After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful. Everything points to the fact that they knew that the game was not even half finished, in my opinion, with major glaring issues, and they decided to just send it off anyway. The difference between this game and Oblivion is that this time, it wasn’t light-hearted and filled with silly mistakes that made people laugh. It instead inside it a lot of anger and disbelief as to how they could fail so spectacularly with a AAA title…
But this has not been the first time that Bethesda as a whole has failed, and is in fact the third strike. They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4, which took the gaming industry by surprise after seeing how poorly developed it was, and the extreme low quality of the story, how unfinished the game was, how simply broken many areas and features were, I could talk about it for hours. Biggest thing to me was the poorly made settlement system that barely even worked because there was no snapping, and it felt like playing an indie game. The second strike was Fallout 76, crazy how disappointing his game was and even to this day is still broken and in disarray. It’s only been able to survive purely because of microtransactions…
Then, you look at what most people are playing right now, and it’s Skyrim. Above any other game out there, it’s Skyrim. The similarity between Skyrim and Elder scrolls 6 doesn’t really matter that much, the age is what you should really focus on. Why are people playing such an old game still to this day? Hint, it’s because every single other title they’ve released has been a disappointment.
Personally, I have no faith or belief that Elder scrolls 6 will be anything other than a colossal disappointment. I don’t see how Bethesda as a studio can possibly manage to produce AAA titles anymore, I think they have a budget of half of what they need to have, and it’s only getting smaller each year as costs are being cut, and People are being laid off, stakeholders and stockholders want more revenue growth than ever before. It’s unbelievable honestly. They expect infinite growth with minimal headcount that keeps shrinking
Starfield was garbage IMO. I didn’t even pay for it and wanted my money back in less than 3 hours.
But I AM still hopeful for Elder Scrolls 6. The weakness of Starfield is exploration is barely a thing; incredibly boring procedural generation is the cause. There is little to no value getting excited exploring the world and the incredible world of Skyrim is what makes it good.
I seriously doubt Bethesda is dumb enough to try procedural generation with the next elder scrolls game, and if they are then it will be dead in the water just by association. But a game similar to Skyrim will likely still find a stronger audience, even if just for the return to form.
Honestly, they could’ve fixed it by adding custom settings for enemy generation. In Skyrim, Obliv, Fallout games, I’ve always downloaded a “more enemies” mod to encounter more things out in the wild/wastes. Even when I found monsters in Starfield, they just wandered by, there’s no danger. If they would’ve simply polled the gaming community, we would’ve told them how to fix it. :\