So if you’ve been nerdy enough to keep up
with the nerd news you’ll know that the
studio that made these games is currently
working on their next big title.
With expectations running high and patience
running low, I’d like to perform a little
thought experiment with you today.
Call it boredom, or call it restlessness after
not having posted a video in over a month,
either way.
Bethesda Game Studios has teased their next
project quote “big and crazy”, and of
course we’re all hoping that this secret
project of theirs will be a great and genre-defining
RPG, but what if, what if they didn’t care
so much about that.
I’m not saying they don’t, but what if
they focused on all the wrong things and we
were left with an open-world that was mediocre,
average, ordinary, humdrum.
What would this game look like?
By asking ourselves this question, hopefully
we’ll come out the other side with a deeper
understanding of Bethesda Game Studios as
developer.
Where they’re going.
Where they’ve been.
And what they should be looking out for moving
forward.
Here are just 6 ways you could virtually guarantee
that Bethesda’s next open-world is a mediocre
one.
#1 – Develop for hype
When it comes time to market your game, you
want to generate headlines like these.
News stories that tout how many lines of dialogue
you recorded, or how much bigger your world
map is than in your previous titles.
This is because, when an open-world game gets
announced, the conversation inevitably turns
to asking that same age-old question.
“How big is it?”
It seems that these days, the bigger your
game world is, the more hype it will generate
in the games media.
If your goal is maximum exposure, this modem
obsession with quantity will work in your
favor.
Don’t be afraid to overinflate your game.
You can do this in many different ways, but
the quickest way is with “random generated
content”.
This mechanic has gone by many names over
the years, but here at Bethesda Game Studios,
we call it “the radiant quest system”.
In Skyrim it took the form of clearing endless
bandit camps, and in Fallout 4 it meant rescuing
endless settlements.
Keep this mechanic around, and by all means,
look for more ways to augment it or expand
it into the future.
As a matter of fact, you could say that “endless
player busy work” is the goal.
That’s because all anyone seems to talk
about these days is their “hours played”-
rather than “hours enjoyed”.
#2 – Create “illusion” rather than “immersion”
Bethesda fans are at their core childish assholes.
In Skyrim we took trick shots at butterflies
and were surprised to discover we couldn’t
only shoot them out of the air, but collect
their wings off the ground afterwards.
In Fallout 3 our character was given their
first gun and we immediately used it shoot
our fathers, we did this just because we could,
but we discovered Bethesda recorded dialogue
just for this occasion.
Taken alone, these details don’t amount
to much, but taken together, taken together
you get that buzzword game developers and
their marketing campaigns love so much, “immersion”.
And it’s fairly easy to replicate the illusion
of this immersion.
If you’re partial to metaphors, then think
about it like this.
Imagine your open-world game as a ball pit.
Each ball representing one of these small
details you included in your game that encourages
players to jump in, explore, and be mischievous.
Now, if you take just some of the balls away,
you still have a ball pit?
So let’s say you put as few balls into the
pit as possible?
Truth be told, some of the kids won’t notice
the difference, because to the casual observer,
it still looks and smells like a ball pit.
As for the occasional kid who enjoys jumping
in and diving deep into his ball pits, well
he won’t be happy, but let’s be real,
he’s going to play in your ball pit anyway.
#3 – Embrace the familiar
People are really hung up on this game.
15 years after its release in fact, and people
still won’t shut up about it.
Morrowind was Bethesda’s 3rd big fantasy
role-playing game in the Elder Scrolls franchise.
Even if you haven’t played it, you’re
at least aware of it.
That’s because the game’s bizarre characters,
creatures, and landscapes really left an impression
on people.
You could say that Morrowind’s boldness
to be different and weird, it stood out.
This kind of world building is tough though
and a bit risky.
When you have an unfamiliar setting, you have
to spend additional time and resources explaining
creatively why this world exists in the state
that it does.
A bizarre and nuanced world has to be constantly
justified to the player through insightful
dialogue and a rich backstory and lore.
You know what’s a lot less complicated than
that, and a lot safer?
Sticking with what people know.
Sticking with the familiar.
For example, if you’re creating a fantasy
game, make it look and feel as Tolkien-eque
as possible.
You might have to spend time explaining what
a Silt Strider is to someone, but you don’t
need to spend time explaining say, a goblin.
And this principle works for other settings
too.
If you’re developing a game set in the post-apocalypse,
rehash old ideas and don’t try anything
too daring.
Make your bad guys clearly bad, and your good
guys clearly good.
If you catch yourself dreaming up concepts
that are wacky or odd, pull back, and implement
more tame ideas in the final product.
#4 – Treat everything as a “technology”
problem, even when it isn’t
It’s no secret that Bethesda’s games sometimes
fall under scrutiny for their dialogue.
The kind of dialogue that makes some characters
feel robotic.
Instead of placing additional emphasis on
writing and narrative, use technology to patch
this problem.
If Oblivion taught us anything, it’s that
people like wheels.
Take the “tech first” approach to solve
every problem, and this will not only keep
your team on the USS Bethesda busy, but it’ll
ensure no real progress in this area is actually
made.
#5 – Keep your team small
Bethesda Game Studios is in the business of
open-world games, and due to their sheer size
and scope, these mammoth projects are some
of the hardest to produce . CD Projekt Red
had about 300 developers working on their
open-world for the Witcher 3.
Rockstar had a team of over 1,000 working
on GTA 5.
Bethesda’s team for Fallout 4, clocked in
at about 100 developers.
This enviably results in less people performing
more jobs, which leads us to our last item
on the list.
#6 – Devalue the writer
When you ask someone about their favorite
moments in a Bethesda RPG, 9 times out of
10 they’ll tell you about a moment made
possible by good storytelling.
Whether it’s a particularly good narrative
they stumbled across by accident, or maybe
a fiction they constructed entirely in their
imaginations within the framework of a well-written
universe.
This goes all the way back to the origins
of role-playing games themselves, where the
best dungeon masters among us, were the best
storytellers.
The Witcher 3 won most of the critical acclaim
the year Fallout 4 was released.
And whether you personally agree with that
judgement or not is irrelevant, people who
played it seemed to genuinely think CD Projekt
RED were the best dungeon masters that year.
Their characters had a sense of nuance and
realism in that game that you can only achieve
with good writing.
If you were curious enough to watch the credits
roll at the end of the Witcher 3, you would
know that their team boasted writers who were
published authors and crime novelists.
Fallout 4’s team sadly boasted no such professionals.
As a matter of fact, due to the small size
of their team, Bethesda Game Studios didn’t
have a single person credited simply as “writer”
on Fallout 4.
Whereas the Witcher 3, in stark contrast,
had 5 fully dedicated writers.
IN ADDITION to their quest designers.
So if your goal of the next project is highly
functional but highly underwritten open-worlds,
keep the professional writer off the payroll
a little longer and keep in line with all
the other points we’ve underlined.
Do that and I can almost, almost guarantee
that progress will take the back seat to,
stagnation.
Mediocrity.
Humdrumness.
As someone whose been playing role-playing
games for most of my life now, Bethesda Game
Studios is ranked as one of my all-time favorite
developers.
And yeah, I’m optimist.
I think their best years are still ahead of
them.
The fact that their next big release likely
won’t carry the names “Elder Scrolls”
or “Fallout” in it has me nervous, excited,
but nervous for them.
My name is Josh, thank you for watching.
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