Thursday, January 24, 2019

Gamer Savings Time: Beating Bethesda at its Own Game(s)

Anyone that's a video game fan has probably heard about the Homeric Odyssey of PR rocks and shoals Bethesda's been through in the past few months. Bag-gate, messing up a bottle of whiskey, Fallout 76's critical scorching all over the internet, a pretty significant data breach, just to name a few. It seemed like Bethesda couldn't go a week without some fresh PR hell. Well, it isn't getting better, not yet anyway, because it looks like 2 other studios are poised to out-Bethesda Bethesda. Yeesh.

First, we have Obsidian's upcoming game, The Outer Worlds. I'm very excited for that game. Judging from what's been shown of it so far, it looks like Obsidian just went ahead and made the game that a lot of folks were hoping Bethsda's Starfield was going to turn out to be. From what we've seen so far, TOW looks like Fallout, Borderlands and Mass Effect went to space, got drunk and had a whacky threesome while rewatching Firefly. Then, someone got in The Family Way and that glorious little sci-fi RPG baby will be The Outer Worlds. And to dump just a little salt in that wound, they had to take that little shot at Bethesda in the Game Awards trailer. It was a bit immature, but funny. I'll admit that I laughed.

As if that wasn't enough, the Ubisoft decided to come in and steal Bethesda's cake. I know that last year, I was hoping for a good post-apocalyptic title. I was uncertain, but I had some hope for F76. Yeah, that didn't pan out. Then Ubisoft stepped in, gave us a hug and said, "There, there. We understand. Don't cry, Little ones. Here ya go, Far Cry goes Post-Apoc. Far Cry: New Dawn. BOOM! You're welcome." New Dawn looks to be a damn good Post-Apoc game, another squirt of lemon on Bethesda's paper cuts. I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic games, so I'll definitely be keeping an eye in this one.

So, it does rather loom like Bethesda is getting beaten to the punch twice in 2 different games by 2 different companies. Ouch. I know it looks like I'm jumping on the Bethesda Hate Train, but that's really not what I'm doing. I'm actually hoping that Bethesda takes a hard look at all this, wakes up, smells the coffee and learns a lesson. I hope they take that lesson and realize they need to knock both Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 out of their respective parks. Then, I hope they keep that train a-rollin' and come up with a new Fallout game that equals or even surpasses New Vegas.

That's what I hope happens. It is possible, but given how lazy and cash-grab focused the AAA game industry can be anymore, I'm not going to hold my breath, and I'm not putting all my eggs in that basket, but I'll remain hopeful until I'm given a reason not to be. In the meantime, well, I'll just look forward to New Dawn and The Outer Worlds, I guess. Seems like a decent plan.

Mahalo, my friends.

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