Worried for Elder Scrolls 6

[Demi-Fiend from Shin]

Let's be honest. Starfield- wasn't the most received. I'm worried about the future of the Elder Scroll 6 and Fallout 5. I have the sinking feeling they're gonna gut and mess it up like their games prior.

[Wade]

Not worried at all. Don't care. Won't buy. Bethesda is a joke.

[starman]

yes, don't worry about it, it's going to be trash

[Fweezy]

Crazy to really think that Fallout 76 is probably the best game they've put out since skyrim. Fallout 4 garbage, f76 was trash till recent updates... Starfield somehow makes Mass effect Andromeda seem like a 9/10

[vonbleak]

Im not actually worried because both F76 and SF were experiments and different from traditional BGS games... This is why they failed...

ES6 and FO5 are traditional BGS games and so far they still know how to make those... Skyrim/FO4 were both great games...

[Wade]

Originally posted by vonbleak:

Im not actually worried because both F76 and SF were experiments and different from traditional BGS games... This is why they failed...

ES6 and FO5 are traditional BGS games and so far they still know how to make those... Skyrim/FO4 were both great games...

All the talent left Bethesda long time ago. All that's left is Lyin Todd, Crazy Emil, incompetent hirees and woke checkboxes. Good luck with Olders Scrolls 6, mr von Bleak. You will need it.

[Mkhuseli5k]

The existence of Creation Club should have made you worried for Elder Scrolls 6 long before Starfield. Starfield not having microtransactions shocked me. They do exist now in the form of the Creation Club, but not at launch. Either way I was worried about future Bethesda games long before Starfield and that worry hasn't really gone away because Creation Club still exists and is very successful. Another reason to worry is Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76, Fallout Shelter. What reason would a company making so much money from microtransactions have to give us quality single player games? Coz we're gonna yell at them online? They might get a bad reputation, but they' still making loads money. They also have the option of amplifying DEI and then say all the critics are bigots. They will look like the good guys giving women, POCs and LGBTQ people opportunity and representation. Creation Club is the one thing you should want gone if you care about future Bethesda Games.

[Laser]

F76 turned into a success and SF by the end of 2023 made $650 million and also was quoted specifically by microsoft as contributing to the record game profits through record gamepass sign ups. It might not be a creative success for many and it might not be as successful as Skyrim but Microsoft did just fine out of it. It might be a creative failure but financially it did fine.

[vonbleak]

Originally posted by Laser:

F76 turned into a success and SF by the end of 2023 made $650 million and also was quoted specifically by microsoft as contributing to the record game profits through record gamepass sign ups. It might not be a creative success for many and it might not be as successful as Skyrim but Microsoft did just fine out of it. It might be a creative failure but financially it did fine.

But for us old school fans none of that matters... F76 and SF were experiments... We want Old school BGS games again...

[Laser]

and i think the Creation 2 engine is better suited to Elder Scrolls games. it will still have loading screens galore but I'm sure ES6 will be great.

[Wade]

Originally posted by Laser:

F76 turned into a success and SF by the end of 2023 made $650 million

Source?

[Wade]

Originally posted by Laser:

F76 turned into a success and SF by the end of 2023 made $650 million

No source? Still waiting.

[Wade]

I think you mixed up Starfield and Star Citizen. But, it's just a few letters here and there, almost the same.

"Star Citizen has exceeded 650 million dollars in funding"

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamingnews/comments/18adw7p/star_citizen_has_exceeded_650_million_dollars_in/

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

I've said this before, but if anything, I'm actually encouraged by Starfield when it comes to TES VI.

Why? Because while I actually happen to quite like Starfield personally, almost all of the criticisms I do have of it, as well as the most frequently raised criticisms others seem to have of it from what I can tell, stem from it being what it is.

Which is to say, a massive scale space game with 1,000 planets in it, each being made up of dozens or more greater-than-Skyrim sized landing maps that get generated on the fly procedurally based on biome and height map and other data, while pulling from a library of far-too-few points of interest to populate all of that, and a comparatively small number of hand-crafted environments, While also just being a game in space, focused on space things, including a deep ship building system.

There's no reason that I can see to think the next Elder Scrolls game won't take place in just a single province like every other TES since Morrowind has, or that it won't take place in a single contiguous map like every TES since Morrowind has. Or if it is more than just one province, I still imagine it taking place in a single, just larger, map.

There's no reason that I can think of to imagine this won't also enable them to return to the intentionality and hand-craftedness of games like Skyrim or FO4, which seems to be what some people (a lot of people) wanted Starfield to be, only in space.

There's no reason that I can think of that they wouldn't be able to re-emphasize Radiant AI in that scenario. And there's no reason I can see to think the unique-content-to-scale ratio won't be much less like Starfield's, and much more like other TES games' have been.

In fact, just about the only thing about Starfield I'm not big on that I can maybe imagine them feeling like they have (from their perspective, depending on their design goals) to carry over to TES VI, is if they expand city sizes even more, they may once again wish to populate them with generic crowd NPCs in addition to the fully Radiant AI enabled unique NPCs, to avoid their feeling empty. (Something I hope they don't do, and instead hope they just allow... just let the cities feel empty and stick to fully Radiant AI NPCs imo. But they probably won't.)

In other words, Starfield is its own thing, with many of its limitations and flaws stemming in large part or entirely from the intentional decision made to go with the enormous scale they chose to go with, to let procedural generation try to make up for the emptiness and repetition that entails (which needless to say, clearly resulted in mixed experiences for people, even if I happen to like it personally,) and to set it in space, obviously.

There's no reason to imagine TES VI having those same structural decisions underlying its design imo, and so what I suspect we'll get is a much more typical TES game structure, in a single map, with all of the things people say they enjoyed about games like Skyrim.

I made what I consider to be a very safe, restrained, conservative prediction about the next TES in another topic, and I'm still going to come back and see how close to reality it was, if I'm still alive whenever it releases finally lol.

Originally posted by Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser:

We know next to nothing about TES VI right now, but if I had to make a very conservative prediction about what it might entail, it would be:

• A game world in a single map again, perhaps larger than Skyrim's, perhaps not, but on a single map.
  
• An increased degree of global Radiant AI governing a larger number of unique NPCs (but probably also generic crowd NPCs like we see in Starfield, just because cities will probably again also be larger and more crowded, so expecting every single NPC to be a fully Radiant AI enabled unique entity is probably unreasonable and not feasible to implement.)
  
• A return to longer lore fragments, including many of the past TES games' books and documents, just because they're no longer pulling from real world literature that they can only include snippets of as in Starfield.
  
• Probably some yet again tweaked progression system that I'm sure will once again lead to cries of the game being "dumbed down" and becoming "not an RPG" even though people like myself will be fine with it just like with every Bethesda game since Skyrim lol.
  
• A denser, more varied, more tightly populated world in terms of locations and content, akin to previous modern TES games.
  
• The usual array of joinable factions all TES games have.
  
• A main quest I can probably take or leave, but the freedom to largely ignore it as per usual, and as I typically do in most Beth games.
  
• A lot of the same jank and bugs all Bethesda games have, especially at launch.
  
• Loading screens for city interiors or specific interiors within those cities perhaps. Which is typical.
  
• Probably not much if any choice and consequence except in a very rudimentary sense, which is also typical of Beth's games. They aren't BioWare or Larian etc.
  
• May or may not include settlement building at launch. If it does, I'd expect it to be more limited in scope than Starfield's, possibly similar to Hearthfire's in terms of where we can build, just because unlike FO4, Tamriel's provinces are not all wastelands and in a more handcrafted, densely designed world, in the past they have tended to give us limited, prescribed locations as to where we can build. (Even going back to Morrowind, where we get to have homes via the Great Houses, we couldn't build anywhere we wanted. The same was true in Skyrim.)
  
• Typical Bethesda modding support, possibly expanded in functionality, but maybe not. Probably won't arrive until well after launch as with Starfield. Arriving at launch would be a welcome surprise.
  
• Probably an attempt at further improved combat, as with Starfield, but, you know... with swords and magic and bows.

I'll add another prediction to that, though. And that it that, even if the next TES is almost note for note just Skyrim but with substantially improved graphics, set in a different province, and maybe a bit larger, with more settlement stuff, and even if it ends up being a game I personally enjoy much like Starfield, many people will still condemn it as "lazy," "disappointing," "slop," "trash," etc.

Why? Well, not only because that seems to just be a given for literally every game I enjoy these days (for the last decade running now at least.) But also because I suspect something else going on is that some people simply no longer enjoy Bethesda's formula.

People want them to do things they've never substantially managed to implement in their games, it seems. Things outside their wheelhouse and specialty. Things like Larian-esque branching narratives. Or modern-CDPR-esque grittiness and interior seamlessness. Or Rockstar-esque sandbox mayhem shenanigans. Or deeper simulation elements. Or whatever the case may be.

And I mean, that's fine for people to want, if that's what they're in the market for. Hell, there's things I'd like to see too that probably won't ever happen. Like a return to all text wiki-style dialogue like in Morrowind, because I still stand on the hill of elaborate, epic, flowery lore and dialogue being read in text form, being more amenable to people's imaginations painting onto them whatever they want, as opposed to fully voiced dialogue which in some ways limits players' imaginations, and constrains the amount of text that can be put to page for practical reasons.

But I accept that that's not going to happen, because nobody wants a modern game without fully voiced NPCs. Just like those other things probably aren't going to happen, and we'll instead probably get something much closer to my list of predictions above, because those other things just aren't what Bethesda are good at.

In short, some people don't want Bethesda to make the games they're good at making anymore. They want them to do something other than that, plus the things they're good at. And I strongly suspect those people will be disappointed by TES VI on that basis, even if it's just Skyrim but prettier and bigger in a new province.

I also strongly suspect I'll find it enjoyable on that same basis, because I enjoy Bethesda's games. But that remains to be seen, of course.

[dannyj147]

I'm not, I enjoy Starfield so quite looking forward to ESVI :)

[ƬᗩԲԲվ]

One advantage is that it won't be 1,000 planets so the world will feel handcrafted. And a larger modding community since it's TES. Still I'm worried it will be as underwhelming as Starfield.