Is Elder Scrolls 6 doomed to fail? I can't see how it will work

Woodstock , 11 hours ago

I’m hopeful but cautious.

For me the big issue with Starfield was the obsession with massive maps/worlds etc that were either empty or filled with junk. The travel system and loading screens also made the game as a whole completely disjointed.

The only reason I’m hopeful is the continuous map as opposed to content being spread way too thin on thousands of planets. If they get the content more dense then hopefully it’ll be at least half decent.

I’m totally with you on Bethesda / Microsoft trying to get the most money out of the least effort and that’s my biggest reason I’m not getting hyped for it. The goal for them is currently the most cash rather than making the best game possible. Annoyingly this has infected pretty much all big game studios these days. Ironically, that approach is better for the short term but horrendous for the long term outlook.

I’ll be sticking to the golden rule though: NO PREORDERS!

simple , 11 hours ago

They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4

Eh, not really. Fallout 4 has its share of fans and while the roleplaying and story was weak, I thought the world was well laid out and fun to explore. But yeah, none of their games are as good as Skyrim which says a lot because that game has a ton of issues itself.

I think ES6 can still be good but it needs a lot of change from Bethesda’s side. For one, they should either trash the engine or fix its issues. It’s unbelievable that everything in Starfield has a loading screen between it, ran poorly, and was still a buggy mess. The enemy AI was apparently unchanged for the last 20 years or so, because every NPC is still clunky and has trouble moving from A to B.

If anything I think starfield was exactly the kick in the nuts that Bethesda needed. Hopefully it motivates them to do better next time.

Stovetop , 11 hours ago (edited 9 hours ago)

None of their games are as good as Morrowind, yet that hasn’t stopped them from selling like hotcakes.

superkret , 11 hours ago

Morrowind was also an almost unplayable buggy mess when it came out.
One of the first places you go to if you do the main quest is the Balmora mages guild, and when you went downstairs in the release version, you regularly fell through the floor.
And alchemy, crafting and spellcrafting were so broken you could just spend half an hour on it to turn yourself into a god.

dojan , 10 hours ago

It wasn’t well balanced but it was a good RPG experience. Oblivion had a bunch of elements stripped out, but it was still an RPG, the wonky alphabetical voice acting aside. Skyrim felt like a cookie-cutter action adventure game, all the roleplay had flown out the window.

Buttflapper OP , 8 hours ago

Yup, and they fixed it. When Fallout 76 came out, it had the exact same major issues and bugs that Fallout 4 did, that the community literally fixed themselves with their unofficial patches. Bethesda was so unbelievably lazy They could not even copy and paste the unofficial bug fixes off Nexus mods, to me, that’s startling. At least with Morrowind, they fixed stuff

bionicjoey , 11 hours ago

Honestly I think that if ES6 is to Skyrim what FO4 is to FO3, it will probably be good.

The danger is if they try to replicate Starfield or FO76, ie. cut corners like crazy, be blinded by dollar signs in their eyes.

sparky1337 , 10 hours ago

I feel like in comparison to Starfield, ES6 should be smaller and more compact which should alleviate a lot of the other complaints I’ve seen.

At this point the hype alone will sell it. There may be some apprehensive players since starfield, but I don’t think it’ll impact them too much.

Also elder scrolls being their big IP, they kind of don’t have the wiggle room to screw this up.

acosmichippo , 7 hours ago

exactly, I’m a huge ES fan who hated Starfield, but it is not causing me any grief over ES6. Almost all of the Starfield issues I had were due to the vastly different world(s) structure.

Buttflapper OP , 10 hours ago (edited 10 hours ago)

They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4

Eh, not really. Fallout 4 has its share of fans and while the roleplaying and story was weak, I thought the world was well laid out and fun to explore

When I say failed, this is of course my own opinion. I personally feel like it was a failed game because of how simply unfun it is. I had to mod the game to extreme amounts just to get it to be believable and as enjoyable as Skyrim, Oblivion, other Bethesda games. It simply was not fun and its released state due to the horrible dialogue, basically lackluster and meaningless world. No matter where I explored, it wasn’t really rewarded at all with anything.

It’s unbelievable that everything in Starfield has a loading screen between it, ran poorly, and was still a buggy mess

It’s unbelievable that everything in Starfield has a loading screen between it, ran poorly, and was still a buggy mess

Corporate greed and incompetence, plain and simple. It took a mod creator a week or two to cook up a solution for that and make the game free of loading screens, he did that FOR FREE. Bethesda is out here with millions in Budget, they couldn’t have figured that out? Unbelievable. It’s the same crap every single game, too. They’re just lazy. Most Beth games that have been released has had a mod released that makes it 100% open world with no load screens

DarkMetatron , 9 hours ago

There is no mod to make Starfield free of loading screens, the cell structure of the engine demands loading screens. A mod exists that introduces real space faster then light travel between planets in a system yes, but that mod a) destroys the storytelling and lore of the game completely b) it still has the loading screen to land on the planet and c) changes a quick load screen with a boring travel through empty space.
It is like changing a stage change cut to black in a move with a real time travel scene with nothing at all happening but watching the people drive.

Buttflapper OP , 8 hours ago

There is no mod to make Starfield free of loading screens, the cell structure of the engine demands loading screens

That’s a fair point - it doesn’t completely get rid of the game’s need to load the next area, but it does a good job of hiding when the loading is happening.

but that mod a) destroys the storytelling and lore of the game completely

How, exactly?

c) changes a quick load screen with a boring travel through empty space.

This is an absurd and honestly ridiculous complaint. ‘boring travel through empty space’ dude it’s a literal SPACE exploration game, how can you complain about travelling through space, in a space game? Wtf? What do you think Space is? Candyland, filled with gas stations and theme parks along the ride? It’s an empty, insanely large expanse. Some people want that. You could say the same thing for any Fallout/Elder Scrolls game, too. ‘Boring ride through the country’ < oblivion and Skyrim. ‘Boring walk to the next area’ <Fallout

deranger , 7 hours ago (edited 7 hours ago)

You could say the same thing for any Fallout/Elder Scrolls game, too. ‘Boring ride through the country’ < oblivion and Skyrim. ‘Boring walk to the next area’ <Fallout

Exploration is one of the most enjoyable parts of those games. It’s not boring in ES or FO because of all the things you find along the way. Walking from A to B and getting distracted for 2 hours at random POIs you find is a hallmark of these games.

This aspect was completely absent in Starfield, idk how they fucked up exploration so much.

it’s a literal SPACE exploration game, how can you complain about travelling through space

Traveling != exploration. Eliminating the load screens just leaves you in boring space with no POIs to discover along the route.

Buttflapper OP , 7 hours ago

Exploration is one of the most enjoyable parts of those games. It’s not boring in ES or FO because of all the things you find along the way.

Maybe the first playthrough, sure. But after the first time I played through Fallout 4 (65% explored POIs), I tried to replay it, and it felt stale that quickly. Just going from starter area > concord was such a snooze. Autorun and watch netflix. Oblivion was a little more captivating and scenic, and so was Fallout 3. You’d find random little homes blown up, robots, people trying to stab you with a rusty knife. Fallout 4 and 76 are just so empty and devoid.

Traveling != exploration. Eliminating the load screens just leaves you in boring space with no POIs to discover along the route.

Fair point… No Man’s Sky kinda figured out a way to make it more fun, you can do it much more interactively with the hyperdrive and warping through small spaces in a system. But there’s rocks to find, sometimes pirates that shoot at you. >

DarkMetatron , 5 hours ago

How, exactly?

One of the major points of the game is that the only way to travel faster then light is with Gravjumping, there is no way to travel faster then light in real space. There is a large part of the main quest all about that. And that is the reason why everyone gravjumps everywhere The mod introduces faster then light travel in real space, and by this destroying one of the most important points in world building and lore of the game.

This is an absurd and honestly ridiculous complaint. ‘boring travel through empty space’ dude it’s a literal SPACE exploration game, how can you complain about travelling through space, in a space game? Wtf? What do you think Space is? Candyland, filled with gas stations and theme parks along the ride? It’s an empty, insanely large expanse. Some people want that. You could say the same thing for any Fallout/Elder Scrolls game, too. ‘Boring ride through the country’ < oblivion and Skyrim. ‘Boring walk to the next area’ <Fallout

That is how most people play those games yes, that is why fast travel (or other ways of fast transportation like teleportation magic or carts/boats) exists and it is used because most of the time travel is BORING as fuck and I want to do things in my game not commute between places. Not every travel is exploration, I don’t explore the city when I travel from home to work and back and very often in games travel is not done to explore but to get from point A to point B because your quest or task demands that. And starfield is not a space exploration game (because you literally can’t find anything new in space in the game, everything you can find is either on or around planets but not in open interplanetary or interstellar space.) it is an RPG with a big focus on star system and planet exploration. Traveling through empty space (and staring onto a point in the blackness of space that very very slowly gets bigger) is one of the most boring wastes of time I could think of. Traveling through space is like traveling over an huge, empty and flat saltlake in the middle of the night. There is literally nothing to see there, the only interesting things are the start of the travel and the destination. Ok, there are people into that I am sure, games like desert bus exist after all, and if you like that then have fun with the mod. It is a single player game after all and I will never tell anyone how to play their single player games (or even multiplayer games if it is ok for every other player). You do you!

MarcomachtKuchen , 10 hours ago

I’m so exited for Avowed to show me how else a skyrim like game can look and feel.

TrousersMcPants , 8 hours ago (edited 8 hours ago)

Idk, Outer Worlds was really lame, imo. It was honestly more boring than most the Bethesda RPGs for me because it was basically trying to do the same type of thing as them but with way smaller worlds so it’s just not as interesting.

acosmichippo , 7 hours ago

much better than Starfield though!

TrousersMcPants , 7 hours ago

I think I played more of Starfield, frankly

PunchingWood , 11 hours ago

I don’t really feel like you can compare the two games. Starfield was a big scope with mostly procedurally generated content with a few handcrafted areas, which resulted in very repetitive content since they simply didn’t make enough variety in content. I feel like the procedural part and the ship and base building parts took a lot of resources away from other gameplay features, like a more interesting story or more engaing gameplay.

It also doesn’t help that Starfield still runs on an extremely outdated engine. Even if they updated it, there are still ridiculous limitations that shouldn’t even exist in this day and age. Just looking at Star Wars Outlaws gives a good impression how seamless stuff could’ve been in Starfield. Yet even entering a small shop or your ship requires a loading screen.

And on top of that the game just runs like absolute garbage on the old engine. When Todd Howard just answered with “just buy an RTX4000 card” it spoke volumes about the lack of optimisation that came with that game.

That last part is probably gonna be the biggest obstacle for Elder Scrolls 6, but having a handcrafted world will probably let them get away from a complete failure of a game already. Another obstacle might be to write an interesting story and characters, I frankly can’t remember anything from what I played in Starfield, it was generally just boring and Bethesda probably gambled on the open-world exploration experience offsetting that.

Also Bethesda needs to stop relying on mods saving the game for them, many basic functions are missing and I found myself often needing mods to have an even acceptable experience, especially with Fallout 4 and Starfield. It’s probably why Skyrim is still so popular, because there is that massive collection of mods out there.

Buttflapper OP , 10 hours ago

Starfield was a big scope with mostly procedurally generated content with a few handcrafted areas, which resulted in very repetitive content since they simply didn’t make enough variety in content.

The budget for Starfield was scales of magnitude larger than No Man’s Sky, and will likely never have even half the updates that game did. Bethesda never carries a game that far, not even Skyrim

Also Bethesda needs to stop relying on mods saving the game for them, many basic functions are missing and I found myself often needing mods to have an even acceptable experience

Agree, and it’s sad they won’t even learn from them either. Every single Bethesda release isn’t open world. A modder has to make that FOR them. Unbelievable man. That’s not even remotely complex, any game developer should be able to figure that out easily, could just go look up one of the already made mods for open world, copy paste, done.

PunchingWood , 10 hours ago

To be honest I never found the procedural generation in No Man’s Sky good either.

It’s a better game by far, but once you have been exploring a few systems you often start finding repetitive content there as well. But there’s definitely more variety than Starfield and it’s mostly seamless too. And NMS came out about 7 years before Starfield.

I think the biggest issue is Bethesda clinging on to their engine for dear life like it’s their precious baby, and they’re keeping it on life-support with minimal updates.

Kaboom , 9 hours ago

I frankly can’t remember anything from what I played in Starfield

I remember not being able to arrest Ron hope despite having a non-lethal weapon and a brig

Like come on, that was obviously the good ending. Why not implement it?

100 , 7 hours ago (edited 7 hours ago)

skyrim and fallout worlds being handmade is one thing people look for in their bethesda games and they went with random generation, destroying large part which makes their games unique and lets you ignore their shit main story writing with the often better side content scattered around

its like how they ruined their dialogue system in fallout 4 with the voiced player and limited mass effect dialog wheel when they had a working, superior system to that

Katana314 , 11 hours ago

Why do you think they keep rereleasing Skyrim? It’s the last good game they made.

If you want Elder Scrolls 6, look to spiritual sequels made by other companies. Bethesdead.

PlantJam , 10 hours ago

Any suggestions for spiritual sequels?

Kaboom , 9 hours ago

I liked Outer Worlds, I found it pretty good, if a little one note in its writing.

scops , 8 hours ago

Outer Worlds is way closer to a Fallout spiritual sequel (or beat Starfield to the punch) than an Elder Scrolls game.

Did they ever fix the reputation system? I managed to instantly piss off an entire city while I was in the middle of it because I accumulated one too many “We don’t like you” points in the middle of a quest. Completely ruined my immersion and was a hard stop for me.

Kaboom , 3 hours ago

That’s called consequences for your actions, and it’s usually viewed as a good thing

overload , 11 hours ago (edited 11 hours ago)

Financially, I’m not sure if you could say that starfield or fallout 4 was a failure… Look at steamcharts player counts as an indication. All time peak concurrent players:

Skyrim: 90,000

Skyrim SE: 79,000

Fallout 4: 470,000

Fallout 76: 72,000

Starfield: 330,000

Sure skyrim has sold on many platforms and over time likely has sold the best, but you can’t say that starfield and fallout 4 were commercial failures. Starfield being on game pass day 1 means the real concurrent numbers would be enormous.

I’ve not played starfield and agree it looks like shit, but TES VI is likely going to sell gangbusters to mainstream audiences given how much Skyrim broke into the mainstream.

I agree with you that Bethesda isn’t what they used to be with TES Morrowind - Skyrim era and desperately need to get rid of that engine. But for the metric that truly matters, sales, I don’t know what it would take for TES VI to fail.

Buttflapper OP , 11 hours ago

I think there’s two definitions of successful in gaming today. First is financially successful, it generated some decent profits for the stockholders. Second is how it was actually perceived by the community as a whole. Oblivion was spectacularly well received and made game of the Year edition. Fallout 4 was heavily criticized, but still somewhat successful in terms of the community reaction. Starfield was globally frowned upon, as someone who has played that exact game, it’s horrible. I honestly feel like that game is a one out of 10. 1.0 out of 10 would be my exact rating if I had to give it one. It’s not going to get the cyberpunk treatment, so sure maybe it’ll break profits and be considered financially successful. But I don’t think that game should ever be considered a success in any other aspect

ampersandrew , 10 hours ago

A 1 out of 10 for Starfield is ridiculous; either hyperbole, or you haven’t played many video games before to see what a 1 out of 10 would truly be. I was very disappointed by it too, but level set a bit here.

all-knight-party , 10 hours ago

I couldn't take this post seriously with how much subjective opinion is stated as fact. Fallout 4 is one of my favorite games, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to its faults and shortcomings. That being said, I can't read something that's claiming extremely broad negative things like Fallout 76 is still "broken" and only lives because of MTX" without acknowledging "why people are playing this and microtransacting if the game is broken and irredeemable?" And without defining what is broken and what is not.

I think Starfield was a wake up call for Bethesda. They need to heed it and keep up with the times, get back in touch with the simulational and unique things that they were known for and can still carve a niche out of, and not rest on their laurels as the rest of the gaming landscape innovates around them.

As soon as the unique and interesting mechanics and systems have been eclipsed by Bethesda's failure to make an exceedingly polished and innovative game, people stop justifying the jank and the public opinion falls off. Starfield is their last sign to turn the ship around.

krellor , 10 hours ago

I remember buying mistmare on cd back in 2003. That thing was a broken mess of a game that crashed constantly, and no returns once you open the seal. Kids these days don't know what a 1/10 game really is, lol. That game was so bad most of the (short) Wikipedia page on it is about it's low scores, including a 0/10.

Buttflapper OP , 10 hours ago

A 1 out of 10 for Starfield is ridiculous; either hyperbole, or you haven’t played many video games before to see what a 1 out of 10 would truly be

I’ve played 20 years worth of games. My criteria is actually very logical. What is the scale of the company and their resources, the budget, past releases, and then finally, the game itself: How many hours do I get out of it? How linear is it? How believable is it? How captivating? Replayability? I give Starfield a 1.0/10 in all of these. Keep reading if you’re curious why

Linearity: This game is almost entirely linear, despite being called a “sandbox”. There’s no point whatsoever to wandering around away from the main storylines. Unlike Skyrim, Oblivion, hell even Fallout 76… You can’t just go wander off and find some new awesome area to do interesting stuff in. You find a new area, but it’s bland, has nothing interesting, or is very short-lived. So you’re basically coaxed back to just go finish the main story, with is such a linear and plain slog.

Believable: There are so few important choices to make, none of them really feel meaningful either. Also, the story just feels so cheesy. It’s so bad. You’re wandering around with a cowboy and his pre-teen daughter shooting people in the face, really? Yeah, that makes sense. All your companions are judgmental and never STFU with the ‘holier than thou’ attitude, forcing you to basically be good, or to be lectured constantly and nagged. Towns feel pointless and unbelievable. Not a single town I visited felt like a real place. For example, the western style town felt like Westworld. It was so clowny.

Replayability: Once you’ve done the entire storyline, there’s literally no reason to replay the game. It’s such a linear and unimaginitive story that there’s really nothing worth going back and seeing again

Now why is this a 1.0 out of 10? Taking the company size, their past projects, their capabilities, their support network (the entire mod community of all their games)… They had the potential to make SOMETHING better than this, but it was clearly rushed. It’s also highly unlikely they’ll give it the Cyberpunk or NMS treatment, leaving it bland, boring, broken… for $70. Unbelievable. The fact that a multi-million dollar company backed by Billion dollar Microsoft could produce this is just ridiculous.

MarcomachtKuchen , 10 hours ago

All your points are valid, but people might not judge the game based on your criteria. One could rate the game in Scale, Artistic vision or Gear progression and would not land on a 1 out of 10. Surely not on a 10/10 but definitly not on a 1. Even in your categories you have a strong bias. IMO there is no way you can give linearity a 1/10. Sure all of the sidestuff is not great but it’s there. A game with the lowest score in linearity does not even have options. Like one Mario level and that’s it.

I agree with your point how games also need to be measured by how big the company is and how great the games potential is. Totally 1/10 for Bethesda there.

Kaboom , 10 hours ago

Scale? It’s plenty big, but there’s not a lot of good content in it. Quantity vs quality.

Artistic vision. There’s something there, but it wasn’t realized.

Gear progression is bubkis, they have this weird rarity system that makes no sense and makes it feel awful.

MarcomachtKuchen , 9 hours ago

Quality would be a new criteria which I wanted to exclude in scale. Sure the quality of it all ain’t great but there are a lot of poeple who enjoy gigantic maps, no matter how bland.

Renacles , 9 hours ago

I’d argue that the best part of the game is the pirate questline. You get to pick between being a double agent, gathering evidence and sabotaging their plans, or an evil pirate that fights the law and only cares about themselves.

ampersandrew , 10 hours ago

Your opinion is your opinion, but I don’t think the scale of the company or its resources matter one iota. Games made by a single person have been better than those made by thousands of people, and that’s without putting my thumb on the scale in either direction. I don’t even agree that Starfield is linear, but even if it was, that doesn’t make a game bad. If you’re calling Starfield a 1 out of 10, there’s no room to go down from there on that scale, which is absurd to me, because that means you’d have to cram Superman 64 and Bubsy 3D on the same part of that scale.

Buttflapper OP , 8 hours ago

but I don’t think the scale of the company or its resources matter one iota

It absolutely matters. I can forgive and honestly move past a 1 person team or small indie company making a huge clusterf*ck of a game. But if you have 25 million dollars to make a game and you produce literal trash, there’s no excuse. The little guys/indie studios struggle, like totally understandable. How does BETHESDA sized company fail so spectacularly? That’s the core complaint.

Superman 64

??? this is a Nintendo 64 game, not even remotely the same resources available. Now we have incredibly powerful tech available in the gaming industry, and although we can’t confirm it, supposedly generative AI is being used. You’re talking about someone building a log cabin and it looking like crap, versus someone an entire construction company with top of the line cranes and huge vehicles.

ampersandrew , 8 hours ago

It definitely does not matter. You build a game that you’re capable of making. If it felt like they were making a game that needed a bigger budget to realize the design they were shooting for, that will affect my opinion of it. Games like Halo Infinite spent so much money on the game making it “big” that it actually made the game worse than if they’d spent less on it and kept it smaller. I don’t give a damn how much they spent making it. We had a whole era of RPGs in the 2010s that were made for a tiny fraction of the development cost of what was coming out of BioWare, but they were better RPGs without having to give them any sort of pity scale to arrive at that conclusion.

I brought up Superman 64 because it’s known to be one of the worst games ever made. When you know how bad a game can actually be, Starfield has no business being a 1 out of 10.

DarkMetatron , 9 hours ago

I would say non of your points are valid, but I am someone with about 300h in Starfield and I didn’t quit because I didn’t had any fun anymore but because other games stated to pile up. Personally I can’t wait for Shattered Space and I will play most likely start a complete new character and play the game from scratch with the DLC.

Do I think that it is a perfect game? Hell no! No game is perfect and Starfield has its fair share of problems and issues (the really boring temple “puzzles” for example). But for me Starfield is a very interesting and believable hard science fiction world that is not far away from what we could do with our technology now, if we would figure out a way to jump faster then light. Starfield is very good in delivering a believable space, and yes a believable space is huge and mostly boring. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t find for example beautiful places out there, it just is random, take lots of time (due to the frigging size of space and planets) and is rare. Starfield gives us a universe that is in huge parts like the real universe out there. For me the main quest of Starfield is one of the best main quests ever written by Bethesda, just after Morrowind and way better then the “Find the hidden heir, protect the hidden heir, close some portals and watch the hidden heir fight the big evil of the game” main quest of Oblivion. That I, personally, find utterly boring and unsatisfying. The strengh of every Bethesda Elder Scrolls/Fallout/Starfield Game is not that the main quest but all the other quests around and starfield has lots of great side quests, companion quests, and faction quests all over the game.

Is Starfield a 9 or 10 out of 10? No! But there are only very few games out there that I would give a 10/10 rating Is it a 1 out of 10? Not at all! But it is a strong 8 and could become a 9 when the DLC is for Starfield what Far Harbour was for Fallout 4.

All personal taste, Starfield is unfortunately not the right game for you but it is a great game for me. I love it!

Buttflapper OP , 9 hours ago

with about 300h in Starfield

My God… doing what, exactly? It took me like 40 hours to 100% the game, then everything else is pointless. Every planet is completely barren…

ampersandrew , 8 hours ago

In 35 hours, I got 28 out of 62 achievements and left 3 or 4 of the major faction quest lines undone. 40 hours doesn’t sound right for 100%.

DarkMetatron , 5 hours ago

My God… doing what, exactly? It took me like 40 hours to 100% the game, then everything else is pointless. Every planet is completely barren…

Having fun mostly. Doing quests, exploring the planets, building bases, building ships, doing NG+ multiple times and playing different playstyles in every new universe. There is so much in the game to do and to experience. And saying that you 100% the game, yeah sure when that means having every achievements, but that is not how to really 100% the game at all. At least not for me.

dojan , 10 hours ago

First is financially successful, it generated some decent profits for the stockholders.

This is the only sort of success they care about. Anything else is secondary. These companies gladly burn bridges with their communities so long as they believe it’ll benefit their bottom-line.

JusticeForPorygon , 10 hours ago

I think you’re missing the point that the majority of l companies don’t care about the quality of what they release. Large pro consumer companies like Valve and Lego (I couldn’t think of any others video game related), who might be willing to let their bottom line fall in favor of improving relations with the customer, seem to be very much in the minority. For most others, the only thing that’s important is how the bottom line is affected. Starfield, for all its flaws, was the #11 bestselling game of 2023.

Now, you could be onto something when you mention Bethesda’s poor track record, and how that might play into ES6’s release. If they keep making disappointing games, maybe there will be a “boy who cried wolf” type situation where, since Bethesda keeps making disappointing games, no one will want to buy ES6 by the time it comes out. Personally though, I don’t think that’s very likely. The reality is that many (if not most) consumers don’t even know who makes the games they buy, nor do the look into the other games that company makes. And for the ones that do, more still probably don’t care. I think no matter what there will be a sizable amount of people who see Elder Scrolls 6 and go “Hey, I liked Skyrim, this’ll probably be great!”

MarcomachtKuchen , 10 hours ago

Yeah but I hope active community members like here help to spread the word of well working companies

haunte , 8 hours ago

So your personal opinion of the game is the only thing that matters. Got it! At least use an objective metric. I personally played the hell out of Starfield and really enjoyed it, with a few caveats. I guess that means it’s a huge ass success. It’s your opinion vs mine. And I value my opinion over yours.

Buttflapper OP , 8 hours ago

So your personal opinion of the game is the only thing that matters

Nope, there’s lots of real reviews out there besides my own. Generally, the community views star field incredibly negatively. You had to purchase it on Steam to leave a review. That’s an objective fact. Ain’t nothing fake about it. It was overwhelmingly negative on release.

How much money a game made, on the other hand, is worthless. Who cares? Call of Duty is objectively very profitable. Does that mean it’s a masterpiece now??

Tellore , 11 hours ago

Then, you look at what most people are playing right now, and it’s Skyrim.

As a side note, Morrowind is also quite big still. /r/Morrowind has 178k members and is very active. Project Tamriel Rebuilt regularly getting updates. OpenMW getting more popular.

ampersandrew , 10 hours ago (edited 9 hours ago)

Even if they spend $300M making it, they’ll likely still make their money back, even in a world where Game Pass exists. I think their tech stack is so ancient that it ought to be thrown straight in the garbage, and they’ll get more mileage out of an Elder Scrolls game that’s forked from what Obsidian built in Unreal for Avowed. It also sure sounds like, much like studios like Arkane, Rocksteady, and BioWare, they were so high on their previous successes that they couldn’t admit to themselves that any decision they made was a bad one. If they can learn from their mistakes and take the L on Starfield (an L that would be considered a W for most other developers), then Elder Scrolls can potentially meet fans’ expectations. If they keep making games the way they’ve always made them without trying to adapt to the times, they’ll follow the same path as Fallout 4 and Starfield.

Ketram , 10 hours ago

Starfield was garbage IMO. I didn’t even pay for it and wanted my money back in less than 3 hours.

But I AM still hopeful for Elder Scrolls 6. The weakness of Starfield is exploration is barely a thing; incredibly boring procedural generation is the cause. There is little to no value getting excited exploring the world and the incredible world of Skyrim is what makes it good.

I seriously doubt Bethesda is dumb enough to try procedural generation with the next elder scrolls game, and if they are then it will be dead in the water just by association. But a game similar to Skyrim will likely still find a stronger audience, even if just for the return to form.

Buttflapper OP , 8 hours ago

incredibly boring procedural generation is the cause. There is little to no value getting excited exploring the world and the incredible world of Skyrim is what makes it good.

Honestly, they could’ve fixed it by adding custom settings for enemy generation. In Skyrim, Obliv, Fallout games, I’ve always downloaded a “more enemies” mod to encounter more things out in the wild/wastes. Even when I found monsters in Starfield, they just wandered by, there’s no danger. If they would’ve simply polled the gaming community, we would’ve told them how to fix it. :\

masterspace , 10 hours ago

Starfield’s biggest flaw was in trying to make a grand space game given that Bethesda’s strength is sandboxy, exploration focused, RPGs.

I am of the mind that exploration fundamentally does not work in a space game because the scale is too big. There’s waaaay too much space on even a single planet to populate with meaningfully interesting things to find. So there’s maybe one or two interesting handcrafted things per planet and you spend all your time in system and galactic scale maps to find them, rather than stumbling across them while out on a walk.

The only space games that work imho, are either ones with tiny planets like The Outer Wilds, or ones that are more linear and driven by very good writing and space is more of a backdrop than the actual millions of km you have to travel through and explore (like The Outer Worlds, or Mass Effect).

So I think Bethesda has a higher chance of success in literally any other, more limited, setting, given that writing isn’t their strong suit, but all that being said, I still don’t know if they’ll course correct.

ms_lane , 9 hours ago

There is also the mediocre story, but hopefully they’ll learn the lesson that no, we don’t want something as automagically powerful as a dragonborn or whatever, it worked for skyrim sure, but it’s a not something needed in every title.

Working from a zero prisoner to hero was always the goal and should be again.

Renacles , 9 hours ago

I think the issue is that they still have their developers write their own quests rather than hiring a team of dedicated writers like other studios do nowadays.

The games will never be narratively coherent when everyone is pulling in a different direction.

masterspace , 8 hours ago

Yeah the writing in Starfield is pretty bad.

I think Skyrim’s was better because there was less central control. I know that stuff like the whole Werewolf quest was just made by a passionate designer and dev who made it after hours, but that during Starfield development a lot more got run up the chain and there was less individual freedom.

I suspect that stems from the massive procedural generativeness but am not sure.

Flamekebab , 9 hours ago

If we reword the question as "Is Elder Scrolls 6 doomed to be a mediocre experience?" then my money would be on "yes". Bethesda generally seem to aim to make games just as good as they need to be to make money. Capitalism over creative expression.

If the game is good enough to get people to buy it and consider buying the next one, that's all the effort it's worth putting in (as far as publishers are concerned). It's not a new approach, they've just had a lot more practice at it than game developers/publishers had in the '90s.

Temper your expectations as unless you're willing to buy a few million copies yourself, they can't justify the cost of caring what you think.

...and no, I do not approve of this system one jot. It's gross and antithetical to creativity. I'm glad we have a lot more independent developers who aren't as beholden to neoliberal capitalism these days.

capt_wolf , 9 hours ago

I strongly disagree. I’ve had immense fun in every Bethesda game, including Starfield and 76. I’ve put hundreds of hours into all of their games, possibly over a thousand for games like FO3 and Oblivion. The only one that truly failed to grasp my attention was ESO. My only real complaint about Starfield was NG+. Losing over a hundred hours of collecting and ship/settlement building isn’t new game plus. It’s a prestige system, and although it makes sense given the ending, it’s a shitty way to restart an RPG. Nonetheless, I’ve still gotten 180 hours out of it. Hell, I just started a fresh game last week and started modding the hell out of it.

With Bethesda, their games are about the fun you make. Sorry if you didn’t enjoy the experiences, but maybe some of them just weren’t meant for you. Personally, I’m looking forward to ES6 and sinking a few hundred hours into it. If it’s a bad game, so be it, but I honestly can’t wait to see what they do!

ampersandrew , 9 hours ago

Starfield somehow built a game tailor made for NG+ and not only didn’t take advantage of it with their faction system, they also got rid of my favorite guns and all of my currency, which discouraged me from engaging with it at all.

djsoren19 , 9 hours ago

I’d say the bigger problem is just that the Bethesda RPG model is completely outdated. It feels like something you’d play a decade ago, but what used to be it’s contemporaries have absolutely eclipsed it by this point. If I wanted to play just a fun easy fantasy romp, I’d go for Dragon’s Dogma 2. If I wanted an actual RPG with bones that could offer me a challenge, I’d play Elden Ring. If I’m just looking for a well-written story, I’d go play something by CD Project Red.

Bethesda’s games aren’t well written, aren’t that interesting to play, and basically cannot offer any real challenge. The only real saving grace for Skyrim has been the modding community, which has been able to continually breathe life into what would otherwise be very tired game design.

IchNichtenLichten , 9 hours ago

I think it’s DOA without an upgraded game engine. I started playing Starfield right after coming off Cyberpunk with RT enabled and immediately requested a refund from Steam, it just looked like absolute shit in comparison.

Virkkunen , 4 hours ago

There are amazing and impressive games being made in Build engine (the one from classic DOOM) even today. The engine is not the issue, it's who's using it and how.

Gamers go all high and mighty with their expletives against creation engine but it doesn't matter, they could use an abacus or unrealdot unitybite rered 6 engine for all that it's worth and the games could still come out bad if they don't change how they approach and develop it.

Eggyhead , 9 hours ago

Tbh I love FO4. It’s not the best in the series, but I’ve played it through a couple times and wouldn’t mind playing it again soon. Hardly anything I’d call a colossal failure. FO76 was a hot mess at launch, but it had its hooks. I got that at launch and ended up playing more of it than I expected considering. No clue about Starfield, but if FO4 and 76 didn’t bug me as much as it did everyone else, I might get on with it decently… assuming they put it on PS5 at some point.

I think Elder Scrolls VI will do well no matter what condition it’s in, though I also doubt it will be a smooth launch.

bizarroland , 4 hours ago

I really enjoy fallout 4 also, especially with a handful of mods it takes it from an all right game to a very good game. I still count that as a failure on bethesda's part for not fully realizing the games potential but thanks to the community fallout 4 is actually a really good game.

5oap10116 , 8 hours ago

I’d like to think they’ve learned some lessons from their last few releases but who knows…