They can take as long as they want. After Starfield, I have zero confidence that TES6 will be any good. Bethesda has some serious issues they need to sort out with their production pipelines and methodology and they need to rethink how they approach story-driven open world experiences.
Every time I see a Starfield video and see the camera turbozoom in on a character as they deliver a forced, robotic line with terrifying facial animations - I get teleported right back to 2006. It is very obvious this studio does not know what they are doing and has learned little from their previous releases and from other contemporary games.
I’ve said it before, and I believe that Bethesda is going to completely mess up TES6.
There are several issues with Bethesda, the major problem being they seem to have lost all creativity and they’re trying to apply the same old formula to every single game with minimal changes. Then hope that modders will keep it on life support. And sadly that’s how I found myself having to play their games, because without many mods it was often awful to play on PC, and I still didn’t have fun thanks to repetitive content and forgettable story and characters.
Another is that they’re clinging on to that damn dilapidated game engine of theirs like it’s their precious baby. It’s an awful engine, insanely outdated, limited and performs terribly. Starfield is a great example of how awful it is, but every game before that has had major performance issues and limitations as well.
The only redeeming feature might be that TES6 probably won’t be a procedurally generated world. They really showed how repetitive and boring it can get with procedural generation. And a handcrafted world would have so much more character. They could perhaps use the procedural engine for dungeons, and enemies and their bases, or items found through the world, but not the world itself.
But I’m afraid it’s just going to be a near Skyrim carbon-copy. It’ll likely be an okay looking game with an okay looking game world, but I bet gameplay will be mostly unaltered from what they’ve been doing for over 20 years. Same old basic combat, same talking heads with lifeless animations, same sneaking and magic gameplay, etc.
Agreed. They need to retire that dogshit engine and write a new one. I know that’s a huge and expensive undertaking, which is why they probably won’t. TES6 will sell like hotcakes on its name alone.
I had been looking forward to TES6 for so damn long, but at this point the most exciting thing we can look forward to is the crazy glitches that speedrunners will discover. That is, if they’re not just the same glitches we’ve alll seen time and again.
Well before Starfield came out they said they couldn’t make TES6 yet because the technology didn’t exist. Starfield’s development, I assume, was partially about building this technology. That makes me assume it’s the procedural generation or the ships. If the former, I doubt it’s the main game world or TES6 is fucked. I would suspect maybe something like plains of oblivion that are proc-gen or something.
To me, one of the biggest things that make Starfield feel so bad is the planets are so boring, specifically because there’s too much to do (and it’s all meaningless). Every location is surrounded by the exact same amount of points of interest. There’s no barren areas and more habituated areas. It’s all this bland uniform container of “content” with nothing making any of it stand out. Proc-gen only works when it can be used to make a lot of boring empty space with a few interesting unique things to find. I don’t think they’ve figured that out yet.
I found it extremely funny that todd said that planets are empty and boring, because irl, planets would be boring and and empty wastelands. Why do you make a boring game then todd? Are you stupid? Is that your dream game? Imagine you can make any videogame that you want and you go: i want it to be set in the middle desert.
Oh so there are gonna be pyramids, bandits and other points of interest?
No the desert is pretty empty and boring.
Oh, sounds pretty good.
I do not understand why Bethesda fans even deal with that shit. They must laugh their asses off every time someone doesn’t refund starfield.
It’s all this bland uniform container of “content” with nothing making any of it stand out.
The big irony here is that they could damn well make weights for the procgen to create spots with dense “habitation” and others with zero points of interest. But nope, just generate a map, plop down 5-8 POI, call it a day. The “big cities” like New Atlantis stand out in the worst way possible, a small square of buildings surrounded by absolutely fucking nothing. They effectively copied the worst aspects of No Man’s Sky
Well before Starfield came out they said they couldn’t make TES6 yet because the technology didn’t exist
It’s being built on the SAME ENGINE as tes5 was built on. I think they were blowing smoke.
It is very obvious this studio does not know what they are doing and has learned little from their previous releases and from other contemporary games.
I think they’ve learned that they don’t have to care about that to be successful. We have to keep reminding ourselves that success by these studios does not have to be defined by ‘making a good game’. Starfield was a great success financially and there’s no reason they should change gears from that perspective. Starfield has made around $700 million.
I think they really don’t believe in storytelling in the way traditional game writers do. They think enough simulation can replace good writing.
Personally I’m certain they are wrong, and it’s tragic that they own the Elder Scrolls IP.
Simulation? What? That’s the one aspect that has been gotten worse with every Bethesda title. Their storytelling was always garbage. I never finished the main quest in Skyrim even, and the one in Oblivion was trash, the one in Morrowind barely existing. This was never the strong suit of their games.
Hot take, Michael Kirkbride carried TES lore. Even the interesting parts of Skyrim is based from his writing.
I should have said more, for once. I meant simulation more to describe the Bethesda house style, which seems to be this idea that having apples that can roll around on a table or whatever is immersive and engaging enough that you don’t need Michael Kirkbride hanging around putting weird metaphysical shit all over the place, actually. I wasn’t saying they were good at it, only that it appears to be what they think.
I don’t agree that all of it has always been trash, but the quest writing mostly always has. For your Skyrim example, I went to the midnight release. I completed the main quest within a 24h period IIRC and I remember just being incredibly disappointed. I haven’t finished it again since. Honestly, Skyrim in general is a letdown besides the world they built, although they could have done a lot more to make it more interesting and feel more lived in and real instead of an amusement park.
Their writing in the past has been really strong in world building. They’ve had really interesting lore and reasons for us to be doing what we’re doing. Most of the people who did that are gone now though, and they have been for a while, so I don’t expect it in the future.
I just want more Skyrim dlc at this point. I have lost faith in their ability to make new games
ES6 will be fine. Starfield was doomed from the beginning because of the silly space exploration structure.
Not if they keep on their BS. Let’s look at Fallout 4. The engine is absolutely the weakest part of the game. Can’t even keep 60fps in the city on any settings or on consoles. Frame times are all over the place. And the game isn’t even that pretty, it’s very ugly and textures are real bad. The story was pretty awful and boring, the writing in every way was forgettable.
So that’s why ES6 is screwed. It’s been downhill since Skyrim and even releasing a better looking Skyrim in 2028 on the PS6 isn’t going to cut it. It’ll be the most expensive budget title out there.
Skyrim will always hold a special place in my heart, it’s almost like a simpler time.
Starfield damaged Bethesda for me though. To spend 25 years on it in total and for it to be as it released was very disappointing. I mean basics like no city maps or land vehicles? Every base you come across having the same bodies in the same place with the same loot? I want to love it, they can do things I can’t even imagine (I can’t program Jack shit) but for that to be the end point of their decades of labour just doesn’t add up for me.
Starfield was boring as hell and now they’re too scared to try ES6 (because it’ll be garbage).
I would love to be wrong…
They’re not too scared to make Elder Scrolls VI. It’s their next project. It’s just not coming until probably 2028 at the rate they’ve been working lately, and it’ll feel 15 years out of date this time instead of only 10.
What’s really crazy is to compare Bethesda with CDPR. I’ve been replaying the Witcher 3 and it just struck me how I won’t have to wait 15+ years for the next entry. And to look at how much more efficient they’ve been in the past.
For a timeline, Witcher 2 released in May 2011 and then the Witcher 3 released in May 2015. Took 3.5 years to develop. Cyberpunk released December 2020, only 4.5 years after W3 had its last major DLC. Then in 2023 they released a very large update for Cyberpunk, about 2/3rds the runtime of the main game. And then in 2025 we’ll probably get the next Witcher game. They have like 3 games in active development now.
So what’s the difference with Bethesda? Well Skyrim sold 30 million units and Witcher 2 sold about 8 million. Less than a third the income. Yet if you compare CDPRs staff to Bethesdas at time of their next games, CDPR had doubled Bethesda’s work force. And guess what happened? Witcher 3 sold 40 million while fallout 4 sold 25 million. Thats despite Witcher 3 costing an estimated $81 million while Fallout 4 sits closer to 1.5x that at $125 million.
Then you talk about engines and it gets even worse. CDPR arguably started with a worse engine and I shouldn’t need to explain how much they’ve destroyed BS in that regard as well. Witcher 2 looks worse than Skyrim by a lot imo. But by the time their next game rolled around, it was an industry leader in graphics. And cyberpunk 2077 is like the next Crysis now while starfield is… oh boy. And guess what? After all that work on their engine, they abandoned it. Why? Because their resources are better spent making games and systems in an engine someone else updates for them. Bethesda meanwhile not only can’t juggle the ball of updating an engine and game dev, but they’re not even smart enough to swap engines.
Bethesda has all the signs of a dying studio and Microsoft is the sucker for buying them. And it’s a waste of talent more than anything. Talented people exist at Bethesda whose resources and career development would be far better off being applied on UE4.
Given the technical problems with Cyberpunk at launch, I don’t know that it’s a great idea to champion them. Both studios have had a similar release cadence in the same time periods.
When Microsoft bought Bethesda, they bought Zenimax, which includes far more than just the likes of Elder Scrolls.
This is, more than likely, exactly what will end up happening.
They know Creation Engine is not fit for the task. They know the writing is stale and uninspired. They know that it’ll more than likely be aimed towards mainstream success, rather than being a good rpg, making it even more simplified.
I really hope i’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath for TES6 anymore
I never got the big deal with Skyrim. I’m not saying it’s bad, but I don’t get why people went all crazy for it. Bethesda over streamlined the Elder Scrolls series with Skyrim for the mainstream audience. By removing and/or simplifying game systems.
EDIT You can be the leader of all the guilds with a single character. Just why?
I got super prepared for Oblivion to be as complex and difficult as Morrowind and was severely disappointed by it even at launch. Skyrim was slightly better than Oblivion in terms of mechanical complexity (dual wielding, how magic works, the forts, etc), but also even more streamlined in others (like how skills and leveling work).
I’ve played the absolute shit out of all 3 (as well as FO3, NV and 4) though. There is just some inexplicable draw to them. And it’s that very thing that Starfield lacks that had me rush the MQ and just stop playing once it was over.
Deep or not, I hated the levelling system of Oblivion with a passion. Needing to micromanage which skills I increase for each level so I can get a good attribute increase was such a micromanagement pain, especially when everything kept scaling up your level. Often I felt like I was getting weaker, not stronger, when I leveled.
I’d much prefer they replace the system with something different (like how it works in fallout 3) than what they did in Skyrim where they just carved out all the annoying bits and left barely anything behind though.
Most Bethesda RPGs are going for bredth instead of depth. They give you a giant world to explore and usually throw you into that world with complete freedom relatively quickly.
I generally agree that Skyrim (and Oblivion to be honest) aren’t particularly strong games when you look at pretty much any individual system, and the games don’t interest me much, but I totally get the appeal.
I never got the big deal with Skyrim
I’m guessing you never played it on PC.
But I did. Also the classic “The modders will save the game.”. Man, I’m getting tired of that.
Agreed. Modding doesn’t “fix” Skyrim either. It adds surface-level content and tweaks but the fundamental bones of the game are still there and they are heavily flawed. One of the few exceptions I can think of are things like Skywind but that’s only because it removes Skyrim’s story entirely, overhauls many of its mechanics, and uses the world/lore/story of one of Bethesda’s better games.
And in the case of Starfield - it’s entirely beyond salvaging with mods. Mods will not be able to fix the biggest problems with that game because they are literally the very way the game was made. To fix them would require basically remaking the entire game from scratch.
I sometimes download Skyrim again, mod it for hours and as soon as I start a new game I realise I don’t even wanna play it.
You might be interested to know that there are several hardcore modding scenes, where the point is to mod the game for fun. The mod guides are updated every month or so and includes thousands of mods. It takes days to install, and actually playing is optional. In most cases, a new save is required every update, so modders keep an additional playable state if they actually want to play the game.
Lexy’s LOTD is my fav one, it’s only over a thousand mods, has very detailed instructions, and a very friendly community.
