View Topic

Fallout: 76, TES:Blades, Starfield, TES6.

Personally, so excited for Starfield and TES6. If I'm honest, the other games look decent as well.

I wasn't paying much attention to the conference, but from what I've read so far it was high on ambition and low on details...am I right?

I'm going to be curious how TES6 shapes up over the next few years. I think Skyrim has been the iconic single-player RPGs for nearly a decade now, setting new standards and expectations for what people wanted from the genre, and it seems that they're in a position where they'll have to upstage themselves in order to produce something that isn't a disappointment. It's like when Blizzard made Starcraft 2...sure, it's made them a lot of money and can on some level be called a success, but can anyone say it's as iconic as the original to this day?

I wasn't paying much attention to the conference, but from what I've read so far it was high on ambition and low on details...am I right?

I'm going to be curious how TES6 shapes up over the next few years. I think Skyrim has been the iconic single-player RPGs for nearly a decade now, setting new standards and expectations for what people wanted from the genre, and it seems that they're in a position where they'll have to upstage themselves in order to produce something that isn't a disappointment. It's like when Blizzard made Starcraft 2...sure, it's made them a lot of money and can on some level be called a success, but can anyone say it's as iconic as the original to this day?

Yeah, low on details. I'm assuming Starfield isn't even past alpha and that TESVI is in pre-production.

Well from the looks of Fallout76, they've either upgraded their engines or created a new one. Todd(?) or one of the people at Bethesda mentioned that they are able to do more with their future games than they were previously allowed to because of engine/hardware limitations, so perhaps they can make these new games revolutionary. I think Bethesda knows they can't screw up TESVI, as it will have high expectations.

I really hope they take as looooong as they need to perfect Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield rather than trying to push them out within a year or two.

Yeah, low on details. I'm assuming Starfield isn't even past alpha and that TESVI is in pre-production.

Well from the looks of Fallout76, they've either upgraded their engines or created a new one. Todd(?) or one of the people at Bethesda mentioned that they are able to do more with their future games than they were previously allowed to because of engine/hardware limitations, so perhaps they can make these new games revolutionary. I think Bethesda knows they can't screw up TESVI, as it will have high expectations.

Maybe the expectations will be so high that it's not possible to meet them.

It's hard just being on the team that has to make a sequel to such an iconic game. I read awhile back that when Blizzard was making Diablo 3, just the fact that they were making the sequel to such an iconic game paralyzed with fear...debates would break out over virtually any proposed change about whether it would make it less of a Diablo game, and ultimately Blizzard had to hire someone from the outside to take charge and make those decisions. I don't envy the team that has to make the sequel to Skyrim. I'm sure the next TES will be a financial success and it'll be a decent game, but it's probably doomed to live in the shadow of its predecessor no matter what they do.

I'm sure they thought the same thing when they were making Skyrim, because before that they'd made the also-very-well-received Oblivion, and that worked out just fine.
And before Oblivion, there was Morrowind...

I mean, those were good games, but they were hardly iconic, and certainly not for almost a decade.

I feel like Skyrim was only iconic by virtue of when it was made, though. When they were making Oblivion, DLC was still very much experimental (and in many instances reviled, both best illustrated with the eternal Horse Armor joke), and 'remaster' as a concept was unheard of. Skyrim has retained its place largely because it's been remastered and re-released enough times that half the jokes were 'BE3 2018: Todd Howard Re-Announces Skyrim'.
When they were making Morrowind, 'mods', while they were a thing, weren't nearly as easy to create, roll out, or most practically for the vast majority of people, download and install - which are what made Oblivion and subsequently Skyrim have the longevity that they do. Subsequently, of course, there's been the development of huge modding communities, and of course the Steam Workshop to vastly facilitate the uploading and downloading process, but at the time it wasn't nearly as prevalent as it is now.
If Oblivion and Skyrim had been switched (and had their graphical quality swapped around too, because a tragically large number of people define a game's quality by its appearance), Oblivion may have been just as much of a cultural touchstone as Skyrim was.

I feel like Skyrim was only iconic by virtue of when it was made, though. When they were making Oblivion, DLC was still very much experimental (and in many instances reviled, both best illustrated with the eternal Horse Armor joke), and 'remaster' as a concept was unheard of. Skyrim has retained its place largely because it's been remastered and re-released enough times that half the jokes were 'BE3 2018: Todd Howard Re-Announces Skyrim'.
When they were making Morrowind, 'mods', while they were a thing, weren't nearly as easy to create, roll out, or most practically for the vast majority of people, download and install - which are what made Oblivion and subsequently Skyrim have the longevity that they do. Subsequently, of course, there's been the development of huge modding communities, and of course the Steam Workshop to vastly facilitate the uploading and downloading process, but at the time it wasn't nearly as prevalent as it is now.
If Oblivion and Skyrim had been switched (and had their graphical quality swapped around too, because a tragically large number of people define a game's quality by its appearance), Oblivion may have been just as much of a cultural touchstone as Skyrim was.

Does that really matter for fan expectations though? Simply by virtue of being such a massive cultural phenomenon, Skyrim has built up much larger hype for TESVI that will be difficult to fulfill, regardless of whether such expectations are justified.

(Disclaimer that I may be talking out of my ass considering that the only TES game I played was Morrowind for like an hour or two so basically I have no experience with this subject)

taulover is correct...Morrowind and Oblivion were great games, but Skyrim set a whole new standard on immersive gameplay that is going to be very difficult to exceed. In fact, I think that expectation is why MMOs have been in decline for the last few years, and why TES Online didn't live up to the pre-release hype. People now expect that level of immersion that was in Skyrim, but it's impossible at the moment to recreate on a game that's shared by thousands of players.

They'll expect even more from Skyrim's successor.

What is this level of immersion from Skyrim?  I have only played Oblivion so I am not knowledgeable on the topic.

What is this level of immersion from Skyrim?  I have only played Oblivion so I am not knowledgeable on the topic.

Yeah, level of immersiveness is rather subjective in this case. I've seen many people argue that Morrowind and/or Oblivion are far more immersive than Skyrim, as well as vice versa. It may all depend on what aspects of the game you find more necessary to establish suspension of disbelief.

As I was saying in my post, it may simply be the larger popularity of Skyrim that has caused expectations to grow—with a larger fanbase comes increasingly higher fan expectations. (Wikipedia says that Oblivion sold 3.5 million copies in a little over five years, while Skyrim did the same in two days.)