Why do people hate Oblivion,Fallout and maybe other Bethesda games

[AlternatePFG]

I don't hate them, they're just not my thing. Different strokes, different folks etc.

a) The open world setup inherently leads to bad pacing, at least in every example I've seen thus far.
b) The utter lack of focus is crippling. Lots of content, but it's all paper-thin.
c) The dialogue is poorly written and the voice acting varies from mediocre to terrible.
d) The combat is utter pants, and there's always a lot of it.
e) The characters are uncanny-tastic and poorly animated.

Yeah... that'll do for starters.

That said, I'm not quite sure about what hate you are referring to. Bethesda games seem extremely popular, especially around here. You can't read five posts without stumbling across someone pre-emtively creaming their jeans over Skyrim.

I just have to say, for point c), Old World Blues for New Vegas had some of the best dialogue ever. Of all time. Those scientists made up for every mudcrab-fearing peasant or repeated conversation ever.

But that wasn't Bethesda who wrote that. New Vegas, and by extension Old World Blues were made by Obsidian.

Not disagreeing that the dialogue in OWB was brilliant though.

 

[witheringsanity]

Are you kidding? Every game Bethesda makes, no matter what many, many flaws it may have, garners a massive following with a ton of critical acclaim.

Not a fan of Oblivion though, the leveling system in that game is absolutely broken.

sneak in a corner behind your horse while casting light on yourself for 100 sneak and 100 illusion... sounds perfectly normal to me!

OT: i absolutely LOVE fallout 3 and oblivion, but as someone who literally didn't play oblivion till 4 years after it launched, i can tell you i didn't care about the game because it looked SO BOOOORING. granted, it wasn't, and once i finally got over the pretense that the game was going to be a dull grind-fest, i gave it a chance and couldn't put it down.

so to sum up, i think most people "hate" bethesda games either because they haven't tried them, or they just dont like that type of game

 

[Zhukov]

c) The dialogue is poorly written and the voice acting varies from mediocre to terrible.

I just have to say, for point c), Old World Blues for New Vegas had some of the best dialogue ever. Of all time. Those scientists made up for every mudcrab-fearing peasant or repeated conversation ever.

Probably because Bethesda didn't make it.

Old World Blues was made by Obsidian, a developer capable of writing decent dialogue.

 

[imnot]

They may be buggy, but Bethesda games are some of my favourite around.


Also.

[HEADING=2]Holy shit! 5 days until Skyrim![/HEADING]

I wish people would stop doing that, it reminds me that Iahve a whole school week before I can play it!

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OT: because its not their type of game.

 

[Zipa]

Maybe because people are not all the same and have different tastes, same as music or art or any other medium. Its not a hard concept.

Plus they have a habit of being released buggy as fuck which just annoys the hell out of people.
Oh and the fanboyism for skyrim is nearly as annoying as the call of duty / battlefield fanboys.

 

[Vivi22]

I like most Bethesda games myself, but here's a few possible reasons why people may dislike them:

- Potential game-breaking bugs and glitches. I remember accidentally getting my character stuck in a wall once when playing Morrowind. I was forced to reload my last save and lost approximately three hours' worth of progress. I've learned to implement the tried and true "save early and save often" axiom when playing Bethesda games.

- Wonky combat. Morrowind is perhaps one of the most egregious offenders, with its simulated dice rolls that have you miss 9 out of 10 swings with a weapon you aren't proficient at. Oblivion improved on it somewhat, but it still largely consists of hyperactive mouse clicking. As for Fallout, generally the best approach to combat is lining up a bunch of headshots over and over again using V.A.T.S.

- Lackluster story. When you boil it down, most plots of Bethesda games are "a great peril threatens the land, and you're the only one that can defeat it."

- Awkward implementation of NPCs. They typically only have a handful of voice actors and repeat many of the same lines. They also have a tendency to stare at the player constantly, giving them a creepy vibe. Then there's the issue of psychic guards in the Elder Scroll games that are more than happy to chop you up into bloody little chunks because you tried to steal someone's napkin.

Like I said, I enjoy most Bethesda games, but I can see why they might not be for everyone.

I generally enjoy most Bethesda games, but not to the degree the rest of the gaming world seems to. They are by no means amazing games to me, and for pretty much every reason you mentioned. Though I would extend lackluster story to include writing in general. Even the sidequests in Oblivion and Fallout 3 (the two games I've played) were often terribly written. Both in terms of what you're supposed to be doing, and dialogue. And the stiff, talking head, presentation of everything is pretty boring quite frankly. There are some gems to be found, and the worlds themselves generally have great backgrounds and details to discover, but it all kind of falls apart whenever you talk to anyone.

I'd also add repetitive environments (Fallout 3 was better than Oblivion for this, but eventually exploring generic cave #56 gets old), and I absolutely despise the morality systems in their games. Bad enough to attach some score to how good or bad my actions are, but the stark black and white morality systems leave no middle ground. No moral ambiguity. I actually had the urge to start up a game of Fallout 3 again recently. I had played through the first time as a good character, played through a sizable chunk as a bad character, so figured I'd go for neutral karma this time. Of course I quickly learned the only way to achieve this was to basically rob and murder everyone I could because I was getting almost nothing but good karma from actually doing quests. So basically, I had to be a decent guy to complete quests and counter it by being a complete dick and a homicidal maniac the rest of the time. This kind of morality system absolutely infuriates me because it's absurd. And worse is that they've never tried to do any better.

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

-Completely forgettable characters
-Gigantic but boring worlds
-Side missions that are uninteresting and tedious
-Lackluster combat and A.I
-Shoddy voice acting
-Game breaking bugs around every corner
-Lifeless characters

When I brought these up to a friend, he said that in order to enjoy Bethesda RPGs, I had to "scrape away the shit to find a safe with a million bucks inside." But it seems more like trying to scrape away shit to find diarrhea. When almost every single aspect of the game is flawed and there is almost no motivation to press forward with whatever boring objective I'm doing, I think I'll stay away from it.

 

[Nikolaj Bilgrau]

Coming from one who enjoyed Fallout 3 alot;

They're very buggy. I've gotten stuck more times than I care to remember
Or sometimes an NPC will go hurtling into space, completely devastating immersion.
NPCs look kinda creepy.

But in spite of all of this, the game was still great.

 

[natster43]

Well mostly two silly things called free will and opinions. Personally, I wasn't a fan of Morrowind, so I haven't tried any other Elder Scroll game, but I loved Fallout 3, and New Vegas was even better, but made by another company.

 

[Strain42]

'cause people have this really annoying thing called an "opinion" and while it may sound hard to believe, some peoples opinion has them not enjoying titles like that.

I personally liked Fallout 3 and I thought Oblivion was ok.

There are games I love that people hate and there are games I hate that people love. It's just nature.

 

[Coreless]

Because different people have different tastes :$

b) Lackluster characterisation of npcs. Coupled with poor voice acting and strange faces I found it difficult to identify with any of them. I think the only one I can remember now is Martin.

c) A 'standard' fantasy setting that boiled down to lots of bland wooden towns with forests inbetween. I read/watch/play a lot of fantasy and am pretty bored of that setting by now.

d) Little variety in the dungeons. Hello generic cave #20, Hi Oblivion gate #15!

^this, other things that I really didn't like with Both Oblivion and Fallout 3 is the animations and that close up zoom on npcs every time you talk to them. While fallout 3 did improve in those areas it still wasn't that much better imo.

The animations in these games are just....awful imo, they look so stiff and robotic that it breaks my immersion and completely ruins the experience for me in some parts. The zoom in thing is immensely irritating, why you can't just talk to npcs without zooming in on them is beyond me. I really love when I'm running somewhere and some random npc is walking by and completely stops me in my tracks and forces me to zoom in on them so that they can talk to me. I don't know why it bothers me like that but it does, Good thing about Skyrim is that they wont have that anymore so I don't have to deal with it but it just irritates the shit out of me.

Overall the games are very good and offer lots of content but with Oblivion I found it very bothersome and in some times frustratingly stupid to the point that I almost stopped playing. Fallout 3 is a much better open world experience imo, it got many of the dumb things that I didn't like with Oblivion and made it a much more enjoyable experience for me. I don't hate the games but there where a lot of little things that I found very annoying and wish could have changed but overall I think the games are solid. From what I have seen of Skyrim it looks to have pretty much gotten rid of all the annoyances I found with the others so I am definitely looking forward to see how they improved on my biggest complaint...the animations.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

The dialogue is shit, the combat is shit, the story is shit, the graphics are shit, the animations are shit, the characters are shit, the models are shit etc. Honestly, I don't know what's so compelling about Bethesda games. I did have fun playing Oblivion so I guess it has to do with the large and detailed world and the whole "go anywhere, do anything" idea. Mods also help. A lot.

 

[MolotoK]

I don't really hate Oblivion, but I can see why you would.
- Generic fantasy world
- bad voice acting
- no interesting characters
- horrible leveling system (the most efficient way to level is actually to chose some of the lesser used skills as major skills. Level inefficiently and you actually make the game harder for you.)


I do however hate Fallout 3 with all my guts. Many fans of the original Fallout series will tell you the same thing.
It degraded the Fallout series, which consisted of 2 of the best RPGs ever made, to some boring open world first person shooter with some RPG elements.

It had most of the problems of Oblivion (bad voice acting, generic stock characters) and added a lot more:
- The writing was really really bad. (A society of kids in the middle of the wasteland with bright lights advertising the entrance to their base? yeah, right.)
- The SPECIAL leveling system was turned down to easy-mode. In Fallout 1 and 2, characters had to be far more specialized. You couldn't just level however you want and end up with a super powerful character that had no weaknesses and was basically good at everything.
- The combat system is probably the worst combat system ever devised in the history of video games.
- The sense of freedom, that the original Fallout games had, was completely lost.
- Choices had little consequences. (remember how Bethesda marketing went on and on about how you could nuke a town? Yes you could, but there was almost no consequence. Do all the quests inside the town, then nuke it, then give some water to beggars and *BAM*, karma back to normal.)
- The wasteland was way too small and felt too populated.

It just wasn't Fallout.
*rage*

 

[Omnific One]

This is a site that has a majority of members side with Bioware. That's why you get all the hate here. Elsewhere, it's different.

People hate the fact that there are glitches in the massive games that Bethesda makes.

 

[Vrach]

Because people like to hate things that are popular and/or successful.

 

[Palademon]

I personally like them very much so why the hate?

Well there's your problem. You don't understand how opinions work.

 

[Nudu]

Most don't. It's just a vocal minority.

 

[Dfskelleton]

I don't hate them, I just wish that I was better at them. I love Fallout 3, but I have to endure constantly having my ass handed to me on a rusty, post apocalyptic platter. That, and the minimap is the most worthless thing I have ever seen in a game. I've had more luck finding where I'm supposed to be going by just walking around for a while rather than using the damned thing.