They can take as long as they want. After Starfield, I have zero confidence that TES6 will be any good. Bethesda has some serious issues they need to sort out with their production pipelines and methodology and they need to rethink how they approach story-driven open world experiences.
Every time I see a Starfield video and see the camera turbozoom in on a character as they deliver a forced, robotic line with terrifying facial animations - I get teleported right back to 2006. It is very obvious this studio does not know what they are doing and has learned little from their previous releases and from other contemporary games.
I’ve said it before, and I believe that Bethesda is going to completely mess up TES6.
There are several issues with Bethesda, the major problem being they seem to have lost all creativity and they’re trying to apply the same old formula to every single game with minimal changes. Then hope that modders will keep it on life support. And sadly that’s how I found myself having to play their games, because without many mods it was often awful to play on PC, and I still didn’t have fun thanks to repetitive content and forgettable story and characters.
Another is that they’re clinging on to that damn dilapidated game engine of theirs like it’s their precious baby. It’s an awful engine, insanely outdated, limited and performs terribly. Starfield is a great example of how awful it is, but every game before that has had major performance issues and limitations as well.
The only redeeming feature might be that TES6 probably won’t be a procedurally generated world. They really showed how repetitive and boring it can get with procedural generation. And a handcrafted world would have so much more character. They could perhaps use the procedural engine for dungeons, and enemies and their bases, or items found through the world, but not the world itself.
But I’m afraid it’s just going to be a near Skyrim carbon-copy. It’ll likely be an okay looking game with an okay looking game world, but I bet gameplay will be mostly unaltered from what they’ve been doing for over 20 years. Same old basic combat, same talking heads with lifeless animations, same sneaking and magic gameplay, etc.
Agreed. They need to retire that dogshit engine and write a new one. I know that’s a huge and expensive undertaking, which is why they probably won’t. TES6 will sell like hotcakes on its name alone.
I had been looking forward to TES6 for so damn long, but at this point the most exciting thing we can look forward to is the crazy glitches that speedrunners will discover. That is, if they’re not just the same glitches we’ve alll seen time and again.
Well before Starfield came out they said they couldn’t make TES6 yet because the technology didn’t exist. Starfield’s development, I assume, was partially about building this technology. That makes me assume it’s the procedural generation or the ships. If the former, I doubt it’s the main game world or TES6 is fucked. I would suspect maybe something like plains of oblivion that are proc-gen or something.
To me, one of the biggest things that make Starfield feel so bad is the planets are so boring, specifically because there’s too much to do (and it’s all meaningless). Every location is surrounded by the exact same amount of points of interest. There’s no barren areas and more habituated areas. It’s all this bland uniform container of “content” with nothing making any of it stand out. Proc-gen only works when it can be used to make a lot of boring empty space with a few interesting unique things to find. I don’t think they’ve figured that out yet.
I found it extremely funny that todd said that planets are empty and boring, because irl, planets would be boring and and empty wastelands. Why do you make a boring game then todd? Are you stupid? Is that your dream game? Imagine you can make any videogame that you want and you go: i want it to be set in the middle desert.
Oh so there are gonna be pyramids, bandits and other points of interest?
No the desert is pretty empty and boring.
Oh, sounds pretty good.
I do not understand why Bethesda fans even deal with that shit. They must laugh their asses off every time someone doesn’t refund starfield.
Well before Starfield came out they said they couldn’t make TES6 yet because the technology didn’t exist
It’s being built on the SAME ENGINE as tes5 was built on. I think they were blowing smoke.
Unreal Engine is old as fuck too (1995). The engine doesn’t matter if they put the work in to fix the issues. The problem is they don’t seem to be making that a priority.
Dialog camera can be disabled.
Where’s the fun slider? Mine is stuck on suck.
I think they really don’t believe in storytelling in the way traditional game writers do. They think enough simulation can replace good writing.
Personally I’m certain they are wrong, and it’s tragic that they own the Elder Scrolls IP.
Simulation? What? That’s the one aspect that has been gotten worse with every Bethesda title. Their storytelling was always garbage. I never finished the main quest in Skyrim even, and the one in Oblivion was trash, the one in Morrowind barely existing. This was never the strong suit of their games.
Hot take, Michael Kirkbride carried TES lore. Even the interesting parts of Skyrim is based from his writing.
Agreed. TES just hasn’t had good world design and lore since Morrowind. If I remember correctly, he also wrote much of the books in the TES universe which are still used in Skyrim.
ESO might be an exception. I don’t think it has the best writing but it does have much more interesting lore and world design than Oblivion and Skyrim.
I never got the big deal with Skyrim. I’m not saying it’s bad, but I don’t get why people went all crazy for it. Bethesda over streamlined the Elder Scrolls series with Skyrim for the mainstream audience. By removing and/or simplifying game systems.
EDIT You can be the leader of all the guilds with a single character. Just why?
By removing and simplifying systems they made the game more easier for random people who’ve never played a game or haven’t played since the NES. My english teacher that year was hijacking her son’s playstation just to play skyrim.
I never got the big deal with Skyrim
I’m guessing you never played it on PC.
But I did. Also the classic “The modders will save the game.”. Man, I’m getting tired of that.
Agreed. Modding doesn’t “fix” Skyrim either. It adds surface-level content and tweaks but the fundamental bones of the game are still there and they are heavily flawed. One of the few exceptions I can think of are things like Skywind but that’s only because it removes Skyrim’s story entirely, overhauls many of its mechanics, and uses the world/lore/story of one of Bethesda’s better games.
And in the case of Starfield - it’s entirely beyond salvaging with mods. Mods will not be able to fix the biggest problems with that game because they are literally the very way the game was made. To fix them would require basically remaking the entire game from scratch.
I always thought that was a joke about modders adding in big bouncy titties and the game not having much else going for it…
also schlongs of skyrim mod sounds super important for living those exhibitionist fantasies
K, but who cares anymore?
Skyrim will always hold a special place in my heart, it’s almost like a simpler time.
Starfield damaged Bethesda for me though. To spend 25 years on it in total and for it to be as it released was very disappointing. I mean basics like no city maps or land vehicles? Every base you come across having the same bodies in the same place with the same loot? I want to love it, they can do things I can’t even imagine (I can’t program Jack shit) but for that to be the end point of their decades of labour just doesn’t add up for me.
It’s the damn engine, TES6 will be in the same engine. The same engine based on the gamebryo engine designed in 1997.
Starfield was boring as hell and now they’re too scared to try ES6 (because it’ll be garbage).
I would love to be wrong…
They’re not too scared to make Elder Scrolls VI. It’s their next project. It’s just not coming until probably 2028 at the rate they’ve been working lately, and it’ll feel 15 years out of date this time instead of only 10.
What’s really crazy is to compare Bethesda with CDPR. I’ve been replaying the Witcher 3 and it just struck me how I won’t have to wait 15+ years for the next entry. And to look at how much more efficient they’ve been in the past.
For a timeline, Witcher 2 released in May 2011 and then the Witcher 3 released in May 2015. Took 3.5 years to develop. Cyberpunk released December 2020, only 4.5 years after W3 had its last major DLC. Then in 2023 they released a very large update for Cyberpunk, about 2/3rds the runtime of the main game. And then in 2025 we’ll probably get the next Witcher game. They have like 3 games in active development now.
So what’s the difference with Bethesda? Well Skyrim sold 30 million units and Witcher 2 sold about 8 million. Less than a third the income. Yet if you compare CDPRs staff to Bethesdas at time of their next games, CDPR had doubled Bethesda’s work force. And guess what happened? Witcher 3 sold 40 million while fallout 4 sold 25 million. Thats despite Witcher 3 costing an estimated $81 million while Fallout 4 sits closer to 1.5x that at $125 million.
Then you talk about engines and it gets even worse. CDPR arguably started with a worse engine and I shouldn’t need to explain how much they’ve destroyed BS in that regard as well. Witcher 2 looks worse than Skyrim by a lot imo. But by the time their next game rolled around, it was an industry leader in graphics. And cyberpunk 2077 is like the next Crysis now while starfield is… oh boy. And guess what? After all that work on their engine, they abandoned it. Why? Because their resources are better spent making games and systems in an engine someone else updates for them. Bethesda meanwhile not only can’t juggle the ball of updating an engine and game dev, but they’re not even smart enough to swap engines.
Bethesda has all the signs of a dying studio and Microsoft is the sucker for buying them. And it’s a waste of talent more than anything. Talented people exist at Bethesda whose resources and career development would be far better off being applied on UE4.
Microsoft now owns the elder scrolls and fallout IP, plus everything under the smaller studios (Doom, etc). Bethesda won’t matter in the long run.
Given the technical problems with Cyberpunk at launch, I don’t know that it’s a great idea to champion them. Both studios have had a similar release cadence in the same time periods.
When Microsoft bought Bethesda, they bought Zenimax, which includes far more than just the likes of Elder Scrolls.
I swear people forget how atrocious the cyberpunk 2077 launch was.
On machines that were actually strong enough to run it, it was mostly fine. I played on PC and while I admit the later balancing update was probably necessary, I didn’t run into most of the real nasty bugs people liked to talk about. I had a great time putting in 100 or so hours in version 1.
A solid 80% or more of all the problems Cyberpunk had at launch stemmed from trying to launch it on last-gen consoles. It absolutely was not intended for PS4 or XB1 and targeting those platforms was a mistake. Once they pulled availability for those and buckled down on getting it prettied up for next gen, the quality jumped by a mile within the next year and a half of updates.
The launch was rough, I grant you that, and maybe I’m just simping for CDPR but even at the time I was in the vocal minority saying, hey this game really isn’t that bad if you give it a chance and run it on hardware that it was intended for.
And of course now with its updates and DLC it’s just genuinely a great game.
Hot take: I’m fine with Bethesda taking their time to release a game if that means it’ll be higher quality. There are thousands of games released a week. Hi play something else in the meantime.
if that means it’ll be higher quality.
Hahahaha! That’s a good one.
I hate the way most of the ES fans talk and think about this. I see where the frustraition is coming from but for the most part all of the hate is baseless, you all act like you have seen even a pixel of it. Yes the last few games were not their best to say the least but i belive they had a reason for most of the fumbles. While sometimes it was just plain “we need more money” other times itwas a bit more complex with how starfield was a passion project which they made to test out the limits of their game engine. it was never supposed to be a ground braking game just a way to monotize their testing while giving the hungry fans something to play with while they wait. There is no solid proof or reason to balive that TESVI will be trash. It may not be as good as skyrim in some aspects but i belive it will at least surpass it in some other ones. Another thing which bugs me is people being angry at how long it takes them to make it while you know they did projects in between, would you reather a buggy unplayable mess now or a fully flashed out game a year or two later. The best thing to do is wait and see. Don’t make it harder for everyone to be excited. I may have missed some things in this post so if anyone wants to debate me feel free to reply!
-Cheers!
it was never supposed to be a ground braking game just a way to monotize their testing while giving the hungry fans something to play with while they wait.
Can’t re-write history just to cope, buddy
would you reather a buggy unplayable mess now or a fully flashed out game a year or two later
Right now we don’t get either so that’s a weird 2 options to pick
And considering Bethesda’s track record, we will get a buggy mess 2 years from now. I mean, just compare the list of shit the Unofficial Skyrim Patch fixes that Bethesda hasn’t addressed in 13 fucking years
- They never said that it was what i said it was but i think we can all see it.
- i don’t get your point. yes we don’t have neither but they only recently started development you act as if they have been working on it for a dacate which isn’t true so my point still stands.
Thanks for engaging tho unlike the 8 people just downvoting me without giving any feedback on why i am wrong. Cheers
