Highlight these: Star field will contain “the fewest bugs of any game Bethesda has ever shipped with”. So says Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios.
Longtime Bethesda role-playing game players, recalling past launches in the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, are practically licking their chops at this claim. But he put it on the bar, talking to Tamoor Hussain and Jeff Grubb from Giant Bombwith his boss, Phil Spencer, next to no less.
Here’s Booty’s full quote:
Working with Todd [Howard, Bethesda Game Studios’ creative director] and the team, I see the number of bugs, and I’ll just say that if it ships today, this would, you know, have the fewest bugs of any of Bethesda’s games that ever shipped.
I suppose not rolling this one out on PlayStation, a notoriously difficult platform for Bethesda RPGs, helps a lot there. But also those who have put hundreds of hours into it Fallout 3 or 4 or The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim know what a dice roll those games were, still do, at launch on PC and Xbox. Not necessarily groundbreaking bugs, but certainly immersive, in a way that pierces the kind of deep experience Bethesda Game Studios is looking for with these epics.
Before Booty’s comment, Spencer said, “The team has definitely matured. They have Fallouts and Skyrims and Elder Scrolls under their belts.”
But then, in an even more incriminating statement, Spencer said, “To be fair, when the acquisition closed, this game had a significantly earlier ship date than where we actually launch it.”
Good, Thatis interesting. So why was it delayed then? twice?
“Sit down with Todd and the team and explain that we want to give this team time – I think Matt says every single QA person plays across our company Star field right now, looking at the number of bugs, looking at quality where we are,” Spencer said.
So apparently this really takes a method and some math. But it still sounds like a great Pepsi challenge to take on, given that most bugs people encounter in a Bethesda game necessarily develop in an expansive game world that no quality assurance team of any size could fully understand. cover.
Recall that around this time last year EA Orlando, the developers of Madden NFL 23promised that the latest version of the most chaotic and unpredictable sport ‘the most polished ever,” and then how that ended at launch. It’s not the sort of claim I’d engrave on a belt buckle is all I’m saying.