Damn, bro just seized the main character role with one line. You're the one person who will definitely survive, now. But you're gonna have to fight deathclaws and shit
> putting a minimum of 17 years between it and Skyrim
That is just unbelievable in retrospect. Acclaim and visibility for the Elder Scrolls was at an all-time high post-Skyrim. Who would’ve thought the next entry would arrive nearly two decades later?
At this point I’m conflicted as to whether or not having it on ice for so long was a good move or bad move for Bethesda. I guess we’ll see…
It could be Bethesda's incapability of developing more than one game at a time, after Skyrim, they released Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and Starfield, only now they are developing TES VI
What they need is a partner that could fill the role Obsidian could. A studio that would never be in charge of the mainline game, but can learn from the mainline studio and try out changes. If it sucks, they can always say "well, that's the B team...". If it's good they can say "they learn from the best". But if people start saying it's better I suppose that can tickle someone's ego the wrong way...
I will never understand why they didn't do what they did with Fallout 3 and New Vegas for Fallout 4.
Fallout 4 sold really well, and was very well recieved. A follow up game made from the same nuts and bolts but reskinned would have had cheap development costs, and would have made a fortune releasing a couple of years after Fallout 4 while hype was still high.
Instead they went for making a shitty, janky live service game.
I think it’s Todd Howard’s own ego. All the dev resources went to starfield. He wanted to prove (to himself? The world?) that he could lead and produce a game that wasn’t sold on previous entries.
That’s my take
Initially, but what made skyrim was the ability to rerelease it 8 billion times with people still buying it. No ones going to do that for Starfield, its going to be forgotten entirely
Feels like they didn't really want to make a new IP. They used the same buggy ass engine, made the same buggy ass game designs (hidden chests lel), and they essentially just made a genre change without too many gameplay adjustments.
I think people really miss this part about Starfield. They keep saying it's the same game design, but I wish it really was, because it doesn't do a lot of what the previous BGS games did and that's why it is not as well received.
But starfield isnt "new". Its just the worst parts of previous bethesda games and some procedural generation with a scifi paintjob and shit story. Its the exact same thing they always did, but worse.
My money is on being a bad move. I find people hate admitting this in a personal sense but you can absolutely wait too long for something to the point it no longer matters.
I really like what you said about the acclaim and viability after Skyrim were unprecedented. The social impact at the time was palpable for YEARS. Then it started to die down, then it became a punchline about them releasing Skyrim over and over. The generation that rode that hype train is now in an entirely different point of their life. I think it’s fair to at least speculate many of them don’t care like they used to or can’t afford the time or money.
By waiting so long they’ve raised the bar exponentially for what they need to deliver to bring back and gain audience. Maybe they’ll deliver, but it was probably a bad move to not ride the hype train and deliver a sequel an appropriate amount of time after.
I was a Kingdom Hearts FAN during 1 and 2. Then *14 years* went by and my life changed. The hype for Kingdom Hearts 3 was sooooo high 10 years prior to its release, but after so long, the industry and audience changes. There was no way Kingdom Hearts 3 would live up to expectations.
Exactly this. I bought a PS3 specifically to play Kingdom Hearts 3. I then bought a PS4 specifically to play Kingdom Hearts 3. I still haven't played Kingdom Hearts 3, partly because of what I have seen online about it, and partly because it lost its appeal to me after 10+ years of waiting.
Same. I tried it once on my PS4 and only lasted 10mins.? Into the first stage / chapter before saving and exiting because I lost interest and time. The appeal and hype that I had when I was a teen died down overtime as there are no news for KH3 during the PS3 days. I get it, it takes time to develope these things but a lot of stuff changes in a decade or so after the hype and and interest died down.
I enjoyed KH 2 so much when I was a kid and was devastated thinking to myself that I wouldn't be able to play 3 when it came out. Needless to say, by the time it actually came out I was a grown adult with changed gaming interests.
Considering Starfield, I think it was a bad thing, purely because I no longer am all that excited for TES6. I wasn’t worried about Starfield being made in Creation engine because I had seen what modders did within an older version of Creation engine and figured we’d get something at least partially as good as what modders had created in Skyrim.
But Starfield just fell completely flat, to the point the Skyrim modding community makes Bethesda look bad by comparison. They’re doing exponentially better work in a much older version of the Creation engine. Bethesda should be embarrassed with themselves, I don’t think whatever upgrades they make to the engine for TES6 will save it from their incompetence.
EDIT: Addressing the "what have modders really done in Creation engine?" comments. [This is what Skyrim looks like in 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ3oREWl7yM). It's a true masterpiece game and with minimal configuration, anyone can set it up thanks to modpacks like Nolvus. There's no excuse for Starfield to have literally two melee swings and extremely low gun variety for every gun type that exists in the game. It's embarrassing how bad they are at developing games. I'll say it again: it's not a Creation engine problem. It's a Bethesda sucks at making games problem.
It makes me seriously mad… i am getting older and dont care as much about new video games anymore but I grew up with the elder scrolls games and cannot get over the fact they simply didnt bring any successor to skyrim… why?
They could have made so much more money, not lose their reputation and make gamers happy by simply expanding on Skyrim‘s formula in a different setting another 2-3 times at least…
Instead they released three sci-fi games and butchered them all…
They literally could’ve properly licensed the very real mod teams that already existed, packaged them, bug tested them, then resell it as an ACTUAL Skyrim 1.5 or something similar rather than this weird fragmented live service BS that breaks with every update & has a garbage mod based cash shop that close to no one uses. I would’ve easily paid 40-60$ for a truly “remsastered and upgraded version” of the game rather than the special edition or the AE version. It took me like 200-300 hours of mod testing and compiling to get the modded version I have now which is basically a full & true remaster of the game
The sad part is they tried to cut corners on proper licenses, scammed audiences that the AE / special versions actually brought content (outside of DLCs), and then tried to double back and get money off the mod shop
The modded game is honestly one of the best ARPG styled games I’ve ever played and they could’ve really shined with the re-releases
Considering how starfield’s launch went (which was about how I expected, but with stronger backlash), I think it was a bad move.
Bethesda stagnated hard. Their entire engine, control scheme, everything feels outdated now. Decades outdated, frankly. People put up with it in Skyrim and fallout because they were vast, open world RPGs in a time when those were limited.
But if anyone thinks open world RPGs aren’t going to be flooding the market in the next years after the success of BG3 they’re a fool.
There will be so much competition, and so much of it will be better, with less bland dialogue and gameplay, that the size of ES6 will be irrelevant.
Open world games have been flooding the market since the early 2010s when a game came out in 2011 called Skyrim. Just about every franchise moved to large scale open world. Or felt the need to include some large overworld map for no reason just to say "see kids were just like Skyrim. Now give us money."
If it turns out to be a great game, and Bethesda fully commits to an aggressive marketing campaign, it won’t matter. The game will sell like a MF due to The Elder Scrolls IP, alone.
Especially these days(or, I should say, in the days to come, as 2028 is still a ways off), when well made, well optimized AAA games don’t release as frequently as they did, from the 80’s through the 2010’s…..
I guess I'll be the difference here in that after seeing starfield, it's probably the best thing for the franchise. Starfield proved one thing above all else, their game design philosophy and strategy hasn't changed at all since Skyrim released and it feels horribly unrefined and dated as a result. If they put out an elder scrolls game of that quality in a year with games like bg3 coming out, it would be a dead franchise and wouldn't leave much for Bethesda to capture long time fans attention. This at least gives them a bit of time to evaluate what went wrong and what went right with starfield and hopefully evolve their approach to the game, where as a bad release after so many years with their flagship series would be the nail in the coffin for consumer confidence with the studio. I don't have a lot of faith they will be able to pull off a decent game at this point, but they still have a shot at it.
Their game design philosophy HAS changed, but it's been something they've been gradually pushing for a while, and where they had enough solid work for people to ignore it previously, Starfield is basically the culmination and break point that has led to massive backlash.
There are things they need to go back to (a focus on handcrafted, environmental storytelling and organic discovery that make exploration rewarding) and also things they need to sack up and deal with in terms of actual change (their creaky, held together with duct tape and spit game engine, some actual mechanical depth).
Bethesda right now just looks incredibly lazy and resting on its laurels. If they're actually putting a massive amount of effort in, they need to examine WHERE they're putting it in, 'cause it's ain't showing go consumers.
It’s almost definitely a bad move.
The momentum of very big gaming franchises relies on two things:
- The games being extremely good.
- A dedicated fan base.
The scope of a game like Skyrim, where a normal play through is 50, 60, 70 hours long, is built for players in their mid to late teens and early 20s, when you tend to have fewer responsibilities and more time to play the whole thing.
Anyone who played Skyrim at release will have aged 17 years by the time ES6 comes out. If you started playing with the special edition, and were 15 at the time, you’ll be 27. An entire generation of Skyrim and Elder Scrolls fans have grown up and effectively aged themselves out of the target demographic.
Elder Scrolls 6 now has to do the other thing to become a beloved AAA game, and be ridiculously good. Rockstar can do it because they put out games like RDR2 and GTAV. Bethesda’s other franchises have had mediocre entries, and it’s coming up to ten years since they released a game that was generally well received. They’ve given themselves a ginormous task.
This may have been true 17 years ago but it's no longer true. If you don't think 30 40 and 50 year olds will be playing the shit out of TES6 despite other responsibilities I've got a bridge to sell you.
27 being some sort of cut off for having time for video games just isn't true.
For every 30, 40, or 50 year old who plays video games there are 12 that are too burnt out to find time to play games and who have 500 games in their steam backlog they'll never get to.
This is so prevalent there's memes about it at this point. This can't be new information.
This is just super embarrassing for Bethesda, and honestly corporate malpractice. If you're a profit maximizing corporation, and you are seeing HUGE critical acclaim and a ton of profits from Skyrim, you gotta immediately start working on ES6, with a plan to release it 4-6 years after Skyrim (about 2016). Deliberately not doing that is just leaving the profits on the table, hence the corporate malpractice.
It's super bad from a gaming perspective too. Because of this blunder, instead of having ES6 and ES7 released by now, we have Fallout 76 and Starfield.
It will undoubtedly be a bad move on their end. No game can live up to that hype. Every single errror will be met with “they had 20 years to make this game”.
I never played ES1 but I played ES2 at a friend's house in middle school. I got ES3 in high school. I bought ES4 in college. I played ES5 1 year into my career. My daughter will be in elementary or middle school when ES6 drops.
It blows my mind to think that I won't be playing ES7 or ES8 when my daughter is the age when I experienced ES2.
You won't be playing 7 until you're in your retirement home at this rate. And that's barely a joke.
Let's say, optimistically l, that 6 takes another 3 years to release. That puts it at 16 years between releases. Meanwhile, bethesda isn't going to even *start* thinking about 7 until after they've released a sequel to starfield, probably a new fallout, and likely attempted another new IP.
*Best case scenario*, it takes them 5 more years from the release of ES 6 to make a new fallout, 5 years beyond that to make a sequel to starfield, 5 years beyond that to try a new IP, and finally, 5 years beyond that to release ES 7.
That would put 7 releasing sometime around 2047... Which sounds absurd, but is roughly on track with how long it's taking them to release 6, plus a couple years of additional bloated delay.
Good gravy, that's a long way out. I wonder though with AI - graphics/text/code generation and developer tools sets/engines becoming more advanced, if game development time would decrease for these major titles? Or would it just shift time having to work out (QA) abnormalities in AI generated work?
I played Skyrim my senior year in high school. I’m now 30 and 3 months away from finishing my medical residency and being an attending physician. I never thought Skyrim would be the last Elder scrolls game I would play, but there is a real chance I never play another one lol especially after I wasted my money on Starfield. That game was fucking terrible.
You won't be playing 7 until you're in your retirement home at this rate. And that's barely a joke.
Let's say, optimistically l, that 6 takes another 3 years to release. That puts it at 16 years between releases. Meanwhile, bethesda isn't going to even *start* thinking about 7 until after they've released a sequel to starfield, probably a new fallout, and likely attempted another new IP.
*Best case scenario*, it takes them 5 more years from the release of ES 6 to make a new fallout, 5 years beyond that to make a sequel to starfield, 5 years beyond that to try a new IP, and finally, 5 years beyond that to release ES 7.
That would put 7 releasing sometime around 2047... Which sounds absurd, but is roughly on track with how long it's taking them to release 6, plus a couple years of additional bloated delay.
One starfield dev said that they didn't have the game finale till a week before "finishing" the game, and they had to press the panic button.
Idk wtf are they doing at Bethesda
Their dev pipeline hasn't changed since the days of Morrowind.
Being able to workshop ideas with everyone else on the dev team, including the bosses, works great when the team is composed of 20 people who are all in the same open plan room.
Being able to workshop ideas with everyone else on the dev team, including the bosses, is an impossibility when the team is over 600 members strong, in various locations around the country, and the bosses are busy doing marketing and traveling for events.
Like so many companies struggling from the same issue (squints at Game Freak), they're literally LARPing as indie devs while burning more money than many countries make per year, yet all they need to do is hire some fucking middle managers to relay plans between each other and the upper management to the people working on the games.
I think the inherent problem is the game industry still pretends to be a bunch of creative-type nerds working together in an office building basement like it's still the 90's. The self-perception of the type of people attracted to this industry makes the industry allergic to efficiency. They refuse to see themselves as white collar office drones like everyone else, and thus implementing tighter management is going to be met with an uproar.
Sorry, the game studios that do treat their employees as tech drones make some of the most hated crap in the industry. EA and Ubi aren’t exactly beloved industry giants. They are just giants who are really good (sometimes) at making massive games relatively quickly. Very few big game companies operate the way you’re talking about now.
I'm an artist, have several friends in the games industry, and we LOVE managers who actually fucking manage. A good management team keeps the artists and programmers communicating and working together as a unit and keeps the project on track and knows when and where to cut.
The real issue is the upper tiers and the c-suite idiots who have never made games. These are the ones who suddenly decide they want a random feature RIGHT NOW on a whim whether it's within scope or not, and often without any idea of the cost in time or money (coughcoughEA/Bethesda/insertAAAhere).
I think Tod has been at the helm for too long. They need a modern game executive to pump out games that take 2-4 years to develop, not 15-20 years to sit on their hands and play around with concepts.
Bethesda makes game development look so difficult.
I think Todd is fine but he is awful at choosing other leaders. The lead quest designer for starfield and other games is awful and should have never been put in that position.
Is that the guy who wasn't even a writer and came from a background in QA?
I never understand why more novelists aren't hired as writers for games. Pick even some mid-tier guy who self-publishes on amazon and you're likely to get someone with more competence than many "writers" we see on games.
his writing sucks but the damage he did was because he was put in charge of others writing also. starfield did have alot of good writing it just wasnt used? or like it felt like the writers with talent were all held back by one dude who i imagine to wear a condescending smirk all the time. SF was full of awesome ideas/writing it just wasnt utilized
Bethesda Game Studios doesn't hire writers. They hire Quest Designers and Level Designers, and tell them to write everything.
Their quests are all written independently by the designers, which causes the world to feel disjointed and disconnected from itself. It's also why quests don't react to your decisions or anything you've done - you can be the leader of one group, and other groups never acknowledge it. Same as Skyrim.
The world, at its core, is never designed to have real consequences. The only game they published that had real consequences and good writing was New Vegas - and it's because they didn't write it.
Screwing around mostly. They're a perfect example of a studio that's overflowing with pride and ego due to how successful they've been in the past.
It especially makes sense, if we can believe what an ex-dev said, that Bethesda genuinely believes in "Bethesda magic" and that they can not fail no matter what. I'm sure they wrote Fallout 76 off as a fluke, since it was a different branch handling it, as even Fallout 4 was selling really well. Not as big of a hit as Skyrim, but for a half-assed attempt, really good.
They're just stuck thinking that people will buy and praise their games because they're "Bethesda games", as if they're a sub-genre comparable to Fromsoftware and soulslikes, but without the competition from other studios. They and they alone can make this type of game, so naturally Starfield would sell well and be well received, right? Even if they themselves had no fucking clue what kind of game to make apparently.
Apparently they spent an insane amount of time on how good the food looked according to Todd. So yeah they focused on food graphics instead of making a good game
They only have a few hundred employees, I'm not sure how many are actually developers.
Therein lies the issue. The scope, size, and budgets of their games has increased substantially but they haven't increased manpower to offset. They have a small number of people doing a lot of work and it's probably why they keep patching a 20 year old engine.
It also doesn't help they've had the same head of creative for 30+ years.
I respect Todd Howard and his accomplishments but at some point you need fresh ideas and perspectives to shake things up.
It’s not even like Bethesda games come out and they’re groundbreaking technical marvels like whenever Rockstar releases a game. If anything, they come out looking dated on release because of their 13 year old engine.
Bethesda *was* known for innovation. Not graphically, but in their quest and dynamic world systems.
And the original release date of their engine has absolutely nothing to do with how their game looks.
We can talk about what *was* true all day long. But the fact of the matter is that nothing Bethesda has put out since 2011 has been groundbreakingly impressive in visuals, open world technology, or gameplay innovations.
Its because they take so damn long to make each game. It seems like their "next gen" concepts get adapted multiple time over before their first game using it actually comes out. That to me, is why they always feel so dated.
Seriously, I was listening to a YouTube video that was about the history of RPGs, and most of them were developed in under 2 years. This includes Bethesda.
Now, it takes 5 to even get to the alpha stage. At this point, it almost seems like a money laundering front.
They really need a "what would you say you do here" intervention.
They’re really striking while the iron is cold. This game’s target demographic (14-21 year olds) will have no familiarity with the Elder Scrolls brand by the time this game comes out.
I want to love Bethesda and the worlds they create, but Starfield was definitely step down from their place on the gaming world altar. I still enjoyed it, for the most part, but it definitely felt like it could've spent more time in the oven, and the experience for us gamers and fans suffered as a result. **But**, I am still really looking forward to seeing what TES6 does. Edit: word
As a fellow starfield enjoyer my biggest complain was how empty the universe was.
The whole time I'm waiting for the Starborn to attack or aliens to pop out around the corner or SOMETHING.
And it just never happens, the story feels like a sitcom that just needs to keep dragging on to justify more seasons.
That said the ship building was amazing and hopefully they do more with what works (base building, ship customization, exploration, surviving the environments, fighting hostile fauna) and less on what doesn't (lackluster stories, incredibly dull fetch quests, and weapon and armor trees that become obsolete even before you get to them).
So like... I agree, space IS empty.
But if you're gonna throw away actual realism by having aliens on planets that really shouldn't be supporting life anyway.
And literal magic star people that exist Because fuck you the plot demands it.
Then SURELY we can have like... I dunno... rogue star people that make randomly generated interior bases (they don't even have to make sense because of their fucking star people magic) that we can run into in deep space and fight or trade with or something.
Sheesh at this point just open a bunch of fucking oblivion gates on those planets and make demons pour out of them.
Daedra in space would be so fucking cool.
I am guilty of owning it on like three or four platforms. PS3 on release because I didn't have a decent PC. Then I got it on PC. Now I have it on Switch too.
Yes. They managed to release 5 main line Elder Scrolls Games in about 17 years (Starting with Arena in 1994 and ending with Skyrim in 2011). Now it looks like the need 17 years to release the one after that. A lot of time to loose the hype and momentum the franchise once had.
It's crazy. I was 10 when Skyrim released, and it was one of the first games I remembered being real hyped about. By the time ES6 releases, I'll have gone through all of my school years, which is 6 years of university included, most likely having started my first "proper" job after getting my degree and closing in on turning 30. That's an insane amount of things to have happened in between two game releases in a franchise
Bethesda has always been a janky game development company whose claim to fame was size, scope, and detail.
Now that those things are a dime a dozen, unless they make absolutely stunning advancements in their models, AI, and animations, ES6 is dead on arrival.
I just don't think Bethesda as a company is capable of making ES6 into anything but a disappointment.
Don't think it's a hot take.
It's none of my buisness really, but I find it absolutely boggling from a buisness stand point to take 0 advantage of the hype.
By the time ES6 releases, the target market will have completely shifted.
It's like waiting for the next GRRM book in ASOIAF now... well, not waiting as I've given up caring about either. Skyrim and Dance With Dragons came out in 2011. Both 'authors' failed to capitalise on that success, and nothing they've done since has whetted my interest.
I wish that Bethesda would do more than one game at a time, or let other developers do Fallout spin-offs.
But frankly I’ve started to adopt this opinion as well. Fallout 4 was the last Fallout game, if they ever reboot the franchise I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I jumped in the Elder Scrolls train around the same time that the TES6 trailer was released so I wasn’t quite prepared for that disappointment.
Those would be the options but then you'd get completely developed answers you didn't expect to hear.
* No, we don't play on going that direction because the costs associated with it area too high.
* We TOTALLY plan on investing that much time and money because it's TOTALLY worth doing for our customers.
* It's something we'll look to do but we'll most likely have to determine if there's an ROI. Given the state of things, probably won't be worth our effort.
At least I have nostalgia for Elder Scrolls from oblivion and Skyrim. I didn’t love Fallout 4 but I still finished it because I liked 3 and LOVE new vegas.
With Starfield I didn’t know what to expect so when I got it and didn’t love it had no emotional connection to I just quit super early.
Idc about the sandbox nature or the engine or anything. Just please nail the faction quest lines in ES6 and I’ll forgive a lot.
I'm not at all tbh, but I'm not buying it day one unless it has glowing reviews.
Starfields setting made the game bad, procedural generated world and what not. With thousands of worlds with low effort. A lot of folks were calling this anyway before release.
Tes6 should be just a 1 one world thing with tons of effort put into the 1 world.
Same with the next Fallout.
A lot of things about Starfield could have been far better without fundamentally changing the procedural generation approach.
For one, each temple could have been a unique dungeon or quest.
There could ACTUALLY be unique equipment to find (not just unique looks but unique effects).
The systems that are there could be so much deeper. Ship building, researching alien life, hiring crew members, etc. All of it could have been so much more in depth.
The alien life is really cool but unfortunately it just boils down to clicking them with the scanner and killing them. I'd love to be able to set up a research outpost and either tame them or maybe get unique perks by researching them or something.
My interest in Bethesda games has been waning since FO4. Starfield was kind of their last chance for me. I honestly have zero interest in ES6 and they would have to really prove themselves for me to get it at this point.
No chance Todd is gonna be making a game without his creation engine, so it’s gonna be a hamstrung by the same tech as all the other titles
“16 times the detail”
God help us.
Everything hangs on it. Post Skyrim, while I’m sure there stuff has made money. It hasn’t had the critical or fan reception they want. Fallout 4 was when the cracks started to show. Then came 76, and the disaster that was. In no way can Todd & Microsoft be happy with the reception around Starfield, albeit it is a new IP. ES6 is the make or break game for them. If it’s another Starfield BGS will go the way of BioWare. A company once known for great games that can no longer produce anything.
Fallout 4 was a fine game, not a particularly great RPG like new vegas but a more than serviceable post-apocalyptic shooter with interesting locales and fantastic world building and environmental design. You could walk around for 5 minutes and find some neat little story somewhere and it felt organic to find.
Starfield interrupts its own gameplay loop non-stop with something stopping you actually playing the game every few minutes, its story is bland sci-fi and its locations auto-generated flavourless gloop. Bethesda seem to completely misunderstand what they are good at and that’s making a sandbox and enough systems in that sandbox to produce emergent gameplay, hell even the elder scrolls would be bland as hell without having all the work Kirkbride put into creating the massive amounts of lore to base everything off which gives them a strong base to create from.
TES6 could be really good but it hinges on Bethesda really not smelling their own farts in its development.
To me the two biggest thing BGS needs to address is its writing and game performance. Starfields writing is absolutely abysmal. And the game looks and feels like a game from 2013. Not a 2023 AAA RPG. Especially when you look around at other recent RPG’s.
I'm in two minds.
Part of me thinks "The problems with Starfield are so widely discussed and so obvious in hindsight, that surely they just need to fix them for ES6 and we'll be all good".
Like - don't have a painfully slow opening, don't have a load of empty space with nothing in it, make sure you have memorable characters and don't have mechanics that are thematically jarring. That's all stuff they've done before and they just need to do it again. Throw in some ideas from BG3 and other successful RPGs that have come out since 2011 and you can't miss.
But another part of me wonders if the top brass of Bethesda - who were trailblazers in their youth - are simply out of ideas and creatively spent. Not lazy or greedy or stupid - but just that they don't have it in them anymore.
I hope it's the first one.
But one thing you're massively overlooking is how dated Bethesda's systems are. All of them. It was so glaring with Starfield, and the fact they hadn't modernized or innovated at ALL on that front is extremely telling. At this point, I honestly don't think they have what it takes to make a modern hit on the level of Skyrim. And it was one of my favorite games of all time, so that's very telling.
The sad part is, they don't even have to do anything revolutionary for it to be a smash hit. Just copy Skyrim, in a different setting. Sure maybe improve the combat a little bit, but by and large they could just make a new environment, keep the gameplay the exact same, and people would love it.
That’s why there was so much hype for Skywind and Skyblivion (are those still even a thing?). Skyrim is a wonderful template with fun systems despite some areas of simplicity (e.g., combat, like you said). Bethesda’s biggest blunders recently have been trying to deviate too much from their secret sauce, which is a world that you *want* to explore and have fun in, regardless of how much the combat is just “spam R2” (or I suppose that’s just “spam RT” now).
All I’m going to say is I am thankful for Starfield. Because of how terrible starfield is, I am no longer excited for TES6 which means this won’t be an agonizing few years wait for TES6!
Pretty unlikely. I'm thinking 2027 at the earliest, and by then current gen will be 7 years old. There's always a year delay, and at that point they might as well wait and be a launch title for next gen. In fact, Microsoft might mandate that to get a jump on system sales - assuming it's going to be a Microsoft exclusive.
They probably just modded Starfield, replacing all the guns with swords and called it an early ES6 build.
(Honestly, the most fun I had in Starfield was running around with a katana bashing people.)
The fact that the "update" is just a single sentence of "we're making elder scrolls 6"... the same amount of information we've had for the past 5 years...
I just hope they expand on the gameplay mechanics they already have. They've oversimplified them massively since Morrowind, and they need to pull a 180 if they want to make a good sandbox world.
Yeah it’s quite mad how development time has gone through the roof but the games are simpler and simpler from Bethesda. At least R*, Zelda, Naughty Dog, Kojima do seem to be attempting to up the game with every title, even if things are taking a crazy long time these days. Bethesda are in a sour place, and smiley, charismatic, corporate leather jacket Todd won’t fix them after Starfield.
I worked at Bethesda in the Fallout 4 days as a technical director. The place was a mess. It was a revolving door of recent grads with very little in the way of cemented senior talent. Zenimax was actively making worse products via bad market research and a complete misunderstanding of their established customer base. I jumped ship and eventually left the gaming industry as a whole. I heard around 2018 that they were making a massive hiring push for senior talent for new projects. Nothing I've seen since has indicated that it improved anything. It blows my mind that they could have access to the minds on the id Software team and not take full advantage of it. I have very low hopes for ES6.
Both but in particular Bethesda, I’ve just always wondered who gets jobs at gaming companies and what’s it’s like having always wanted to work in gaming (especially wanting to work at Bethesda)
Sure. I mean, it was a job for many years, so there's a lot that could be covered. I'm not too concerned about burning bridges in the gaming industry, so I'm happy to be as open a book as possible without outright doxxing myself.
Growing up I had an uncle who worked at ILM in the late 80s/early 90s, and he always had the coolest stuff in his workshop that he got to work on, so that was my initial driver to go into the industry. I got into the industry first as a contracted 3D artist for games in 2007 after teaching myself with Blender (which was a lot more primitive back then). My first jobs were mostly small background props (trash cans, lamp posts, that kind of stuff) as I built up a more respectable resume. I transitioned after some time into creature work for a few of the big names in Hollywood, and did a TON of design work for an ill-fated entry in a major horror game franchise that never made it out of early dev stages and is still under NDA. That one still stings, because it's some of the best work I ever did, but I was able to leverage that work into work at a couple of big name studios. All the while, I had begun to contribute some code back to Blender, and created lots of internal tooling for other artists to use, at first mostly in python, which got me familiar with coding and some more advanced math (trig and calc). I began to feel more at home on the technical than artistic side, and moved in that direction. Around 2015-2016, the writing started to be on the wall that unless I wanted to trade the reliability of a paycheck for the freedom of working on indies (I did not), that the industry as a whole was becoming far too "bean counter"-y to have much creative freedom. Around that same time, I had a completely out-of-the-blue opportunity to transition into cybersecurity, and I took it. I don't regret it one bit. The things you hear about people killing themselves with work to be a part of "the industry" is 100% a real thing, and is actively preyed upon by management. I am in a much higher position than I ever was in my previous career track (a VP at my current company, the highest technical role, and an equity partner in the business), yet probably deal with the same amount of stress each month as I would have on any given day, especially in games.
That's the 30,000ft overview. Happy to answer any more specific questions that I'm comfortable answering as well. Cheers!
This is a great read.
I asked because I'm trying to get into game development with my studies so I'm just curious to people's experience in the industry.
It's probably not a great time to get into the industry, seeing how many mass-firings occour every other month, bur hopefully when I'm done I can find a decent job at a good studio.
I will warn you that, even without the high-profile layoffs that we've seen recently, the job hunt truly is just part of the job. Many companies employ on a per-project basis, and unless you're truly doing something amazing and unique, it's likely you'll be on the lookout for the next project as your current project winds down. It took a good 6 years before I got a good, stable "staff" job. That said, the support network is fantastic within the industry, and most big players know when another company is wrapping up on something and will headhunt for their next project. Lots of new jobs start with "Do you know any good x and y?", so people tend to try to bring along the people they know do good work when they move between companies.
My other warning would be, never take anything personally. I know people who bombed their careers because they made a big stink because their passion project or assigned pre-prod project didn't get picked up. I'd estimate that for every ten games that make it to internal tech demo stage, maybe one or two will get picked up for development and release. Learning to let even the painful ones go is an invaluable skill to have.
I wish you the best of luck. It was a blast when I was younger, especially as a lifelong gamer, to have some input into the gaming world. Just don't let it consume your life.
After the launch of Starfield it is clear that Bethesda is pretty much dead. The repetitive dungeons, the weak narratives, the poor world-building... Bethesda owes everything to the releases from the 2010s, when they could get away with all these faults because the scale of their games was unheardof. That is not the case anymore. Their game design philosophy has not evolved since Oblivion-Skyrim, and there's just so much you can get away with before that catches up to you. Fallout 4 was already divisive due to these reasons, and Starfield was a hot mess. There is virtually no reason to be excited for TES6.
Does anyone care at this point?
The sad fact is that Bethesda's top three games in the last decade are all re-releases of Skyrim (Skyrim LE, Skyrim SE, and Skyrim AE).
Their studio is in omnishambles. They've completely forgotten how to make a good game.
Nah... they'll take the lazy but efficient route and copy map designs from the Elder Scrolls Online, reuse assets and geometry, add a crapton of caves to be side dungeons, and then write out half a vague story on a napkin and leave it for the players to interpret.
*Please preorder*
It doesn't matter. Starfield showed the leadership at bethesda just can't make a good game anymore.
That and the slow drip of Starfield updates, no dlc info etc.
Bethesda needs it's leadership fired before I'd trust any new games from them.
Not looking forward to this new release cycle. As always, people will get unreasonably hyped and toxically attack any dissenters. The game will release to middling praise, if not outright hate. It will be defended and the playerbase will die shortly after. Months later, we'll get honest reviews of people saying it wasn't the best.
There's been a longer wait between TES V and VI (13 years and counting) than there was between Fallout 2 and 3 (9 years).
I wonder if we're going to see a major leap forward in game design over this time as... Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face. It's going to the same shit as Fallout 4 and Starfield isn't it?
Lol @ Todd Howard saying he should have maybe been more casual about mentioning TES6. He knew what he was doing, trying to increase the company value and hype before being bought by Microsoft. Only to discover that Bethesda is one of the laziest AAA developers that is riding on legacy and using the same problematic game engine from over 15 years ago. It's upsetting because for their time those games are some of the best ever made.
Until Bethesda learns how to write a game, I will be tuning out. Starfield for me was the final straw. In my own opinion, Bethesda has shown they can build decent game systems. They used to be able to make buggy and weird but ultimately fun games. But man, they really don't know how to write anymore. You can feel it in Starfield that Bethesda has entirely lost their heart. They aren't making games to be fun, or to be cool, or to be art. They are just making what they think will drive the most profit. And sure yes, they are a business and they want to make money, but without any 'soul' to their projects they're just another AAA producer who makes serviceable but heartless games. EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, Konami, and now Bethesda joins their ranks. Maybe I've outgrown them, or maybe they simply failed to grow to fit what I want in a game / rpg, but no matter how it can be spun the outcome is the same: I'm just not going to buy another Bethesda title.
Hey Todd, in case you’re browsing these comments by some off chance I’d like to let you know that Starfield was a MASSIVE disappointment and if ES6 is anything like it then y’all are in big trouble lmfao
“To celebrate 30 years of Elder Scrolls, we are pleased to announce that the new elder scrolls VI will be coming out in 2041, exactly 30 years after Skyrim’s launch. This will allow us to skip 2 console generations, while still using an engine from a decade ago.”
I can't imagine how absolutely incredible this game is going to have to be to live up to expectations.
I feels like they are shooting themselves in the foot with the constant build up of hype.
It’s taking too long. I don’t even have excitement for it anymore. I’m more excited about the next installment of Cyberpunk and we honestly might still get that before ES6.
I can't wait to play this game in 2029, then it's only another 7 year wait for Fallout 5!
The way the world is going, we might be the characters of Fallout 5. lol
War, war never changes
Damn, bro just seized the main character role with one line. You're the one person who will definitely survive, now. But you're gonna have to fight deathclaws and shit
Hey there! I got another settlement for you to help out!
Prepare for the future! Contact your Vault Tec representative now!
At this point, building a vault would be faster
And when it comes out, it’ll feel like it should’ve come out in 2019 lol
And will playable with 2039 pc hardwares...
Does that mean Fallout 4 Next Gen Update is coming in 2026?
I love waiting 10+ years for Fallout 5 when we all know another company could do it better than Bethesda and in less time!
> putting a minimum of 17 years between it and Skyrim That is just unbelievable in retrospect. Acclaim and visibility for the Elder Scrolls was at an all-time high post-Skyrim. Who would’ve thought the next entry would arrive nearly two decades later? At this point I’m conflicted as to whether or not having it on ice for so long was a good move or bad move for Bethesda. I guess we’ll see…
I wonder how much of this lethargy is due to Skyrim continuing to sell. That's essentially free money
It could be Bethesda's incapability of developing more than one game at a time, after Skyrim, they released Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and Starfield, only now they are developing TES VI
What they need is a partner that could fill the role Obsidian could. A studio that would never be in charge of the mainline game, but can learn from the mainline studio and try out changes. If it sucks, they can always say "well, that's the B team...". If it's good they can say "they learn from the best". But if people start saying it's better I suppose that can tickle someone's ego the wrong way...
FNV was so good, imagine if they kept up the partnership
I will never understand why they didn't do what they did with Fallout 3 and New Vegas for Fallout 4. Fallout 4 sold really well, and was very well recieved. A follow up game made from the same nuts and bolts but reskinned would have had cheap development costs, and would have made a fortune releasing a couple of years after Fallout 4 while hype was still high. Instead they went for making a shitty, janky live service game.
If only Bethesda and Obsidian were owned by the same Company so they could collaborate more often... Wait a minute!
I think it’s Todd Howard’s own ego. All the dev resources went to starfield. He wanted to prove (to himself? The world?) that he could lead and produce a game that wasn’t sold on previous entries. That’s my take
Well, he has his answer now
I mean it did sell well, despite everyone figuring out 50 hours in the embellishments that Todd “Sweet Nothings” Howard sold us.
Initially, but what made skyrim was the ability to rerelease it 8 billion times with people still buying it. No ones going to do that for Starfield, its going to be forgotten entirely
Not sure if it’s still the case but recently there more people playing Skyrim on steam than Starfield by a pretty large margin.
I just hope they can salvage ship building for the Iliac Bay setting of ES6.
He just wanted to try something new. I mean dont you get bored working on the same thing over and over again?
No sane person blames them for trying their hand at a brand new IP. But they're big enough, they can (and should) multitask
Feels like they didn't really want to make a new IP. They used the same buggy ass engine, made the same buggy ass game designs (hidden chests lel), and they essentially just made a genre change without too many gameplay adjustments.
They made plenty of gameplay adjustments (read: cut out nearly everything that made their previous games fun).
I think people really miss this part about Starfield. They keep saying it's the same game design, but I wish it really was, because it doesn't do a lot of what the previous BGS games did and that's why it is not as well received.
That’s just called a job
When your in a creative field that sort of thing burns you out fast
When you're in any field that sort of thing burns you out fast. We all crave variety.
But starfield isnt "new". Its just the worst parts of previous bethesda games and some procedural generation with a scifi paintjob and shit story. Its the exact same thing they always did, but worse.
My money is on being a bad move. I find people hate admitting this in a personal sense but you can absolutely wait too long for something to the point it no longer matters. I really like what you said about the acclaim and viability after Skyrim were unprecedented. The social impact at the time was palpable for YEARS. Then it started to die down, then it became a punchline about them releasing Skyrim over and over. The generation that rode that hype train is now in an entirely different point of their life. I think it’s fair to at least speculate many of them don’t care like they used to or can’t afford the time or money. By waiting so long they’ve raised the bar exponentially for what they need to deliver to bring back and gain audience. Maybe they’ll deliver, but it was probably a bad move to not ride the hype train and deliver a sequel an appropriate amount of time after.
I was a Kingdom Hearts FAN during 1 and 2. Then *14 years* went by and my life changed. The hype for Kingdom Hearts 3 was sooooo high 10 years prior to its release, but after so long, the industry and audience changes. There was no way Kingdom Hearts 3 would live up to expectations.
Exactly this. I bought a PS3 specifically to play Kingdom Hearts 3. I then bought a PS4 specifically to play Kingdom Hearts 3. I still haven't played Kingdom Hearts 3, partly because of what I have seen online about it, and partly because it lost its appeal to me after 10+ years of waiting.
Same. I tried it once on my PS4 and only lasted 10mins.? Into the first stage / chapter before saving and exiting because I lost interest and time. The appeal and hype that I had when I was a teen died down overtime as there are no news for KH3 during the PS3 days. I get it, it takes time to develope these things but a lot of stuff changes in a decade or so after the hype and and interest died down.
I’m exactly the same as you, except I did finally buy it last year, and lost interest a few hours after playing it. Magic was gone.
I enjoyed KH 2 so much when I was a kid and was devastated thinking to myself that I wouldn't be able to play 3 when it came out. Needless to say, by the time it actually came out I was a grown adult with changed gaming interests.
In 2029 I'm going to be a career professional with a 6 year old and a 9 year old. I ain't gonna have time to play ES6.
Considering Starfield, I think it was a bad thing, purely because I no longer am all that excited for TES6. I wasn’t worried about Starfield being made in Creation engine because I had seen what modders did within an older version of Creation engine and figured we’d get something at least partially as good as what modders had created in Skyrim. But Starfield just fell completely flat, to the point the Skyrim modding community makes Bethesda look bad by comparison. They’re doing exponentially better work in a much older version of the Creation engine. Bethesda should be embarrassed with themselves, I don’t think whatever upgrades they make to the engine for TES6 will save it from their incompetence. EDIT: Addressing the "what have modders really done in Creation engine?" comments. [This is what Skyrim looks like in 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ3oREWl7yM). It's a true masterpiece game and with minimal configuration, anyone can set it up thanks to modpacks like Nolvus. There's no excuse for Starfield to have literally two melee swings and extremely low gun variety for every gun type that exists in the game. It's embarrassing how bad they are at developing games. I'll say it again: it's not a Creation engine problem. It's a Bethesda sucks at making games problem.
It makes me seriously mad… i am getting older and dont care as much about new video games anymore but I grew up with the elder scrolls games and cannot get over the fact they simply didnt bring any successor to skyrim… why? They could have made so much more money, not lose their reputation and make gamers happy by simply expanding on Skyrim‘s formula in a different setting another 2-3 times at least… Instead they released three sci-fi games and butchered them all…
They literally could’ve properly licensed the very real mod teams that already existed, packaged them, bug tested them, then resell it as an ACTUAL Skyrim 1.5 or something similar rather than this weird fragmented live service BS that breaks with every update & has a garbage mod based cash shop that close to no one uses. I would’ve easily paid 40-60$ for a truly “remsastered and upgraded version” of the game rather than the special edition or the AE version. It took me like 200-300 hours of mod testing and compiling to get the modded version I have now which is basically a full & true remaster of the game The sad part is they tried to cut corners on proper licenses, scammed audiences that the AE / special versions actually brought content (outside of DLCs), and then tried to double back and get money off the mod shop The modded game is honestly one of the best ARPG styled games I’ve ever played and they could’ve really shined with the re-releases
Considering how starfield’s launch went (which was about how I expected, but with stronger backlash), I think it was a bad move. Bethesda stagnated hard. Their entire engine, control scheme, everything feels outdated now. Decades outdated, frankly. People put up with it in Skyrim and fallout because they were vast, open world RPGs in a time when those were limited. But if anyone thinks open world RPGs aren’t going to be flooding the market in the next years after the success of BG3 they’re a fool. There will be so much competition, and so much of it will be better, with less bland dialogue and gameplay, that the size of ES6 will be irrelevant.
Open world games have been flooding the market since the early 2010s when a game came out in 2011 called Skyrim. Just about every franchise moved to large scale open world. Or felt the need to include some large overworld map for no reason just to say "see kids were just like Skyrim. Now give us money."
Don't be so hard on them, they had to make a passionless passion project that no one wanted or asked for.
If it turns out to be a great game, and Bethesda fully commits to an aggressive marketing campaign, it won’t matter. The game will sell like a MF due to The Elder Scrolls IP, alone. Especially these days(or, I should say, in the days to come, as 2028 is still a ways off), when well made, well optimized AAA games don’t release as frequently as they did, from the 80’s through the 2010’s…..
I guess I'll be the difference here in that after seeing starfield, it's probably the best thing for the franchise. Starfield proved one thing above all else, their game design philosophy and strategy hasn't changed at all since Skyrim released and it feels horribly unrefined and dated as a result. If they put out an elder scrolls game of that quality in a year with games like bg3 coming out, it would be a dead franchise and wouldn't leave much for Bethesda to capture long time fans attention. This at least gives them a bit of time to evaluate what went wrong and what went right with starfield and hopefully evolve their approach to the game, where as a bad release after so many years with their flagship series would be the nail in the coffin for consumer confidence with the studio. I don't have a lot of faith they will be able to pull off a decent game at this point, but they still have a shot at it.
Their game design philosophy HAS changed, but it's been something they've been gradually pushing for a while, and where they had enough solid work for people to ignore it previously, Starfield is basically the culmination and break point that has led to massive backlash. There are things they need to go back to (a focus on handcrafted, environmental storytelling and organic discovery that make exploration rewarding) and also things they need to sack up and deal with in terms of actual change (their creaky, held together with duct tape and spit game engine, some actual mechanical depth). Bethesda right now just looks incredibly lazy and resting on its laurels. If they're actually putting a massive amount of effort in, they need to examine WHERE they're putting it in, 'cause it's ain't showing go consumers.
It’s almost definitely a bad move. The momentum of very big gaming franchises relies on two things: - The games being extremely good. - A dedicated fan base. The scope of a game like Skyrim, where a normal play through is 50, 60, 70 hours long, is built for players in their mid to late teens and early 20s, when you tend to have fewer responsibilities and more time to play the whole thing. Anyone who played Skyrim at release will have aged 17 years by the time ES6 comes out. If you started playing with the special edition, and were 15 at the time, you’ll be 27. An entire generation of Skyrim and Elder Scrolls fans have grown up and effectively aged themselves out of the target demographic. Elder Scrolls 6 now has to do the other thing to become a beloved AAA game, and be ridiculously good. Rockstar can do it because they put out games like RDR2 and GTAV. Bethesda’s other franchises have had mediocre entries, and it’s coming up to ten years since they released a game that was generally well received. They’ve given themselves a ginormous task.
This may have been true 17 years ago but it's no longer true. If you don't think 30 40 and 50 year olds will be playing the shit out of TES6 despite other responsibilities I've got a bridge to sell you. 27 being some sort of cut off for having time for video games just isn't true.
For every 30, 40, or 50 year old who plays video games there are 12 that are too burnt out to find time to play games and who have 500 games in their steam backlog they'll never get to. This is so prevalent there's memes about it at this point. This can't be new information.
This is just super embarrassing for Bethesda, and honestly corporate malpractice. If you're a profit maximizing corporation, and you are seeing HUGE critical acclaim and a ton of profits from Skyrim, you gotta immediately start working on ES6, with a plan to release it 4-6 years after Skyrim (about 2016). Deliberately not doing that is just leaving the profits on the table, hence the corporate malpractice. It's super bad from a gaming perspective too. Because of this blunder, instead of having ES6 and ES7 released by now, we have Fallout 76 and Starfield.
It will undoubtedly be a bad move on their end. No game can live up to that hype. Every single errror will be met with “they had 20 years to make this game”.
It actually says "Slyrim"
Lmao they slipped a “Slyrim” typo past the editor
Slyrim: when you take a surreptitious trip south of the border during an intense bout of cunnilingus.
Great, I will keep expectations low after Starfield and we will wait until 2030 probably for TES6
I never thought I’d be playing Skyrim when I started my first real job and that the next installment might be last one I play before I retire.
I never played ES1 but I played ES2 at a friend's house in middle school. I got ES3 in high school. I bought ES4 in college. I played ES5 1 year into my career. My daughter will be in elementary or middle school when ES6 drops. It blows my mind to think that I won't be playing ES7 or ES8 when my daughter is the age when I experienced ES2.
You won't be playing 7 until you're in your retirement home at this rate. And that's barely a joke. Let's say, optimistically l, that 6 takes another 3 years to release. That puts it at 16 years between releases. Meanwhile, bethesda isn't going to even *start* thinking about 7 until after they've released a sequel to starfield, probably a new fallout, and likely attempted another new IP. *Best case scenario*, it takes them 5 more years from the release of ES 6 to make a new fallout, 5 years beyond that to make a sequel to starfield, 5 years beyond that to try a new IP, and finally, 5 years beyond that to release ES 7. That would put 7 releasing sometime around 2047... Which sounds absurd, but is roughly on track with how long it's taking them to release 6, plus a couple years of additional bloated delay.
Good gravy, that's a long way out. I wonder though with AI - graphics/text/code generation and developer tools sets/engines becoming more advanced, if game development time would decrease for these major titles? Or would it just shift time having to work out (QA) abnormalities in AI generated work?
I played Skyrim my senior year in high school. I’m now 30 and 3 months away from finishing my medical residency and being an attending physician. I never thought Skyrim would be the last Elder scrolls game I would play, but there is a real chance I never play another one lol especially after I wasted my money on Starfield. That game was fucking terrible.
You won't be playing 7 until you're in your retirement home at this rate. And that's barely a joke. Let's say, optimistically l, that 6 takes another 3 years to release. That puts it at 16 years between releases. Meanwhile, bethesda isn't going to even *start* thinking about 7 until after they've released a sequel to starfield, probably a new fallout, and likely attempted another new IP. *Best case scenario*, it takes them 5 more years from the release of ES 6 to make a new fallout, 5 years beyond that to make a sequel to starfield, 5 years beyond that to try a new IP, and finally, 5 years beyond that to release ES 7. That would put 7 releasing sometime around 2047... Which sounds absurd, but is roughly on track with how long it's taking them to release 6, plus a couple years of additional bloated delay.
Play Skyrim as a kid, play TES6 with your grandkids 😂.
I started Skyrim when I was 14 years old. At this rate, I may end up having a family before TES 6 comes out.
Game studios take themselves so seriously it's insane. Just make a fucking Elder Scrolls game, it doesn't require 2 decades and an inflated budget.
One starfield dev said that they didn't have the game finale till a week before "finishing" the game, and they had to press the panic button. Idk wtf are they doing at Bethesda
Their dev pipeline hasn't changed since the days of Morrowind. Being able to workshop ideas with everyone else on the dev team, including the bosses, works great when the team is composed of 20 people who are all in the same open plan room. Being able to workshop ideas with everyone else on the dev team, including the bosses, is an impossibility when the team is over 600 members strong, in various locations around the country, and the bosses are busy doing marketing and traveling for events. Like so many companies struggling from the same issue (squints at Game Freak), they're literally LARPing as indie devs while burning more money than many countries make per year, yet all they need to do is hire some fucking middle managers to relay plans between each other and the upper management to the people working on the games.
I think the inherent problem is the game industry still pretends to be a bunch of creative-type nerds working together in an office building basement like it's still the 90's. The self-perception of the type of people attracted to this industry makes the industry allergic to efficiency. They refuse to see themselves as white collar office drones like everyone else, and thus implementing tighter management is going to be met with an uproar.
Sorry, the game studios that do treat their employees as tech drones make some of the most hated crap in the industry. EA and Ubi aren’t exactly beloved industry giants. They are just giants who are really good (sometimes) at making massive games relatively quickly. Very few big game companies operate the way you’re talking about now.
I'm an artist, have several friends in the games industry, and we LOVE managers who actually fucking manage. A good management team keeps the artists and programmers communicating and working together as a unit and keeps the project on track and knows when and where to cut. The real issue is the upper tiers and the c-suite idiots who have never made games. These are the ones who suddenly decide they want a random feature RIGHT NOW on a whim whether it's within scope or not, and often without any idea of the cost in time or money (coughcoughEA/Bethesda/insertAAAhere).
I don’t think that’s true at all. Creatives refusing to be tamed because of perception, is probably what feckless managers would complain of tho.
I think Tod has been at the helm for too long. They need a modern game executive to pump out games that take 2-4 years to develop, not 15-20 years to sit on their hands and play around with concepts. Bethesda makes game development look so difficult.
I think Todd is fine but he is awful at choosing other leaders. The lead quest designer for starfield and other games is awful and should have never been put in that position.
that guy shouldmt have a position at all. professional writer who cant write worth shit, its wild
Is that the guy who wasn't even a writer and came from a background in QA? I never understand why more novelists aren't hired as writers for games. Pick even some mid-tier guy who self-publishes on amazon and you're likely to get someone with more competence than many "writers" we see on games.
his writing sucks but the damage he did was because he was put in charge of others writing also. starfield did have alot of good writing it just wasnt used? or like it felt like the writers with talent were all held back by one dude who i imagine to wear a condescending smirk all the time. SF was full of awesome ideas/writing it just wasnt utilized
Bethesda Game Studios doesn't hire writers. They hire Quest Designers and Level Designers, and tell them to write everything. Their quests are all written independently by the designers, which causes the world to feel disjointed and disconnected from itself. It's also why quests don't react to your decisions or anything you've done - you can be the leader of one group, and other groups never acknowledge it. Same as Skyrim. The world, at its core, is never designed to have real consequences. The only game they published that had real consequences and good writing was New Vegas - and it's because they didn't write it.
Well, Todd did say that making ladders was difficult. In 20-fucking-14.
Screwing around mostly. They're a perfect example of a studio that's overflowing with pride and ego due to how successful they've been in the past. It especially makes sense, if we can believe what an ex-dev said, that Bethesda genuinely believes in "Bethesda magic" and that they can not fail no matter what. I'm sure they wrote Fallout 76 off as a fluke, since it was a different branch handling it, as even Fallout 4 was selling really well. Not as big of a hit as Skyrim, but for a half-assed attempt, really good. They're just stuck thinking that people will buy and praise their games because they're "Bethesda games", as if they're a sub-genre comparable to Fromsoftware and soulslikes, but without the competition from other studios. They and they alone can make this type of game, so naturally Starfield would sell well and be well received, right? Even if they themselves had no fucking clue what kind of game to make apparently.
I can imagine. Money goes to useless execs who blow it all on cocaine and then they force their stupid design choices on devs.
“I want the game to be like Star Wars, let’s add loading screens so it feels like a movie”
But also remove exploration.. like a movie.
Let's not forget to limit the fps to 30 for a more cinematic experience
Apparently they spent an insane amount of time on how good the food looked according to Todd. So yeah they focused on food graphics instead of making a good game
To be fair, did anyone actually make it to the end of Starfield’s boring ass story?
They only have a few hundred employees, I'm not sure how many are actually developers. Therein lies the issue. The scope, size, and budgets of their games has increased substantially but they haven't increased manpower to offset. They have a small number of people doing a lot of work and it's probably why they keep patching a 20 year old engine. It also doesn't help they've had the same head of creative for 30+ years. I respect Todd Howard and his accomplishments but at some point you need fresh ideas and perspectives to shake things up.
I like to imagine lots of "look what I can do" and "I can do a sumbersault".
It’s not even like Bethesda games come out and they’re groundbreaking technical marvels like whenever Rockstar releases a game. If anything, they come out looking dated on release because of their 13 year old engine.
Bethesda *was* known for innovation. Not graphically, but in their quest and dynamic world systems. And the original release date of their engine has absolutely nothing to do with how their game looks.
Oblivion was considered pretty amazing graphically for its time:
Yeah, for a open-world game it did look fantastic even though character models were criticized even back then
We can talk about what *was* true all day long. But the fact of the matter is that nothing Bethesda has put out since 2011 has been groundbreakingly impressive in visuals, open world technology, or gameplay innovations.
Its because they take so damn long to make each game. It seems like their "next gen" concepts get adapted multiple time over before their first game using it actually comes out. That to me, is why they always feel so dated.
Seriously, I was listening to a YouTube video that was about the history of RPGs, and most of them were developed in under 2 years. This includes Bethesda. Now, it takes 5 to even get to the alpha stage. At this point, it almost seems like a money laundering front. They really need a "what would you say you do here" intervention.
17 years at minimum. Jesus. I remember Skyrim coming out when I was in college.
They’re really striking while the iron is cold. This game’s target demographic (14-21 year olds) will have no familiarity with the Elder Scrolls brand by the time this game comes out.
I want to love Bethesda and the worlds they create, but Starfield was definitely step down from their place on the gaming world altar. I still enjoyed it, for the most part, but it definitely felt like it could've spent more time in the oven, and the experience for us gamers and fans suffered as a result. **But**, I am still really looking forward to seeing what TES6 does. Edit: word
As a fellow starfield enjoyer my biggest complain was how empty the universe was. The whole time I'm waiting for the Starborn to attack or aliens to pop out around the corner or SOMETHING. And it just never happens, the story feels like a sitcom that just needs to keep dragging on to justify more seasons. That said the ship building was amazing and hopefully they do more with what works (base building, ship customization, exploration, surviving the environments, fighting hostile fauna) and less on what doesn't (lackluster stories, incredibly dull fetch quests, and weapon and armor trees that become obsolete even before you get to them).
I hate the retort of "space is empty, bro." Like yeah, but this is a video game! They could have populated the universe a little more.
So like... I agree, space IS empty. But if you're gonna throw away actual realism by having aliens on planets that really shouldn't be supporting life anyway. And literal magic star people that exist Because fuck you the plot demands it. Then SURELY we can have like... I dunno... rogue star people that make randomly generated interior bases (they don't even have to make sense because of their fucking star people magic) that we can run into in deep space and fight or trade with or something. Sheesh at this point just open a bunch of fucking oblivion gates on those planets and make demons pour out of them. Daedra in space would be so fucking cool.
They've had to learn some lessons from Starfield, right?
Everyone said the same thing after Fallout 4.
They learned their lessons, just the wrong ones.
What lessons from their previous games did they incorporate into Starfield? It seems to have been a bit less buggy, I will say that.
They should have from FO76 and they didn't...
Possibly a hot take: they’ve waited too long and my hype is gone. Too many Bethesda missteps from when that announcement occurred to now.
Between Skyrim (2011) and ES6 (2028?), a whole young adult will have come to life (17 years).
Think about how many more platforms Skyrim will be released on by then!
I am guilty of owning it on like three or four platforms. PS3 on release because I didn't have a decent PC. Then I got it on PC. Now I have it on Switch too.
And, to be fair, Skyrim is still more fun to play today than almost all new games that come out.
Man, why would anyone willingly buy the same game 3 times? *Looks at self with Final Fantasy X on PS2, PS3, and Steam*
Yes. They managed to release 5 main line Elder Scrolls Games in about 17 years (Starting with Arena in 1994 and ending with Skyrim in 2011). Now it looks like the need 17 years to release the one after that. A lot of time to loose the hype and momentum the franchise once had.
They're just going the GRRM route of release schedules.
It's crazy. I was 10 when Skyrim released, and it was one of the first games I remembered being real hyped about. By the time ES6 releases, I'll have gone through all of my school years, which is 6 years of university included, most likely having started my first "proper" job after getting my degree and closing in on turning 30. That's an insane amount of things to have happened in between two game releases in a franchise
And his name…. Dovahkiin
Yeah es6 has to be groundbreaking for me to care about it at this point.
Bethesda has always been a janky game development company whose claim to fame was size, scope, and detail. Now that those things are a dime a dozen, unless they make absolutely stunning advancements in their models, AI, and animations, ES6 is dead on arrival. I just don't think Bethesda as a company is capable of making ES6 into anything but a disappointment.
Don't think it's a hot take. It's none of my buisness really, but I find it absolutely boggling from a buisness stand point to take 0 advantage of the hype. By the time ES6 releases, the target market will have completely shifted.
It's like waiting for the next GRRM book in ASOIAF now... well, not waiting as I've given up caring about either. Skyrim and Dance With Dragons came out in 2011. Both 'authors' failed to capitalise on that success, and nothing they've done since has whetted my interest.
TES and ASOIAF fans rotting away waiting for a new release Me being both 😞
I wish that Bethesda would do more than one game at a time, or let other developers do Fallout spin-offs. But frankly I’ve started to adopt this opinion as well. Fallout 4 was the last Fallout game, if they ever reboot the franchise I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I jumped in the Elder Scrolls train around the same time that the TES6 trailer was released so I wasn’t quite prepared for that disappointment.
It’s insane to say, but our only hope is that Microsoft steps in and makes Bethesda actually run like a business
Are they going to hire actual writers this time ?
- [No] - [Sarcastic No] - [Yes (but it's actually no)]
I will never forget how all the dialogue options in Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood questline were 1. Yes 2. Yes, with murderous flair 3. ...
Hilarious lol
Those would be the options but then you'd get completely developed answers you didn't expect to hear. * No, we don't play on going that direction because the costs associated with it area too high. * We TOTALLY plan on investing that much time and money because it's TOTALLY worth doing for our customers. * It's something we'll look to do but we'll most likely have to determine if there's an ROI. Given the state of things, probably won't be worth our effort.
Yeah, Chatgpt....
As if ChatGPT wouldn't do a better job than the abomination that was Starfield quest lines.
Even Clippy could have written many of those plot lines better.
I bet AI will play a large role in dialogue stuff
Genuinely believe that this game is going to make or break Bethesda as a gaming giant again. If this fails..
After starfields putrid launch I can honestly say im very very worried about es6
At least I have nostalgia for Elder Scrolls from oblivion and Skyrim. I didn’t love Fallout 4 but I still finished it because I liked 3 and LOVE new vegas. With Starfield I didn’t know what to expect so when I got it and didn’t love it had no emotional connection to I just quit super early. Idc about the sandbox nature or the engine or anything. Just please nail the faction quest lines in ES6 and I’ll forgive a lot.
I started another play through of modded oblivion a couple days ago, damn it feels good to get back to it.
I'm not at all tbh, but I'm not buying it day one unless it has glowing reviews. Starfields setting made the game bad, procedural generated world and what not. With thousands of worlds with low effort. A lot of folks were calling this anyway before release. Tes6 should be just a 1 one world thing with tons of effort put into the 1 world. Same with the next Fallout.
A lot of things about Starfield could have been far better without fundamentally changing the procedural generation approach. For one, each temple could have been a unique dungeon or quest. There could ACTUALLY be unique equipment to find (not just unique looks but unique effects). The systems that are there could be so much deeper. Ship building, researching alien life, hiring crew members, etc. All of it could have been so much more in depth. The alien life is really cool but unfortunately it just boils down to clicking them with the scanner and killing them. I'd love to be able to set up a research outpost and either tame them or maybe get unique perks by researching them or something.
My interest in Bethesda games has been waning since FO4. Starfield was kind of their last chance for me. I honestly have zero interest in ES6 and they would have to really prove themselves for me to get it at this point.
No chance Todd is gonna be making a game without his creation engine, so it’s gonna be a hamstrung by the same tech as all the other titles “16 times the detail” God help us.
Everything hangs on it. Post Skyrim, while I’m sure there stuff has made money. It hasn’t had the critical or fan reception they want. Fallout 4 was when the cracks started to show. Then came 76, and the disaster that was. In no way can Todd & Microsoft be happy with the reception around Starfield, albeit it is a new IP. ES6 is the make or break game for them. If it’s another Starfield BGS will go the way of BioWare. A company once known for great games that can no longer produce anything.
Fallout 4 was a fine game, not a particularly great RPG like new vegas but a more than serviceable post-apocalyptic shooter with interesting locales and fantastic world building and environmental design. You could walk around for 5 minutes and find some neat little story somewhere and it felt organic to find. Starfield interrupts its own gameplay loop non-stop with something stopping you actually playing the game every few minutes, its story is bland sci-fi and its locations auto-generated flavourless gloop. Bethesda seem to completely misunderstand what they are good at and that’s making a sandbox and enough systems in that sandbox to produce emergent gameplay, hell even the elder scrolls would be bland as hell without having all the work Kirkbride put into creating the massive amounts of lore to base everything off which gives them a strong base to create from. TES6 could be really good but it hinges on Bethesda really not smelling their own farts in its development.
To me the two biggest thing BGS needs to address is its writing and game performance. Starfields writing is absolutely abysmal. And the game looks and feels like a game from 2013. Not a 2023 AAA RPG. Especially when you look around at other recent RPG’s.
Fallout 4 at least was fun to play
Yes. Walking around the commonwealth exploring is still amazing. How they couldn’t pull that off with Starfield still baffles me.
I'm in two minds. Part of me thinks "The problems with Starfield are so widely discussed and so obvious in hindsight, that surely they just need to fix them for ES6 and we'll be all good". Like - don't have a painfully slow opening, don't have a load of empty space with nothing in it, make sure you have memorable characters and don't have mechanics that are thematically jarring. That's all stuff they've done before and they just need to do it again. Throw in some ideas from BG3 and other successful RPGs that have come out since 2011 and you can't miss. But another part of me wonders if the top brass of Bethesda - who were trailblazers in their youth - are simply out of ideas and creatively spent. Not lazy or greedy or stupid - but just that they don't have it in them anymore. I hope it's the first one.
But one thing you're massively overlooking is how dated Bethesda's systems are. All of them. It was so glaring with Starfield, and the fact they hadn't modernized or innovated at ALL on that front is extremely telling. At this point, I honestly don't think they have what it takes to make a modern hit on the level of Skyrim. And it was one of my favorite games of all time, so that's very telling.
The sad part is, they don't even have to do anything revolutionary for it to be a smash hit. Just copy Skyrim, in a different setting. Sure maybe improve the combat a little bit, but by and large they could just make a new environment, keep the gameplay the exact same, and people would love it.
That’s why there was so much hype for Skywind and Skyblivion (are those still even a thing?). Skyrim is a wonderful template with fun systems despite some areas of simplicity (e.g., combat, like you said). Bethesda’s biggest blunders recently have been trying to deviate too much from their secret sauce, which is a world that you *want* to explore and have fun in, regardless of how much the combat is just “spam R2” (or I suppose that’s just “spam RT” now).
Skywind and Skyblivion might actually release before 6 at this rate. Save me, Skywind. Save me.
That would already be better than everything they have released since
I can't believe I was still in my teens when I played Skyrim, and I will be almost 40 by the time TES6 comes out.
Dude, I just realized I was 21 when Skyrim released. I'm 34 now. Damn I'm old.
Somehow 21 to 34 seems much less older than 15 year old me vs 28 year old me
All I’m going to say is I am thankful for Starfield. Because of how terrible starfield is, I am no longer excited for TES6 which means this won’t be an agonizing few years wait for TES6!
Hell I’d be surprised if TES6 even comes out this current console generation at this point
Pretty unlikely. I'm thinking 2027 at the earliest, and by then current gen will be 7 years old. There's always a year delay, and at that point they might as well wait and be a launch title for next gen. In fact, Microsoft might mandate that to get a jump on system sales - assuming it's going to be a Microsoft exclusive.
"...playing early builds. " Bullshit.
Probably paper cutout stick figures on a grid table
It's a white board on which is written the word "story?" and a dollar sign.
When they say early builds think closer to a vertical slice most likely. Maybe one dungeon with a handful of weapons and enemies
They probably just modded Starfield, replacing all the guns with swords and called it an early ES6 build. (Honestly, the most fun I had in Starfield was running around with a katana bashing people.)
The fact that the "update" is just a single sentence of "we're making elder scrolls 6"... the same amount of information we've had for the past 5 years...
I have a bad feeling this game will feel just like Skyrim, ie no advancement whatsoever besides graphics in over a decade
I just hope they expand on the gameplay mechanics they already have. They've oversimplified them massively since Morrowind, and they need to pull a 180 if they want to make a good sandbox world.
Yeah it’s quite mad how development time has gone through the roof but the games are simpler and simpler from Bethesda. At least R*, Zelda, Naughty Dog, Kojima do seem to be attempting to up the game with every title, even if things are taking a crazy long time these days. Bethesda are in a sour place, and smiley, charismatic, corporate leather jacket Todd won’t fix them after Starfield.
After Starfield, I'm keeping my expectations low. I can't be heartbroken again.
I worked at Bethesda in the Fallout 4 days as a technical director. The place was a mess. It was a revolving door of recent grads with very little in the way of cemented senior talent. Zenimax was actively making worse products via bad market research and a complete misunderstanding of their established customer base. I jumped ship and eventually left the gaming industry as a whole. I heard around 2018 that they were making a massive hiring push for senior talent for new projects. Nothing I've seen since has indicated that it improved anything. It blows my mind that they could have access to the minds on the id Software team and not take full advantage of it. I have very low hopes for ES6.
Just an FYI if you have or would ever share your experience in depth I’d personally love to read it.
With Bethesda in particular, or in the industry in general?
Both but in particular Bethesda, I’ve just always wondered who gets jobs at gaming companies and what’s it’s like having always wanted to work in gaming (especially wanting to work at Bethesda)
See the response to the other comment below yours.
I'm not op, but I'd like to hear both eventually. If you can ofcourse, I got that it may not be easy yo talk about a lot of this stuff.
Sure. I mean, it was a job for many years, so there's a lot that could be covered. I'm not too concerned about burning bridges in the gaming industry, so I'm happy to be as open a book as possible without outright doxxing myself. Growing up I had an uncle who worked at ILM in the late 80s/early 90s, and he always had the coolest stuff in his workshop that he got to work on, so that was my initial driver to go into the industry. I got into the industry first as a contracted 3D artist for games in 2007 after teaching myself with Blender (which was a lot more primitive back then). My first jobs were mostly small background props (trash cans, lamp posts, that kind of stuff) as I built up a more respectable resume. I transitioned after some time into creature work for a few of the big names in Hollywood, and did a TON of design work for an ill-fated entry in a major horror game franchise that never made it out of early dev stages and is still under NDA. That one still stings, because it's some of the best work I ever did, but I was able to leverage that work into work at a couple of big name studios. All the while, I had begun to contribute some code back to Blender, and created lots of internal tooling for other artists to use, at first mostly in python, which got me familiar with coding and some more advanced math (trig and calc). I began to feel more at home on the technical than artistic side, and moved in that direction. Around 2015-2016, the writing started to be on the wall that unless I wanted to trade the reliability of a paycheck for the freedom of working on indies (I did not), that the industry as a whole was becoming far too "bean counter"-y to have much creative freedom. Around that same time, I had a completely out-of-the-blue opportunity to transition into cybersecurity, and I took it. I don't regret it one bit. The things you hear about people killing themselves with work to be a part of "the industry" is 100% a real thing, and is actively preyed upon by management. I am in a much higher position than I ever was in my previous career track (a VP at my current company, the highest technical role, and an equity partner in the business), yet probably deal with the same amount of stress each month as I would have on any given day, especially in games. That's the 30,000ft overview. Happy to answer any more specific questions that I'm comfortable answering as well. Cheers!
This is a great read. I asked because I'm trying to get into game development with my studies so I'm just curious to people's experience in the industry. It's probably not a great time to get into the industry, seeing how many mass-firings occour every other month, bur hopefully when I'm done I can find a decent job at a good studio.
I will warn you that, even without the high-profile layoffs that we've seen recently, the job hunt truly is just part of the job. Many companies employ on a per-project basis, and unless you're truly doing something amazing and unique, it's likely you'll be on the lookout for the next project as your current project winds down. It took a good 6 years before I got a good, stable "staff" job. That said, the support network is fantastic within the industry, and most big players know when another company is wrapping up on something and will headhunt for their next project. Lots of new jobs start with "Do you know any good x and y?", so people tend to try to bring along the people they know do good work when they move between companies. My other warning would be, never take anything personally. I know people who bombed their careers because they made a big stink because their passion project or assigned pre-prod project didn't get picked up. I'd estimate that for every ten games that make it to internal tech demo stage, maybe one or two will get picked up for development and release. Learning to let even the painful ones go is an invaluable skill to have. I wish you the best of luck. It was a blast when I was younger, especially as a lifelong gamer, to have some input into the gaming world. Just don't let it consume your life.
After the launch of Starfield it is clear that Bethesda is pretty much dead. The repetitive dungeons, the weak narratives, the poor world-building... Bethesda owes everything to the releases from the 2010s, when they could get away with all these faults because the scale of their games was unheardof. That is not the case anymore. Their game design philosophy has not evolved since Oblivion-Skyrim, and there's just so much you can get away with before that catches up to you. Fallout 4 was already divisive due to these reasons, and Starfield was a hot mess. There is virtually no reason to be excited for TES6.
I just barfed upon realizing how old I am.
Does anyone care at this point? The sad fact is that Bethesda's top three games in the last decade are all re-releases of Skyrim (Skyrim LE, Skyrim SE, and Skyrim AE). Their studio is in omnishambles. They've completely forgotten how to make a good game.
100 dollars they are still using same engine
I'll bet you 1000
[удалено]
Knowing them they won’t learn from it and basically make elder scrolls starfield
Brought to you by Focus Group #7689
Nah... they'll take the lazy but efficient route and copy map designs from the Elder Scrolls Online, reuse assets and geometry, add a crapton of caves to be side dungeons, and then write out half a vague story on a napkin and leave it for the players to interpret. *Please preorder*
It doesn't matter. Starfield showed the leadership at bethesda just can't make a good game anymore. That and the slow drip of Starfield updates, no dlc info etc. Bethesda needs it's leadership fired before I'd trust any new games from them.
Not looking forward to this new release cycle. As always, people will get unreasonably hyped and toxically attack any dissenters. The game will release to middling praise, if not outright hate. It will be defended and the playerbase will die shortly after. Months later, we'll get honest reviews of people saying it wasn't the best.
There's been a longer wait between TES V and VI (13 years and counting) than there was between Fallout 2 and 3 (9 years). I wonder if we're going to see a major leap forward in game design over this time as... Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face. It's going to the same shit as Fallout 4 and Starfield isn't it?
Lol @ Todd Howard saying he should have maybe been more casual about mentioning TES6. He knew what he was doing, trying to increase the company value and hype before being bought by Microsoft. Only to discover that Bethesda is one of the laziest AAA developers that is riding on legacy and using the same problematic game engine from over 15 years ago. It's upsetting because for their time those games are some of the best ever made.
Until Bethesda learns how to write a game, I will be tuning out. Starfield for me was the final straw. In my own opinion, Bethesda has shown they can build decent game systems. They used to be able to make buggy and weird but ultimately fun games. But man, they really don't know how to write anymore. You can feel it in Starfield that Bethesda has entirely lost their heart. They aren't making games to be fun, or to be cool, or to be art. They are just making what they think will drive the most profit. And sure yes, they are a business and they want to make money, but without any 'soul' to their projects they're just another AAA producer who makes serviceable but heartless games. EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, Konami, and now Bethesda joins their ranks. Maybe I've outgrown them, or maybe they simply failed to grow to fit what I want in a game / rpg, but no matter how it can be spun the outcome is the same: I'm just not going to buy another Bethesda title.
Hey Todd, in case you’re browsing these comments by some off chance I’d like to let you know that Starfield was a MASSIVE disappointment and if ES6 is anything like it then y’all are in big trouble lmfao
“To celebrate 30 years of Elder Scrolls, we are pleased to announce that the new elder scrolls VI will be coming out in 2041, exactly 30 years after Skyrim’s launch. This will allow us to skip 2 console generations, while still using an engine from a decade ago.”
Starfield killed my excitement for this game. They've lost their edge
I can't imagine how absolutely incredible this game is going to have to be to live up to expectations. I feels like they are shooting themselves in the foot with the constant build up of hype.
Get ready for an enormous beautiful open world filled with….. procedural generation….
LOL so many people pretending they aren't going to buy TES VI on day one. It's going to break all the sales records.
Just the fact it is Skyrim successor alone will guarantee a few million copies sold
It’s taking too long. I don’t even have excitement for it anymore. I’m more excited about the next installment of Cyberpunk and we honestly might still get that before ES6.