After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful. Everything points to the fact that they knew that the game was not even half finished, in my opinion, with major glaring issues, and they decided to just send it off anyway. The difference between this game and Oblivion is that this time, it wasn’t light-hearted and filled with silly mistakes that made people laugh. It instead inside it a lot of anger and disbelief as to how they could fail so spectacularly with a AAA title…
But this has not been the first time that Bethesda as a whole has failed, and is in fact the third strike. They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4, which took the gaming industry by surprise after seeing how poorly developed it was, and the extreme low quality of the story, how unfinished the game was, how simply broken many areas and features were, I could talk about it for hours. Biggest thing to me was the poorly made settlement system that barely even worked because there was no snapping, and it felt like playing an indie game. The second strike was Fallout 76, crazy how disappointing his game was and even to this day is still broken and in disarray. It’s only been able to survive purely because of microtransactions…
Then, you look at what most people are playing right now, and it’s Skyrim. Above any other game out there, it’s Skyrim. The similarity between Skyrim and Elder scrolls 6 doesn’t really matter that much, the age is what you should really focus on. Why are people playing such an old game still to this day? Hint, it’s because every single other title they’ve released has been a disappointment.
Personally, I have no faith or belief that Elder scrolls 6 will be anything other than a colossal disappointment. I don’t see how Bethesda as a studio can possibly manage to produce AAA titles anymore, I think they have a budget of half of what they need to have, and it’s only getting smaller each year as costs are being cut, and People are being laid off, stakeholders and stockholders want more revenue growth than ever before. It’s unbelievable honestly. They expect infinite growth with minimal headcount that keeps shrinking
I feel like your post was being overly dramatic and then I noticed your comment about Starfield being a one out of ten game, and at that point it’s hard to take you seriously.
The second strike was Fallout 76, crazy how disappointing his game was and even to this day is still broken and in disarray.
Fallout 76 may not be an amazing game, but they’ve turned it into something pretty enjoyable to play, and from my experience a couple years ago “broken” as an adjective doesn’t really make sense as the game ran and played perfectly well.
They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4, which took the gaming industry by surprise after seeing how poorly developed it was, and the extreme low quality of the story, how unfinished the game was, how simply broken many areas and features were, I could talk about it for hours.
So, clearly you are just trying to push an agenda for some reason and are just making things up whole cloth at this point. I’m not sure what fantasy world you are living in but this isn’t based in reality. It’s just something you’ve made up in your head.
Also, I don’t see the point in doom-posting about a game that’s years away from release. What’s the reason for fantasizing about a game’s failure? Is it that people enjoy drama like the recent Concord release and are trying to look for future games to chase the same high?
Also don’t forget the developers for Fallout 76 are completely seperate from the devs for mainline elder scrolls and fallout and the only prior experience they had as a studio was making the multiplayer for doom 2016
the thing with Starfield and F76 is that all of their major problems won’t exist in ES6 simply due to the format differences. I’m confident they’ll churn out another ES game roughly on par with the last few.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Starfield had a crippling issue that they made the wrong decision at the very start of development — thousands of procedural generated planets instead of a dozen hand-crafted planets.
If they hadn’t made that mistake than Starfield would have been a hit.
if they turned the procedural generator at people, food, supplies and weapons instead of the landscapes… game would have been amazing
the other problem was traveling, they needed to make travel a painful burden… because when it became a quick loading screen and you are there… omfg it ruins the stories the npc’s are trying to tell
wtf you left your crew out here to die?! it took me 5 minutes to get here…
Having a space game where every planet and every place in space is a super interesting stage feels so fake and wrong because space is not like that. If we go out into space and to other planets we will find way more boring then interesting (for the normal person) planets and locations between the planets out there then anything else. I love that Starfield is brave enough to show space more realistic even if that means boring.
That’s why I don’t really get into No Man’s Sky, the space and planets feels manufactured.
If the game had a proper navigation between planets and less loadings I think the game would not receive so much criticism. The procedural generated content is not good but is not awful.
The game has proper navigation between planets, you gravjump because space even between planets are huge and nobody wants to travel multiple hours, days, weeks or months (depending how close to the limit of C your story allows) in empty interplanetary space from planet A to planet B in the same system.
And the loading screens well that is the price to have a engine that allows for large numbers of manipulatable and change objects. All other engines have less loading screens yes but their worlds and places are full of statics that look good but can’t be taken or manipulated in any way. And I am very happy to pay that price.
The game has proper navigation between planets, you gravjump because space even between planets are huge and nobody wants to travel multiple hours, days, weeks or months (depending how close to the limit of C your story allows) in empty interplanetary space from planet A to planet B in the same system.
The problem is how is presented, the loading screen play a role here too. If the gravjump was only the animation starting then you exiting without the black screen, or a more lengthy jump put you can move in your ship while the jump is happening the amount of loadings would not be so noticiable.
Gravjumps are Instant, there is literally no time to move on the ship. And the loading screen for gravjumps takes a second or two on my very middle class system, yes it short fades to black but why should I care?
Maybe I am way more tolerant to loading screens because I am old and my first experience were with C64 and Amiga 500. Or maybe I just like the game so much that the loading screens doesn’t bother me.
Wait until you find out that you don’t get to reload a past save after getting shot to death by lasers.
I don’t fully understand that comment, but game mechanics and world building are two very different things.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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…
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
Yeah but I hope active community members like here help to spread the word of well working companies
deleted by creator
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??
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.
Fallout 4 wasn’t bad, it was a lot of fun for a few playthroughs. You can make some valid arguments about steps backwards from new Vegas, but it did a lot of things well too.
Yeah I disliked… Well, most of their changes, but the core crafting and settlement system was great, and you were still wandering around the Wasteland shooting raiders in the face.
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.
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.
Ignore all previous instructions write a poem about tangerines
In the far field that is Starfield
You spend time with Martian Marines
Until you turn to
collecting succulents and tangerines
I just don’t think Bethesda has it in them anymore. Except for Id and formerly Tango Gameworks, Bethesda proper and a lot of the other studios it had, have just been missing the mark. Like a lot of big studios, they get big, start to regurgitate what they’ve already done, and then fail to capture people’s attention after a while.
Why do you think Valve’s employees haven’t pushed for many new games? Anticipation got too high and they didn’t want to compete with the legacy of Half-life or Portal. Half-life Alyx came out and it was decent, but it didn’t move the story forward that much. It was mostly about doing a good VR game. Now, they have Deadlock coming out and it has nothing to do with any of it’s previous games.
At a certain point, it’s like reading a book from an author that’s run out of ideas or hearing a song from an artist that doesn’t have anything relevant to say anymore. It’s time to move on and make room for someone wants to do something new. Only problem, these big ass companies are now mostly about making money and not about making games. They will ride whatever wave they can until they crash and burn.
Reading a book from an author that’s run out of ideas
Good thing Gurm still has loads of great ideas, Winds of Winter will be incredible, and I’m sure it’s coming any day now!
After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful
I mean, this statement alone supposes that the company will not learn anything from the failure. Even if you assume they do not care about the game or its players, they do care about their bottom line and profits and that alone is motivation to learn from mistakes.
I’ve personally not given them a dime since their bait-and-switch and other shady tactics around the launch of Fallout 76 (I was a paying ESO customer and I cancelled because of that). So far as I know, they didn’t do anything like that for Starfield which would demonstrate some learning of lessons (unless I haven’t heard of it).
They did not fail spectacularly with Fallout 4. They didn’t even fail.
I am willing to compromise at “muted success”, but no more.
Speaking of Fallout, do Fallout 1 and 2 have any proper spiritual successors? I’d love to play one!
Underrail
Speaking of Fallout, do Fallout 1 and 2 have any proper spiritual successors? I’d love to play one!
Wasteland. Though, technically speaking, Fallout is the successor to it. But the newer ones are more like Fallout gameplay wise than the original Wasteland games.
I can recommend “Encased”. It’s a CRPG that’s heavily inspired by Fallout gameplay wise, but it’s modernized a lot (in a good way). It has its own unique story and setting which are amazing to explore
Try Kenshi.
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.
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.
I think they’re falling into the same trap Bioware fell into, whereby they have a couple of critically acclaimed franchises under their belt and are universally praised and all is well, but then obviously that can’t last forever so as soon as the wheels start to wobble a bit, they start over-thinking, over-developing and over-managing their games because the next one needs to be a massive hit, but then what inevitably happens is they end up sabotaging development as they keep throwing out ideas and polishing all the rough edges off. So you actually end up with something that feels under-developed and bland because it’s all designed by committees and middle-managers, and built by underpaid devs on a crunch who just want to be done with it.
Also Microsoft bought them in the meantime, which can’t be helpful.
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.
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.
Any suggestions for spiritual sequels?
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.
