The audio quality drops in the final minute due to a copyright claim, apologies for this inconvenience. Also, screw RU-vid for not telling me of this claim until the video went live. This video was uploaded and waiting to premiere for 2 days, and they didn’t say a thing until an hour after being posted. I could’ve fixed this issue without damaging the quality of the outro, but oh well.
I've had that happen before, really annoying that they list uploads as "cleared" even though Content ID hasn't fully processed yet. Glad it was just at the end and not an intro like what happened on mine!
When I first saw the title I thought you were doing a 25 year long video until my brain started thinking logically, but then again if anybody could do it, it would be you.
I cannot *FATHOM* how much work it was to come up with fresh, interesting visuals and discussion about a game with so little tangible coverage. Another one hit out of the park, Jwlar. Great work!
The dream games of the original 90s Bethesda Softworks were truly groundbreaking. So groundbreaking in fact that the ideas seem to have slipped between the cracks, and too few have rediscovered them.
Dude since I heard about the 10th planet I’ve been so interested, this video was perfect! The 10th planet and Notch’s unreleased space game 0x10^c really shows how difficult it was to make ambitious space games back then
I don't know if you can put them both together in the same "back then". 0x10^c is still closer to present day than to 10th planet. Also in 1995 was released the third installation of Elite series. So ambitious open world space games were definitely possible and already done before 10th planet.
Notch isn't much of a developer. We're finding out he had less to do with Minecraft. He's gone full alt-right now and doesn't bother with development anymore.
Wonderfully informative! Ever since Starfield's announcement I couldn't shake my confusion over its existence since it felt like it was out of nowhere, but now it all makes sense. I'm not much of a sci-fi fan so I'm still on the fence about buying Starfield, but it's nice to know that the game Bethesda spent much of the 1990's trying to make is finally coming out.
My biggest takeaway is the reminder that Bethesda actually used to be ambitious. Imagine if they plan to be ambitious about their next game, Starfield.
Thanks for putting this together, it's a story about something I'd never heard of before, and makes so much sense where it all went forward into today.
Terrific video. I have the originals of those screenshots that "can't be found anywhere else" along with a few more bits of concept art. I'll put it together and get it up on internet archive at some point.
Skullzi TV channel was first to report this many years ago, thank you Skullzi! Great video by the way, I heard about this game in the late 1990's during a chat with Julian Rignall of C&VG
Yep, he covered the 1998 trailer 5 years ago. However, I believe Moritz Ernst Jacob may be the first channel on RU-vid to document the game, realising footage of the 1996 self-running demo over 9 years ago. Still, Skullzi was the first to make any kind of commentary video regarding the subject, so credit to him for breaking the story back then :)
He's only gone and done it! Thanks for putting in the effort with something as relatively obscure as this - research can't have been easy. As a Stargate fan, it's fascinating to learn that not only was Dean Devlin on the project, but he also wanted to bring some of that SG weirdness with the mix of military sci fi and ancient astronauts. Gotta love it. Anyway, great job and props for using Starfield as an excuse to talk about TTP and not the other way around. Keep it real.
Thank you! It was quite exciting as I jumped down the rabbit hole of the Centropolis partnership, being a fan of the Stargate series (and the film by proxy). Certainly a lot more details out there in magazines than I would've thought when I started, it really makes me wonder how much of Nesmith's original design docs laid the foundation for Starfield. Seeing as he still worked there until 2021, I believe he must've had some say in it.
Your research, citation, and production skills are amazing. I only recently discovered your channel, but I can already fully appreciate that you embody precisely what journalism is supposed to be.
He's only gone and done it! Been looking forward to this. Thanks for putting in the effort with something as relatively obscure as this - research can't have been easy.
Loved your input and incredible research for this video, also very chill personality that’s helping me relax this weekend after a stressful week. Will be checking back in your channel and binging your other vids 🤙🏻
Truly I do not understand how they put so much time and story into Starfield.. yet it feels like Fallout 4 DLC. Missing the days of Quality over Quantity.
Interesting to see what Bethesda were wanting for their original space game, but I'm glad they finally got to make one, I've been really enjoying starfield, despite all it's flaws and issues, you can see alot of good thing within it too. People see mainly the bad, and others see mainly to good. But i see both the posatives and negatives, and i see the ambition Bethesda has for starfield 😊
Doomed to the fate of No Man's Sky by proxy. It will still perform well, maybe even better if it's actually good - but I'm not sold on it having the mainstream appeal of TES and Fallout purely due to the genre it has chosen. But then again, with Gamepass, who's to say. I'm sure Bethesda's accountants will be very happy regardless. Fingers crossed it doesn't feel as flaccid as Outer Worlds (personal opinion, that game has many divided opinions).
Everytime I see a video about projects that were grand and genre changing, that never came to fruition or took to long and fell of the wagon, the first thing that comes to mind for me is a quote from the Ancestor of Darkest Dungeon: "Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer." Sadly it rings true way to often.
@@Jwlar Even better if you hear it in the narrators voice. By the way I love your videos, I watched the Daggerfall analysis more often when I would like to admit and it drove me to the point where I said f*** it, I'm trying it myself and I loved every second of it.
Really interesting tale of development hell! Probably good that they ended up cancelling the project in the end, if things went differently the whole company could have gone under.
The book trilogy is one of the best scifi stories I've ever read, and it's barely even scifi! My assumption is that it was to be a prequel setting up the game taking place in 4023
This kind of retrospective is chef's kiss perfect. I have never heard of 10th planet till now, then again it harkens me back to a time of limited internet and some of the best gaming journalists. Thank you for this video!
What Bruce Nesmith so conveniently leaves out in his example about meeting expectations, is that, as is often the case, he was the one raising these expectations in the first place. Like with CDPR and Cyberpunk2077 devs and publishers tend to claim that the fans had expectations which couldn't be met, when they are directly responsible for creating these expectations.
Bethesda published a few games: Star Trek: Tactical Assault, Star Trek: Legacy and Star Trek: Conquest when they had the license, but BGS never touched it (they were making Oblivion at the time). There was also Star Trek: Bridge Commader. It was made on the same engine (Gamebryo) and looks very similar to Morrowind as a result, but it was made by Totally Games under Activision.
Your videos are such high quality, amazes me how you don't have 100k+ views, but I am sure you will reach that level quickly! Keep doing what you are doing!
I think people fail to appreciate just how rough things were at Bethesda after these post-Daggerfall flops. People also fail to appreciate just how many people Todd Howard saved from unemployment and a possibly tainted reputation. Big Todd's methods irk me at times as well, but many of his methods are likely things he learned from these hard times.
We should get Bethesda to release every major iteration of the Xngine and all unfinished projects because of their historical significance. We could frame it as a gesture of good will that may increase sales of Starfield.
It’ll never happen, but we can hope. I believe Todd has mentioned at some point about a lot of the old data at Bethesda being lost, so it’s possible they no longer have access to all the cancelled projects.
@@Jwlar It would be an absolute shame if the Xngine itself was lost as well, the engine was among the first to have truly 3d environments and it did that while also having the largest game world for quite some time.
