MadCap's Game Reviews - "Bethesda Creation Club"

So, Bethesda...we meet again at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was mocking the fact that you were trying to resell what was admittedly a very good game six years afterwards as a "Special Edition", which earned it a spot as one of my worst games of 2017.

How far I have come in seven years of doing this.

But now, I come to tackle a new spore of madness - likely long after anyone has stopped caring about it. The Bethesda Creation Club. When the controversy first broke out, I admit, I was squicky about the concept of paid mods. Of course, anyone who follows my blog will know that I try to avoid controversies surrounding games and just try to focus on the product themselves...though sometimes, that is astoundingly impossible in a few instances.

Like with No Man's Sky.

...or Aliens: Colonial Marines.

But now, I come back to Bethesda again. Once, we were as close and intimate as lovers. I was a scrawny, energetic thing at the age of 21 when Skyrim first graced store shelves in November of 2011. Now that I'm a slightly more robust, cynical creature at the age of 27, it seems that the honeymoon is over. Bethesda is doing things that no longer thrill me and just plain make me sad. Case in point, the aforementioned re-releasing of Skyrim with some graphics clean up long after anyone stopped caring about it...and the Creation Club.
Now, I'm not going to be one of those people who will immediately dismiss the concept out of hand. People who work on mods are people who very, very much love their work as evidenced by people who are still modding not only Skyrim, but its predecessors Oblivion and Morrowind to this day. Yes, all the post-2000s Elder Scrolls games have surprisingly very active modding community. There are many modders out there who work exceptionally hard for little more than mild praise from people on the internet. They will spend hundreds of hours working on something and burn through time only to have nothing to show for it at the end besides the work they've done.

It was the primary reason I hated Hearthfire upon its release (and I still don't really care for it), Bethesda gave us a DLC that was nothing more than a house-building mod. While some excuse could be made for console players needing something custom, the fact is that modders were, are, and will be doing it far better than Bethesda has ever managed to do. One would think they would have learned their lesson with that and been done with it...but nope!

And unto this, the Creation Club. Modders getting paid for mods? Definitely not a bad idea, per se. However, immediately, you can see more than a few problems with it. Some content might just be Bethesda throwing things up that were pre-made and taking the profits from someone else's work. Some content might be just repackaging of former assets. And that's not even getting into the usual joys that come from Bethesda such as feature-bugs.

I decided to take a look at it, as well as doing a little research into it. I'm happy to say that Bethesda has done at least one thing correct - no content to be taken from other mods. Under their guidelines, everything that gets submitted to the Creation Club has to be made specifically for it. Nothing that was on the Nexus beforehand.

However, this was not a popular creative decision upon its release...and it's easy to understand why. When you comb through the hate filled spewings of some, there are actually some legitimate points to be found. One in particular I found was on an article that mentioned Enclave Hellfire Armor being available through the Club...when a free variant was already available for free through the Nexus. Obviously, the two items were not identical, but they did have a point in questioning why someone would go for the free one when the paid version was readily available at just a download away.

This, of course, brings to mind the recycling of assets in order to make a quick buck...which is a pretty fair complaint. This, however, is more of a concern for the PC Master Race than we lowly groundlings in the land of Console Playing Peasants.

Sure, your computer can run Crysis at 60 fps. But I've had sex, so...checkmate, asshole.

Being that I am one of the Console Playing Peasant crowd - and I have both Skyrim and Fallout 4 - I decided to poke around the option that has been sitting in my start menu every time I've logged on for around half a year now. I stepped in, keeping an open mind and heart, the thought in my head that Bethesda might just make something very interesting out of this by supplying us with some cool stuff to play wi-

Yeah, it's not a very big selection.

And the selection that we do have isn't particularly great.

Now, I'm on PS4, so I have no idea if this is the same for Xbox. However, the selections for the Creation Club purchases are, as of this writing: A "Sheogorath Bundle" that provides the Staff of Sheogorath and the bow Ruin's Edge from Shivering Isles, and "Arcane Accessories" that gives you a few robes and spellbooks, an "Arcane Archer" pack, a few artifacts from previous Elder Scrolls games with short quests attached to them, a Mudcrab companion (of all the bizarre things), a zombie plague...and Survival Mode.

Yes, Survival Mode is apparently worth 500 credits in Bethesda's new system.

And it would mean something if any of the quests attached to them had anything to them, but they don't. For example, the search for the sword Chryasmere is slapped onto a pre-existing dungeon south of Riften. You go there, you fight a ghost, you get the sword. There's nothing to it.

On the other side of the coin (or in the past if you follow the theory that the Fallout series is just a predecessor to the Elder Scrolls games - somehow), you have Fallout 4. The Creation Club here (on PS4) boasts a slightly more robust selection...even if most of it is Pip-Boy Paint Jobs, Weapon Paint Jobs, and skins and weaponry from Doom.

The problem with all this, in my mind, is that Bethesda didn't really bother to bring out their A-Game with this one. It's not entirely their fault, of course, they only put out what they're given, and only then if it gets through the testing process in order to be approved. I just feel as though, for this being a highly experimental and controversial direction that they took, that they really should have sweetened the pot - both for content creators and for gamers who they want to earn their micro-transactions from. And yes, that is exactly what the Creation Club is - micro-transactions. I have a natural distaste for this, and this is case in point as to why.

It encourages pat laziness from developers and, frankly, Bethesda doesn't need to get any lazier than they already are. How can I say that? Well...

THEY RE-RELEASED A GAME FROM SIX YEARS AGO WITH A FEW COSMETIC CHANGES AND CALLED IT A SPECIAL EDITION! MAKE A NEW GAME, TODD!!!!

MAKE A NEW GAME, TODD!!!!!

MAKE A NEW GAME, TODD!!!!!

Don't get me wrong. I love the worlds I've been to with Bethesda, but this is really just the latest in a downward spiral for them. Skyrim was a critical mass and now it feels like we're going in a downward spiral at least with the Elder Scrolls. First came ESO, then Special Edition, then this. I feel like Bethesda is so drunk on its own success that it feels like it doesn't have to try anymore, which is frankly just depressing from a company that once infused their work with such wonder and enthusiasm.

But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. After all, people were (and possibly still are) buying Oblivion's Horse Armor DLC even years after they'd stopped working on updates for the game. Maybe Bethesda will make their billions on this and I'll just have to eat humble pie because I can neither fathom the depths of their greed nor the stupidity of the people who will happily slap down the money for minimal effort. So...do I like the Creation Club? No. Do I dislike it? Not really. If anything, it just seems unnecessary because - as I've said before - modders do it better.

Should they be paid for it? Sure. But there's really no way to do that without Bethesda trying to wring some pennies out of the venture as well, which they are at least somewhat entitled to seeing as they developed the software to allow it to happen.

In short - yes, modders who put in the hundreds of hours of work should have something to show for it. No, Bethesda shouldn't be restricted entirely from collecting at least a wee percentage of that considering they made both the base game and the software, without which there would be a lot less modders out there.

In concept, the Creation Club isn't a bad idea. The way Bethesda has it set up is pretty much the fairest way that you could do it. Is there a better way? Sure, but I wouldn't know what it is.

If you're interested, you can find more information on the Bethesda Creation Club at their official site here.