There's an old saying in Korean: When you are young, choose obstacle over success. It means that being too successful when you are young is actually detrimental for your growth as one becomes too arrogant and their view becomes too narrow. The problem with Bethesda is that they were too successful and all they are doing now is trying to replicate their formula of success without putting effort to make a good game. Good video as always.

I can't explain or rationalize it but every studio that Microsoft bought recently is on it's last leg. Blizzard is obviously fucked. Activision slowly starts to realize that shitting out a (bad) COD every year won't be enough anymore. Bethesda was bought solely on its old glory and even Arkane had a major slip up under Microsoft. Obsidians new game looks like it's aimed at a very limited audience too. All my heroes, they're going down.

Look up the video "Todd and the sweet little lies" from 5 years ago. He's been lying his entire career.

Seems like they haven't learned any lessons or gained any humility from the disaster of Starfield. Doesn't make me hopeful for TESVI.

They added a map to Starefield though, that's quite a big innovation for the RPG genre.

Bethesda fanbois are directly responsible for the studio's lack of improvement. They still act like stacking potatos and sandwiches should wow people and guess what, stacking sandwiches and potatos was one of the selling point Bethesda chose to show us pre release. Can't wait to stack potatos in TES 6 !

Kind of nailed it. Doesn't help their lead writer brags about not using a design document, complains about RPG gamers making paper airplanes out of his stories, and calls his writing "the great American novel" while the BEST thing he ever did was the cliche after cliche after cliche that was Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood(where he completely ignored ALL of the previous Dark Brotherhood lore to boot)...yeah things are looking grim. And I'm sorry but just because they produced a 7/10 TV show for people who don't even play their games isn't going to change a thing.

Todd is always in snake oil salesman mode. I fully expect TES6 be utter trash. It's being built on the same antiquated Creation Engine as Starfield. It will have a lot of the same problems that Blandfield has (poor optimization, infinite loading screens, hideous character models, ancient facial animations etc.) And worst of all, it will have similarly pathetic levels of writing.

Entirely agree especially for one reason - Howard & Bethesda reacted downright arrogant to valid criticism of Starfield very reminiscent to Apple's "you're doing it wrong" answer back in the day. No sign of doing a bit of introspection to begin course correction.

I'm not looking forward to whatever *blank*born you end up being in TES 6.

Didn’t even bother with buying it. Back in the day i used to buy everything they put out. Now, last product i bought was fallout 4( which i actually liked) but nothing about Starfield felt appealing. Then it came out and my low interest cratered.

TES6 will be exactly like Starfield with loading screen every where and 16 times the detail

One of Bethesda's biggest problems is that they have no competitors, they are the only ones making their kind of rpg and have no reason to try to do better and listen to fan requests or criticism. An example of this is their shalowness in re-implementing deeper role-playing mechanics into their game. I was blown away yesterday seeing the latest Skyblivion dev diary in which they showed that they had re-implemented all the roleplaying mechanics of Oblivion and that they had also added many new ones in addition ! The day is coming when Bethesda will have real competition, people who have taken inspiration from their games but who haven't lost the appeal of deeply cohesive lore and deep RPG mechanics that Bethesda used to have.

from an individual who grew up on Fallout NV i and Elder Scrolls, all that I hope is it to get better. but I ain't going to fall for the nostalgia trap again like i did with wow. Any way Nice video Shieldy

Yeah, like I said on the poll...it's over for Bethesda and we even have to wait another 5 years for this slop. I am probably done with it but I will keep my eyes open just in case.

Honestly, I like Skyrim and have never used mods. The thing with Skyrim is even if it's been months or years I can jump back in and just randomly play and have fun. There's no equivalent in Starfield. It wants me to finish the main quest and go to NG+ and that's not what I want. But, that's all that's really left to do. Outposts aren't fun. Shipbuilding is for no reason. Everything in the game is just stuff to do, but not for any in game reason, really. It just is boring, so I don't even want to do anything in it.

Truly open explorable worlds without aggressive level gating is what BGS is actually good at, and they got away from it with Starfield. I think their issue is they don't understand that's what people liked from Skyrim. Make a character who can live in that world. Explore it. Layer it with mods. Build your own experience. Ignore the quests if you want. Taking the formula they're good at and improving on it is what Larian and FromSoftware has done with success.

I was pretty excited for starfeild. First time I got to a door, the door cracked and then the screen faded to black and I was teleported into the interior, I put my controller down and sighed. I knew I was in for a stinker

Modder here. Starfield isnt worth modding. Between the fact that the game is just boring,without a drop of the CK until at least the first DLC. Its also an issue of the fact that the game just needs so much work. I have a nagging suspicion that I cant prove right now, that the nav meshes are largely broken. I noticed this issue with the fact that your companion often teleported to keep up with you. I also noticed with how often NPCs get stuck on objects in combat. Especially with how jump packs are standard with many NPCs,the NPCs cant 'see'where they can go to. So it creates this goofy loop where they get suck and can be picked off. Its very obvious in certain dungeons that dont have NPCs using their jump packs. They function in a servicable manner without their packs. But when the pack gets involved,the combat AI packages(how Creation/Gamebyro games work,everything is in packages,like the BSA files. Its been a hot minute since I made mods but the terms should still be accurate.) Breaks because navmeshes are broken/incomplete. Add onto the factor that the guns are largely boring. Samey and just not fun to use. Combat is pretty forgettable once you get space shouts. The entire damage system needs to be reworked and so does the laughably non-existent perk system. To put it simple its a monumental task just to fix the problems with gameplay. Not to mention the issues with the laughably bland and boring story.

Todd Howard has had ZERO creditability since he got on stage and lied through his teeth about how great (the dumpster fire) called Fallout 76 was going to be.

I remember seeing people excited because they FINALLY added a map, I was like it’s been almost a year you have to be kidding

Nobody can call starfield a “next gen” game

I have 3000+ hours into Skyrim and 4000+ hours in FO4 and I suspected that Starfield was headed for clusterfuckdom from the very start. I listened to what they wanted to do and what they wanted the game to be and then I learned they were going to use the Creation Engine to do it and I thought ...no way. There's no way you can do that on the Creation Engine. ...but wait! This is Creation Engine 2! I still said no way. They'd have to update the Creation Engine to the extent that it wasn't the Creation Engine anymore. And now, lo and behold, we have Starfield with all of the limitations, jank and goofiness of the previous Creation Engine. Then there's the loading screens; oh my God the loading screens. They weren't really an issue in Skyrim and FO4 because they were relatively few and far between with a vast open world to explore without ever encountering one. But Starfield, by contrast, is an unending procession of loading screens interrupted only by the occasional fetch quest. Not acceptable in my book. I get why Bethesda clings to the Creation Engine. It's cheap (because they own it), easy to work on and everybody knows how to fix it. But the same can be said for the Model T and Henry Ford understood that if you don't move on you get left behind and that's exactly where Bethesda is with the Creation Engine today.

Todd to Kirkbride is the same as Jobs to Wozniak.

Bruh its crazy how he still tries to argue that they dont share their ip because of "quality concerns". Biggest 🧢 of the century. Bethesda is so laughable

It's getting pretty grim as I remember having concerns about Skyrim even by the time the definitive edition came out. Compared to Oblivion, I felt Skyrim was missing something that Oblivion and Fallout 3 had which was personality, quirks and mystery. Great side quests (so many of them) that you could stumble upon. It was like every 10 steps of the game had some Easter eggs or entire dungeons I had never encountered even after several previous playthroughs. Skyrim felt too gentrified, I guess? Ya, it felt like the dumbed-down version of Oblivion that catered to gamers and non-gamers alike.

People forget that Skyrim had a massive marketing campaign with huge reach. I knew alot of people personally who didn't even play games that knew about Skyrim and were interested in it.

How can you manage 500 hours in this game?? That's crazy honestly

"Everyone knows Bethesda have terrible writing, combat, and graphics. But let it never be said that they don't make excellent worlds to explore" -Me before Starfield

I loved skyrim and oblivion but their fallout games have nothing on new vegas by obsidian or the isometric games.

To be fair it would be hard to consistently make games as good as Skyrim, seeing as its the best game ever made.

Imo, the biggest issue, is, that once you finished the big faction quests and main story, there isn't that much to do. There are a couple of interesting spots to discover, but other than that, it's just one procedurally generated planet after the other, all having the same buildings. In Skyrim and FO4, there was just so much to discover by just walking around, in Starfield, there isn't. It's all empty.

Every night before I rest, I try my best to come to terms with the fact that elders scrolls 6 is going to suck.

I'm steering clear of anything Todd Howard detected

Boycoting Bethesda since Fallout 76. That was the last straw. That game ruined my relation with my girl at the time lol. The fact that they insist on using an ancient engine in modern games is mind boggling to me. Fallout 4 should have been the last game to do that.

Imagine creating a game in 2023, where we are currently at the height of gaming development with high end technology, just for this game to become "loading simulator", All of those years just to get bitch slapped by Bethesda, expecting us to wait years upon years for the game to be fixed, thinking this is yet another Skyrim waiting for modders to actually finish developing the game, we expected better but since Bethesda is not going to learn, then kiss elder scrolls goodbye.

Bethesda basically puts out sandbox simulators 🤮

Liked and subbed based solely on the fact you sound slightly like Zoidberg from futurama

I always had a feeling about the 1000 worlds idea. As soon as you go off the rails the illusion falls to pieces. My hope is that Microsoft licenses some of these IPs to devs that can consistently deliver.

I can see within Starfield something great, I think the game had potential but they fumbled it like the idiots they are.

seeing this gameplay makes me laugh hard ... how can the ai just be that bad???? they got shot and resume patroling?!? what is this

I always tell people when it comes to ES6 not to expect anything more than Skyrim 2, that's literally the best case scenario we can hope for. Nothing revolutionary or ground breaking, just more of the same you played 13 years ago, minus a feature or 2 that was present in Skyrim.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies Todd 😅

Bethesda has a devoted mod community and then does absolutely nothing with it. Bethesda has people who work for free just to add stuff to their game and they won't even notice what people add and what people want added. What are the most popular mods for bethesda games? Meshes and texture packs so the game looks good, particularly bodies and armor. New weapons and animations. Adding new features to the broken engine. New quests with voiced npcs that isnt progen slop. What does bethesda do for starfield? Ugly bulky armor, and bland textures for the environment. like only 10 guns total in the game, goofy looking animations. same old busted engine with very few new features, we finally get hair physics in starfield and now you always wear helmets. less quests than skyrim or even fallout 4 had. At this point we should be more hyped about how modders will mod a bethesda game 5 years later, than how good the game will be at launch.

I think part of this video is right, but I think part of it is not. Undoubtably Skyrim was in part so successful because of mods and because of the time that it came out in. However, I still don't think that most of Bethesda's game design is outdated. Their game design actually HASN'T stayed the same. It has been changing with every game. They have been progressively stripping out RPG elements and created more and more procedural generation. What they don't understand is that people haven't been playing Skyrim for all these years because it has infinite radiant quests or whatever. They've been playing it for that amount of time because it has an immersive, mostly hand made world that has been made infinitely replayable in part through mods and in part through the various RPG elements it has. "Starfield" was not a proper RPG. And it basically killed exploration dead by not having an overworld and procedurally generating almost everything. The universe also was not nearly as interesting as the TES universe to explore. In my opinion, if anything, Bethesda needs to look backwards. Backwards at Daggerfall, at Morrowind, at Oblivion and at Skyrim. It needs to reintegrate more RPG elements again and it needs to stop trying to go for procedural generation. It needs a mostly hand-crafted world with RPG elements and full of possibilities in an interesting universe. I think if TES 6 continues to follow the trend they've been on for over a decade now of simplifying and making things more generic, it'll be a bad game. But if they leverage the interesting TES universe properly, they reintroduced RPG elements, while handcrafting an interesting and free world all while at the same time maintaining mod support and improving on select pieces of the game like combat and companions, then it'll be great.

I'm not even on the lookout for Elder Scrolls or Fallout news. I am wondering if there will be comparable modding tools for Avowed.

When you said 18 years after skyrim would be when es6 likely comes out made my heart sink. Thats just fucking insane for a wait

They are just mailing it in and putting crap out knowing it will sale anyway, so why try.

People need to understand after a decade most AAA studios you like arnt the same that made the games you liked from the past. People move on from the studios over time. The Bethesda that made Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim is mostly gone, a lot of those devs have moved on from this studio. Clearly from how long development time is taking between titles and the lack of fun or quality it’s saying the most talented have clearly left the studio.

Fluke? No. They made Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 before Skyrim and though they didn't do Skyrim levels of sales they were all still massive hits for the time they released in. Fallout 4 sold around the same number of copies as Skyrim. Fallout 4 overtook Skyrim a few years ago but I don't know if it's held on to that lead. The problem is that instead of giving more of what the players of their earlier games liked they've been trying to capture a larger audience by making changes to their core design philosophy that people don't like or enjoy. They simply don't listen to their fans anymore because as you said in the video Skyrim made them think they could do whatever they want and still have a hit, which unfortunately has been proven to be true so far, at least according to sales. Until people actually stop buying their games instead of just complaining they'll continue making the same mistakes.

No one believes God anymore, not even himself.

The first time bethesda's ever done a Chosen One??! Morrowind: Am I a joke to you?

I cant help but partially disagree. While most of what you stated is true, we need to keep in mind that all Bethesda games after Skyrim were not Elder Scrolls games, the universe they know all about. No one can deny success of every single major TES game with Skyrim as a flagship for modding community. Their recent games were mostly okayish, nothing to be crazy about for sure, but for me the most important part is that Larian set the expectations bar pretty high for everyone in RPG industry with Baldurs Gate 3 and people will definitely look and compare TES VI to BG3 or new Larian title whatever it will be. Bethesda (and Todd for that matter) are well aware of that, which makes me... Not hopeful, but less dreadful about TESVI? Then again, I just might be biased since its my all time favourite universe with its lore. Its also worth mentioning that Bethesda took at least SOME feedback into consideration, looking at the scope of the new Starfield update.

The last bethesda game I played and enjoyed was Oblivion but that was more because it was my first open world RPG and I was 10. They have really released a good game since then. And won't in the future atleast not with Todd at the helm

I'm not surprised as a saying goes every boycott is a cinematic away from ending. It's not the same but that's basically Bethesda and their fans.

Wasted years making a menu simulator when they should've been working on Elder Scrolls 6.

Remember that Todd Howard wanted to release Starfield one full year before it eventually did until Xbox’s Phil Spencer stepped in knowing what a disaster that would’ve been

God Howard !! Love it !! Been riding on the name for years. Well put brother !! Oh.. " It just works "..

Starfield is ugly. The character faces are so bad they are meme worthy. Exactly like in Mass Effect Andromeda, an eight year old game. Bethesda still doesn't use motion capture. That's just lazy. I would say Todd Howard needs to go, but Microsoft would just replace him with an even worse corpo suit.

5:40 You hit the nail with that point.

CDPR switched to UE5 because it was becoming increasingly difficult to update/overhaul their RedEngine and they also have to spend time on training new hires on how to work with their propietary engine. They're expanding, they're trying to work on 2 major titles at once which is why they're setting up a new studio in Boston. And it's easier to hit the ground running and start working on what matters when you can hire people that are familiar with the engine (UE) instead of having to spend time onboarding people so they can use your engine (RedEngine). Furthermore this also expands your potential hiring pool because UE is fairly popular. RedEngine can looks absolutely gorgeous, they aren't ditching it because they're not happy with how games look. 2077 is still one of the most visually impressive games out there. Hell, even TW3 still looks downright beautiful.

I thought , at FIRST, I'll wait a couple of...years, let the modders do THEIR WORK, an be on SALE and maybe. But with their attitude of their CUSTOMERS being idiots well they deserve NO "praise" for doing...something and I'll NEVER buy this thing , hell I wouldn't STEAL it. I FEAR for ALL in the future, Elder, Fallout. For a multi, MULTI BILLION dollar company that has been in the business for DECADES I'm no longer...impressed. Liethesda can keep it's LIES annnnnddd I'LL keep MY money.

BGS has been bleeding talent ever since they got acquired by Zenimax media after the release of Daggerfall. It started with Julian Lefay who left after they got acquired. Then there was Michael Kirkbride who left during the development of Morrowind. After that there was Ken Rolsten and Ted Peterson who both left after Oblivion. Skyrim was built by a new team out of the scraps left behind by Rolsten, Peterson, and Kirkbride, and now that they don't have superior reference material to work off of, the cracks in the team's talent are showing. This current team lacks talented writers and proper direction. Some of the devs at BGS are clearly very talented, many of the systems in modern BGS titles are quite impressive, but without proper engine developers and coherent design strategies the talent they have is being wasted. If Microsoft wants to salvage BGS, it's the production and management areas of the company that need shaking up, but I get the feeling that won't happen as Todd Howard would have to admit that he is largely responsible for the failings of his studio.

Bethesda is the game company that after Morrowind takes one step forward, make absolutely mindblowing 180 turn and then another two steps. I love Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout NV. Right now playing Fallout 4 and plan to revisit Skyrim after so many years. But I can tell you, they really downgrading their games in one side, but upgrading them from another. Take gameplay mechanincs/creative abilities of player ratio as example. In Morrowind we had very basic combat system but so many options with how you want to fight. Many weapons, spells, enchantments, customisation with combinations of armor and cloth with different parts of body. But we had basically two own houses. One of them from House Hlaalu, your own estate, but you lose another two interesting quest lines of Great Houses. Second one is in Bloodmoon DLC, but it's technically worse than the estate, because of less amount of containers. And did you know that containers in Morrowind had their own inventory limitations by weight? Yeah, thats a bummer and making harder to store all the stuff you find in the world. But it's still not critical. In Oblivion we had simplification of combat. Less weapon variety, less customisation with armor and cloth, less interesting spells. There was a potential with combat skills, but in reality they were unreliable and weak. But we now can have our own house in every major city and it's much better to store stuff and decorating your home. In Skyrim you can not only buy a house, but built your own. Make it special, add a drop of your soul into it. But, you quessed it, combat now feels stiffed like everyone in old rusted tanks. Also no more special combat perks - crits, bleed damage or armor ignore, take it or leave. You know what is one of the reasons of popularity of stealth archers builds? You can evade combat with it. Not a good point to combat system, if you ask me. Do you think that this only for Scrolls? Think again, we have Fallout 4. Now we can build entire settlements, literally bringing civilisation in the wasteland. But combat? Well, shooting is fine, but melee combat is stiff again. And I played NV with melee build, so I know what to compare with. Again we had New Vegas, with "survival" ability for someone who don't want pre-war chems, different ammo types for your situation, not only more different melee weapons, but combat skills that makes melee combat in NV feel special. Oh wait what, no special combat perks that make you effective in melee again? At least, if you get lucky, you find random legendary. Yay. But you know what, building settlements is fun (for me at least), so I can excuse this flaw, especially when Fallout 4 is more about building new world. But now we have Starfield. Less focus on combat, more on the ability to build. Your own ship and bases on every single planet. And if your own ship is great, because it is your home at the same time, why do you need to build bases? To make more junk for more bases and repeat? No, thanks. You see what I'm saying? It was a long road, but Todd came from games with simple but engaging combat with problematic creativity with your own creations, to game where you expected to craft and build but with boring combat system and no real point to build anyway. Because what happend if you beat the game? That's right, everything resets, so why even bother building bases? And if you gonna say "but in 2002 Morrowind combat was shit too" I'm going to say "Yes, objectively it was not good. But for that time it wasn't terrible either. But time go on, games show more and more interesting ways to create combat and Todd is just float. And for a while it'll be fine. But there's need to be changes, good ones. And he's not even making combat systems better but costrating them by little pieces". And no, "just mod it" option is invalid, this kind of thinking has show itself harmfull for Bethesda. Why bother if players can just mod what they like, right?

I'm hoping they'll turn it around, but my expectations are set very low

People need to take the nostalgia lens off and realize that the Bethesda that gave us Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, died some time ago, there isn’t much hope for ES6.

The problem with Todd and Bethesda as a whole is that their games have ALWAYS sucked. Their games always had more bugs than a tropical rainforest, their world design has always been lacking, with problems ranging from simplistic quest design, laughably bad AI and illogical NPC behavior to things like programming so atrocious that you could render quests incompletable -- not merely failable, but outright broken -- if you deviated even slightly off the beaten path, as well as a staggering lack of detail. Remember how in Skyrim, one of your perks allows you to take less fall damage by wearing heavy armor -- figure that one out yourself -- or its stealth system being based around taking advantage of the pig-shit AI, to the point where you could crouch in a corner and pop arrows into the heads of bandits, with them being none the wiser, and there's even a perk that allows you to confuse enemies by simply crouching. And of course, their stories have always been exceptionally poorly written, with simplistic factions, forgettable questlines and a complete lack of verisimilitude or immersion. All these problems have existed since the beginning; it's only now that open-world games have become fairly commonplace -- if generally lackluster and homogenized -- where all of Bethesda's technical and mechanical faults are much harder to ignore. Bethesda has ALWAYS been lazy and incompetent. They never changed; the players and the industry did.

Bethesda's reaction to Starfield's criticism says it all, I don't have any faith in them anymore and I have no doubt that es6 will be a financial success just like starfield and we'll hear all of these complaints again but nothing will come of it.

I now believe that Bethesda are making updates for Fallout 4 and Skyrim only to break the mods and make the players go to Starfield

ES6 will be a massive success and pretending otherwise is completely delusional. The recent update addressed several of the things people were complaining about. No vehicles and no performance mode for example. This idea that they’re ignoring fan feedback is factually incorrect.

"Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer"

It took Bethesda 9 years to fix the 0kb save corruption on Fallout 4 PlayStation...and the only reason it was done at all was because they were hoping to squeeze a bit more cash out of it with the release of the tv show.

Great video and I agree with the overall sentiment of lower expectations with BGS and don't believe Todds marketing, however I don't think it would be a wise decision for BGS to switch engines completely. One of the major reasons their games are particularly attractive to the modding community is due to the nature of how the creation engine and their respective 'creation kits' are designed and I would assume it would be difficult to recreate this design in a more general purpose engine such as UE5 or similar. Having said that, there is no reason why BGS cannot continue to improve and implement features to the Creation Engine, such as taking features from the likes of UE5 that people find superior and integrating it with CE (assuming compatibility).

I don't even even need TES 6 to be that good. I just need it to be something that captures enough of the imagination that people flock to mod over further modding Skyrim. One reason being that Skyrim's engine is horribly inefficient at rendering clutter. I had thought for a while now that Skyrim is probably going to be their Magnum Opus.

Skyrim was also played and loved at launch by primarily 12-17 year olds. Though those kids and teenagers grew up and still buy/play Skyrim because it’s nostalgic, they also had different experiences like Baldur’s Gate 3, and elden ring. Our tates have evolved and matured. Bethesda’s game design has not.

Todd "The Fraud" Howard

I think I see it just a little, subtly, differently. Bethesda’s mistake was to think that people keep playing Skyrim because of Skyrim. Whereas what Skyrim became was a framework on which others (more talented and imaginative others) have hung a great game. The modders are Skyrim. And people aren’t put off by bad graphics so much as they are by graphics that look way worse than they needed to. Like that student who just doesn’t try hard enough, and puts more energy into being defensive about their lack of effort, rather than working on that.

Damn, 30 seconds in and you sound a lot like Joshua Graham from New Vegas

Todd's just alright, he's got his cyber truck so im happy

Well in Morrowind you’re literally the Nerevine the incarnate of a god. And the messiah of the dark elves. And in Oblivion it’s mentioned you’re the only who can stop Dagon i think Urial mentions it in the beginning and of course in Daggerfall you activate the Numidian causing a dragon break. Although this is in ESO. Sotha Sill mentions there’s a peculiar instance of the prisoner always changing fate and thwarting destiny. As in you the player character chooses the destiny of the games. Since you’re always a prisoner. It’s just that in Skyrim you can completely choose to ignore the main quest entirely. Never learning a dragon shout therefore never actually activating any of the dragons. Before Skyrim ignoring the main quest locked you out of main areas like Vivec city

There’s no way you can play Morrowind and then play sky rim and think Bethesda maintained it’s quality.

I dont get why they did do 10 planets with 100times more detail...or 100 planets with 10 times more detail?? Who tf cares abt 1000 planets??

I know Fallout 5 is a way off, but I really hope they drop the base building mechanic you see in Fallout 4 and Starfield. It’s become tiresome and I feel like it takes development time away from things they should focus on.

i have 10,000 hours in skyrim, but that's hours spent between the console version then on the Skyrim LE on PC, then now SE, i haven't moved over to AE, and i really do love the game, for the longest time it was the only game that offered the best gameplay aspects the most freedom and the biggest landmass, i loved it. only recently within the last year have i been playing FO4, i enjoy both games but i feel FO4 has far more issues skyrim did when it comes to performance issues and bugs and glitches, but i have been really enjoying the game. to me their games are a potentially infinite sandbox where anything and everything is possible, within reason of the engine limitations. i mean i remember speculating what starfield was going to be like long before they announced the idea of the game, and i pretty much thought it would never add up to anything more than a load screen simulator, in which i was right to a degree, i never thought they would make a ship work like it does, but now that i understand the trick in how it was done, i know they are capable of much more but they were lazy in starfield's design. and i agree with that one poster get the game in 5 years when it's not only fixed and all it's DLC is out, but the game will finally be what we all wanted, or at least far closer to what we all wanted at launch.

Oh man, hardly anyone is addressing Bethesda's regression. Their games get worse mechanically, they care less about the lore. So they made their own universe - and it's so thin and poorly thought out. Story, characters, quests all going backwards. Content, less. Even the procedural shit - they couldn't bother to make more than 10 different dungeons that they knew would be recycled infinitely. The game isn't a game. It's like a dev kit. Bethesda made all these cool systems and parts for a game, but someone who knows how to design and has a vision should come in and make a game using all of Starfield's jumbled assests, mechanics, etc. Like just give Starfield over to Obsidan, or CD, or Larian - all the development is done, the combat, traversal, planets, procedural engine, all finished - now just let these devs make a game out of it. It could be, would be so much more. Choices matter, killing matters, sequence breaking possible, reactivity from the world and factions that interact with you and eachother. Branching narrative with missable or failable paths. Far more dynamic dungeons with a larger pool of handcrafted assests for a procedural engine to mash together - nothing ever repeats. But hand crafted impactful dungeons/exploration also sprinkled through out. Also space-travel not worthless. Maube interactive scanning, some way of making finding stuff up to you. Also, to have kept the Bethsda "magic" the main cities should all have been like 20-25% the size of Skyrim's map. Basically like Skyrim's holds, all hand crafted with organic exploration and real locations. This game could have been so much more if Bethesda had any ambition and their games got better with every release. This seems like too much to ask for cause it's fucking Bethesda. The games get worse, and they also strip them of content and depth. If they had added in more... everything and each game surpassed the last then my demands would be reasonable, expected. But hey, now I know they can't. Starfield was their last trick. Fallout 4 sucked and I thought they learned from it. But after this, I know. It's over.

I have 13k+ hours on ESO and the graphics and gameplay look really good for a 10 year old game. Guess we'll have to wait and see how TES6 turns out.

The second I completed the mission where you get your “sTaR BoRn PoWeRs” i uninstalled. I tried hanging on for hours to see the big innovation and it’s just copy and pasted Dragonborn. Todd made starfield for 25 years and there’s not any original ideas?

If bethesda keeps their engine for tes6 they fully deserve to go down

After 8 hours of Starfield I stopped playing - life is too short. Skyrim was a great game and so many newer games owe BGS for it. I do find it unacceptable that the BGS game engine is so bad and buggy. Playing thru Horizon Forbidden West atm. Looks amazing and I've not had one bug. I really do hope that Bethesda, Obsidian and Bioware all put out great games in the next cycle, because we are at least 6 years from Larian's next project. Cheers

I admit that I got suckered into buying Starfield. Because of the ship building & i actually enjoyed it UNTIL i realized that you cant add doorways or ladders on the inside of your ship. 🤣 I was like WTAF ? im DONE.

all of their releases are wildly financially successful and I think that's resulted in them learning the wrong lessons with each subsequent release. they won't start learning the right lessons until the public stops falling for their snake oil. looking at it's concurrent player count, starfield might just be that game, finally.

Personally, I'm just baffled it took this long for people to catch on that Besthesda just don't make engaging games. Skyrim, the popularity of which continues to mystify me, was an ocean an inch deep, being charitable. It wasn't a bad game, but it wasn't a great game, either. It was just... a game.

I worked with Unreal engine 4 for a time in a game studio. It is not a magical perfect engine that fits every game as it is praised to be. Usually the decision to migrate to ue4 is made purely to save money and lay off in house engine programmers. And I think the industry is much worse for that. I am glad studios like larian are investing in their own tech.

They're pushing everything on Teso now, but i don't want Teso... I would like a real TES

After preordering Failout 76, I vowed to never preorder another Bethesda game again. I had gamepass when Starfield dropped and waited a couple of months before trying it out. I got about 2 hours in and never touched it again. I really hope Microsoft just takes Fallout from Bethesda and gives it to Obsidian. I am sick of Todd. He looks and sounds like a used car salesman.

Your thesis is compelling. You points reign heavy like I'm body slamming purple haired SJW's from Harvard. My point is, the assumption we need our hands held to land and take off on our own accord, but instead they guide us to the atmosphere and back. Then as to not burden us with the troubles of physics, by not letting us traverse the planet with our ships that fly through galaxies. So there's that. If they would have implemented that, it would have been enough for me to actually play more then 6 hours.

Skyrim to me is a lot like the modern version of play solitaire. I am bored and got time to kill. The game is fun, but it is not very deep. There is a lot of story happening in a way. But you are not really seeing most of it play out. Like it is all back ground stuff. The game play is not very engaging or exciting. It works. Starfield has a ton of problems. Mostly there are several game loops that are done better in other games. Base building games are all over the place, shooter obviously and flight/space sims along with FTL. Then you plop that all into a Bethesda travel system.

If it's so bad why did you put in 500. I always put 500 hours into games I don't like. What an absurd thing to do.

Steam really needs to start letting user leave neutral scores, and not force us into this false good/bad dichotomy.

Skyrim came out 18 years ago. That's an adult childhood's worth of time. Not a single person who actually was involved in the development of Skyrim is still at Bethesda. To think Elder Scrolls 6 will be good, after Bethesda's last 2 games were utterly unplayable, is the definition of insanity.