Arena started it all, with the entirety of Tamriel generated for you to explore freely. Daggerfall moved that into a smaller region with political intrigue and a detailed character system. Morrowind took it to new exotic lands and introduced the series to both consoles and the world of modding and creators. Oblivion brought us to the heart of the Empire, realms beyond, and all new gameplay mechanics. Skyrim let you do battle with dragons in Tamriel’s harsh northern province.
Reading this paragraph kind of highlights when they stopped innovating
I remember how I was amazed when they showed that you could pick up shot arrows in Oblivion. Now I am not even going to click this link for whatever the drip feed information it contains. Seeing what Bethesda, Blizzard and Ubisoft have become, 17 years old me would be very disappointed in today's game industry.
Oblivion is hands-down one of my favorite games I have ever played and I feel it’s a more engaging game than Skyrim was. Sure it has its quirks and certain annoying features that are dated, but it captivated and locked me in way better than Skyrim. It was colorful, weirdly fantastical, and constantly had me going down random rabbit holes that revealed cool surprises! That is the Bethesda quality I desired that made me want to play their games.
If it was 2016 again and I heard this news about ES VI, I would be on the full hype train. But alas, we are post Starfield and I have lost any faith they will actually deliver on a decent follow-up. It was lackluster, boring, and all grey; nothing whimsical that used to draw me to their games. The doubling down on criticism tells me that creative spirit is gone and development has just turned into get the task done with a set time frame.
No kidding. Or how we just got used to Morrowind’s erm…“unique” hit system and weapons actually collided in Oblivion, with real physics!
And I still remember that trailer shot of walking down the hallway with the traps and casting a fireball while still holding a sword. It was such a crazy feature update!
“Close shut the jaws…OF OBLIVION”
And…yeah…today’s game industry is more “How can we make Ai enhanced 24k textures so the game is a 1.5 TB install, but streamline it so entire armor sets are a single item and we remove half the skills from previous titles.”
I really liked Skyrim, but definitely disagreed with how “opinionated” the games got about how you were supposed to play them…
Finally digging themselves out of the Gamebryo hole in favor of a modern engine.
Bringing in inspired talent to replace their long-stale game design and direction.
Character art that doesn’t look like Bethesda hates humans. (To be fair, they might have addressed this in Starfield. Humanoids in past Elder Scrolls games look ugly as hell, though.)
I have lost all interest in playing any future Bethesda games because of their engine. It was pretty crap (but acceptable) back in 2011. Now it feels like a scam to pay for their games. Like one of those “GameStation 5” you can buy on Wish.
the engine has some quirks but the platform is irreplaceably easy to edit and easy to use with its plugin system, and conflicts with other plugins are simple to handle unlike majority of games that get modded
without that all you have is a bland game with forgettable story and barely any rpg elements, but gamebryo is replaced by another engine and its own bugs and faults
Yours is the only praise I think I’ve ever seen for their approach to conflict resolution. I suppose there’s always someone who hasn’t been bitten. :)
no gamebryo means modding is likely gone with it
Mod support as good as (or better than) Gamebryo’s is always possible, assuming the studio is willing and competent.
Bethesda surely understand how much they have benefited from modding over the years. Skyrim’s Anniversary Edition content is built mostly of mods, after all. So it’s reasonable to think they would at least consider making it a priority in a new engine.
It’s not “some quirks”, gamebryo completely killed any ambition in Starfield with how utterly ancient and impractical it is. Most issues with Starfield, even some gameplay issues, boil down to the engine or the things they had to do to try and mitigate its shittiness. This led the modding community to pretty much ditch Starfield, despite how moddable the game is.
And sure, modding will suffer, but other games with different engines manage to have modded content too.
The only reason gamebryo modding is “easy” is because the community has been working on tools for it for decades.
It uses weird proprietary formats nobody else is using and full of stupid quirks. Back when Morrowind released, officially all Bethesda provided along the construction set was their plugin for a thousand-dollar licenced product to make nif models. Nowadays they don’t even do that anymore because they know people have been making their own free tools for Blender etc.
As for the modding structure itself, other games support a plugin hierarchy like they do. Rimworld in particular, and it runs on Unity.
Last but not least, yes, we are in development on the next chapter – The Elder Scrolls VI. Even now, returning to Tamriel and playing early builds has us filled with the same joy, excitement, and promises of adventure.
So still no updates on TES6 then. Saved you a click I guess
This is my take too. I gave Starfield a chance and I should have just gotten Baldurs Gate 3 that weekend instead.
What’s worse is how they dug down into qualifying why it sucked and their nightmare of a PR response. It fucking sucks though too. I want them to be good.
I couldn’t finish Starfield, but had fun up until the point they added the fantasy mechanic to it. For a game I got for free, it was worth every cent. I might have been upset if I got it full price though.
They really, really need to take the critiques of their procgen to heart. Games are too big now. We don’t need endless planets of nothing. You can create incredible experiences that unfold over dozens of hours - if not hundreds - in a smaller, more curated world.
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