Does Bethesda Make Well-Written Video Games?

My first encounter with Bethesda was Fallout 3, a divisive game to say the least. I enjoyed it though, perhaps because I had no experience with previous Fallout titles.

However as you might be aware, I'm currently playing Morrowind and loving it. Oh sure the exploration is great fun but I am eating up the lore. The books ar ea lot of fun to read and I am having a good time piecing together the history of Tamriel and the various races. I still have a mountain more to go, too. I'm hardly alone in this either. Morrowind is regarded as one of the best WRP Gs ever and I've met my fair share of people who think this Dagoth Ur fellow is a fantastically written villain. (if you discuss any details about him, please put them in spoilers)

But with Fallout 4 on the way I've run into the "Bethesda sucks"crowd once more. It's rather jarring, being pulled from "Bethesda is the shit" to "Bethesda is shit."

So my question is, what do you think of the writing in their games?

Bugthesda can make decent lore, but fails hard when it comes to writing anything else. Morrowind is probably the high point in main quest and overall writing (and even then it's not too special). Anything else faction or main quest related is usually average to poor.

edited 3rd Jun '15 8:47:06 PM by KingFeraligatr

Their writing isn't spectacular, but I wouldn't call it bad in any way.

Sometimes they miss the whole "do it your way" mark and wind up railroading you into things. Like the ending to FO 3, where you're trashed for sending a radiation immune party member into the rad infested control room to finish the game. That never should have happened. It's little logic drops like that that undermine the stories.

Personally, I don't see why we even need serious main stories. We get all kinds of sidequests and new worlds to explore. If we do need a guided tour, I don't see why they can't use the Companion Quests to run it. Though we shouldn't need a fully guided tour. Just give us enough to do in each city from the start, and use the quests to send us out into the world. Mount And Blade has no central story, but if you explore the cities you run into, you'll find the people who can give you quests and reasons to run around.

Define "writing", I suppose.

Their overall plots and characterization are often bad. Morrowind is largely the exception and has a more interesting general plot, with the future games drawing a lot more on this "oh you are the Chosen One, save the world" plot (which is in Morrowind, but it's built-up well and done interestingly). Dagoth Ur is pretty good, and there are some specific good characters in their other games, but a lot are also rather one-note. It doesn't help that most people are voiced by the same small group of people, though it comes a bit with the territory of their massive games.

When it comes to lore, they're a lot better. The main problem is the game's contents themselves tend to not really match up with this. They have a very interesting background, but not so much actual game stuff. Which is probably reflected in the reception of Fallout 3, where they didn't write the background lore and you're left more with just the implementation and the lorebreaking that standardises it all.

When it comes to Bethesda's works, my experience is mostly with Skyrim and a little bit of Oblivion (see: i haven't played fallout 3), and based on that I would have to very firmly say "no". I suspect that Morrowind is probably better in that department, mostly because what i've seen of the setting piques my interest, but all skyrim amounted to me for was horrendously uninspired tolkien-esque fantasy names being thrown around that i couldn't get attached to at all. there were a couple of enjoyable npc's (sheogorath) but most of it was just pretty average at best.

i would only consider a very few creative minds in the videogame industry capable of crafting well-written videogames and Bethesda is DEFINITELY not one of them.

though honestly i have a lot of other problems with bethesda as a studio. to quote a reddit comment on a thread about the recent Fallout 4 controversy:

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:00:47 PM by wehrmacht

I disagree. I thought most of the guild quests in Oblivion were great. The Dark Brotherhood in particular. Of course, they all took a big step down with Skyrim.

edited 3rd Jun '15 8:54:30 PM by Ryuhza

I think a main quest is important in Fallout. I really like the idea of the overarching story and a climactic finish to it.

For example, in New Vegas, I felt like all the sidequests were helping my character "prepare" for the battle of Hoover Dam. He was running around, getting money, supplies, new skills, ect so that he'd be ready to change the course of the Mojave Wasteland. He wasn't just wandering the wastes solving sidequests for the heck of it, he had a whole plan there.

I remember not liking the Mages Guild much, or at least not the quests after getting your recommendations (loved the Recommendations bits).

It becomes a very stereotypical plot, with Necromancers being the stereotypical bad guys, the King of Worms, Mannimarco, becoming flat as a pancake, you having to stop them, and eventually you of course are forced into becoming Arch Mage.

I did like the Dark Brotherhood line, though.

...It probably didn't help my mage character walked around with their pal the summoned skeleton and half-way through the line became a vampire.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:02:26 PM by Lavaeolus

Okay, so there are reasons. Different strokes and all that. It's not necessary for everybody, is all I'm saying. I don't mind being a wanderer and just helping or hurting people as my character's mood dictates. Or as I've said elsewhere, getting to start my own caravan and guiding them through the wasteland.

I am still highly intrigued by the Skyrim plotline, namely the whole Civil War thing.

Granted how well each side is handled is a very YMMV thing. I know I made this comparison before but the arguments about it really remind me of Mages/Templars in DA 2. You'll get the group who says the whole thing was garbage and badly done but then you also get the people who were really into it and chose a side.

There are no shortage of people who are firm believers in Stormcloaks or Empire so that says something to me and I look forward to learning about the conflict when the time comes.

Also pretty much everyone in the much beloved New Vegas was voiced by Yuri Lowenthal or Liam O'brien. Just saying.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:05:02 PM by Nikkolas

I'm an uncultured philistine. I don't get what makes something "quality" or not. For the most part as far as I'm concerned if I like something then it's "good". If I don't then it's "not good". I typically find myself very impressed for one reason or another with Bethesda stories. So with that train of thought I personally think they're good.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:04:36 PM by Spirit

See, this is the problem I'd exactly highlight with a lot of Bethesda stuff. The conflict sounds interesting, great debates have been inspired by it. But you get a lot of talk around the world, but ultimately, in the end, the Civil War line...

...is completely blank. It's a series of random fights, with each side being almost entirely identical as you take forts and rarely engage in dialogue.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:04:30 PM by Lavaeolus

it's something a lot of people pick up on when they've read enough stories to the point where they can properly evaluate craft.

it's a bit harder to evaluate "writing" in videogames because it isn't this abstract separated from everything else in the game. you have to take a number of things into account, like the dialogue, the actual plot line, the methods the game uses to convey narrative information besides cutscenes, etc.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:09:06 PM by wehrmacht

If the characters' motivations are believable, and you can't find any huge plot holes, the story's probably good. Not necessarily a personal favorite, but good. If the game has to rely on browbeating you to get you to do something, because said something is illogical and unnecessary to boot, then there's something wrong with the story.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:08:48 PM by Journeyman

I tend to be hard to impress, especially with professionals. Hence my harsh judgements. But I still think Bugthesda can't write anything but average stuff barring Morrowind and lore.

There's plenty of people who can write lore like crazy, but can't put it into ground level practice. I can spin worlds like mad, but individuals? That's something I usually struggle with.

Of course if the story isn't a character centered piece, that shouldn't be a problem. Bethesda isn't Bio Ware and it doesn't appear to be trying to be.

If the story isn't trying to do something in the first place, it's not fair to criticize it.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:14:58 PM by Nikkolas

I'm a lore junkie myself and make it a habit of learning the lore of series I get into. I can come up with lore as well. With characters though? I don't know. Maybe I can be decent and I have 1 or 2 in depth characters.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:14:46 PM by KingFeraligatr

It's pretty much fair to criticize most things, even if not that much attention was given to it. Maybe you judge less harshly, but still it is right to criticize it.

the thing with writing truly great characters is that it relies on an understanding of people that is rooted in reality and your personal experiences, not just other fiction.

from there i imagine it's just listening to criticism and practicing. you get better at craft over time.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:20:38 PM by wehrmacht

But if the writer wasn't trying to do something in the first place, you can't say they're bad at it.

If Bethesda was BW and had a whole slew of characters that developed and changed and received intense focus from start to finish in the game, and none of it made any sense, then it be fair to say they can't write characters.

But if they don't really focus on characterization or development and just use people as a means to move the story along, then you can't really say they're bad at writing characters, because writing good, three-dimensional character wasn't the intent.

I'd say the story in general often is incredibly cliché, not just the characters. You're the Chosen One, you save the world, or you save a certain guild at any rate, and this is pretty much every guild quest in Skyrim, from the Companions to the Mages College.

I'd also say they are, at least in Oblivion and especially Skyrim making an attempt at characterization. You're probably meant to feel something when Person A and Person B both heroically sacrifice themselves so you can beat the questline. I don't think the intent is quite a character piece either, however.

People reserve the right to criticize things even if the author/etc. wasn't focusing on it. I'm too lazy to come up with good analogies or anything of the sort, but you should remember it's not right to ignore the flaws of something. I don't care if the author/etc. tried or not, they still deserve criticism. Maybe it can be less harsh as I said before, but I still think that they deserve criticism. Every part of a work works together, and any weak link weakens the link.

edited 3rd Jun '15 9:25:52 PM by KingFeraligatr

Video Games with stories take away the "reader's worry" element to any story they insert, due to the fact that the player is not just a witness, but somebody who can change and control elements of their story.

It's hard to write a good story when the player character's death is never set in stone. Therefore, the "reader's worry", or the player's worries that they might fail becomes less enthralling and more annoying.

A boss fight with an extremely threatening villain becomes less edge-of-your-seat suspenseful, but more along the lines of "that's bullshit he should have missed me".