Something Good that needs to be said about Skyrim and Bethesda

I’ve got to say this, as I’ve seen a lot of negativity about Bethesda and this game. I have done my share of complaining in the past about games and I’m sure my seemingly endless diatribe only served to stress them out unduly.

I know have worked in the video game industry myself and I would like to impart some of what I have come to learn about how video game creation goes.

Quality Assurance: I can guarantee you that Bethesda’s quality assurance team (the guys playing the game and finding bugs) have worked their butts off. They are not bad at what they do. The problem is the limits of a team, and the time available to fix things. Many of these issue were given tickets, but the product manager needed to make a VERY tough decision to waive the issues in the interest of time.

For example (completely hypothetical)… a bug was found where talking to Ulfric Stormcloak at 12pm at night crashed the game and corrupted your save files. Another issue occurred where dead people showed up at your wedding and ruined the reception, making you unable to marry. But there was only time to fix one issue – which do you fix? Easy answer there.

I totally understand the frustration; the opinion that BOTH need to be fixed and that time needs to be made. But there are many things at work here. Running a huge video game company that is working on one of the most massive games EVER, you only have a few years to make it. You must make sacrifices. And trust me… it eats the man up that has to waive that issue. But it will get fixed, now that the game is released and the pressure is off.

Designer: “Do we delay the game to add more spells?” Good question!!!

I’m sure it was asked at some juncture. But consider this… each spell must be designed, created, implemented, and extensively tested. Guess how much time that will take to be thorough and do your job right? Well it could take days to be honest. That is days of work and ultimately thousands of dollars to make a single spell for the game.

So now you know the bind they are in. You might ask yourself? Who cares… they should devote the money and time to better secure that the end-users are content and willing to purchase more content in the future. It’s a fair question and line of thought. But please consider the scope of this game. There are hundreds of hours of content for those that seek it out. Again sacrifices had to be made for the sake of the schedule, or funding for the game could be cut and it could collapse altogether, meaning Skyrim might have never been released.

“Why won’t they tell us what is going on?”

Why? Well because nothing is final until it is ready to be released. That cannot and will not make promises that they may not be able to deliver.” Public relations” is a fine line between saying too much and too little. They are careful about walking it – as are most game companies.

Overall, I am very impressed with Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. For me, it is a major leap in fun over Oblivion. It is deep, powerful, and innovative. Combat is better. The story is better. Side quests are better. Voice acting is better. New content is fresh and fun.

I’m not asking you guys to change your opinions on Skyrim or Bethesda. The great thing about this is that you are entitled to your opinion. And to be honest, Bethesda and no other game developer would EVER grow, evolve, make better games if we did not point out what we are unhappy with. So keep that up! But before devolving an argument into rage, I implore you to consider some of what I’ve said here.

Thanks for reading!

removed-

Easy, add more spells.

Excellent post. I still can't shake the feeling that a lot of the problems are due to rushing the release date and poor management by higher ups in the company. Whenever I am annoyed, I am never thinking of the development team but of some guy up in an office somewhere who still hasn't worked out how to use his iPhone. I'm sure the development team anticipated many of the problems people are encountering and feel that it is likely that their concerns were over-ridden by higher ups. I may be mistaken, but I've seen a lot of things in the game that look like they attempted to mitigate some issues they knew would be present. I'm not at home or I'd put up some screenies to show what I mean by this.

At any rate, it doesn't really matter. Yes. The game is a buggy mess that, for many users, fails to adequately utilize their hardware and provide the optimal experience that they have every right to expect from a video game released at the end of 2011. It is, to quote a user's post I read in the Oblivion forums once regarding Oblivion, "a beautiful monster." That's the hardest thing about it for me. It is the wonderful experience of playing in this amazing and beautiful world that keeps people from just walking away instead of staying here to [censored] about why it won't run better on their monster rigs and raging that Bethesda foisted a sad beta on us at retail price. If you didn't love it, or at least sense the wonderful potential this game has, you wouldn't feel so robbed and disappointed. Honestly, if it weren't for my love of the TES games, I wouldn't have bought Skyrim at all. I knew to expect lots of headaches and hours lost to looking for fixes and tweaks to get it working properly. I knew it was going to crash on me and lag, that it would have broken quests, bugged items and other wackiness that would take at least a year or more to get ironed out through a combination of patches and community fixes. A lot of us felt this way and just hoped that we would be wrong.

Eventually, I hope, the majority of the issues will be fixed and we can all get on to the best part, playing and enjoying this amazing game. I love this beautiful monster.

Its clear that the game was released early and lacked some polish. The release date was set in stone both due to advertising and marketing it for Christmas. The dual wield concept was introduced late in the production and thus screwed the project time line. The development of dual wield was not thought through, the cut scenes only work well for certain styles of play and playing in 3rd person. The end result is [censored]e and needed many hour work before it was ready for release. If you use dual 1h weapons you only have one attack a big slash with either left or right hand, there is no physics reaction to contact with the target. So regardless whether you hit the target of not you over swing and look like 5 year old trying to swing baseball bat. There are no combos and the power attacks are a joke.

The world they created is amazing and saves the game lifting it far above any over game of this type.

I love the game and have played endlessly since its release but there are so many little things that would have taken very little time to implement but have been ignored. The game shows so much promise and if it had more time and better creative direction it would have been truly fantastic. The poor UI and over simplification of the lore, attributes and lack of creativity in how plots develop, lack of choices, moral dilemmas, leave it lacking many of the qualities that made its ancestors fantastic.

We should expect better, I believe that the team put there heart and soul in the development but its not their contribution that needs improvement. The gaming industry has changed since the release of Morrowind, Skyrim sold 3.5 million copies in 2 days the financial resource are there to deliver a perfect product.

Yeah, the financial resources are there, but sometimes the time doesn't seem to be. We will see how Bethesda reacts to the issues and adversity and becomes a better company for it.

They certainly aren't resting on their laurels after a very sucessful launch. They will be focusing on this game for some time. Count on it!

A very fair and objective commentary....

People focus on the one bug they encounter and never see the 100 bugs they spent hours upon hours fixing.

Good post that.
To be fair, this forum isn't worse than any other forum of a major game shortly after release.
As always it's a matter of sifting through rage, overenthusiasm and trolling to find the few threads worth reading and contributing to.
Not every critical comment comes from a "hater" and not every praising comment from a "defend at all cost"-supporter.
But it's oh so convenient to just stick opinions into that black or white drawer..when in reality there's a million shades of grey in between.
The black and white approach is easy, it's all the grey stuff that takes effort...and effort isn't for everybody, is it ?

o/