We’ve talked at length about Starfield both before, during, and after its launch. The reason for that was Bethesda was hyping up the game like nothing else. It was the studio’s first original IP in 25 years, and the dev team was trying to use all they had learned from past experiences to craft something special. What they released was divisive at best. Many critics liked it for one reason or another, but gamers went from enjoying it to getting bored with it to wondering why Bethesda did what they did with it. That extended to its “hyped” DLC, which had many of the same issues as the main campaign.
However, a recurring trend in recent times is members of the team and former members of Bethesda chiming in to say how “good the game is” or trying to defend what the team did. Enter ex-Bethesda designer Bruce Nesmith, who not only felt that a sequel is warranted for the sci-fi title but that it’ll be much better next time around. He revealed to VideoGamer:
“I’m looking forward to Starfield 2. I think it’s going to be one hell of a game because it will address many of the things people are saying, ‘We’re quite there. We’re missing a little bit.’ It will be able to take what’s in there right now and put in a lot of new stuff and fix a lot of those problems. When we built Skyrim, we had the tremendous advantage of Oblivion, which had the tremendous advantage of Morrowind. All that stuff was there for us.”
On the surface, that does “feel right,” and he even gave examples of other games that had “big hyped openings” in their franchise, only for the sequels to take things to new levels. However, there are some caveats here. For example, the games he listed, Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect, were indeed given legendary sequels. The catch is that both critics AND fans praised them upon release, and gamers were eager to get their hands on a new title.
In contrast, with Bethesda’s title, many aren’t asking for a sequel. Not to mention, no one knows how long it would take to develop one.
Another element here is that despite having “other games to fall back on,” Bethesda has slipped up multiple times in the past, including with Fallout 4, which many agree wasn’t as good as the 3rd entry or the spinoff that Obsidian Entertainment did.
Thus, a sequel is anything but a guaranteed hit.
