.

Doubly so a Bethesda game.

It wasn't developed by Bethesda. It was developed by Arkane Studios. Whose games have run well in the past.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

It wasn't developed by Bethesda. It was developed by Arkane Studios. Whose games have run well in the past.

It's made by Arkane Studios.

Well shoot, I was wrong. Sorry about that.

 

[DoPo]

It was developed by Arkane Studios. Whose games have run well in the past.

Hold on, which Arkane are you talking about? Because the first Dishonored was also the first game that has ran "well" in the past. Arx Fatalis is quite buggy to this day. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic had some notable technical problems around launch - I think most got resolved eventually but still.