With the April 2025 release of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, it feels like the era of Starfield is coming to an end. The latest original IP from Bethesda Game Studios, Starfield, got a considerably more lukewarm response than anyone could have predicted, and, at this point, it feels like Microsoft and Bethesda are trying to brush it under the rug. A rumored Starfield PS5 release was recently reinforced by a trusted insider, but after that, it seems like Bethesda’s premiere space-exploration RPG will end up being grounded.
Starfield would be great if it was a single solar system and they actually designed each planet by hand. Instead of these generated planets all having identical copy pasted abandoned labs and outposts…
The pessimist in me believes that Starfield, and the Oblivion remaster, are testing probes to see how their community/customers will accept big changes to bethesda-style games.
Starfield testing if gamers will accept the abandoning of Bethesda hand crafted worlds with lots of detail and hidden little unmarked interest points, and replacing it with low effort, low cost random generation.
Oblivion Remaster an attempt to test if gamers will accept Bethesda abandoning modding, since Oblivion:Remastered does not support mods (but players/modders still found a way to force them, only because everything but the graphics is still on the old, original engine)
and I think both of these should be ringing major alarmbells for what they are planning with TESVI
edit
and just to clarify. I dont think theres anything wrong with proper use of random generation. Their dungeons are already basically tile sets, Which can be the basis for a great randomly generated dungeon system, That would keep things fresh and new and interesting… especially in Starfield, where there is basically 1 of each type of PoI, and if you’ve explored it once, you’ve explored the entire games worth of content.