I try to be critical of business decisions and not so much creative decisions, so I'm usually going to lay the blame for a... not so great plot or poor writing not at the feet of the writers, but at the feet of the people who were running the show.
Borderlands 3, for instance, had terrible writing, but I don't think that's the fault of the writers. I think that's the fault of business people not understanding that part of what made Borderlands 2 so good was the solid writing, and those kinds of... priorities and decisions show.
anyway I know this criticism is like 10 years too late but you can really tell, with Fallout 4, that Bethesda had long ago lost the idea of what made Fallout 2 so good. Even 3, for all it's incredible jank, had some good stuff going for it.
(New Vegas, you did your homework and are excused... well, is what I would say, except they're literally some of the people that made 2, so calling it "their homework" is a bit misleading since they wrote the textbook)...
having said that, I'm installing it since I'm curious about what, precisely, this patch entails so you know, whatevs.
anyway, people give Cyberpunk a lot of shit, but that game has excellent, impactful writing that works from many different perspectives and it tends to make the world feel so much more alive. There's lots of other things, of course: level design, sound design, traffic, NPC flux, etc. But Fallout 4, by comparison, always felt a little dead, and not in the way it means to, even though both games probably have as many un-openable doors. Likewise, Borderlands 2 feels alive due in no small amount to the writing and pacing... I just don't believe the world exists when the characters are talking or when the action is happening, but when in the in between idle periods, too. Looking at signs, the layout of the junk, where enemies are.... whereas Borderlands 3, for all it's attempts to be bigger and better, feels smaller and substantially flatter. More dead. Just paper dolls playing out an unprioritized script.
@aud Ever since Fallout 3 gave you the option of blowing up the initial town for no bloody reason, it really seemed clear that they cared much more about the post-apocalyptic vibes than any of the critical analysis that went into what about humanity led to the apocalypse in the first place.
@aud Ditto. For me it's just that such a dismal setting, even with its bleak and gallows humor, feels like it needs to have something to say to justify that world.
"America thought it would be easier to bury itself in propaganda and literal vaults than to work for peace, and now its surviving remnants create the same conditions all over again, all throughout perpetuity" is a hell of a thing to say, but that just gets lost in optimizing VATS points and hording bottlecaps.
@aud (This is decidedly not the game's fault, but I also feel some wariness of those fans that look at Fallout-style dystopias and long for them, rather than seeing them as a sardonic and satirical warning.)
@aud And then this is taken TO WILD EXTREMES in Starfield...
I feel like Bethesda has a lot of "feature owners" that are incredibly passionate about making their features the best they can be (have you SEEN the models for the food? damn!), but a real weakness from the folks in charge who should have a holistic view and be prioritizing/cutting the right things.
(Cutting, too, absolutely. The "sit down in your ship" animations are beautiful, but they make the game worse.)
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