[HN Gopher] Bethesda Thinks Fan Remaster of Oblivion Is 'Very Sp...
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Bethesda Thinks Fan Remaster of Oblivion Is 'Very Special' and
Supports It
Author : hn_acker
Score : 59 points
Date : 2025-05-03 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kotaku.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kotaku.com)
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Bethesda knows support for the official remake would go down the
| toilet if they did anything but praise for the unofficial remake.
| Its hard to take Bethesda on good faith on this.
| Wobbles42 wrote:
| I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. They may
| or may not be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, but
| at least they ARE doing the right thing. That decision was made
| by a set of humans, and likely at least some of them are well
| meaning.
|
| In any case the corporate entity as a whole is not conscious. A
| strictly behavioralist approach is appropriate there. If it
| does the good thing it gets the carrot, if it does the bad
| thing it gets the stick. We can't win it's heart and mind
| because it has neither, so we have to settle for keeping it's
| behavior in line.
| voidfunc wrote:
| It's a lesson more companies should learn (looking at you
| Nintendo), the revenue hit from a fan-made IP clone is likely
| negligible. People want the official stuff usually as well.
| The PR hit from attacking creator fans is way worse.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I know businesses often bring it upon themselves, but this
| "fucked if they do, fucked if they don't" attitude needs to be
| carefully applied. It leaves no room for anything, really, and
| it's exhausting.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| It's not unwarranted. With the recent popularity of remakes
| and rereleases, there's been tension between fans, their
| multi-year/decade labor of love projects, and the studios
| hoping to remonetize dated franchises.
|
| A friend and old-school RuneScape player told me he was
| quitting over this: https://www.ibtimes.com/runescape-devs-
| backtrack-hd-mod-ban-...
|
| Bethesda signaling their blessing might not have happened if
| others hadn't made such spectacular messes of their own
| relaunches.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Yes nobody is doing good deeds to stab themselves. Not sure
| what your point is here?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Regardless, the remaster appears to have been rushed out due to
| increasing leaks, no? It's hard to believe that with the
| technical issues the release was actually intended to land in
| April 2025, instead of fixing issues until March 2026 and
| releasing it as an anniversary remaster.
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| It's an Elder Scrolls game. Technical issues are part of the
| product spec.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| True! On the other hand, performance appears to be quite bad
| and there seem to be tons of very obvious visual glitches
| with transparent objects, foliage etc.
|
| It using the UE5 renderer of course means the usual
| reservations of that engine also apply - it will most likely
| never run smoothly, as Unreal Engine games invariably have
| more or less severe stuttering.
| lupusreal wrote:
| In some ways, the bugs are part of the charm. Sometimes
| anyway. Having to run esoteric commands to fix broken quests
| in a years old game isn't so endearing.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Bethesda is notorious for buggy software releases. They could
| spend 10 years on something and it would likely have tons of
| bugs still.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| This one does feel extra infuriating though, since it still
| has bugs that were fixed by fan made bug fixing mods from the
| original game. It doesn't really even feel like they try to
| fix bugs
| chme wrote:
| This is also not surprising for BGS as was demonstrated
| with the multiple Skyrim re-releases, which didn't fix all
| issues patched by the unofficial patches, and even
| introduced more.
|
| See the change log here: https://www.afkmods.com/Unofficial
| %20Skyrim%20Special%20Edit...
|
| Only a very small amount of the issues fixed there where
| integrated into the official patch releases.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Keeping the VO flubs in is so good though, especially now
| with the automatic lip syncing https://youtu.be/AWgPq6ocd5c
| tjpnz wrote:
| Bethesda farmed the remaster out to another studio and the
| issues are mostly performance related. They chose to utilize
| Unreal Engine 5 for the graphics[0] which means you get all
| the stuttering and uneven frame times present in most games
| using it.
|
| 0: I recall reading somewhere that the game uses a really old
| version of Bethesda's proprietary engine too - but only for
| physics.
| detaro wrote:
| It's a pattern a few remasters have used: Run the entire
| old engine for the game logic, but bolt a more modern
| engine on top for the rendering. So it's not just physics
| but pretty much all gameplay logic thats done by the old
| code. Which is also why mods that don't touch graphics were
| apparently easy to port to the remaster, but changing
| models etc needs adapting to the new system.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| How can you leak a 20 years old game?
| accrual wrote:
| GP is referencing how rumors of the remaster were spreading a
| few days before the official announcement. There were some
| early topics on Reddit at least.
|
| Personally I doubt the "leaks" have anything to do with the
| release date. The game worked fine on day one for me. Yes
| there are some bugs, but none serious and none that made me
| think "this was rushed".
| jemmyw wrote:
| Bethesda doesn't think anything. Some people in leadership there
| think this. It would be very nice if they codeified what
| "support" means and the circumstances around it into company
| policy so that fans know what is what while that policy is in
| place (and who to blame if the policy is abandoned).
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I mean, when you reach the point where they advertise the mod
| in dev spotlights videos, I think it's fair to say there's some
| institutional support, even if it's not codified.
| Lammy wrote:
| > Bethesda doesn't think anything.
|
| It even kind of irks me when people talk about "Bethesda" when
| it's really "Microsoft Corporation presents Microsoft Gaming
| presents Zenimax Media presents Bethesda Softworks presents
| Bethesda Game Studios".
|
| Not picking on you in particular since the same thing happens
| with iD Software, Github, NPM, and many many more. I feel like
| there's a collective lack of straightforward language to
| discuss the influence of this kind of corporate structure.
| Falling back to the singular-subsidiary name with the rest
| unspoken is probably exactly what they want.
| jemmyw wrote:
| I wouldn't know who Bethesda was owned by without going and
| looking it up. I personally don't think this kind of
| corporate structure should be allowed, too much controlled by
| too few.
| sushid wrote:
| What would you allow? Just one level deep? Two? All you'd
| be doing is incentivizing the creation of more proxies and
| more legal fees/inefficiencies to go along with it.
| KeepFlying wrote:
| The number of levels isnt the issue, it's the size and
| scope of control of the market.
|
| The rest is on journalists to be sure to mention
| "Microsoft owned Bethesda" more often.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| at the very least, it shows that bethseda leadership are not in
| the habit of alienating their fans.
| tedunangst wrote:
| I think people understand how metonymy works.
| npteljes wrote:
| Even if they do, I very highly doubt that they successfully
| process it emotionally too. I especially dislike when news
| conflates leaders with nations. I think it just adds
| unnecessary emotions to the mix. Which, of course, is good
| for the news source, so I doubt I'll ever see a decline in
| this phenomenon.
| npteljes wrote:
| I hate the same about how media presents news regarding to
| nations. Russia attacks instead of Putin's army attacks,
| Brussels denies instead of EU officials deny, etc. It irks me
| so much, especially in a world where we pretend to do away with
| racism. Because what these headlines end up reinforce are just
| stereotypes. Which just keeps the people in their bubbles,
| wasting the chance of them learning something new about the
| world.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| This is a bit different situation than Nintendo and it's not fair
| to compare the two. The mod requires the base game where Nintendo
| software is hardware coupled. Furthermore, Bethesda has monetized
| mods directly (the Creation Club).
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Let's call a spade a spade. Nintendo litigates worse than any
| other company and they never drop prices. I can look the other
| way because they're otherwise very good to their customers but
| they do have genuine faults.
| nothercastle wrote:
| And they are really letting their franchises go stale
| recently. Pokemon is especially bad.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| They do make amazing games though, for all the ones that
| they make. BOTW and TOTK are just so so special games to me
| (and I hope many others), and I have learnt by experience
| that almost no Nintendo game gets released half baked or
| lacking their best efforts.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| In fairness, Pokemon is perhaps the worst case in game
| design difficulty. You have an audience insisting on 3D
| characters and animations for 400+ (or however many now)
| Pokemon, each necessitating ~6 animations for unique
| attacks, 5+ status effects, idling/reaction animations, and
| ideally some trainer interaction.
|
| I understand why Nintendo has tried to use a lo-fi
| artstyle, make games with only subsets of the total
| bestiary, and generally limit development. Hell, I even
| understand why Palworld gave up on unique attack animations
| and just went with guns.
| comex wrote:
| 1000+, though the last two generations have included only
| a subset.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Pokemon is it's own weird situation. It's not solely owned
| by Nintendo, but co-owned and managed with Game Freak and
| Creatures Inc by The Pokemon Company. It's not just a game
| but a media empire. They have to coordinate between the
| game, anime and TCG. It's not quite the same as Zelda or
| Mario where they have complete control and don't have to
| worry about messing with dozens of other product launches
| if the game needs a delay.
|
| I wouldn't agree that their other franchises are stale
| right now either. Certainly not compared to Ubi's,
| Microsoft's, etc.
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