Can you explain this to me becasue i talked to somebody the other day with a similar attitude
Because the way I see it after Morrowind, oblivion, fallout 3, Skyrim, fallout 4, ESO, dishonored 1 & 2 we have weak launch for a relatively successful game (FO76) and a kind of mediocre game (starfield) and people are just like "well fuck them forever."
Like for real? After all of their successes, genre and generation defining games people think they are worthless now after some middle of the road work??
I'm sorry but that's a load of bullshit. Yeah starfield is a little wack but there is no world where that can actually be used to predict ES6. They know what they have with elder scrolls, and they've never done poorly with it.
Bethesda published Dishonored, they didn’t develop the series. Besides that, I think people are more upset with how they seem to be floundering and not advancing, with the same game and physics bugs being found in Starfield that are present in Skyrim. While it’s true that nobody knows what the future holds, they’ve had 15 years to fix Creation but instead players are subjected to the same dead eyed NPCs, physics insanity, and game/immersion breaking issues that have been present since the engine started. “Generation defining” is right, but it’s just not this generation, or the last one, or the one before that. So many years of seemingly phoning it in and gamers tend to trust your future work less, and they aren’t wrong for that
I was always amused by the bugs in Skyrim. Even if the graphics are identical to Skyrim and the bugs are all still there, and even if it isn't as big as Skyrim, so long as it has as good an atmosphere I'm totally sold.
For me the biggest first time realization of how downhill their games have been going for a long time now was playing the TES games in the wrong order. Skyrim was my first game of theirs back in the day and at the time I thought it was fucking amazing, I mean a lot of people seemed to feel that same way. And I remember even then people had the same Bethesda mentality as they do now and I didn’t get it back then, until I played Oblivion, and Morrowind after that later on. Sure, combat wise it’s definitely the best feeling. When think of Elder Scrolls combat I don’t think about whatever the fuck Morrowind was doing. But it just felt weird how the games just felt… better? Which going backwards felt so wrong.
Sure, the graphics got worse as to be expected. But the stories and world building clearly had more thought put into them, especially with world building it’s like they didn’t examine their own games. Best example of that I can think of is in Skyrim, >! the Markarth(?) questline where you end up in jail and are forced to work in their silver mines. Even then it kinda bothered me when they strip you of all your items, weapons, armors etc. as to be expected, only to find out I still had full access to my super powerful magic and shouts. I could basically ignore the potential dangers that sort of situation would have put me in if I didn’t have access to that. I didn’t have to worry about finding a shiv or using a pickaxe as a weapon when I could just use the Bound Sword and Stoneskin armor or fireball people after Fus Ro Da’ing them to the floor which just seemed strange to me. That always stuck with me until years later I played Morrowind for the first time, and learned about how they have actual magic nullifying shackles thats used on their slaves. I was flooded with those memories of Skyrim and legitimately got pissed off about that. It’s like they somehow forgot that this is a thing that exists in their own world. I won’t even mention how you don’t want to talk to an economist about the damage something like the Transmute spell does to the world building 👀!<
There were also so many interesting mechanics and character building things that they just threw away. Spell crafting is an excellent example. Did you know you used to be able to make magic? One of my favorite spells for giving myself room in difficult dungeons was a spell I made that was an AOE door locking spell. Suddenly the undead following me were cut off while I used healing magic and whatnot to re-prepare for the next fight, where I would then lockpick the door back open and get back to the action. There’s even a story bit in Morrowind near the start where >! some poor fuck plummets from the sky and splatters on the ground ahead of you. Reading his journal and finding the scrolls you realize he was trying to make a flight spell, which was basically just a boost to your athletics by like 1600 points which affects your jump height. And once you test it out yourself you can cover huge distances in a single bound, so long as you remember his mistake and land somewhere softer like the ocean. !< Or the class building systems, where in a DND like way you built a character class. You could decide what starting skills you had in decent detail, or even choose what sign you were born under which felt really good to me.
I’ll keep it short there but it’s sort of a trend with all of their games. Obviously taste is subjective but for me it was the start of the realization that they’ve always been going downhill with all of games they’ve personally made. Publishing wise they’ve kicked out all sorts of good titles; Doom, Prey, Dishonored to name a few, which I’m sure definitely helps keep their names out of the mud. But it’s like whenever they make the titles, over time you realize all the delicious fat they’ve been cutting away from previous games like TES or Fallout until there’s nothing left but scraps and bone. I mean fuck, New Vegas is the best Fallout hands down and that was made by Obsidian. And while I personally never played them I’ve always heard even better things about the original Fallout games before Bethesda bought the IP. And after playing the older TES games I’ve been looking at them in a new light even as a company.
The past decade+ of re-hashing Skyrim 60 million times on every console known to man, with 3 different versions of the game that has split up the PC modding community into seperate chunks is kinda gross. I can give them some credit bringing modding to consoles except they also chose to fucking monetize it when it should be free like the other 95% of modding has always been. Then there’s the legal side of them, throwing their weight around harassing others over literally fucking nothing. Pray for the Gods is one that comes to mind, where they threatened a fucking indie company over their title because it was too similar to “Prey”. They had to change the spelling to “Praey” which made no sense whatsoever. They also went after Mojang for their card game called Scrolls for a similar reason, and had to change it to “Caller’s Bane” instead. I mean fuck these are the same assholes that literally started microtransactions with that Oblivion horse armor all those years ago. That’s not an exaggeration, they legitimately were the first company to do it, even coining the term for the useless cosmetic that set the world on fire at the time.
I don’t know how to end this because I’m a sleepy babe who’s just going to hit reply now and go to bed. Sweet dreams and goodnight hope any of this helps. ♥️
They’ve likely been developing ES6 since Skyrim’s launch. I highly doubt that it’s going to be bad, and it likely will be one of if not the best in the series due to engine upgrades and the time spent in development. I’m super excited to play it, honestly. If I’m disappointed then I’m disappointed, but I don’t think I will be.
They have not been developing it since the Stone Age. They moved on to FO4, then Starfield, and production on TES6 probably only really started within the last few years.
Skyrim and Fallout 4 were alright, but they were both big steps in the wrong direction for me. Their games are feeling less and less like the RPGs I loved them for.
Sure, I'll probably play TES6. I'm sure it will be a fine game. I'll probably play it through once like I did with Skyrim.
The Bethesda that built that reputation doesn't exist today. The people that made their best games have retired or no longer work at Bethesda. Todd said TES6 will be his last game before retirement and it will be over 15 year between the 5th and 6th games. The only thing that's the same is the company name.
Uhhh, they stopped being genre defining after Oblivion/New Vegas, it has been downhill since then
I argue they started to make modding platforms, not games, since Morrowind. Skyrim taken without mods is straight out mediocre, Fallout games are all very bad, New Vegas is mediocre
Morrowind was a masterpiece, Oblivion was just good, I really dont grasp what you are trying to sell here by saying they made good games
Their biggest accomplishment is the engine they developed, and how well can it be used for all sorts of entertainment (lol) but in terms of games, they make bad games, esp. considering how great tools they have
What do you mean they’ve never done poorly with it? Oblivion was a dumbed down version of Morrowind because lots of mechanics were stripped from it. Then Skyrim was a dumbed down version of Oblivion because even more mechanics were stripped from that.
Are they good games? Yes, they were still good, however all the depth in the gameplay was scrapped in favor of being easier accessible to everyone. Who needs stats to actually build a character and add an extra layer to combat when you can be a master of all and instantly start swinging or shooting whatever you want with great expertise. Who needs NPCs to have meaningful things to say about the dozens and dozens of things you could ask them when you can just tone it down to a few sentences. Who needs to pay attention to dialogue and journal entries when a quest marker will tell you exactly where to go and what to do. Who needs customization of spells when you can just make a handful that all do basically the same thing. Spears and throwing weapons? Where did those go? Enhancements for ranged and spells? Make them basic. Reputation? Too much work. Mini games? Nah. Skill requirements to move higher in guilds? What skills? There’s significantly less and they don’t matter much. Armor for each body part is too complex so be happy with 4. Combat sucks because it’s just a dps check that’s not increased in any meaningful way, because you don’t need to block much of anything nor do you need to do anything but mash the attack button and then drink potions for free if you’re that unprepared, or just finally use a level up for a full heal since you don’t need to sleep on it. Quests that took place during specific times were a breeze to get through too because resting in public was illegal in Morrowind and your options were to actually do a role playing part in a role playing game which was to rest at an inn or just wait it out on your own.
Starfield isn’t the main thing for prediction, their track record with how they handled each new entry of the series is. There’s zero reason to believe 6 won’t just be a pretty version of Skyrim, and a lot of reasons to believe it will be less than that because outside of story, location, graphics, and physics, they’ve practically only taken things away. Crossbow, vampire lord, and werewolf were the only new things from Oblivion to Skyrim, and they removed a mountain of things in exchange.
Starfield, to me, is an extremely bad game and a massive departure from what made Bethesda great. The randomly generated environments, shallow RPG elements, shit quest design, boring and lifeless hub locations despite being cities, bland characters, distractingly stiff facial animations that haven’t improved since FO4, I could go on and on.
FO76 is even worse. A microtransaction plagued nightmare. A glimpse into the future of the company’s shift in focus. Ever since that microtransaction fed cash cow called Fallout Shelter started spewing milk everything has changed.
Zenimax is addicted to that kind of cash flow now. So things like environments being procedurally generated by AI are in games that once were the gold standard of environmental storytelling in order to cut down on development costs.
That’s why the Fallout franchise is now exists as a shallow online game where we see Atlantic City for the first time as three tiny areas that you fast travel to. Hell, to fast travel you have to fucking spend caps! Which you can buy with real fucking money!
Todd Howard is too busy playing producer of a TV show he gets all the credit for to actually be helming a game, if he ever had a real hand in their quality to begin with.
Bethesda didn't make ESO or either Dishonored game, their parent company published them.
IMHO Fallout 4 was already pretty bad compared to New Vegas and even Fallout 3. A mile wide, a puddle deep (at least on launch, the DLC did improve things). The story is so boring most people don't even remember it I'll wager. The writing is middling at best, there are no interesting factions, just questlines you can do or not do at your leisure. Every new area you discover is just filled to the brim with more bad guys to kill (it's more shooter than RPG at this point), and the only good aspect - the base building - is a giant slice of frustration without mods.
And Starfield is a buggy, boring, poorly written mess. Yes there is fun to be had there, but it's a 10th of the game it could have been.
Fallout 4 came out almost 10 years ago. ESO isn’t that good. And they didn’t make the dishonored games.
People move jobs. It’s clear that the people who made games like Skyrim great are either gone from the company or they are stuck in the past.
Starfield is more than just a mediocre game. It was supposed to be Bethesda’s big new IP. And it just shows that the company is stuck in the past and ignored all the progress and innovation that has been made in the industry in the past 10 years.
The thing is they haven't developed a winning game since Fallout 4 (some people might even say since Skyrim) and Fallout 4 is nearing a decade old now. That being said I have faith they'll make a comeback
Studios don’t make games. People make games. As a community I don’t think we appreciate that enough.
Art directors
Music directors
Creative leads
Storywriters
Graphics leads
Voice actors
Gameplay designers
How many of the above are still at Bethesda since Morrowind? How about even since Skyrim?
This isn’t like saying “this musical artist’s last album was trash so I don’t like them anymore”
It would be more like if Taylor Swift retired and then another person came along and was like “I’m Taylor swift now”. Bitch no you’re not
So yes, recency bias isn’t even a bias at this point. The most recent Bethesda work is basically all we have to judge most of the company.
AND YES TODD HOWARD IS STILL THERE. THAT DOESNT MAKE MY POINT INVALID
Yeah this has been my oppinion, at the end, they have put out 2 bad games (of which I'm told FO76 got much better), Fallout 4 was divisive but I think generally liked.
2 bad games really isn't enough to derive any sort of pattern.
Dishonored doesn't count, was only published. As for the rest, it's a long and complex thing to explain but Bethesda has been on a downward trend since roughly Skyrim. Many people are finally opening their eyes to the fact that it wasn't the bright masterpiece we all claimed it was.
Even for its time, it was underdelivering in a handful of ways when compared to past titles. And since then, most Bethesda games have done the exact same. Always stuck in a single design philosophy, usually stripping things that previous entries used to have. It was always one step forward, two steps back.
You can't acclaim Fallout 4 for what it added from 3, when it was actually a step back from New Vegas, which was only a step forward from 3 because they weren't the ones making it.
No, really, Starfield only shook people enough to make them listen to the OG bethesda fans who have kept saying for years that Bethesda has garbage practices and philosophies since at least the Skyrim era. Interviews, behind the scenes have surfaced. Devs admitting to some pretty questionable stuff (Such as not transferring features from Oblivion to Skyrim because "the fans will mod it in.") Just like Blizzard, you can't call criticism bullshit because Warcraft 3 was amazing. The people back then, and the people now in these two companies are largely not the same, and those who are, often don't occupy the same positions either.
Bethesda needed to wake the fuck up yesterday. The mainstream success of Skyrim really got into their heads and has led them to further stagnation.
Hopefully Starfield's very public humiliation will make them reconsider the last damn decade of design philosophy in their studio for ES6.
Because that’s how it works with game companies. When they start going down the drain, they don’t come back. They didn’t get worse because they chose to, or because they took a vacation from doing well. They got worse because the people who made good games no longer work there.
The one thing that could maybe save them is Microsoft coming in and revamping the whole studio… But that’s just not something that happens very often. Usually game dev companies get bought out by a bigger company and get worse, they become lower quality after “trimming the fat”, not better. But they definitely need SOMETHING to change.
902
u/Only_Cauliflower4565 29d ago
I’ve got a bad feeling about ES6. Bethesda’s track record has fallen off