[Opinion piece] Starfield Killed My Hype For The Elder Scrolls 6

I’m honestly baffled as to why people have had any faith in Bethesda Game Studios for years. Even if you liked Fallout 3 or 4, what they did with 76 should’ve obliterated any remaining trust.

Good. Then, you can only be positively surprised.

Personally, I found it particularly damning, how generic all of it was. They had a really interesting, diverse world with Morrowind. Then Oblivion was already a severe step backwards with relatively generic high fantasy. And Skyrim felt even more samey to me.

Well, and now with Starfield, I already start sleeping when I hear the name. What is it supposed to be? Astrology Astronomy Simulator 2024? Did really no one in that management meeting have a better idea for the premise other than that it's Fallout in space?

To some degree, obviously it's not supposed to be fantasy, so maybe they'll actually be more creative with that, again, but with them now belonging to Microsoft, too, I just fully expect design by committee.

If you didn't see this after Fallout, namely 76, I dk what to tell you.

I loved Morrowind when I was 12, replayed it recently and it was just as good as I remembered. I was hyped on Starfield and bought it blind for 40e. I don't usually make mistakes like these but I got cocky this time. I still can't fathom how uninteresting Starfield was. I literally dropped it out of boredom. How can you manage to do this with a space game ? seriously ? how do you create something so bland from a premise so exciting ? with the funds and time you have ?

Morrowind and Oblivion are probably both on my top ten list of best games ever, if not top 25. I used to be a huge Bethesda fan. Starfield is perhaps the most disappointing game I have ever played. I tisk say worst, mind you, I said disappointing. Any excitement I had for ES6 is well and truly gone.

To be honest, Bethesda’s best work is probably behind them. They will sell a few more games based on brand recognition and because we are suckers, but I don’t expect much. I’m old enough to have seen many of my favorite developers go through this. It’s difficult to have overwhelming success and keep knocking it out of the park with every release. Expectations for something better than the last thing are so high, the pressure to do something new, the culture change that comes with huge growth, and they eventually lose that magic that captured us in the first place.

People in the future will realize that Skyrim was made in a perfect sweet spot at Bethesda. It was made recently enough that the controls make sense and it feels good to play, but Skyrim was still so, so ahead of it's time when it came to an open world RPG. Back then, Bethesda's writers really had a knack for making incredibly interesting settings, and just seeing an entire digital world so wonderfully realized was considered ground-breaking.

A decade later, and the same model has become stale. The gameplay is still there, but the soul is not. Idk if most of those old writers have just left Bethesda or retired after so many years in the industry, but the magic has left the studio. I'm not even really looking forward to ES6 as much as I am the upcoming Avowed from Obsidian, because their games still have plenty of soul.

If they really have been working on it since it was teased a few years ago, then I have to assume it will just be Skyrim: Again (Again)

It's a shame that it probably won't even be that much of a visual improvement, if Starfield is any indication

Bethesda killed mine.

Games have been steadily driving away from story-oriented to action-oriented since they began. I expect ES6 to be some type of Dark Souls clone.

For the author and everyone else. If they're not throwing away their entire tech stack and workflow for how they build this sort of game and starting from scratch, they're making a huge mistake. At least start with what Obsidian built for Avowed and work from there.

It's SO LINEAR!!!!!!!!!

I want FREEDOM!!!!!! I DONT WANNA JOIN THE DORKY NASA BOYS, I WANNA CANNIBALIZE THEM!!!!!!!!!! ):< (this playthrough)