#arkane studios my beloved

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

Playing Prey again bc I've had a craving for an immersive sim and. Good god this game got done so fucking dirty by Bethesda. Its SUCH a good time, the intro alone puts a big grin on my face every time. Only reason it's not as beloved as say Dishonoured is the forced connection to an IP it was never trying to be in the first place

[glitteraffe-art]

god its been forever since i actually watched it but hey. listen to me tf2 fans who like inflicting angst upon everybody's favorite little war criminals, i am talking directly into your ear now. i need you to do me a favor. i need you to go watch Moon (2009 film directed by Duncan Jones) right now. don't look it up beforehand so u don't spoil the twist.

unfortunately i can't tell you why it's relevant to tf2 because doing that would also kind of spoil the movie. anyways its free on Pluto TV (does have ads but i use an adblocker)

[wine-dark-soup]

being a nerdy teenager in france through the 2010s was hearing 24/7 that the ~French Excellence~ was shining through the french video game industry (of course propaganda but hey. I was in middleschool not bilingual and saw that you could work IN FRENCH in your country so it was enough for me). And like it was true. Ubisoft is french, and back in the 2010s assassin's creed still had a reputation, far cry 3 was a hit and so on. We also have arkane studios (dishonored my beloved dishonored) and like the french branches of studios like blizzard.

Oh boy did i dream hard about joining those. But specifically for writing purposes? HOW was i supposed to do that? I couldn't just learn 3D animation if i wanted to write yknow.

Well. And then i grew up and understood how bad the industry treats its workers and anyway ubisoft and blizzard suck and arkane studios is not based in a region i'd live in if they did hire writers. But i'm still curious as to how you're supposed to start a carreer

when i was a teen i wanted to become a video game writer which is probably the only job i ever dreamed of doing but since then i understood what the industry is like and i'd rather not die

[text-to-speech-impediment]

THE VAULT IN OUR STARS

An Opinion Piece on How Bethesda Survives (And How You Can Change Them!)

A/N: I wrote this op-ed for funsies. As you may know, I am known to warm myself at a corporate dumpster fire from time to time, but this one is especially close to my heart. I may replace with an actual edited version but for now, just enjoy it in its raw & unpolished glory. If you’re a Bethesda fan, you’re used to it anyway.

           In the words of Todd Howard, “I read on the internet…that sometimes it doesn’t just work.”

           Indeed, after just over two weeks since its 14 November release date, Bethesda Softworks’ release of survival multiplayer sandbox “Fallout 76” has more than merely failed to impress most of its players. The game has garnered an infamously low average score of only 54% on popular game journalism site, Metacritic. It fares no better on Youtube, with dozens of popular influencers obliterating the high expectations of even the most devoted fans of the Fallout franchise; but this will not be another essay to dishonor the multiple technical, immersion and storytelling woes that plague beleaguered “Fallout 76”. That’s for another essay.

           This criticism is one that many previous public complaints have touched on, flirted with, but seldom fully explored while caught up in the disappointment they had in “Fallout 76.” Specifically, this essay is leveled broadly at Bethesda Softworks LLC, the video game publishing division responsible for “Fallout 76”, as well as ZeniMax Media Inc., the parent organization of Bethesda and many other well-known game developers such as Arkane Studios, id Software and more. The upper management of these companies is removed from all but the finances of their industry; they are abusing both their content creators and consumers to calculated effect, remaining foggy at best on the aim of the products their teams are producing and out of touch with the end user’s interest.

           What more can we say against corporations of this staggering size? Corporations and mergers, time and again, continue to exploit art production and consumption then shrug off the backlash by driving screws into their overworked employees and letting them take the fall with the public. Unless we look at past events, this trend of blame shifting isn’t obvious. It’s hard at the moment to see that Bethesda Softworks’ colossal failure to recreate their previous endearing successes with fans in “Fallout 76��� didn’t happen overnight.

It is for this reason that I sit on my soapbox today, somehow about to make an analogy of the gaming marketing industry by using Hazel and Gus from good ol’ John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars.” Never did I imagine I’d see those concepts together, but here I am smashing them together like this is fanfiction(dot)net. Don’t get too excited, though, because none of the wholesome aspects of Hazel and Gus make it into this analogy; no, this essay is all about the essence of what happens when you take a beautiful thing and strip it to the bare bones. Being a gamer in today’s culture of parasitic marketing is roughly akin to being desperately in love with a dying cancer patient. With their pants down and tumors exposed, Bethesda is giving us a rare glimpse into exactly what has made them cancerous: a lack of Vision (not to be confused with Activision.)

You see, Bethesda doesn’t have a vision. If you asked Todd Howard today what Bethesda’s vision was, his response would essentially amount to “get bigger, bigger than we’ve ever seen before,” and you would never be quite sure if he meant to say it would be the games, the bugs, or the pocketbooks that would be getting “bigger.” Bethesda has no vision because they are blinded by what I like to refer to as the survivalist mindset, cancer that has spread through their higher management and public faces so quietly for so long that Bethesda has only just noticed it rearing its ugly head. They have ventured through the past 20 years producing games that fans would merely refrain from harshly criticizing. If only they had seen their culture of undiluted survivalism in time to integrate it into “Fallout 76.”

To see the birth of this cancer that is killing Bethesda, we will travel back in time to 31 October 1998, when “The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard,” along with its related title “An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire,” were both resounding “commercial failures,” according to Stephan Janicki of Computer Gaming World. These two disappointments brought Bethesda to the edge of bankruptcy before ZeniMax Media swooped in and claimed them as a subsidiary in 1999. In the following years, Bethesda Softworks knew they had to succeed, or they were done in the eyes of both their corporate overlords and their fans. This is when the panicky, survivalist mindset set in. Feverishly they worked until, in 2002, they released “The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind,” and Todd Howard was relieved to find that “It just work[ed].” Upon the laurels of Morrowind, Bethesda skipped happily into the sunset, bringing us many more beloved titles like “Fallout 3,” “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Legendary Edition,” and “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition.”

But they never grew out of that survivalist panic. Like cancer, it festered in the background, that burning fear of “commercial failure,” which is a euphemism for rejection by their fans. Bethesda’s near-death experience had scared them. Their aversion to conflict and attempts to please every consumer instead of maintaining a focused design and lore quickly made them the endearing dweeb of game developers, merely slapped on the wrist for repeat performance flaws that would break the fans of other developers. “Cute” bugs in coding dating back several releases, consistently shipping products with technical difficulties unbecoming of a $60 price tag, multiple rerelease announcements and story-writing so poor that it’s common for players to joke about blatantly ignoring the main plot of the game, often for hundreds of hours, in favor of the things Bethesda did capture: exploration, immersion, and lore.

That brings us to the jokes. After Skyrim-related content pervaded their 2017 E3 press conference, it began to dawn on Bethesda’s corporate half that all those Bethesda memes were laughing at them, not with them. Shaken by flashbacks of Tiber Septim’s conquest of Hammerfell in “The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard,” Todd Howard and Bethesda’s upper management knew they couldn’t sit by idly and allow for history to repeat itself. They couldn’t accept hearing rejection from fans, even if it meant directly ignoring their feedback. Tunnel vision set in in the wake of more Skyrim jokes and criticism over their Creation Club microtransactions. The cancer was consuming them and the only way to heal their fracturing friendly persona and silence their critics was to get bigger, bigger than we’ve ever seen before; but at E3 2018, two decades after their initial “commercial failures,” their realization came many years too late and they didn’t snap out of their survivalist mindset in time.

Their bigger-than-we’ve-ever-seen-before came in the form of “Fallout 76”, not an ambitious venture objectively but very ambitious for Bethesda Game Studios Austin Branch, formerly known as BattleCry Studios LLC, who had never coded a project using Creation Engine, which Bethesda has been using exclusively since 2011.

But wait! say the studious fans of Bethesda. If Creation Engine has only existed since 2011, why does “Fallout 76” have bugs dating back as far as Morrowind? Creation is based off a much older engine called Gamebryo (known as NetImmerse until 2003). A much older engine that has successfully supported huge multiplayer games, most notably the critically acclaimed “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.”

If the core of Bethesda’s Creation Engine is a game engine that can create an enjoyable multiplayer experience, then why can’t “Fallout 76” do the same? Well, spread this funny honey on a biscuit, baby, because the answer is more cancer!

The fact that Bethesda has recurring bugs dating back over multiple releases suggests that, rather than taking time to address technology advancements, Bethesda’s survivalist mindset has grown upon Creation Engine like a tumor, strapping framework on top in half-baked layers, as quickly as possible, reducing the flexibility and independence of asset files into a fragile, unstable, monstrous whole.

I genuinely do not believe that Bethesda Game Studio Austin’s game developers were incompetent or lazy. Since the “Fallout 76” announcement at E3 2018, many have suspected disorganization in Bethesda’s management as they encountered a truly new set of obstacles for the first time. No one knew what “Fallout 76” would become, not the end users and certainly not the management of Bethesda Studios that for years had ignored the desperate need for ease-of-use coding with conservative couplings (files dependent on other files). They threw BGS Austin, a relatively new team that was inexperienced with designing Creation Engine worlds, into a hyped AAA release with an enormous fanbase; and what it became was an unacceptable byproduct of that insidious culture of corporate survivalism. Bethesda officials became so concerned with what the public thought of them that they never thought to check. They fixated on getting bigger than we’ve ever seen before until their creation became confused and codependent. They obfuscated what brought fans to Bethesda in Morrowind and kept them coming back through every hiccup and every rerelease: the fun to be had in exploration, immersion, and lore, but most importantly, the Vision.

Oh, what a situation Bethesda finds itself in now! Even though they’ve finally seen a backlash from setting profit margins before considering their team’s capacity, many feel this call-to-god moment has come too late. Losing the reverent trust of large portions of their fanbase, they must either find a way to fix their cancerous, bloated Creation Engine or risk losing their Bethesda aesthetic by developing a costly new engine to proceed. Bethesda knows this, and they desperately hope that no one else does because they also realized that by promising not only a decade-anticipated new “Elder Scrolls” release but a new game franchise as well, they’ve already allocated most of their resources. They can’t go back on their promises now without a complete “commercial failure” from fans already stretched thin by “Fallout 76;” now more than ever they need all hands on deck. There is little time and money left to dedicate to the enormous undertaking of designing a new game engine from scratch, much less the even more arduous task of unscrambling Creation Engine, now so distorted that their employees don’t know how to fix it anymore or they would, just to stop seeing memes about Skyrim and floating Scorched Zombies. It’s hopeless. It’s arguable that they deserve help after insulting fans with the lack of focus and attention for “Fallout 76,” multiple buggy rereleases of a buggy title from 2011, and the general sense of not understanding what made a compelling story. They do not deserve sympathy for the vague unease of having to create your own purpose, a job which Bethesda has shifted to its fans to avoid facing its fears from 20 years of trying to please everyone for their own pride and not in the spirit of their consumers.

Bethesda may not deserve our help, but many still believe that The Elder Scrolls does, that Fallout does. If you’re one of those people, there is something you can do, and it’s to ignore the cries to boycott all Bethesda products “forever.”

Bethesda owns the intellectual property to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout; and while Bethesda is an abusive, frustrated company with—seemingly—a vision of self-destruction, they do still care what you think because of their all-consuming fear of the Redguard. But ZeniMax Media owns them, even the neurotic Todd Howard, and ZeniMax Media has only ever cared about your money. You cannot refuse to agree to buy the game you want Bethesda to make and still expect it to arrive, but you can refuse to pre-order their games and indulge in microtransactions for as long as it takes. The game industry’s security and stock values are heavily dependent on fan loyalty, digital merchandise sales and pre-orders. This money gives them their security blanket in case they create “Fallout 76.” Wrapped in their blankies, the management of Bethesda and ZeniMax Media will keep their narrow vision and continue to use their development teams as bad press sponges unless they experience some genuine fear of “commercial failure.” If consumers reject their vision, they will change their vision for money; because Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

[referencegreys]

Redfall single player

Redfall single player full#

That's our general approach to most infiltration style missions.” And there's another way through the sewer, but there's a hazard like flames or toxic stuff that you have to deal with. This entrance is open, but there's guards patrolling. This entrance is not guarded, but it's locked, it has security systems. “And they have to entail different trade-offs for the player. “Especially when it's a campaign mission we have quality and design checklists where we're like, ‘there's got to be at least three ways in’,” explains Redfall’s co-creative director, Ricardo Bare.

Redfall single player full#

In full Arkane tradition, key locations will have multiple entry points, each designed to offer a different challenge. Sneaking or running out in the open is just one of the choices you’ll make while exploring the town of Redfall, Massachusetts. It helps you avoid encounters so you can get to where you intend to go.” Along the way, stealth is useful for that. “Because it means as I move my way, as I go across a parking lot, scale a little wall across the road, and make my way onto the roof of a building to rewire the antenna for this little side mission that I've got going on, I'm triangulating. “What works for us is hearing, sight, distance, view cones, and all that nerdy stuff that we love,” says Smith. A vital part of making this work is enemy AI legions of vampires wont inexplicably descend upon you just because you entered their patrol bubble. Rather than Redfall demanding quiet, surgical strikes against unaware targets, stealth is a tool to aid in the exploration of Arkane’s first urban open world. “Stealth is important to this game, but this is not a stealth game,” says Smith. But, like Deathloop, that doesn’t mean the beloved stealth vs action choice that characterises so many of Arkane’s games isn’t part of Redfall’s DNA. That understanding perhaps informed Arkane Austin’s decision to lean towards the action ambitions of Deathloop (created by sister studio Arkane Lyon), rather than Dishonored’s sneaky sensibilities. It's even more likely that things are going off the rails.” It's more likely that it becomes something new. “As soon as you have a second person, if that person is another idealised Arkane fan, there are times when the game still feels like with another person,” he says. That said, Smith recognises that the experience is transformed when other players join the party. “We set out to do the most ambitious thing we possibly could,” Smith assures me. Those fears weren’t baseless either with Arkane’s history of critical success but commercial struggles, it was easy to believe a co-op shooter was the studio’s attempt to make something more mainstream. Fans of the studio’s previous work will no doubt be relieved that all those elements are accounted for and that Redfall isn’t, as some feared, a Left 4 Dead replica.

[leviamares]

hi this is my blog, i post about my hyperfixations in a totally normal and sane way.

my current thing is the dishonored series, so it’s gonna be a lot of that for the foreseeable future >:)

other stuff i like (and do also post about): dnd (my beloved!!), welcome to night vale, stranger things, disco elysium, bioshock, borderlands, and basically anything published by arkane studios. i’m also an art major, so i love all forms of art and will likely reblog tons of that. i can draw a little bit, and i just got a tablet, so maybe I’ll share bits and pieces of my attempts at digital artwork.

i especially adore writing and prose and poetry and all that good stuff! maybe i’ll post some of mine, if i’m brave enough.

this is really just an everything blog. welcome to the circus. have fun. or don’t. i’m not the boss of you.

[nevertrustanoracle]

Look, nothing gets me hyped like an Arkane Studios game reveal.

The DotO trailer put me into shock for the rest of the day. It was my 21st birthday, I went to see a movie that night, still that trailer and my reaction is my strongest memory of that day. I don’t even remember what movie I saw, just that while walking to the cinema I was still reeling.

Mooncrash and Deathloop while not as extreme, still got me massively hyped despite not being my usual taste in games.

Redfall had me practically vibrating in my seat at 4:30am, all traces of tiredness gone.

Just, Arkane Studios my beloved 🖤

Excuse me while I scream about Redfall for a few days

[ladystylestores]

Our favorite games from Sony’s PlayStation 5 event

Yesterday, Sony finally took the wraps off its next-generation PlayStation 5 console. We now know what it looks like, what its accessories are, and also that there will be a disc-free digital edition.

But as exciting as the reveal was, it was only just the last five minutes or so of the actual event, which really was entirely dominated by the games that you will be playing on your PS5. Some of them are coming by the end of this year, most of them will be in 2021, and some even as far ahead as 2022 were showcased.

But the games really were the focus of Sony’s event, as they should be. It is the games, after all, that define a console generation and what people remember long after these things turn to dust. So with that in mind, this article will focus on some of the games Sony showcased yesterday. The list is of my personal favorites based on everything I saw during the keynote yesterday and is in no particular order.

I’ve also decided to leave out the first party AAA titles. Sure, a new Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man or Gran Turismo game is exciting and what everyone will be talking about, but for me, it was really the new IP from the lesser-known studios that stole that show.

So here’s a list of my favorite new PS5 games from Sony’s announcement.

Grand Theft Auto V

Just kidding, I don’t really care about this one. I just had to get it out of my system because Sony really thought it was not only worth including but also starting the event with. I know this game is still popular and I’ve enjoyed spending countless hours in it. But we are now seeing this game being re-released for the third time over as many console generations. You can do better than this, Rockstar. And so can you, Sony.

Little Devil Inside

I’ll start with the one that struck me as the most interesting game that was revealed in the keynote, Little Devil Inside by indie developer Neostream Interactive. This game first appeared on Kickstarter back in 2015, where it was successfully backed and has been in development ever since.

The game involves the player character in a “Victorian-like” era embarking on dangerous missions to find evidence and findings for his employer, a mysterious professor. The gameplay is an exploration-focused survival action RPG with a charming low-polygon paper mache-style art design. The gameplay almost reminded me of Shadow of the Colossus, but with much smaller creatures. Hopefully, it’s as fun as it looks.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits

As a sucker for art style, Ember Lab’s Kena: Bridge of Spirits is right up my alley. It’s a gorgeous looking game with a storybook-like aesthetic with wonderful creature designs and fluid animations. It’s a story-driven third-person action-adventure title with fast-paced combat where players find and grow a team of spirit companions called the Rot. These creators enhance the player’s abilities and create new ways to manipulate the environment. It also looks like something people of all ages could play and appreciate, so that’s definitely a bonus.

Oddworld: Soulstorm

Soulstorm is the latest entrant in the beloved Oddworld series, known for combining fun action-adventure and platforming mechanics with a dark sense of humor and relevant themes. Soulstorm is a continuation of the last game in the series with Abe as the main hero on a quest to save his world. The levels are bigger and more intricate this time and the developers are taking advantage of the power of the PS5 to have even more characters and objects on screen at once. But below all the mayhem and insanity, there also seems to be a story and character that you’d want to care about.

Stray

Yet another absolutely gorgeous looking game, this time from Annapurna and BlueTwelve Studios, Stray is a story about a stray cat in a futuristic walled city seemingly populated only by robots. The cat must find its way home with the help of its sentient drone friend and perhaps also help the city along the way. I’m not sure what the final gameplay is going to be like but this world is just so stunning that I’m already sold on it.

Ghostwire: Tokyo

Alright, we are in AAA territory now, starting with Ghostwire: Tokyo by Tango Gameworks and Bethesda. Directed by Shinji Mikami, the person behind several Resident Evil games, God Hand, Vanquish, and Evil Within, Ghostwire: Tokyo is an action-adventure game set in a stunning recreation of modern-day Tokyo. It’s not super clear yet what the gameplay is beyond just fighting the supernatural forces occupying the city but the setting and the visual design are enough to pique one’s curiosity.

Deathloop

Deathloop is a super-stylish first-person shooter with a time-loop setting. Created by Arkane Studios and Bethesda, the game has the player stuck in a time-loop, waking up every day on the same beach. To escape this time-loop, he has to take down eight occupants of this island. The only thing is, everybody else on this island is out to get you. If you die, you wake up on the beach again, starting the time-loop all over.

With every loop, you learn more things about the game and its characters. You have until midnight to kill the eight occupants and free yourself from the time-loop. The only problem is the other occupants along with an assassin out to get you.

The rival assassin in this game can actually be controlled by another player. Her job is to protect the targets from you and if she gets you, you repeat the loop. As a player, you can also choose to play as the assassin yourself, foiling other players’ plans to get out of the time-loop.

Returnal

More time-loop games, I hear you ask? Well, you got it, this time from Resogun creators Housemarque. Returnal is a roguelike third-person shooter where every time you die, you begin the cycle again, except this time the level design changes. Your character is stuck on a hostile planet filled with all sorts of creatures that can kill you and trigger the time-loop. Every time you wake up, the world is different with different creatures. Your job is to survive.

That’s it for this list. Obviously, there were a lot more games shown, including some interesting ones like Jett: The Far Shore, Project Athia, Hitman 3, Resident Evil Village, and Pragmata, along with the first party titles mentioned at the beginning of the article. Some of these are PlayStation 5 exclusive, some just console exclusive while others will be multi-platform, including the current generation. Either way, I am looking forward to trying them out.

If you have any favorites, mention them in the comments below.

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