Just in terms of timeline, Dragon Age 4 was teased at about the same time with the same level of teaser trailer. It’s releasing this fall.
So a full modern RPG being fully developed in that time by a smaller studio, and for elder scrolls we haven’t heard squat.
Who knows how DA will turn out, but we know modern Bethesda quality thanks to starfield. Not having any news in 6 years proves this trailer was made just to shut fans up
Often times trailers that early are used as a hiring tool, too. Cyberpunk’s original CG trailer was back in like 2012, and that game came out in 2020, but we know from an interview at E3 before The Witcher 3 came out that there was a very small team working on Cyberpunk before Witcher 3 was done, and Cyberpunk at that point was mostly just design documents.
And DA4 got almost remade to remove the live service features
What’s Bethesdas excuse?
Who knows how DA will turn out, but we know modern Bethesda quality thanks to starfield. Not having any news in 6 years proves this trailer was made just to shut fans up
Pretty sure they flat out said this was true
Yup:
“Bethesda and Todd Howard announced Elder Scrolls 6 when they did because of fan demand, or in the words of Skyrim’s lead designer Bruce Nesmith, because ‘the pitchforks and torches were out.’” Source
Elder Scrolls VI exits pre-production, development begins (August 2023)
I hope they’re using this time to learn lessons from their Starfield flop and gather the talent and budget needed to improve upon Skyrim. A modern engine probably wouldn’t hurt.
However, my expectations are very low at this point.
They haven’t learned from Oblivion, Skyrim, or Fallout 4. Probably others.
Or really, they learned they can just keep releasing games on a hacked-up Morrowind engine, and make huge piles of money. So that’s what they’ll keep doing.
Yup. ES6 is going to sell like condoms on an STD themed swinger convension no matter how many bugs are going around.
And the saddest part is that too many have learned nothing about AAA titles, and will preorder the game, making the game a massive financial success even before releasing anything of quality.
People have such nostalgia boners for Morrowind. Warranted or not, it’s still annoying.
A modern engine probably wouldn’t hurt.
If it does not have similar levels of moddability then it will absolutely hurt.
I think it’s safe to assume they know that and would bear it in mind when choosing or building an engine. Their games are famous for modding, after all.
That’s a years if not decade+ long project though, including major investments of time and money that you could pour into actual games. You can’t just stomp a new game engine out of the ground, especially not with how complex video games in of itself have become, and if you want it to be as moddable as their current one.
The budget for Starfield was twice that of Baldur’s Gate 3. Throwing more money at it isn’t going to do a lot if they’re allocating it poorly.
I’m not suggesting that a big budget alone is sufficient to make a good game.
However, enough budget to keep the team employed (note the many gaming industry layoffs lately) and appropriate budgeting (in terms of both money and time) affect things like code, art, and writing quality. It’s kind of important.
I think it’s going to require the people making the most high-level decisions to come to the realization that their old way of doing things is outdated. I don’t have faith that they’ll come to those conclusions.
The real number is Morrowind had something like 10-20 writers that worked on it. Modern Bethesda games have 1.
I think I counted 6 quest designers in Starfield, which was a spot in the credits I was specifically looking for given how many quests they had and how many of them would have been better off not even existing. You can’t talk about having 1000 planets and then make quests that aren’t interesting to populate them.
It’s a tricky balancing act. They need to recover the investment as early as possible to pay less in capital costs but doing that will mean that later on when the product is sub-par it will cause problems and extra work.
Since the engine, game logic, art, story, testing is so heavily coupled together changing the engine a little bit could cause a month of work down the line.
I think personally the best way is to start by making an engine or taking one off the shelf and then write a mini version of the game with shit art that has a lot of bugs.
At the same time making models with hitboxes that all have the same physical properties otherwise, dialog content and recordings and all other content that can be done separately.
Once that is fun to play then you can start working creating a slightly bigger system with a single short storyline to have a cohesive experience and will have the genaral feel of the game.
Once everything above is done setting up a closed beta is the way to go. Take some feedback, add features and redo the small story to be more fun.
Then once everything is a fun experience but people just want more you do the whole everything.
I’m replaying Starfield, and on my second playthrough, I’m noticing the depth they put into this game. Sometimes a single dialogue line you said days ago will have an effect on NPC attitudes through an entire side story. I’m not going to argue that it’s not a regurgitation of their lame formula they’ve milked for the past 15+ years, but they do need to reevaluate where their money/dev time goes to.
Replaying as well, doing side quests I put off and surprised they actually go interesting places. Just did the one where zero G kept turning off and on at the space station that got taken over.
Damn, TIL you can come across these locations on accident just exploring. I thought that place was weird to be randomly floating out there with no real good loot. 😂
The only thing Bethesda is motivated to do, frothing, absolutely chomping at the bit, is figure out a way to successfully monetize modded content.
Yay, six more years til they release a buggy mess
Do you want another release of skyrim? Because that’s how you get another release of skyrim!
As much of a joke as all the re-releases are, I’m super happy Skyrim VR exists. It’s one of the best VR experiences with the right mods that make it an actual VR game instead of a cheap cash-grab…
why are so many people absent mindedly pushing this buggy mess narrative? starfield was their least buggy release ever (i personally only encountered one terrible bug that was easily fixed with reloading a save)
its not like bethesda ever released a game as buggy as fallout new vegas or cyberpunk, besides 76 but, like new vegas and cyberpunk, it got fixed
It was 5 years and 8 months between the release of Oblivion and Skyrim. Oblivion was released on March 20, 2006, and Skyrim was released on November 11, 2011.
Skyrim is almost three times as old now. I’m going to be honest, I’d rather just have another Skyrim expansion than a modern Bethesda game.
It would not surprise me at all if we are another six years away.
