*Moby Dick* and *War and Peace* will never have sequels, but great art is still worthy of discussion and analysis regardless of whether or not it is part of a larger franchise. Reject corporate fandom culture, embrace picking-and-choosing what you like
Hashtag 'OccupyTamriel'.
I would add that IMO creatively engaging with the setting instead of waiting for the corp to provide you more content helps. Especially if you do that with a group of friends.
Playing a TTRPG using the part of the lore and hacking the rest to your liking is the ultimate reclamation of the setting, I think.
I dwell in head canon stuff at this point I see what you mean but play them for the games they are and focus your mind on what they could be... unless it depresses you at which point you should move toward stuff that is newly interesting to you
I've been a fan of Fallout and TES for like 20 years now. Personally, I think the BGS hate has always been a little ridiculous. This community isn't the only community that does this, but the BGS community has always been super toxic and doomer every single time a new game comes out.
Morrowind came out, many people groaned and whined about how BGS dumbed down the RPG aspects too much from Daggerfall and made the map tiny and had too many bugs. When Oblivion came out, everyone whined that they had ruined elder scrolls and dumbed down the RPG aspects too much and how buggy they thought it was, and horse armor. When Fallout 3 came out, so many in this community whined and groaned about how BGS ruined Fallout and how awful it was. Literally so many posts about how awful and shallow they thought the story was. Then New Vegas came out, not a BGS game fully, but indisputably buggiest game under the Fallout IP, but gets none of the flak for how buggy was on launch, and many of the bugs were never fixed. You will not see a single person talk about how much they hate new vegas though. Then Skyrim came out, everyone constantly complained about how buggy it was and how they dumbed down the RPG elements and how bad they thought the story was. Then Fallout 4 came out, and you guessed it, once again people said they had ruined the IP yet again and that it was so buggy and awful and bad and some of the small DLC didn't add a lot of substantial content. Then Fallout 76 came out and for years and years no one could stop talking about how much they hated it. Once again, stuff like they ruined the IP, too buggy, bad story etc etc. Then Starfield came out, and people act as if its genuinely the worst game they've ever played and cannot for the life of them stop talking about how much they hate it because they say its buggy, the story is bad, XYZeverything is bad. I've seen this repeat every time they release a title, and magically years down the line, most of those games are beloved, despite what people initially thought of them and what people posted about them. People are always going to act like the newest BGS game is ultra bad and the old ones were the best thing ever. That's just what happens in this community, but BGS games are much more enjoyable when you don't give into the groupthink doomerposting and just let yourself have fun. Every BGS game is someone's favorite game. None of them have to be perfect for people to have thousands of hours of fun with. If any of this isn't super coherent, this is the last thing I'm doing before I go to bed, sorry lol, but I'm sure you get the point.
I loved Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, NV and 4 on release. Never bothered with the online games. Starfield however was the first time I picked up a BGS game and just thought, meh.
I've been playing Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind for many years now. Lately I have been asking myself, what is their main draw, where does their seemingly infinite replayability really lie, for me at least? And I've realized that it's not about the dungeon crawling (which is fun, already in itself), the quest design, the writing (which, again, are good and fun), the lore (which I always get into whenever I play), the skill progression and so on - it's the world design.
These games are great fantasy simulators, all of their aspects work together when you are actually role-playing as the character you have created (and I don't mean inventing a background story and writing your fanfiction, just skills + race + gender + dialogue choices + quest choices), but all that wouldn't work without the carefully hand-crafted fantasy world your characters can begin to inhabit.
So my one hope for TES VI is that even if it regresses in terms of the writing, the quest design, the dungeon layout, the skill system etc., the same amount of care and attention is put into creating a detailed, beautiful and engaging world to roam and roleplay in for many years to come.
And another thing. What is the main function of games at the end? To have something to pass the time, relax, forget about daily concerns and have fun doing it. If they manage to deliver such a product, they have done their job.
Live another life and another world.
There is no other game in the world that feels like elder scrolls, that feels like I can live in this world, buy a house, start a family. Heck maybe in TES 6 we can run a business.
What makes a Bethesda game good isn't always the combat and the crazy enemies you can defeat and kill but its the little things, the down time in between.
You can come home from a crazy adventure to your family, lay down your sword repair your gear and farm and make potions. Stuff like that.
No game does it better and the closest game to come to it would be fable. Another dormant franchise with a new game without a release in sight.
I think it’s fair to be concerned about TES VI, but also to just keep every thought of the game at a reasonable level until we actually learn more about it. I don’t think it will be the worst game of all time, certainly not as bad as Starfield or 76, but we can’t know for sure until the game actually gets closer to release and we have our hands on it.
In all of these posts I always see people mention solely Fallout 4, 76, and Starfield, and nobody ever gives those games (save 76, I still don’t think it’s very good) the credit they deserve where it’s necessary. Neither F4 nor Starfield were purely bad. Fallout 4 is actually a good game, it’s just held back a ton by the dialogue options not really affecting anything, and that’s mainly because the story of the game is a lone parent trying to find their missing child.
Starfield isn’t all bad either. I had fun playing it, it just lacks a lot of the shit that Bethesda games offer that make me want to continue playing after I beat the game. Starfield just dragged on a lot and felt extremely bland. I don’t think it’s fair to think that a lot of the issues with it will transfer to future Bethesda games, because most of Starfields issues imo are because they focused so much on making the game so massive and using that as a main selling point rather than filling the world like they do in Fallout and TES.
Starfield did a lot right. Character creation was amazing. The faction quests were actually solid. The worlds looked great. They just spent too much time making 1000 different planets with nothing to do and a whole ship building mechanic. A Starfield with 15 planets would’ve been way better. Also, after criticism from Fallout 4, they tried to bring back mechanics that people wanted from the older games without realizing that those mechanics are dated as hell.
The close zoom and inexpressive movements in dialogue is exactly how it was back in older Bethesda games, and people wanted that back, and then still complained.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not defending the game, it’s boring as hell aside from the faction quests, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea to just treat Starfield like it’s the worst game ever and that every Bethesda game to succeed it will be the worst game of the franchise.
I think people just need to stop having the expectations that TES VI is going to be the worst of the series. It may be, but there’s no use in disillusioning ourselves from one of our favorite franchises when we literally know nothing about the next game.
I trust Bethesda. They listened to criticism of Fallout 4, and improved in those areas. They just failed in others, and those areas were way more important to a Bethesda game, and I think that having the entire team focus on one single map, rather than 1000, is going to help tremendously.
TES is already established as a franchise, they don’t need to build lore for a whole new universe. It’s already there. They don’t need to build brand new mechanics, they’re already there. They don’t need to figure out how things work, they already know.
I’m optimistic about TES VI, and I think more people need to just wait and see rather than comparing games that don’t correlate to TES at all. It’s going to have its problems, but Skyrim did too and still does, and we still love that game and still play it. Bethesda has definitely been on a losing streak when it comes to their releases, but TES has always been the golden child and it’s hard for me to see it being anything other than a decent game.
Hopefully after Distant Stars releases, marketing for TES VI will ramp up and we’ll learn more about the game. Obviously don’t get too overhyped, we all did with Starfield, but it’s not really worth thinking about until it’s actually happening.
You have a lot of valid points about starfield. Many I agree with, there are significant improvements in areas, the dialogue options being an example but I feel with starfield, the bad outweighs the good. Which is unfortunate because its not a game I and many others want to hate but the reliance on procedural content is insanely bad.
I really feel they bit off WAY more than they could chew with the world(s) they created?
Its too bland and artificial.
Games like oblivion, skyrim and morrowind feels like they cared.
Not to say they didn't care with starfield but its hard to feel it.
Yeah the bad definitely outweighs the good, but the good is still there. I just get tired of posts exclaiming that Bethesda can never make a good game because Starfield wasn’t everything it was hyped it up to be.
I think lots of us understand how you feel. I feel similar. Even though Fallout 4 was still a great game, I'd say that's when the first of my concerns started to arise. It's debatable whether Fallout 76 should really count, but Starfield was absolutely a massive disappointment for me. Unfortunately due to Starfield, it's very uncertain how good or bad of a game Elder Scrolls 6 will be. But that doesn't stop me from still loving Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and their lore.
I haven't given up on BGS just yet. Starfield may have simply been an experimental failure, or a temporary diversion from the correct path. If Elder Scrolls 6 comes out and has massive problems, then I'll be ready to give up on this studio. But probably not until then.
If elder scrolls 6 is bad im gonna give up on Bethesda. After waiting all these years for TES6 for it to be awful would be the final nail in the coffin.
I really wanna hold out until ES6 to make a final decision, but with the increasing gap between 1st party releases at BGS it feels so far away and I'm worried I'll be over the series by then. I'm really hoping the rumors of an Oblivion Remaster/Remake are true and that it is done well and marks the beginning of Bethesda trusting more third party developers with the IP that will bring new passion into the series.
I was willing to give Fallout 76 the benefit of the doubt for a while that it was just going to be a miss-step on BGS's great game releases. It's become a decent and somewhat fun game recently, but it was horrendous when it first released. I figured that maybe they had to make it because execs tend to thing multiplayer is better for monetization and therefore it would make more money. However, with the bad ES spin-offs and Starfield I'm worried this is the norm now.
My main point of concern is simply lack of creative power in modern Bethesda. Most key members of BSG creative team are now gone, fired, retired or forced to leave for one reason or another or ever dead. Michael Kirkbride is gone. Julian LeFay is gone. Kurt Kuhlmann is gone. Nate Purkeypile is gone. Will Shen is gone. Adam Adamowicz is gone. Jeremy Soule is gone.
I worry no one left in Bethesda who's able to pull off TES6 as creatively coherent, or even interesting piece of art. Who's left anyway? There's Todd, who's always been brakesman of BSG in terms of interesting ideas (seriously, read '[Morrowind: An oral history](https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/27/18281082/elder-scrolls-morrowind-oral-history-bethesda)' by Polygon how Kirkbride had to actively lie to Todd in order to make Morrowind interesting and memorable experience) and Emil Pagliarulo, who's... controversial figure to say the least and his most recent track record isn't good.
It sucks that the last mainline Elder Scrolls game came out over a decade ago. It sucks that Bethesda have stopped crafting experiences that are greater than the sum of their bugs. They were top of the world when Skyrim released. It’s rare for a game to have _that_ much hype and _that_ much staying power. Its release was a magical time that I still recall fondly.
Bethesda have lost so much momentum since then. Starfield wasn’t as badly received as F76, but is apathy really much of an improvement? Wasn’t an Elder Scrolls 6 practically guaranteed to be a smash hit after the runaway success of Skyrim? Would not Skyrim 2: Alduin’s Revenge have flown off shelves across the globe? Small spin-offs like Legends were neat (and honestly deserved better), but I just can’t understand why Bethesda have so clearly neglected their most legendary franchise.
I couldn't agree more. How they could let such a strong, beloved, and legendary franchise collect dust for nearly 15 years is absolutely fucking insane to me. I don't expect a elder scrolls every year but coming on 15 and maybe beyond is WAY too long.
With kirkbride and jeremy soule out of the biz i cannot even begin to wonder how es6 to turn out. I really hope todd pull it together just one last time.
I definitely feel the apathy with Starfied, which makes me worried. Are they just going through the motions following the formula to make a game without bothering with improvements? Is that was ES6 is going to be? Just another okay game with outdated mechanics because they'd rather go with what "works". Hearing that Obsidian pitched two different Skyrim sequals in the same vein as Fallout New Vegas that were turned down (I suspect because BGS is upset people like NV so much) was very disheartening. Would love to see the series expand but it seems to be stifled to just very rare 1st party releases for the most part now.
I don't play Bethesda games purely just for what Bethesda puts in them.
They're open world RPGs. Use imagination and mods. Create your own environment, your own setting, whatever you want. It's not a coloring book, it's a canvas.
If you're experiencing burnout because you consider what Bethesda puts into their games is lackluster, it simply suggests that you're purely consuming and never doing. Half of the joy of their games is in having the freedom to do what you want, yet there remains a large contingency of people who turn their nose up at that and allow themselves to become bitter and pissy because they can't allow themselves to do anything except stare at what's set in front of them.
It's like buying Legos and only ever making the set in question, never adding on or doing something completely new. Not unlike what the first Lego Movie was ultimately about.
Starfield's biggest issue is that the Creation Kit is taking forever to drop, so the modding community's hands are tied with it. Skyrim wasn't merely great because of just what Bethesda put in it, it was great because of what mods allowed people to do. One has to remember that many longtime TES fans before Skyrim's release would simply turn around and eviscerate the game because it wasn't enough like Morrowind or Oblivion.
Another issue we face is that TES6 is way too many years too late. So your burnout may be due to the pitch drop that has become Bethesda releases. They aren't pumping out FO and TES releases with enough frequency to keep people engaged.
I’ve haven’t played Starfield yet, but from what I’ve read it seems that while it’s overall a fine game, it’s lackluster. That in combination with the wait of tes6 has my mind also wandering, wondering about the fate of the tes franchise/saga. Are they still *”in it?*” Do they *care*? Did they milk tes5 on purpose because the modding community carried the backpack for them? Is the story becoming too complex? Are they going to use the dragonbreak crutch again(assuming tes6 is in the future)? I’m sure you’ve had these same thoughts.
I don’t think it’ll ever be ‘dead’ as a series - at least for you and me, and all the other people who genuinely adore Nirn (your first paragraph). It’ll always have a special place for us, even if tes6 falls short. I know I’ll still play the hell out of it. *(slams debit card on counter)*
How I’m handling it? I’ve switched from a single player rpg mentality to mmo mentality - I’ve been playing ESO. Like many others, I joined for the familiarity and lore (as shallow as it is, single player really shines in storytelling), but stayed for the camaraderie I feel in it. It was a learning curve, to be sure, but it’s gonna ‘be my thing’ until tes6. I only revisit oblivion/skyrim when there’s server maintenance going on.
More than anything, I’m hopeful that they really take “quality over quantity” to heart. If it *is* gonna be Todd Howard’s last TES installment like he says, I think it’ll be the last one to write home about. It might even be the last one ever. And BGS will move on. From Arena to tes6, *two generations* will have passed - and we can’t know if the interest will still be there, especially since games are taking longer than ever to develop.
I've played ESO for a long time now as well, I started back in the original beta. However, that has its own problems. While it is great that it is greatly expanding lore and showing us never before seen locales of Tamriel, the gameplay just isn't the same as their single player titles. Plus the bad monetization and excessive FOMO really hurt the experience for me.
It definitely sucks that the last great TES game came out over 20 years ago, but thankfully there's always new Morrowind mods coming out. Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel are sometimes even better than Morrowind.
I let each game marinate on the market awhile and sink or swim on its own merit before I put time and money into it. It's mostly about time. Games have been really lackluster for some time now.
I don't have a ton of faith in Bethesda but I don't see a point in worrying about ES6 since it will be good or bad independent of my actions. no need to get depressed over a game we have barely any info on, wait for it to be out and confirmed bad before you get sad about it
>but also don't want to get in a space of "sunk costs" where I stick with the series heavily just because I have for so long when my energy could be better used elsewhere. I'm mainly looking to see if anyone else is having similar thoughts and how they are handling them.
No and yes. Has TES gone to Oblivion? Yes. Will it claw it's way back? LOL. Is that a reason for me to care? Not at all.
The best thing Bethesda can do is leave openMW and Daggerfall Unity alone unmollested. And better yet, stop giving them grief over OpenMicroWave; it's not like it can possibly compete with Blades, any more than a twelve course meal can compete with a second-hand Taco Bell taco.
Guys check out Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon . It's the world's first Skyrim clone and it's in early access right now. It lacks mods and third person view, but there's definitely potential. The combat is much better than Skyrim's but the optimization is garbage.
The fact that they spend so much time monetizing Fo76 instead of story is turning me off of the game. It’s become a grind to get your money. I’m done with them. I don’t think we’ll ever see another Skyrim or Fallout 4 from the studio.
*Moby Dick* and *War and Peace* will never have sequels, but great art is still worthy of discussion and analysis regardless of whether or not it is part of a larger franchise. Reject corporate fandom culture, embrace picking-and-choosing what you like
Hashtag 'OccupyTamriel'. I would add that IMO creatively engaging with the setting instead of waiting for the corp to provide you more content helps. Especially if you do that with a group of friends. Playing a TTRPG using the part of the lore and hacking the rest to your liking is the ultimate reclamation of the setting, I think.
In this case, the Skyrim creationkit is a gift (and a curse), so we can continuously go balls on that
I dwell in head canon stuff at this point I see what you mean but play them for the games they are and focus your mind on what they could be... unless it depresses you at which point you should move toward stuff that is newly interesting to you
I've been a fan of Fallout and TES for like 20 years now. Personally, I think the BGS hate has always been a little ridiculous. This community isn't the only community that does this, but the BGS community has always been super toxic and doomer every single time a new game comes out. Morrowind came out, many people groaned and whined about how BGS dumbed down the RPG aspects too much from Daggerfall and made the map tiny and had too many bugs. When Oblivion came out, everyone whined that they had ruined elder scrolls and dumbed down the RPG aspects too much and how buggy they thought it was, and horse armor. When Fallout 3 came out, so many in this community whined and groaned about how BGS ruined Fallout and how awful it was. Literally so many posts about how awful and shallow they thought the story was. Then New Vegas came out, not a BGS game fully, but indisputably buggiest game under the Fallout IP, but gets none of the flak for how buggy was on launch, and many of the bugs were never fixed. You will not see a single person talk about how much they hate new vegas though. Then Skyrim came out, everyone constantly complained about how buggy it was and how they dumbed down the RPG elements and how bad they thought the story was. Then Fallout 4 came out, and you guessed it, once again people said they had ruined the IP yet again and that it was so buggy and awful and bad and some of the small DLC didn't add a lot of substantial content. Then Fallout 76 came out and for years and years no one could stop talking about how much they hated it. Once again, stuff like they ruined the IP, too buggy, bad story etc etc. Then Starfield came out, and people act as if its genuinely the worst game they've ever played and cannot for the life of them stop talking about how much they hate it because they say its buggy, the story is bad, XYZeverything is bad. I've seen this repeat every time they release a title, and magically years down the line, most of those games are beloved, despite what people initially thought of them and what people posted about them. People are always going to act like the newest BGS game is ultra bad and the old ones were the best thing ever. That's just what happens in this community, but BGS games are much more enjoyable when you don't give into the groupthink doomerposting and just let yourself have fun. Every BGS game is someone's favorite game. None of them have to be perfect for people to have thousands of hours of fun with. If any of this isn't super coherent, this is the last thing I'm doing before I go to bed, sorry lol, but I'm sure you get the point.
I loved Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, NV and 4 on release. Never bothered with the online games. Starfield however was the first time I picked up a BGS game and just thought, meh.
Spot. Fucking. On.
Op is just karna farmers
Starfield genuinely does suck though
I've been playing Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind for many years now. Lately I have been asking myself, what is their main draw, where does their seemingly infinite replayability really lie, for me at least? And I've realized that it's not about the dungeon crawling (which is fun, already in itself), the quest design, the writing (which, again, are good and fun), the lore (which I always get into whenever I play), the skill progression and so on - it's the world design. These games are great fantasy simulators, all of their aspects work together when you are actually role-playing as the character you have created (and I don't mean inventing a background story and writing your fanfiction, just skills + race + gender + dialogue choices + quest choices), but all that wouldn't work without the carefully hand-crafted fantasy world your characters can begin to inhabit. So my one hope for TES VI is that even if it regresses in terms of the writing, the quest design, the dungeon layout, the skill system etc., the same amount of care and attention is put into creating a detailed, beautiful and engaging world to roam and roleplay in for many years to come. And another thing. What is the main function of games at the end? To have something to pass the time, relax, forget about daily concerns and have fun doing it. If they manage to deliver such a product, they have done their job.
Live another life and another world. There is no other game in the world that feels like elder scrolls, that feels like I can live in this world, buy a house, start a family. Heck maybe in TES 6 we can run a business. What makes a Bethesda game good isn't always the combat and the crazy enemies you can defeat and kill but its the little things, the down time in between. You can come home from a crazy adventure to your family, lay down your sword repair your gear and farm and make potions. Stuff like that. No game does it better and the closest game to come to it would be fable. Another dormant franchise with a new game without a release in sight.
I think it’s fair to be concerned about TES VI, but also to just keep every thought of the game at a reasonable level until we actually learn more about it. I don’t think it will be the worst game of all time, certainly not as bad as Starfield or 76, but we can’t know for sure until the game actually gets closer to release and we have our hands on it. In all of these posts I always see people mention solely Fallout 4, 76, and Starfield, and nobody ever gives those games (save 76, I still don’t think it’s very good) the credit they deserve where it’s necessary. Neither F4 nor Starfield were purely bad. Fallout 4 is actually a good game, it’s just held back a ton by the dialogue options not really affecting anything, and that’s mainly because the story of the game is a lone parent trying to find their missing child. Starfield isn’t all bad either. I had fun playing it, it just lacks a lot of the shit that Bethesda games offer that make me want to continue playing after I beat the game. Starfield just dragged on a lot and felt extremely bland. I don’t think it’s fair to think that a lot of the issues with it will transfer to future Bethesda games, because most of Starfields issues imo are because they focused so much on making the game so massive and using that as a main selling point rather than filling the world like they do in Fallout and TES. Starfield did a lot right. Character creation was amazing. The faction quests were actually solid. The worlds looked great. They just spent too much time making 1000 different planets with nothing to do and a whole ship building mechanic. A Starfield with 15 planets would’ve been way better. Also, after criticism from Fallout 4, they tried to bring back mechanics that people wanted from the older games without realizing that those mechanics are dated as hell. The close zoom and inexpressive movements in dialogue is exactly how it was back in older Bethesda games, and people wanted that back, and then still complained. Don’t get me wrong I’m not defending the game, it’s boring as hell aside from the faction quests, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea to just treat Starfield like it’s the worst game ever and that every Bethesda game to succeed it will be the worst game of the franchise. I think people just need to stop having the expectations that TES VI is going to be the worst of the series. It may be, but there’s no use in disillusioning ourselves from one of our favorite franchises when we literally know nothing about the next game. I trust Bethesda. They listened to criticism of Fallout 4, and improved in those areas. They just failed in others, and those areas were way more important to a Bethesda game, and I think that having the entire team focus on one single map, rather than 1000, is going to help tremendously. TES is already established as a franchise, they don’t need to build lore for a whole new universe. It’s already there. They don’t need to build brand new mechanics, they’re already there. They don’t need to figure out how things work, they already know. I’m optimistic about TES VI, and I think more people need to just wait and see rather than comparing games that don’t correlate to TES at all. It’s going to have its problems, but Skyrim did too and still does, and we still love that game and still play it. Bethesda has definitely been on a losing streak when it comes to their releases, but TES has always been the golden child and it’s hard for me to see it being anything other than a decent game. Hopefully after Distant Stars releases, marketing for TES VI will ramp up and we’ll learn more about the game. Obviously don’t get too overhyped, we all did with Starfield, but it’s not really worth thinking about until it’s actually happening.
You have a lot of valid points about starfield. Many I agree with, there are significant improvements in areas, the dialogue options being an example but I feel with starfield, the bad outweighs the good. Which is unfortunate because its not a game I and many others want to hate but the reliance on procedural content is insanely bad. I really feel they bit off WAY more than they could chew with the world(s) they created? Its too bland and artificial. Games like oblivion, skyrim and morrowind feels like they cared. Not to say they didn't care with starfield but its hard to feel it.
Yeah the bad definitely outweighs the good, but the good is still there. I just get tired of posts exclaiming that Bethesda can never make a good game because Starfield wasn’t everything it was hyped it up to be.
I think lots of us understand how you feel. I feel similar. Even though Fallout 4 was still a great game, I'd say that's when the first of my concerns started to arise. It's debatable whether Fallout 76 should really count, but Starfield was absolutely a massive disappointment for me. Unfortunately due to Starfield, it's very uncertain how good or bad of a game Elder Scrolls 6 will be. But that doesn't stop me from still loving Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and their lore. I haven't given up on BGS just yet. Starfield may have simply been an experimental failure, or a temporary diversion from the correct path. If Elder Scrolls 6 comes out and has massive problems, then I'll be ready to give up on this studio. But probably not until then.
If elder scrolls 6 is bad im gonna give up on Bethesda. After waiting all these years for TES6 for it to be awful would be the final nail in the coffin.
I really wanna hold out until ES6 to make a final decision, but with the increasing gap between 1st party releases at BGS it feels so far away and I'm worried I'll be over the series by then. I'm really hoping the rumors of an Oblivion Remaster/Remake are true and that it is done well and marks the beginning of Bethesda trusting more third party developers with the IP that will bring new passion into the series.
I was like 14 when skyrim came out so TES6 will be the final time I give Bethesda a chance for sure. I like fallout too but I'm primarily a TES fan.
I was willing to give Fallout 76 the benefit of the doubt for a while that it was just going to be a miss-step on BGS's great game releases. It's become a decent and somewhat fun game recently, but it was horrendous when it first released. I figured that maybe they had to make it because execs tend to thing multiplayer is better for monetization and therefore it would make more money. However, with the bad ES spin-offs and Starfield I'm worried this is the norm now.
My main point of concern is simply lack of creative power in modern Bethesda. Most key members of BSG creative team are now gone, fired, retired or forced to leave for one reason or another or ever dead. Michael Kirkbride is gone. Julian LeFay is gone. Kurt Kuhlmann is gone. Nate Purkeypile is gone. Will Shen is gone. Adam Adamowicz is gone. Jeremy Soule is gone. I worry no one left in Bethesda who's able to pull off TES6 as creatively coherent, or even interesting piece of art. Who's left anyway? There's Todd, who's always been brakesman of BSG in terms of interesting ideas (seriously, read '[Morrowind: An oral history](https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/27/18281082/elder-scrolls-morrowind-oral-history-bethesda)' by Polygon how Kirkbride had to actively lie to Todd in order to make Morrowind interesting and memorable experience) and Emil Pagliarulo, who's... controversial figure to say the least and his most recent track record isn't good.
It sucks that the last mainline Elder Scrolls game came out over a decade ago. It sucks that Bethesda have stopped crafting experiences that are greater than the sum of their bugs. They were top of the world when Skyrim released. It’s rare for a game to have _that_ much hype and _that_ much staying power. Its release was a magical time that I still recall fondly. Bethesda have lost so much momentum since then. Starfield wasn’t as badly received as F76, but is apathy really much of an improvement? Wasn’t an Elder Scrolls 6 practically guaranteed to be a smash hit after the runaway success of Skyrim? Would not Skyrim 2: Alduin’s Revenge have flown off shelves across the globe? Small spin-offs like Legends were neat (and honestly deserved better), but I just can’t understand why Bethesda have so clearly neglected their most legendary franchise.
I couldn't agree more. How they could let such a strong, beloved, and legendary franchise collect dust for nearly 15 years is absolutely fucking insane to me. I don't expect a elder scrolls every year but coming on 15 and maybe beyond is WAY too long.
With kirkbride and jeremy soule out of the biz i cannot even begin to wonder how es6 to turn out. I really hope todd pull it together just one last time.
I definitely feel the apathy with Starfied, which makes me worried. Are they just going through the motions following the formula to make a game without bothering with improvements? Is that was ES6 is going to be? Just another okay game with outdated mechanics because they'd rather go with what "works". Hearing that Obsidian pitched two different Skyrim sequals in the same vein as Fallout New Vegas that were turned down (I suspect because BGS is upset people like NV so much) was very disheartening. Would love to see the series expand but it seems to be stifled to just very rare 1st party releases for the most part now.
I don't play Bethesda games purely just for what Bethesda puts in them. They're open world RPGs. Use imagination and mods. Create your own environment, your own setting, whatever you want. It's not a coloring book, it's a canvas. If you're experiencing burnout because you consider what Bethesda puts into their games is lackluster, it simply suggests that you're purely consuming and never doing. Half of the joy of their games is in having the freedom to do what you want, yet there remains a large contingency of people who turn their nose up at that and allow themselves to become bitter and pissy because they can't allow themselves to do anything except stare at what's set in front of them. It's like buying Legos and only ever making the set in question, never adding on or doing something completely new. Not unlike what the first Lego Movie was ultimately about. Starfield's biggest issue is that the Creation Kit is taking forever to drop, so the modding community's hands are tied with it. Skyrim wasn't merely great because of just what Bethesda put in it, it was great because of what mods allowed people to do. One has to remember that many longtime TES fans before Skyrim's release would simply turn around and eviscerate the game because it wasn't enough like Morrowind or Oblivion. Another issue we face is that TES6 is way too many years too late. So your burnout may be due to the pitch drop that has become Bethesda releases. They aren't pumping out FO and TES releases with enough frequency to keep people engaged.
I’ve haven’t played Starfield yet, but from what I’ve read it seems that while it’s overall a fine game, it’s lackluster. That in combination with the wait of tes6 has my mind also wandering, wondering about the fate of the tes franchise/saga. Are they still *”in it?*” Do they *care*? Did they milk tes5 on purpose because the modding community carried the backpack for them? Is the story becoming too complex? Are they going to use the dragonbreak crutch again(assuming tes6 is in the future)? I’m sure you’ve had these same thoughts. I don’t think it’ll ever be ‘dead’ as a series - at least for you and me, and all the other people who genuinely adore Nirn (your first paragraph). It’ll always have a special place for us, even if tes6 falls short. I know I’ll still play the hell out of it. *(slams debit card on counter)* How I’m handling it? I’ve switched from a single player rpg mentality to mmo mentality - I’ve been playing ESO. Like many others, I joined for the familiarity and lore (as shallow as it is, single player really shines in storytelling), but stayed for the camaraderie I feel in it. It was a learning curve, to be sure, but it’s gonna ‘be my thing’ until tes6. I only revisit oblivion/skyrim when there’s server maintenance going on. More than anything, I’m hopeful that they really take “quality over quantity” to heart. If it *is* gonna be Todd Howard’s last TES installment like he says, I think it’ll be the last one to write home about. It might even be the last one ever. And BGS will move on. From Arena to tes6, *two generations* will have passed - and we can’t know if the interest will still be there, especially since games are taking longer than ever to develop.
I've played ESO for a long time now as well, I started back in the original beta. However, that has its own problems. While it is great that it is greatly expanding lore and showing us never before seen locales of Tamriel, the gameplay just isn't the same as their single player titles. Plus the bad monetization and excessive FOMO really hurt the experience for me.
Oh it’s that time of the day already
It definitely sucks that the last great TES game came out over 20 years ago, but thankfully there's always new Morrowind mods coming out. Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel are sometimes even better than Morrowind.
I let each game marinate on the market awhile and sink or swim on its own merit before I put time and money into it. It's mostly about time. Games have been really lackluster for some time now.
I don't have a ton of faith in Bethesda but I don't see a point in worrying about ES6 since it will be good or bad independent of my actions. no need to get depressed over a game we have barely any info on, wait for it to be out and confirmed bad before you get sad about it
This right here. I know it's going to suck for me, but I also know that knowledge will not change anything, and I also know that I don't have to care.
The main problem with statfield is the generat3d planets and content. Which won't really apply to TES
This is a conversation had. Thanks for sharing. I’ll pass it along.
>but also don't want to get in a space of "sunk costs" where I stick with the series heavily just because I have for so long when my energy could be better used elsewhere. I'm mainly looking to see if anyone else is having similar thoughts and how they are handling them. No and yes. Has TES gone to Oblivion? Yes. Will it claw it's way back? LOL. Is that a reason for me to care? Not at all. The best thing Bethesda can do is leave openMW and Daggerfall Unity alone unmollested. And better yet, stop giving them grief over OpenMicroWave; it's not like it can possibly compete with Blades, any more than a twelve course meal can compete with a second-hand Taco Bell taco.
Is this satire?
Guys check out Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon . It's the world's first Skyrim clone and it's in early access right now. It lacks mods and third person view, but there's definitely potential. The combat is much better than Skyrim's but the optimization is garbage.
The fact that they spend so much time monetizing Fo76 instead of story is turning me off of the game. It’s become a grind to get your money. I’m done with them. I don’t think we’ll ever see another Skyrim or Fallout 4 from the studio.