As sad as it may sound, a big problem in the video game industry is certain developers or publishers having hit titles, sometimes one after the other, and then thinking they can “skate on what they’ve done before” and not attempt to do all they can to make each following game special. We’ve seen that with companies like Xbox, Capcom, and so on, and it’s sometimes not pretty. But the company we’re talking about right now is Bethesda, who has been going through it as of late because of a certain title, and now, the fate of Elder Scrolls 6 is in doubt.
We say that because, on Reddit, gamers are rightfully questioning if Bethesda has “lost the plot” of what made their games so great and whether The Elder Scrolls 6 can possibly return to the form they had in the past. Or, whether it’ll go the “Starfield route” and just have a bunch of puffery nonsense proving that Bethesda is ‘living in the past.’
To many fans, Skyrim remains the best title that Bethesda ever made, and they were happy to talk about why that was:
“The magic of that game when it came out was that you could just wander in a random direction for 15 hours of gameplay and have such a varied, interesting experience that it created an internal narrative for your character that motivated you to stick with it.”
In contrast, games like Starfield didn’t give you that sense of “anything can happen if I go here.” Instead, there were NUMEROUS lifeless worlds to travel to and only small stuff like “researching and scanning” to do. You had to constantly bounce back and forth between worlds, and it wasn’t interesting. Not even close, and fans have made that clear over the months since its release.
Another issue that fans pointed out is that Bethesda’s game engine has helped make the games look outdated, as it’s still the same “visual style” as past titles that came out over a decade ago. Redditors also pointed out that they keep “remembering the wrong lessons” and trying to do things like procedurally generated quests and collect a lot of loot instead of weaving vast narratives and meaningful plots into their stories and gameplay.
We’ll be fair; the “backlash” to their recent title might be enough to convince them to try something different to earn people’s faith back. Then again, they’ve had multiple stumbling blocks and yet haven’t changed, so the future is far from certain.
