Love seeing developers defend other developers and educate gamers when they make bad takes.
So here is a Cyberpunk developer defending Bethesda and educating a gamers bad take, Lol.
Caveat, I'm not an engine guy and I have only a little experience with creation kit
— Patrick K. Mills (@PKernaghan) October 2, 2023
So if a programmer with that experience wants to come and correct me you are welcome
But I don't see any reason why they couldn't do something more elaborate if they wanted to + had the tools
They do some scenes that are staged in a more refined way, like meeting constellation for the first time, some quest sequences etc
— Patrick K. Mills (@PKernaghan) October 2, 2023
But they have vastly more scenes with a revolving cast of characters and a mind boggling number of possible locations
Instead bgs puts their resources into giving maximum levels of player freedom, they are just doing something different with their time and that's cool
— Patrick K. Mills (@PKernaghan) October 2, 2023
You can want their scenes to be more cinematic or whatever, and that's fair, but it comes at a cost.
But not every game can do every thing, you can't make a game that has every feature executed to the same level as the best in that field, and it has very little to do with the engine you are using
— Patrick K. Mills (@PKernaghan) October 2, 2023
Another from Tantalus South
The fact that Bethesda was able to use the same engine for Fallout/Skyrim for a space game should be enough proof that an engine can be made to do whatever you want, but nah I guess changing camera mechanics was more complicated than adding an entire space/planet system.
— Ben Sims (@BenSimsTech) October 3, 2023
Yep. Plus there are tradeoffs, it would be harder to support a fully freeform character creator that is iconic for Bethesda games, plus much harder to have a huge range of NPCs if they are all baked anims. Not exactly sure how Cyberpunk handles this but I'm guessing less variety
— Ben Sims (@BenSimsTech) October 3, 2023
But yeah baked mocap is a good point. Bethesda games have to account for thousands of characters and full creative freedom for player characters, so not everything can be baked. Some procedural blending is required. This makes it a game design trade-off, rather than technical.
— Ben Sims (@BenSimsTech) October 3, 2023