Games Inbox: Is Bethesda overrated as a game developer?

The Friday letters page is relatively enthusiastic about Horizon Hunters Gathering, as one reader thinks Nintendo should ditch GameChat on Switch 2.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Poor Partner
So that Partner Showcase from Nintendo was awful, as we all thought. Although it was actually quite a bit worse than I was expecting, to be honest. There was no real surprises for anything big, Elden Ring and The Duskbloods weren’t there, and the mic drop at the end was Bethesda.

I don’t want to get into fanboy territory but if there is one developer whose success I have never understood it’s Bethesda. OK, Skyrim was innovative back when it came out but stuff like The Witcher 3 did the same idea much better. More importantly, Bethesda has never made anything that good again.

Fallout 4 is significantly worse than 3 and I, along with most people, didn’t even bother with Starfield – which you’ll notice was not one of the three games they revealed. But what really gets me is how bad Bethesda is technically. Everyone’s been saying it about them for years and yet they never change.

And so what do we see in that new trailer? What looks like a terrible port of a game that should have no problem working on the Switch 2. If that’s what you’re showing off I hate to think what the rest of the game looks like.
Torrence
PS: The only saving grace was two different dinosaur games!

Welcome bomb
What a nice surprise the Nintendo Direct pulled today.

A Bomberman Collection? Heck, yes! Takes me back to when I was 10 years old playing Super Bomberman 2 single and multiplayer and destroying the CPUs.

Also, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in June, for Xbox and Switch 2? I will take that!
ShaunOMacY2J (gamertag)

Small screen gaming
Yikes, that Partner Showcase was weak sauce. I know we were told not to get ourselves hyped up but I really question what the point of it was. It’s not like the proper Nintendo Directs don’t have third party games, so why exactly did we need this bunch of third rate games and lazy-looking ports?

Fallout 4 looks like it runs terrible on Switch 2 and it’s going to be nearly 11 years old by the time it makes it, so I really find it impossible to get excited about it.

But what else was there to tempt anyone? Resident Evil Requiem looks like a pretty good port but there’s no way I’d buy it on Switch 2 instead of PlayStation 5. Third party games on a Nintendo format need to offer something special or be really well suited to portable play, but that didn’t seem to be the case for most of the games they showed.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on a handheld screen would be such a waste given how over-the-top and detailed the graphics are. Another Nintendo Direct and yet more disappointment.
Goldwing

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Evil deal
While most of what I was interested in from yesterday’s Direct was already known about, the release of the Pragmata demo was at least a welcome surprise.

Short but sweet as a demo, but it’s sold me on the game. Hopefully I get better at the hacking and combat at the same time, it’s a bit like rubbing your stomach and patting your head. But it already feels like it’ll be a good game.

Capcom are really going through a golden period. The new Resi looks good too, the triple pack of 7, 8 and 9 on Switch is just £82 at Argos, which is tempting, even for Game-Key cards.

I do wish Elden Ring had been in the Direct though.
Euclidian Boxes

GC: That is a very good price for the Resi trilogy.

Forgotten birthday
We are getting very close to that Zelda 40th anniversary and Nintendo still hasn’t said a thing, except for some concerts. Are they really going to ignore such a big number, even as they make a fuss about Pokémon turning 30?

You’d think they’ have a game lined up to go along with it, probably a remaster or remake, but I don’t see how they’ve got time to release it now. Even if they shadow-dropped it. Considering how multiple leakers knew about the Partner Showcase, and were accurate about it, I don’t see how we get a surprise Nintendo Direct in the next two weeks.

I’d love if it did happen but at the moment I’m not even confident Nintendo will mention anything to do with Zelda this year. Since when did Link become the unloved loser who can’t get anyone to go to his birthday party?
Paulie

Wasted time
As achingly trend chasing as it all looked, I surprisingly found myself quite fluffed by the Horizon Hunters Gathering reveal, it looked very polished and fun.

But live service games’ moment-to-moment gameplay often is very good, it’s that they are designed to drag on forever that’s the problem; for the well documented reason of being forever games and all the monetisation models around them, I genuinely feel I need to boycott live service games.

Jan-Bart Van Beek’s assurance at the start of the video, that Guerrilla bloody love making single-player games, and will continue to make them, didn’t convince me one bit. If it’s a hit they’ll divert more time and resources to it.

At the start of the gen, and the talk of Sony having 500 or so live service games in development, I convinced myself that it was additional to single-player. But we learnt that wasn’t the case and nearly all of their traditionally single-player studios were significantly tied up with the live service push. With the $3.6 billion purchase of Bungie as well, Sony committed massive resources to it all.

So no live service games for me, or Nintendo Directs from now on. Time better spent elsewhere.
Simundo

Honest addition
Interesting to see Valve admit that the RAM problems have caused them to change their Steam Machine plans, at least a little bit. I think that’s the first time a company has actually admitted it, because usually they just say it won’t even when they turnaround and do a price raise straight after.

Maybe Valve would be a good addition to the console world if they’re actually going to… tell the truth and engaged with people? They’re not saying much at the moment, because the thing hasn’t been properly unveiled yet, but I’m hoping they can bring some straight talking to the industry… as well as Half-Life 3.
Gantz

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Always in motion is the future
The steady stream of news about the Switch 2’s fortunes is kinda interesting, it seems like it’s destined to get locked in a debate over whether it is a success or not for a while to come. I think both things can be true, it’s the fastest-selling console ever and taking Japan by storm, but also underperforming in the West and third party games sales are floundering. 18 million consoles sold is great but if everyone is just replaying Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom at 60fps, as Ubisoft weep into their Star Wars Outlaws sales, that isn’t the gaming saviour we were hoping for.

I did suspect performance in the UK might not be in line with the blockbuster figures elsewhere, the Black Friday deals (admittedly modest) ended up running right up until the end of January and the console wasn’t ever sold out over that time.

In Japan, it’s worth remembering that the machine is essentially being subsidised due to the currency problems with the yen. They have a much cheaper, locked Japanese language version that’s unavailable in other territories. Suggesting in the West, at least, Nintendo really need to bring that price down significantly somehow. Maybe ditch GameChat? I recently saw figures it was being used by less than 4% of console owners.

The latest Partner Direct lent into Japanese developed titles and franchises (outside the Bethesda reveals) in a strategy that seems to double down on the console’s trajectory so far. If Western publishers can’t turn a profit on it and so ditch support, it won’t be good for anyone at a time when we need games to be as widely available as possible. If the market fractures everything will be even worse.
Marc

GC: GameChat Is unlikely to have cost very much in either R&D or manufacturing. That’s probably why it exists. Nintendo actually did better, proportionally, in the UK than most other countries, over Christmas. Whereas it did unexpectedly poorly in France, which is usually it’s biggest market in Europe. Everything is very much in flux at the moment.

Inbox also-rans
So if the PlayStation 5 is selling roughly the same as the PlayStation 4 that means it’s going to come out at about 117 million sales, right? So somewhere around the fifth best-selling console of all time, above the Wii and PS1. That seems a pretty good achievement to me.
PhantomZ

So glad to see that Rave Racer is getting a proper console. I was always sore it never got a proper home version, as it was my favourite in the arcades. Can’t wait to play it again.
Johno

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