10:10 Next time you make an expose piece with selectively picked information, you could at least ask other people before you use their videos as visual filler.

Prey 2017 should have been called “Psychoshock” It was a brilliant fucking game; I”ll never forgive Bethesda for how they treated Arkane Austin.

I actively go out of my way to not know how these people look, if I ever see Todd in public I’m crashing out

Maybe the answer for Bethesda and Emil to beat expectations would be to fire their entire marketing department, then consumers would have absolutely zero expectations.

Paid mods, there it is, the Bethesda fanboys will never agree on it though. The quality of the creation club is horrendously poor, most of the crap there can be made by modders in a few days. And that is ultimately what it is, low tier mods you have to pay money for, and people treat it as vanilla gameplay. You can play the game with whatever mods you want, but don’t call it vanilla game play at this point. You use creation club mods, you are playing a modded playthrough.

Modern Bethesda is like the Brotherhood of Steel (OG bos, not Bethesda’s the power ranger diet enclave extreme catholic religious semi tech cultist bos version.)
They refuse to change and adapt to be better, and because of that. They’ll begin to stagnate and fall.

Sixteen times the lies, terrible writing, of course the bugs.

In no other game can you wander across the Gloves of the Pugilist and find out you can punch a dragon to death. I’m no gamer, I dust off the thing maybe twice a year. But I have to be careful to remind myself not to start playing Skyrim. It’s like a black hole. Friggin amazing. I don’t think that vibe can be matched again. How do you not fall asleep researching this? I know everyone wants a banger for the sequel, but man, this is boring stuff.

” Tell me lies tell me sweet little lies “

In a way Bethesda’s current state can be linked to the horse armor. They let greed take over and it was a constant race to see what they could get away with, how little they could offer and still be profitable. They refused to see the warning signs and now they burned all of the trust.

Im done with the Obsidian glazing and shifting of blame…it was the second time they took a less than 2 years contract and released a glitchy mess…new vegas is good but you can feel they had scope creep and literally gave all their time to the ncr…house and yesman recicle so much content, and either house or the legion get a companion…and they could have fixxed that if they wanted in their time patching and dlc.
Hell if it wasnt for youshua gram…and his amazing voice work honest hard would be the worst dlc in any bethesda branded game . (Exept i gues their spsce game, that game sucked) but the honest hearts was bad and lonesome road is another decent dlc that is more linear than mothership zeta… a dlc that moralizes you about pushing a botton they force you to push and you dont get an ending for defiying them and walking away…and breaks the most important thing the corrier had…his origin was fully up to you…and they broke it, forcing you to get a fixed origin…like all other fallout and they terrible rip off owrer worlds…

Launch was terrible in ps3, had to buy an xbox copy… and they crasshed and burned with every dlc bugs…

And the ridicusly unesesary explanation at the begginin was unesesary…there was no need for a faction run down…youd learn about them lile every other fallout game as you, go…
Hell their feature creek caught to them in not letting you play the post game…they didnt need to change everything, just the hover damn and have the other factions add 2 ir 3 lines to their roll out….

Fallout 3 learned how stupid not letting you keep playing was for godsake

New vegas was the best fallout yes, but Obsidian chosee to take the deadline, interplay sold the ip and then broke contracts, and obsidian doesnt even have the same people in them

People need to stop glazing them and trying to hypocritically critizise fallow three combat and 3 d leap when they justify lots on it in NV

Fallout 3 is a good game and ofcourse there were going to be retcons, and not all are bad…the master made supermutans with fev? Yeah the stuff was stored all around the country, the enclave was destroyed in california? Well they were decendants of the usa gov ofcourse they would have bases around the contry specially dc….jet origin was retconed? You seriously think that Myron would be the only person to figure out that you can make drugs with cow shir? We make medicines in the real world with cow urine an dung… the brotherhood is acting diferely? Thats not a retcon is a plot point and that saved the brotherhood…hell interplays brotherhood was already shifting they made the tactics and beat them up brotherhood and everyone is glad the beat them up was un cannonized by bethesda
Honestly the scorpions was the only stupid thing…and that the caps were never explained even if they had an eassy way as poluted watter was a plot point they just had to add their version of the watter traders …into the plot….but lets be honest while NV trys to explain caps…they dont make sence with no presence of the watter traders…and they rificusly made the watter pasable to drink…far from the strip…swimming is a valid gameplay choice instead of a risk…you even have to rescue the plane and rads is not even a problem

Bethesda is crap now days,
And yet skyrim is a reealy good game, it is…even if they eff up magic even more than oblivion has and im someone who played the games backwards…and can admit that i want a game now days with that level of magic but without the porcentage hits …im so glad Oblivion killed that as that doesnt work on 3d

Fallout 3 is a really good game, the only 3d fallout game that feels like an apocalypse, even more than 1 the only other fallout game tht doesnt feel POST post apocalyptic…fallout NV is fully about civilisations. 4 is about civilizations, 2 is about civilisations
I just sick of bad talk about 3…

Blame interplay mismanagment already

Hardly news, they’ve been in stasis since Skyrim dropped and arguably, they’ve been in decline since Morrowind.

Kingdom Come 1 and 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 saved my love of video gaming

56:30
“Some of which, sparked lawsuits. Because… why not?” 😂

Monetizing mods is probably most idiotic thing I ever witnessed in gaming. Second would be, making game mechanic patents.

43:01 I don’t know much about the game industry but I think 25% is pretty fair. They’re giving you the platform, tools and IP to generate revenue where as before you’d get zero. Maybe they could have taken a 5-10% hit after the backlash but should have stood firm either way.

The disease started much earlier, not with the horse or with Todd Howard. It began with Altman and his group. Everything they touches gets exploited and then gets destroyed. They are the Beast from the Bible.

Fallout 4 didn’t just devolve into “Yes, No or Sarcastic”, it devolved into “Yes, Yes but Sarcastic, Yes in a roundabout way and Yes, later”. Back then we used to joke that Fallout 5 would just be a movie. The fact that it became a TV show isn’t even surprizing.

Can we get an early life on Altman?

Nevermind, I was right.

*Release Elder Scrolls 6 trailer*
*doesn’t say anything about it*

owning two of the hottest rpg IPs on the planet and making people wait over a decade for their next title is fkn lunacy, you literally lose a significant amount of customer base to life expectancy for gods sake. its nuts. thy should have dedicated simultaneous title teams

so in other words one of the most corrupt lawyers on the planet leveraged his connections to take over zenimax then forced out its creator? gotcha.
btw google BCCI and nazis

Bethesda would be better off without Todd Howard and Emil.

All I know is if Bethesda ruins the next elder Scrolls. That’s it for them. Their company is a pariah. They have no idea how beloved elder scrolls is.

hbomberguy bullied a man into suicide.

He was incharge of Redguard, yet the media dont like to bring it up, while morrowind ”TODD THE LEAD DESIGNER DIRECTOR WHO MADE MORROWIND”

I refuse to purchase anymore Bethesda games, that even means games published by Bethesda as they’re likely stained by their corruption.

I think Bethesda needs an absolute flop fans refuse to buy. Like Bioware’s Veilguard.Something that will rattle Phil Spencer Todd Howard and Pagliarulo. I think that needs to happen to get any kind of course correction.

This is amusing and very ironic to see Zenimax do this to so many smaller companies, since the company that bought them, is the master of doing it. Zenimax can’t hold a candle to the game companies Microsoft has destroyed.

Piss Howard – “It Just Works!”. No it fucking doesn’t, Todd! It aint worked in YEARS! Stop drinking the piss! You’ve been on it starting with Skyrim and you haven’t come off it since!

I have no faith for ES6

I was among BGS’s most loyal players. And Starfield was my last straw. BGS’ next game will be the first game that I’m waiting at least 1 week after release to buy it, when enough other people have got a chance to play it who aren’t influenced by the privilege of playing it early.

Man I’ll never forget me and my brother’s reaction when they said “1000 planets” like yup it’s gonna suck. We both asked why the hell they wouldn’t just do 1 system with a handful of planets

The only reason I even played fallout 76 or starfield was because they were on Xbox game pass

I just hope Ardenfall is good. Someone needs to take the Bethesda formula mantle and RISE ABOVE!

I’m glad more people are finally waking up to Bethesda’s mediocrity. Skyrim was the last decent game they made, but the problem is that there aren’t many games that play like a Bethesda RPG. Kingdom Come Deliverance is probably the closest.

I started playing Starfield, and it’s pretty good imo I have a couple hours in it.

//How Bethesda Destroyed Its Reputation//

You should’ve titled the video “How Bethesda Destroyed Its Reputation: BEiNG MaRYLand” as that’s what they’re emulating.

11:38 THAT right there is whats wrong with bethesda right now. jfc even then they were arrogant. if they actually listened they’d probably see a lot more valid critiques…
BGS is going through the SAME thing (among other glaring issues) CDPR went through pre cyberpunk 2077 debacle. absolutely shit trash management with extremely bad delegation, slow everything, clogged communication channels. CDPR however after getting fucking blasted by the fans took it on the chin, sucked it up and CHANGED. they listened and recognized the issues… bethesda has completely ignored all that criticism. instead choosing to blame fans in top of just straight up ignoring the problems. from our perspective they seem so conceited. bgs head is so far up its own ass it can’t see a way out. they’re their own worst enemy.
also the nearly two decade cycle (by release) of TES is so fucked. its horrifically bad business. its such a bad dumb decision its made phil spencer, the nicest ceo, annoyed as fuck. to the point they now HAVE to release games quicker. on account of fumbling that fallout show cash cow. bunch a fuckwits.

starfield is/was such an unbelievable shitshow. a colossal failure, not financially but spiritually. (also mechanically cuz it sucks a$$). i just NOW todd shoved his head into every. single. detail and mechanic they made. i mean there’s literally a clause(?) that says every decision HAS so to be run through him first. its so dumb, inefficient and so so corporate. i could go on & on about bgs i was a die hard fan and now i cant stand it. i relish in shitting on SF and bgs…. but i dont want their games to fail. i want TES6 to be good but i just dont think bgs is capabale anymore. theyre dead just like all the other legacy studios. idk if todd was always a fool but he and emil and the higher ups sure asf are now.

ah yes, the big canvas shortage of 2018

51:21 FUCKING PRONOUNS

You mentioned Robert Altman, oy vey!! this is anti-semitic.

From my favorite developer to a lifetime boycott since Fallout 4 removed RP from the G.

Took me a sec to recognize TB’s voice. That kinda bums me out

Morrowind is a much better game than daggerfall.

They destroyed their reputation with Oblivion.

After downscaling the entire game series to fit into Morrowind, they did it again for consoles with Oblivion.

That game was over hyped by Bethesda like crazy and half of the stuff supposedly in it wasn’t in it.

@Selwen if you hate them so much stop letting them live rent free in your head & shut up about them.

starfield took 16hrs to be interesting for 1hr. sad.

I’m a bit old. I’ve only just started playing fallout 3 and Skyrim this year on my 360. I love them. Broken as shit but think it’s funny. Got new Vegas and oblivion to start now.

To all Bethesda fanboys: You are enabling all of this.

DON’T BUY DOOM!

It’s ridiculous that it actually makes me sad watching stuff like this. Looking back at masterpiece games, and how their creators got screwed over, how they basically never recovered, and those franchises getting milked to death. Knowing there is no way to strip these IPs away from these companies, and anyone who gets to close to it is getting sued somehow or another. It’s so dumb.

I’m glad I could never get into any of Bethesda’s games because of the technical issues. You can try to convince me that Skyrim is a gem when my first playthrough was immediately hard locked in the into… Funnily enough New Vegas was the only game I was able to stuck with despite the technical issues. And I genuinely tried hard to get into Skyrim but how can anyone claim that it gives full freedom to the player when I can’t even kill specific NPCs? There really isn’t any indication that they are an “essential” character. I’d be on a rampage through a city of guards reminiscent of the GTA games, then all of a sudden one of them just refuses to die.

Gaming execs are a USELESS AND TERMINAL CANCER.

Hey! Not all of their games are terrible, you know. By the way, how could you say Starfield is a bad game. I enjoyed that game.

Waiting for a video like this about bungie considering the current state of destiny 2 and how marathon is vapourware now

the fact is with starfield, it was mid. it was alright. thats it. i had fun at parts, its story had promise in places. but it seemed half finished and half written like all bethesda games. i miss the character sheets from morrowind, oblivion, and fallout 3. though it wasnt really character sheets anymore by fallout 3. but what they did with skyrim and fallout 4 was terrible. the gameplay for fallout 4 was great ill say that. its still one of my favorite fallout games to play. i love how they did power armor in it. combat is fun and engaging, and the settlement building is fun. but the writing has been increasingly bad since morrowind. plothole filled mediocre writing that just doesnt feel good. and the way i see it, it all stems back to todd howard.

Love this video. Just the pure full history of the downfall of this greedy company

Starfield was supposed to be Todds Magnum Opus…It was a Magnum Fuck Ups
Im seriously worried about the next main line Elder Scrolls. If that goes sideways, thats the final one, im out…Been fan a since F3

You’ve earned a like and a sub from me. You covered almost everything!

You know what? I apologize to Todd Howard for being stuck with those unfunny clowns, Pete Hines and Emil Pagliarulo. those two hate art and games

I remember seeing the Original Prey 2 Trailer it had the Best Graphics i d seen at the Time i thought this cant be Real

if you think TES 6 is gonna be good, I’m sorry for you

What do you mean “destroyed”? They always been like this, makers of pre-alphas sold at full price.

I never believed in Bethesda’s reputation. I always understood it was an illusion.

Bethesda is literally a Crime Lab

51:20 look it’s pronouns guy

$50 says TES:VI gets released as Skyrim 2

Fantastic video. Reminder to wait for reviews when TESVI eventually releases.

Fallout 76 launch was so bad… why they didn’t just wait for 6-12 months and fix bugs, some of which are still in the game. Or make real canvas bags, can’t be that expensive when the collectors edition is 200 fucking dollars.
At least buying atoms and/or 1st is optional. Unless you play a lot (like me), it’s getting harder to manage weight.

As for Starfield, it never caught my eye. After seeing their typical gameplay showcase, it was just fallout 4 with different textures. Same shit, but in space.

Now we just have to hope they don’t fuck up TES 6. If they don’t have new engine for it, I’ll just wait for -80% steam sale.

The Nord is Cold Resistant
and the Ork has 1 Minute of Rage per Day
Thats the Difference Wow…
that Doesnt Change the Fact that the Days from 11.11. 2011 to 30.11. 2011 Were the greatest Days of my Gamer Life

Leave it to coporate suits to drain all the humanity out videogames for likie… 2 extra dollars.

Skyrim did irreversible damage to the RPG genre and how people perceive RPG’s. I love Skyrim, but I’ll never forgive Bethesda for that.

You deserve millions of subs bro. Great content!

todd howard montage

God I wish they kicked Todd out after his first failures. Every single thing pointed directly to firing that jackass.

That interplay one: it seems like interplay tried to inflate the price by selling fallouts (at the time) unfeasible potential as an online multilayer, and Bethesda just called them on it, saying if THAT has potential YOU do it. Sure they milked that move for value but it was interplays misstep.

Tbc I know Bethesda is horrific. Maybe it’s just poor storytelling here.

i will never side with Interplay in the Bethesda vs Interplay thing … there was no way Interplay was going to pull that off as anything other than a Star Citizen disaster – lol

Bethesda are stuck in their 90s/2000s mindset when it comes to their game design.

the best fallout they produced wasnt even made by them. and todd gets so mad any time its brought up.

good video sir

lmao todd trying to dodge the question of why we took out weapons and mechanics god i want to fucking slap him

I understand the constraint, but you also didn’t touch on pagliarulo’s wack business ideas, where people in different teams don’t need to know what’s going on in other departments and shit. He’s basically done a whole Ted talk about it, and hearing how it functions, there’s no wonder why their games come out so disconnected from reality.
And I actually think Tod is mostly a face, a guy once so passionate for innovation in games, but who ended up being a puppet to much more powerful people who actually call the shots.

This is a great in depth investigation into Bethesda. We need exposés like this in response to videos defending shitty game studios & publishers (like neverknowsbest last video that defended corporate greed and entirely sidestepped the clear evidence that gaming studios used to be very different even when they had suits & a board).

I honestly think for the masses ES6 is their last chance before they really become that one studio no one looks forward to.

As a fan of the original Prey from 2006 I will NEVER forgive Bethesda for what they did to Prey 2 and the IP.

But this is to be biggest contribution is the music unfortunately they got rid of the composer. This is why most of the music sucks.

51:46 nah man that fucking killed me holy fuck lmao

amazing video!!!

I manage to play Starfield for about 30 hours, even making it to the end.
But I certainly watched reviews an critics on YT about it for twice that time, it became another hobby 🙂
Thankfully Tod didnt put any copyright protection in it, so atleast I didnt pay any money for that experience…
Starfield made me install NewVegas again, start MassEffect and get interested in other space games like Star Citizen…

And Elder Scrolls 6 will sell like hot cakes because it’s the sequel to Skyrim.

12:33 and boy does it show

As someone who enjoys more lore friendly mods, _ALL_ Creations are massively immersion breaking. Especially Skyrim.

This is such a well-made documentary! You really put in the time and effort to tell the history of the studio and tell the story in a way that isn’t the same few talking points in so many Bethesda critique videos. Subscribed!

I remember years ago Bethesda did a gameshow presentation where they showed a bunch of their fans on a big screen.
Every single person there looked like they had sustained shipping damages.

The title alone got my like, now i watch it.

1hr bethesda analysis video are considered short now

My biggest fear is that Bethesda will rush TES6 in order to catch up with Fallout games because of the Fallout series

wow it acutally is old rich white dudes who are the evil villians of this story hahahaha

God howard was here to troll us

I don’t see people in the comments getting it. Combine the first 8-minutes with what is shown at 20:50. A game company brings-on rich, evil men, lawyers, then later sues other people.

i pray, i hope, i beg they take player feedback to make elderscrolls 6 the best game they ever made,, i dont want it to be bad, but…. i wont get my hopes up, i know people dont like fallout 4, but i enjoyed it, i like the housing system they made, even if it was a bit bare bones, i hope they make it better in skyrim where we actually have a city. and a questline with how we want people there, if its corrupt or evil or a thief’s guild din or if its a place full of necromancers, i know im asking for alot tho… i just dont want the newest elder scrolls to be s**t… i dont want what there doing with the elder scrolls online, oh my god its gotten unbearably political in the newest dlc, So so so unbearably so.

Eventually Gearbox is going to show up on this too along with a ton of the things they touched along the way.

Every hatebaiter on YouTube: “Figure’d I’d psychoanalyze the absolute tits out of a game company who’s games I both have an ungodly amount of hours played in on top of haven’t played in 5 years straight, you know, because I’m an expert on these sorts of things.” /s

Emil’s rant was just pure gold. “Waaaaah, making games is hard!”
Ok, stop making games then and release your IP’s and let someone more capable do it!

They are millions of great programmers that work for free, and if they screw up Bethesda has to take zero responsibility: The Modding Community.
No other company can just push out shaite and wait for the customers to make the product themselfs.
And so they decided to scam them

Bro just stop it with those videos, youtube outrage grifters and autistic 4chan chuds are why their reputation is worse for wear. BGS have made games which are unlike ANYTHING seen before or since. Kenshi comes close, but that’s about it. I’ve never seen any game studio get more undeserved smearing than BGS. And worst of all, the people who do it think they’re somehow “based” and “objectively correct”. Disgusting.

None of first 8-minutes surprises me. Money follows money (for now…).

I laugh, eternally, at “Bethesda Bad,” and the Falsehoodtubers who push it.

Just remembered, I bought Skyrim on PC at release. I got a beautiful map printed on a kanvas with it. My brother bought it later on for PC too, he got the typical plastic map print. Like a GTA map. I remember being pissed off on his behalf at the time. I thought he should’ve gotten a nice map like me. I still do. Fuck Bethesda

Hot take Bethesda hasn’t released a good game since Skyrim

I’m still a bit shocked and confused that people play Bethesda games on console. They’re missing out on the only reason it’s good.

Until a game comes out that is similar in scope, scale and gameplay to Skyrim I have to have faith in Bethesda, as shitty of a company as they are. I know that TES6 will never live up to my expectations but I can only hope.

No matter the game, none have quite lived up to Skyrim and Oblivion, it’s been more than a decade since they released but I still play them more often than modern games.

Hell compare Oblivion with Avowed, it’s night and day. Truly disappointing that we’ve somehow regressed. KCD comes close but it’s more of a medieval setting, less of the fantasy genre I want so again it’s not quite there. Witcher has the genre but you’re locked into the role of the Witcher and there’s a solid story/progression you’re railroaded into. Skyrim and Oblivion has the main story yes, but you don’t feel like you need follow it.

Tl;dr – Bethesda will never release something that will live up to what I hope TES6 will be, if another company can produce something similar it’ll put them in the dirt.

fallout 76 was where they slipped and they’ve been sliding downhill ever since

Mr Howard can’t ever get his shit together

Emil claiming they can’t do anything about that because bugs are always going to happen, is just the most insane statement from anyone in software development. How about trying to release when QA is happy with the game, instead of when Zenimax and your shareholders tell you they want their development costs paid back..

New Vegas was mostly a product of original Obsidian crew with Chris Avelon lead. And even Obsidian with its corpa structure is not the same anymore.

The fact that Howard is clearly aware of the criticism and convinced himself that doing the opposite is the right call infuriates me. This is a garbage company.

They wasted YEARS developing Fallout 76, then came back with a whimper with Starfield… God I hope the next ES isnt a flop

i like the vid superb, but i saw asmondgold that when i stop watching and dislike the video.

12:05 – it never fails to tickle me, when Toddy says the games have ten races. They have five. Humans, elves, orcs, lizard people and cat people. Splitting the races by color alone is just dumb and lazy.

It really does feel bad that a shit company like this made my all time favorite game

The issue is always capitalism

I find it funny it took people so long to see that Skyrim is a bad game. I played it not long after it came out, and I was the target audience. I was so dissatisfied and disappointed about how it was presented, both that it was just an action fantasy with faux RPG and that the game is just plain ugly.

Destroyed fallouts lore and their rep great success

I forgot about that Phil Spencer quote about his 15th playthrough 😂😂 I don’t think anyone will ever play that game through 15 times without going insane.

I love Bethesda games

Todd Howard is same as DJ Khalid.

Bethesda is not even relevant anymore. Fallout 76 revealed their greed. Starfield revealed whats left of their skill in making games. The only thing theyre doing nowadays is creating blank templates for modders to turn into a game. Theyre less than half the developer that their modding community is.

55:21 After decades of creating buggy games, Todd Howard finally gains the ability to glitch reality itself.

I dont think the general gaming audience is going to keep buying Bethesda games given how the rest of the industry in recent years is being ill received and no amount of censorship is going to help make up for the extreme loss of revenue from the customer.

I never blamed Bethesda for the horse armor or the creation club. The customers are the ones who enable this business practice, and it will continue in one form or another for as long as customers spend their money on it.

Todd and Emil aren’t responsible for simplification of Elder Scrolls and Fallout. They’re responsible for the ENSHITIFICATION of both franchises.

People complain… but still buy

Have to point this out since I haven’t seen anyone else do it, but ES6 & Starfield weren’t announced after the disaster of Fallout 76’s launch. 2018 was the year 76 came out, and that E3 was when Todd showed it off to everyone. That presentation was where we got that(now infamous) “16 times the detail” quote. ES6 and Starfield were announced at the very end of that same presentation.

I drive by the zenimax building in Austin to go to school every day I can’t even imagine what kind of dogshit they are whipping up in there lol

Fallout 2 was the first game I bought with my own money, and Fallout 4 was the game that broke my spirit. After F4, I stopped caring for any franchise/title in games/movies/music. I just go back to old stuff or play dark souls like games.

Weird, they seem to still be successful and their games beloved. 🤔

Im gonna be laughing my ass off when tes6 releases and you all buy it 😂 because you will, you’re fucn addicted.

You’re money is better off in bethesda’s pockets tbh. You don’t deserve voting rights 😂

Great Global Canvas Shortage of 2018 was not Bethesdas or Todds fault, nobody could predict that!

After Fallout New Vegas, obsidian fans advocated for the fall of bethesda for many-many years. They were the ones who tagged The Outer Worlds as “fallout” killer and kinda dupped people into buying the game thinking it’ll be like New Vegas. Henche why you now keep hearing Avowed being tagged as a “skyrim killer” (in an ironic sense) despite the devs attempts to claim otherwise.

So sad to see all the best gaming companies I grew up with turn into soulless husks run by unapologetic capitalist asshats.

Critically acclaimed means nothing to true blue real gamers. Commercial success means everything. If the masses love it thats all that matters. Your critically acclaimed games to me means the studio will shut down soon. And you are most definitely are in bed with gaming journalists

Man, you could have talked about Bethesda bringing back the true paid mod store, and all the horrendous mismanagement that happened there. People were scooping mods off of nexus and other sites, directly uploading them to Bethesda as their own work, and profiting off other’s work, and Bethesda did not even have a method to detect it, and actively suppressed conversations about it.

Oh, and their update to add those features? Just HAPPENED to break all the existing mods, too.

Skyrim’s modding community is still in shambles, in some ways. Some of the biggest mod collections for Skyrim (Immersive, in this example) are STILL recommending to downgrade to 1.6.640 (before the paid mod store implementation) and play off that.

Looks like Bethesda maybe not Todd, “lived long enough to be the villain”. Harvey dent

The worst part is you don’t need an hour long video to explain that bethesda has ruined their reputation. Just cursory knowledge of the elder scrolls franchise and how it’s been removing features in every iteration since daggerfall and you would have to be the biggest fool in the world to think that ES6 won’t be buggy, shallow, soulless, and boring.

This is your second “How X Destroyed Its Reputation” video that is exactly 1:08:43 long.

We know, we all know, we all watched it in real time. This is the 10,000th video about this exact subject. We don’t need any more of these.

Obsidian good bethesda bad amiright ?
can i have gazillion like for this quick summary of this video ?

I’d like to think Elder Scrolls 6 will be great but I’m not holding my breath especially if Emil is lead designer and writer. I may just get my fix from Skyblivion or the Bethesda remake of Oblivion. Be curious to see the comparison videos between those two when they’re both out.

500 Atoms? Fuc$ yeah!

I really believe that the main issue was that they either couldn’t or chose not to invest in a new Creation Engine or other engine altogether. You’re getting a suped of version of the same engine for over almost two decades at this point and the cracks show when other modern day games are using more powerful tools. What looked cutting edge in the 2010’s doesn’t fly anymore and it shows.

Sad thing is, when you look at the worst Bethesda has done, they still come out kind of ok when compared to EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard …

Todd Howard and his god-cursed midlife-crisis leather jacket…

If you think about that The first elder scrolls game Arena released 1994, then daggerfall only two years after that, two secondary titles got released between two main entrances(which weren’t great tbh), morrowind 2002, oblivion 2006 and Skyrim five years after that in 2011, I thought tes 6 will release in 5-7 years after that. We’re waiting over a decade for more than 12 years now and they didn’t do much in that time, Todd dude…people died while waiting for your game, literally.

Thing is, “Keep it Simple, Stupid” isn’t actually a bad strategy- What is a bad strategy is overusing it to basically gut *ALL* content and somehow *STILL* have to crunch and then still try to advertise as content rich, feature complete, and slap the RPG tag on- You know, the genre known for elaborate deep choices? That’s how you end up with a game that’s as vast as an ocean but deep as a puddle, janky as hell, and you end up looking like a fucking dunce.
Re-releasing the same game like 17 times also doesn’t help when you’ve not done a damn thing to fix bugs, change the graphics, or anything else for that matter- Blizzard is only ahead of Bethesda in that regard ’cause they actively managed to take out stuff and make their products worse!
And even worse, the people who really need to be held responsible & punished for this shit, the publishers and CEOs, get away scot-free with their pockets full of extra money as they jettison their gilded life pods to the next place to run into the ground, like that part in Dead Space 1 where the military ship picks up the life pod with the Necromorph in it.

This is the truth.

I never played more than a few hours of Fallout 4.
The city building irritated me.
I hated the Workshop dlc’s.
Rather play Skyrim, thank you.

Personally, i think Bethesda should concentrate on two things. Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Nothing else. I think people only get angry at them because they care. And they ultimately only care about those two things.

You work hard but Have to work on Your diction if You want people to participate in such a long narration. Words like “change”. Good luck, Your content is worth the effort.

It’s all a big club and you are not in it.

You forgot the major thing that me and others are most mad about, that after Skyrim they never worked on ES6, releases a trailer in 2018 but didn’t actually start the game for many gears later after StarTurd was released. Thats all I’m mad about

you know, with that background, the entire Paradiso questline suddenly makes way too much sense… of course the board of directors is marked “essential” and cannot be shotgunned to the face as they should, but blowing up the sleeper ship in orbit and/or putting them all into indentured servitude is completely fine -. –

But I like Bethesda…

In the San Bernardino mountains they use tortirers and engage in grand theft against residents. If you want to be robbed by the police come on up!

Bethesda are perfect proof that the customer in general is an idiot, they have always released broken buggy rubbish, they have always been greedy scum and yet its only in recent years people have started to push back, even after Fallout 76 people still went insane for Starfiled and defended that trash Its quite pathetic and hardly a sur[rise the gaming industry thinks the customer is an idiot because they are. Its going to be hilarious watching the same morons hype up ES6, defend it and suck down the broken mess Bugthesda feeds them, people that buy Bethesda games deserve what they get.

It’s crazy that Bethesda figured out dynamic AI 15 years ago and Avowed can’t in 2025. Feels like we’re still in the last generation, tbh.

Make a collab with Creetosis!

cosmetic… upgrades were never a thing for me , I only care about items that improve performance

I think the saddest thing about Starfield is that you can see where they tried to innovate. They added lots of systems, and the procedural generation was ambitious. But lacked clear direction and had a really uninspired, boring vision.

It could be a step in the right direction, but the first thing they need to do is know what the hell they want to make – other than blank canvases for base building (a mechanic I personally hate with a passion).

Hey just a friendly reminder 😊

Dont pre-order elder scrolls 6

Dont buy it at release either.

Fallout 76 will always be the saddest joke for me, other then it’s awful launch and all those problems, the game fails at being a live service to this day, it’s content is sparce and baron, and they spend so long to drop anything, the game looks like they have 5 people working on it and they do nothing until something comes along to advertise something, for example the game went dry on content and updates, only pumping out small nothing missions and shitty FOMO battle passes, then the awful Fallout TV show comes out and BOOM 76 has an extension to the map, it has playable ghouls and so on, now the show has died down the content goes back to the slow almost nothing content trickled out to the consumers.

76 has always been and still is a game that is never for the consumer, I remember when you could get atoms for free by doing challenges, but that has been removed for the lowest, slowest grind for shitty BP XP, and back when you could get atoms for playing the game there was a bug that made some of the weekly and dailys auto complete but gave you nothing, this bug stayed for years and was never fixed until they replaced it with XP, and they knew it was broken they just didn’t want to fix it, why would they fix that bug when it makes you earn less Atoms. Now Fallout 76 is being dragged across the floor to promote crap when needed and tries banking off of the single atom of good will Bethesda had to keep people stinged along, I gave up on the game, I put up with all the shit from day 1, and in the end when they added the battle pass I dropped it, it clearly would never respect my time so why bother, I remember I still had it installed a while back and so I was about to uninstall it, but before I did I went on to check what had changed and how it was going, and It felt like the whole game was frozen in time till I returned, the only difference was just more scummy crap to milk money out of their players, so I uninstalled it. The sad part is I see reviews for the game that don”t really ever talk about how the game is fun, or what is good in the game, it’s always the same thing “This game is fun when you play with friends” or “I had fun because of the community that is trying to keep this decomposed corps alive” nothing really saying the game is good or fun, and all I think is, “If your only good thing about the game is nothing to do with the game and is to do with friends and the community then the game isn’t good and it’s pointless, anything can be fun or made better with friends or the community” so now the game is just racking in money managing to string along players still somehow which props to Bethesda, they still somehow got it, I expect the new Elder Scrolls to make big sales, people will make excuses and buy it, even those that shit on it and I’m not even blaming them, because it’s always happened and will keep happening and we all fall for it even if we like to say we don’t.

This video was good, I knew a lot about Bethesda and all the fucked up shit but there’s a lot in here I never knew about, like Prey 2 I though was canceled over being to ambitious and not near finish, this video made it clear that Bethesda are always the ones pushing awful shit, Microtransactions, exclusive content, paid mods, because of Bethesda there is now paid mods and debits over it when a mod shouldn’t have to be paid for to get it and instead it should be open for all and if people want to see more of their work they can donate to keep them going to see more of their mods, there is exclusives and people pushing for exclusivity for their platform when we should all be pushing for non exclusives, platforms should be winning you over by making their platform actually have a reason to buy it and not over games that can be played on everything else. I knew Bethesda was awful but this video has made me think about a lot when it comes to them and all the crap and problems in the gaming land scape, bugs me I didn’t see this stuff back when I was in my game dev course, we already didn’t want to work for any Triple A when asked and we all wanted to go Indie, but this stuff would of made things a lot more clear, though seeing a developer’s face on call when he was asked about crunch was really telling. The gaming industry is so fucked.

ⁱᵗ ʲᵘˢᵗ ʷᵒʳᵏˢ

Bethesda doesnt care and I am confident neither does Microsoft. Microsoft has no problems covering for openly racist game directors so I dont think Todds god complex is going to bother anyone. Fortunately there are plenty of other good games being made, Bethesda can sink as low as they want.

Fallout 3, 4 and new Vegas are awesome! Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim are awesome! Love them all

after that starfield woke garbage with awful physics and looking like it was from 20 years ago? heck no we dont trust them to make good games

they updated skyrim and nuked my safe with mods. I changed every review to bethesda games and will give them a negative review until i can be sure they changed (probally never)

I remember the game informer interview back when it first dropped. As one of the players who was like, “this is nice, add spears back in”, hearing him say, “actually we are always trying to figure out how to reduce from what came before so that your choices are more meaningful” was the moment I knew Bethesda was never going to change course. The pattern of stripping down and consolidating has remain unchanged since that interview in 2011. Since before that, really, since Morrowind, it’s just that the 2011 GI interview is where he opened the playbook for everyone to see.

This video should be mandatory viewing.

Imagine if todd had made the witcher 3 , 😂😂😂, its like a toddler trying to paint the mona Lisa

Bughesda had a reputation? Good one? Really?! I never noticed!

Unless im delisional i remember playing ck3, listeing to lex fridman doing a podcast with todd howard and at one point they start reviewing that realistic shooting game unrecorded i think its called and todd said something like back in the day we worked for 5 years and partied for one but nowadays we work for 1 and party for 5 years. I remember trying to find it a couple days later to show my friends but it wasnt in the video anymore.

Dont worry mods will fix it…. until updates like Skyrim AE or Fallout 4 next-gen…. then we have broken savegames and modders must update the mods.

I can’t wait for the next ES game where I have to spend $60 additional dollars to unlock the day 1 full DLC cut content edition then where they try to force every mod author onto creation club where I can then pay £5-10 for every individual component of a 5 piece armour set to look slightly different than the generic class archetype they’ll offer. The 796.5 endings will be my consolation prize. It just works.

I would sooner die than use the insidiously named ‘Creation Club’ and I despise how artistic innovative passion project mods are being sized up by hungry money grubbing execs. Just fix my game for me. Make my game fun for me. Then I’ll take 75-90% the revenue and here’s a couple of cents, good boy, good boy, make 5 more for me. The reason Skyrim has 60 million sales is its modding community, nothing else. It’s the most moddable game out there. These modders ALREADY paid Zenimax and Bethesda a fortune by being the best possible advertisement for the game. It’s like CK2 and 3 and the game of thrones mods. Free modding leads to massively enhanced sales.

Fallout 3 is garbage? Shut up

Seeing Fallout being successful is like seeing your dead grandfather’s rotting corpse becoming the CEO of a well-known and successful company

The progression or video games rest on the shoulders of Indie devs. Triple A companies are to scared and greedy to progress. Even if way ward realms flops there will be things there that havnt been done before.

They can still bounce back and salvage it. They just need one more solid release of Skyrim to win back the fans.

I’ve been a 20 year fanboy. I’m at the point today where I wont buy anything again. THIS IS WHAT INVESTMENT CAPITALISM DOES TO THE THINGS YOU LOVE!!

It’s literally all been downhill after Skyrim.

59:33 anyone else feeling kind of nostalgic for Season 1 of Moist Cr1TiKaL?

We keep it simple because we think you’re stupid

Todd Howard: Breaker of mods, killer of saved games!

You don’t become a giant nowadays without being a total asshole.

I dont understand these videos they all say bethesda ruined its reputation but the fanboys are still there and many so….what is this about exactly? The games still sell millions? I hate Bethesda dont get me wrong but like???

the thing that made the horse armor such a “success” is that around that time xbox gave away enough points to basically get the armor for free (since it was the only thing you could spend the points on) so alot of people received free horse armor and the corporate side took them numbers and ran.

Babe wake up, another Bethesda is le bad essay just dropped
(I am not defending Beth I agree but this is just more of the same over and over without saying anything new)

Hatebait

kinda bullshit about how “groundbreaking” oblivion was, HL2 did physics much earlier and other rpgs, even gothic1 (2001) did npc behaviour much better than oblivion did. I mean those weren’t standard at the time of oblivion relase, so it was still impressive but you talk about it as this game was first in those 2 aspects, which is not true.

17:14 sorry it’s a pet peeve of mine that this point in particular is constantly mentioned as a lie. Todd clearly states that there’s over 500 possible endings IF YOU ADD UP EVERY POSSIBLE PERMUTATION

Which means he is talking about all possible combinations of the ending segments which are or aren’t included based on the choices during the game. It’s really easy to get to 500 like that with just a few permutations. He doesn’t even remotely imply that all of these are completely unique and radically different endings.

“Streamlined”…. That’s a nice way of saying “dumbed down” for the avg first person shooter gamer.

The final nail in the coffin for me was when Todd bragged how FO76 had no NPCs… That was when I knew he had no fucking clue on what makes Fallout feel like Fallout.

Not to mention the fact that bethesda copies from other IPs like Earthsea tales, or even popular legends and mythology. If they don’t buy an IP to ruin it, they copy some IP’s elements and then ruin them into their games

I like Fallout as a concept but Bethesda’s iterations are severely lacking.
Never got the Skyrim hype.

At this rate i feel sorry for actual fans, who will have to wait 15 to 20 years between releases of their favourite franchises only to be disappointed.
Microsoft should really give BGS’s IP’s to other studios to have a crack at, couldn’t be any worse.

They’re delusional.

You are talking as if fallout 4 was acceptable..
Bethesda been showing it’s “cashgrab” mentality since fallout 3… To the point they sabotajes fallout new Vegas when it was the best game under Bethesda’s name ever made.
Bethesda was good during the oblivion era, when they did not figured out how to make rpgs et cetera.

Bethesda is exactly who I think they are, and all the games they are known for were made by other companies, primarily Black Isle/Obsidian. They may have ruined their reputation, but honestly they never deserved it in the first place, they just slapped their name on someone else’s work.

Starfield where even the company review replies are procedurally generated.

His responses to everything is an absolute joke i actually hate him so much wheres luigui

you forgot the TESO it still have a kinda good playerbase ….tho it’s not as good as it was to be. 😛 also toxicity on there is less than regular cod game… 😀

The same is happening with CD PROJEK RED. People should already follow the veterans who left the studio and formed Rebel Wolves instead of CDPR corporate and DEI driven studio. Don’t give them benefit of the doubt just because you remember them making cool games in the past.

To be fair i think Phil tried to warn us. “15 play throughs… 200 hour not on the same play through” was this his way of hinting the game was so buggy he could not finish the 1st 14 play throughs?!

Fallout 4 speech checks be like:
“I will not tell you the secret.”
“[High Charisma Check] Yes you will.”
“[Success] Yes I will.”

Great video, only thing id like to add is Skyrim VR , which is an unplayable boring mess thats basically the normal game with VR view or one of the best VR titles avaiable if you mod it heavily. At this point Bethesda relies on modders to fix their games and its just annoying.

Nice Work to ignore on The first half pieces like Remaked Wolfenstain series to modern coat as same for Doom and New original gamesseries As RAGE and Disonored (all publish with Zenimax)

Elder Scrolls online is proof that Bethesda hates Elder Scrolls fans.

Reputation destroyed to anyone who cares, which means exceedingly few.

Hence why bethesda loses features every sequel. What a stupid way to make games

I bet this is going to be yet ANOTHER video telling everyone what we already know and yet they are still in the positions raking in cash. Will there ever be justice. No. So why fucking bother

I hate todd howard with a passion

1:07:23 You know, they say that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. But for me, it’s rhetorical questions

In general, Bethesda games have been dropping in quality since Morrowind.
They casualized more and more elements, so that not much is left of the gameplay mechanics in later games.

Also, as another YouTuber pointed out – Bethesda’s strategy so far seems to be to create each new game for a new, more casual audience. That approach has been leaving the old fans in the dust.
Oblivion lost many Morrowind fans.
Skyrim lost Morrowind and Oblivion fans.
And so on.

This is such a phenomenal breakdown. The leadership changes over time is not something I’ve understood before – explains SO much. Thank you for this, sincerely.

The only ones who destroyed their reputation is CD Projekt RED!!!!

The last good thing that came out from fallout was thevtv series

Also, that intro music came from andromeda, humanity rebirth ( a steam game made by one guy…for free )

They will suck forever by definition microsoft owns them now. The company died the day they closed the sale.

Brilliant Work! Great video!

By doing literraly nothing 💀
Where did I hear that again, bunch of people who don’t play games running a game company 8:00
11:30 smth smth thanos voice line, you needsa go both way, simple and complex.

I was so hyped for FO4 and to this day despite multiple attempts I haven’t been able to drag myself through it and have never been able to complete it. So shallow and boring.

Robert A Altman
Every<<>> single<<>> time<<>>

Using HCommieGuy as a source. All your other opinions discarded.

“Great games are played, not made.” What does that even mean? What kind of nonsense logic is that? In the words of TFS Frieza: That’s stupid! You’re stupid! Stop being stupid!

19:40 Stop, stop. Bethesda bought an IP Interplay almost destroyed.
Two idiot French people took over Interplay with seemingly no strategy about game development, squandering a dozen other IPs and studios.
If You people are going to pull the “Bugthesda bad” for the Fallout acquisition, you are obligated to say “Interplay bad” twice as much, for dropping the ball on the Fallout IP first.
IF Fallout and Interplay were healthy Bugthesda won’t have been able to buy it.

Todd Howard needs to get his ass kicked.

Can’t wait to hear the endless chorus of “Mods will fix it!!!!!” when the absolute mediocrity that will be TES VI drops.

I always thought Hodd Toward was hot shit, especially for making Morrowind, but now I am very concerned about ES VI’s future.

Great journalistic work! I used to be an adventurer, but then I tried Starfield.

“Keep it simple stupid” yeah super smart. When Emil said they decided not to use a design document he meant HE decided not to use one. Incomprehensible. The inconsistencies in Starfield are impossible to ignore. Their games have such a big scale and so many different departments that it’s unrealistic to not use one.

Every new BGS game is slightly prettier, and even more dumbed down than their last release.

“Keep it simple, stupid” is such a fundamentally wrong approach to entertainment. How about “Keep it interesting”? It is cartoonishly bad, like something out of 30 Rock.

“what skills are superfluous”
Thats the thinking that got rid of the unarmed skill, i am genuinely not buying a new elder scrolls if unarmed doesn’t have its dedicated skill back.

Let me punch stuff without needing to level up something else, Todd

The idea that voice-acted protagonists ruined roleplaying and dialogue is a popular myth, often shared by those who love long pages of written lore. The real shift came from broader streamlining, driven by consoles. The bigger reason? A natural evolution away from wordy RPGs. Planescape: Torment was great, but the dialogues that truly stood out were the voiced ones. Text-heavy RPGs and pure text adventures faded from the mainstream due to a shift toward more accessible, faster-paced gameplay.

Emil shouldn’t be writing RPG anything, though he would be quite competent for writing cash shop/live service shop/advertising snippets (the guy has zero understanding of understanding the contexts of full worlds and consequences of writing on a world, and based on Starfield writing anytype of character except rich douchebag as seen by who you’re allowed to interact with in the game, how the game utterly chickens out on really demonstrating/showing multiple worlds in a post war depression, and how every single character fails to understand even basic evils of unleashing a god upon a slum to buy an extra 5 seconds of escape time in the main story).

Funny, i still play New Vegas. I own Fallout 3, 4, and Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim. I beat them, then never went back. I pick up New Vegas every couple of years, but never the Bethesda games.

Tldw: horse armor dlc, F3 endings, FNV metacritic rumors, 100 editions of skyrim, F76 was a desperate cash grab to inflate Zenimax value for Microsoft buyout, buyout happens, starfield bad

If I could travel back in time, the first thing I would probably go do is eradicate Bethesda’s plan to introduce $2.50 horse armor DLC.

Good news everyone. New games are failing even worse, so skyrim looks quintuple A in comparison.

I once had a tear in my eye when telling my friends and family about the magic of elder scrolls games. Now I dont even want another one. Amazing how important precious reputation is.

Corporate interest are what’s destroying games. Inserting political propaganda and opinions that ruin the narrative and make the game feel unauthentic. It feels forced because it is. They don’t care about gamers. They care about gamers money and will willingly release a pile of garbage with a good trailer so people will buy it.

The genius of Lafey is even more impressive considering how far Bethesda got by adding attics to his Chrisler Building

10 years ago Todd wanted to monetize mods in Skyrim. The fanbase freaked out and there was a big backlash. Todd went on a big online rant calling players names and shit, then blamed them for his failed idea. That’s when i dipped out and stopped giving Bethesda money. This idea eventually became the Creation Club and somehow people were ok with it. A lot of people seem to gloss over or forget that this even happened.

Bethesda has become a joke and they don’t even realize it. Until Todd Emil and the Creation Engine retire i don’t see things changing

Fallout London shows us just how incompetent Bethesda really is. That friends is how you write a story.

This video is gunna pop the fuck off, and for good reason. It’s been clear for a very long time that Bethesda isn’t to be trusted. I remember the Scrolls controversy, and thought even back then Bethesda was being stupid trying to own the word scrolls. At least Notch got some money out of it, and whilst it’s just a game name, it’s exactly that which shows Bethesda’s shady hand that is corrupted, but was lucky enough to touch gold several times.

They’re not even running on fumes anymore. The train has fully stopped. Whenever the next Elder Scrolls comes out, it’s success will mirror Bethesda’s continuous success. If TES VI fails, Bethesda is finished, and, sadly, good riddance.

Perhaps Fallout’s IP would be sold off in that situation, maybe Obsidian dares to buy it? They have few people left who are OG from Black Isle or even having worked on New Vegas, and I know Tim Cain is looking to retire – but, the possibility that he could at least return in some consulting format, to work on Fallout once again – would be a dream come true.

That would be very unlikely, but the IP’s being sold on could be the best thing that could happen to them.

It all started with a horse armor dlc . And then it went downhill ever since

i am a tiny bit disapointed you forgot about the leather jacket and the nuka cola scam.
but its understandable considering they have mastered the art of “daily catastrophe” with priming their fanbase into accepting mediocre result while praising it as the next comming of Jesus…

Never saw this before, but are Todd Howard and Linus Sebastian like long lost brothers? Especially that last picture with young Howard is telling 😉

Despite everything, watch as how the majority of consumers are just going to buy Bethesda’s next poorly-made game. Mark my words.

The primary release of ‘76 was unforgivable 😭

The DLCs saved FO4 for me, mods (“Sim Settlements 2” f.e.) made it ‘my’ ‘nearly perfect’ game and I had ton’s of fun with it, until Bruhtesta downgraded the game with their next gen bs, I have zero hopes for a good FO5 at this point. Saying one is caring for the modding community and otherwise just ripping it apart repeatedly sadly is just a minor issue within their whole hypocrisis

Todd is lord, Todd is life

19:14 – Make no mistake – Van Buren got finished in the form of Fallout New Vegas. It is the same Black Isle Studios guys working on both games. The Van Buren feature list is almost a perfect subset of FNV’s. You can look this stuff up on a Fallout wiki. In short, the faction system that was in New Vegas was also planned for Van Buren. For instance, both projects feature Powder Gangers and the armor system is more similar to the old Interplay Fallouts.

I know this will be not popular but Skyrim was the start it was an ok game but no where near oblivion not even to start with morowind or daggerfall. it was a console game with console ui forced on pc players. the first 3 games had PC SPECIFIC controls. the entire game was meh compared to the ones before!!!

Beautifully made video, lots of info but as an ex-superfan i already knew almsot all of them.

Playing this Indiana Jones game is like expecting that around every corner will be some sudden plot shift or botched update that makes it suck. It takes more than one good game to demonstrate a pattern of returning to success but it’s a start, and really surprised me.

Who’s laughing now?!^^

31:11 what shape you making there buddy🤣

Great video. I was there for Daggerfall. It was an epic fantastic world, but the game was most incredibly broken and poorly functional, it was largely a play it until it breaks thing for my crew. It could delete the directory it was in, so you’d best not have it in the root of the drive or in Program Files under Windows. It’s a legendary game that finally is playable with Unity, and I wonder if that’s the game that made fan-patches happened.
Morrowind was like a postage stamp of world and content and promises that actually were delivered by Daggerfall, but it was mindblowing in great ways and I remember it being a playable experience without worry, a fantastic evolution with some undeniable quirks. It was their peak imo, it had content, it had serious stuff, if you were a redguard you’d be subject of matters that cannot be mentioned here.
2006’s Oblivion was a small made-for-console forgettable trip that birthed useless DLC, sure was more approachable than Morrowind but it’s still a turkey of a game, promising more than it had a chance to deliver, never forget the demos of the intelligence that was oh-so powerful clever AI resulting in a woman taking out her house pet via magic.
Skyrim was the next step, a good one but it lacked soul for me, and good lord what a poorly functioning mess, corrupting savegames and breaking apart and snapping. It was only with Skyrim VR that I felt it became whole, but still managed savegame corruption in there, something which wrecked many adventures in Fallout 4, the corruption is a part of speedrunning, accidental speedrunner tricks breaking things so easily should not happen and I have lost many savegames especially on console FO4 due to it.
If you can safely jump between character saves in Starfield then color me surprised, if you can do it in ES6 with not a single sense of code copied over from Morrowind or later I will be extra surprised, for from ES6 I expect Oblivion 2: RIP bozo bogaloo.

what went wrong tldr: They let the juice in

Cancelling Prey 2 was criminal. That new Prey stinks.

I am still angry about STAR FAIL..

16:20 “one of the earliest” is exact definition, and I’m glad you phrased it that way. Many people believe to this date how Bethesda invented this, but….
Radiant AI is just a fancy name Bethesda slapped on the functionality previously found in Piranha Bytes Gothic games.

40:55 If only 🙂 In Fallout 4 you have 3 options to approach the quest + 1 additional information about the quest. The 3 options are, yes, yes but sarcastically, and yes but not right now.

I pretty much only ever seen people shit on Bethesda on the internet. Most of the people I know in real life who play games (friends and coworkers) still like Bethesda and consider their games to be incredible classics at best and still pretty fun at worst–and yes, that includes Fallout 4, 76, and Starfield. In fact, I’ve hardly heard a single negative word about them in person. I really suspect that this is one of those things that seems more unanimous than it is because one side is much more vocal than the other on online forums (that, or one side simply doesn’t _use_ online forums to the same capacity). I don’t think the more casual audience really cares about why they’re “supposed” to hate Bethesda. I get why people hate them, and I get why people still love them. This comment is just food for thought.

Whats really tragic to me about Bethesda is all the studios that have been devoured by them

Starfield – Thats what ruined their reputation in my eyes. Although I feel as though most of the blame for that is probably Microsoft with them purchasing Bethesda

Release the same game for 20 years with a new paintjob once in a while.

this was REALLY good, eye opening ty

Attention-grabbing thumbnail, for sure! Nice one 🙂

Elder Scrolls 6 will be the exact same sort of slop as Starfield, but despite that, we all know it will break sales records. There is obviously huge demand for Bethesda-style RPGs. Why is nobody else making them??

As a 15 year long “Bethesda fan”, soon to be -ex fan if they mess it up on whatever they have next anyway. I don’t care much about 76 or ESO, when I first saw Starfield and the modding potentials it can bring I was actually kinda thrilled but then am saddened that not only they fluked it with Starfield, the modding scene explosion that I expect to see is barely anywhere to be found.

But I will still hold my little small spec of faith on them for whatever they have next, Fallout 5 or TESVI or even idk Oblivion Remake.

If they fluked that also, then my 15 year Bethesda attachment will all be gone. Perished, dissolved into atoms and I’ll probably will only play Skyrim or Fallout 4 modded of course until the end of me.

The biggest downfall is that politics in the gaming community has RUINED gaming. Fuck your political views.

dont forget the helmet that came with 76 was also a moldy health risk

Bethesda was trash since day 1

Nice vid

chronologically or alphabetically?
it all started with that goddamn horse armor

It started some time between Morrowind and Oblivion. Morrowind was, in my opinion, the peak. Oblivion was good too, and the NPC AI really helps the world feel real, I usually use a mod in Morrowind to copy this behaviour because I like it so much. Skyrim was too simple, in my opinion, although the modding community effectively fixed that. I’m kind of dreading TES 6, because I just KNOW it’s going to be even simpler and have micro transactions. I really hope it’s not the case, but that remains to be seen.

I’ve liked every fallout game except 76, including 4. I know a lot of people don’t like 4, but it’s always been OK for me.

Starfield was like a punch in the gut frankly. I expected way more from it, and it’s just not there. There’s so little there as a foundation that even the modders can’t really save it for me.

21:22 If you go to Roberts Personal life on Wikipedia then his ruthless tactics and the banking scandal makes so much sense.

Skyrim with millions and millions of downloads for Sex mods, I can’t imagine anyone actually plays for the storyline. Maybe, that’s just me and the other 3 million people.

Wish they would remake Morrowind

It never gets old picking at Todd and Bethesda, such nerdlings

“Oh, that Howard guy, so cool. Yes? He’s like the Tom Cruize of dorks.”
What Todd “the legend” thinks as he’s buying upgrades for his micro Yacht.

I am happy Interplay died, because if it didnt we would have gotten another isometric gloomy and very disgusting and antiquated game

If you dont believe me the devs thought it was okay to make the second fallout a pornographic nightmare complete with a full blown pornography studio in new Reno where your character can participate, has a starting perk called “Sexual prowess” 🤮 and you have the ability to play as a 16 year old girl with the option to prostitute yourself

This video just works

You have several narrative supporting inaccuracies here. Which is a shame because the general direction of the video is correct. But you over amphesized the negative aspects.

Theyre gonna fuck up the oblivion remake

Oh no the act ma’am

It’s pretty sad what Bethesda has become.

And now everyone’s making Skyrim like games. Because Bethesda hasn’t made a Skyrim like game since Skyrim. And no one has any hope for the elder scrolls 6.
This sucks especially for me. I played only a little bit of Skyrim, but I enjoyed what I did do. I was hoping to get back into the series after learning about the lore, And I was waiting for the next game to come out for a long time. Turns out it probably won’t ever come out, and if it does it’ll probably be trash! 🗑️😔

I would say Bethesda was ahead of it’s time back then. With Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout3, Skyrim. Then Fallout 4 came out. Still a good game but you saw the huge cracks and you saw they stuck to the past. It felt old compared to a Witcher 3 for instance

Starfield was the 3rd top grossing game on Steam after Hogwarts Legacy & Baldurs Gate 3 and it was the only single player game cracked into top 10 monthly average users on any platform last year.

Get out of circlejerk bubble ffs. Bethesda is doing better than ever.

If you think Bethesda’s bad, you need to look into Zenimax (the parent company (who sold it to microsoft? I’m a bit out of the loop)). To give you a little quicky, Zenimax is private company and the story of a founder screwing over a co-founder.

great video, man. just wanted to comment that this guy seems to be drunk or impaired in some way at 4:22 during his interview. also, Keep It Simple Stupid doesn’t work when you are making an extremely complex product with a huge team. it’s just not going to be simple.

dude showing bethesda as the enclave gunning down the vault dwellers marked as interplay from the intro of fallout 2…. peak.

Fallout 2 was probably one of my favorite old school PC RPGs. Next to Neverwinter Nights… back when they game studios had guts and soul. now they’re corporate shells wearing the skin of what we once loved.

skyrim was the definition of overhyped slop
i cant finish the game till this day since it came out, its just too boring and bad

Fuck the inescapable ads

Wait a minute. It this that Youtuber who took the term “Design Documents” and smeared a developers reputation over it?

I didn’t even know HALF the stuff in this video, all these shady practices pre 76 was something that shook me. I straight up want them to tank at this point.

I played New Vegas a week before Fallout 4 came out. It was very aight. Did not age super great. I had much more fun with Fallout 4.

Astronauts went to the moon dude, and I’m pretty sure they had fun, so I don’t know why you’re complaining.

Man… I’ve been paying attention to gaming news for that long? I knew this whole story before he told it. I feel old.

DO WE REALLY NEED ANOTHER 1000TH VIDEO GOING OVER ALL THE BETHESDA TIMELINE IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL EVEN THOUGH THIS VIDEO IS MADE OF NOONE BECAUSE WE ALL HAVE THIS FUCKING INFORMATION STORED IN OUR BRAINS ALREADY.

its sad i use to love them so dearly but knowing this and after starfield plus the ego they bann in discord if peoples says do es 6 is just dumb 😪

When you make sht games you do this to yourself.

Really good job on this video. Got it as a random sidebar rec, but ended up watching the entire thing.

33:44 watch out with that highlight effect or Illuminati will claim you stole it from her.

The last true Bethesda rpg was dagger fall unity so a fan project to truly unlock its potential and morrowind the rpg elements have slowly removed over the years with each new game unfortunately

funny i just checked steam charts it is 4pm in Australia 13/03/2025…. Starfield 2300 players
BG3: 31,868 players.
Skyrim: 17,298…..
FO NV: 2,848
Fallout 76: 3,600

only Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Daggerfall are lower in player count but combined more than starfield…
oof

Excellent video, backed up by thorough research. Thank you!

Todd Howard became Peter Molyneux 😂

Watch all the betas that won’t stop complaining instantly preorder es6 legendary super meme set for 350 dollars. It’s all a joke

Glad u good put together the same super cut of 16x the detail I’ve seen literally 20 other times for years now. I was afraid this might be an original thought. Silly me

I think the funniest bit about 76’s E3 presentation, was it was one of the most blatant “paid audience member” presentations.

This may be a dumb question, are they the ones who make and maintain ESO? I rarely hear that game mentioned in regards to Bethesda for some reason.

The only thing that will ruin Bethesda (and gaming in general) are toxic edgelord influcencers and their armies of drones….

Betathesda has always been trash. Y’all just didn’t take notice until they got bought out by Microsoft, the “villains” of the industry since 2013.

I don’t like modern Bethesda, but Prey 2017 gets way more hate than it deserves, its a great game

Hate how the overlay is blocking the last sentence at the end of the video.

Orange Man Bad

I always roll my eyes when people try to tout Daggerfall’s giant size or vast number of cities as some kind of selling point, when very little of it is hand crafted or meaningful.

Tod could’ve been one of the GOATS of gaming, but he spent so much time selling the exact same game that everyone thinks he’s a one-hit-wonder now

Game development takes way too much time nowadays. The Elder Scrolls VI is going to be obsolete by the time it comes out, it will carry the same issues and game design as Starfield and Fallout 76. I bet the game started development as back as 2016. People should stop buying games from companies like Bethesda but morbidity and the necessity to feel validated in their opinion actually makes these companies thrive. Starfield was a success because people wanted to prove that it was indeed a mediocre game, yet once they have bought it, it means jackshit to Bethesda because they have your money in their pocket. It’s a vicious cycle in which gamers are the biggest people to blame.

New Vegas sucked compared to f3 and 4 btw so hArd disagree
The woke actmaam is a terrible clip lol no one takes him seriously i even fell off penguin once i knew he remakes existing content sigh…

I love starfield, but it’s pretty obvious bethesda and Obsidian got their souls stolen by Microsoft

Amazing video! Very well done. Unfortunate to see the potential they have squandered

Bethesda’s reputation was instantly destroyed for me when they made Doom 2016. Offcourse the normies ate that diarrhea up like it was apple pie. So maybe for them it took a little longer. You can always trust triple A corps to suck the soul and creativity out of IP’s.

After Starfield…all of my hope was lost

This was very nice to listen to while I did tedious, repetitive work in After Effects. Very good video. Although I am not longer excited about ES6, I am quite excited about Skyblivion.

Julian Lefay is ADORABLE in those throwback pics! that grimace plastered on his face is HILARIOUS! it looks like he can smell the neighboring dumptruck stationed just outside that is now for some inexplicable reason become a permanent fixture with the company lol. at any rate i will def say for sure that he looks wayy too cool to be hangin with that bunch tho and by that point, no offense personally to any of those truly fine looking folk. but yah, if i were to continue keep reading into things, id say it is almost rather quite sad, how alone he appears, in his personal awareness, in general, whatever the things were, at that point in time. what a babe <3

They released skyrim. Boom. That how.

Man, and this video came out before the leaked announcement for Elder Scrolls oblivion where there won’t be any mod support.

These kinda videos got old 5 years ago, imagine now

Unfortunately there will be no climb from this fall

the western rpg design akin to Bethesda is so outdated that the only thing enticing for them to keep me from playing or engaged is, on how dynamic the writing is, reactive or interactive.
i mean, mix it wtih CRPG/Immersive sim elements. looking at Indiana Jones, even COD6 having social stealth. the indie/AA titles excel well with developing mix genres

Stopped watching the minute you showed that you’re another redditor that likes to shit on Fallout 3 just because it’s popular to do so among your fellow incels.

Anyone who refuses to settle a dispute by way of a quake 3 match is not even human. I regard them as a lower form of life. Like that of a squirrel or other similar rodentia.

I DON’T CARE WHAT ANYONE ELSE SAYS STARFIELD 🌠 IS A GOOD & FUN VIDEOGAME 🎮

Another turd youtuber riding the hate train. Bethesda makes the best games ever and thats a fact.

Avellone confirmed the FNV bonus was made by Obsidian, not Bethesda

ES 6 will be a mediocre disappointment and every games journalist will still give it a 9

Given all of this, a path which has lead to where we stand now, people have seemingly put blinkers on themselves when looking at TES6 and telling themselves it will be a new Skyrim, and not closer to Starfield.

thank heavens i was born poor and brazilian and didnt grow up believing skyrim was peak videogame