The Elder Scrolls 6 announcement is now as old as predecessor Skyrim was when The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced, and developer Bethesda hasn't shared another snippet since.
I'd implore anyone who disagrees to maybe replay the MegaTon section at the beginning of Fallout 3. Bethesda haven't evolved at all since and it's aged badly, especially the writing.
I didn't notice when I was 18, but that was me with 16 years less experience.
I'm gonna guess they know that what they have will be about as bad as Starfield, and they might be fighting internally to make it not be that. If that's the case, maybe they'll get through to the rest and fix it. But they probably won't.
Either way, nobody should pre-order it. Wait for reviews. If it even ends up shipping at all.
I believe that was the same year as Fallout 76, which has come out as being made to boost Bethesda's stock before the Microsoft buyout. I would not be shocked at all if the trailer was put out solely for the same reason.
It was there to calm the fans. TES fans wanted the next TES but Bethesda didn't really have anything about the next TES. They had FO76 (which is not a traditional Bethesda title), Elder Scrolls Blades (that nobody remembers) and Starfield (which they didn't really elaborate on). To throw a bone to the TES fans, because nobody gives a shit about a mobile game, they said the game after Starfield will be TES6.
It was just something they did to prevent what Blizzard ended up doing a few months later with the Diablo Immortals reveal. And it worked because what do people remember 6 years later? Nobody cares about FO76 or TES: Blades or Starfield. All people remember is "Bethesda announced TES 6".
It will be riddled with monetisation, with the attendant mission/quest structure to support that goal. Like, it's an impossibility that it won't be. Starfield was on the verge of getting some good will back from the player base, but squandered it on that bullshit pay-per-quest DLC they released recently. Bethesda is beyond help at this point.
Their games are from another time, I feel. They are so focused on how they have always made games and somehow proud of it.
They were great when they were made all those years ago, the times when games felt clunky. It was the times.
But Starfield still has that clunk and other games feel way more fluid these days. I don't feel like I can go back to playing a game that feels like I'm playing a brick.
No preorders, probably won't even end up playing it because it will most likely, probably, definately, suck farts.
I felt like Morrowind struck a great balance between clunk and depth. Skyrim was polished but had no depth.
Something like Kingdom Come Deliverance feels way more clunky to me, but has far less appeal to general audiences than the Elder Scroll games. Although, there are extremely passionate fans of it, so there's obviously still a market for that kind of game.
The fucked up thing is that no matter how bad and disappointing Starfield was, and no matter how bad and disappointing their subsequent games will be, I’ll still buy and be naively excited for Elder Scrolls VI because Skyrim was such a foundational gaming experience 😩
To be fair morrowind was full of clunk, many people were turned off by game mechanics, plus generally forgetting to save before dieing and losing your whole character.
I think the problem is they tried to scale up the production to reach more people, which increases costs. They can't make a unique/interesting/quirky game because they have to sell to a huge amount of people or else its a failure. Morrowind likely didnt have the "market cap" skyrim did, but morrowind is full of creativity and choices.
Morrowind sold 200k copies its first year, and 4 million over its first 4 years while skyrim sold 7 million its first week and 30 million in its first 4 years.
Was it actually officially announced or was it just that they said they would definitely be making a 6th elder scrolls game eventually? At this point I don't even remember, though I vaguely recall a stupid teaser of flying over a forest with a title screen, but I might just be thinking of Skyrim's announcement teaser.
I also recall them saying they wouldn't even really start real work on a new Elder Scrolls game until after Starfield shipped. So if that was true, they only have actually worked on the game maybe a year or two.
Expectations are going to be unattainable by the time the game actually comes out.
I'm hopeful. I'm sure I'll get downvoted to hell cus how dare I enjoy things, but I've had fun with all their games. Even starfield. It was a departure and an attempt at something new. I still put in over a hundred hours on it. The ship builder was awesome and the ships themselves were super cool too.
Skyrim is still my 3rd most played game. And I'm pretty sure fallout is up there too.
You're 100% allowed to just enjoy it and not worry about the drama. That said, we're looking at the fifteenth year on the horizon with no follow up to Skyrim.
A "AAA" studio taking fifteen years to make a game is unacceptable. Especially when its a game that guarantees massive sales thanks to the IP's pedigree.
Agree. If it comes out someday I'll probably buy it and enjoy it. Even starfield I thought was fine. Not great, it was fine. BUT ain't no way it's been under development for 15 years. It's been on the back burner. They're terrified because they know they can't top Skyrim, and that style of gameplay is no longer really accepted. (See - Starfield endless loading screens).
Idk why any shareholder holds Bethesda stock, I guess now that it's Microsoft
It's going to be a flagship game that releases with a newer engine. Maybe ES6 will be that game. A less hopeful take is that the success of ESO is going to prevent them releasing anything else in the universe until it dies.
They update their engine with every game they make, just like everyone else that has their own in-house engine. The problem is that engine is updated by Bethesda.
Ooooh but with Starfield they called it "Creation Engine TWO", you see.
The least well-kept industry "secret" is that the major version number of a hidden technical component literally doesn't matter as soon as you hear it because the marketing people will get their grubby little hands on it and force an update whenever they need to capitalize on some kind of wow effect.
"CE2" is clearly barely any better or different than skyrim or fallout's CE; in fact as far as I can tell the script extender dropped pretty much immediately after the game's release, which clearly indicates no major architectural change to work around. Also if Bethesda really did enough work to warrant a "version 2" why the hell are there loading screens everywhere like it's 2008.
Skyrim 32 bit to Skyrim 64 bit was probably a much bigger generational leap than anything Bethesda has done since then.
As a developer I believe "just rewrite it from scratch" is a cardinal sin and a beginner's mistake in 95 % of cases. Creation Engine though? They are clearly carrying around technical debt that was already very dated 15 years ago, like the constant loading screens. Now the loading screen look soooo bad it's a complete meme yet they don't seem capable of fixing that. At least apparently they managed to get rid of the FPS lock with Starfield? Only 20 years too late.
It’s going to be a flagship game that releases with a newer engine.
I'm pretty sure they already said that its going to run the same engine as Starfield.
A less hopeful take is that the success of ESO is going to prevent them releasing anything else in the universe until it dies.
This is what I'm worried about but I'm somewhat encouraged though because Rockstar is finally going to release GTA:6; perhaps the era of local games isn't dead quite yet.