The Elder Scrolls VI

Mods are all very well, but Skyrim is last gen game console. That is what Bethesda were developing for. It's just happens to have a PC version.

Enhanced edition for current gen vs mods is a different discussion. How many more copies would that have sold if they spent more to add in some of the things the mods do. I'd wager it wouldn't have been worth the time/money.

 

Indeed, why take the risk to spend time (=money) doing something that modders may well do for free anyway? I am grateful Bethesda make the SE version of Skyrim, more so because I double dipped Skyrim (first on PS3, later on PC) so SE was 'free' for me through Steam as I had the prerequisite DLC.

 

Ok so Bethesda don't really need to try very hard to produce a high quality current gen game because eventually the modders make it much better anyway. Got it.

FYI it takes years for the mods to progress to that level. Bethesda provide the creation kit but the tools themselves and what the game provides is far from capable of what the modders provide. There's a lot of hacks that are created over time to add the necessary framework required, which is all done in people's spare time out of their passion for gaming. It's only very recently that SE modding hit the same level as the original mods and it was even harder for them due to what Bethesda did with SE, it took years.

 

Come on, that's not what I'm saying. SE/Remasters shouldn't be compared to a current gen title.

As the only current gen Creation Engine titles, Fallout's kind of it's own thing. It's not like 3 and Vegas were attractive titles compared to Skyrim.

 

well the engine is 21 years old now . So if we expect star field in 2020 we will have a 23 year old engine powering their game. I had hopes when they bought ID they would use one of their engines or have ID develop one for Bethesda games. At this rate however I don't hope for much anymore. I didn't buy fallout 76 and I will most likely wait for star field to be in the bargin bin if its based on the gamebryo/creation/ immersive engine

 

Sorry, that was more to DSoups comment.

 

fixed.

 

Yep, pretty much That and screen archery. It does create a really nice immersive experience though, far more than Skyrim did originally when combined with some gameplay mods. RDR2 is an example where such amazing realistic visuals, physics, animation and character models/hair creates a far superior immersion into the world.

 

Creation Kit for Fallout 4 launched six months after Fallout 4 itself and very quickly there was mods reworking the game's weather system, UI, weapons, animation, game balance as full environmental overhauls like Resurrection.

Fallout 4 mods took off fast because it was an unencumbered new game, new engine and CK launched quickly unlike Skyrim SE, where - and I've been a Nexus user for almost ten years now - I recall that was much gnashing of teeth and consternation about expectations of modders having to port their mods to the new engine and how this would splinter the modding user base and make everything worse for everybody. It felt like a lot of unnecessary drama because modders have the power about what to spend their time on.

Your point of "Bethesda don't do anything close to what the modders have done with their own game" is true but I'm betting that Bethesda targeting the performance of their base game to run on the widest array of hardware because that is what's profitable. And for people who want to more, that is exactly why there is innate mod support.

 

The initial mods were all using the creation kit only really, with people adding their own textures, models and animations. Relatively speaking, the "easier" parts. The amount of extra work coming from things like SKSE, new bodies with lots of additional bones, greatly extending the physics systems, adding all the features the ENBs were eventually able to achieve. None of those things came overnight. Nothing done within 6 months of Skyrim or Fallout's release pushed the games beyond what they were capable of at release to any real extent, not to the level I'm referring to for a fully modded Skyrim.

The window of supported capable PCs is always shifting as years go on and developers target higher levels of game fidelity. It's always been like that with PC games, especially with larger publishers. Looking at Fallout 76, that window is barely shifting at either end. The argument is that their engine, and/or their unwillingness to dedicate time to re-work a lot of it (more than they have) is not allowing them to push into a level of fidelity that gamers expect nowadays. If their games were as polished as most other games are, there probably wouldn't be as much criticism and backlash. But the constant buggy half-ass releases compound the problem.

 

I'm confused what you're unhappy with. I thought you were talking about Creation Kit but you seem to be talking about modding games beyond what Creation Kit (and Bethesda) offer and support. The onus is not on Bethesda to support that level of modding, what other game dev does?

Bethesda and Blizzard and similar in this respect. They're obviously targeting the widest possible user-base as possible - from a technical perspective. Maximising potential profit drives decisions like this.

 

Fallout 4 was released after Skyrim. Excuse if I am wrong and didn't mention the game you meant -FO4=Fallout 4?-.

I mean..., before Skyrim I had never ever seen anything like this in a videogame, it was really beautiful.

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-10-28-todd-howard-the-next-generation-is-about-access