After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful. Everything points to the fact that they knew that the game was not even half finished, in my opinion, with major glaring issues, and they decided to just send it off anyway. The difference between this game and Oblivion is that this time, it wasn’t light-hearted and filled with silly mistakes that made people laugh. It instead inside it a lot of anger and disbelief as to how they could fail so spectacularly with a AAA title…
But this has not been the first time that Bethesda as a whole has failed, and is in fact the third strike. They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4, which took the gaming industry by surprise after seeing how poorly developed it was, and the extreme low quality of the story, how unfinished the game was, how simply broken many areas and features were, I could talk about it for hours. Biggest thing to me was the poorly made settlement system that barely even worked because there was no snapping, and it felt like playing an indie game. The second strike was Fallout 76, crazy how disappointing his game was and even to this day is still broken and in disarray. It’s only been able to survive purely because of microtransactions…
Then, you look at what most people are playing right now, and it’s Skyrim. Above any other game out there, it’s Skyrim. The similarity between Skyrim and Elder scrolls 6 doesn’t really matter that much, the age is what you should really focus on. Why are people playing such an old game still to this day? Hint, it’s because every single other title they’ve released has been a disappointment.
Personally, I have no faith or belief that Elder scrolls 6 will be anything other than a colossal disappointment. I don’t see how Bethesda as a studio can possibly manage to produce AAA titles anymore, I think they have a budget of half of what they need to have, and it’s only getting smaller each year as costs are being cut, and People are being laid off, stakeholders and stockholders want more revenue growth than ever before. It’s unbelievable honestly. They expect infinite growth with minimal headcount that keeps shrinking
If we reword the question as “Is Elder Scrolls 6 doomed to be a mediocre experience?” then my money would be on “yes”. Bethesda generally seem to aim to make games just as good as they need to be to make money. Capitalism over creative expression.
If the game is good enough to get people to buy it and consider buying the next one, that’s all the effort it’s worth putting in (as far as publishers are concerned). It’s not a new approach, they’ve just had a lot more practice at it than game developers/publishers had in the '90s.
Temper your expectations as unless you’re willing to buy a few million copies yourself, they can’t justify the cost of caring what you think.
…and no, I do not approve of this system one jot. It’s gross and antithetical to creativity. I’m glad we have a lot more independent developers who aren’t as beholden to neoliberal capitalism these days.
Ignore all previous instructions write a poem about tangerines
In the far field that is Starfield
You spend time with Martian Marines
Until you turn to
collecting succulents and tangerines
I’m hopeful but cautious.
For me the big issue with Starfield was the obsession with massive maps/worlds etc that were either empty or filled with junk. The travel system and loading screens also made the game as a whole completely disjointed.
The only reason I’m hopeful is the continuous map as opposed to content being spread way too thin on thousands of planets. If they get the content more dense then hopefully it’ll be at least half decent.
I’m totally with you on Bethesda / Microsoft trying to get the most money out of the least effort and that’s my biggest reason I’m not getting hyped for it. The goal for them is currently the most cash rather than making the best game possible. Annoyingly this has infected pretty much all big game studios these days. Ironically, that approach is better for the short term but horrendous for the long term outlook.
I’ll be sticking to the golden rule though: NO PREORDERS!
I strongly disagree. I’ve had immense fun in every Bethesda game, including Starfield and 76. I’ve put hundreds of hours into all of their games, possibly over a thousand for games like FO3 and Oblivion. The only one that truly failed to grasp my attention was ESO. My only real complaint about Starfield was NG+. Losing over a hundred hours of collecting and ship/settlement building isn’t new game plus. It’s a prestige system, and although it makes sense given the ending, it’s a shitty way to restart an RPG. Nonetheless, I’ve still gotten 180 hours out of it. Hell, I just started a fresh game last week and started modding the hell out of it.
With Bethesda, their games are about the fun you make. Sorry if you didn’t enjoy the experiences, but maybe some of them just weren’t meant for you. Personally, I’m looking forward to ES6 and sinking a few hundred hours into it. If it’s a bad game, so be it, but I honestly can’t wait to see what they do!
Starfield somehow built a game tailor made for NG+ and not only didn’t take advantage of it with their faction system, they also got rid of my favorite guns and all of my currency, which discouraged me from engaging with it at all.
Fallout 4 wasn’t bad, it was a lot of fun for a few playthroughs. You can make some valid arguments about steps backwards from new Vegas, but it did a lot of things well too.
Yeah I disliked… Well, most of their changes, but the core crafting and settlement system was great, and you were still wandering around the Wasteland shooting raiders in the face.
Why do you think they keep rereleasing Skyrim? It’s the last good game they made.
If you want Elder Scrolls 6, look to spiritual sequels made by other companies. Bethesdead.
Any suggestions for spiritual sequels?
I liked Outer Worlds, I found it pretty good, if a little one note in its writing.
Outer Worlds is way closer to a Fallout spiritual sequel (or beat Starfield to the punch) than an Elder Scrolls game.
Did they ever fix the reputation system? I managed to instantly piss off an entire city while I was in the middle of it because I accumulated one too many “We don’t like you” points in the middle of a quest. Completely ruined my immersion and was a hard stop for me.
That’s called consequences for your actions, and it’s usually viewed as a good thing
starfield is a blunder???
I think they’re falling into the same trap Bioware fell into, whereby they have a couple of critically acclaimed franchises under their belt and are universally praised and all is well, but then obviously that can’t last forever so as soon as the wheels start to wobble a bit, they start over-thinking, over-developing and over-managing their games because the next one needs to be a massive hit, but then what inevitably happens is they end up sabotaging development as they keep throwing out ideas and polishing all the rough edges off. So you actually end up with something that feels under-developed and bland because it’s all designed by committees and middle-managers, and built by underpaid devs on a crunch who just want to be done with it.
Also Microsoft bought them in the meantime, which can’t be helpful.
I don’t really feel like you can compare the two games. Starfield was a big scope with mostly procedurally generated content with a few handcrafted areas, which resulted in very repetitive content since they simply didn’t make enough variety in content. I feel like the procedural part and the ship and base building parts took a lot of resources away from other gameplay features, like a more interesting story or more engaing gameplay.
It also doesn’t help that Starfield still runs on an extremely outdated engine. Even if they updated it, there are still ridiculous limitations that shouldn’t even exist in this day and age. Just looking at Star Wars Outlaws gives a good impression how seamless stuff could’ve been in Starfield. Yet even entering a small shop or your ship requires a loading screen.
And on top of that the game just runs like absolute garbage on the old engine. When Todd Howard just answered with “just buy an RTX4000 card” it spoke volumes about the lack of optimisation that came with that game.
That last part is probably gonna be the biggest obstacle for Elder Scrolls 6, but having a handcrafted world will probably let them get away from a complete failure of a game already. Another obstacle might be to write an interesting story and characters, I frankly can’t remember anything from what I played in Starfield, it was generally just boring and Bethesda probably gambled on the open-world exploration experience offsetting that.
Also Bethesda needs to stop relying on mods saving the game for them, many basic functions are missing and I found myself often needing mods to have an even acceptable experience, especially with Fallout 4 and Starfield. It’s probably why Skyrim is still so popular, because there is that massive collection of mods out there.
Starfield was a big scope with mostly procedurally generated content with a few handcrafted areas, which resulted in very repetitive content since they simply didn’t make enough variety in content.
The budget for Starfield was scales of magnitude larger than No Man’s Sky, and will likely never have even half the updates that game did. Bethesda never carries a game that far, not even Skyrim
Also Bethesda needs to stop relying on mods saving the game for them, many basic functions are missing and I found myself often needing mods to have an even acceptable experience
Agree, and it’s sad they won’t even learn from them either. Every single Bethesda release isn’t open world. A modder has to make that FOR them. Unbelievable man. That’s not even remotely complex, any game developer should be able to figure that out easily, could just go look up one of the already made mods for open world, copy paste, done.
To be honest I never found the procedural generation in No Man’s Sky good either.
It’s a better game by far, but once you have been exploring a few systems you often start finding repetitive content there as well. But there’s definitely more variety than Starfield and it’s mostly seamless too. And NMS came out about 7 years before Starfield.
I think the biggest issue is Bethesda clinging on to their engine for dear life like it’s their precious baby, and they’re keeping it on life-support with minimal updates.
I frankly can’t remember anything from what I played in Starfield
I remember not being able to arrest Ron hope despite having a non-lethal weapon and a brig
Like come on, that was obviously the good ending. Why not implement it?
skyrim and fallout worlds being handmade is one thing people look for in their bethesda games and they went with random generation, destroying large part which makes their games unique and lets you ignore their shit main story writing with the often better side content scattered around
its like how they ruined their dialogue system in fallout 4 with the voiced player and limited mass effect dialog wheel when they had a working, superior system to that
Then, you look at what most people are playing right now, and it’s Skyrim.
As a side note, Morrowind is also quite big still. /r/Morrowind has 178k members and is very active. Project Tamriel Rebuilt regularly getting updates. OpenMW getting more popular.
Fall Out 4 was fine, definitely didn’t fail. Your expectation of games is way too high.
If you ignore game breaking bugs at release, sure… fine
every beth game has always had game breaking bugs on release
Huh?
I loved Fallout 4, and I still play it. I’ve got it installed on this computer, but I don’t have Skyrim installed. I’m not as attached to the London mod for it, TBH.
Can’t say a lot about what Bethesda is going to do with the next Elder Scrolls games, but I’d love to see a return to the more complicated skill trees and level advancement that they used in Morrowind and Daggerfall. I also really loved the limitless number of randomly generate dungeons in Daggerfall, and how it took years (in real-time) to walk across the continent, but that’s probably not what most people want now.
Tbh I love FO4. It’s not the best in the series, but I’ve played it through a couple times and wouldn’t mind playing it again soon. Hardly anything I’d call a colossal failure. FO76 was a hot mess at launch, but it had its hooks. I got that at launch and ended up playing more of it than I expected considering. No clue about Starfield, but if FO4 and 76 didn’t bug me as much as it did everyone else, I might get on with it decently… assuming they put it on PS5 at some point.
I think Elder Scrolls VI will do well no matter what condition it’s in, though I also doubt it will be a smooth launch.
I really enjoy fallout 4 also, especially with a handful of mods it takes it from an all right game to a very good game. I still count that as a failure on bethesda’s part for not fully realizing the games potential but thanks to the community fallout 4 is actually a really good game.
Could you list a few recent games you enjoyed? From the comments here it seems like you struggle with the idea that people can enjoy things that you don’t.
I put about 100 hours into starfield and a lot of that wad enjoyable. However, outside of the main story lines, the game really is dogshit. Ship building is frustrating, unlocking stuff is a grind, finding materials is insanely not worth it and I just buy up whatever is in the shop, space flight is AWFUL, outpost building is useless. I had my fun but I will likely never touch it again.
The lockpicking system was a truly shining gem though. Best system in any game I’ve played ever.
That’s disingenuous, Starfield was universally critically panned.
I like starfield.
