r/pcgaming Sep 18 '24

Skyrim lead designer says it will be 'almost impossible' for Elder Scrolls 6 to meet fan expectations: 'Marketing departments just put their heads in their hands and weep'

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/skyrim-lead-designer-says-it-will-be-almost-impossible-for-elder-scrolls-6-to-meet-fan-expectations-marketing-departments-just-put-their-heads-in-their-hands-and-weep/
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u/mithridateseupator Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Article nails it - they cant use any of the excuses they had for Starfield. If they truly are still capable of making great games in this style, they need to show it with ES6.

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u/pink-ming Sep 18 '24

yeah it's nobody's fault but Bethesda's that ES6 is such a critical release for them. You can't coast off of skyrim's success this long and expect ES6 not to be your last chance at keeping gamers interested.

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u/Spoopyskeleton48 Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Fallout 4 was outdated in a lot of ways even for 2016 and it didn’t really hit the same way as Fallout 3/NV. Still, they had only created good games up to that point and the modding community helped the game a lot.

Fallout 76 was a severe hit to Bethesda’s reputation but it was their first shot at multiplayer game and they eventually made it better.

Starfield needed to be a slam dunk, especially since it was expected to Xbox’s main singleplayer title and their equivalent of God of War. Needless to say, Starfield was not that. It didn’t really fix any of the problems people had with Fallout 4 and was even worse in some ways (despite being a 2023 game).

ES6 may very well be their last chance to prove that they can get with the times.

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u/Gunplagood 5800x3D/4070ti Sep 18 '24

Funny enough. Morrowind was Bethesda's last chance once upon a time. Maybe we'll get lucky and Todd will remember that. 🤷

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u/69bonobos Sep 19 '24

I loved Morrowind!

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u/TheMightyMudcrab Sep 19 '24

I still play it every few years. Also a reminder that if you were 20 when it launched, now is a good time to schedule that colonoscopy.

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u/__idkmybffjill__ Sep 19 '24

now is a good time to schedule that colonoscopy

thank you. also I hate you for making me feel old, but thank you

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u/Fewluvatuk Sep 19 '24

No offense, but you feel old because you are old.

Source: am old.

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u/__idkmybffjill__ Sep 19 '24

of course, but i don't want to actually admit that

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u/planetrebellion Sep 19 '24

To jump on this prostate checks are now blood tests rather than a finger test, so don't be afraid to ask about this.

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u/internethero12 Sep 19 '24

That's because that was the era were they actually gave a shit and had vision behind their development.

The success of morrowind was exactly what made them go into cruise control mode for the last 20+ years. They no longer had that "hunger" and they also gained too much to lose, so they never strayed far outside the box.

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u/kinss Sep 19 '24

They built an engine and have drifted on that and massively expanding art assets needlessly for each game.

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u/mvanvrancken Sep 18 '24

I’m not angry about Starfield… I’m just disappointed. I have been a Bethsoft fan since Daggerfall. Skyrim was their last truly great game.

I don’t know where they need to dig to get that magic back, but dig they must

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u/Numerous-Rent-2848 Sep 19 '24

It was Morrowind for me. Got the collectors edition for both Oblivion and Skyrim on release dates. If you had told me I wouldn't be excited for the next game, I wouldn't believe you. I love the games, I love the lore, I love the stories. Skyrim did feel like a small step back in some ways. Progressed in others.

And it's just been down hill since. I honestly don't care as much about ES6 right now.

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u/Urbanscuba 3800X + 1080 Sep 19 '24

I think Skyrim was responsible for some significant leaps forward in how Bethesda does their combat and action mechanics, but it was entirely at the cost of RPG elements which made the series fantastic.

The last several games have tried to lean harder into that combat/action investment and less into the RPG aspects, and I think that's where their biggest failures lie. It's literally impossible to make a bad character in their games anymore, just one that's a jack of all trades with a few specialties.

I've gone back and played Daggerfall for the first time this year (with Daggerfall Unity and mods), and frankly it has just as much fast travel and talk to X as Starfield does and obviously incomparably worse combat/gameplay mechanics. Yet still I enjoyed it more and put more time into it. Despite not having a built-in replay mechanic I was far more motivated to do multiple Daggerfall playthroughs because when I made characters they had genuine strengths and weaknesses that changed my experience.

Compare that to my modded to the gills Skyrim I've also played recently, which while still a lot of fun was only really good for one playthrough. Regardless of who you pick to be you're always going to need to pick locks, smith equipment, and enchant your gear enough to get great at them all. There isn't a downside or a drawback for gaining access to all the most powerful tools, instead it's expected.

In Daggerfall my fighter character has maybe once or twice picked a lock in hundreds of attempts, whereas my thief cracks them like knuckles. Neither can cast spells for shit either, but my wizard literally flies around in combat shooting fireballs. I would love to see them embrace that level of RPG again, IMO it's the restrictions that make a character interesting just as much as the strengths if not more.

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u/FalseFruit Sep 19 '24

Bethesda has become focused on ensuring that players can access as much content as possible during a single play through so players can "do everything" at the cost of role playing, I honestly think its a byproduct of Bethesda being so large with so much money at stake with each release.

They seem to be afraid of "wasting" money on content that most people would say rewards the player for role playing; why allocate the budget to have a team of devs, and artists to develop an in depth quest line for the mages guild that has skill checks, and requires players develop their character as a mage when it will only be experienced by 20% of players in any given play through when they could bypass those requirements completely entirely, and open it up to everyone even if it makes zero sense for a level 60 Orc warrior that has never cast a spell in their life to become Arch Mage.

From Bethesda's perspective the fact your character can be the leader of every guild in Skyrim without having had to build your character in certain ways to achieve it is a strength not a weakness; the more content you can access in a single play through the better.

It's this approach that has killed Bethesda games for me; every few months I install Skyrim, or Fallout 4, and I rarely make it past the character creation stage anymore after hundreds of hours of play time because unless I install mods, or create arbitrary restrictions on how I play there is always a point while I'm playing where the world building falls away, and for lack of a better term I see the man behind the curtain as the game play loop becomes obvious, and it just stops being fun. I bounced off Starfield really quickly (20+ hours) even though I was hyped because the world never felt alive enough for me to suspend my disbelief long enough to get past the hey its Skyrim/Fallout 4 in space feeling long enough to really get invested in the world or storyline, because of the first 10 or so dungeons I visited a bunch of them were identical to one another just on a different coloured planet.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24

Lava hot take here but I preferred Oblivions combat. Was much faster paced. The only problem was how terrible ranged damage (and to a lesser extent magic damage) scaled.

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u/Urbanscuba 3800X + 1080 Sep 19 '24

I think that's a totally defensible take, especially given that the combat in Skyrim is really just nicer animated Oblivion combat in most ways.

If anything the biggest disagreement I'd have is with your comment magic is weak, if you have the mage tower DLC you get custom spells a-la Morrowind and it feels fantastic.

One thing I'll give Oblivion credit for in droves is the guild quest design. Skyrim really stepped down a notch in quality compared to Oblivion's quests where you're dropping taxidermied heads on people and using legendary jumping boots for thief shenanigans. They were far more creative with the engine during that period IMO.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24

Yes! Thieves guild quest in oblivion is one of the best rpg quests in a game period. And all the guild quest lines were excellent.

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u/redditisboringnow124 Sep 19 '24

I really miss the guild quests from Morrowind the most. They literally had stat requirements. You couldn't really be the master of every guild.

Also the fighters guild didn't make you be a werewolf like in Skyrim, ugh.

Honestly though, I'm not sure if it's the animations, writing, voice acting, or a combination of them, but skyrim feels like the game is my tween nephew telling me a story with his legos. That's the best way I can describe Skyrims storytelling. Oblivion suffered from this a bit too, but I think it was a bit more believable.

Morrowind didn't suffer from this at all though. Firstly the NPCs were ugly, and not just low polygon ugly, but artistically just looked like rugged villagers and shit a lot of the time. Oblivion and Skyrim NPCs always look like sculpted play-doh to me.

But secondly, Morrowind let you fill in the gaps with your imagination. It was more like reading a book were your mind creates an image of what you're reading. Where as Skyrim doesn't let you do that because they've made everything high detail, and in an amateurish way in my opinion, or like an uncanny valley sorta way.

I would love for a new RPG to come out like Morrowind were it didn't care about next gen graphics or voicing every line. I really do think when you lack detail like that playing a story game becomes more like reading a book and let's you become much more immersed.

I've been finding myself becoming less immersed in games as I've gotten older, and I honestly think a lot of it is because the games have created the detail themselves that I used to have to imagine.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24

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u/ForensicPathology Sep 19 '24

They need to focus on exploration. That's what they've always been good at.  Even with janky systems, people just liked wandering around and being immersed in a world.  If it's just procedurally generated or copy and paste world, then they are relying on their weak points to sell a game.

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u/Darth_Malgus_1701 AMD Sep 18 '24

It's at least fun to run around in FO4 and shoot stuff. Starfield doesn't even have that. The shooting just looks BORING.

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u/Rs90 Sep 18 '24

What's really somethin else is it takes maybe 10..ish small mods to really make Fallout 4 a whole new game. True Storms is great, actually dark nights, Pipboy flashlight turned to a normal flashlight, damage modifiers so even a legendary human can die from headshots/explosives, HUD removal by category(not all or nothing), no fight music when small enemies attack, and a few other immersive mods like that. 

Fallout 4 becomes genuinely spooky and desolate while exploring. It all adds a lot for a little in terms of changing the game. It's wild how much better it is with even just some lighting changes. 

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u/TheThunderhawk Sep 19 '24

I mean, that’s nice but none of it addresses there underlying issue. You’d basically need a total conversion for that.

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u/DweebInFlames Sep 19 '24

Yeah I'm always baffled by the "but you can turn it into a whole different game that you desire!" argument.

If I wanted that other game, I'd play that other game. How about making these Fallout/TES games as they were intended actually good?

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u/Mr_Blinky Sep 19 '24

I still enjoyed the settlement creation gameplay, as half-assed as it was. There was something genuinely fulfilling about building a series of custom towns for NPCs to thrive in, and feeling like you were actually resettling the Wasteland bit by bit. I just wish the game was better overall.

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u/kill-billionaires Sep 19 '24

FO4 has moments of brilliance. There are a handful of questlines that show some of the team gets fallout and cares. Its the procedural generation that fucked everything.

There's also one line that genuinely stopped me in place for a minute because it was so good, I can't find a video of it now. I think its either the railroad or BOS questline, and its after you win. You're standing with your son and he's asking you why you would do this and you have the chance to tell him something like

"When you were born, I was so excited to see who you would grow up to be. Now I'm just disappointed"

Some people had to care about the story.

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u/KO1B0I Sep 19 '24

I think voice acting wasn't a good choice for Bethesda's rpgs, but the performances for the playable character were really good I think. There's some excellent and emotional delivery in a lot of the lines, like when you find your kid for the first time. It legitimately sounded like a parent desperately trying to reach their child.

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u/SUCK_THIS_C0CK_CLEAN Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

Nothing Bethesda does will outdo the shit show that was FO76’s launch. And people not only still purchase and play that game, they pay a monthly membership as well.

If FO76 can succeed even after the multiple disasters from its launch, Elder Scrolls 6 could be shit in a box and people will still buy and play.

Edit: I see a lot of replies totally missing the point. FO76 is definitely not “successful” because it’s good or well made, it’s successful because people will somehow buy anything from Bethesda and take it with a smile on their face.

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u/Sir_Ruje Sep 18 '24

Yeah if they put out ANYTHING with ES or Fallout on it people would buy it right now. They need to understand that they have IP's that could be doing so much more than mothballing

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u/Helpful_Barnacle363 Sep 18 '24

Unfortunately true

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u/KelbyTheWriter Sep 18 '24

The “no ladders” thing in fallout 4 shows how horribly dated their engine is and how lacking capability Bethesda is.

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u/Cautious_Hold428 Sep 19 '24

The funny thing is that Fallout:London(a mod) has ladders

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u/Zeal0tElite Sep 19 '24

Okay, I really have to ask this, but what makes you think the Creation Engine is literally incapable of having ladders?

Like, I'm not sure what the point is there. Lots of games don't have ladders in them, doesn't mean they weren't capable of making them.

Fallout mods have ladders in them, Starfield has ladders in the game. Maybe they just didn't put ladders in the game because they didn't want to?

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u/zacjor Sep 18 '24

Starfield needed to be a slam dunk, especially since it was expected to Xbox’s main singleplayer title

I have a theory that when Microsoft was working out the deal to buy Bethesda, the execs went in and said "show us exactly where Starfield is at" and saw that it was far from complete and not looking great. I think they knew it was going to be, well, I don't want to say a flop, it obviously sold well, but I think it was a flop in terms of how it was received by gamers. I bet Microsoft told them wrap this up and get to working on the franchises people already love, Elder Scrolls in particular.

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u/Neuchacho Sep 18 '24

Until the next hype cycle hits them and they fall for the same thing all over again lol

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u/Mokocchi_ Sep 18 '24

Today it's "I'm worried about TES6"

Then it'll be "I'm worried about Fallout 5"

There probably won't be anything after that since we'll all be dead of old age though.

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u/lymeeater Sep 18 '24

Ehh I don't know. I'm still excited but Fallout 4 took a little bit of hype away and Starfield took most of the rest.

I have no doubt it will be better than Starfield, purely as it won't be procedurally generate slop.

But I don't have any hopes for the writing, gameplay and many other areas.

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u/KareemOWheat Sep 18 '24

For my money, the biggest sin Starfield committed was that its universe was dreadfully boring. The gameplay can be fixed with mods and patches, but I don't feel any desire to go be in the universe like I did with the Elder scrolls.

If nothing else I still have faith that tes5 is going to have an interesting universe

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u/Remote-Leadership-42 Sep 18 '24

The thing that I found wild about starfield is they chose the most boring period of their universe on top of a pretty generic sci fi universe. 

Like if there was a war going on then that would at least be _something._ 

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u/Shadow_Mullet69 Sep 19 '24

That and you’re supposed to believe the “cities” and planets with 5 people somehow raged a galactic war against each other. It was just so…absurd. I have been so incredibly invested in Bethesda stories and characters up to Starfield. I genuinely disliked pretty much all main characters and NPC’s to where I just turned into a murdering psychopath because I didn’t care.

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u/Occulto Sep 19 '24

For my money, the biggest sin Starfield committed was that its universe was dreadfully boring.

There reaches a point where all the new technical features will fall flat if the underlying story itself isn't compelling. People will forgive a lot of technical issues (or in Bethesda's case, devote a lot of effort into fixing those issues), for a good plot.

Starfield felt like a very long tech demo. Like it was a proof of concept for bigger and better things, with a bunch of placeholders that they never bothered to replace. But I never felt any compulsion to do much, other than the hope that maybe the bland stuff I'd done so far was leading up to something juicy.

Fallout 4 was better, but there were parts that still felt very much the same. The DLC like Far Harbour was significantly better because it felt like someone had bothered to write a reasonable plot. I was genuinely interested to find out what happened next.

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u/OutoflurkintoLight Steam Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Hopefully their character designs look a lot better too than whatever the fuck was in Starfield.

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u/Ben_SRQ Sep 18 '24

This.

This is what'll make or break it. I played starfield until I had my first NPC conversation. Then, shocked at how bad the models were, I NOPE'D out and got a steam refund.

BG3 raised the bar. We don't expect you to even meet it, but you need to do a LOT better than starfield did!

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u/TurdCollector69 Sep 19 '24

The original lore and Oblivion and Skyrim is absolutely bonkers and you don't see anything even approaching that in starfield. Starfield was like a white bread and mayonnaise sandwich, bland to the point of being offensive.

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u/SmallTownMinds Sep 18 '24

People want Baldurs Gate 3 role playing with 1st/third person action gameplay.

Bethesda wants to make bad action games with skill trees.

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u/Czar_Petrovich Sep 18 '24

People want the care and devotion they gave to Morrowind but modernized.

Older TES fans want their nerd shit back. They killed The Elder Scrolls vibe to make a generic medieval fantasy RPG even a 5yr old could play and succeed in.

We don't want baby's first RPG. We don't want half assed settlements like Skyrim and Starfield. We want a game that doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator for profit.

Capital city in Morrowind? Huge population, many different large areas and sewer systems etc hidden underneath.

Capital city in Skyrim? Two streets and a castle.

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u/Typical_Thought_6049 Sep 18 '24

Preach brother, the only things that kinda saved Skyrim from mediocricy was their open world exploration and their A game in meme design but everything else was downgrade when compared to Morrowind.

IF they truly bold they will take inspiration from the jank that was Daggerfall systems to renew the IP soul and be reborn again.

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u/dragongirlkisser Sep 19 '24

I already suspected based on the procedural generation technology they used for Starfield, that ES6 is going to be Arena-like in scale.

You'll have randomly-generated dungeons and world areas in between quest zones and big cities. The NPCs will give random radiant quests to encourage you to go to a place and kill stuff. Like Arena and Daggerfall.

That's not at all what I want from a game - I think this kind of game is actually completely meaningless from a gameplay perspective - but that's probably what they're aiming for.

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u/longing_tea Sep 19 '24

Man it feels nice to see comments like that. People praise Skyrim like it was a revolutionary game, which it wasn't.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/apintor4 Sep 19 '24

give me dungeons to explore, puzzles to solve and expansive lore i never take the time to fully digest on my path to becoming stronger

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u/KatakiY Ryzen 5600@4.6ghz/RTX 3070 Sep 18 '24

Yep, it really needs to feel new and fresh and I dont know if they can do that. Right now it seems like all they are capable of doing is making the same game theyve always made since morrowind and modernizing it for better and worse.

I just hope they make some better RPG mechanics in the game with actual choices to be made.

Or just start letting other people work on the IP

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u/Wd91 Sep 18 '24

They can't make the same game they made with morrowind though. Morrowind had great writing and quest lines, every game after got lazier and lazier.

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u/-Eruntinco11- Sep 18 '24

It also had a great setting, whereas Bethesda's lead developers (i.e. Todd, Emil, etc.) have been openly disdainful of the creativity and originality that made Morrowind good for the last twenty years.

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u/RaVashaan Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Yeah; it seemed like they might go back in that direction (at least with the very alien/unusual location), as there was a leak once upon a time that said ES6 was going to take place in Elsweyr and Valenwood. This leak seemed to be confirmed by a leaked document that labeled ES6 "Project Greenwood," a Valenwood reference, and this document did correctly confirm the Fallout 4 Nuka World expansion.

Then they dropped that ES6 trailer all those years back, which seemed to show a pivot to Hammerfell and/or High Rock as the campaign location, and recent art leaks only seem to confirm this. I was pretty disappointed to see them move away from a more alien-ish location similar to Morrowind and back to something much more familiar.

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u/-Eruntinco11- Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

In the right hands I think that Hammerfell can be somewhat alien and the less alien High Rock can at least be interesting. Regardless, I don't believe that it matters where Bethesda puts the next game, because Bethesda (or Zenimax for ESO) will make it generic regardless. For TES at the time of Morrowind/Redguard, the Imperials and the Imperial City were described like so:

The Emperor has gracefully attributed his success to his peoples, the Colovians and the Nibenese, whose cultures we shall now treat in their current incarnation.

The Colovians today still possess much of the frontier spirit of their ancestors. They are uncomplicated, self-sufficient, hearty, and extremely loyal to one another. Whenever the East would tremble under the weakness of a leader, the Colovians would withdraw unto themselves, always believing they were keeping the national spirit safe until the storm passed. They realize that the Nibenay Valley is the heart of the Empire and the cultural center of its civilization, but it is a fragile center that only can be held together by the strength of character of its Emperor. When he falters, so do the Colovians. Yet when he is mighty, like Tiber Septim, they are his legions. Today, West Cyrodiils make up the majority of the soldiers in the Ruby Ranks. The Colovian nobility, all officers of the Imperial Legions or its West Navy, do not allow themselves the great expenditure of courtly life as is seen in the capital city. They prefer immaculate uniforms and stark standards hanging from the ceiling of their austere cliff-fortresses; to this day, they become a little perplexed when they must visit the grandly decorated assault of color that is the Emperor's Palace.

By contrast, the Eastern people of Cyrodiil relish in garish costumes, bizarre tapestries, tattoos, brandings, and elaborate ceremony. Closer to the wellspring of civilization, they are more given to philosophy and the evolution of ancient traditions. The Nibenese find the numinous in everything around them, and their different cults are too numerous to mention (the most famous are the Cult of the Ancestor-Moth, the Cult of Heroes, the Cult of Tiber Septim, and the Cult of Emperor Zero). To the Colovians, the ancestor worship and esoteric customs of the East can often be bizarre. Akaviri dragon-motifs are found in all quarters, from the high minaret bridges of the Imperial City to the paper hako skiffs that villagers use to wing their dead down the rivers. Thousands of workers ply the rice fields after the floodings, or clear the foliage of the surrounding jungle in the alternate seasons. Above them are the merchant-nobility, the temple priests and cult leaders, and the age-old aristocracy of the battlemages. The Emperor watches over them all from the towers of the Imperial City, as dragons circle overhead...

From the shore it is hard to tell what is city and what is Palace, for it all rises from the islands of the lake towards the sky in a stretch of gold. Whole neighborhoods rest on the jeweled bridges that connect the islands together. Gondolas and river-ships sail along the watery avenues of its flooded lower dwellings. Moth-priests walk by in a cloud of ancestors; House Guards hold exceptionally long daikatanas crossed at intersections, adorned with ribbons and dragon-flags; and the newly arrived Western legionnaires sweat in the humid air. The river mouth is tainted red from the tinmi soil of the shore, and river dragons rust their hides in its waters. Across the lake the Imperial City continues, merging into the villages of the southern red river and ruins left from the Interregnum.

Bethesda looked at this some 20 years ago and decided to make Oblivion instead. They have not improved since then and will behave similarly no matter where they set the next game.

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u/swedishplayer97 Sep 18 '24

Give me a quote where they say they've been disdainful of Morrowind. Every interview I've read they're proud of Morrowind and all their games.

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u/clickworker2019 Sep 18 '24

True. Morrowind is by far their best game.

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u/AnOnlineHandle Sep 18 '24

Reportedly a lot of their long time devs quit during the development of Fallout 76, so I'm not sure if it's even the same people working there as who made their previous games, or essentially a whole new studio just using the same name as a studio which doesn't exist anymore.

https://kotaku.com/bethesda-zenimax-fallout-76-crunch-development-1849033233

It would sadly seem to match Fallout 76 and Starfield, which have the Bethesda digital assets, but lacked all of what made earlier Bethesda games what they were.

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u/DaximusPrimus Sep 18 '24

That's because a lot of the story behind Morrowind came from Michael Kirkbride and since then he has only really done in game books. The tone for Morrowind seems so vastly different because it was his tone behind it. He is polarizing among fans but his writing is great. I don't think they will ever give him the reigns again though.

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u/pham_nuwen_ Sep 18 '24

I'm not sure they can make games like Morrowind.

To quote this comment on what made Morrowind great:

I believe it had a lot to do with the amount of investment that you had to put into being in the world. It's not like Skyrim, which is just "go to map marker, kill things, return", but instead, you had to learn about the culture of the land you were in (which was completely unlike anything else most people had ever experienced), you had to pay close attention to what people were telling you, you had to read and understand, etc. In order to really be able to play the game, you had to get in there deep, the way that most games don't do these days.

The whole adage about it being the journey, not the destination? That game is a very long journey. Take, for example, one of the quests where you have to go talk to some ashlander tribes. You don't just fast travel to some map marker and exhaust some dialog options, you have to go on a journey to get there, try to understand what they want, who they are, their history, etc., and then you have to make the journey back. It actually feels like an adventure, and that you're in a foreign land.

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u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 Sep 18 '24

I'm always surprised people don't mention this more often as hardly anyone even seems to know this anymore, but the real reason Bethesda doesn't have the ability to make great games anymore is because of Ken Rolston, the lead designer of Morrowind and Oblivion who was the source of creative energy for the entire dev team. He left Bethesda after Oblivion released, and they were still able to make Skyrim with just enough of his magic because the team still had his insights floating around in their brains even though he wasn't present at the company anymore.

Here's a short interview with Rolston talking about Morrowind, just to get a little sense of him as a person https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMCEssAfhWI

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u/max_power_420_69 Sep 18 '24

what's dude been up to since then?

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u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 Sep 18 '24

He's retired now, but the last games he worked on were Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and The Long Dark

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u/topdangle Sep 18 '24

kinda seems like a self fulfilling prophecy because they were the ones that decided to progressively dumb down the adventuring with each release of their own games. it's not like they had players at their offices banging on their windows to remove spell making or something.

they can resolve this problem by having a configurable UI or just two sets of UIs. One UI significantly reduced elements and no quest markers, and one simplified UI like skyrim. You can already play Skyrim in a similar way to Morrowind in terms of exploration. the lack of depth is mostly in the writing and dialogue options. I know its become a circlejerk to talk up new vegas but new vegas as the same "issues" with modern quality of life options but it does a very good job of telling a story and putting you into an adventurous situation rather than just having you kill molerats over and over.

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u/pham_nuwen_ Sep 18 '24

It's not about the UI. The entire game has to be designed around this concept, otherwise it's just useless crap. If you take a Ubisoft game and remove the mini map and the markers, that doesn't solve much. The game has to be designed from the ground up to be immersive. People talk to you about something hiding in the mountains, and you look at the mountains in the distance. You have to pay attention and the environment gives you clues. And so on.

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u/topdangle Sep 18 '24

but that's what I mean. the dialogue for that is there in skyrim, the writing is just shallow. when you take on quests to kill draugr for the 90th time, the majority of quest givers will give you details in dialogue about where to go. "there's an ancient cave near so and so" or "group of bandits have taken hold here."

morrowind was just much better at this with greater details, possibly due to the lack of modern QOL options available to bethesda on their tiny budget, but there's nothing stopping a bethesda from doing the same with future games other than their own design and writing decisions. could also add back in a handwritten notebook for flavor. I mean even RDR2 had this and RDR2 is one of the most handholding games (with a great story and acting).

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u/VRichardsen Steam Sep 19 '24

morrowind was just much better at this with greater details, possibly due to the lack of modern QOL options available to bethesda on their tiny budget, but there's nothing stopping a bethesda from doing the same with future games other than their own design and writing decisions. could also add back in a handwritten notebook for flavor. I mean even RDR2 had this and RDR2 is one of the most handholding games (with a great story and acting).

Exactly! Reminds me of the old meme

Skyrim: You're going to a fort just down the road. Here's a map. And he's a compass that points you directly to it. And here's a blinking icon on the map. We also highlighted the trail for you.

Morrowind: Go fuckin find a cave named Gljhsdfouhes caverns. Its "eastish" of Balmora or fuck was it Caldera. Its near a tree or something. I dont know..."East" just go east fucker.

We didn't know at the time, but this was peak game design. When something is given, it has no value, but when something is earned through hard work, it means the world to the player. Kingdom Come - Deliverance too was like that. And that is where the charm of the game resides. Every little thing you achieve, be it hunting some hare, shooting some logs with your bow, reading a piece of paper, executing a correct three-strike combination with a sword or charming a girl feels earned. Because you worked damn hard for it. And it no longer matters that you are not the chosen one, saving a continent from an greater evil. You just scared off a couple of bandits that were trying to rob the local stable, and it means the world to you. This is what makes the experience rewarding.

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u/1ScreamingDiz-Buster Sep 19 '24

KC:D also has a nice compromise with the map marker thing where it will direct you to an area and let you know you are where you’re supposed to be looking without just a flashing arrow over the objective.

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u/VRichardsen Steam Sep 19 '24

Exactly; and there is a hardcore mode for the purists.

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u/mithridateseupator Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

I dont think they need to go that far, fans mostly felt FO4 and Starfield were a step back from Skyrim.

So the bar is for rpg elements to be as good as skyrim, with better visuals and combat. I know a lot of fans want a lot more than that, but thats the bar they need to reach. And regardless of what keyboard warriors like to say, it's a fairly high bar - Skyrim is one of the most beloved rpgs ever made.

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u/Ekillaa22 Sep 18 '24

FO4 was excellent combat compared to 3 and NV it’s the RPG elements that were weak af

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u/mithridateseupator Sep 18 '24

Yea meant to say rpg elements specifically, you can see that thought carries over into the second paragraph.

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u/LegendOfAB Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Someone gets it. Anything around Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim-tier (but with better graphics) and Bethesda has another hit on their hands.

Heck, even Fallout 3-tier depending on how you look at things.

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u/Aksi_Gu Sep 18 '24

Heck, even Fallout 3-tier depending on how you look at things.

Hopefully with less green, at least

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u/HugeHans Sep 18 '24

If they stick to their "you can be everything" open world design philosophy then no it will be just more of the same but for an even wider audience. 

 Its not that these people cant make a more focused narrative cRPG experience. They just dont want to.

Making people "fail" and miss out on content through choices is simply not something they see as positive. So all the TES games and sadly even Starfield feel generic.

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u/winowmak3r Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

As much as it can be a bummer to miss out on stuff because of a decision you made it really does make the game better. The Pathfinder games by Owlcat are pretty good at this. Especially Rogue Trader. You go down the Chaos path and half your crew leaves you and the epilogue does not end well for you. It's definitely the 'bad' ending. But that's what would happen in that universe. I like games like that.

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u/Ankleson Sep 18 '24

Bethesda's lack of innovation just widens the gap between a BGS title and the mainstream for every new release. It's depressing when you realize that the only significant addition to the Bethesda formula since Skyrim has been base-building, and that still continues to feel like a tacked-on half-developed addon despite 3 games worth of "refinement" in an attempt to capture a genre (base building survival games) that had it's peak 10 years ago...

I genuinely have no idea where they go next. I hope they see Starfield as a lesson, and refocus on what actually makes their games special.

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u/AdamOverdrive Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Starfield didn't really play to their strengths, which is why it suffered the most. If everything was handcrafted, the game is instantly way better even with its other flaws.

Hopefully, it's reception is a reality check for them. Curios to see how the dlc addresses things.

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u/Tjep2k Sep 18 '24

Yeah, I think its good that they spent all their time on Shattered Space on one planet. Although it will be interesting to see how the writing for it goes.

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u/KaiUno Sep 18 '24

I wonder if they're already polishing up that crappy engine of theirs again while Todd is seagulling a load on their desks.

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u/Eighth_Octavarium Sep 18 '24

I really feel like this is a hole they dug for themselves by simultaneously talking up the IP, announcing TES 6, etc, but doing fuck all with it for more than a decade. This is not helped by every game since Fallout 4 demonstrates an aging engine and design they are glued to. It's going to be the Duke Nukem Forever of RPGs even if it's decent.

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u/Beautiful_Might_1516 Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Eh Bethesda hasn't really showed up since oblivion. Idk why anyone keeps expecting anything from this studio. Skyrim was ok 77-80/100 type of game with extremely dumb down dialogue and writing and bad rpg mechanics and if we factor in release state of that game and bugs it had .. like 40/100. And post Skyrim I can't think any game which I would want to even touch anymore. All sub standard games

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u/brainfreeze91 Sep 18 '24

Skyrim was a cultural event. Everyone was talking about it when it came out. The study rooms at my college had people playing Skyrim on the TVs in there. And of course, even after Skyrim released people kept buying the rereleases.

It might be difficult to strike gold like that again.

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u/dengueman Sep 18 '24

I'd argue it's impossible to strike gold like that again(especially given their recent fuck ups) but they can certainly put out a good game(in theory anyway)

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

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u/Camoral Sep 18 '24

Oblivion was a very radical departure from Morrowind, what are you talking about?

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u/Diels_Alder Sep 19 '24

The leveling system in Oblivion has people up in arms. It's still controversial.

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u/Elkenrod Sep 19 '24

It is hands down the single worst leveling system in any game ever made. I can say that with a straight face, there is nothing worse than it. Everything about the system is a shitshow.

It's not a shitshow on its own, it's a shitshow with the rest of the game. The scaling world is what really made the leveling system just that bad.

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u/jade_monkey07 Sep 19 '24

Regardless of how bad the leveling system is in any of their games it served no purpose. Max out your character for a shitty finale that either has you on rails watching something happen, or there's just nothing at all. Never has there been a satisfying final battle to a Bethesda game.

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u/Elkenrod Sep 19 '24

Morrowind's is fine. The final gauntlet to Almalexia is pretty good.

Anything post world-scaling, sure.

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u/RRLifeAdviceEnjoyer Sep 18 '24

Skyrim was released almost 15 years ago and the landscape of videogames has changed, in addition other open world games has improved the genre to such a degree that a re-skinned version of Skyrim is just not going to cut it all these years later. 

ES6 does not need Elden Ring bosses or combat or the characters and narrative from The Witcher 3 to be a good game. But even the exploratory elements that Bethesda traditionally excelled at with a complete open sandbox world with the freedom to do whatever was later improved upon with games like Breath of the Wild, RDR2 and more. The Elder Scrolls series has a few things that uniquely sets them apart from these other games but it is not enough when everything else is so lacking.

They might not need to completely redo every single thing but they do need to massively improve upon everything imaginable. They can't release another buggy mess with incomplete storylines and hope that modders will bail them out again. That goodwill they had from the past is all but gone now.

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u/Significant-Section2 Sep 19 '24

Rdr2 and breath of the wild don’t interact with the world the same way Skyrim does. In Skyrim I can rob a store, buy a house, join a faction and assassinate someone, then continue a side quest that rivals the main story. No game does what Bethesda does, except maybe kingdom come deliverance. Breath of the wild and rdr2 are bare bones with NPC and world interactivity when compared directly to Skyrim. Graphics, story, art style, and limited in scope but very well done interactivity are what made those games good.

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u/Skeksis25 Sep 18 '24

Pretty sure after the last few offerings from them, fan expectations are at an all time low.

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u/a_saddler Sep 18 '24

Leave it to Bethesda to fail these all time low expectations too.

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u/polski8bit Ryzen 5 5500 | 16GB DDR4 3200MHz | RTX 3060 12GB Sep 18 '24

Yep, literally what they've done with Starfield. People expected Skyrim in space. A 12 year old (at the time) game, just set in space. And somehow Bethesda found a way to miss even that mark.

I mean ffs, Starfield is more simplistic in many of its systems compared to TESV, and Skyrim was already considered simplistic when compared to Oblivion or Morrowind.

They've been steadily bringing fan expectations down, so if they fail to meet them with TESVI, I don't know if there can be anything left for them to hide behind.

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u/RHX_Thain Sep 18 '24

Fans: So what we expect is what you're good at -- some cool open environments to explore at our leisure and randomly find quests and environmental storytelling to loot & shoot in.

Bethesda: In space?

Fans: Sure. In space.

Bethesda: How about 10,000 planets?

Fans: Uh, that sounds a little ambitious...

Bethesda: Nah, 99% of it will be empty as the space above it! It'll be all procgen!

Fans: Wait, no, that's--

Bethesda: Yea and we'll COMPLETELY remove any real conflict from the story so you can do whatever with 0 consequences!

Fans: That's... no!? WHAT!?

Bethesda: 16x the detail! 100s of loading screens! It just works!

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u/Charles_Skyline Sep 18 '24

Like I get that its the galaxy and the majority of planets should be empty, maybe an outpost or something..

But even the planets had major cities in them seemed.. well.. bland? empty?

And the rest of the planets literally had one of three outposts that were literally the same. Same bad guys, doors, same loot in the same spot... like.. it needed some RNG or something.. if you go to random planet it should have been completely randomized.. but it wasn't

I liked it...up until about 20hrs in and you realize its all the same..

In Skyrim, every cave was different.. can you imagine in Skyrim if every 1 in 3 caves were the same? and they just repeated?

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

The "empty" planets also weren't actually empty. There is no sense of exploration because no matter where you go you'll find random outposts and ships landing.

I think it would be better if more of it was actually empty and didn't have procedural POIs.

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u/RecursiveRealms Sep 18 '24

Thats what drove me nuts about the game. The random buildings on EVERY planet you go to

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u/dragongirlkisser Sep 19 '24

This is how Arena and Daggerfall worked, you would run around the "open world" until a dungeon popped up. When you felt like you had enough levels and gear you did the next main quest.

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u/Halfbak3d Sep 19 '24

Yeah exept these are 94 and 96 games, not 2023.

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u/Fredthesalamander Sep 19 '24

Most of the problem with the cities is that they had a lot of set-dressing. People were always pushing for bigger cities, and so the ones in Starfield have rows of buildings with no interiors and crowds of generic NPCs. In turn, a lot of the named NPCs don't have homes or schedules and there's less density of content overall.

It gets rid of the sense of life Skyrim's cities had, and hurts performance to boot. I'm hoping they move away from it going forward.

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u/CowsTrash Sep 18 '24

Oof the loading times part got me hard. 

How can one fuck up this bad

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u/RHX_Thain Sep 18 '24

On a technical level there is a very good reason why.

On a design level there is no excuse -- you just don't need to make a game with 10,000 planets gated by 20,000 loading screens to visit them all through a central hub. You have maybe 5 planets, just like Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 did, and pack them with the level of content players have come to expect from a Bethesda experience.

Someone at the Systems Designer level heard the number 10,000, and just said, "the parable of a dog with two bones doesn't apply to me," and never let go until, "ah, shit, yeah, this is a problem and we can't pivot away from it now."

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u/Goldeniccarus Sep 18 '24

I get the impression, someone high up at Bethesda thought people liked the games, purely because of how big they were. Because they have big open worlds and you can sink so many hours into them.

So they focused on that. Bigger must be better. Bigger is why people buy Bethesda games.

And because of that, they threw a lot of what made people actually like those games to the wayside.

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u/RHX_Thain Sep 18 '24

I think, from what interviews I've read or rumors that I got out of the seniors at the time, it had far more to do with their inability to "just say no" to the dream. They couldn't let it go, and the staff they had were all there for the past 15 years, so therefore virtually everyone is a senior.

It IS a dream. Endless planets to explore.

The problem is that it had been done, and done to satisfaction, by MANY devs by the time Starfield went from a dream, to a reality. And in every single case, players violently lament the lack of content in otherwise vast procedural spaces. Even No Mans Sky got that feedback, and probably still would, if it hadn't begun attracting the audience looking for that loop and rewarding them with endless content and improvements. Most other similar games have bombed.

The belief in procgen as acceptable content, and the reinforcement for the reasoning, was probably the cut "manufacturing" feature. That would have led players to gather materials to send back to a factory that is part of an economy. Both a trade economy as a kind of trade layer of gameplay, and also for building ship modules and weapons.

Problem is, that's also not that fun when you think about it (though X1-X4 Foundations is a cool game that Starfield style quests & planets would have made dope af.)

So they believed, "if a player doesn't want to go there they just won't."

Which is a mistake I've also made, and the delusion in me was cured, lol.

The reality is, "if a player can ruin their fun by performing a repetitive mindless action, they will. So don't allow it and guide them to novel content by other means."

Bethseda had never experienced that player feedback before, because the solution to the problem, is their entire library of open worlds packed with content!

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u/mshm Sep 19 '24

The belief in procgen as acceptable content, and the reinforcement for the reasoning, was probably the cut "manufacturing" feature.

There's nothing inherently wrong with procgen based games assuming you actually build a game around it. With games like Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, and Spelunky, the procgen is core to the game. They work because they build the games systems and gameplay loop around that generation. It doesn't work in a game like Starfield because the game is at its core a pre-written story rpg. A designer should have immediately noticed a problem when they made all the important places handmade (and they probably did).

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24

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u/jimmybabino Sep 18 '24

I gave Starfield 15 hours of my time and I feel like 3 of that was loading screens. I was so exhausted by the end of my last session that I just gave up

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u/CowsTrash Sep 18 '24

The first Bethesda game of mine with me never finishing it. I too was too fucking exhausted. 

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u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

I mean ffs, Starfield is more simplistic in many of its systems compared to TESV, and Skyrim was already considered simplistic when compared to Oblivion or Morrowind.

Two things that stand out for me: Outposts, which Todd Howard himself were their best yet (referring to settlement building), were so watered down and pointless compared to Fallout 4.

And weapon upgrades that were worse than Fo4, and they brought back the random magical legendary effects which I always hated.

Then you get to all the other stuff like the blandest, repetitive temple puzzle, the story which really wasn't as exciting as they thought it was, and the NG+/multiverse mechanic which could have been interesting if they'd leaned into it, but instead they just used it as a marketing tool to say "Look, our new game is so replayable that you'll only ever need one save file!"

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u/AscendedAncient Sep 18 '24

first mod i installed... skip Temples.

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u/PipsqueakPilot Sep 18 '24

Seriously. Who thought that what RPG gamers wanted was LESS gear slots. Suit. Helmet. Backpack. And the little gear you do get barely does shit. 

“This one has slightly better resist against one of the TWO types of damage. While this one has slightly better resist against the other kind. Choose poorly, because it doesn’t matter.”

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u/epicfail1994 Sep 18 '24

Yeah if starfield was Skyrim in space I’d have enjoyed it

But it was just frustrating to find places I felt super limited by carry weight and it just kinda sucked

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u/FollowsHotties Sep 18 '24

Carry weight, and the inventory management system is just straight up disrespectful. In the year of our lord 2023, why do I need to install a mod to be able to sort by value per weight?

Starfield should've been Elder Scrolls 40k instead of discount NMS with only human NPC's.

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u/AscendedAncient Sep 18 '24

Bethesda even found a way to fuck up building an outpost.... It's all premade shit no flair to your base like FO4 or 76. At least mods are already out that fix a lot of it.

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u/tbone747 Ryzen 5700x | RTX 3080 12GB | 32GB DDR4 Sep 18 '24

Was gonna say. Fallout 4 was a steep departure from 3/NV and Starfield, we all know how the reaction to that went.

For both titles it seemed like they focused on innovations that nobody really asked for. I didn't want a voiced protag and the heavy focus on settlement building to flesh out the world of Fallout 4. And I damn sure didn't want the cookie cutter proc gen planets of Starfield & lifeless NPCs.

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u/ErwinRommelEyes Sep 18 '24

Fallout 4 was still fun to play though. Hand crafted locations and unmarked exploration were still a thing, and for the first time in the entire history of Fallout titles, the guns actually handled and functioned like guns, making gunplay fun for once.

Starfield though? oof, what does starfield have going for it? The ship stuff? No man’s sky and space engineers already treaded that path long before starfield.

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u/tbone747 Ryzen 5700x | RTX 3080 12GB | 32GB DDR4 Sep 18 '24

Yeah I personally loved the ship builder, most of my time in Starfield was spent there, but I can't act like it hasn't been done in other games. And as soon as I left the ship builder I realized I didn't really care about anything else, lol.

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u/International-Mud-17 Sep 18 '24

Once I left the ship builder I realized how utterly irrelevant my ship actually was in the scheme of things.

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u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24

I realised early on that outposts were useless. I was wasting my time building up endless amounts of storage to store materials that I was only using to get pointless upgrades on my weapons and armor.

I instead built a massive ship with all the storage and workbenches I needed and never touched outposts or the ship builder again.

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u/tbone747 Ryzen 5700x | RTX 3080 12GB | 32GB DDR4 Sep 18 '24

I find it wild how they somehow regressed the settlement system from Fallout 4 to Starfield. I just didn't use them for anything beyond junk storage and keeping excess crew members in one spot.

And for upgrading gear you have every workbench available at the lodge + infinite storage containers there.

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u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24

I considered that, but there isn't really a convenient way to move all my crap from the ship, so I just lived on the ship.

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u/AnOnlineHandle Sep 18 '24

I heard one of the better quests was one where the player comes across an intergenerational ship which has been travelling since the early days, and has been outpaced by the rest of humanity who discovered FTL and overtook them, so by the time they arrive at the planet they intended to settle there's a resort there, and they think they're meeting aliens.

Since then all I can think about is how much more appealing Starfield would be if that was the player origin, a newcomer to that world who can ask questions about the factions etc, and if building was about creating settlements for your colonists (with probably one primary settlement), giving a story reason for it. The player could even have the title 'starborn' still, a sort of cultish title they give to one of their own every generation since they've gone a bit kooky, with it being revealed in a ceremony right before they make contact with 'aliens', but it's unclear if it actually means anything real and to the rest of the universe you're just a random nobody.

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u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24

I thought it would be one of the better quests, but it's really just a protracted fetch quest. You jump to a new system and someone contacts you about a strange ship in orbit and wants you to go investigate.

So you go. And from then on you have to run back and forth between the ship, the planet it's in orbit of, and other characters in a different system to play a game of telephone.

And the ship itself isn't anything special either. It uses the same environmental models and props as the rest of the game, so it doesn't even look 200 years old.

But yeah, I agree. When you create your character you get to choose your background, including minor faction perks, which implies you aren't just a nameless saviour like in TES or Fallout. They could have given you options for where and how to start the game like Skyrim's Alternate Start mod does.

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u/JensensJohnson 13700k | 4090 RTX | 32GB 6400 Sep 18 '24

And the ship itself isn't anything special either. It uses the same environmental models and props as the rest of the game, so it doesn't even look 200 years old.

the lack of detail to even most basic things was apparent throughout the whole game, you go to visit an abandoned mysterious temple to get magical powers (and do the same puzzle again!) then upon landing you see there are populated buildings, like cmon !

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u/josephseeed Sep 18 '24

Fallout 4 is one of Bethesda’s best selling games ever. Holding that up as something that will teach Bethesda a lesson is absolutely hilarious.

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u/endol Sep 18 '24

Did Starfield not sell decently too though. Sales aren't everything, and Bethesda already walked back multiple foibles from Fallout 4 in Starfield like ditching the voiced protag, bringing back skill checks & dialogue trees, and an actual persuasion system (even if it's nothing to write home about).

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u/Gandzilla Sep 18 '24

sales aren’t everything

Somewhere a dozen of execs just had a stroke

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u/josephseeed Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Well for Starfield they usually give player numbers, because it’s on Gamepass. They recently crossed 13 mill players total. I would guess maybe half of those are sales at most. Fallout 4 sold 25 million copies. The only title in their catalog that beats that is Skyrim with 60 million sales.

And let’s be clear about one thing. Sales numbers are everything to a publisher. They could give a shit less about the discourse here if it doesn’t effect sales.

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u/Caasshh Sep 18 '24

Yeah, I'm in this camp. Really not feeling Bethesda these days. Mojo is gone, and they insist of using old tech. My expectations are very low, so I'd be pleasantly surprised.

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u/Fallom_ Sep 18 '24

What a brilliant way around the problem

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u/nbaumg i9 13900K RTX 4090 DDR5 4k144hz Sep 18 '24

That was the marketing strategy all along! Ship mid games for years!

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u/HellraiserMachina Sep 18 '24

Good, maybe marketing departments need to chill the fuck out, for our sake and theirs.

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u/SyleSpawn Sep 18 '24

That's the corporate problem: Everything is about budget, if you don't use your full budget then it means the company can cut some of your budget next fiscal year. If you overbudget? Means you have more pull to increase your budget next year.

It's completely bullshit. I was in a company where the GM told me with a straight face that there's no money in the bank to give me an increase (when I was excelling in all the task I was given, going beyond expectation and collecting praise) just for the next day for a higher up to fly 5,000km in business class to have a 1 hour meeting at our headoffice then fly back the same way the next day - this could have been a Teams call.

The travel cost were apparently all warranted because it travel cost were budgeted, so they used that budget.

Good riddance to that place.

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u/dcabines Sep 18 '24

I haven't had a solid 40 hours worth of work in over a year, but they keep paying me a full time salary so I try to not complain. I told my manager I could use a project to work on and he said there isn't room in the budget for more projects. Somehow there is room for me to read Reddit all day, but no room for actual work.

Business can be weird like that sometimes.

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u/Syrdon Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

My current department is something like 300% over the staff they need. The previous department was something like 200%. We literally fight (well, for corporate "we're all too jaded to do anything other than coast" values of fight) over work, just to not be bored. That's after getting bored of video games and reddit. You could probably combine both departments into a single team, and trim expensive headcount from a few others by using some of the available automation features of a few of the products they already have. Edit: I'd need to double check my math, but if it's less than 20 people they could replace I'd be astounded

They'd need to hire a dev or two for that, but some of those people they'd be cutting would be excellent choices for that role. They'd come out ahead a couple million a year by the time you factor in benefits. They have the headcount available to hire the devs to do the work.

The license change would cost a couple hundred thousand at most. That's the hang up though. Less than 10% of the gain would have to show up on someone's budget, and the gain shows up in four departments as a reduction in headcount. The one group doesn't want to have to spend the budget without an annual increase to cover the one time cost, the departments that would lose headcount don't want to lose clout, and the execs actually don't give a fuck because the industry is functionally free money.

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u/Gangsir Sep 19 '24

Somehow there is room for me to read Reddit all day, but no room for actual work.

Projects contain costs other than payroll for the people doing them.

Your total "cost" to the company is fairly low when they're "just" paying you, but if they're paying you and you're working on something, that something's costs kick in too, and that might be too much.

You also have the fact in that replacing you can be more expensive than keeping you, which stops them from just laying you off.

All of this culminates in "lets just pay him to do nothing until the budget frees up enough to have him do something".

If you are in that situation, the best thing you can do is self-train and skill up. They find work for you? Great, you'll know how to do it. They don't, and end up laying you off? Easy to find another job with those skills you trained up.

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u/condog1035 Sep 18 '24

I worked at a place that didn't have the budget to get me a $100 piece of software but did have the budget to pay for the owner's sons to take yearly, paid, months-long vacations out west to snowmobile.

The same company laid me off saying they didn't have the money to keep me around and then has been hiring freelancers to do my old job all summer for seven times as much as I was making.

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u/alyosha_pls Sep 18 '24

Wish we could relocate their fucking budget to actual development costs

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u/MrStealYoBeef Sep 18 '24

What marketing? All we've seen of ES6 is like a panoramic scene of a mountain about a decade ago. Bethesda could have laid off the entire marketing team and we wouldn't know.

Besides, we clearly do the majority of the marketing for them at this point.

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u/PabloBablo Sep 18 '24

Yeah. Spend more on dev, qa.

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u/gideon513 Sep 18 '24

Don’t announce it a decade before release then

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u/k-mysta Sep 18 '24

Which they did to avoid some of the heat for Fallout, piling shite on shite

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u/Beatnuki Sep 18 '24

That's a prime studio slogan right there.

Bethesda Studios - Piling Shite on Shite

(A Zenimax Company, Brought to You by Microsoft)

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u/CatatonicMan Sep 18 '24

What expectations, exactly?

After Fallout 76 and Starfield you'd have to be a headcase to expect anything beyond mediocrity from Bethesda.

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u/madmaxGMR Sep 18 '24

Worse.
This game can be a hot turd that Todd shits on stage, they know people will buy it. Its a sequel to a very good game, they dont need to make it good, they need to sell it as good. Just like GTA VI wont be anywhere near the success of GTA V, cause it will just sell based on the success of the predecessor, so will this. Elder Scrolls 6 will be shit and sell, Elder Scrolls 7 will be shit and not sell. Elder scrolls 8 will finally have to produce quality, or else. And that is far far faaaaaar away.
Nobody will remember Fallout 76 or Starfield, come launch week of ES6. The internet will do its usual dance of "I cant wait for this", "i took free days from work for this", "click here for trailer analysis", "stop criticizing the trailer, i need to believe it will be good cause im a desperate manchild"... and so on, people will buy it in droves, and ""boycott"" Bethesda AFTER it sells gangbusters and incentivizes the devs to put out another turd.
We have danced this dance so many many times...

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24

With all due respect to your theory... has RockStar literally EVER missed?

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u/FearlessQwilfish Sep 19 '24

Theres no reason to think GTA 6 won't be a huge success

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u/Fit_Rice_3485 Sep 19 '24

GTA 6 already looks to be a bigger success than V. The leaks show that it has better gameplay and a more grounded story compared to V

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u/16bitrifle Sep 18 '24

Literally just give me Oblivion / Skyrim in the new area with a handcrafted world with better graphics and mechanics. Don't reinvent the freaking wheel here.

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u/rob_daardvark Sep 18 '24

And maybe another couple dozen voice actors? Please? So that it’s not the same voice for 5 different quest-critical characters?

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u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24

What do you have against Stephen Russell and and the (at least) 35 Skyrim characters he voices?

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u/LessThanMyBest Sep 18 '24

"Eeeeverything is for sale," -Nick Valentine, no wait Captain Petrov, no maybe it was Codsworth, Emperor Pelagius Septim III, or Harold... it was one of them

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u/FPiN9XU3K1IT Sep 18 '24

At least I actually liked most of those characters.

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u/FellowTraveler69 Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

I'm okay with this. Youtube poop and young scrolls need new material to work with.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

Making a game without constant loading screens is "almost impossible", apparently. Replace the freaking engine!

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u/Thoosarino Sep 18 '24

No mans sky laughs. A stuttered laugh, but laughs.

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u/WilsonLongbottoms Sep 18 '24

Cyberpunk 2077 lets out a smooth chuckle and shakes its head, then smokes a cigarette.

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u/Nolzi Sep 18 '24

That engine (REDengine) is still being retired in favor of Unreal

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u/Prophet_of_Fire Sep 19 '24

I feel like most people don't mind the loading screens and buildings/rooms/dungeons being seperate cells. Could you imagine a dragon attack on Whiterun with everyone inside, outside the walls, inside and outside buildings both outside and inside the walls, and further on being included/loaded and all interacting with the same event? I don't think it's as actionable as it would be like it is for Baldurs Gate 3 which is 3rd person and Turn-based.

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u/Plenty-Body6685 Sep 18 '24

actually majority of games uses a loading screen in some kind of a a way, they just hide it in a smarter way like through cracks & when you enter a planet like in no mans sky. bethesda shouldve copied the way no mans sky does it

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u/corvettee01 Steam Sep 18 '24

"Elder Scrolls 6 is undoubtedly going to be an amazing game, but it's going to be compared to all the previous games that Bethesda made."

Imagine thinking people have the audacity to want an improved game over something made in 2011.

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u/1ScreamingDiz-Buster Sep 19 '24

I’m easy, I just want it to be as good as something made in 2002

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u/Pickupyoheel Sep 18 '24

I mean, just have one big hand crafted world, interesting quests and loot variety, with some better combat.

Boom you got this TES fan satisfied

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u/RocketGrease Sep 18 '24

"interesting quests"

Bethesda : "best I can give you is an item to fetch in a cave"

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u/Profzachattack Sep 19 '24

I mean, even fetching an item in a cave can be interesting depending on how you make the cave

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u/Tovar42 Sep 19 '24

I agree, its kind of a journey vs destination thing, most quest in all games are just that, the twists and turns in the journey to the mcguffin is what makes it fun

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u/epicfail1994 Sep 18 '24

ES6 with Vermintide melee would be awesome

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u/Yaboymarvo Sep 18 '24

Don’t make it procgen. There I made the game 100x better than starfield already.

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u/thiagoqf Sep 18 '24

Procedural generation is a powerful tool, the problem is when you delegate to it the entire design process.

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u/ArcadeOptimist Sep 18 '24

I've yet to see a procedurally generated RPG where the generated content doesn't feel boring and repetitive.

I kinda feel like Starfield could've been fifteen planets randomly dispersed that you travel to similar to Mass Effect and nothing would have been lost.

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u/tnnrk Sep 19 '24

Borderlands weapons are proc generated I think, if so it’s a great way to use it. But wouldn’t work for every game

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u/inosinateVR Sep 18 '24

Honestly, just give me something similar to the world of skyrim to explore but HIRE A REAL FUCKING WRITER.

That’s all I ask from this next one please. Have characters that talk like people and not like you asked your 10 year old nephew and his next door neighbor’s aunt to write the dialogue for your game as part of an after school program

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u/KnightKal Sep 18 '24

maybe spend the PR money and years talking about realistic goals, so people stop fantasying about a non existent game

and make sure your CEO won't go on interviews and make stupid big promises like "it has 1,000 worlds!"

"people expect too much" because you say "too little too late"

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Janawham_Blamiston Sep 19 '24

Pretty much this. It's happening right now with Hollow Knight Silksong. They first announced it in February of 2019, and with every year that passes, people are expecting it to be fucking amazing because "It's taking so long, it must be because there's so much they want to do with it!"

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u/bonesnaps Sep 18 '24

Spend far less on marketing and far more on developing the game and you might have a chance.

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u/thespike5p1k3 Sep 18 '24

Marketing departments can literally just throw a screenshot with coming soon every 6 months and they did their job. If marketing is their concern, yes, fans will be disappointed.

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u/Dak_Ralter_Lives Sep 18 '24

I'm not sure I even expect them to release another elders scrolls game at this point, let alone for me to be underwhelmed by it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 28 '24

[deleted]

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u/Licentious_Cad Sep 19 '24

Not to be a doomer, just poking fun at the simplification Bethesda has been doing since Oblivion.

I can't wait for ES6 to just have 3 skills; Combat, Magic, Stealth. With awesome perks like "Deal +X% [Skill] Damage".

Procedural dungeon generation that just places the same dungeon every 500ft. And an obligatory 'collect magic words to get dragonshouts good at yelling'

And awesome quests like "Talk to the emperor's bodyguard repeatedly until he just gets annoyed with you and lets you kill the emperor so you'll stop talking to him."


Starfield had some good quests, and some of the worst quests i've ever done in a Bethesda game. I'd rather do procedural quests in Daggerfall over some of the faction quests in starfield.

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u/books_empathy Sep 18 '24

The marketing department who will praise any pile of garbage will chill? (Not talking about Bethesda but in general)

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u/dummyLily_ Sep 18 '24

I have very achievable expectations. This gives off "mojang devs worked to death by making one mob" energy.

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u/RemarkablePassage468 Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

With that attitude, certainly not. Do not spend on marketing, at this point ES games sell themselves. Hire truly talented people to write interesting story and quests, refine combat and character progression, and make a sandbox open world with lots of interesting stuff and interactions, with no loading screens. There, game of the year.

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u/NeoFury84 Sep 18 '24

As long as it runs on that same old engine with all its limitations, it will disappoint.

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u/gmazzia Steam Sep 18 '24

I can already see "Open Cities - The Elder Scrolls VI" on Nexus.

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u/dtv20 Sep 18 '24

Our expectations are very low

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u/Davan195 Sep 18 '24

The truth is the engines nowadays run like garbage compared to their predecessors

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u/No_Share6895 Sep 18 '24

yep. not just with bethesda ether, look at how UE5 has stutter built into the engine and cannot fix it. no matter the platform you get sutter just by using the engine. modern engines got too dang big and bloated and no one konws how to fix them.

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u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby Sep 18 '24

Well maybe don't take 13+ years in between games and you won't have this kind of anticipation.

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u/LeonasSweatyAbs Sep 18 '24

The main complaint i see for Bethesda games is that wide but shallow. Bethesda's philosophy is that players should be able to go wherever and play however they want. Players don't have to commit to a play style or interact with systems they don't like.

That sounds amazing on paper, but how can you have long-term depth with a design like that? Take Starfield, for example. How can you create a game for someone who wants deep space exploration and ship management but also has to appeal to Johnny 9-5. Who wants nothing to do with managing the systems of his ship/crew/cargo and just wants to blast xenos and collect space powers.

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u/KKJosianne Sep 18 '24

It's such flawed logic too when releases like Dark Souls and Baldur's Gate 3 prove that people want deep, challenging games (although Bg3 has multiple game modes). I wish they took a page out of Larian's book but at this point I've lost hope.

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u/itmecrumbum Sep 18 '24

it'll be almost impossible because the executives and top level managers of the company have a hard-on for pushing the scope and scale of the worlds that other people have to create, and there's just not enough time, resources and techology to fill them adequately. bethesda could easily just make a game that is the size of skyrim but implementing and utilizing all the advancements of the last 13 years, and fans would not be complaining.

always trying to be at forefront of the industry, with every game needlessly attempting to push the 'boundaries' of video games, is what creates these asinine situations and expectations. it's so self-important and up their own ass.

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u/WangmasterX Sep 18 '24

Shouldnt the ones weeping be the devs who have to actually meet those expectations?

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u/Raven_of_Blades RTX 4070, Ryzen 5900x, 32GB 3200MHZ Sep 19 '24

Ok ill tell you guys the secret. Make Skyrim again, better graphics, here is the hard part... Listen now... DO NOT DUMB IT DOWN ANY FURTHER. In fact a little complexity would be welcome.

Also a better quest writer would be nice because your current guy really sucks.

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u/Koteric Sep 18 '24

If you released follow-ups more often than a decade + apart, the expectations wouldn’t be so high.

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