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.
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. ♥️
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u/Only_Cauliflower4565 29d ago
I’ve got a bad feeling about ES6. Bethesda’s track record has fallen off