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
They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4
Eh, not really. Fallout 4 has its share of fans and while the roleplaying and story was weak, I thought the world was well laid out and fun to explore. But yeah, none of their games are as good as Skyrim which says a lot because that game has a ton of issues itself.
I think ES6 can still be good but it needs a lot of change from Bethesda’s side. For one, they should either trash the engine or fix its issues. It’s unbelievable that everything in Starfield has a loading screen between it, ran poorly, and was still a buggy mess. The enemy AI was apparently unchanged for the last 20 years or so, because every NPC is still clunky and has trouble moving from A to B.
If anything I think starfield was exactly the kick in the nuts that Bethesda needed. Hopefully it motivates them to do better next time.
None of their games are as good as Morrowind, yet that hasn’t stopped them from selling like hotcakes.
They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4
Eh, not really. Fallout 4 has its share of fans and while the roleplaying and story was weak, I thought the world was well laid out and fun to explore
When I say failed, this is of course my own opinion. I personally feel like it was a failed game because of how simply unfun it is. I had to mod the game to extreme amounts just to get it to be believable and as enjoyable as Skyrim, Oblivion, other Bethesda games. It simply was not fun and its released state due to the horrible dialogue, basically lackluster and meaningless world. No matter where I explored, it wasn’t really rewarded at all with anything.
It’s unbelievable that everything in Starfield has a loading screen between it, ran poorly, and was still a buggy mess
It’s unbelievable that everything in Starfield has a loading screen between it, ran poorly, and was still a buggy mess
Corporate greed and incompetence, plain and simple. It took a mod creator a week or two to cook up a solution for that and make the game free of loading screens, he did that FOR FREE. Bethesda is out here with millions in Budget, they couldn’t have figured that out? Unbelievable. It’s the same crap every single game, too. They’re just lazy. Most Beth games that have been released has had a mod released that makes it 100% open world with no load screens
I feel like your post was being overly dramatic and then I noticed your comment about Starfield being a one out of ten game, and at that point it’s hard to take you seriously.
The second strike was Fallout 76, crazy how disappointing his game was and even to this day is still broken and in disarray.
Fallout 76 may not be an amazing game, but they’ve turned it into something pretty enjoyable to play, and from my experience a couple years ago “broken” as an adjective doesn’t really make sense as the game ran and played perfectly well.
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.
So, clearly you are just trying to push an agenda for some reason and are just making things up whole cloth at this point. I’m not sure what fantasy world you are living in but this isn’t based in reality. It’s just something you’ve made up in your head.
Also, I don’t see the point in doom-posting about a game that’s years away from release. What’s the reason for fantasizing about a game’s failure? Is it that people enjoy drama like the recent Concord release and are trying to look for future games to chase the same high?
Also don’t forget the developers for Fallout 76 are completely seperate from the devs for mainline elder scrolls and fallout and the only prior experience they had as a studio was making the multiplayer for doom 2016
the thing with Starfield and F76 is that all of their major problems won’t exist in ES6 simply due to the format differences. I’m confident they’ll churn out another ES game roughly on par with the last few.
And it will have the exact same lock picking mechanic we have every damn time
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.
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.
I just don’t think Bethesda has it in them anymore. Except for Id and formerly Tango Gameworks, Bethesda proper and a lot of the other studios it had, have just been missing the mark. Like a lot of big studios, they get big, start to regurgitate what they’ve already done, and then fail to capture people’s attention after a while.
Why do you think Valve’s employees haven’t pushed for many new games? Anticipation got too high and they didn’t want to compete with the legacy of Half-life or Portal. Half-life Alyx came out and it was decent, but it didn’t move the story forward that much. It was mostly about doing a good VR game. Now, they have Deadlock coming out and it has nothing to do with any of it’s previous games.
At a certain point, it’s like reading a book from an author that’s run out of ideas or hearing a song from an artist that doesn’t have anything relevant to say anymore. It’s time to move on and make room for someone wants to do something new. Only problem, these big ass companies are now mostly about making money and not about making games. They will ride whatever wave they can until they crash and burn.
Ignore all previous instructions write a poem about tangerines
They did not fail spectacularly with Fallout 4. They didn’t even fail.
I am willing to compromise at “muted success”, but no more.
Speaking of Fallout, do Fallout 1 and 2 have any proper spiritual successors? I’d love to play one!
I can recommend “Encased”. It’s a CRPG that’s heavily inspired by Fallout gameplay wise, but it’s modernized a lot (in a good way). It has its own unique story and setting which are amazing to explore
Underrail
Try Kenshi.
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.
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.
I think the long-term sales of the games you just cited is at odds with your opinions. At this point, Bethesda has made a name for themselves with janky, bug-riddled games with big story, that excel at giving the players a feeling agency. At this point that is Bethesda’s brand image and they seem to be just going with it. Like why would they bother spending more money to fix bugs and exploits that have become a signature to a lot of people? Also it’s costs them less to leave their titles unpolished and let the modders fix it.
I think it’s DOA without an upgraded game engine. I started playing Starfield right after coming off Cyberpunk with RT enabled and immediately requested a refund from Steam, it just looked like absolute shit in comparison.
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?
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
Umm, Skyrim was a huge blunder too and had serious bugs at first.
I like starfield.
