Skyrim lead designer says it will be 'almost impossible' for Elder Scrolls 6 to meet fan expectations: 'Marketing departments just put their heads in their hands and weep'

Honestly I'm expecting a hot steaming pile of garbage given their trajectory. Just another fantasy veneer on the same tired Bethesda formula rife with bugs. My expectations are so low, in fact, my plan is to wait for a good sale to get it, or until I hear that it's released in a playable state but still post release.

Translation: "We refuse to bring Michael Kirkbride back to the project."

Bethesda has already run up against the wall of insurmountable expectations with Starfield, which by most measures was good but not great. That's resulted in a sub-60% user rating on Steam and a general sense that the game was somehow a failure—or at the very least, a fumble.

Ah no. The problem with Starfield is mostly that they didn't know where to go with it.

well my expectation is that it's going to be shit, and I'm afraid they'll have a hard time to even meet that.

they don't have good writers. the last time they did they made Morrowind. oblivion was uninspired. Skyrim was their last hurrah. a game saved by environmental artists and side quest designers. the main story was mid. the gameplay was jank. the characters were mostly bad.

starfield had no vision, no direction, awful writing, forgettable quests, terrible characters. i doubt 6 will be any better. maybe a little because it has decades of lore and world building that might carry it somewhat. but I'm not the least bit excited.

It'll have no trouble meeting my expectations, because I expect that Bethesda today can't make a good game so I expect it to be shiiiiiiit!

But also, fuck Bethesda and this "lower your expectations" bullshit. No Todd, it isn't impossible to please your fans. No Todd, it isn't impossible to make a good AAA game. No Todd, it isn't a burden or a problem to have millions of fans who have high expectations for you.

If you can't cut it, fucking quit and hand the reins over to someone with fresh ideas, someone who's still hungry and still wants to make good things.

All you have to do is make it more like Morrowind with some updated mechanics. The world doesn't have to be huge; smaller, handcrafted one is preferred to huge, lifeless one. Set it in an interesting, alien province, not generic medieval like Oblivion and Skyrim. And for the love of God, move on from Gamebryo/Creation engine, it's been outdated for over a decade.

Big budget studios love to just remake old content. They hate original ideas. So they should go back to fantastic games like Morrowind and Daggerfall and Skyrim and make them less annoying, prettier, hey put all the old stuff into the Skyrim framework, at least! Shame no one had thought of that.

/s

(Skywind, I think, and Skyblivion?)

It wouldn't be hard to meet my expectations, just don't be worse than Skyrim. Skyrim already was a watered down mostly boring experience, surely you can match that or, god forbid, do better.

I mean, I don't know what to tell you, after Fallout 76 and Starfield I'd say expectations are well and truly tempered.

I don't want to appear dismissive, the bar for triple A RPGs is insane, but it's been long enough that I think meeting the scope of the few good Bethesda ones that everyone remembers would very much satisfy people, at least if they looked good and played well, which would be a Bethesda first.

Bethesda: we made an engine we intend on using FOREVER and now that microsuck owns us we're bound to limiting the capabilities of the engine to work on the Xbox toaster exdition, plus of course we're a greedy lazy corporation that only cares about extracting every last penny from our IPs. SO WHY DON'T YOU WORSHIP US!?

skyrim bethesda is not the same thing as starfield bethesda

It doesn't need to meet outstanding expectations, TODD, it just needs to be a good fucking game...TODD. Skyrim isn't good because it has the best fighting mechanics or most outstanding AI or anything like that. It has stood this long because anybody can turn it on and literally just pick a direction and exist. The world that was crafted is still interesting to this day. We don't need a game that is better than Skyrim, we just want something similar, updated, and worth stepping into for the world and our own imaginations. Modding support not put aside.

My expectation is it will follow the trend of getting worse so meeting mine should be an easy enough bar. For real though if they can just make it feel like an alien world and not medieval with magic I'd be at least content. My unrealistic elder scrolls dream is for a landfall game where the player is just some civilian and you're running from and watching all the bat-shittery that's going on

I feel like staying in the shadow of Skyrim makes things worse for them. If only they could make a different game, like a TES spin off, to try new things like they did before Morrowind, they'd probably shift their mindset from reiterating and adjusting the same formula ad nauseam to a fewer success. Like, a small 1,5-2y project with a semi-linear action akin to The Dark Messiah of M&M, or a fucking AMID EVIL as a fantasy shooter, but about some lore-important chain of events. They can later reimplement their work on it into a better combat in TES6 and rise some hype about the franchise that is starved from any news by now. Beth have a lot of talents at hand from companies that did shooters they published. They, imho, just need to start small, because Skyrim would tower over them just like Half-Like for Valve unless they break the silence with their Alyx.

Of all possible scenarios, I want the fight for the Red Mountain. Either the original one against the dwemers with their tech, or an L4D-like one against Dagoth Ur and his blighted punks. They did a lot of performative nods to Morrowind, so why won't they just go with it?

I look at Yakuza series and I wish Bethesda would follow their example, with remasters, spin-offs, back-references, side-series and a complete switch of original mechanics just for them to reevaluate what them and Todd want.

I'll never buy another Bethesda game; the last one was Oblivion.

I expect it to be mediocre, but saved by mods eventually.

Bethesda should just focus on making great modding tools for the modders 😂

I don't buy Bethesda games anymore esp if they are owned by micro-shit.

The worst of the corporate slop

Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us really spoiled me with environmental immersion and story, so every game played after is just disappointing.

Bethesda essentially must build a close as possible simulation to a fantasy reality on a map the real life size of Poland in Unreal Engine 5 with a story like the first five seasons of Game of Thrones or it will fail.

Actually, it will be super easy, barely an inconvenience for them to meet my expectations, because they're so low. But they probably still won't.

"What do you mean you didn't make a single update to the engine?!?"

...

"It is broke! It is very much broke and needs to be fixed!"

It’s a Bethsada game, expectations are that it sucks but the community will fix it

Pretty scary if they don’t think it can reach that

Anyone know if they're using their existing engine?

Skyrim was a defining game of a generation, the next one is going to be a let down no matter what. If they at least put the effort in that they have with the mainline elder scrolls and fallout games it has a chance to be.